CHAPTER XVIII: THE TALE OF THE UNIVERSE

− "God-Cause was alone and He was accompanied. He was one and He was two. He created Himself and both created one another, but nobody created them. That’s how God-Cause is, Nike, both indescribable and incomprehensible. But in my head I know that this is true. And at the same time He was a woman and He was a man, He was both at the same time. Or else, how could He engender all His daughters and sons? With whom? Everything in Him was beauty and harmony and desires to create. He lived in a nebula, no space or time yet, and felt the voice of Urgency, gift that was in Him but He originated, to expand and invent everything. And before creating everything had an order. There was no kind of tension, because he didn't know who opposed him. And it is fair that He alone could contemplate that perfection or otherwise His creatures wouldn’t have been able to stand it. His creatures..., well, I don't know much of all this, Nike, because we will not deal with God-Cause, but finally one day He decided to give them life, and they were females and males, their daughters and sons, the first beings-gods..."

− "Beings-gods, Mistress Oakes?"

− "And I also said daughters and sons. In our small cosmos, we have arrived first, and men have no problem in reversing the usual sequence. As for the rest, let me explain it to you well, Nike, if I can. You'll see. We are all beings that will be gods. There is no death or eternity. We will go from a celestial world into another and each of us will create our own universe. And in that infinite world we will create our creatures, who are beings that one day will also be gods in those universes of their own creation, who will work with the laws that they have wanted to give themselves, each different cosmos with different laws, beings-gods, our children, who in turn will give birth to their creatures, and we will participate in all that, in our creatures and the creatures of our creatures and their universes in an infinite vertigo, and they will have laws different from ours, and we will fight with them, sometimes challenging them, sometimes letting them to persuade us that what they have made is beautiful and good. Yes, Nike, so I see the purpose of creation. And we don't know how many universes there are already created. So ours might come from the first daughter or son of God-Cause, but also of His grandchildren or great-grandchildren... If I want to know how many generations there were between God-Cause and God-Fate, how many universes, how many different beings-gods, I could lose my mind and would never find out."

− "Did you say daughter? Is it because women are always first? " -I asked amazed.

− "The Universe is a woman, Nike, but if you interrupt so much, I will never finish to tell you."

   I remembered that I had heard that sentence from Bruce and that I had thought that he was speaking literature. But after all Mistress Oakes was also doing literature.

− "I was telling you that He created His first daughters and sons, all beings-gods, irrespective of their sex, and each ended up being goddess or god of their own universe. Each universe has one or the other, regardless of whether the universe is female or male. I know that our universe is feminine, Nike, later I will explain it to you. But you have to distinguish between God-Fate, involved in every one of the universes created by all His offspring, and the so-called Gods-Universes, one for each celestial world, but as I do not know them all, let us call Goddess-Universe or Universe to ours, whose celestial world is female, also ruled by a goddess. And in each universe, and therefore also in ours, you always can see the battle between two strains, because Universe makes her laws, but constantly supervised by God-Fate.  Do you understand all this, Nike?"

− "Very vaguely, Mistress Oakes. But all of that, how does it influence us?"

− "Let me tell you things as God commands, and do not ask me if who commands is God-Fate or Goddess-Universe, or we will never finish. Both the God father of all, as His daughter or granddaughter Universe, designate a road to their creatures, a road previously planned to the smallest detail, and with a target of life or with several, another of the things that worry me because I don’t know them. He assigns every creature a trail of earth or water, a path or a river: birth, the threshold of the road; a few stones or, in the case of the path of water, waves, which will be his stages; a few passengers, pedestrians or navigators, which will share the path: friends, family, strangers, people who will be entering our lives in chronological order and will be modifying our trajectories; a few trees or sirens, the happy moments of our life; rocks or reefs, the unhappy moments. And in the end home, if the trail is of earth, or the sea, if it is of water: death.

− "I think your path is of water. But if you are worried, I will tell you that many poets have seen the image of the sea as death, but for me rivers in the sea do not die, and perhaps we do not die and like them, we just change from state"−she told me when she saw in my face that I had been wondering.

