by V. Cobe
CHAPTER 30
Circulus Protectionis
They were in a type of arena. The floor came down in the center, tapered.
The umbriferos looked there, lively, in a large circle. From the high ceiling fell seven long strips of cloth, each in the color of a niche.
“And it is with this that we strengthened it,” said a man in the center. “Another Circle, another safety for all of us, another essential contribution from niche Mysticismi!”
The circle cheered and whistled enthusiastically.
Alem couldn’t see what was happening in the center but suspected that he didn’t want to anyway.
“What are you doing here, Jaala?” he asked.
“Nobody calls me that anymore. My name is Kaama,” he said, and a proud glint showed in his eyes. “Sorry for that sinister phone call… but care is needed. And sorry for taking so long, but down here they are a bit obsessed with secrecy.”
“Why’d you call us here?” asked Alem, a little annoyed.
“I want to show you that this isn’t what Etaú made us think it was. You’ll like it. We’ll walk together here, as before. Trust me, Alem, you’re gonna see—”
“Jaala, stop. Or Kaama, whatever you call yourself now. We didn’t come here to niche at this, or whatever that ritual is called. We came here to get you.”
Kaama leaned back and puckered his gaze.
Alem took a step forward.
“You have to go see your parents. They’re concerned. Don’t you think about them? Your father—”
“What do you know about my parents? You know nothing.”
“We care about you,” said Hazael and looked around. “What have you been doing here?”
“I am a festivus now. The Umbrification was just a party, this is all very simple, nothing like Etaú had us think. And Alem, they have God here as well, I just wanted you to see—”
“How can you say such a thing? Look at that symbol!” He pointed to the circle of the mystici painted on a wall. “You know what that represents, don’t you?”
Kaama couldn’t answer.
“Come with us now! They’ve brainwashed you.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” replied Kaama, irritably.
“I’m your friend, despite everything. I care about you and your wellbeing.”
“Did you care about me in the past month?”
“What did you want me to do? After you decided to stay with my kidnappers, you stopped answering the phone. How do you think I felt?”
Kaama looked to the other side of the arena, without answering.
In the middle of the circle of umbriferos, the man continued to speak.
“I ask your attention and for everyone to remain calm and quiet during the ritual. It is imperative that our mystici not get distracted.”
Alem continued, “But I never stopped thinking about you. And that’s why we’re here now.”
“You’re here because I called asking you to come. And because I went to see you at the ceremony.”
“I saw you there and went to your house. I talked to your mother and then decided to come here. I thought you’d want to know that your father is dying.”
Kaama turned his head and gazed up at him.
For a millisecond, Alem could sense doubt, hurt and fear in his friend’s eyes, but he quickly composed himself.
“My father died long ago. And my mother as well.”
“Oh,” said Lael.
“Don’t say that!” said Alem.
“It’s not because your parents aren’t alive that you’re more of an orphan than me, don’t doubt that. They never cared for me, and I know why. I’m different, Amen, I’m different, like you are, and different from you as well. My place has never been up there, and my parents know but never accepted it. They’re blind, devotees, zealots. They killed the cat because black spots were showing up on it and they thought it was right. You think it’s right. I don’t.”
“I also don’t think it’s right.” Alem suddenly felt very sad.
Jaala continued, anger growing in his neck, “The Institution has flaws, I know it and everybody knows it. Only those who don’t want to see it don’t. And you clearly don’t want to see it.”
“I know it has flaws, but it’s still a better place than this. Umbra is very seductive, I know, everything looks so good!” Frustration was seizing him. “But all the crap of the world ends up here; we’re in the sewers, for God’s sake! But the Institution is different. Its bases are the right ones. There are things that are wrong, I know, old-fashioned things that don’t fit in the world today. But it only needs small retouches, a little cleaning of the dirt from Man that has accumulated for centuries. God is there, and God reaches all through it. That’s what’s important to me. The Institution helps many people, provides shelter and hope and keeps the world hunger-free—”
“Umbra also helps many people. People who are to be executed for insignificant things, people who feel apart from the ridiculous and rigid morals of your Institution. Helps—”
“Helps to abduct children, blow up squares full of people, helps spread doubt in people’s hearts, hatred, alienation from God, perversion, adultery, the devil, drugs, anarchy, death, hunger. It’s the freedom. Helps spread freedom. Right… Kaama? Freedom has a very dark side, but you know that. People can be evil and perverse; if you let them do whatever they want, the world is destroyed. That’s why God is important. That’s why we need God, to understand the right values, the right conduct. No man is above God to be able to say ‘this is how it should be done’; that’s why the Bible exists, the texts in which God tells us how things should be done.”
