Chương 23: Do Not Make a Sound

The paper under the glass cover did not move. Kichan's throat did. Even before any sound came out, the muscles inside his throat found their places first. The place that needed to open low, the place that needed to hold the breath long, the place where the tip of the tongue had to curl back. More than the letters on the page, the spaces between them pressed at him. Those gaps were not empty. The places to rest, to draw out, to stop breathing—they were part of the sentence too.

Kichan stood in front of the glass cover without moving his hands. His fingertips were quiet. Only his throat kept reacting. That made it more unpleasant. Until now, his fingertips had always come first. Whether it was the stems of plants, the grain of metal, or the conditions placed on a door, Kichan had touched and read with his hands. But Loagaeth skipped past his hands and caught him by the throat first. The man Kichan had taken for a bookseller stood beside the glass cover.

Only under the low light of the back room could Kichan see the worn white collar inside his neckline. The rosary that had been half-hidden by the cardigan sleeve had slid down beneath the wrist bone. He was watching only Kichan's lips. Kichan deliberately clenched his teeth together. The priest said,"Well done."

"For keeping my mouth shut?"

"Yes."

"That's a compliment I'm hearing for the first time in my life." The priest did not smile.

"At the moment, it may be the hardest thing you can do." Kichan looked at his own reflection in the glass cover. His jaw was tight. The shadows beneath his eyes were dark, and his lips were dry. He did look like a tired tourist. The problem was that tired tourists had no reason to stand in front of something like this with their throats locked in place. Dust crawled out from inside his shirt and climbed onto his shoulder. The priest's gaze shifted to Dust. A tiny wire body. A back flat as a coin.

Dust and metal filings clinging to the ends of thin legs. The priest inhaled slowly.

"You've already touched four of them."

"Four?"

"Plant and body. Metal and record. And now voice." Kichan did not answer. Voynich. Rohonc. Soyga. Loagaeth. Each of those names rose inside his head with its own different sensation. Fingertips, bone, metal, conditions, breath. Things that had once been separate now tangled together like branches grown from the same trunk. The sprout mark at the tip of his index finger grew hot. Kichan raised his hand and looked at it. At first, it had been a small mark like a cotyledon.

Now the vein-like lines had deepened farther into the inside of his finger. The line of Voynich, the line of Rohonc, the line of Soyga. And the last line, not yet fully opened, trembled in a thread-thin way. The priest saw that hand and bowed his head.

"Language has already begun to pass through you."

"I never learned any of this."

"You didn't learn it. It seized you first." Kichan hated that sentence. But he could not deny it. Then a bell rang outside. It was the church bell. At a fixed hour, it would have been an ordinary sound. But heard in front of Loagaeth, it was not ordinary at all. The first toll struck the ceiling, the second ran down the walls, and the third shivered inside Kichan's ribs. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Without realizing it, he tried to match his breathing to it. Almost no sound came out of his mouth. It was closer to humming. Even so, that low-held resonance spread in a thin layer over the glass cover. The priest's eyes wavered. It was too clear to call a mere hum, and too alien to call a hymn. The note Kichan had brushed against in the plaza now came back from someplace deeper. The priest said sharply,"Stop." Kichan cut off his breath. The inside of his throat hurt.

The priest laid a thin cloth over the paper fragment. Once the sentence beneath the glass was covered, the force pulling at Kichan's throat weakened a little. It did not disappear completely. Even under the cloth, the sentence was still breathing. With one hand, the priest gripped the small cross on his chest. That hand was trembling.

"You are not a believer."

"No."

"And yet that sound did not rise upward just now. It touched what was around it first." Kichan touched his throat.

"I don't know why I'm doing this either."

"That the surroundings reacted before you understood is precisely what makes it strange." The priest looked once at the cloth-covered glass case, then back at Kichan.

"I have listened to hymns my whole life. The wavering hymns children sing when they first learn them, the hymns old people sing with the last of their strength. I have seen sound touch stone walls and ceilings and steady human breathing. But that one note you let slip in the square was not a sound that gathered people. It felt more like air and moisture were trying to exchange places." Kichan lost his words for a moment. It was hard to tell whether that was praise or an accident report. The priest exhaled low.

The thumb gripping the rosary paused once over the cross, then moved down toward the cloth-covered glass.

"In that case, opening the door may be better than trying to block it." He did not explain further. Instead, he checked the little lock beneath the glass cover with his fingertips and drew out an old key from inside his cardigan.

"Is all of this one book?" Kichan asked. The priest shook his head.