− "Everything is therefore planned, and there continues to be a touching beauty in all that. And at the same time a horror: there is no possibility of escape from the path that has been prepared for us. Or so it seems, does it not, Nike? Anyway God-Fate and Goddess-Universe love us. The former had already bequeathed us freedom, decision between two or more options, but is there any freedom if He had planned at each point of the trail which would be our decision? Faith or Philosophy have sometimes answered yes. If we have to choose between A and B, and God-Fate knows that we will choose, B, what do we care, if we don't know that option was determined in advance? Thus, in every moment of doubt among options, we will believe that we are free. If it is a hoax, it is also beautiful as everything in creation. Surely there must be more, Nike, but we cannot understand God-Fate, because nobody has been able to explain Him. But the story continues. Whatever it is God-Fate, His daughter Universe, who comes from Him, who loves Him and is loved by Him, but that is not Him, in the freedom that Her father gave her, accepting the gift of creating that She was offered, in the inexorable of the father and the flexible by lover of Her creatures, Universe offered a second solution: rectification. Offering it, Universe shrank for the first time."

− "I am sorry to interrupt, but I don't know if I want to become everything you say. It's too much responsibility, and if it is true that we are here for learning, the truth is that I have wasted valuable years, all my life so far, and I don't know how much longer I will be."

− "I know, Nike, but you think on a human scale. To become what you have to, you have to first pass by eleven rooms." 

− "Eleven?"

− "I know it's confusing, because when I speak later of the Universe gifts I will mention eight. But I think that they are eleven, even if I ignore the names of the last three. But to become beings-gods, we will have to go through eleven worlds. People often wonder about where we come from and where we are going. They wonder indeed but they neglect often to wonder about the beginning. As I see it, we have gone through a room already and that’s why we are born with Liberty. Some have called it free will. And many have also described life in this room as a valley of tears. Necessary tears, which always clean. Perhaps for that reason, we live in the second room: Horror. And without it, Wisdom can never be achieved. It is a trip designed to the last detail and all stages are necessary, and each one has its raison d ' être. And if a walker goes astray, the Universe shrinks and rectifies."

− "It shrinks and rectifies?” –I did not understand anything. Suddenly everything became magma. Even the Universe seemed to learn from its mistakes.

− "The Universe rectifies every time it sees one of its beings walking down the precipice. Believe me, Nike, it has already rectified for you, and probably it will do it again. But those of us here below not always are able to notice it. My opinion is, for example, we have never been able to find that snake because it has never existed. It was a rectification of the Universe so that you stayed here with us, and when it succeeded, its ephemeral live was lost forever because it had no reason to be any longer. It only existed for ten minutes."


 

   So far in Protch’s living-room I had not yet gone into the sofa. And when I did, it was a stunned reaction which made me go into the bottom so my feet didn’t stagger so close to the ground and did not feel again the vertigo I had felt that morning of August 4. Mistress Oakes’ tale could be termed naive or arrogant, but it explained everything, even my bite.

− "Did Protch realize that detail?" the fire was achieving that I was invaded by true slumber, "and what did he tell you?"

− "He certainly realized. I don't know if he believed me, i.e. I do not know if he believed Mistress Oakes’ tale, but he also had to sit. He had been a while standing arranging a vase. I think that henceforth he listened to me feeling the vertigo which no doubt I was transmitting.


 

− "It rectifies, yes –she continued−, but it also shrinks. This whole story, Nike, which you might find ridiculous -as I could, with some gesture, I rushed to assure her that I believed it. Did I? − may be just imagination, but already I suggested last night that if it is imagination, it was the imagination of many people, as well as Jacques Verôme’s and mine. And maybe some of them are sane. Surely more than once you've heard that somebody’s heart shrinks. It has just happened to you −I never had to tell her anything. I think that about me she knew everything−, and you understand that you cannot make room for more. The same happens to the Universe. The same applies to her."

− "To her?"

− "Yes because it should be She-Universe, because it is female. To not tell you so, you know that it is her. Look, Nike, the Universe carries in her womb her creatures, breastfeeds them, has the shape of a uterus to give birth, of a lap where to rock us, it shrinks and rectifies to educate Her creatures. She is a woman."

− "And with the Milky Way She even gives milk to Her descendants." –I said, looking for more relations”.

− "A beautiful symbol, but the Milky Way is only our galaxy, not the Universe, and there are other celestial worlds."

   But Mistress Oakes was our Milky Way, who had given us all the colostrum that was creating us.