“I’m sorry, the Bible?” he asked sarcastically, dropping a dry laugh at the end.
“Yes, the Bible. The Bible if read with love. It’s love, Jaala. Everything leads to love.” Kaama didn’t answer.
The old man in the center of the circle shouted, “The Institution is not the solution!”
“The Institution is not the solution!” repeated the umbriferos in unison, making the gesture of Umbra with their hands above their heads. “The Institution is not the solution!”
Kaama shook his head.
“You have no idea what this is….”
“Come with us. Get out of here. Leave this place that’s so alluring, so attractive, where everything is possible, but full of evil, full of destruction, separation, disunity, disintegration. Go see your father. He has a lot to tell you. Believe me, you will not want him to go without saying goodbye.”
“You had to come here and spoil everything, didn’t you?” said Kaama dismissively.
“Jaala!” exclaimed Alem incredulously.
“Don’t call me Jaala! That’s not my name here. Now I know, more than ever, I belong down here, not in the world of crap that exists up there. That’s a crappy world! We have always been different, me and you. You’ve always been the nuns’ favorite, and I the hated one, even though I had as good grades as you did. But I also hated them, all of them, they’re all hypocrites. I could never live in the middle of that, ever. All of it disgusts me!”
“Stop, please!” asked Lael.
“When I discovered Umbra,” continued Kaama, “I realized immediately. It was here that I belonged all along: my life could finally have a future, and it didn’t have to be a miserable one. And now you show up and ask me to follow you? You, who never cared for what I felt, never did anything for me? I’m sick of it! I’m always behind you, following Alem, the special Alem, who has suffered so much. It wasn’t them who kidnapped you, Amen! Not them. There’s a lot in Umbra that you don’t know, don’t judge the whole for the part. You speak in disunity, separation…. Shut up! I will no longer follow your ideas. No, you won’t ruin the only good thing that has happened to me. You know nothing, but now I do… and I think you’re in a big mess, if you ask me.”
The cries of the umbriferos ceased, and the man in the center shouted, “Begin!”
There was ab
solute silence in the room. Then, without warning, voices rose that intoned words gravely in a language Alem couldn’t speak but the name of which he knew: Latin. They came from the center of the small arena dug in the soil. There was no melody most of the time, which made it feel like he was listening to something vibrating, but then the voices would raise their tone sharply just to lower it again immediately after. A shiver ran down the nape of Alem’s neck.
“I called you here so you could see this,” Kaama told him. “Go on. It might change your mind….”
Alem pierced the crowd until the edge of the arena’s center. There, naked bodies lying on the ground writhed like eels; they were so fluid and flexible that Alem doubted they possessed any bones. As they rippled they were also rippling around the center, like planets revolving around a star. Across the arena, on a kind of royal bench, were eight chairs made of metal in the seven colors of Umbra. There were two blue chairs on which sat the twins who had revealed that horrible vision to him. They laughed as if they were watching a clown show. In the yellow chair sat the blonde woman with overly long hair that Alem had seen enthroned, in Carmel, during the vision. She looked bored with whatever was happening there.
In the center of the arena, the bodies scattered in groups. The intonation coming from their mouths gained a high pitch and didn’t lower again.
And then Alem saw her. He wanted to faint. In the middle of a group of naked bodies was Bithynia, curling in sync with the others and singing in that wicked tone, that horrible mixture between animal and sexual.
“I can’t believe it,” said Hazael, already next to Alem.
The women joined in the center to form a small circle, facing inward. The men surrounded them to form a larger circle. With groans of pain and pleasure, the females sat cross-legged and took from among them stones the size of tennis balls, all completely black. Their voices raised to a terrifying acute pitch. They raised their arms that held the stones and threw them forward, arms outstretched. The balls hurtled in the center and crumbled into dust, which fell to the ground raising a huge flame, suddenly sparking a fire.
Alem couldn’t stop looking at it despite the urge to vomit, run, cry and die. He felt a tingling in his lower back. He felt that it was about to happen again.
Bit crossed her eyes with his. She stopped singing abruptly. The melody distorted, the fire extinguished, and then everyone fell silent and stopped.
Moans and cries resonated around her.
In unison, the twins, close to tears, asked in a hurt tone, “What did you do, little one?”
