by V. Cobe
CHAPTER 3
The Procession
I called Zalmon in the morning. No one answered at the monastery’s office or at his house, but I managed to catch him on his cellphone. He didn’t seem to mind the audacity.
“But of course I can come to see you.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Just tell me the subject of our talk, my child. I’m a little curious now. You’ve never invited me there again since Irá died.”
I ignored his barb. “It’s better if we talk when you get here. What I have to tell you shouldn’t be discussed over the phone.”
After a few seconds of silence, he replied, “Well, whatever it is, it will be solved, don’t worry.”
I hung up and went to the backyard with Alem to try to calm down. My head was aching, and I suspected it wasn’t just the result of the previous night’s drinking. I rubbed my temples in thought. The bishop could be sneaky, so I had to be careful with what I would tell him later in the day. At the same time, I had to make sure he understood the seriousness of the situation so that he’d be compelled to help.
A sharp sound came out from inside the house.
I stood up quickly, forgetting about the headache, and well, practically everything else around me.
For a few seconds there was just silence. And then:
“Amen.”
The utter came from my son.
My face must have shown pure dumbness when I looked at him. Despite the childish voice, the word had been perfectly perceptible. He probably wasn’t the first child in the world to speak amen as his first word, especially because it’s one of the most spoken words in the entire world, but he was three months old.
Then another sound emanated from inside the house, louder this time, and my attention shifted. And then again from my son.
“Amen.”
I was horrified, motionless, with the exception of my chest, expanding and contracting.
A hard bang invaded the yard, and the security alarms began to scream. Glasses broke somewhere, and doors were shut and shattered.
I picked up Alem with one arm and kept him close to my chest.
The backyard had three doors: one lead to the garage, another to the living room and another, camouflaged in the middle of the green wall, to the street outside.
Entering the house was out of question, and the green door was probably being watched.
More glass shattered inside the house.
I struggled to run with Alem in my arms, but I managed to get to the door at the green wall quickly enough.
It’s ten o’clock in the morning, a strange hour for an attack.
I held my finger against the fingerprint scanner, and the door opened. As I crossed the threshold, I looked back and could still see a woman dressed all in black, wearing a smiling demon mask and brandishing a black gun. She was exiting through the glass door closest to the swimming pool.
I closed the door behind me and ran down the sidewalk. When I got to the corner, there was another man wearing the same mask and running in the perpendicular street in my direction. He aimed his gun at me, but I managed to hide behind the corner wall. A bullet passed me in the next second.
I turned around and ran in the opposite direction, but before I reached the other corner, a tall man wearing sunglasses and a dark blue suit blocked my path. His gun was pointed at me already, its barrel less than a meter from my face.
I was ambushed.
He pulled the trigger, and a bang rang out.
“Get out of here!” he screamed.
I wasn’t hurt, nor was Alem. But the man who’d been running to me from the other direction was on the ground, holding his bleeding stomach. The woman inside the house was kicking the green door and trying to get out.
Another masked man appeared from behind the one on the ground, and my suited protector fired again.
“Get away from here!”
I ran without looking back, without stopping and without knowing where to go. I went through an alley between tall buildings, at the end of which was a procession of genuflecting people.
Nothing made any sense. Why did that suited man fire at the others? Were they not on the same side?
The pilgrims were singing a song of pain and suffering in unison as they followed on their knees a statue of a saint carried by four young men, who were following a priest. The boys were dragging themselves on foot, and one could see on their faces that the weight of the sculpted stone statue was too much to bear, even if split among four pairs of shoulders.
I lost myself in the middle of the pilgrims and kneeled. A woman beside me looked at me through the corner of her eye and averted her gaze as soon as our eyes met, but she never stopped chanting. She whispered something to a woman next to her, who whispered to another. And in less than a minute I had dozens of eyes on me.
I wasn’t the only woman carrying a child on her lap and kneeling, so I thought I’d go unnoticed. Actually, being a woman and kneeling with a child was the least noticeable thing to do. But then I realized what was happening.
“You cow!” I heard someone shout behind me.
