The Alchemist’s Code by Martin Rua Page B

the funeral we exchanged nothing more than a quick ’hello’. I decided to move to the village where my poor mother had come from, a small place near Kiev. When I recovered, I finally found a job there as a teacher.
    At the beginning it was tough. It’s quite a small place, but in summer it’s really nice. I began to make friends and I met a nice man who I got on really well with. In short, everything was going well, and at a certain point my life had become almost perfect.
    The odd thing is that from being just pleasant it
suddenly
became perfect, and I couldn’t tell you when it happened exactly. I just know that one day, as I was going to work, happy and carefree as usual, I bumped into someone – a very old man who was polite and kind, and somehow strangely familiar. The man told me he was an old friend of my grandfather, my father’s father. At first I was frightened. This old fellow – Konstantin was his name – said that my grandfather had given him something before he died and told him to give it to me when my life had taken a certain turn. I tried to get him to tell me what he meant, but he was vague. He just handed me a package and said not to open it in front of anyone, not even in front of the people dearest to me. And not at my house, he added, but somewhere secluded.
    You can imagine my fear. I didn’t want to accept anything from him. But Konstantin insisted, and convinced me of his good faith by saying three words.”
    She paused a moment, and I waited anxiously for her to reveal to me what those words were.
    â€œHe said
De’ Vova-Vova –
the name I used to call my grandfather as a child, truncating the word
ded
which means grandfather. It was a kind of secret word that only he and I knew, because I only used it when we were alone. That silly baby talk made me realise that my grandfather had given this man something important.
    I took the package and tried to get more information out of him, but he just told me that the contents would reveal everything.
    That day, I had an appointment with Anatoli, the man I was seeing, right after school. I went to meet him, going a longer way round than usual and walking by a beautiful lake that’s near the village. I stood on the shoreline, contemplating the still water and, not without hesitation, opened the package. Inside were a book and a small wooden box of apparently little value. The book was some kind of anthropological essay written by my grandfather many years earlier which I had never seen before, while the casket looked familiar. I turned it over in my hands and little by little remembered where I had seen it. It was on a shelf in my grandfather’s house, along with a myriad of objects dating back to the last war. I had forgotten this casket.
    It was empty, but what was carved into the bottom was worth perhaps more than any object I could have found: a symbol, clearly visible. A kind of four-spoked wheel.”
    â€œDid you say a four-spoked wheel?” I broke in.
    â€œYes, why?”
    â€œI think I saw the same thing in a vision I had. But it’s a vague memory. Please, go on.”
    Anna’s expression became even more serious.
    â€œIt’s no coincidence, I’m sure. The exact moment I saw that symbol, I was overcome by a flood of images – of visions that invaded my mind. Faces, places, past episodes of my life, and also things that I didn’t remember ever doing. Numbers and strange symbols unknown to me flashed before my eyes.
    At the end of this bizarre experience, my mind began to form a picture of this amazing reality, because the images that I had seen, including what appeared to be hallucinations, were scenes of my former life, scenes of my everyday life. Only that they didn’t correspond to the memories that I had. I didn’t know whether to trust the visions or just accept that, somehow, I was simply making them up.”
    At these words, I shook my head