− "And if the Universe is a woman, the Earth is a man: you will think that it also has uterus and lap. But the father also hosts. The Earth is the one that plants the seed, the one that sows, the one that fertilizes. And little more, because except in that women and men are equal. Then together father Earth and mother Universe are responsible to nurture and educate. But I was explaining to you that the Universe is affected by Commotion. And as I am a beggar, I will tell you that it shrinks whenever someone offends or attacks a beggar, or when one of them is on the edge of the abyss, as a loving mother would. If it is not a beggar, I guess it is the same, because all women and all men are beings-gods. When it wants to save you from the abyss, after shrinking it rectifies, it diverts to unexpected paths, because in them happiness is waiting. But you have to look for it. But when it shrinks, it becomes smaller, it changes its dimensions and this can be a disaster for everyone, but above all it is for the offender: it crushes him, it grinds him."

− I think once I insulted two beggars."

− "Possibly. That's why, for years you have felt as if you were crushed. But the Universe takes you up to the Recognition of Acceptance when She really loves you. If one day it rectified because of you, today it will do it on your behalf. Can you see the difference?"

− "Many concepts. I do not know what to say."

− "Many concepts. And we haven’t come yet to Verôme. Nike, if the Universe wants to rectify, She places you in Verôme, in the singular. The sequence can be confusing to you. But as I see it first comes Verôme, then the gifts of the Universe and at the end Recognition of Acceptance. But this latest one comes from all, or if you prefer, is in all. Let's see, Nike. Last night Miguel named you the eight motifs by Verôme, those that I know of, because I already said that I think they are eleven. Did you not notice that anything important was missing?"

− "Happiness. Ah yes, and love and friendship."

− "Let’s go step by step. Happiness I do not know where it is, but I think that it comes when you accept the eight positive signs. Friendship is another face of Beauty. But where is love? I've been thinking about all this for years. I believe that love is the ninth sign, or even that Recognition of Acceptance and it might be the same. Consequence of the eight, ninth sign, which is in all and from every one of them it comes. Recognition of Acceptance is as confusing as love, as impossible to define. But the gods are love. And harmony. I was saying that the Universe rectifies and places you in Verôme. You know that this, in the singular, is the trial of the Universe. In the plural it is the eight gifts. Do you see clearly?"

− "It would be foolish to answer I do. But I hear you interested."

− "Have patience. I'm coming. When the Universe places you at Verôme, it offers you to look at yourself in a mirror of two crystals and four decisions. The crystals are two: the clean crystal and the dirty crystal. Nike, which do you think it is the best of the two?"

-"The clean one?" –I answered uncertain.

− "If someone tries to deceive you, he will display a clean crystal so you can see what he has wanted you to see, all his foul trick, in all its deceiver sharpness. On the other hand a dirty crystal forces you to look twice, because you perceive nothing clearly. And if you go beyond soot, the truth comes out clean. Shade teaches you to open your eyes for the first time. They say, I don't know if it is true or not, that children are born blind, in a certain sense they perceive life through the dirty crystal, and it teaches to open other senses, but they always know the truth about who to love. Only later, when they can see through the clean crystal, they begin to deceive themselves. But I called it also of four decisions. Nike, the first deity that took you, as happens to many, is Recognition of Acceptance, which also has a double face, or rather a double orientation. You will understand better when you give value to re."

− "To re, did you say?"

− "Let me put the emphasis on the first syllable and pronounce it like this: Re-cognition of Acceptance. You re-cognize yourself, you come to know who you are, and re-cognize the others: What you thought were shrubs, you re-cognize as flowers. At a certain point you see a strange subject, yourself, on the clean crystal or on the dirty crystal and you assume who you are or get frightened. Four decisions. You can re-cognize yourself and like yourself and therefore you accept yourself. That is living in the affirmative. That is the first option, the first way for Re-cognition of Acceptance, you see who you are, and you accept yourself and the others. But living in the affirmative does not imply challenges, it is an easy path, without many obstacles, not a very positive way to learn, which is the meaning of life. The second option is that you re-cognize yourself and you are afraid of what you see. You spend your life wondering many things. It is living in the interrogative. And you do not find the answers. I think that this has been your path, but you have a second chance because you have accepted Liberty, that of yourself and others, and you can already move. On any of the four paths you can reach Liberty, but living without answers is hard, and that’s why your Verôme can be long, slow and painful. But fear not, Nike. You will arrive to happiness. The two options that are left are to choose the dirty crystal. Let's see. You do not re-cognize yourself very well, but you look better and more deeply and accept yourself. That would be living in the exclamatory. In this mood, everything overwhelms, it makes you doubt, and you are caught by infinity. So we were last night. And the fourth decision, or path, is that you do not re-cognize yourself, but you feel so many doubts that you do not accept yourself. It is living in the negative, the most common path, that of almost all mortals, that of them men without creeds that cannot see happiness, which is so near the heart that could caress them if they could see it. The negation of everything, the emptiest and most absolute nothingness. These are the paths. I know that there are always at least four paths. And I see in your doubts that perhaps you've walked a little on all of them. But along any of the four, you can see Liberty. But I turn back a little. Because Liberty is not absolute, and the human being has not been allowed to create but has been permitted to re-create. Can you see, Nike? Re again."


