In the November of 2020, I was officially appointed as the Education Secretary for the City of Horizontes Antagônicos, a small town located deep in the foggy, forested and hilly innards of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. I’m sending this to explain the motives behind the decision to cease the banishment of all activities related to the teaching of Arts and Crafts in the schools of Horizontes Antagônicos.

Before everything, I must state that the ban was not started during my administration, but several administrations before, by the Emergency Municipal Education Decree 12/76, by Mayor Rosas education secretary in the April of 1976. The decree was later turned into law with endorsement by the State Court of Justice and unanimous approval in the Town Hall. However, until 1989, this ban did not extend to private schools. By 1990, it applied to all educational institutions for children under 14.

I had, since the beginning of the pandemic, been isolated in my family farm twenty-three kilometers away from the city, enjoying my retirement after teaching Pedagogy in the National University of Belo Horizonte for thirty-eight years. The reason I had chosen to abandon my good retired life was a letter sent by Mayor Mara Amaral, who was a childhood friend of mine. She said the city would be facing a major issue related to the public education, and a pedagogy expert would be needed. I was at first reluctant to accept such call, but the boredom of staying almost a year locked in my farm compelled me to accept the challenge.

A few days before the mayor officially confirmed me as secretary, I returned to the city. That was still in November, just after her reelection. I had not served the city as the Education Secretary in her first term. Secretary Ferreira, a very educated and acknowledged old lady whom I did not meet personally but heard very good things about, did so. However, she retired after the reelection. Later, I found out she died shortly after retiring, but the cause of her death was not made public. When I arrived back in Horizontes Antagônicos, I was notified of state-wide changes that the municipality would be legally required to implement, one of them being the adoption of the teaching of Arts in their schools. Furthermore, the older city law was declared unconstitutional by the State Court a few months before.

“It’s been a long time, Carlos.” Mayor Amaral said as I entered her office for the first time, a place where I would visit so many times afterwards.

“Mara, how delightful it is to see you again. I am really grateful you have chosen me to this job. I know the difficulties we will face.” I said, coughing a bit. I had started smoking during the pandemic and it was already ruining my lungs.

“Oh, I don’t think you know what we will be facing, Carlos. It is worse than it seems. Much worse.” She said. Mara seemed consternated.

“I read the nationwide reports while in social isolation. Basically all the students of the country had to attend online classes for a year. This is very problematic for young children, and it is still not safe for them to return in person, COVID is still out of control and there’s no vaccine yet. I have been researching how we can improve this, maybe with hybrid classes, but…” She stopped me.

“No, this is a problem we will have to face. But I’m afraid the problem I needed you for is way more dangerous.” The Mayor said.

“Wh-What do you mean? School shootings? We have those in Brazil?”

“No, it’s not that. You see, for some reason, a few decades ago, a law banned the teaching of Arts and Crafts in Horizontes Antagônicos for children. This law was recently repealed, and as soon as in-person classes return, we will be obligated to have Arts and Crafts in our curriculum, by State Law.” She sighed.

“That’s easy to solve, Mara. I know a few teachers of Arts from Belo Horizonte, they’re probably out of job due to the Pandemic, we could bring them here, you know.” I smiled.

“Carlos. I need you to find out why Arts and Crafts were banned back in 1976. I could not find anything that explained the reason. But you have way more contacts in the education area than I do. I think you could help me with this.” She said.

A few days later, after I had rented a new apartment and was officially nominated as Education Secretary, I started looking into the matter. At first, it was pretty obvious to me what had really happened. In 1976, the Brazilian Military Dictatorship was in full bloom. A bloody bloom, must I say. People were being censored, tortured and murdered, all for the sake of battling communism. The military and the CIA were afraid the communists would takeover and install a dictatorship, so they took over and installed a dictatorship themselves. Brilliant. During those brutal times, all literary works which could make people use their own brains were forbidden. Even Cubism was forbidden, because Cubism was believed to come from Cuba, and Cuba was communist. I suspected this was the case with Arts and Crafts. That some blockhead thought artists were all socialist and decided to forbid the discipline altogether.

However, this was not the case, as I soon discovered that after the regime fell, in 1990, the censorship was increased, and not stopped like in the rest of everything. Before 1990, private schools were still allowed to teach Arts and Crafts to children under 14. Something, indeed, strange was going on here. The worst part is that there was no justification whatsoever in any of the documents related to the ban. This was usual, standard practice, in documents issued during the Military Dictatorship, but not after the re-democratization.

Horizontes Antagônicos is by no means a large city. I think it is not even above 70k inhabitants. But during the 70s it was much smaller. It had only three schools until the mid-90s. Two of them were municipal schools, one of them was private. Nowadays we have around then schools, most of them municipal. This is even a bit ironic, because most of the commerce here only exists because of a nearby federal university.

