“No, they’re decrepit, and I’m sure they leak like sieves,” said Orsina. The servants had vanished up the broad ceremonial staircase, and Nigel followed.
“These are funny,” he said as he passed the statues of winged infants on the banisters. “Especially this one …”
“He’s pretending to be Priapus,” said Orsina. “Do you recall …”
“Oh, right, the big fellow in your uncle’s garden.”
The staircase swept magnificently to the ballroom. Nigel craned his neck and swiveled round to look at the somber painted vault. “This I do remember.” He looked down at the intricate geometry of the parquet floor and grunted. “So much labor, but to what end? At the moment I’m more interested in lunch.”
“So am I,” she said. “You can see the rest of the house afterwards.” They crossed to the dining room overlooking the Grand Canal, where Bhaskar and Soma had set out their lunch. Orsina had reassured them that, as a Londoner, Nigel was fond of Indian cuisine. As they ate, he sweated profusely, while she explained the logistics of modern palazzo life. “We mostly live in these four rooms. Uncle has a suite at the top, where no one dares to go. We barely use the third floor, except for our stingier friends and relations who’d rather share the one bathroom than stay in a hotel.”
Nigel had enjoyed the luxuries of Villa Riviera, with Dumitru and Afina, Samanta, even the aged Marianna all attentive to his needs. He was not sure, now, about spending August in this cheerless palace, with a smelly canal on one side and swarming tourists on the other. But he had come with a purpose: to learn Orsina’s language properly.
He kept at it every weekday from nine until four. Then, his head spinning with Italian phrases, he would buy the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune and read them in a café, making calls on his cell phone. A pleasant evening with Orsina followed, with dinner in a restaurant, or the odd party in nearby villas on the Brenta River.
****
It was early morning in Leo’s apartment and the phone was ringing. He let it ring till it stopped. But then it rang again. “Not her, not again!” he thought as he stood at arm’s length from the receiver. “I’m going to have to get a phone with caller ID …” Lately, he had spent much time consoling Sylvia. He had even accompanied her to her first appointment with a new psychiatrist. As they sat in the waiting room, he couldn’t help noticing how fat and ugly she had become, like an old spayed cat. The analogy was cruel, he knew it, but had come of its own accord. And to think that, in her twenties, she had been so beautiful. The phone rang again; Leo finally picked up.
“Hello? Leo? Is that you?”
“Yes!” Relief and surprise left him at a loss for words.
“Leo? Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. It’s wonderful to hear your voice, Orsina; how are you?”
“I’m well, thanks.” After a few more awkward moments, a conversation got under way. “She must have read my letter, and now she wants to keep in touch,” thought Leo, taking the phone to a comfortable chair, while she thought, “He must have expected me to be passionate after reading his letter; but my tone has thrown water on the fire.” Leo said:
“Glad to hear you’re fine. It’s been a pretty grim week and I could do with some light relief.”
“You mean the news? Yes, that Santiago business has sent my uncle into a tizzy. He’s behaving even more eccentrically than usual. Anyway, Nigel and I are staying at the palazzo in Venice for a while. In case you wanted to get in touch, now you know where to find me.”
“I certainly don’t want to lose touch.” One more awkward pause. He resumed. “How’s Nigel? Did he buy the Ferrari?”
“Of course, and he’s driven it a lot. He said he had to make the most of it before being condemned to a city without roads.”
“Who condemned him?”
“He’s sworn to do a month’s intensive Italian course, and I’ve found him a language school nearby.”
“A language school? Those are for college students. Why doesn’t he take private lessons?”
“He says he misses the rough and tumble of school life.”
“And what will you do while he’s learning his irregular verbs?”
“I’ll catch up with all my school and college friends who live here, and I want to check out a restoration project that I’ve helped with.” Orsina hesitated. “And I’m going to study that book, Leo. I really am, this time. I refuse to let Uncle think that the female brain is incapable of it.”
“Talk about living in the past! I’m studying it too. I bought the modern edition on my way through Rome, and I’ve read it already. I actually liked the chapter about the plant world. It made me wonder if Emanuele is working magic to get those huge trees looking so young?” He said this in jest, and was surprised by her reply.
“Do you believe in magic, then?”
“Well …”
“Well?”
“Let’s say I’ve had a few experiences, a very few, that incline me that way. Actually, the Jesuits used to have a great respect for natural magic, the sort that’s done through understanding how nature really works, but without intervention by spirits. But the kind of tricks they used to regard as natural magic are so far outdone by things like the telephone, the movies, the computer, that there’s not much room for it these days.”
“I’ve had experiences, too.” Orsina hesitated again, then swerved back onto firmer ground. “Leo, do you think we could study The Magical World together? After all, that’s what made me contact you in the first place, and yet we never got around to it. Together we could really get somewhere.”
An excuse for regular communication with Orsina? Leo’s heart leapt, but he forced it down like a pesky dog. “I’d love that,” he said.
