Twinkle

by Skyler Steele

  “Well, until Camen comes, I suggest we find the books and gather them here”, Tomas said pointing at our table.

  This means he would soon appear. My agitation was obvious because I stumbled on something, I do not know exactly what it was, when I was getting up. If I had not held the table I would have fallen down.

  Sam laughed.

  “Adrian, be careful, we need you”, she said holding me by my hand.

  We took on the search for books from the Old Testament and some other religious writings. Between the corridors, where the strong scent of wood was mixed with the timeworn paper, I caught a smell of lavender. I looked around searching, not knowing exactly what. What were the chances of lavender being found in there? Yet, it was strange. The whole day I felt this strange aroma all around me. Sam brought the last volume down from a high shelf and placed it in my arms where she had piled a lot of other books. She was using me as a barrow!

  “That is all”, she said and we got ready to return, loaded, to our table when I saw him coming towards us smiling, with his hands extended to us.

  “Let me help you’, he said and pulled the books from my arms as I was more loaded: he took a pile of books with very careful moves, as if he was touching something precious, being afraid not to break it. But they are just books, I thought wondering. Unless, he was so careful in order not to touch me. I gave one more book to him, extending my hand.

  “Would you take this one too?” I asked making a sweet face.

  I did not like such behaviour but I wanted to try a new kind of contact with him. He looked at me with semi closed eyes, with a twisted smile as if he was making fun of me for what I had done. He stretched his free hand to take the book touching my fingers with his. My eyes were motionless on our fingers, waiting to see a new blaze jumping; I kept them fully open and held my breath. Nothing happened.

  “Is it better now?” he asked me as he was moving his fingers to get rid of their numbness. I stood for a few moments, looking at them not being able to talk.

  “Yes, thank you”, I finally managed to say, finding my self control.

  He turned his back to us and went to our table. I could not see his face but I was sure he was smiling satisfied. He knew that I had seen the brief shine and I felt absolutely sure that he was hiding something; something very significant. I followed him and sat on a chair, confused but sure. Absolutely, sure!

  “The creation of man is not an easy subject. It would probably give us hard time”, Adam said from the other side.

  “However, it is attractive and mysterious”, Camen argued sitting on a seat next to me, too close to me so, by making the slightest move I would be touching him. He wanted to prove to me that nothing happened. That no matter how much I touched him, nothing would happen. He did not convince me.

  I turned and looked at him.

  “And impossible, don’t you think?”

  He turned his head towards me, looking at me with the same teasing smile.

  “Why?” he said and his eyes were sparkling.

  “Well, I was thinking, a god who has everything, or better yet, he is everything why create humans?”

  “Because he created all the rest” he responded.

  “Which means…?”

  “It means, Adrian, like an artist. When a creator starts creating, he never stops”.

  “So, our creator had an inspiration”, I concluded thinking about this aspect.

  “Holly inspiration, I would say… And surely! What a great challenge to create something from himself. To make something in his own image. It is something that all of us know that continues until our days’, he said leaving us speechless.

  “How? How, exactly, does it continue?” Tomas jumped in.

  He smiled and put his hand through his hair showing his face even more.

  “Humans fall in love, get married and feel strongly the need to create their children through their love”.

  “Yet, it is not the same”, I brought my objections. He turned and looked at me.

  “If you think about it better, you will see that as our creator made the First humans and he considered them his children, by definition of course, the same way the man who falls in love and makes his family, considers it also by definition, his creation. And every good parent raises his children nursing them with principals and positions, in order to be able to stand and also support the whole society giving the mankind all the good they possess. But without the parent being responsible for their choices and the road they may follow, since every one of us has a free mind that decides for our actions. That way, god created the first “divine humans” blowing in them the passion and the absolute need for creation”.

  Adam surprised me with his unexpected interest and the change of his position.

  “This is sensible, if someone takes a look at our story. From the moment the First humans were expelled from Paradise, something similar to the children leaving their family during their adulthood, there were obliged to create, not only to survive, but also to find a meaning in their existence. Whoever does not create, finds himself in the painful state of being both lazy and incapable of surviving, especially without the divine material. Because the “to his image and similarity” gives us unlimited possibility to create”.

  “Well, we are also somehow gods, in a way”, Sam observed.

  Camen continued reasoning.