 

−She was talking to me about re-construction and re-demption, which I started to accept to one day reach my re-surrection.

-In a week when you were waiting to see if finally came Re-gulus

−So many years and I had not seen it. Protch, you should have a star.

−Thanks, Nike, but I do not know them, and I prefer to wait and see if you give me one one day.

−I did not know them the night before, but now I do. Let's see, what sign are you?

−Aquarius.

− And what about Maudie? I don't want to leave her behind.

−Libra

−Maybe then Sadalmelik and Zuben Elgenubi. But they are little bright. It would be easier if they did not have to be of the ecliptic.

−Leave the ecliptic for you. If I did not understand wrong, the ecliptic is the south, but you also have the north. My wife, like me, will also want to be near you.

−Thank you, Protch. Then it is easy, because I want you to be bright and that you are always together. Maudie might be Gemma, from Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. And you could take Arcturus, from Bootes, the Oxherd. They are not the same constellation, but they are close and very bright. Is it ok? Shall I write them?

−Gemma for Maude; Arcturus for me. They are easy to remember: you won't need to write them down.  I'd like to see them.

−That happened to me with Zosma, but I had to wait. And the same thing will happen to you. They will be seen in summer.

−We will wait with enthusiasm until then. Meanwhile I remain with the shiver that this winter has come to visit me the Polar Star.


 

− "Re-create, such as I understand it, would be to give a second form to what already it is created, take several facts and turn them into a story. Then you can just imagine, which is also allowed to us, as maybe I am with this entire tale. In any case I am not creating. I either re-create what I can see or I am delirious. But do not take everything that I tell you as a prophecy.


 

− "Sorry to interrupt you. I think that her words had a biblical tone, they were a cosmogony. She explained to you the concepts clearly. But as in any writing, everything was permeated by Shade. But rather than be a prophet, she made you a Gospel. Of course, apocryphal. One of the reasons for me to these bonfires - I said in tears-, was to hear her words through your voice again".

− "I've always said that you should write."

− "But human beings are not allowed to create."

− "Perhaps. But if it were true that there are eleven rooms, we are not humans, but celestial beings. And, in any case, in this second room, you will always have the option of re - creating us."

− "Perhaps one day. But for that maybe I should live first at some point my motif by Verôme."


 

− "And after the mirror of two crystals and four decisions, the motifs by Verôme come to you if you first take Liberty. It all started for you when you found Miguel and John.                 You started to accept yourself when you accepted them; you reached your freedom when your soul allowed the freedom of the others. Re-cognition. Two directions. As I said Acceptance may come at any time. You started in it. And look, Nike, don't be afraid of what I will tell you: as the motifs by Verôme are eight, or twice eight, you can look at each pair, positive and negative, as if it was us in chronological order. But we have always been waiting for the eighth motif by Verôme. And I think that it is you. Do not be afraid. For years I racked my brain, when we were still four, five, six, until Luke came, the seventh. But what I didn't see, therefore I tell you that you must not have fears, is that the eighth could remain with us only a few days or all life. But it doesn’t have to be all life. I only knew that I had to tell you all this delirium. Because listening to you I can understand myself, and I understand better everything. And I think that one day you will explain to me even God-Cause. In any case, my mind is connected to yours. You compared me with your grandmother. Let you, in a sense, be my grandson. I've been awaiting you for many years. So the first is Liberty, the lighthouse that points with its powerful light towards the other seven gifts. Each being-god is free to take it or not. And only if you take it, the other seven, following some logical sequence, get to you."

