by V. Cobe
CHAPTER 19
St. Matthew’s Square
The word Tjiq, written on a piece of paper that Hazael had replicated from the original, hypnotized Alem. He wondered what it meant.
Haz looked up the word in all sources but discovered nothing. Was it a code? Was it written in an extinct language?
“Alem, pay attention,” ordered Sister Rafaela, the Current Events teacher. “What do you think of this?”
Alem looked at the big screen displaying an article in a newspaper, The Inquisitor, from the previous week. John Prince had apparently discovered a particle, which he called Prince’s Particle, but Alem had no idea what it was.
“I don’t know, sister,” he answered.
“You don’t know? And I sincerely don’t know what’s wrong with you. Just as the year is coming to an end. Don’t you want to finish with good grades?”
Alem nodded and looked down at the paper in front of him. The circle under the horizontal line caught his attention.
“Who knows?” asked the teacher. “Claudia.”
“I think it may come to revolutionize the world. If we can use the particle to understand the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit…”
Alem was no longer listening.
The gesture that Sister Tamar had made resembled that symbol, the same symbol he had seen in the dungeons.
Welcome to Umbra, they told him.
But after all what was Umbra? And why had they kidnapped him? Why was that tiny symbol drawn in the corner of a paper within a vase in the monastery church? And the strange whisper of that black-haired man….
Alem looked at Jaala in the desk next to his.
Jaala returned his gaze with a slight nod. With only the movement of the lips, he said, “Everything’s ready.”
They parted ways in silence, too nervous to speak.
Alem walked to the main courtyard in front of the monastery, from where the buses that would take the students to Dead King’s Square would leave. He tried not to look suspicious. He sat on the step of a lateral arch of the building and opened his biology book, the first that came out of his backpack. His eyes stared at the pages, but he didn’t read a single word.
After a few minutes, Lael showed up in the courtyard. He was paler than usual. Despite being much taller and stronger than Alem, it seemed he couldn’t hold the weight of the backpack he carried on his back.
Other students started arriving and placed their bags and backpacks inside the compartments of the red and gold buses. Hazael circulated among one of the groups. He was tense, but anyone who didn’t know of their plan wouldn’t have noticed. He threw his bag into the luggage compartment and entered the bus without even looking at Alem.
The driver greeted him and checked his name on the list.
Jaala came next and approached Alem with a confident pace. He held out his hand.
“You’re not saying goodbye today?” he asked.
Alem stood and shook his hand.
“I said to act normal, but apparently no one listened to me,” muttered Jaala. “Everyone’s here. Let’s go.”
They approached the bus. Jaala was right; they were already completely surrounded by students ready to leave.
The right time was looming. Lael looked at Jaala, then at Alem and then advanced to the bus’ door. He mounted the steps and greeted the driver with the most forced smile Alem had ever seen. Then he took a deep breath and sank down on the floor with exaggeration.
Outside, Jaala gave a low laugh.
The ones already inside the bus stood, the driver leaned over Lael, and the entrance was filled with curious students.
“Did he collapse?”
“Make way!”
They moved away for the driver to exit with Lael in his arms. He could barely carry him. He put him on the floor and was soon surrounded by the students.
“I’ll call the Superior!” shouted a skinny boy with glasses.
Jaala touched Alem’s arm and circled the group of curious students. They climbed the steps and walked through the bus’ corridor.
Their fellow students were nailed to the windows, aware of Lael in the middle of the ground.
Haz stood near the back doors of the bus, reserving two places for him and Alem. He crossed eyes with Alem but said nothing.
Jaala passed him, Alem crouched in front of the seat closer to the window and waited for Hazael to cover him with a backpack full of clothes.
A few seconds later, the movement inside the bus resumed, and the bus was once again filled with students.
“That one’s always fainting,” said the young man who sat in the seat behind which Alem was hiding, as the bus proceeded.
Alem peeked through the bag.
Hazael was at his side reading the Bible, and Lael and Jaala were sitting in the pair of seats behind. Jaala grinned and winked over the back of the seats. Lael made a tired but relieved smile.
An hour and a half later, when Alem’s legs had already gone numb, dozens of boys jumped from their seats, took their belongings from the racks and rushed to the stairs of the two exits as they laughed and waved to the outside of the bus.
When the bus was almost empty, Hazael took the bag and coats off of Alem, rose and approached the stairs of the rear exit.
Alem glued himself to Hazael, and Jaala and Lael guarded his back. They walked down the stairs and stumbled into the street.
Hazael went on his way, as if nothing was happening, toward his mother waiting by a car.
Alem diverted to a bench in a corner of the square.
Lael was no longer behind him, and Jaala went ahead and said, without looking at him, “See you now.”
He went to his mother, leaned his cheek against hers in one swift movement, told her something, dropped his bag and turned back.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said when he returned to Alem’s side.
Hazael was still talking with his mother. He gave her a kiss, left her and searched for Alem in the square. After spotting him, he went to grab his bag, calmly.
Lael’s parents were arm in arm staring at their child, suspiciously. He gesticulated for a while. They acquiesced reluctantly and then embraced him before he went running to the others.
When he arrived, Jaala told everyone, “Let’s see what’s so special about this St. Matthew’s Square.”
“What if they find out?” muttered Lael.
“No one’s finding out anything,” cut Jaala.
“Alem may be expelled!”
“Lael, shut up! Everything will be fine.”
