minute 39

His parents wanted him to choose if he wants to be baptized or not. So he turned to his computer searching the internet for answers as his generation always does. He read some articles about the rite but can’t imagine what it looks like. Several movies on youtube made him even more curious. One scene that he stumbled about made the skin on his forehead curl. This is not what he had in mind. Where is all the happiness? Shouldn’t they be in a church? “Mommy? Could you come in for a minute?” Not knowing what he came across his mother told him that in the past people used to be baptized in a river and stays by his side watching that strip with him. “Let’s watch it together, we both might learn something.”

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There is a woman, suffering in pain and … what are they doing there? She becomes unconscious and two men drown her! Are they trying to kill her? The music arouses something threatening, as If there is an evil lurking beneath the water. The movie’s colors – black & white – underline the dramatic scene even more as do the people’s backs that I watch all the time – I even seem to be one of them. This is getting a little voyeuristic.

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“The ground was all stone and mud. ‘Uncle, I –‘

‘Kneel. Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?’

The boy knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need his uncle’s help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.”

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The man on the left looks strong, dominant, dangerous! Two men lead her out of the water and she looks really relieved now – what happened? Is she just happy they didn’t drown her? What makes people feel the way they do, I am really curious. Why must she be lead out of the water? Is she too weak to walk on her own? What is that movie about? It is pretty old and the fashion and hairstyle appears as if those are Germans from the 1930’s. Are all these people Jews trying to escape the holocaust by converting to Christianity? Oh wait, those are only females standing in line, awaiting their salvation and men give it to them – this film could be older than a whole century. No wait… This is a baptism!

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“’Bow your head.’ Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon the boy’s head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doubled down his back, a cold rivulet run along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips.”

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“The music is too loud. I don’t want to look at this, please mommy!” The boy turned his eyes away for some seconds, only to find himself staring back at the screen open mouthed as if being hypnotized. “It is all so dark. I can barely see those people standing in the water. Are they hurting that woman? She looks so sad. There are too many evil men, they are scaring me. I don’t want to look at this!”

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Oh god, this is so depressing! The music makes me feel scared and the backs of the others make me also feel guilty. I am one of them but i am too weak to help the crying women. Only black and white, guilt and fear, depression and a dead-end-street - I am devoured by a world of sadness.

The music suddenly changes when she reemerges to sound a little less sinister. The next woman is already standing in line and it appears that she is really happy, joyful!

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He pointed at the people standing in line and asks why they don’t show their faces and who they are. His face turned into a grimace and he seemed as if he was about to cry. The moment the woman emerged the young boy moved closer to the screen, becoming more interested in what he witnessed and tried to look behind the man’s back to have a better view on the woman – he became part of the scene. All of a sudden he pushed himself back into the chair, afraid of being the next to be drowned. “I don’t want to be baptized mommy!”

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'“Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were,” Aeron Greyjoy intoned. ‘Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel. Nephew, do you still know the words?’ ‘What is dead may never die,’ Theon said, remembering. 
‘What is dead may never die,’ his uncle echoed, ‘but rises again, harder and stronger. Stand.’”

 
Andreas Freiwald