I would soon find out my dear hometown is completely atrocious when it comes to record-keeping. The mayor was not joking, it was ridiculously hard to find any information regarding the ban. The city administration officials who could give me the answers were by now long dead. I could not find the records to teachers and principals or even students at the time, most data was missing. I literally tried to ask people who were studying there at the time, and half of them said “I don’t know”, “I don’t remember”, “Right, they abolished arts, I wonder why”, “Must have to do with the military regime”. The other time told me to talk to other people, who either referred me to yet more people or said they didn’t knew.

It took me for nearly one week of surveying records or asking around when I finally found a clue, even if not by my direct action. Through a possible massive game of Chinese whispers and gossiping, the information that I, the municipal secretary of education had been looking someone who was involved to the local schools in the year of 1976 for an interview had been morphed into the announcement that the Brazilian ministry of education would grant monetary rewards to school employees and students of the 1970s. Explaining to the gullible crowd that this was only a rumor was awful, and some of them gave me death states, but on the good side, a retired language teacher presented herself, even if she was very disappointed that she would not be getting money.

“So, Mrs. Veneza, am I right?” I said, as I entered my office with a cup of coffee, where she was waiting for me, eating a biscuit one of the secretary’s staff brought her.

“Yes, darling. It’s been long since anyone has had need of me for anything… Most of my life was kids needing me for all sorts of stuff you know. And now, since I retired, I’m mostly alone.” She lamented.

“I know how it feels, Mrs. Veneza. I am also a teacher. Was, I mean. I retired not long ago.” I said as I drank the coffee.

“So you must imagine my wonder when your staff told me the new secretary of education needed me! I don’t think I can be useful to you, however, Secretary Noronha. My Portuguese is completely outdated, it has been long since I last practiced Latin. We used to teach Latin before 64, you know. I also think we had a bit of an over-reliance on the paddle. If I recall correctly, corporal punishment is seen very badly nowadays…”

“You are indeed right, Mrs. Veneza, but I have not called you here to interrogate on how you punished or not young kids, nor about languages. I need to know about another subject entirely, actually.”

“Oh, I also taught Sewing. It was mandatory for girls. You want advice on implementing that again? I think you would need to teach sewing to the boys too, if you want…” I interrupted her politely.

“No, no, it is also not about sewing. It’s actually about arts.” When I said that, she visibly shivered.

“I-I d-don’t think I c-could help you with that, Mr. N-Noronha…” She stuttered.

“Please, Mrs. Veneza. I couldn’t find a single record on why arts and crafts were outlawed. I couldn’t find anyone who remembered. You are the only teacher who was there, who can help me.” I said, almost begging.

“Can’t you let that thing rest? Who needs arts? If they want, they can leave for a better course in a better town!” She complained.

“There’s new state legislation, it requires us to implement Arts and Crafts in the curriculum. But if I am to reinstate this subject, I must first understand why it was forbidden.”

“Fine, Secretary Noronha…” She looked around her shoulders, as if somehow checking if we were alone. “I will tell you what happened in 76. What I know at least. But in exchange, I want my retirement payment to be increased. It has not been updated to inflation for years.” She demanded.

“I’ll tell the mayor to adjust it. Now, please, tell me what happened.” I said, finishing my coffee, almost breaking the porcelain cup in anticipation.

“It was March, merely one month after school year began, the year was ‘76. I was teaching Portuguese and Sewing at the Ambassador Jean-Claude Moreau Municipal School. For convenience, we used to just call it Moreau.” She sighed, before proceeding. “You know, Jean-Claude Moreau was a French ambassador who moved here from the capital after retiring. He was the one who built the abandoned mansion in the woods to the north.”

“I am familiar with Moreau’s story and the urban legends surrounding his mansion. I and my friends once spent a night there. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, besides.” I said, worried that she would start telling me old folklore that wouldn’t help me with anything.

“Calm down, Mr. Noronha. The thing is, Moreau was the one who built the school I worked in during my time as a teacher. That’s why the school had his name. And he didn’t just help build it. Moreau donated his personal library to the school.”

“What sort of books did he donate?”

“Most of these books were French-Portuguese dictionaries and guides. In fact, the Moreau school taught French until the late 20s, and Moreau’s daughter was the teacher. But there were some books that were actual actual books, you know. Not mere dictionaries.”

“Let me guess, everything was in French.”

“Not everything. Some of the works were in English and even in Italian. But the former ambassador himself translated most of the books to Portuguese. At the time, Arts was part of Moreau’s curriculum. We would organize a new play every semester, to help the kids study literature, portuguese and to speak in public. There were several benefits arts had. And we used the books from the school library.”