I was committing a Transgression: wearing a white low-cut shirt, to be worn only at home with a man’s permission. And Transgressions had to be reported by anyone who witnessed them.
The pilgrims wouldn’t care why I was dressed like that in the street. But who in hell would enter a procession in the middle of a life or death escape anyway?
I could stop and explain that my house had been broken into and that my and my son’s lives were in danger, but then the Brigades would take me to a Correction Center and separate me from Alem, which Defectio would certainly use to their advantage. And how would I explain this assault to the Institution? Umbra was a forbidden subject. Umbra wasn’t real.
I lifted my red knees off the ground and started running through the crowd. I stumbled and knocked over an old lady carrying a child, and the crowd grumbled in wrath. Running only made things worse; it assured them they were right.
Someone threw a stone against my back, but I kept running with Alem through the kneeling faithful. They screamed with hate, encouraging violence. Soon all kinds of objects started raining on me.
I had to get out of there and I had to get away from home. I pierced the crowd to an alley and ran. A few pilgrims came after me looking for justice.
A pick-up truck, carrying blankets and straw, was parked in front of a café. I was tempted to climb in the back and hide. Yes, it was an act of desperation, hurried by the exhaustion of having run with a baby in my arms, but a successful act of desperation.
The angry voices of pilgrims passed us. The truck shook, the driver’s door opened and then closed. The engines started roaring and took us away from there. All I wanted then was to leave.
When I thought it was safe, I uncovered us from under the blankets. The warm and bright sun hit my face. Alem was facing me as if nothing had happened. Any baby would at least have cried and yelled after that experience. But then again, he wasn’t a normal baby.
“You’re a big problem, you realize that?” I asked, relieved for having escaped.
He looked at me as if thinking and smiled.
I niched during adolescence, though I had surrendered long before that. My grandfather, a radical umbriferum, used to tell me stories of Umbra with details so rich I dreamed during the day and night. Of course, my parents couldn’t know about this.
I enjoyed hearing about the Second Rebellion the most, maybe because there was no information available on it—the Institution reduced it to vague footnotes about a demonic revolt that was quickly contained, for the good of everybody. But in my grandfather’s stories, the Second Rebellion wasn’t anything like that. It was the second and last major coordinated attempt by Umbra to overthrow the Institution. Unfortunately, that attempt, just like the First Rebellion, only managed to increase the Institution’s power by wiping most of the umbriferos off the planet. But my grandpa survived. And I liste
ned to him avidly.
My parents, despite having been born practically inside Umbra, always tried to educate me and Onesimus, away from extremes. However, even though they were forced to maintain some religious practices in public, at home there were none. They avoided maligning the Institution in front of us, though they never spoke kindly of it either. But both Onesimus and I knew what they were and frequently heard them arguing in their room about Umbra, its seven niches, and something they called the Great Superstition, of which I knew nothing at the time. Because of all this, I grew up admiring that underworld. Not even when they whispered about the subject of Defectio, the black sheep of Umbra, did my illusion fade.
I was sixteen when my brother first took me to a meeting of the niche Intellectus. He had gotten in through a friend three years before after reaching adulthood. Our parents knew but didn’t support him; the life of an umbriferum was dangerous. But Onesimus didn’t listen to them, and one day, after hours of enduring my insistence, he agreed to take me there in secret.
On that night, he showed up in my room with two black cloaks. Noticing my amazement and smiling with satisfaction, he explained, “Black cloaks were forbidden by the Institution a long time ago when they realized that Transgressors used them as camouflage in the streets during curfew. And that’s exactly why we’re using them now. To enter Umbraland, we need to wear one of these.”
An hour after curfew started, we put on the cloaks and hoods and left through the backyard gate. We ran through the streets, always trying to stay immersed in shadows, which was difficult since most of the streets had intense bright lights. Once in a while, Onesimus would stop in the shadows and listen, trying to figure out if the Night Brigade was near.
When we finally stopped in a dark alley at the end of the street, he didn’t seem worried much. I, on the other hand, was terrified, thinking that all of our neighbors had seen us by now.