− "Let's see."

− "Let’s see. Very few are the men who take Liberty. We are all, or should be, equal in law. But there are very few truly free men. Because Liberty frightens. They are not sure what to do with it, and so that it would give its fruits, they must get to Horror."

− "But Horror is positive?"

− "Very positive, Nike. There is no authentic Wisdom without first having known fear, even terror."

   It was easy to see in Mistress Oakes Liberty. Then Olivia should be Horror. After all, when one day I knew her story, I saw that in her terror she had given birth to Lucy, Wisdom.

− "And Wisdom I shall not have to explain. It is the real name of things, to capture their soul. But to see the road that continues until the following gifts is not simple. Perhaps because Dignity, such as love or respect, is impossible to define."

− "Re-spect" −I replied

− "Can see you, Nike? All leads you to re. You start to see the re-lations. First you will believe that you do not see them, but I think that to re-late will make you one day not to commit injustice to those you love most. But although already a powerful light shines for you, the last re-lation will be made by somebody when a few years pass, and it will not be one of us."


 

−Nike, there is room on the sofa. Let me sit beside you or I feel that I'm going to faint So Mistress Oakes was talking about me.

−She was, Protch. But I only have known a few minutes ago, here in your living room, close to your Jupiter God-Fate. It could not be otherwise.

−I really would like to meet her. What a great woman, Nike.

−Again she was right. And perhaps she continues being right with you. Her prophecies are full of shade. You have to scrutinize through the mist and see your way. It is true, perhaps, that every road is a trip. But I don't know when mine started, when my motif by Verôme started.


 

− "I don't know when my motif by Verôme started, or if it did not have an eternal beginning, over and over again. And neither do I know when it finished, unless it concludes in you, or if to finish it I need you to follow me."

− "Re-gulus and I. Yes, perhaps. I begin to understand. I begin to re-late. But I see you more walking through the ecliptic, jumping in your confusion from constellation to constellation."

− "Perhaps that’s the reason why my trip was so long. I think you should re - create us. But if one day you did, don't forget your first inspirations."

− "All stories should be told twice at least. Perhaps they should also be read twice at least, don't you think?"

− "I do. But so that it can be read, first you have to write it. Do it."


 

− "I was talking about Dignity, the fourth spirit of the Universe."

− "The fourth spirit, Mistress Oakes? More deities?"

− "Yes but not, Nike. The spirits of the Universe are more than eight and it is impossible to count them. The spirits are the servants, the angels of the Lord. And, as the motifs by Verôme, they also make the laws of the Universe."

− "And re-spect?"

− "Re-spect is like love. It is indefinable, but we all understand it. It is another double face, like Recognition of Acceptance, or they may also be the same. Acceptance, of yourself and of others. And remember that for you to get to Acceptance, or Liberty, you had to be taken to the tent of the fourth. To respect, to Dignity and to Urgency. You accepted Miguel and John and started to accept yourself. Look, Nike, if definitions do not help us, we have to create our own definitions. Once I looked up in a dictionary the word Dignity and it told me nothing. So as I see it, but if not, you had better look up one day your own definition, Dignity is to give all, yourself, others and the words of others, their own perspective. Wisdom is only a creator when it has previously drunk in the sources of Dignity. Then, accepting, you give value, you respect and are worth. Do you understand?"

− "With much difficulty, Mistress Oakes. I can only say that I do see Bruce in Dignity. But then all of you are also a number?"

− "Everyone is a number from one to seven and now I know that you are number eight. But somehow I expect that you will also have to do with sixty and with three."

   I began to re-late.

− "Lucy told me something that she also sought number three."

− "When you find it, it may be also your three. But numerology looks at itself in a mirror and believes itself to be perfect, because everything leads to everything, if you find the re-lations. Nike, before you ask, I will remind you that in Babylon they used to have the sexagesimal system. And I will not be the one who explains to you your 60. You are not still in it, but you will be, as you will also be in your three. ”

   I was in my 60 and my 3. She had prophesied me all the path. But as I with Re-gulus or you with your new stars, I was going to take a long time to see it if it is true that my Verôme was going to be long, slow and painful. But forgive me for having diverted. She was dealing with number 4, not with number 3.

