The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1 Read online

CHAPTER 8

  The White Tree

  Dark circles were flooding the skin around my eyes. I took a pot of illegal makeup that I’d bought years before at the Grave of Treasures, a shop in Umbra that specialized in contraband goods. But not even a kilo of face foundation was enough to hide the circles completely. I put on a long red skirt, buttoned my white, high neck shirt and left toward Sinner’s Square.

  I entered the busy stationer, Crucified, to buy The Faith Diary, even though I didn’t believe any of what was written in it.

  One shy clerk didn’t take his eyes off me from the moment I entered. Around me, two customers averted their eyes when I faced them. One of them went out of the shop running after we crossed our gaze. The Conclave had taken down all the posters at Umbraland, but the umbriferos still remembered.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” whispered the clerk.

  I dropped the newspaper on the counter, went out running, climbed into the first taxi I saw and headed toward Heart of Carmel.

  It had only been a week, but Alem already seemed different, bigger, more grown up. And despite the hard week I’d had, and that desperate contemplation of the future, seeing him renewed my spirit.

  Alem was energetic and smiley, just like a regular child should be. He wore a red cassock, the same tone as his hair and embroidered with a golden string.

  “My best friend’s name is Jaala,” he said, while we sat on a bench in the monastery’s back garden. “We sit together during classes. But the teachers separated us in a few because we talk too much.”

  “You have to behave. You must pay attention to what the teachers say. Are you enjoying it?”

  “They call me ‘the one with the scarlet hair’. Or just ‘red’. I don’t mind.” He smiled.

  “And what are the sisters like?”

  “Mother Superior is mean. We’re all afraid of her. Except Jaala; Jaala’s the bravest.”

  “You’re also very brave, son. Is he your only friend?”

  “There’s also Hazael, who always knows everything about anything, and Lael, who’s quiet but nice to everybody.”

  I told him about how the house was being restored with the swimming pool, the grass and healed trees, and the fixed windows and doors. I told him about the short visit to the Correction Center. I told him about the process of my reinstitutionalization and explained to him that his institutionalization would happen that year and that the monastery would organize it.

  Fall had barely started, but the leaves already fell like hail, twirled by a storm that turned the day gray and windy. But that didn’t stop the monastery’s church from being packed for the new students’ Introduction Mass. The elite was all there: the Ministrum Uno, the archbishop of Carmel and even the archbishop of Naze, who had sent his own nephew to Zalmon’s monastery for it was the most renowned in the country.

  The inside was admirable. The storm made it necessary to light candles, which gave the service an almost magical atmosphere. Dry leaves swirled and flapped outside against the stained glass behind the altar.

  When the aisle became full, Zalmon appeared from a lateral door and approached the altar, followed by two deacons and one priest, who stood in a corner.

  Total silence filled the church.

  “We are the Faith,” said the bishop, his strong voice echoed as he opened his arms to the audience.

  “We are the Faith,” the congregation responded in chorus.

  “Dear brothers and sisters. Today is a very special day for our relatives and friends. It is the day these little ones will receive Jesus Christ for the first time. It is certain that all of them have already sensed the presence of Jesus, as he is always with us. But today they will make with him an inner pact, in which they will promise to follow him for the rest of their lives and, in return, Jesus will follow them. For them, that journey starts today. For the Faith!”

  “We are the Faith,” replied the whole church.

  The bishop held out his hand toward the door on the left, and the boys came out in a line, spreading out behind the altar.

  The audience exploded in applause and tears of joy. The elite, with their gala hats and suits, felt that moment to be the magnificent first step of their children into that perfect system that was the Institution, in which only a few could be free and privileged.

  Mother Zilá let herself be seen for only a few moments at the door, but after the final boy exited, the door closed with her on the other side.

  The choir sang words of pain, suffering, sin and forgiveness. Their ghostly voices filled the church but at the end silence reigned again.

  “Our lives are filled with sin. And it is only through Jesus Christ that we can expel it, that we can purify our souls. And that is why this day is so important for your lives,” said the bishop, addressing the line of boys behind him. “To you boys, the challenge is even harder. God teaches that women, for tempting men so constantly, are even more sinful than they, but the difficult mission for the men is to love and respect them despite that tempting serpent they carry all the time around their sinful necks.”

  I felt like throwing up, despite having heard all of that hundreds of times before.

  A few boys released nervous giggles, and others pulled ugly faces at these words. The boys then moved forward to the front of the altar, one by one, and received the communion wafer and wine from the priest’s hands while the choir released their angelic voices again.

  Any mass was torture for me, even the ones in which my son was participating. And even the ones in Umbra.

  For the niche Amoris Christi, Jesus Christ was the son of God, just like in the upper lands, and loved everyone and everything. Despite that, even in a Christian society, it was a niche with a paucity of members. For someone to whom the repression of the Institution was unbearable, abandoning it and renouncing its teachings but still believing in and loving Jesus required great courage. To exchange the Institution for Umbra was a lot easier for atheists and agnostics.

  A few months after my first Umbrification, I was leaving a Festum party with Rhode when we crossed the green zones and heard chanting. We followed the voices to a small room whose door had the symbol: