A Point of Support.
The office was already empty. Jürgen zipped up his jacket as though sealing the conversation shut, but I did not hurry to leave. He stood by the window, looking through the city — not at the rooftops, but somewhere beyond them, toward a point only he could see.
It was the look of a man who had already made up his mind but had not yet found the words to convince me.
I put my notes aside. Waited.
He turned slowly, as though making sure I was ready. His voice was calm, unhurried.
— I promised you a mystery. A real one. Not something from a book.
— What kind of story?
— There’s a chapel at one of the bases. And inside it — a fresco. Saint Joseph of Cupertino.
I said nothing.
— They say he could fly, — Jürgen added.
— A saint?
— Yep.
I looked at him. Jürgen rarely said things without a reason. If there was something behind his words, he never rushed to explain it.
— And you want to show me a fresco of a flying saint? Something inside me tightened. What’s the catch? Take a photo and tell me about it later.
— Not quite.
He fell silent, and in that pause I felt the cold for the first time.
— Soon we’re going to the mountains. Up high. And there, you won’t just be able to feel the altitude — you’ll have to experience it.
He said it completely calmly. I still had no idea where he was going with this.
— I saw you on that beam. The wind was hitting you in the face, the beam was shaking — and you held your ground.
— What’s wrong with that?
— You were standing.
He looked straight into my eyes.
— As long as there’s a surface beneath your feet, you still have something to support you. Even if there are two hundred meters between you and the ground. You’re still standing. A jump is different.
— A jump?!
It took me a moment to realize whether he was serious. He said it so casually, as if he were suggesting we go fishing rather than step into empty space.
— I need you to try it before we go into the mountains.
Calmly. With an instructor, on a safety line. So that your body can remember, just once, what happens when there’s no support beneath you anymore.
There was no point arguing with Jürgen. I agreed.
Not because I had suddenly become interested in skydiving — the jump had never been part of my plans, and I didn’t particularly want to talk about it beforehand. Besides, the trip itself was another journey my brother had invited me on.
In the end, it became another link in the chain of mysteries we were yet to unravel.
Two days later, we arrived.
The chapel stood beside the fence as though the fence itself were holding it at the edge of the rocky ledge, keeping it from sliding down. Beyond it lay nothing but the empty shore and the sky stretching all the way to the horizon. The grey limestone, mottled with lichen, looked bleached by the sun.
From the outside, the building looked strange — awkward, even.
On the northern side, an extension stood beside the chapel that seemed as though it had no business being there. Low, no more than three metres high, with a pitched roof, it resembled some kind of utility building — a shed or a storeroom. The roof made it look even smaller, emphasizing its already squat proportions.
Above the western façade rose a small Baroque bell gable topped with a bulb-shaped cupola — alien here, like a foreign voice in an old prayer. Below it was a sealed opening — a former doorway, filled in with pale stone. The outline of the arch could still be made out: semicircular, Romanesque, narrow. Once, people had entered through it. Then someone had decided that the entrance was no longer needed and sealed it shut.
It was confusing.
The entrance was on the other side.
The chapel itself was layered.
The lower two metres pressed heavily against the eye — a squat, massive volume of large, irregular stones jutting through the whitewashed plaster like bones beneath thin skin. They looked warm even at a glance. Uneven, flecked with mica, they caught the light and held on to it, as though they had spent centuries absorbing the sun.
Above them began a smaller, more regular masonry — pale stone, with narrow lancet windows. Smooth, cold, dry stones, their joints as fine as lines on a drawing. Light simply slid across them without lingering.
The difference in texture was so pronounced that it seemed as though the walls had been built at different times, according to different rules.
Beneath the cornice, where the roof met the wall, patches of soot darkened the stone. The soot disappeared deep into the masonry, beneath the upper layer.
Traces of a fire.
The wooden roof had burned, while the walls survived — charred and cracked — until they were built up again. The roof was steep, covered in grey wooden shingles, weathered by the wind and darkened by time.
Simple.
Practical.
We approached the door.
Above the portal, the name was still visible:
Capella Ascensus.
In the stone, I could make out the faint outlines of a fiery chariot in the sky. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out the almost-erased fresco.
—The Chapel of the Ascension, — Jürgen said. — They say it was once dedicated to Elijah.
— The prophet?
— Yes. He was taken by heavenly fire. Before the end of his earthly ministry, Elijah crossed the Jordan with Elisha. Suddenly, a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared, and Elijah was taken up into heaven in a whirlwind.
I looked at Jürgen.
— Was it always like this?
— No.
He paused, gathering his thoughts.
— *There’s a record of the consecration in the diocesan archives — dated 1042. But the inventory of monuments states that the foundation is older. Fourth century, perhaps the fifth. Christian communities already existed in Provence by then. But almost nothing remains of the earliest structures here.
The Gothic masonry, the entire middle level — that’s thirteenth century. They rebuilt it when the Order was still powerful, when there was still money and it seemed that all of this would last.*
— And after that?
— After that — following the fall of Acre in 1291 — there’s a void. From the late thirteenth century to the seventeenth. Nothing at all. Not a single document. No record, no inventory, no letter. As if the chapel had never existed.
I looked at him.
— How can you say that if nothing survived?
— Because in the seventeenth century, when they began rebuilding, they made an inventory — what was there, what had to be changed, what had to be demolished. And from that inventory, looking back, it became possible to understand what had been there before.
— And there’s really nothing else?
— That’s exactly the point. Even a small chapel should have at least some record. But here, it’s as if someone simply erased it.
A chill of dampness and cold air drifted out from the depths of the chapel, as though something that had once been hidden was still there.
(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)