by V. Cobe
CHAPTER 32
The Feminists Niche
The television showed Icabode, smiling, speaking into a microphone in the Hall of Stigmata, the main conference room of the Fort of the Faith.
Alem, covered by the black cloak, was standing in front of the screen and ready to disappear into the night as soon as the first hour of curfew passed. He was seeing a ghost.
Icabode was announcing his planned withdrawal, admitting to having found a man who represented God more accurately, a holier man than he himself was, to whom he would pass the torch.
The recording that was broadcast was renewed twice a year in case Icabode was afflicted by a premature death that could discredit the role of a Most Holy President—the man chosen by Jesus to rule the Faith, a man who does not live at the mercy of the whims of chance, a blessed man who doesn’t die unexpectedly—and announced that the new chosen one would be presented to the world two days later.
The memory of the deformed limbs of Icabode, soaked in blood, still sent shivers down Alem’s spine. And now he was being called to office, and that ruffled him even more. The day before, he was merely a young man with a promising career; now he was being called by Father Caleb to the Fort of the Faith to prepare the global announcement that he would be the next Most Holy President.
He turned off the television with a sharp hit and left the house. He ran through the shadows to the sewer lid covered from the light, his orange hair and black cloak flapping in the wind. He stopped to look at the sky for a moment: it was black, except for the small moon almost gone and one or two stars that shined over the light of the street lamps. He slid the cover, went down the stairs and found the door to Umbraland.
Several arches and tunnels emerged from that deserted wing, but only one was lit, as if that was the only possible continuation of the large underground creature.
He followed it, noting that the foul smell disappeared gradually as the number of steps increased. He didn’t know how to reach St. Matthew’s Square beneath the earth but knew the direction he had to follow, so he ran without hesitation.
The darkness was sprinkled with a glint of orange. A sign indicated St. Matthew’s Hole through the left tunnel. A neon sign above a door was blinking No. 3 – Dead Doves. Underneath it, noise, light and smoke escaped.
It’s here. He pulled the hood further down and inhaled deeply.
The room was full of people drinking, speaking loudly, dancing and blowing smoke through their mouths.
My mother was here?
A very tall umbriferam stumbled passed him, spilling half her drink on him, with half-closed eyes and a smile full of pleasure. She mumbled something, made a laugh that hardly left her mouth and went on her way.
A young girl as old as Alem called him from behind a counter.
“Need help?”
Her face was full of drawings, but Alem wasn’t afraid. He just didn’t know what to say.
“Would you like to order anything?” asked the girl.
Next to Alem, a burly umbriferum was holding a cylindrical glass filled with a steaming gray liquid. Alem pointed to him.
The girl behind the counter frowned.
“A Well of Vodka? You must be really bad,” she said as she poured liquids from different bottles into a glass.
Alem tried to nod; he couldn’t arouse suspicion.
“Is it your first time here?” she asked.
He shook his head negatively.
“Okay.” The girl placed the full glass in front of Alem, and the contents splashed all around. “Drink this; it’ll do you good, Mr. Quiet. It’s ten.”
Alem took money from his wallet and paid.
“I’m actually looking for someone named… Tjiq. You know who that is?”
“The Tjiq?” She raised her eyebrows but kept her smile. “Tjiq of Feminismus?”
“Maybe, yes, it must be.”
“Well, there’s only one Tjiq around here anyway. What do you want with her?”
“To talk.”
The girl laughed.
“To talk, of course…. We all want to ‘talk’ with her. She’s there in that corner.” She pointed with her chin to sofas against the back wall, surrounded by umbriferos who were chatting lively with one other.
A twenty-something-year-old girl with greenish blonde hair was sitting in the midst of them.
“Yes, that one,” said the girl behind the bar with a sly smile.
Alem thanked her and took his drink without tasting it.
She saw him coming from afar, gazed at him but didn’t get up.
“Tjiq?” asked Alem.
Tjiq smiled graciously. The other umbriferos didn’t take notice of him.
“It’s me. You’ve heard of me, have you?” She tilted her head to the side, studying his face and body. “And you, who are you?”
She uncrossed her legs and stood from the sofa, curious. The others cleared the way for her to pass.
“I’m…,” he hesitated. “I came because of this.” He handed her the paper with the code he had found in his mother’s dress.
Tjiq took it slowly, read it and shook her head, slightly bored.
“What is this?”
“I found it in my mother’s dress and thought that maybe you knew her.” He translated her name. “Cevjem. Did you know her? Long black hair, brown eyes.”
Tjiq laughed as if she was amused and lazy at the same time. She rolled her eyes and replied, “Decided to snoop around behind mommy’s back, did you? But aren’t you too grown up for that?” Then she scrutinized his body with her eyes. “I could even take you to my pit, like with—”
“My mother died. She was that woman… that woman on the poster. There’s a poster at Sinner’s Square, at Sinner’s Hole, I mean.”
Tjiq’s smile faded. She seemed to be salivating.
“What’s your name?”
Alem took a deep breath.
“Amen.”
She widened her eyes for a split second. A wry smile came to her face.
“Your name’s Amenevj?”
“Yes.”
Tjiq looked at his hood as if trying to see beneath the black fabric. She reached out to uncover it, but Alem walked away.
“Don’t be afraid. Your mother and I… I tried to protect her but….” She looked around. “We shouldn’t talk here.”
She turned to the group on the sofas and said, “I’ll be back.” Then she took Alem’s hand and led him out of the bar to St. Matthew’s Hole.