“Great! Now, we have different versions, and I still have to respect the family’s taboo, but see if your edition talks about the Cave of Mercury. It’s near the beginning, just after the quote from Orpheus.”
“The book’s right here,” said Leo, crossing the room to his crowded desk. “Let me see … Yes, I have that in Chapter Four, and we can start with it.”
“Let’s give it a few days. I’m so glad we can do this together! I hope it won’t interfere with your research.”
“Such fine acting,” he thought, “God bless her.” She knew perfectly well that he would postpone any research for her. So, things were to be on a sort of professional basis. But heaven forbid that she should suggest collaborating by e-mail. “Don’t worry, my other collaborator is doing most of the work this summer. But I hope we can do ours by phone. It’s so much subtler than e-mail,” he said.
“I hate e-mail,” said Orsina, “and I was hoping that you wouldn’t suggest it.”
So it was settled: Orsina was back in his life! And she needed him. Leo had not felt this excited in years. Yes, he reminded himself that she was married now, but still, just hearing her voice made life seem so much more promising. He should thank The Magical World for this unexpected joy. He propped the book up in front of his dinner, and began at the beginning.
****
An hour later, he realized that he had eaten his dinner without giving it a thought. He made himself a pot of coffee, then settled with his feet up on a sofa, beneath a single reading lamp. One particular cryptogram had drawn his attention. It had to do with “Tartar.” This, said Cesare, was not the common tartar that crystallizes in old wine barrels, nor Tartarus as another name for Hell, but the magical Tartarus that “resides in the dark center of our virgin Earth, in which there burns the continuous and occult fire of Nature.” Its true meaning, the exasperating alchemist went on, is revealed cabalistically by the phrase Terrae ARdor TArdans RVtilantia Sidera. Leo translated this as “the heat of the earth impeding the glittering stars.” What exactly did it mean? Perhaps he should simply concentrate on this image.
And how rich it was! The five Latin words opened suddenly a world of significance and awe-inspiring imagery. The earth is hottest, of cours
e, at its center, reputedly occupied by a mass of white-hot iron. Leo brooded on the paradox of something brilliantly white from which no light can escape. He saw in his mind’s eye the graduated colors of the earth’s layers, going from white to yellow, orange, dull red, then the brownish-black of the planet’s crust. Yet through all of this there radiates a heat as from the heart of a living body. Yes, he said to himself, the earth is a living being, edible, drinkable, breathable, and that is why beings can live on it. But the soul, which Leo had from childhood thought of as something white and deep inside him, is as invisible as the earth’s core. The stars, on the contrary, radiate whiteness from their surfaces. Are they then visible souls? What does it mean for their light to reach us; and what about its being impeded by the earth’s warmth?
Like a hunter chasing a white deer through a forest, Leo’s mind followed these associations. Soon it ceased to verbalize them, and he was led on by images alone, then by colors of inexpressible significance. Truths beyond words seemed on the verge of revelation, when a tremendous shudder ran up his spine and he opened his eyes. He had distinctly heard the bedroom door behind him open. It’s just one of the cats, said his rational mind. He got up. Even the dim lamplight dazzled him as he crossed the living room to greet the cat. Angela stood before him, stark naked.
Leo stopped, stunned, gaping, his heart rushing. There was something oddly glacial about Angela, far removed from the bubbly blonde presence that charmed all about her. Her face was without expression, but she beckoned him to follow her through the door.
As he stepped in, it was not into his own familiar bedroom with its single bed, its antique quilt, its crucifix and childhood teddy bear. He found himself floating amid interstellar space, with Angela’s perfect female body floating beside him. She shone with the reflected light of a myriad stars, which turned her pubic hair to silver fur and purged all color from her breasts. She was beautiful beyond words, and he felt himself sexually aroused; but he feared, no, he knew that to touch her would chill him to the bone. She was of moon-stuff, a virgin Diana, huntress of stags and men.
They were moving fast, in a timeless rush through airless space. She looked him in the eye for what seemed to him an eternity. Then she spoke. “You don’t like me, do you?” Indignation welled up as Leo protested to the contrary, but she cut him short. “Look out for my sister,” she said in the same toneless voice, and another wave of emotion surged up, at once warm and desperate, like a crimson, enveloping sheath that excluded all other senses. As the wave passed, the starlight returned, but Angela was no longer there.
She had led him to the brink of a gaping abyss. Leo could not resist looking into it, but the starlight could not reach its depths, and it might well be bottomless. He felt himself being drawn into it, not as a climber loses his hold and tumbles into a crevasse, but as a weighted diver sinks towards the seabed. Or else the seabed rises to meet him, as the bottomless abyss seemed to be rising towards Leo. The stars faded and went out, and there was only night, silence, and a feeling of warmth that gradually localized itself at the region of Leo’s stomach. For the first time in what seemed an eon, he made a voluntary movement, and with that returned to consciousness of where he was.
