Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Friday 7th April

When he opened his eyes there were no shadows anywhere, but the urgency that hung over the valley made this noon different from the usual peaceful hours.It is the silence of a ghost town, or rather a city of angels abandoned by humans. A donkey brayed, followed by another; a cow roared dully; a dog began to howl, as if something terrible was about to happen. Or is happening. Or already happened?Ellery jumped up from the couch with a cry.But he remembered: that would not happen until sunset. But why... so quiet?Did all the Quinans flee so as not to be left as eyewitnesses? He was also wearing bad-smelling, crumpled clothes.Sleep hadn't refreshed him, and the sunlight streaming in through the window hadn't washed away the soreness in his bones.

He went out into the street.There was no one.He went all the way through the village.Here, there, through the open window, he caught a glimpse of moving shadows, and he even saw a person in the distance... Is it a plumber? — working in a field.If the waterwheel does not turn, the fire will burn the fields.No, the Quinan did not leave their homeland.They just can't bear to look at the home of the day, like a hill avoiding the approaching sun.Most people are huddled in their homes, with their doors closed. Their sorrow must have been great. Equally great was the silence that hung in the valley, and Ellery's endless and fruitless struggle with confusion in the afternoon.

The choice always seems to fall into one of three points: He can let everything take its course, as the teacher wishes. He can tell the truth.But in this case, the teacher had said, he would deny it, and the people would believe him, not Ellery, and Ellery knew that without a doubt. He can go out and seek aid to stop the execution.But that would be the end of Quinan. You have no choice! Ellery walked along the path between the two rows of trees to the terraced hillside, along the carefully cultivated ridges.No one wanted to talk to him, no one even waved to him.Twice between wanderings he walked towards a place where there was a person in view, but when he came close, there was no one there.He couldn't bring himself to knock on any door.

Towards dusk he found himself descending the hill into the sacred synagogue.The teacher sat alone on a stool.He made the familiar gesture of blessing to Ellery and asked him to sit on the bench.Ellery sat down heavily.The old man seemed to be in absolute peace. "Master," said Ellery, "I beg you again to reconsider." "Very well," said the old man calmly. Ellery's heart was beating wildly. "So you're going to tell them the truth?" he cried. The old man was silent for a long time before he said: "I have thought twice, Elroy, as you asked. I see no reason to change what is written. I will say nothing more to people, including you."

The sun began to sink. People seemed to pop up all at once—from cottages, pens, fields, woods, and shadows—like sudden dragon teeth.They gathered together from all directions, forming an ugly gigantic monster with ten thousand heads. Ellery became one of them too. He saw the slender teacher appear among the crowd.The crowd made way for him, surrounded him sadly and walked slowly, the teacher's right hand was still making blessing gestures. In this way, the Kuinan people reached their destination.When the crowd vanished suddenly, and Ellery found them all lying on the ground together, he was relieved and almost wept with joy.

How could he take a symbol so blindly and literally?He was witnessing a pomp similar to that of the New Mexico Mountain Penitent ceremonies, which call themselves Brotherly Lights, which annually rekindle religious fervor and elect a new group of leaders.Rituals performed on holy places, designed to purify sins, mysteriously prevent the loss of life, although the punished suffer no less. What puzzled him was how the isolated Quinan knew about this extraordinary religious ceremony.Perhaps they invented similar customs themselves, or learned them from books containing ancient teachings?Because what he saw was...

The teacher crawled on the spot prepared for him. There was silence, not even a gasp. From this point of view, the ancient Egyptians probably held an annual event to commemorate the death of Osiris.People only know the allusion from the play, but they don't know that some people believe that it is the real thing that happened before their eyes. The overseer rose from among them and came forward, holding a vessel in both hands.Everyone held their breath, and even the wind stopped blowing. The supervisor gently supported the teacher's head with his left hand, brought the vessel to the old man's lips with his right hand, and then walked away from him.The teacher lay motionless on the spot.As the sun went down, it painted the sky in blood, and it also stained the teacher's steady hand.Suddenly, a breeze blows, and the grass whispers warningly...

Ellery woke up, a great rage welling up in his heart.He actually allowed himself to accept such deception and bewitchment!The teacher and his puppets succeeded in infecting him with the fever of their daydreams, convincing him that the real is unreal, and the unreal is real.But his fever was cured.The phantasms and great tragedies that seem to be real experiences are nothing but fanatic fanatics of disgusting rednecks, and the teacher is but a born actor, and soon the lesser actors of the original drama will step forward To play their stupid roles.Enough, he's had enough of this nonsense!It's time to stop.

A nearby woman began wailing, screaming and falling forward.Another woman—oh, a weaver! —began to mutter the eulogy.The children cried in fright. (They were also rehearsed!) Then the guys... Ellery threw up his hands and yelled, "That's too much!" and walked up to where the old man's arms were outstretched.Ellery knelt on one knee, reaching out to shake the old man's thin shoulders. But his hand stopped halfway. Suddenly a coherent line of thought formed in Ellery's chaotic mind: I, too, had followed the wrong old adage.Quinan's code is not the Roman code.The liquid in that vessel was not symbolic substance for symbolic punishment; it was real punishment, with nothing symbolic in it.

It turned out that the teacher was not acting at all.His face was still still, but it wasn't the same quiet anymore.In the form prescribed by Quinan's law—as it was written, as he did, feet together, arms outstretched, in divine symmetry—the teacher died on the ground.