The Twisted Biography of the author
ANTON VON STEFAN
Part seventeen - the miraculous rediscovery of the gothic author
From the time of his disappearance in early September of the year 2012, Anton Von Stefan faded into the mists that often enshroud many of his Gothic Tales. Then, as the warm winds blew from the Eternal City of Rome, and crossed the wide sea known to man as the Adriatic, the mists parted on the eastern shore. Soft sand and small pebbles ran along the shoreline from Albania through Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia. Aged date and palms trees lined the wide and lustrous promenades, now empty of the summer crowds, and many of the kiosks had been closed or fully shuttered for what the locals call ‘winter’. But for a lone man, clad in shorts, open sandals and bare above the waist, exposing a deep bronzed skin which looked so out of place this late in the season, the beach in Bar, Montenegro would have been empty. This bearded individual walked lazily along, then turned into one of the few cocktail bars still open, the Tropicana, a place reminiscent of an establishment of the identical name this same person had visited in far off Havana.Cuba. When I too ambled into this lazy seaside tavern, I was pleasantly surprised to see Anton Von Stefan sipping a Mojito in the cool shade of an umbrella on the outdoor patio.
He had with him, four of his Gothic Horror Stories, works that he was most intent on editing, and my presence was of little interest to him. The next day, he had left without leaving any note for me to follow, but a local taxi driver had sent word that he had travelled north to the town of Budva, a short distance from where I stood, to sequester himself. The completion of his work was, ultimately, his present goal. I let him be, and only followed four days later. There, at the side of a pool, on the fifth day after our previous encounter, sat the author, amidst some late fall guests, in a hotel I shall leave nameless. Heedless of any distractions around his immediate presence, I recognized that he was in his own realm, a world and a condition he is somehow able to put himself into when his mind is fully at work in his horrid tales. I have witnessed the same scene in the very midst of WreckBeach, in beautiful Vancouver, on a summer weekend, with thousands of nude, or semi-nude bathers, Frisbee throwers, and beer vendors enjoying the ambience of nature's wonder, the sea pounding the soft sand as each wave laps the shore and our author in the very center of it all. Yet, he is fully immersed in his work, oblivious to the erotic images of the tanned, young women, many fully nude for the first time, nervous and constantly chattering with those people who are around them, as these youthful and curvaceous bodies pass close by.
As he worked on in Budva, on occasion, when a particular word, paragraph, or idea does not sit well within his active mind, he would sit back and close his eyes. Anyone passing by the pool and not knowing how the author works, would simply think he was sleeping in the hot sun, idling the time and the day away. Yet, with the thermometer in the low 30s, and the sun brighter than in mid-summer in Canada, Anton Von Stefan was not there as a vacationing foreigner, but had sought seclusion and comfort in the mild fall weather Montenegro offers. I watched only from a distance, not wishing to interfere with the creator of yet another Gothic Tale.
As the mood swept him, he would stop for a few minutes to dive headlong into the saltwater pool, the brain fully submerged to cool off its circuits. At sunset, he invariably packed his books and his papers, took a towel from his room, and went for an evening swim in the warm Adriatic Sea.
On another occasion, the night winds bore dark clouds over the seas, full of electrical currents, and bright flashes of lightning briefly flew across the night sky. No sound of thunder reached the author’s ears, but his keen senses had roused him, and he was fully awake and out of bed as he watched in awe from his large, varanda. Sitting just metres away from the shore, light filckered from afar as the electrical storm danced over the dark sea. By 5 o’clock in the morning, the tempest had come close enough that the first distant intonations of what was to come crossed the expanse of the Adriatic began to rumble in faint intonations of sound. At a quarter past that same hour, a bolt of lightening struck on the mountains which rise up sharply from the coast, are bare of any trees or foliage, and are located but a few kilometres to the east of the city of Budva. In an instant, the sound of thunder tore through the still night, and everyone in the hotel finally became aware of what Anton Von Stefan had been watching for the past hour and a half. Shortly, the power in small city flickered and went out. Only darkness, that ebony shroud of the night, was their new companion. Seconds later, the eerie flash of another bolt of heavenly light illuminated the strange faces of those who had just been roused from their slumber. Instantly, the silence was again shattered by a tremendous explosion of sound as the vibrations tore through the air and shook the windows and shutters of the surrounding buildings. Heavy rain followed in due course, and the morning began to appear with the first hews of violet parting the dark sky. The impressions of the night, however, were not forgotten by our most observant author.
