Fatima: The Final Secret

I was thinking now about the number of explorers who have had the idea of entering a Pyramid. Why? What did they hope to get out of it? I thought about how they don’t stop their efforts until they’ve achieved their goal, leaving their country, their family, facing a thousand setbacks until they see what they once possibly discovered in a book and which caught their attention.

Every search has its origin, like an internal voice that asks questions from deep within. What is it? Why don’t you find out? And the listener looks for answers, and not only that, but every time the listener finds an answer, it seems that the call only adds another question and another mystery that has to resolved.

As if only just becoming aware of where I was, sitting on a bench in a garden, I looked around. A very elderly gardener was beginning to prune some hedges there next to me. He gave me a signal that I understood, that I should move, because he was going to bother me, or rather that I had bothered him, because the branches that he had to cut would fall on the bench where I was sitting. I dare say, could he not have started at the other side? But surely he was thinking, “What is this guy doing here at this time, not letting me work in peace?”

Sensing that I was bothering him, and since I had already rested a little and had calmed down, I got up and gesturing with my hand, I said goodbye to the gardener, leaving him to get on with his work.

I looked both ways before crossing the road and as I saw that no cars were coming, I went back to the side of the Pyramid. I don’t know why, but being close to it made me feel at peace.

I felt at that moment as if this place was safe, and while I was there, nothing was going to happen to me. From what I had read about it, I know what it had been through, and still it remains defiant of time, as if saying, “If you want it, you can get it.” That internal affirmation that I had made to myself helped me to take the decision to continue investigating, to continue the work I had set out to do, to get to the bottom of the matter and see what was hidden.

Why was there so much zeal to keep whatever it was from being discovered? Who was behind all this? Because I was being increasingly pointed toward the upper echelons of the Church, and that I couldn’t quite believe. Why would they want to hide a message that was supposed to be from Heaven? At that moment, the question gave me strength.

I had to continue with all of it. It was as if the Pyramid instilled me with courage, and motivated me to continue researching.

Calmer, I turned and bid it farewell, until next time, because I was sure I would have to return to Rome another time, perhaps when the dust had settled and they forgot about me, and that way I wouldn’t have to gamble with my life for an answer.

I looked for an entrance to the metro and when I went down the stairs, I thought, “I’m not going to go to Termini Station, because surely they’ll be thinking that I’m going to escape and they’ll be waiting for me there.” When the train arrived, I took it in the opposite direction and decided to continue to the end of the line.

I hadn’t even paid any attention to where I was actually going, I didn’t care much, I just wanted to put some ground between us, so when we arrived I was surprised.

I had been gathering my thoughts and minding my own business for the entire journey, at first standing up, because all of the seats had been occupied when I got on, but when I saw that one was empty, I sat down and I became completely disconnected to everything, after all, I didn’t have to be aware of what stop we were passing through. I would get off when the train reached the end of the line and figure out where I was.

We passed through tunnels, we stopped at stations. I don’t know how many, I wasn’t counting them, but I thought we must be far enough away by now, and I said to myself, “I could get off,” but then I thought: “The further the better,” so I decided to follow the original plan: to not get off until the end of the line, wherever that might be.

I knew that the subway lines are very long in Rome, and they do go far. That was what I was looking for, to put some distance between us and to make it impossible for them to find me, because I was sure that those two would be good bloodhounds, that’s why they would have been hired in the first place. If I was even slightly careless, they would sniff me out, because they would not be willing to let their target escape. From what they told me the first time, they only wanted me to leave the country, but after the shooting, I wasn’t so sure that was their only order.

The train arrived. It stopped and I felt like I was waking from a dream, although I’m sure that I’d not slept. I realized that I was alone in the car. Where would the people have gotten off? I don’t know, nor had I noticed, but surely they would have gotten off gradually as they always do.

When the train arrives at a stop, some get on and others get off, everyone goes on to their destination, but it seems that I was the only one going here. What would this place be? And where would it be?

I looked out the window as I got up from the seat and quickly got out of the car, because at that moment I heard the beeping and I didn’t want to stay locked inside and be taken back to where I had gotten on it.

I saw through the windows that we were at a station, but not underground as would be normal for a subway station. The sunshine came streaming in, we were in the open air, I didn’t quite get why.

Outside the car, the first thing I did was to look all around me. Where was this? A small town, surely not, was I asleep? I rubbed my eyes and no, when I looked again I saw the sea in the distance, how was that possible? How had I gotten there if I took the subway in Rome? How could I be close to the sea? Well, not quite close, since the sea was down there and I was up on a mound, standing there at the station, but I was still astonished. “But the sea is very far from Rome,” I said to myself. “What a day I’m having! What weird things are happening to me!”