“If someone goes to the window at this point during curfew, they’re up to something and they’re probably just like us,” he assured, too confidently for the weak argument he gave. “Besides, we haven’t been outside for more than thirty seconds.”
It seemed much longer than that to me.
“We mostly kept to the shadows, and the cloaks turn us into black unidentifiable figures: undershadows. Which actually means shadows of the underworld.”
At the end of the alley was a sewer lid that he opened.
“I’ll go first,” he said, taking a flashlight from his pocket.
He went down and I went after him, closing the lid behind me like he’d told me to. No one got used to the smell – it was as if we’d dived into a pool of feces.
“Hold your nose closed and breathe through your mouth,” he suggested.
I followed him through the sewer tunnels, not knowing where we were going. I could barely see anything blocked by his back, but once in a while I was able to glimpse walls and rivers of filth.
A few seconds later, we stopped. The flashlight lighted a rusted iron wall in front of us. An engraving carved on the wall, from the top to the floor, blinked intermittently as the light touched it. It was the symbol I had seen in the fountain Mr. Brisk was cleaning the symbol of Umbra.
Onesimus pushed the wall, his arms trembled softly with the effort, and a weak light crossed the wall from Umbraland, the territory where Umbra physically exists, and illuminated the dimness on our side.
The area was completely irregular: the ceiling of a room could be higher on one end than on the other, and so could the floor. There were different levels, at heights that seemed purely random. You could walk around thinking you were on the lowest floor, only to find that in front of you was a room with an even lower ground, turning the one you were in into a cliff. There were tunnels and rooms, round and rectangular, small and wide. In certain areas, the walls were covered in signs, arrows pointing in different directions, several of them on top of one another, indicating the most important places.
But the most fascinating were the colors. The walls, floor and ceiling were painted in tones that signaled the niche that predominantly used that specific area.
As we walked through the tunnels and rooms, the colors would change, sometimes gradually, others suddenly, but always hurling an aura of magic.
After several minutes of walking around the labyrinth of colors, we found a room with the walls, floor and ceiling painted in indigo.
An arrow indicated The Contradictor to an alley on the left. The door was closed but it took only seven knocks from Onesimus for a slot to open at his height, showing two inquisitive blue eyes behind it. They inspected us from top to bottom, first me, then Onesimus, who replied with a gesture I had never seen: he formed a circle with his left hand, placed it in front of his chest, opened his right hand palm down and stretched it horizontally above his left one – a representation of Umbra’s symbol. The eyes disappeared from the slot, and the door opened.
The man on the other side replied with the same gesture but didn’t say a single word.
The blue shades of light were weak. The only sound came from the soft sputter of a worn out lamp, about to fuse.
We followed a narrow corridor in the only possible direction. At the end was an old man sitting at a desk with his back to us and writing something. He puckered his face when he looked at me, as if he couldn’t see me well despite the thick-lensed glasses he wore loosely on his ears. After seeing Onesimus, he relaxed his face, and as if he couldn’t hear properly, said loudly, “Another one who doesn’t like the light, is it?”
Onesimus smiled, but I was about to fall over.
Then the old man pointed his chin to a door next to the desk.
As we crossed it, Onesimus whispered, “He was just faking it; he hears and sees perfectly.”
The new room was large and slightly circular, also painted in indigo. At the center, a circle of fifteen umbriferos, men and women of ages ranging from twenty to eighty, was discussing something.
A peculiar painting on a wall grabbed my attention. It showed a man in the center, sitting cross-legged on a lotus flower. His hands were held together close to his chest, one with two fingers pointing upward, the other with two fingers pointing downward. There were two hands on the sides of his body, one holding what looked like pages of a book, the other holding a small golden pot. He wore gold pants, and his nude torso was half covered with beads of different colors that hung from his neck. Flowers, trees and clouds emanated around him. But the most interesting detail were the four heads that protruded from his body, crowned imposingly. I didn’t know what that was but I’d never seen anything like it.
“You will never be able to prove it!”