“Romeo and Juliet?” I giggled softly.

“Moreau had several Shakespearean tales. Macbeth, the Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Julius Caesar… But we had to make several adaptations in the plays. After all, we were talking about a 12-year old cast.”

“I think I know what happened. One of the parents said the play was too violent, and they forced the city hall to ban arts. Did I get it right?”

“Oh, if only it was that. I’m afraid the truth is much darker.” She sighed before continuing: “There was a play… That was very different from the others. Shakespeare, Sophocles, the Grimm Brothers, even good old Edgar Allan Poe. All of them paled in comparison to that. This play… It was never meant to be read by children. It… I don’t think it was ever meant to be read by anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“That play was a work of the most impure production of the decadent movement. But I remember wondering if it wasn’t even older. Maybe as old as Shakespeare. It was a strange story, very abstract. And it…” She looked around, confirming if we were really alone. “It was cursed, Mr. Noronha. No, not cursed. Worse than that. That play was nefarious. It seemed alive sometimes. I read it. It’s meaning changed… The meaning of the words, the mental image it generated, they adapted themselves to the reader.”

“You are saying the text changed on it’s own?” I asked, wondering if trusting that woman was really a good choice.

“The text never changed as far as I know, but the words were structured in ways to create new meanings. When I first read that book, I was terrified, because the book described me as one of the guests in the ball scene, and I knew the author was talking about me specifically. Even if the text was way older than me.”

“It is common for a reader to identify him or herself with a story’s character, Mrs. Veneza. But I think I see what you’re getting at. The play was performed by the kids in 1976. I guess parents read the source material and were horrified, and moral panic ensued.”

“Worse than that, Mr. Secretary. It was a terrible mistake. The Arts teacher in ‘76 was a new one, an old army colonel sent by the regime “vanished” the previous teacher, if you know what I mean. This new teacher was a soldier, not a teacher. He just picked a random book and gave it to the kids to act as they saw fit. But he picked the book… The book of the King. The book that should never be read.” She sighed sadly, as if she somehow felt guilty. “I warned him of the risks. That book was too much for the children. I even tried to hide it, but he had locked the library’s door. Something happened then. You know, similar to this Covid thing, but psychological. The children became obsessed with the play. Most of them failed their tests or stopped their hobbies. All they talked about was about this damned King and his court and tatters and the black stars.”

“Why didn’t you or the teachers or the parents do anything?”

“The thing is, even if the old colonel didn’t care a bit about books or arts, watching the rehearsals affected him. He became obsessed with the book himself, talking about it all the time and asking the children to read it for him. One of the teachers told him that this was getting dangerous, the children were too obsessed and were failing their grades. The next day three army officers came to that teacher’s house, they took her to an abandoned warehouse and electrocuted her for hours. They released her, but her hands never stopped trembling. Never.”

“But it was the regime itself that banned Arts and Crafts, wasn’t it? What happened?”

“After three months, the spectacle was ready. At that point, students didn’t even come to the other classes anymore, but the colonel ordered us teachers to give them good grades at gunpoint. When the play was ready, all parents came to watch. Not only the parents, their entire families and even friends. Never one of our plays had such a large audience. I don’t know why so many people came. I and the other teachers were also there. I was glad that this whole thing was going to finally end, but I also had this feeling… That something bad was going to happen.”

“And did it?”

“Yes… The play was bizarre. As I said, this book creates new, multiple meanings for every words, but the play was completely next-level. I didn’t know 12-year olds were capable of acting in such a profane way, but they did. The play had no scenarios, yet the contorted towers were higher than any skyscraper, and the lake’s water was black and cold like ice. This play was so, so violent. No horror movie I ever saw was that violent. I mean, the first act is not very disturbing, only a bit. But the second…”

“Did any child get hurt?”

“Hurt, Mr. Noronha? The children were quartering, hanging and eating each other while their parents watched, hypnotized. While we watched, unable to do anything. The actual play was even more violent than the script. Of all the meanings of the words, the colonel had chosen the most violent ones. It was a festival of flesh and depravity.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“It got worse when the King appeared. At first I thought he was the colonel, but then I noticed he was carrying the colonel’s dead body. The King wore several tattered traps, and an yellow mantle. When he opened his arms, we saw the purple vortexes of infinity. As I heard all members of the audience fighting each other, I fell to the floor. I had a stroke.”

“And what happened next?” I inquired, even if I was afraid of the answers.