I read the sign, the name of the station was Ostia Antica, where would that be?

I sat on one of the three benches that were there, in the shadow of the canopy of that old place. I couldn’t believe it, I thought I had gotten onto a subway train.

Of course, I’m sure I had entered a subway station, but now looking all around me, I saw that it looked like a regular train station, a wooden building painted green, a little house typical of mountain villages. Inside, through the windows on the side of the building, I could see a room where there was a table with two chairs and a blackboard with something written on it. I could also see a man who was now heading toward the door.

When he came out and saw me sitting there, alone and surely with a look of confusion plastered across my face, the man approached me. I gathered that he must have been the station guard, because he was wearing blue overalls, which must have been his work clothes.

He looked at me very seriously, it seemed that he did not dare to speak to me and he moved away, then turning around he came back to where I was still sitting and said:

“Necessita qualcosa amico?” which I understood to mean, “Can I help you with anything friend?”

<<<<< >>>>>

In those moments, when I was listening to that man speak to me in Italian, I felt joy. I understood and, now more than ever, I appreciated the idea that my mother had that day for me to learn it. I had never studied Italian before, since I knew French and English.

It was so she wouldn’t have to see me going out to play soccer with my friends, which she never really liked. She said she didn’t understand what we got out of kicking a ball and running around without stopping, which was fine for kids, but older people never understood it.

I think what she didn’t like in reality was that I came home with muddy clothes. On top of that, if she ever told me to do something after a match, I would always answer that I was very tired.

Italian turned out to be very easy for me to learn. I have to say in all honesty that I have always had an affinity for languages.

We had spoken Galician in our house ever since we were little, especially with my grandmother, who said that Castilian Spanish was for school. She never understood how Franco, in his Galician homeland, had allowed the speaking of Galician in the streets to be prohibited, why did he want us to speak something else? Having always only spoken Galician in her own town and having done so very well, she was always understood by all her neighbors and hadn’t ever needed to speak anything else.

One day, while I was still just a boy, I was going to the home of a school friend and when I passed by the door of the Cathedral, some men who spoke strangely were going inside. I was very surprised because I only half understood them, and I asked my friend:

“What are they saying?”

“It’s Portuguese, couldn’t you tell?” he answered.

And I became curious about that language that was so similar to ours. My interest led me to study it, and over time I managed to master it so well that, as I can verify from my trips to Portugal, not even the Portuguese notice any accent in my voice when I talk to them.

I started studying Italian at the same academy where I learned English and I was fortunate enough to have a beautiful teacher from Florence, who in addition to teaching us how to speak, also made us fall in love with “Mia cara Italia,” or “My beloved Italy,” as she called it.

She taught us with so much warmth, that when she told us bits of its history, it seemed that we were experiencing it for ourselves, we were going through those streets.

I remember the day she told us about Venice, her words immediately transported me into a gondola, and I could feel it moving through the calm waters of its canals, to the point that I could almost hear the gondolier singing a barcarolle.

We were exploring those narrow nameless streets, as she told us:

“I don’t know how they can know their way around.”

Then we reached St. Mark’s Square, the water level almost reaching the wooden walkway where we all walked in single file, careful not to fall, so as not to get wet. They are spread out across the square so people can cross on the day of the “Acua Alta,” as they call it, and walk around without getting their feet wet when the high tide floods the entire square.

She taught us these things, as she told us about them, with pictures that she had and that way we could learn words that she made us repeat until we were pronouncing them correctly.

When she told us about the Tower of Pisa, and she told us that it was leaning, my image of it was so real that I asked the teacher:

“And when it falls, then what?”

“No, it’s been like that for many, many years, and it seems to be safe, it won’t topple,” she said, laughing at my idea.

Then she showed us the picture, I was even more surprised and I thought, “I have to go see this one someday, it’s not enough to only see her image, I didn’t believe her when she said it wasn’t going to topple.”

And that’s how she told us things about each of the important cities of Italy, and this made us talk in a natural way about each of the places, because the whole class was in Italian.

She wouldn’t let us say a single word that wasn’t in Italian, and she made us ask her about everything she was saying, to see if we were learning properly and we loosened up with the language and understood everything. She encouraged us to go to her country, she said it was the most beautiful place in the world.

She showed us many images, especially of her beloved Florence. She told us where she used to play when she was a little girl, the place where she was born, the squares that were close to where she lived. It made us fall in love with those places that seemed so dream-like to us.

She told us about events that occurred in the Middle Ages when the city was very important, and those buildings that had those two-colored bricks caught our attention.

<<<<< >>>>>

Now, here in this station, when the guard asked me if he could help me in his peculiar small-town Italian, I could understand his words and answer him in a way that he would understand me too.

“I don’t know where I am,” I said a little embarrassed.