"One language." Kichan did not understand that at once. One language. Everything he had read until now being the same language. Letters he had read without ever really reading them. Sentences whose meanings had entered him even though he had never known their sounds. Now all of them were knocking at the inside of his throat. Kichan laid his palm on top of the glass cover and then pulled it back immediately. The paper fragment beneath the cold glass trembled almost imperceptibly. No.

What shook was Kichan's breathing. A car stopped outside the shop. Then another. The alley was narrow. Tires pressed against stone and halted, doors opened, radios crackled, and someone gave a low order beyond the glass door. The priest closed his eyes.

"Too late."

"Who?" Kichan already knew. Dust flattened itself against his shoulder. The equipment bag was on his back. The problem was the moment he took the wake-up rod out. If he pulled a long iron rod from that bag inside a daytime bookshop, between tourist postcards and reproduction icons, the place would instantly turn into a crime scene. He left the zipper alone. Instead, he reached first for the thin wire, coins, and small metal fragments he had brought from New York inside his coat. Kichan pressed his lips together.

If I'd known it would come to this, I should at least have opened the zipper beforehand. The thought annoyed him the moment it occurred. If only I had known was always late. The bell over the door rang. Two men in black suits entered first. Behind them came local police in uniform. Over their uniforms they wore short bulletproof vests, and pistols sat at their waists. They did not draw them immediately, but their hands were in positions that could. At the very back stood Lee Seoyoon.

She had followed him through London, New York, Seoul, and now all the way to Rome. She looked tired. That surprised Kichan a little.

"Mr. Han Kichan," Lee Seoyoon said in Korean.

"Please step away from that fragment."

"You came all the way here and that's still your opening line?"

"Loagaeth is not like Rohonc or Soyga."

"I just noticed that myself."

"If you noticed, then all the more reason to step back." Kichan looked at the glass cover beneath the cloth. A sheet of thin paper. But inside his throat, it felt less like a book than like a door. A door that seemed as though it might lead somewhere. He knew he should not touch that door. At the same time, he knew the Golden Dawn should not be allowed to take it back either.

"Why are you people always trying to collect dangerous things?" Lee Seoyoon did not answer. That was enough for Kichan. He looked at the brass candlestick beside the counter. It was old. It was displayed as if it were only a decoration for tourists, but the balance was decent. He took hold of it. One of the suited men immediately lifted a hand. Kichan did not swing the candlestick. Instead, he struck its base once, very briefly, against the corner of the counter. Tak. The sound was small.

At the same instant, the metal hinge inside the display case by the door came loose. One strand of wire extended from Kichan's fingertips, ran along the floor, and nudged the locking pin inside the case. The display case door popped open. Bundles of postcards and small reproduction busts spilled out. One of the police officers looked over reflexively. In that instant, Kichan pressed the locking mechanism of the glass cover. It did not open. The lock was not made of metal alone. Permission. Keeper. Church. Owner.

Do not sing. Conditions were layered over it one after another. The sense he had gained from the Book of Soyga unfolded like sentences. Kichan stopped his fingers. If he forced this open, it would make a sound. And that sound would shake the sentence beneath the glass. The priest said quietly,"To the back." Kichan looked at him. The priest pressed a small button beneath the counter. Somewhere under the back room floor, something gave a faint tremor. Lee Seoyoon shouted,"Stop!"

The priest laid his hand on the glass cover. His hand was trembling.

"This fragment did not originally belong in this shop." One of the bookshelves at the back slid aside, revealing a narrow door.

"It leads under the church." Kichan looked at the door.

"Why is there a passage like that?"

"Old cities have many unnecessary passages." One of the suited men reached for his gun. Kichan flicked the coin tray on the counter with his fingertips. Coins scattered over the floor, and several rolled beneath the police officers' shoes. Not enough to make them slip. But enough to create the briefest hesitation before they fixed their footing again. In that gap, Kichan touched the glass cover once more. The priest turned the key. One condition released. Kichan twisted the second. Church. Keeper. Do not sing.

He left the last condition untouched. Do not sing. That one felt correct. The glass cover opened. Kichan took the cloth-wrapped paper fragment and tucked it against his chest. The inside of his throat went hot immediately. He clenched his teeth. Do not make a sound. Not now. Kichan ran for the rear door. The stairs were narrow and dark. The wall was cold, and from below rose the smell of old stone. The church bell was no longer audible, but the silence of Loagaeth still remained inside his throat.

Even while running, he kept his mouth shut.