“When I woke up, three months had passed. No one but me and three other people left the school theater alive that day. Agents came to my hospital bed, asking what I remembered. I told them “Nothing.” And it was true, at the time, I didn’t remember anything. It took several months for my memory to really come back. I later was told about the three other surviving audience members. One of them escaped unscathed, two of them had several broken limbs and bones. One even lost an eye. The same agents when to their hospital beds and to the escapee’s house, and they vanished. Then… It became taboo to talk about arts. The population was told the school was targeted by a communist terrorist attack. At the end I was the sole survivor.”

“Wa-Wait… Who was the King?” I asked, trembling. I suddenly felt observed, and started looking around, to confirm if we were alone.

“The King? The King was the King, Mr. Noronha. He was simply there.” She said, as she got up. “It is dangerous to mention his work like I did. I am telling this so you don’t get any ideas about Arts and Crafts.”

“Wait, Mrs. Veneza! I need to know more.” I said, sweating.

“Mr. Noronha, I was wrong when I thought the spectacle would be the end of it. It wasn’t. The regime tried desperately to silence anyone who knew the truth, even banning arts and crafts to prevent more incidents. You know why? Because the play had tainted the town. Look at drawing children do, even nowadays. Look at what they write. Look at their games. Hide and seek, for an example. They love to play that game, but if you ask any of the children, nobody will know who was the one seeking them. They will only say none of them were doing that task, but there was a kid playing with them and seeking them.” She went in the door’s direction.

“But if nobody knew, why did they ban Arts from private schools in the ‘90s?” I asked.

“They didn’t know what, but everyone knew something horrible happened because of theatrical arts and children, Mr. Noronha. And no one was eager for something like that to happen again.”

“Wait, Mrs. Veneza… Where can I read the book?” I pleaded. She looked right in my eyes.

“Be careful, Mr. Noronha. You are playing a dangerous game. I see the same madness in your eyes that I saw on the colonel’s. It is not a book. It is a curse. And like Nietzsche said, if you stare at the abyss too much, it stares back at you.” She said as she left.

I wish I had listened to her. But the truth was, somehow, I got fascinated with all of that. I needed to know more, I needed to see this book. I will not write the book’s name, but I needed to read it. I looked in every library, even in nearby towns, in the internet, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. But the book found me. One day, I was awoken by someone knocking on the door of my rented apartment. It was nearly midnight. I opened the door, and saw a small child, I think she had four or five years. She wore an yellow skirt and was barefoot. She asked me to follow her. And so I did. She took me to a small playground behind an abandoned school, it had an yellow tent raised above it. There were three other small children there, drawing. There were several drawings on the broken walls of the school, of a strange being on an strange city, wearing an yellow or white clothing that covered his body entirely.

“Where am I?” I asked the child, but she was not there anymore. All children had disappeared, but I found something where they previously were. In the damp earth, full of dirt, laid a hardcover yellow book. It’s title was “Kingdom Come”. I grabbed it, and suddenly I woke up in my bed again. Was it all a dream? It seemed like that, until I went to have breakfast, and found the book laying on my kitchen table.

Before I read, I did not know words could have such profound, incomprehensible meaning, but dare I say, this book was not written using language, it is more like a picture book, a printed artistic portfolio, but without pictures. The sentences and words in that book were structured in a way that every single sentence had five or six completely different meanings at the same time, some of them completely disturbing or hazardous. I didn’t show up to work that day. Or the next. I spent two entire days reading and re-reading the book. Without going to the bathroom, without drinking anything, without eating anything, without sleeping. Three days later, I woke up in a hospital bed, having collapsed from exhaustion.

I was angry, I was so angry. I was so angry at the state for forbidding children of accessing what is the greatest work of art ever written. The mayor gave me two weeks-off, they suspected I became afflicted with Covid and that’s why I nearly died in my apartment. When I went back to my house, the book had vanished. But I knew it would come back eventually, when the time was right.

Now, it wasn’t easy. The year of 2021 was entirely with online classes, but in 2022, things got better. In-person classes returned, and I oversaw the reinstatement of Arts and Crafts. Some older folks were scared, but so far there were no incidents, and they became more and more relaxed. I successfully managed to convince everyone that Arts and Crafts were banned because of the dumb military censorship. And I see him getting closer. The drawings the children paint are always filled with yellow elements. When they write essays, the King is always there, hidden among the words. Waiting, biding his time. Yes, I had to silence Mrs. Veneza. It was easy. I just showed her a small picture made by one of the children, of a beautiful yellow symbol, and she had a heart-attack right there.

The time is getting closer. In a few days, classes will start again. The book appeared yesterday on my doorstep. I know what I have to do. The Kingdom is definitely coming, and no one will stop me, for I will spread his gift.

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