Peter has never forgotten the required movement. Pushing the blade through the skin between the ribs. The moment of power. The ecstasy of killing, mixed with the ancient words, sanctified by thousands and thousands of years of death.

But which came first? The killing or the prayers? Which is the key and which is the lock? Can one exist without the other? As Marika turns over his old body, Peter wonders why he lied. Why shouldn’t he admit that he dreamt of the blood of children, blood spilled by his own hands? What are those two deaths compared to the devastation of war? What makes those two bodies different from the millions lying on the battlefield, starving to death in their homes, flying into the air as ashes?

The difference is that he killed them. Now Peter understands why he wanted to believe Márti. It makes no sense to keep lying to himself. If he hadn’t gone public back then he would have wanted to kill again. Not for the Great Lord and the rituals, but to smell the scent of innocent blood. To take a life. At first he would have used the rituals as a justification for his acts, to disguise his true vice. Márti kept him from offering sacrifices by means of her political movement, and Peter was grateful for that.

But Márti is dead now, and Peter knows he will soon follow her to the place where the dead go. What is left to restrain him now? Why couldn’t he sacrifice someone to honor Márti’s memory, like in the old days? Why couldn’t he beg the Great Lord’s slaves, his body and soul drenched in sacrificial blood?

The Great Lord would know. The Great Lord would know that Peter was not killing for him. He would know that Peter did everything for his own sake, his own enjoyment.

‘Do you have faith?’ old Peter asks the night nurse.

‘In what?’ she asks back.

‘In anything.’

She powders the old man’s skin with talcum, then unpacks the diaper.

‘You’ve seen dead people, haven’t you?’

Old Peter nods.

‘So have I. Then why believe in anything?’

Old Peter thinks of the next day’s funeral, of death and his desires. He has more strength left in his body than anyone would guess, he knows this, he feels this. If only he could smell the scent of young blood once again, just one more time before the eternal night.

Before he goes back to sleep, he makes up his mind.

At the funeral, it was time for the Jaw of Saturn.