It would be about as close as anyone would ever get to touching the founder, the creator and like a god he had become to all of the Artesians the new generation of willing converts.
This courtesy did not seem to extend beyond me, nor to Sophie or our children. This was with much relief and seemed I was now treated like the last of the originals who knew Karl first hand. But why couldn't they say this of a baker or a waiter who served his meal? Or of his driver or even someone who polished and pressed his uniform? They all touched the creator and many surely still exist and can remember the old Commissar.
I remember then Greta Knutmudsen, his only kin. She never married and we had met on a few occasions as Karl was very secretive and guarded about his past. We kept in contact and she survived the war, the enemy soldiers somehow knew she was the sister of the creator. While they never harmed or touched her with filthy intentions, they neither granted her any courtesy that they heaped on me.
We called more frequently after the war and she shared insight into her brother. Family life was not blissful and quite strained as he never got along with their father. He was a drunken lout and nearly ruined their family with his ineptitude. But his ascending the Politiburo assured them a comfortable life and she was never found of wanting. She continues as a school teacher in a sister institute of the Perkin's. Everyone knows she is a Knutmudsen, but like the same treat her no different than if she wasnt one.
If there was ever a time to make the rounds of this cast of characters, perhaps we should dive into everyone who hasn't yet been mentioned. While I cannot account for all my accounts for the past few years, there are many details, most mundane and quite routine that have transpired and involved many people who have yet to be mentioned other than in passing, including Greta.
Greta is eight years the younger of Karl. They were the only siblings of his father Kurt Knutmudsen and their mother Gertrude. The Knutmudsens were actually first cousins and as was custom for them to often wed. Since neither Kurt, nor Gertrude had siblings, it became clear their offspring were unlikely to ever wed. To others outside their customs they would find this revolting and equally odd, but that was how foreign customs go and to each their own.
Kurt Knutmudsen was indeed a drunk, but he was neither abusive nor cruel. His was more the jovial kind that found delight in everything when in a stupor. This offended the industrious senses of his son who wanted a mentor to look up to that was a captain of industry, instead he had an incompetent comedian for a father.
Gertrude put up with Kurt's antics as she preferred his drinking over his smoking as he would light up a chimney of smoke and with Greta's poor circulation and asthma was an impending death sentence on their household. So the drink was Kurt's favorite past time and she plied it the best she could with what cheap liquor they could afford.
Greta largely grew out of her childhood asthma and only had rare bouts when she could barely catch her breath. She found unique ways to compensate for her shortcomings and could still take off in a sprint or climb flights of stairs unassisted.
She was never found for wanting as Karl made sure after his appointment to bureau chief all of his spare income went to her. She proved a reliable accountant and investor, but only enough to not raise suspicion. She could have retired comfortably, but feigned that the war had erased all of Karl's assets which largely was accurate.
Some of Karl's old things she still keeps and many are treated like holy artifacts and relics. She could fund a large ransom with just a few of his trifles and she has at least a thousand of them in one of many crates and barrels in their ancestral home. You could never quite understand the Knutmudsens even without the Artesian nonsense. Here was Greta who could be the richest woman in the world, sitting on a gold mine of Karl's things and all she does is donate them to museums.
There is an entire and intricate economy devoted in the trade and exchange of Karl's things. It became such a serious problem and cause for concern that now any donations must go through the Central Administration and only after several curators have evaluated the value and intent of each artifact. They are all numbered and catalogued with a blockchain to track their existence and authenticity as many replicas and fakes have also been produced in astonishing numbers and ever improving qualities.
I had gifted one of Karl's old pens that he had on his desk while still a Commissar to Anna when she first came to the Central Administration, much to her delight. It was before she even mentioned the Artesians and like Oliver before she took it as an indication and waited for further instruction. We both laughed that I was very adept at my ineptitude and skilled producing some hidden meaning when there never was one. And to my astonishment she said it was not just any pen, it was the one he used to write many of his teachings as she said it had a unique flourish on certain letters that matched his first editions. She said it really floored her and she almost gave it away that she was an Artesian the day he handed her Karl's pen and when she began writing with it and thought it a truly ingenius code word. And for a time she thought me a truly mastermind of spycraft and her reason for being abrupt in saying she would be honest with me always as she was terrified that she had been found so quickly by a true master. In time, she realized how very wrong her assumptions.
Then these writings did survive the fire, or were never in danger and Oliver, Michael and many of the Artesians were actually in contact with Anna's people. It would explain a lot of things and now made more clear that the Commissariat co-opted what already existed and perhaps like a fool handed it out as a pen to Karl as I did to her not realizing it was significant and real. That would be a simple explanation for the greatest mystery of mine.
I shared that theory with Anna and she said it was very plausible and Karl's writings does exist and I've been observing them, walking past and through them everywhere in her city. But they were not entirely his own and he merely perfected what generations for centuries have tried and failed. I started to understand and could make sense of a few words and phrases that sound like things from Antiquties or from many other bygone eras, like the Montresor many exhibits remixed each fall and largely the same presentation.
Then the language is now perfect if the Artesians have won? Yes, enthusiastically Anna affirmed. Isn't it brilliant and great that mankind finally achieved what it has yearned for since the dawn of time? I tried to smile and nod in agreement, she knew I didn't understand and couldn't. She patted my hand and wished I would know what she felt, but was happy for everything and each time she touched my hand she felt she was touching the Knut and it made her skin crawl with delight.
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