− "Dignity also has a double face. Wisdom would not be understood without it, or without Urgency, which is also in it. And it is also in our fourth code. And I did not invent them. Urgency is a strong need, once you love or respect, to say something that you are urged to say."

   I had not, until that morning, heard of the codes. My face asked the questions that my voice hesitated to ask.

− "Yes, Nike. We have a few codes. Only the beggars of the Torn Hand. Forgive me for not telling you yet. Your time has not come. But you will also know them. Let's go on sign by sign."

− "Signs?"

− "Motifs by Verôme, gifts, signs, spirits of the Universe. They have many names, but all come to be the same thing. From Dignity we go to Greatness. Another impossible word. Greatness is something more than magnitude. As I see it, it is to get rid of the unnecessary. If you follow my path, Wisdom leads to Dignity and then it has to undress to cause Greatness. This only comes if it is naked."

   "A free man has to be naked..." Miguel had said, he who was Greatness and number 5. But he only felt complete when he met John, his Clarity.

− "I know what you're thinking and I say once again: exactly, Nike. Miguel was complete in the sixth, when he came, as finally we are coming, to the sixth sign, Clarity. I see it as the original inspiration once you've learned to see things and open your eyes. When you've been wise, you've put Dignity and you've reached your Greatness when stripping, light dazzles you with its Clarity. The inspiration that has led a painter to see several apples in a still life painting, re-creating them; or as music, which is like the blood under the skin of the objects. Perhaps that is the reason why Verôme was a pianist. And I tell you, Nike, that only you can enjoy one day, if you mean to, perceiving the music of the spheres. Or as literature, which is a laborious birth and only when you give birth you can have some rest. There is no art without Clarity. But they will be Wisdom, Beauty, and Commotion that will give birth to creation."


 

   One day I re-interpreted these words again and they shook me. Was there anything that that woman didn't know about me? Even of my future. But I had to move from bite to bite or one shock after another, to reach some light. And I didn’t rest until I arrived to Re-gulus. And only thanks to you I stopped one day travelling and reached my harbour: Re-gulus, my inspiration, my white whale.


 

− "And there will be no art without its daughter, Beauty –she was still telling me−. Clearly you can now re-create and the one is nothing without the other. So we have already reached it. We are going by Luke. Beauty is a sacred word that is degrading, and which will eventually be replaced meanly by its bastard sister, aesthetics. This infamous one is today still only used to refer to the beauty of bodies and we have not yet said: how aesthetic stars are. But it will be said. Beauty is divine; aesthetics is diabolical. Fortunately, Luke does not care of the bastard and Beauty he has been for everyone. Also for you –I would say I panicked but I would say again that it had already stopped worrying me that this woman could be reading me. And once again she did−. The goddess Beauty opens roads, kills obstacles and calms hearts, because I have already explained to you that with it comes friendship. And if you and Luke already have called each other friends, you are closer to Beauty. Because now we come to the end of Verôme in the positive. Do not fear anything, Nike, but you are Commotion, the eighth sign."

   I said nothing. Not even my face protested. Simply I am afraid that I did not believe her.

− "Beauty moves, it creates its effect, its consequence. Your work of art is now ready to be transmitted. Perhaps in the signs I do not yet know it is allowed to create."

  Suddenly, I started to count the planets of the solar system. But no, I thought, I wanted to know too much for re-lating too much. Again she read me:

− "I know what you're thinking, Nike. I have also thought it. But either I find soon the three signs that I don’t know or Pluto is not a planet."


 

− "I interrupt you again, I am sorry. But you know that the man who nearly has your name speaks to me often of eleven dimensions, and ensures that Pluto is not a planet. She could not see it because maybe it was still not discovered, and she believed with faith in astronomy as it was in her year 29."

− "Yes, it is true that the man of the cats, as I call him, is very good at re-lating. He has also spoken to me of all that. I look forward to his entrance in the story."


 

− But with the eight existing signs, you can re-create and move. For you to accept the eighth sign, Nike, you had to travel before on the seven, which should have already reached you, and love and respect the seven, from your Liberty, which you accepted with bare hands. Before even being aware that you had a heart in a very good condition. But perhaps you have also lived the other eight signs, since we still lack the eight negative ones, which are also positive."

− "Which are also positive?" –I didn’t understand anything.