“What did you find out about that?” asked Alem.
Hazael nodded.
“On the Internet that word doesn’t appear anywhere. Zero hits.”
“Did you look it up on the monastery computers?” asked Lael, alarmed.
“I did, and I didn’t leave tracks. But I found a small reference in a book, after days of research. It was the only one.” He stopped walking and took out an old, heavy book from his backpack. “It was in the outdated section. It’s from 1920. But the title caught my attention.”
He lifted the book in his hands and turned it to the others. On the cover, it read: One Thousand and One Masteries of Transgressors. He opened it to where he had placed a bookmark and handed it to Alem.
“Start at the fifth row.”
Alem read to himself:
…a ridiculous tale of a secret society of Transgressors, thus assuming that they could organize themselves intelligently. At stake was the liability of the Institution security forces. Therefore, it is easy to see the lie translated in this myth and the absurdity that would be the existence of such an underworld, which they had named Umbra, meaning ‘shade’ in Latin.
“It’s a myth, then?” asked Lael.
“Of course it’s not a myth,” replied Jaala. “That’s what they want you to think. It’s an underworld.”
“Who wants us to think that?”
“The Institution,” said Hazael. “The Institution wants t
o hide it.”
“It’s confirmed, then, that those old men were taken by the Brigade because they were talking about this.” Lael shivered as he finished the sentence.
They all became silent. They looked at each other for several seconds until Alem spoke.
“We really can’t be talking about this.”
Jaala started walking, and the others followed.
“I don’t know if—” began Lael.
“If you don’t have the courage, you can leave now,” Jaala interjected, without stopping his pace.
Lael said nothing but seemed to become even more nervous.
They stopped in front of two bus ticket vending machines. Jaala touched one of them two or three times, inserted a banknote, retrieved the tickets and gave them to the others.
They didn’t speak during the entire bus trip.
Alem watched the movement of the world closely: young people with cross-shaped earrings ran through the streets, old men resting on park benches looked him in the eyes as the bus passed, tired men walked in red suits and gold ties without noticing anything around them. But there was no sign of the black-haired man.
The display screen inside the bus announced ‘St. Matthew’s Square’, and they disembarked, more nervous than ever.
“Okay, now what?” Jaala turned to Alem for directions.
“Now we search around. That man didn’t send me here for nothing.”
“That’s right. Let’s go,” Jaala said to the other two.
“Wait. The paper….” Hazael withdrew the note he had copied from the one Alem had found in his cassock’s pocket. “The paper has a time on it. Did you think about that?”
“You think something happens only at that time?” asked Alem.
Jaala got angry.
“And you only tell us now, Haz?”
“We’re not here doing anything, then!” Lael said.
“Let’s at least try,” decided Alem.
“Okay, but don’t forget that we only have half an hour to look around before Gera comes to take you back.”
The red sidewalk court of St. Matthew’s Square was full of crumpled sheets of newspaper, empty fast food boxes and old and used plastic bottles. But the dozens of people who circulated didn’t seem to care about that.
Alem approached a fountain in the center. A stone man, probably Jesus, stood there contemplating the square. He had a smile on his face and one arm, which was missing a hand, raised in the air. The stone rim was cold and clammy to the touch, but for Alem, that didn’t matter. Everything was new. He bent over the edge and looked at the stones on the bottom, still and overlying each other.
“Alem! Jaala! Come here,” called Hazael.
Lael was already beside him, looking at a newspaper.
“Look at this,” said Hazael, holding the sheet. “I’m convinced it’s a code.”
At the end of a page advertising perfume, Blood di Christi, was written ‘33 Possum Street – 14h30’ under a horizontal line.
“This line above the words… I’ve seen this elsewhere, I’m sure. But never really noticed it.”
“Do you really think the man he saw in the church sent him here to find this newspaper?” Jaala was running out of patience.
“That’s not what I’m saying. But it can all be part of—”
And then it was as if time had stopped for Alem. Rose petals fell from an opening in the ceiling at a slow pace in the middle of the arches of one corner of the square, as if descending from the sky.
He stopped listening. Amidst the swirling petals, a girl his age spun with open arms, receiving the roses on her body, letting them land on her cheeks, nose, smile, forehead, closed eyelids, fingers, arms and neck. The green of the grass she trod was already sprinkled with the bright pink flowers that had gone there to rest.
Alem’s mouth was slightly agape. Everything in that scene was beautiful. Her brown, wavy and loose hair danced a little below the shoulders. A Faithful Cross the size of a pea shined in the center of her forehead, between her eyes. A fish-shaped earring was nailed on one side of her nose.
A guard of the Order Brigade called her, telling her that she couldn’t step on the grass, but she didn’t care. The group of boys and girls next to her, who had to be her friends, laughed and pointed. Because she didn’t respond to the guard, he entered the garden and pushed her out. But she kept her smile and ran to the group as if nothing had happened.
“Bithynia,” muttered Alem.
“Huh?” exclaimed Jaala.
Hazael followed Alem’s gaze.
“Oh… a girl.”
“It can’t be just that, otherwise he wouldn’t be like this,” said Jaala. “Alem?”
“It’s the first time he’s seen a girl our age up close, that’s why,” continued Hazael.
“It’s a bit too much,” responded Lael.
“It’s Bithynia,” Alem said.
“Who’s Bithynia?”
Alem smiled before answering.
“Bithynia is the friend I had at Sun’s Farm.”