9. Seventh Memory

9. Seventh Memory

Humankind bases a lot of what it believes on words. Those words come together to create pictures for us, concepts and definitions bouncing around our brain. I think we can all agree on that.
Upon my arrival into the city of Tob, Des took me to a church – a big round building, where everyone could see the centre, like a stage. And in that church, people believed in the power of words more than anyone back in Caisin had.

My mother believes in a God, one so great and powerful that he had other things to do than deal with all the cruelty of man, with the people who went hungry, with the cities at war. She believed, with all her mind, that we weren't the only land that existed, and that this God would check on his cities in turn. We couldn't all be “constantly under the watchful eye of the Bjanai”.

She firmly believes in this God. My mother, my realist, discoverer of truths, difficult to convince mother, believes in Bjanai. “The Creator”.
People do. It is, I think, the most widespread belief, at least around the Caisin regions.
In Poffat, I am told, they place their faith in a bird, one that rises from the depths of the ocean in times of need and burns in a fire when its duty is done. I think they call it “Synd".
My mother told me of the logical people of Nola believe in no God. They think they are the creators of their own destiny, that you are born, you live and you die, and the only person to remember you is he or she who continues your work or keeps your achievements.

And here in Tob, they believe in a God. But they believed in a different unseeable God to my mother, one who couldn't be defined by simple words. So he remains “the Unnamed” - which, I wish to point out to those who coined this particular phrase, is a name in and of itself – but to the believers he was an image you simply couldn't define with speech.
His High Priest, on the other hand, is very much visible, and wishes to stay that way in the public eye. I do not trust him. People who wish for notoriety and wealth within a society will often use other people to get there, and keep using them to remain such.
Being the son of a truth sayer can be helpful – even if some of her truths are very subjective.

Oliya, Des said they called him. “The Messenger”. Wherever we went, people talked about his sermons, whispered about his doings and celebrated his successes.
I wanted to see for myself. I wanted to watch this Messenger talk about what he knew best. I wanted to see if he could convince me to believe.

Des remained entirely unconvinced, but she took me to the church anyway, knowing that I would get my way with or without her permission. She told me what Oliya looked like – a tall man with grey hair and dark eyes, pale skin and thin frame. He would wear rings on his left hand, chains binding each ring to the next “to symbolise something or other”, and a white robe with an embroidered chest that covered his entire body apart from his head. The chest would have a picture on it, one of seven symbols, but she couldn't remember what they were. After all, she didn't believe in what this man had to say.
The robe reminded me of the priests of Bjanai, but I did not say so.
We waited until the right time and walked in, after having paid what would have been an outrageous sum of money were it anything else, with people of all ages, from teenagers to young parents to the old. They all believed. I found it strange.

The hall was round, like the outside, but smaller than I thought it would be. The audience, for that is what we were, were divided into seven sections.
Clearly, the number seven was key to this doctrine.

There were columns around the edge of the seating area, and between each section. I got the impression that more attention had been paid to the stage than to the architecture of the building. The focus of the whole place was the stage. They wanted it to be impressive.
There were candles on every column, and there were some magnified by mirrors, to light up the stage.
The columns between each section – seven, again – all had a different symbol on them. Most likely the same seven that the High Priest's robes showed. They probably meant something to those who believed, but they didn't make sense to me. What order they were supposed to be in, I couldn't have guessed.
A hawk, an eye, a hand, a book, a ring, a candle and a square shape, on its point. Some sort of stone, perhaps.

The people coming to see this church's show folded themselves onto the seats, into each other, trying to occupy as little space as possible so that everyone could get in. People at the back were pushing the ones at the front, as though the ones at the front could go faster.
Des complained into my ear the whole time, about being elbowed, about being shoved, about the baby crying behind her, about the heat that came with being with so many people.
I was almost regretting making us come here.
Everyone was buzzing. A rich-looking lady, who hadn't even blinked about the price of being let in, was sitting behind me and telling her husband that today's sermon would be about the memories.

I felt that if all we were going to hear was anecdotes, we might as well have gone to the pub and asked a drunkard to tell us a story instead of spending (ridiculous sums of) money to watch a man in a dress deliver a speech.

Oliya walked to the centre of the stage, turning to face each section of his audience in turn.

He waited for us all to be seated, to be quiet, and when the hall was silent, all the lights except those on the stage went out.

Theatrics. Very effective.
Des yawned, and told me to wake her up when he was done. She knew what she knew and didn't need to be told otherwise. I would have to tell her about the people of Nola. She would live in perfect harmony with them.

Oliya's robe had the eye symbol on it, and his eyes stood out as being dark compared to the white of his robe and his face.
I could see why people followed him. He was certainly very charismatic. An old man in the row in front told his neighbour that when the High Priest opened his mouth and spoke to your section, you felt as though he was speaking only to you.
Next to me, Des crossed her arms and leant back into her seat, eyes closed.
Oliya raised his arms and smiled.
“Welcome, my friends. It is an honour to have you here.”

An honour he was well paid for.

“Some of you may be troubled, some of you may wish to seek my wisdom, but the questions and worries will have to wait until the end of the meeting. I will speak with all who wish to speak with me, but all in good time.”

He spoke slowly, convincingly, with the passion that comes from complete confidence in your own words. He spoke with a soothing calm that quietened even the infants, his voice smooth, like a deep black river. But water that is smooth on the surface is rough underneath. Being the son of a fisherman teaches you these things.

He was hiding something from all of us. He was a conman, and the wide-eyed people around me were his marks. The fools.

“When you stare up at the ceiling, in the dark, trying in vain to sleep, you will see pictures.
You will remember strange things from your day, or your past. Simple things, uneventful things, like something amusing someone said, or the gestures that caught your attention at lunch from the other side of the pub, or a sound you heard from another room whilst reading a book.
Unimportant things that stand out when you see these pictures in the dark. They stand out because they are normal or usual.

On the surface, at least.

When you remember these things, lying in bed, searching for sleep, the images that go with them will often be still, a moment in time, not the whole event.

In the morning, you will often have forgotten what it was that you saw.
A dying man on his deathbed, will also see these images. If you were to ask him what he sees, he would not be able to tell you the event, he would not be able to recall the date, but he would – without a doubt – be able to tell you that though the words escape him, he feels hope. How many people here have heard declarations of love and affection from a dying man?”

The people around me murmured, a few shouting their assent.

“The moments before dying, be they weeks or be they hours, are filled with images from the past in the same way that the moments before sleep are filled with images of the day we leave behind.
These thoughts plant themselves in our memory for specific reason. In each of these moments, these still images that we cannot forget, the Unnamed God is with us.
Maybe in a word, maybe in a sentence, maybe in a loving look, maybe in a movement – but the Unnamed God is there, reminding us that his presence is constant, his love always true.
Before man knew how to speak, all they had were the images.

And then the Word came to us. The Word was sent to us by the Unnamed God to help us communicate these images, and the emotions that come with them, to each other. Hope.
The Unnamed God filled us with hope. And that hope is what we see in those moments before we fade – faith in each other, in mankind. When we see the lack of hope, it just reminds us to be stronger.

That is the seventh collective memory of mankind.”