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–… Can you leave me Kurt then –was saying Rudolph– Have you talked him of the Sign?

–I didn’t belive it convenient –Dad replied–. Furthermore I wouldn’t know how to
explain him with the enough profoundity that Mystery. You know more than me about these
things; you’re the most indicated to speak with him.

Rudolph Hess moved his head affirmatively while in his face maintained sketched that
shy smile so characteristic of his person.

–Let’s wait some years; –Said Rudolph Hess– if Kurt does not ask before. Did he suspect
something already? Has been protagonist of some abnormal incident?

–No, Rudolph, except for the matter of the Ophites¸that I’ve already told you in my
letters, nothing strage occurred to him later, and he has even forgotten it, or at least, the
remembrance doesn’t affect him.

At this point of the conversation between Rudolph Hess and my father little was what I
understood, but when they mentioned the Ophites an incredible episode of my childhood
came to my memory instantly. When I was some ten or eleven years old I was victim of a
kidnapping! It was not a criminal kidnapping with the objective to obtain payment for ransom,
but a kidnapping perpetrated by fanatics of the Ophite Order that just lasted a few hours until
the Police, thanks to the information that a professional fink gave, could thwart it.

Chapter VIII

The event occurred thus: my parents had travelled to Cairo –The familiar Engenho is
some metres away from this city– with the purpose to go shopping.

While Mom was entertained in the vast halls of the English Store I, avid of mischiefs,
went down towards the street with much dissimulation. One moment later I ran many blocks
away from the Store attracted innocently through the rowdy «Black Market», labyrinthine
neighbourhood of miserable street stalls and secure refugee of beggars and small-time
criminals.

In that day the human tide was dense by the lanes in which the distance between two
stalls of sales left a narrow passage to the pedestrian transit. Pottery, fruits, carpets, animals,
and all what can be imagined was sold there and in front each goods my curious eyes stopped. I

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