Chapter 4 - Aviano

θάνατος δ' ἐμὸς γάμος, τέκνα, κλέος

"Death will be my wedding, children and glory."

Euripides Iphigenia in Aulide

The air in the sterile room of the Military Mental Health Service, once thick with unspoken stories, now vibrated with a palpable, almost suffocating terror. Chalcas, hunched and shrunken, was no longer simply present; he was consumed, dragged once more into the vortex of his past. The lines etched into his face had deepened into an abyss of anguish, each one a witness to the horrors he had seen and, even more damningly perhaps, allowed and not opposed. The Balkan War, the White Eagles of the Atreids – these were not just memories; they were a gangrenous infection that had finally, irreversibly, gone beyond the last remnants of his instinct for self-preservation.

He rasped: "I... I was there. Foča. The Partizan sports hall." But these were not words addressed to the group; they were sounds emitted by a man who was already drowning. His voice, once a dry whisper, was now a guttural rasp, strangled, flayed by the truth emerging. The tremor that ran through him was not just a shiver; it was a convulsion, as if his very bones recoiled from the ghostly touch of the cold concrete, from the spectral echoes of screams that had never truly faded. The demons had carved their names into his bones.

The Gestalt operator session had just begun, and his eyes, now wide open and glassy, no longer saw the therapy room, but the narrow and suffocating space of that gymnasium. The faces of the men, a kaleidoscope of predatory glee and cold indifference, surrounded him. The complicity was not just chilling; it was a diseased bond, forged in shared brutality, a co-responsibility that now, in the relentless light of his awakening, seemed a yoke of molten lead wrapped around his soul.

"We... we took her," he spat out, the words torn from him as if they ripped through sinew and bone. "Iphigenia. Witness 77. A child. Twelve years old." Every syllable was a punishing hammer blow against the now crumbling edifice of his denial. The terror in the girl's eyes, her small, desperate struggles, were no longer distant memories; they were searing brands on his retina, an indelible image of pure, unfiltered horror. He was not merely remembering; he was reliving the ritual fervor, the twisted, obscene justification for their actions – conquering the land of the adversaries. But even as the words formed, they turned to ash in his mouth.

He saw himself, a younger man, yes – and perhaps for that reason even more guilty. A man in the grip of a perverse zeal, his hands – these same gnarled hands – stained with the symbolic and spiritual blood of an innocent. He was still a priest, and a man of nearly 100 kilograms and just under two meters in height. He could have stood up, he should have made himself heard. But he saw himself from afar, like an angel in flight. He was not merely present; he was an active participant, a willing instrument in the rape and sacrifice of Iphigenia. The act committed that cursed day was not just a group ritual, not just a wartime rape; it was in truth a profane inversion of his priestly vows, a sacrilege against every fragment of humanity he once possessed. He had been, in essence, defrocked, even if never officially.

His breath broke, a gurgling sound of pure, unfiltered agony. He gasped like a man drowning on dry land. "She... she was the daughter of a Bosnian Muslim officer," he managed to say, the detail amplifying the horror, turning it into a personal crucifixion. "And we... we killed her."

When he finally opened his eyes again, they were no longer simply full of tears; they were black wells emptied by despair, reflections of an inner landscape devastated by a self-inflicted catastrophe. Shame was not just a feeling; it was a physical weight, crushing him, pressing him into the floor. Guilt was not an abstract concept; it was a corrosive acid, eating away at the last fragments of his self-respect. Horror was not just an emotion; it was a ravenous beast, devouring his sanity.

"I helped them," he rasped, the words a shameful confession, a condemnation whispered from the deepest pit of his being. "I facilitated it. For... for victory. For our land." That "victory" was now not just tasteless; it was toxic, a poison running through his veins.

"It tells me... that I am a monster," he finally articulated, the words not a whisper, but a scream of self-loathing that echoed in the stunned silence. "A monster who walked among men, pretending to serve the Gods, but serving only... abomination."

The session continued, but for Chalcas, that day was no longer a therapy session. It was an exorcism of a tormented soul, a harrowing journey into the darkest recesses of his own depravity. The carefully constructed walls of denial and justification had not simply collapsed; they had imploded, leaving him exposed, flayed, and completely broken. The war had long since ended, but the war inside Chalcas had just begun – a true, incessant, and merciless battle. He was condemned, not by any court, but by the devastating and inescapable truth of his own complicity in the atrocious death of a child. His punishment had only just begun – it would be an extreme form of contrapasso, continuing to commit the ancient and terrible crime of massacring the innocent, turning them into true sacrificial lambs.