“Of course I won’t! If God doesn’t exist, it’s not possible to prove His non-existence.”
That conversation had been unthinkable to me until then.
“It isn’t? Can’t you prove a soccer ball doesn’t exist in my stomach, for instance?”
“It’s not the same thing… In that case you’re talking about existence in a certain place, not about the existence or non-existence of soccer balls. Can you prove soccer balls don’t exist? Assuming they don’t exist, would you be able to prove it?”
“Just because you can’t prove something doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Look, can’t you see that reasoning is a fallacy, just as it has been proven throughout history? And because it fails, it can’t be taken so seriously, as if it was infallible. There isn’t just reason out there, there’s a lot more beyond it. There are a lot of things the light of reason obfuscates.”
Onesimus bypassed the circle and sat on an empty chair. He signaled for me to do the same.
When everyone quietened down, a middle-aged woman dressed in an indigo cloak addressed my brother.
“Hello, Opetinut.” Then she looked at me and asked, “And you must be…?”
“Cev,” answered my brother before I could speak.
“Yes. Your brother told us all about you, Cev. Welcome.”
She smiled. “We’re going to continue now, but after we finish, I’ll explain how this works and arrange your Umbrification.”
I looked at Onesimus, who signaled with his eyes that everything was all right. I didn’t know why he called me Cev instead of Bethel or why he was called Opetinut and not Onesimus, but I decided not to contest it then.
The group returned to the discussion of whether it was possible to prove the existence or non-existence of God.
I was fascinated. That conversation broke dozens of lines of the Ordus, but those people talked like that didn’t even exist.
At one point, they talked about the meaning of color in the various religions that had existed before the Institution eliminated them. A young man kept mocking the symbolism of the colors, contending that all of them were probably created randomly or were nothing more than the result of superstitions of early ignorant people.
But the oldest man present, more than eighty years old, expressed a different opinion, one that I’ll never forget.
“In the diversified Hindu religion, the importance of the saffron color was enormous.” He stated in a rough voice. “As it was in Buddhism and Sikhism. Among these religions, its meaning diverged slightly, but in all of them it represented equality, the unity of the world and the fight against injustice.”
“In Christian churches prior to the Institution, like the Catholic Church, purple was considered the color of divinity and royalty. Green was the sacred color of Muslims, probably because it’s the color of the oases, which were particularly adored in the Arab deserts.”
He paused, studying everyone’s faces, and then continued projecting his harsh voice, “But the color red…. The color red has always been one of the most important colors in religion. Everyone here knows of the special meaning that red has in the Institution—especially on the Faithful Cross and clergy garments—but it’s found in other religions too. For instance, in several Asian religions, red was seen as the color symbolizing the energy of life. The red lotus flower represented true and natural purity of the heart, kindness and compassion to the Buddhists. In most religions throughout history, red had a significance related to good… but not only. Think of Hell and the Devil.”
He picked up a laptop at his feet, typed and clicked for a while. He then turned it to face the center of the circle for everybody to see what was on it.
It was a website I’d never heard of. At the top of every page was written Library of Umbra. It displayed images of what looked like the interior of a cave, filled with cave paintings.
“These are one-hundred-year-old drawings. Umbra historians have theorized they’re related to the first religion that ever existed on Earth.”
There was a rudimentary drawing of a tree,
“‘The Black Tree of Light’,” the man noted.
The roots burrowed profoundly in the soil and extended downward and sideways and then upward again out of the ground to connect with the branches. There were only a few branches that resembled arms filled with leaves. The trunk had two eyes, a quiet mouth and red leaves at the top.
“The red of the leaves is the only color in the painting, though it’s so faint it’s almost gone. But why? Why was it necessary to paint these leaves red, leaving the rest of the painting black?”
Dozens of little dots shined above the tree, resembling a starlit sky, intercepted only by three figures with long wing-like arms holding with smaller arms what looked like a giant serpent, as if they were bringing it from the sky to the tree.
“The decryption of this picture, and all its symbols sparks a certain disagreement among those who’ve studied it, but all of them agree that this is the first representation of the known Black Tree of Light, a symbol of the bridge between the light and the occult. As for the red leaves, there are several theories, but it’d take all night to explain.”