As the warm winds returned, constantly blowing off the sea from the south, and as the sun moved across the horizon, so too did Anton Von Stefan move slowly north. I followed his trail up to Dubrovnik, then crossed into Bosnia / Herzegovina, as he wandered up the coast. At Tucepi, there was again a pause in his journey. I saw no movement except for his eyes and his pen. Once more, he had found nirvana at a poolside. Yet, at this hotel, he had five outdoor pools, each more beautiful than the other, to choose from. As is his custom, he simply pulled two chairs up to a table, put down his dictionary, his synonym finder and his reams of typed paper, and he began reading the manuscripts in earnest. Only his mind and his pens worked. I say pens, for as I observed, he went through more than five full ink pens in that week alone. When he finally did get up and move on, he had completed the re-writing of all four of his Gothic Stories as well as composing the groundwork for the preambles to a few other completed tales.
Without so much as a word, I followed him at a distance up to Split. There, in the hot fall sun, he took a keen interest in the ghastly history which marked the ‘birth’ of this resort town. Built in only 11 years by slaves of the Roman emperor, more than 2000 people died in the process. The grand palace was to be the retirement home of Diocletian, a tyrant who had the local bishop and 2000 Christians brought before him to celebrate the completion of the facility, and the begining of his retirement (305 AD). To celebrate in true barbarian style, he had the holy man chained to a weight and thrown into the Adriatic Sea. The rest of the Christians were put to death by way of amusement, as the emperor saw fit. Upon his death in 313 AD, the whole town built around his palace was said to have celebrated. His ulimate successor (of the eastern part of the empire), Constantine, had remained low key in the declaration of his own faith, was said to have had himself baptized upon his deathbed. With other 'edicts' of tolerance procaimed by the western Emperor near the end of their respective lives, the persecution of Christians, by the Romans, at least, officially came to an end.
Little remains of the heathen past, the cruel emperor’s buildings were converted to Christian temples or residences for the people he had tried to crush, a population that, interestingly enough, is presently estimated to be at 2,000 souls. Of the mighty ruler, there is but one small bust remaining in the lower vaults of his grand palace in Split which portrays the exact features of his hard face. All of this history, and the actual buildings which remain, was of great interest to Anton Von Stefan.
For three days, he wandered here and there though the remains of what once was a most opulent, and important place. Then, as leisurely as he arrived, he moved further up the coast, just stopping by to walk the 566 steps up to a grotto on the hills overlooking Rijeka. The path is steep, the stone steps are the gift of a wealthy merchant from the year 1532. This path, leading up to the monisary where the house of Mary was said to once have stood, a prize of the retuning crusaders, is now a pilgrimage which was visited by Pope John Paul II in 2003.
Opting to find rooms in a four star hotel in nearby Opatia, he spent the next few days along the serene promenades which grace this land’s shore. These opulent walkway, and the mansions and hotels of this beautiful coastal city all date from the time of the Austrian Empire, the mid 18th Century to be exact. I followed discretely as he travelled to the ancient Roman town of Pula. There, I marvelled at seeing him put himself in the very middle of that open aired arena, a coliseum wherein many a Christian was cruelly put to death, much like the carnage in Split. Under numerous emperors like Diocletian, Roman ideology had a distinct, varying faith, one which consisted of many gods. Those that preached a radical change to that established religion and actively sought to convert others to those foreign ideas, were subjects of Rome that were commonly the main event of the day in the arenas. This practice, during the heathen transition of Roman rule, continued for centuries, actually ending around 313 AD, the date of Diocletian’s death.
Returning to Opatia, I saw Anton Von Stefan enjoying the Adriatic Sea, and spend another full day sun tanning in the last days of October 2012. Then, he wandered off into Slovenia. It was in the capital city of Ljublijana, in this new country, after visiting the caves at nearby Postonija, as the first light rain began to fall, finally heralding a change in the unseasonably hot weather, that I finally saw him board a train whose final destination was Vienna.
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