“So you knew my mother?”
“We were good friends. Down here; up above we never saw each other. I’ll tell you everything.” She pulled Alem by the arm.
They walked through a dark and orange tunnel full of mud. A few rats ran ahead of them. Tjiq buried her pointy heels in the sewage but didn’t seem to care.
There must be some misunderstanding, something he had missed. My mother wasn’t an umbriferam.
“I’ll take you to a place where your mother loved to go,” said Tjiq, as a filthy and gentle breeze rippled a lock of hair on her face.
The orange brightened to a clear yellow exactly when the tunnel opened into a hall crowded mainly by umbriferas.
A concave building, like a big yellow igloo, a half sun, was at the center of the room. Above it, a yellow circle was spinning by itself under a static horizontal line of the same color. Inside the circle, an inverted triangle marked the Feminismus niche and spun the opposite way.
“This is our headquarters. Don’t be fooled by the small half sphere; there are many floors below it.”
All of that was reprehensible. Some umbriferos had painted lips or painted eyes and others had their whole face painted like dolls. Some were androgynous. Some were dressed, but their clothes barely covered anything. The Ordus was of no interest there.
Tjiq stopped in front of two large glass doors and winked at him, as if to say that everything was fine.
“What is it?” asked a girl sitting behind a desk as they entered the concave building.
&
nbsp; “I just came here to talk with my new friend.” Tjiq offered her a triumphant smile.
The center of the igloo was like a huge cliff, as if a large pit had been dug in the middle. Tjiq took him to the edge and descended the spiral stairs surrounding the void. In the center of the void, suspended in the air, were statues of women in various poses: diving, dancing, running, touching their private parts. The bottom of the pit couldn’t be seen.
Alem followed Tjiq down the stairs until the female figures disappeared and the light started to thin. Glass and yellow metal gave way to gray stone.
“Almost nobody knows this area. But your mother was special to us.”
The bottom of the pit was right there and it was no more than bare and cold stone. Tjiq came to a ledge on the wall and crossed it. The corridor was another downward spiral around stone. When it finally came to an end, they were in an inner courtyard, filled with what looked like plants. The only light came from candles in tall candelabras.
“These are species that only grow in the dark.”
“But how do they grow—”
“You don’t need to know how. Just look at their beauty.”
The leaves were black as death, but were sprinkled with a variety of colors that glowed softly.
“Can you wait here?” she asked. “I have to go make a phone call. I’ll tell you everything about your mother in a moment.”
She crossed the courtyard, entered a dark room and lighted a few candles.
No phones would work this deep underground, he thought. Something was wrong.
Alem approached the chamber where Tjiq had entered and listened. I should just get out of here. But curiosity was stronger than fear. He wondered what his mother had been doing there. Hearing no sound, he peered.
The chamber was empty, except for a wooden table full of papers spread on top. A stack of newspaper clippings was piled in a corner.
Alem walked there.
‘The Great Superstition is back!’ announced the first cut. The following headline read: ‘Boy mentioned in GS allegedly found’. Alongside the clippings was a copy of a letter. It was addressed to Zalmon:
May 21, 2073
Your Excellency Bishop Zalmon Costa,
Everything is going as planned. The boy and his mother are safe. I have developed his motivation despite the obstacles she poses. I’m trying to occupy her with everything I can.
During the next week I will be in Carmel, we will see each other at the Fort of the Faith.
May God be with us,
Reuel Gonçalves
Trembling, Alem put the letter aside and looked at the rest of the documents. He found a black folder marked ‘Heart of Carmel’ on the cover. He opened it in his hands.
A black and white photograph of a middle-aged Mother Zilá appeared right on the first sheet. At the lower right corner was a note: ‘May 1902’. But that couldn’t be right.
Other nuns appeared in photos on the following pages. There was a list of names and dates that filled dozens of sheets labeled with the heading ‘Abortions’. The nuns appeared in it dozens of times. A loose sheet had an outline of the monastery forest and the Gloque next to it.
Alem’s hand weakened and dropped the folder on the table. When he looked up, Tjiq was standing at the entrance of the chamber and staring at him. She had a rope in her hands.
“Didn’t I tell you to wait in there?”
Their eyes remained fixed on each other until Alem lunged forward to escape.
He was stronger than her, but she didn’t move aside. She bent her legs and attacked him with a straight arm. The pain was so strong that Alem had to cling to his nose, lying on the floor.
Tjiq took the opportunity to run up to the wooden table and rummage in a drawer. She took out a firearm.
Alem ran out of the chamber. With the presence of death, a discharge coursed through his body, from the base of his spine to the top of his head. He fled through the courtyard, waiting for the bullet, and tripped over a group of red and black striped plants. When he turned his neck back, he saw a terrified Tjiq, still pointing the shaking gun at him. He followed her gaze to his own back where, just above his lower back beneath his sweater, an undulating mass was trying to escape, almost tearing the fabric.
The shape of a snake’s head, jaws open, stretched his clothes to the limit, moving toward Tjiq.
In a black leaf, he saw his reflection: his features were indistinguishable but there was a powerful ball of orange light emanating from his head, as if his hair shined intensely, spreading across the yard. Within his eyes, in the place where the iris should’ve been, were two lines, one red and one orange.
With his hands and face bleeding, he got up and ascended the dark spiral to the floor of the pit. Then he went up in circles until the top of the igloo and, terrified, left the yellow headquarters to the middle of the blackened gray of the sewage.