She stood and ran toward Alem, who was already passing through the crowd to get out. “It’s the eeennnnd!” someone moaned.
“Nooooo! The ritual has been broken!”
“Alem, wait.” Bit’s voice touched him like a knife.
Panicked screams erupted from the umbriferos. Someone fainted and went rolling into the center of the arena. There was a joint anxious movement.
“This is not what you think. I can show you. It’s very good what I’m doing.”
Alem turned and faced her. It seemed as though he was looking at someone else.
“Who are you?”
Bit broke into a desperate cry and stammered, “Alem… please… I’ll explain. Our love is invincible, it will make you understand.”
“Understand? You want me to understand this? Don’t you know what Umbra did to me? Don’t you understand what this means to me? I have to understand?”
“I’m so sorry that your life has been that way, I didn’t want it…” She started walking toward him.
“Stop.” A tear lurked in his eyes. “You’re lucky if I don’t deliver you to the Institution.”
“Please!”
“Don’t speak to me ever again. Not because I mean you harm but because it will harm me a lot.” He turned his back.
She ran after him.
Alem pushed through the nervous crowd to get to the beginning of the tunnel that would take them away from there.
Bithynia tried to grab him but could only catch his cloak. She pulled it, uncovering his head.
“Don’t do this to me! I love you more than anything. I’ll leave this for you, get out of here with you and never come back!”
Alem released himself from her with a sudden jerk.
A shout from the metal pew stood out from the others.
“It’s him. It’s the boy!” It was the blonde woman. “Hold them!”
Alem walked faster.
Hazael and Lael followed him as he passed Kaama.
“It’s just crap that ends up here, isn’t it?” he said to Alem.
Alem was about to answer him but a battalion of what seemed to be children with blue cloaks appeared behind them.
“We have to get out of here!” shouted Hazael.
“Over there!”
They ran down a cement ramp to a tunnel they didn’t know.
“There’s so much you don’t know, Amen!” shouted Kaama from the back. “Go to Sinner’s Hole, for example, and see with your own eyes.”
Alem’s heart was about to rip his chest. His eyes filled with tears. Two treacheries on the same night.
At the end of the tunnel was a sign indicating Sinner’s Hole to the right.
“Maybe Jaala was trying to help us,” said Hazael.
There was no time to think about it. Alem ran, distressed and barely noticing where he was going, to Sinner’s Hole, a broad and slightly illuminated space. It was possible to see without a flashlight, although poorly. But there was nothing. It was just another gallery full of dust, manure and cement, full of badly painted light blue columns.
Behind them, someone kept shouting, anguish brought and blown away by the wind that had raised there.
They rushed to the signaled exit, ready to disappear from the sewers, but something at eye level pasted on a wall next to Alem jumped into his sight: a very old poster, worn and torn, with many parts missing and others unstuck. On it was the face of a woman.
Alem got closer to the poster. His heart was beating wildly. He smoothed the paper surface, dusting and stretching the curled lower left end.
His mother looked at him through time with a serious expression on her face, as if warning him of the danger of something. The dress she wore was like the one he had found a few months before in a vase in the monastery. Beneath her face were red bold letters; only the first sentence was still legible. It read: ‘The woman in the photograph is dangerous’.
“We have no time! They are coming!” shouted Hazael.
Alem ran to the exit and closed Umbraland’s door behind him.
In the darkness they ran, groping, in search of iron ladders that could take them out of there.
“I found them!” shouted Hazael.
“Did we manage to outwit the others?” asked Lael, panting.
“I don’t know, but we have to get out of here immediately,” said Alem.
Hazael went up the ladder, with Lael right below him. He reached the top, moved the cover to the side and put his hands on the tar. As soon as he did, two arms in a red and gold uniform grabbed him and pulled him up.
“I got one!” shouted a Brigade guard.
Alem let out a cry of terror.
Lael let go of the iron ladder and fell on the concrete floor beside him.
Another Brigade guard showed up at the open hole to help pull up Hazael.
Alem grabbed Lael and dragged him out of the light that fell through the hole. He heard Hazael sob, fear seizing his voice.
“The others must be down there,” said one of the guards.
“They have already left,” cried Hazael, afflicted.
“Don’t lie to me, kid,” the man replied.
“Never mind,” said the other. “By now they’ve fled already and that place down there is a disgusting maze. We already have one; tonight is looking good.”
The other spat and answered with an evil laugh.
“Yes. The general
is going to be pleased.”