Page 356 - The Grotesque Children's Book

This was an actual town. There was a church in the picture: symbolic of sanctuary, yes,
but better than the symbol, Aurelio recognized from a sketch Santi had made once illustrating a
story about his wife Guilia’s hometown of Vierspitzen, an actual church in an actual Swiss town.
Santi had buried the jewels in front of the arch on the third hill, right where the goats were
marking the spot.

(Meanwhile, the Southern Italian man was making an effort to see exactly which part of
the ceiling was so fascinating to his quarry, but he dared not slip out of the shadows of the
octagonal room. He noted the very tiles on the floor where his quarry was standing, tediously
counting tiles from the north wall and from the west wall. He planned that he himself would
study the ceiling from that very spot, later.)

Santi buried the jewels for me to find, thought Aurelio. He meant for me to journey to
Vierspitzen and find the jewels. That is, that is, that is if he got the chance to finish.

Sedem collocare pisces. Si finem capitis: et exivit. “Find the fish chair. If my head is
finished, then I escaped.”

Aurelio spent another three hours looking for a throne made of lilies or decorated with
pelicans. You solvers are welcome to look as well, but the rest of you will be spared the details
of Aurelio’s thoughts as he reached one dead-end after another. It wasn’t until he came to
Bay 37...the final bay on which Santi had been working. His final bay, of course! Why hadn’t I
started there? thought Aurelio, disgusted with himself for having wasted all that time, and then
further disgusted when he saw that Santi’s final image of a “fish chair” was not, in fact, a symbol
of Christ’s throne but literally a chair made out of fish. Santi himself was sitting on a fish. No
symbol, just straightforward communication at last. “If my head is finished, then I escaped.”

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