  “Clearly we are, because we are his only creations to possess his inheritance, that of divine creation. Just because of that, even the simplest mind can conclude the reason why man dominated earth, eliminating the wildest animals. It would have been very selfish of us to speculate that the whole universe, the nature and the world powers, cooperated to make us the sovereign of everything. Logically, something else ought to have existed, of equal value and equal potential to ours. A quick look at the surrounding area makes everything crystal clear. Millions kinds of life exist plentiful in nature but without being conscious of themselves, while their only goal is survival. Anybody can easily compare them to the humans, without the Divine material, all of them unable to perform the divine job of creation”.

  I had to admit that beyond all his other endowments, he was an excellent speaker who was riveting you with the power of his words and his passion for rationalization.

  “I think we achieved the most difficult part of our project. Camen very aptly justified the creation of man”, Tomas said, opening the text of Genesis. “What would you say we see how?” he asked looking at us.

  “Perhaps we should first find parts in the books to support the previous argument”, Sam suggested. “We cannot present a project without evidence either from scientists or men of religion”.

  “You are right, Sam. But this way we will end up explaining why a poet wrote his poem, a silly thing that is still happening at our schools. Even though we have a masterpiece in front of us, we are avoiding reading it simply and feeling it or understanding it according to our personal experiences and our sensitivity. Also we do not see the power of the words or the meanings the poet attributes to it but we turn to a detailed analysis of the poem and to funny things like how he wrote it, why he wrote it, and to what emotional condition he was at the time he wrote it. It is completely unreasonable”, I protested to Sam’s proposal.

  “I agree with Adrian”, Adam said, “and I propose we continue focusing on the reason of the creation that can have more scientific explanation”.

  Tomas, who was shuffling the text of Genesis all this time, read out loudly:

  “And God made man to his image and made them male and female[4]. But for Adam there was not found an assistant similar to him[5] And God put Adam to sleep and toke one of his ribs and filled it with flesh at its place[6] and God built the rib taken from Adam to a woman and brought her to Adam[7] and said to Adam This bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She will be called woman because from her man she was taken[8]”.

  He turned, looked at all of us and continued. “Don’t you think that those
two parts are contradictory? In the one it says that He created Eve from Adam’s rib when no companion similar to him was found, while in the other part it mentions the creation of the first couple simultaneously. Also, let us accept the theory of Adam and Eve being thrown out of Paradise and having two sons Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, and the Biblical writings mention that because of this act God made a sign on him so that, no man who would meet him could be able to kill him. The question is, which man? The only people existing were Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had a third son, Sheath. How then, the human race was multiplied?”

  We all remained thinking and looking at him.

  “This does not make sense. Incest is impossible. It does not suit to a god who created everything in perfect harmony. He could not allow something like this to happen”, Tomas continued.

  “Therefore, the creation of man stops there. But then, how do we exist here today”, Sam countered, bringing up the problem of human race.

  “Unless we do not see beyond what we see”. I heard Camen saying and I raised my eyes towards him.

  His expression was calm but his look was strong and directed at me; as if he was the angel from my dream that was posing this question to me for the second time.

  “So, what do you mean Camen”, I asked him trying to derive a meaning.

  “We are talking about texts written thousands of years ago. Perhaps something was lost in translation unintentionally or something was eliminated purposely. And usually the parts that are eliminated are being codified, so as not to be entirely lost and to pass the knowledge to the next generation”, he explained his argument with a touch of smile that was probably directed at me.

  “Thus, if the second hypothesis is valid, we will have to find the code and even worse, to break it”, Sam stressed, projecting to us Michael Angelo’s work which was illustrating the creation of man.

  “Here, the creator is passing his divine breath to man with the one hand while the other is holding a hidden, especially beautiful, woman’s figure”.

  “Michael Angelo was simply an artist who painted the creation on his work, as he imagined it”, I said and I sounded simplistic even to myself.

  Sam looked at me with a sneer.

  “Or he was a man with a deeper knowledge of the texts that were lost in translation, which he wanted to transfer by painting it on his work. People who study him think it is about Eve or the Virgin Mary who was already selected by god according to this assumption”.

  She showed us the text which accompanied the illustration and continued her thought.

  “This, however, does not add up with the whole story. As for Eve, she was created after Adam; therefore she cannot be presented as already created. Besides that, I remember, there is a clear scene of her creation from Adam’s rib. Referring to the Virgin, if she is appearing on Michael Angelo’s work, then it says that god had a plan and brought the First humans in front of a fait accompli, something that does not comply with the free will which he offered them. And it seems to me entirely unreasonable of him to stage this Biblical scene so as to send Christ on Earth, for us to crucify him and also to arrive today at a point of doubting about him”.