− "Positive and negative are two words that I don't like very much. Because everything is worth to evolve. Think of tears or of the fertile sadness. But I'll call them eight negative signs so that we can understand each other. Nike, the motifs by Verôme can perhaps be reached by all men, the positive and the negative ones but I cannot be sure. But it will be easier to explain to you the latter, the negative signs, if you think about those who are at the base of the social pyramid, beggars. Think about it before answering me. What is the first thing that attacks with heartbreaking strength to beggars?"

− "Hunger?"

− “No, Nike. Hunger comes later. Imagine yourself for a moment on the street."

− "Ah. It seems to me that I see it. Before hunger, if I were in the street, I think that I would feel much confusion, much disorientation."

− "Believe in yourself, Nike. You have just seen it. Not knowing what you should do, how, when, where. This disorientation is called Shade."

   I understood why Luke had said that that name was good for her. Her twilight wanted only encrypted codices, the books of the Universe, to be revealed. I could imagine her the first day, before Hunger, disoriented. Dear Mistress Oakes. I felt a desire to give her a new embrace.

− "But Shade has a second face, much more terrible. Imagine that, Nike. From not knowing what you have to do one day to not knowing if you'll have to do it every day, the devil always, a rogue that lays in your temporal sequence with aim to extend it and make it eternal: that is what I call the horizon. Behind it now comes Hunger."

   It should be Olivia then.

− "If I am able to follow you, Olivia has taken the worst part: Horror and Hunger. But you all must have felt Hunger."

− "We all, Nike. But she is always hungry, due to the lack of food in many days of many years. Even when she has just eaten. But that Hunger is also emptiness, need, and this is not always of food. I know that you understand me. Sure, you've already been there. Call Hunger by its double face, by its second name, solitude, and I am sure you will understand me. And after Hunger comes Cold. Or any inclement weather, also heat. On the street you feel it more strongly."

− "Also the fog?"

− 'No. Fog is in the first sign, in Shade, which prevents us from seeing this hazy city skyline. But a beggar is strongly attacked by Cold and wind."

   From Olivia’s winds had come the Cold of her daughter. I remember Lucy huddled in a blanket next to Luke. Fog, wind and cold. For a moment I thought that Mistress Oakes was going to put in chronological order even the climate. But there she stopped.

− "For the fourth sign think that you have been a few days in the house of the fourth, in Bruce's tent. What comes after Cold?"

− "Misery?" –I muttered after a while of much thinking.

− "Approximately, because misery is everywhere, but especially in the fourth sign. Nike, after being disoriented, starving and being cold, you start to notice everything that you also need: clothing, soap, furniture, photographs of the loved ones... That is Scarcity. It is not surprising that with so many shortages, behind that ruffian comes Temptation."

   I couldn't imagine Miguel with temptations, even less, when now I knew it, with its second face, that now she explained.

− "Temptation is the desire to not be yourself, to abandon all your paths. And if you get to do it, you can fall in its offspring, also of the fifth sign, Betrayal. Nike, when I was a child I used to read the Bible because I am the daughter of a priest. And don’t look at me with that face of strangeness. My father was a Presbyterian, and so am I after all. A priest was also Luke’s father, but Catholic. He had to abandon his vows to marry and engender him, and thus our explosion could continue, our big bang. Now you are the only one to complete our little universe. I see that it does not frighten to you hear things."

− "I may have no fear because my fate, rather than terror, can be disbelief, which has accompanied me throughout life. Something prevents me from believing. But I am captivated by your story.  Continue, please."

− "Nike, the first temptation which appears in Genesis is the well-known temptation of Eve and the serpent, but I see a previous one, and the inspirer, who would have thought about it? In this case was God, who for me, from then on ceased to make sense. It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I, like you, may be somewhat unbelieving, but from that point I don't understand God. He made the perversity of creating them with a brain, but he did not allow Eve and Adam to use it. And then He planted knowledge in the center of the garden, the most tempting tree, and the most beautiful fruit. May believers forgive me but to me God was instigating them to fall, and logically Eve and Adam fell when he wanted them to. And therefore it is difficult to say who betrayed who, but there was a betrayal. But if you know Miguel, I will tell you that he had had temptations, and he will have more, but that he will neither fall nor betray. His God-Fate did not want him to fall or to betray. Perhaps because he is complete with John in the sixth sign. Forgive me, Nike, the sixth sign so far is sealed for you, because you're not on the street and only beggars know its name. But you can understand me half if I tell you how it is also known: Invisibility. With this name, it is very easy to understand. Something makes that those on the other side don't want to see poverty, and hardly look at us or see us. We are not. They put on a visor and we do not exist. They pass by without touching us, because if we have been seen, they have been unwilling to realize. And to know which sign comes now, think of Luke, or also of Bruce, because I already told you that everything is in everyone."