He straightened his glasses on the tip of his nose and continued, “Nevertheless, according to not only our scientists but also to the Institution’s, even though they will never admit it, it was at this time in history that Man started to think abstractly or, if you prefer, acquired that amazing thing we call consciousness.”
He closed the laptop and placed it next to him. He leaned forward, to the center of the circle, pointed his finger at everyone and no one in particular and finished, “The significance of color in religion is unquestionable.”
I recalled all of this vividly while riding at the back of that truck, not knowing where I was going.
Around me, the view was discouraging. We passed wide golden wheat fields, revealing that we were approaching the countryside.
I didn’t know what I was going to do when the truck stopped, but I had no other option but to stay on that truck. I tried to relax and lay on the straw with Alem sleeping at my side. I laid my hand on his head and tenderly rubbed his red hair.
The road went from tar to gravel. We followed under a scorching sun, with nothing around us but golden plains, until the truck stopped and the driver’s door opened.
I could see only a stripe of the blue sky through the blanket with which I had once again covered me and Alem. After a few seconds, a white and smiling head appeared before the blue sky.
I gasped but didn’t move.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” said the man, reaching out with his hand.
I took off the blanket, climbed to my feet with his help and jumped off the truck, without knowing what to say.
He looked at my clothes, at my cleavage. Turned his eyes away in shame and said, “Follow me.”
Orange trees were laid out in front of me, on both sides of a clay road that led to a green gate, from where we had just entered. On the other side, the truck was parked in front of a big three-story mansion. Around it, the terrain descended until it was lost in hills and grass.
I didn’t know where I was, but I had no place to go, so I let the man guide us.
I had to contain a gasp when we entered the mansion: the hall was a genuine sanctuary, filled with religious figures and symbols. There was a Faithful Cross the size of me on the front wall, and Jesus Christ bled right next to it in a painting so real it was as if the Son of God was right there with us, surrounded by white candles and statues of his entourage, the saints.
We crossed the hall and entered a small room, in which the religious madness persisted.
“I… I’ll be going now. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, really,” I said.
“But you just got here.” He turned to me, smiling.
“I’m grateful for the ride and I apologize for all of this, but—”
“Oh, please, forget it. Just have a seat,” he insisted, keeping his smile.
I sat with Alem on my lap, but kept fearing the sanctuary. I wanted to call Rhode and Ezekiel and ask them to come get us, wherever we were.
“Do you need anything? Riding for that many hours on the back of a truck must be tiring.”
“I need to make a phone call.”
“So there I was, in Carmel, eating at a café after a busy morning when I spot a young lady with a baby in her arms climbing into my truck to hide. Then I see pilgrims who did not look happy nor reasonable.”
He picked up a phone and handed it to me.
“I don’t know what you did, but if it was serious, there wouldn’t have been pilgrims after you, it would’ve been the Brigades. They looked like savages those pilgrims. And I hate fanaticism.”
“I showed up at the procession like this,” I responded and looked down at my shirt, “and they didn’t like it.”
“And why did you show up like that? I’m sure there’s a valid reason.”
“I had to get out of my house hastily.”
He nodded before getting up to leave the room. “I’m going to give you some time for your phone call. Will be right back.”
I dialed Rhode’s number and waited. I wondered how that man could say he hated fanaticism with a room decorated like that.
“Rhode! It’s me, Bethel.�
�
“Where are you? Everyone’s looking for you. The Investigation Brigade was just here!”
“They broke into the house. I had to run.”
“Who did? The Brigade?”
“No, they did. They had masks.”
Silence.
“Is Alem with you?”
I sighed.
“Yes, safe and sound.”
“Bethel… since the Brigade came I keep seeing all these men in dark blue suits here. They don’t leave. They’re surrounding the house.”
That call was a mistake.
“They’re probably listening to this conversation. Don’t worry about us.” I hung up.
The man reappeared.
“You know that by now the Brigades are probably looking for you after what happened at the procession.”
That and the shots that were fired, I thought.
“If you turn yourself in now, you’ll only have to say you left the house in a hurry and they won’t punish you for that. Much. Maybe you’ll spend a few days at a Correction Center, but that’ll be it. They know you have a child to take care of and would be sympathetic.”
Very sympathetic. And then Alem would be taken away from me during that time and I’d never see him again.
“Or are you going to run away and hide?” he asked, smiling. I wondered what he wanted. “Just because of something like this? Those pilgrims, they’ve already forgot you and moved on to their next cause.”
I couldn’t just have gone back and turn myself in. That would’ve meant that Alem would be separated from me until everything was taken care of. And that time would be enough for Defectio to take him. And even if they didn’t, where would I go after, the Mansion of Frogs? Just to have to run away again one day?
“I need to make another phone call. I’m sorry.”
“Of course.” This time he didn’t give any hint of wanting to give me some space.
I asked him to search for the monastery’s phone number.
When the bishop answered the phone, he was angry.
“Where are you? You have to go to a Center. Everyone’s looking for you! Someone broke into your house, fired guns, killed the dogs…. I feared you and Alem were in danger.”
Lord and Christian, my poor babies.
“We’re okay, bishop. This is what I wanted to talk to you about earlier.”
The man was looking at me stupidly.
I lowered my voice in hopes he wouldn’t hear me. “I’m being followed. I don’t know exactly by whom.”
“Where are you? Go to a Center, and I’ll solve this.”
“Will I be arrested?”
“Of course you will! I will see what I can do so you only spend a few days there, but what happened in the procession was too public. We received dozens of complaints. Tell me where you are.”
I realized he wasn’t going to solve this for me. I felt like crying. I didn’t know what to do.
I hung up without saying goodbye.
“It seems like you’re in big trouble. You can’t go back to Carmel.”
I didn’t answer but faced him and waited for what he might say next.
“Stay for as long as you want, until all this goes away.”
“Aren’t you going to call the Brigades? You can’t shelter fugitives.”
The word fugitives gave me chills.
“You’re not the first ones I’ve protected,” he said. “And you won’t be the last.” His eyes were shining, and his smile was wide.
I faked a smile, slightly distrustful. What would I do there? Live as if everything was normal?
“You must be wondering why I’m doing this. I’ll tell you again: I hate fanatics. I’ve helped a lot of people escape, people who didn’t commit any real crime. You fell into my lap, and I cannot turn my back on you.”
“And you don’t want to know why I can’t go back to Carmel?”
“No, that doesn’t concern me. Apparently, the Second Bishop of Carmel is fully informed, so I won’t get involved. The less I know, the better. If you stay, I’ll ask you just one thing: you must not leave this farm under any circumstances, except if you’re leaving forever. It was a risk bringing you here, and if you keep entering and leaving, someone will see you, even from the road. And if it’s someone from town, they’ll start asking questions. People don’t have a lot to do around here.”
Behind the man, a cuckoo clock opened its doors. Instead of a bird, what emerged from them was a figure of the Virgin Mary.
“Help me with the daily chores and let me teach the little one the Institution’s doctrine as he grows older. I know he’s still young, but it’s never too early to instill the Faith.”
As he grows older? How long did he think we’d stay there?
“I won’t be able to stay long. They’ll find us eventually. And with the phone calls I just made….”
“No one can know the origin of your phone calls, don’t worry. Go take a shower. There are clothes in the room upstairs. Wear them, yours are dirty.”
Dirty was a nice way to describe them.
“I’ve lived here for a long time now. No one comes here, and no one will bother you.”
All of it seemed a bit suspicious, but what could I do? I was displaced from Carmel, and I didn’t have any other place to go. Maybe I could stay a few days before I had to leave again, maybe out of the country.
“Maybe for a few days. I’ll just rest from today’s stress.”
He reached out with his hand and said, “My name is Reuel Gonçalves. You can call me Reuel.”
I shook his hand.
“I’m Bethel. And this is my son, Alemeth.”
“Welcome.”