  “Yes, this seems rather logical”, Adam said. “Then, who is the figure that our creator is hugging, according to the opinion or the knowledge of Michael Angelo?”

  “This is the riddle we are called to solve, if we are lucky, by studying the Bible with extra attention. And this requires effort, time and mainly a separation of the texts. Every one of us should undertake a part of them, making notes of whatever is considered significant or relevant to the mysterious woman”, Tomas suggested.

  “Adrian, would you like to pair with me?” Camen turned and asked me with semi-closed eyes, letting his charming smile show his perfect teeth. It was a very smart move of his part; if I had attracted his interest as he had attracted mine, conquering probable contenders of my company in order to study the texts for our project. This way we could spent even more time together and I liked this prospect more than I had expected, considering the short time I knew him.

  I was sure that his proposal was not at all accidental. Ι could not help but noticing the way he was looking at me the whole afternoon at the library. His look clearly showed a desire, mixed with surprise that surely was not only due to the first impression I gave him in the morning, during Mr. Scot’s lesson. An impression that was confusing me but beyond this, his whole attitude and behaviour had something more like a game, an early flirt with a slight reservation. I turned and looked at him. He had something magical, besides his supernatural beauty, with which his creator had endowed him. I felt immense warmth, tranquillity and absolutely incapable of refusing whatever he was asking me.

  “Well, what do you say?’ he insisted and bent near me with a move of both expectation and patience.

  I felt his breathing threateningly fading on my shoulder. My blood rate was raising octaves higher and I breathlessly answered: “Yes”.

  A simple “yes” without being able to resist to the strong attraction he was creating on my body and mind. This was unprecedented for me. There was never before a man causing such a chaos to my thoughts, such vibration to my senses. “Love…?” I wondered. “Love at first sight? Love on the first day of my academic studies?”

  “I prefer to work alone”, Adam said pulling me out of my delirium. I did not expect anything else from him. He seemed extremely lonely the whole day.

  “Then, Sam, you will be my partner”, Tomas said laughing, following Camen’s example. “And I suggest working on the texts of Genesis, unless someone else wants them”.

  He turned and looked at us with an inquisitive look.

  “I am taking the historical texts”, Adam jumped in.

  “So, we are left with Michael Angelo and the ceiling of Cappella Sistina”.

  He looked at me saying those words, with a way that made me think that he already knew about my dream. But this was impossible. I had not told it to anyone.

  “It is late. What would you say we leave? I am dead tired”.

  Sam was yawning and stretching her body at the same time, a sign of her tiredness. In fact, I was also feeling exhausted but I wanted to study the frescoes alone. Perhaps I could find something.

  “I am going to stay a little longer. I want to search about a subject that interests me”.

  Before my sentence was over, Camen jumped up surprising me.

  “Good, we can leave together. I have to do something at the library too”. I looked at him with a probing look. Does he really have something to do or he simply wants to be alone with me, I thought.

  The rest said goodnight and as they were leaving, I saw Sam smiling at me with a look full of innuendos. I ignored it. I was already agitated from the prospect of being alone with him, even happening under piles of books. Camen pulled his chair a little on the side to stretching his legs. He was numb too.

  “Well, what are we looking for”, he asked smiling.

  “We…?”

  I was confused.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to search for something?” he continued in the same style.

  “And didn’t you say you have something to do?” I argued.

  “Sure. But I can do it tomorrow”.

  His smile became broader and his eyes revealed that he was enjoying the situation he had created.

  I did not know what to do. Should I tell him about my dream, about that his words were identical to the angel’s words in my dream, about that he himself looked like an angel and every time he was looking at me I was losing my words and my mind…?

  I decided to reveal to him only a small part of the truth.

  “I wanted to study the frescoes of Cappella Sistina”, I explained as calmly as humanly possible.

  “This is something we would do together, I thought”.

  His style became questioning. I enjoyed, for a moment, the confusion I had caused him.

  “Yes, of course. I only wanted to examine them
before we decide to see them together. For my reasons”, I clarified.

  He suddenly became serious.

  “Without being indiscrete, may I hear the reasons?” he directly asked, staring at me.

  I was not expecting this. I was surprised by his question and even more, the certainty he was showing while making it. Instead of being mad with this indiscretion, I found myself trying to look for some justifications about my interest for Cappella Sistina, since I did not want to reveal my strange dream.

  “The truth is that, I was always fascinated by Michael Angelo, his works of art, his knowledge, his life”, I answered, not being able to find something better to say.

  He bit his lips.

  “And you decided to come to England to study him? Couldn’t you do it at his birthplace… which is also yours?”