“That happens to many folk, don’t worry. People get a surprise having gotten on in Rome and turning up here, almost getting their feet wet,” he replied with a smile. This train has always been used by the people of Rome to get to the sea.

I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that the same thing had happened to others calmed me down.

He was the one who told me that the inhabitants of Rome had always come here to these beaches since ancient times, and that these days they also used this train to come and sunbathe and cool off if the weather permitted it.

“It’s very comfortable, so they don’t have to drive or worry about finding a place to park, and that way it’s cheaper, they just have to pay for this ticket and then to get onto the beach.”

“Onto the beach?” I asked somewhat taken aback, thinking that I had misunderstood.

“Yes, don’t you know? You have to pay to get onto the beach here,” he told me emphatically.

“Paying to bathe?” I said in surprise, but deep down I thought it was a joke.

“No, you pay to get onto the beach. If you don’t want to bathe in the sea, that’s up to you. You can also just lie down to sunbathe, or sit down to eat a sandwich. Each person can decide what they want to do,” the man said very seriously.

I was a little hesitant. It hadn’t been a joke on his part. Paying to get onto the beach, I’d never heard of such a thing.

Well, the important thing is that now I knew where I was. Then I asked him at what time I could return.

He informed me that the subway trains ran at all hours of the day and that it was very punctual, because as it was the first station on the line, punctuality was the most important thing for them. If they lost even a few seconds, little by little, as there were so many stations, they would arrive in Rome very late.

The phone rang inside that office and the guard said goodbye and off he went with a brisk step to answer it.

When I was alone again looking in that direction, I saw the station bathrooms, where I decided to go. I went in and the first thing I did was freshen up my face, I needed to wake up.

I knew I was not asleep, but the cool water was good for me. Having calmed down, I left and headed confidently into town. I had to find somewhere to eat, and I had to drink something because my stomach had started to grumble very loudly, since, alongside some other things, I had neglected it.

I crossed several streets and found nothing. I couldn’t seem to find anywhere where I could buy some bread at the very least.

Suddenly I saw the water, the sea, there in the distance. I had forgotten it was there and I lost my hunger, at least momentarily, and I went toward it to get a better look. How could the sea be there? I still didn’t get it. I just kept remembering that I’d taken the subway in Rome.

Since I couldn’t ask anyone because the whole place was empty, I opted to sit there for a while on the beach. It was full of dark pebbles, and almost entirely covered with everything that the sea brings in after a stormy day, logs, the occasional rag, heaps of seaweed, all dragged in by the sea.

Looking absent-mindedly over all of this, I got to thinking once more about what I was doing, about how my life had taken me, or rather, my curiosity had taken me, into such a strange situation, sitting there in that lonely place, in an unknown corner of Italy, hungry and not knowing what I should do next, or what my next step should be.

Hitting me in the face, the sea breeze was agreeing with me, erasing all my worries as if by magic. I noticed that coolness in the air caressing me, and it calmed me. I suddenly felt that I had nothing to fear, that everything was fine, that there was only that moment and that I should enjoy it, no matter what had happened, or what was still to come.

I don’t know how long I was sitting there like that, looking all around me, gazing at the stones on the ground, when I asked myself, “Is it really true that you have to pay to get onto the beach here in Italy? I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my days.” I still thought it had been a joke, by that man who had told me, even though he didn’t have the face of a joker. “Who would pay to enter such a place? If the sea belonged to everyone, in my opinion, who would have come up with such a strange notion.”

Turning that issue over in my mind, so odd, yet so unimportant to me, I was forgetting all the commotion that’d had to happen that day to reach this point.

Relaxed, sitting there facing the sea, the Mediterranean was so calm. It seemed, as they say, “As still as a millpond,” so different from the Atlantic to which I was so accustomed to seeing.

There was no chance of ever finding the sea calm along the coasts of Galicia, it always seemed to be wild, like it was angry, as if it wanted to smash the rocks that prevented it from penetrating the land. It was nothing like here, where it gently approached and receded again, almost in silence, as if it didn’t want to cause a fuss.

Today at least, the water moved silently. The waves were barely noticeable, although looking around and seeing the debris that was scattered over the stones, it was clear that it wasn’t always so peaceful, that it also knew how to get angry. That being said, the important thing was that I was enjoying it now as it rocked gently back and forth in front of me as if it wanted to reassure me, saying, “Relax, all the danger has passed.”

I was watching it for a while and I began to think about how curious it is that even in nature, there are massive differences. Tiny plants born next to towering trees, long-necked giraffes alongside large-shelled turtles with almost no neck at all, although I do know that in Australia, there is a native species of turtle with a long neck. That’s rare of course, but there are many things there that can’t be found anywhere else except for in those distant lands, from what I’ve read about them.

