Free Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street by Indrek Hargla Page A

appearance of a saint and a miracle are thus things that really may happen, but only a few of them have happened. Some people are inclined to be too keen to see saints and angels, and the church cannot allow that … But death, Melchior, death is final. One does not come back from death.’ But something in the monk’s words forced Melchior to look straight at him seriously and to ask him to explain further. ‘My people believe – still now, even after they have heard the word of God – that the spirits of their ancestors can come back,’ explained Hinric, speaking in a measured voice, but Melchior perceived irritation behind his words. ‘As a learned man and a servant of God I must consider it to be empty superstition. The death of the body is also the death of the soul on earth, and the soul lives on in God’s realm. The soul of a sinner dies completely in hell.’
    â€˜But a soul is not a ghost,’ observed Melchior. ‘Tobias Grote said he
saw
a ghost.’
    â€˜He believed what he had seen,’ said Hinric with certainty. ‘He believed he had seen a spirit, and my words didn’t make him think differently. I remember that in the village where I was born andlived, before Brother Arnulf took me away with him to bring me to the Dominicans, there in the village, Melchior, they believed firmly in ghosts haunting the living. There was a man living there who died – and he was a Christian – and his wife came to complain to the village elder that the man was haunting the house after his death. I saw and overheard how the wise men of our village cast spells and curses like the heathens do on the house and the wife. I heard their incantations, and I saw what they did and how they cast spells. And I saw how that woman fretted and cried out in terrible pain because her husband was holding on to her as the only thread connecting him to his earthly life. And the wise men visited this woman and cast spells on her and drove the evil spirit back. They made her drink potions boiled up from roots and chanted heretical words. That must definitely have been more than twenty years ago, but I remember it still, and I saw …’
    â€˜Did you see the ghost?’
    â€˜I … I don’t know
what
I saw, but if I had then been able to, I would have prayed and cried to the Virgin Mary and St Catherine for help and put my hope in their power and blessing. I remember I was afraid, but my parents forced me to look because they had recognized in me that power which might have made a sorcerer out of me, too. And when Brother Arnulf came visiting they let me go with him because, according to those people’s understanding, monks were men with the same power as their wise men had. But, Melchior, their charms helped, and that woman was freed from her tormentor. They said that after death some people don’t get the correct guidance and remain stranded between two worlds, trying to get back home. I’ve always wanted to think that that can only happen with people who have not accepted God’s love into their own souls, but … but sometimes I even think that the heathens, too, will get to know the difference between the Kingdom of Heaven and hell, and they will know what God’s guidance really is, but they don’t know how to find the right path to get there. Demons, though, can torment both Christians and heathens, only the heathen’s soul is an easier catch for them. That womanregained her health, but otherwise, without the wise men’s help, she would have died at the hands of her persecutor.’
    â€˜And Tobias Grote died shortly after complaining that he’d seen a ghost,’ said Melchior. ‘Yet I don’t want to believe that ghosts can kill.’
    â€˜Tobias Grote fell to his death from his tower,’ replied Hinric. ‘He’d had too much to drink and didn’t know where to draw the line.’
    â€˜He might