− "Dirt?" –I dared to ask sotto voce, fearing to offend them, or offend her.

− "Yes, Dirt. But now you will know why one day you will understand your world better with Luke, because you've looked through the dirty crystal. But he hasn't felt with it what you could feel, because you also own the eighth negative sign, Nike. Almost all beggars have felt it someday: Shame. You've felt it already, I'm sure, for your past; it remains to be seen if you will feel it in the future. Not in your present, because now you're in Bruce’s tent, Dignity, and you're getting used to give perspective to everything. Because I have been a good time talking to you about the eight negative signs and still I haven’t talked of the largest stigma of beggars, the double face of Shame, Compassion. I would change its dirty name for solidarity or tenderness, daughter also of Commotion, your daughter, Nike. You can be bitten by it one day, but I see you are still not. Because you don’t feel Compassion for us. And we thank you. Acceptance, always double. As you don't feel Compassion for others, you may not get to feel her sister Shame. Time will tell. And I don't know how much longer we will be talking before I end up exhausting you, but the sixteen signs can also be read in zigzag, in both directions. I finish already, Nike, so I will not name the sixteen; only some. Now, let's start with Liberty. It feeds on puzzling, Shade, and will reach the necessary Horror, that gives the Solitude-Hunger needed for Wisdom. Or in a backward view: you feel Shade in your life until one day you accept Liberty, but with it alone you do not fill your Hunger, your emptiness, and feel Horror, that with Cold also becomes desperation after which awaits, as perhaps one day also happens to you, the skin and the blood of Wisdom. But the day that you're about to freeze up, Nike, if you have an atom of memory, think of what I said, and as always there will be at least four roads, be confident. From greatest despair happiness will come to possess you. And this will come hand in hand with Beauty, so that it can finally give birth to you, Commotion. But although the gifts account is closed, I still have my doubts. Sometimes I think that the sixth and the seventh sign are interchangeable, or else think who has come to you first: John or Luke. Perhaps both at a time. I will never know if Clarity is born from Beauty or Beauty from Clarity. And I have already finished. Nike, have you ever been frightened?"

− "I don't know if I will ever be frightened to see. Perhaps to do.  But maybe, and fear does not speak for me, I am not the eighth."

− "The fact that there was one day a snake with the only aim of bringing you to us. This snake will never reappear. I have already seen that clearly. But temporary or permanent, you are the eighth. I knew it for sure when I had my vision, which you already know, on 27 July. Why precisely then, Nike? I will tell you. It was in the last hour of the day that we were eight. I think that I could not see my death until we were not all. The laws of the Universe are not so unfair. And seeing you for the first time, I recognized you. Nothing happens by chance. Long ago I learned it. I should have remembered it."

− "Or re-membered"

− "Don't laugh at me, you handsome guy."

− "To laugh at you, or at any of you, is the last thing I would do, Mistress Oakes. But what will I do now?"

− "Yes. I see again that your fear is not to see but to do. I don't have the answer, Nike. You can without fear now seek your Recognition of Acceptance, talk with it, walk, swim, look, and search. Shorter or longer your path, you will know where to walk. And if you think my tale is crazy, think also there was once a big bang, literary, when someone re-created the story of a madman, a countryman of Miguel’s. Speak to him also. Something he has of a Knight with the Sad Countenance. And finally, I leave you, you handsome boy. Don't lose your wits. But if you do, take care that the rays of your big bang are bright.

   I stayed a while feeling vertigo, before remembering, or re-membering, I wanted to examine the surroundings. I still have a lot of August 4 to tell you, Protch. A fruitful day. Only I was in the tent for ten minutes before I dared to leave. I was pondering if my path, as she had told me, would be long, slow and painful. Or perhaps she had been naming, as a path, the fourth time, Lucy’s temporal sequence. Perhaps all directions; or perhaps only the past. But I didn't let my new Liberty to lead me to Horror. Be that as it may, she had only come to tell me a tale. She had not created, she had only re-created.