Well, this wasn’t the time to think about that, although one day I would like to visit that distant country and check out the curiosities of its culture for myself.

We Galicians have always boasted about the antiquity of our land, but I think the aborigines in Australia say that they have lived there for 40,000 years, that the gods had left them there to take care of everything and that one day they would return and hold them accountable for it.

Of course it’s important to see that different beliefs are held in different places, and I dare say, something really must be hidden behind traditions, because if not, where did they come from? Who was the first to come up with them? And why have they not been lost with the passage of time?

Too many questions always arise as soon as you start to really think about something, but it would be interesting to know all the answers.

I remembered that there is a belief in witches, or “the Meigas” in my beloved Galicia, and when you ask people, as I had asked my grandmother on several occasions:

“Have you ever seen a ‘Meiga?’” I asked her inquisitively, so she would tell me.

“No, child, never, but I’m sure they exist, as they say, ‘Just because you haven’t seen them, it doesn’t mean they’re not there,’ and if you don’t believe in them, they come and punish you,” my grandmother would answer very seriously.

That subject had scared me for a time, and it made me not want to go to my grandparents’ house. I was almost sure that because my grandmother believed in them, even though she had never seen one, a “Meiga” was roaming around her house, and I didn’t want it to see me. When it saw that I didn’t believe they existed, it would punish me by not letting me play or by taking away my snack, which was worse, because as my brothers say, I have always been a glutton.

My father used to say that I must have “Tapeworms,” because I was always eating and I was like a toothpick. I didn’t understand it, but the truth is that I’ve been thin all my life. My mother put it down to soccer, and more than once when she got angry because I had borrowed something, Carmen had called me scrawny, which she knew bothered me a lot.

“It seems you’re jealous of me,” I would say, “for not having my slim figure and you can’t eat all the bread you want, because you say that bread is fattening. It must be for you because I eat sandwiches and I’ve never put on weight. Maybe it’s that the bread knows who’s eating it, and since it knows that you don’t like to be chubby, the bread stays inside your body just to annoy you and it sees that such nonsense doesn’t matter to me, so it leaves me in peace.”

The discussion would have to end, because my mother would get between us and say:

“That’s enough, everyone eats their own food, case closed.”

Leaving a piece of her snack as soon as my mother left, she would hand it to me and say:

“Let’s see if this’ll make some of your bones less noticeable.”

I was delighted that she would give it to me, I don’t remember ever saying no.

CHAPTER 5.

A mild ache in my belly reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. At that moment, I suddenly heard a noise and I said to myself, “What’s that sound? It sounded like someone was raising a metal shutter, the kind they have in some stores. Let’s see if I’m lucky and it’s a coffee shop or something. Whatever it is, at this point I’ll settle for anything, sweet or savory, it’s all the same to me, but I can’t hold out much longer without getting a bite to eat,” I thought, “I’m going to end up fainting.”

Getting up from those stones that I’d spent such a long time sitting on, and becoming aware of some pain in my buttocks, caused by the discomfort of my seat, I headed toward the place where I thought that sound had come from.

I was walking slowly, my legs seemed to be half asleep because of the way they’d been positioned, when I suddenly saw a girl walking a dog. She was calling it beautiful and other things that I found amusing.

Why do people imagine that animals are listening to them? I have stopped to think about that at times. I had a neighbor who lived alone, and with the idea of keeping loneliness at bay, or so he told me, he bought a puppy. It was a tiny little thing, a Chihuahua, I think it’s called. If you weren’t careful, you could step on it, and when I would meet him on the porch as he was coming in or setting out for a walk, my neighbor would tell me:

“Manu, you have no idea how good company he is.”

Smiling and doubting his words, I would leave and hear him talking to his dog as I walked away.

“Let’s go here or there, I know you like it there,” he would say to the dog.

How did he know what his dog liked? What an imagination. Well, this girl was so entertained talking to her dog, that when I said, “Hi,” having not seen me approach, she was startled, so I immediately added:

“Don’t be afraid, I just wanted to ask you if you knew where there was a coffee shop that would be open at this time.”

After her fright, she had pulled on the dog’s chain and placed him between us, to defend her. She made a gesture with a shrug of her shoulders to show that she hadn’t understood me, which made me realize that I had spoken to her in Spanish.

I immediately said the same thing in Italian, and when she heard it, smiling, she extended her arm and pointed to a place for me. I looked toward the place she had indicated and saw that the curtains were being drawn at that moment. Yes, that must have been the place where I had heard them raising the shutter earlier, I had no doubt. I thanked her and headed over there with long strides.

I pushed on that glass door and looking over near the windows, I saw that a waiter was finishing drawing the curtains, he still had the cord in his hands.