He was lying face upward on his bed, his feet dangling to the floor. He raised one arm and felt a cat—no, both cats—lying on his stomach. The rest of him was getting cold, and it was pitch dark. That was strange, since he hadn’t turned off the reading lamp when he got up from the sofa. He felt along the bed to the bedside table lamp, and turned the switch. Nothing happened. He stood up and groped his way to the light switch beside the door; again with no result. “It must be a power outage,” he thought, trying to keep cool, “and a serious one, because there is no city light coming through the window.”
The whole of Washington was in total darkness: that was a sobering thought. “Perhaps there’s been some terrorist attack,” thought Leo. But surely there would be the wailing of ambulances, police cars, fire engines. No, there was nothing for it: he’d have to wait till dawn, and since he was so cold, he got under the bedcovers. As he settled, hoping for sleep, he heard the familiar early morning noises outside the window. He got up again and slowly made his way to it, opening the curtains by feel. The world was wide awake, but Leo, whether awake or dreaming, was in utter darkness. Overwhelmed by the terror of the unknown, he fell to the floor by the window, shivering with cold, and saying to himself: “It will pass, it will pass …”
ELEVEN
The sacristan awoke early every morning, looking forward to his stroll down to the Cathedral with the ancient iron keys chained to his belt, and to unlocking its doors. A pious old man who had been born in Chartres and dedicated his life to the great church, he never ceased to marvel at its beauty and spiritual power. On this day in August, however, he was running, and away from the Cathedral, straight to the police station.
It must have been fifty years since he had run like this. Unable to catch his breath, he could not tell the gendarmes what he had to say. He could only point to the Cathedral, and look terribly distressed. The policemen recognized him, and two of them left for it at once.
A large crowd had already gathered, pilgrims, tourists, and townspeople. “Let us through, let us through!” the gendarmes shouted. They made their way to the central portal. On its great doors, still locked, there was a large graffitied slogan in scarlet spray-paint:
Seize them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly.
One gendarme copied the sentence into a notebook, then the pair headed straight back to the station.
The Mayor of Chartres had a rude awakening, as the chief of police told him the news. He was not only offended by the sacrilege, but alarmed. After the bombings of San Petronio and Santiago, he knew that this was no trifling incident. He told the chief to evacuate the area around the Cathedral, and to keep its doors locked until further notice. Immediately after he hung up, the mayor awoke his secretary, and told her to get him in touch with the President himself, in Paris.
“Monsieur le Président?” the secretary had wondered. Had she heard correctly? She had.
Soon after the President of France, the media heard the news; shortly after that, France and the world knew that the doors of the great cathedral had been soiled with a passage straight out of the Koran.
The Chartres incident, however, was only a beginning.
In the weeks that followed, scarcely a day went by without a report of some desecration of a beloved Christian site. Like the fanatical Taliban who destroyed the Buddhist rock carvings in Afghanistan, the perpetrators delighted in knocking off the heads of statues and damaging altar paintings beyond repair. Not since the Revolution had France seen such vandalism as now occurred, first in Chartres then in the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, where priceless stained-glass windows were smashed; the glorious pilgrimage church of Vezelay, where the solemn figure of Christ in majesty was covered in oozing dung; and, perhaps worst of all, the smiling angel of Reims Cathedral, whose head was never found again. In Italy, Spain, Austria, and Catholic Germany it was the same tale of desecration.
The Vatican made every effort to hush up the incidents; besides, no one had been physically injured. The clergy in the places affected were forbidden to talk to the media, and discreet calls were placed to TV, radio, and newspaper editors. But the attempt was futile. It was just what the media needed: the scenes of vandalism and the distress of the witnesses made good copy, and the op-ed writers competed in hand-wringing. There was intense pressure on the Muslim communities to stop protecting those responsible, and angry denials of any involvement only made matters worse for them.
****
“Professor, I have news for you.”
Leo was anxious to know it, after his eyes had gone through a battery of tests.
“Let’s see: the pupillary reactivity is normal; there is no corneal opacity; no lenticular cataractus changes; no opacification o
f the vitreous cavity; the optical nerve looks discreet and normal in coloration, and the visual field is within normal parameters. In short: everything seems to be fine.” The ophthalmologist, a plump man in his sixties wearing thick glasses, spoke in a particularly persuasive tone.
“Thank God! And thank you, Doctor.” After a short pause, he added,“But if everything is fine, how do you explain what happened?”
Sitting helplessly on his living room’s floor, unable to see anything, Leo had waited and waited. Eventually he had groped his way to the phone and dialed, by feel, 911. The ambulance had arrived, and the paramedics had taken him directly to Georgetown’s Hospital. As he was waiting to meet the ophthalmologist, his vision had begun to come back to him, slowly and tentatively at first. By the time the ophthalmologist had started to examine his eyes, his vision seemed restored. The doctor’s words stirred him.
“Well, Professor, we need to find out more. Temporary blindness is a rare phenomenon. It may be a symptom of something else. But before we get into that, there are more tests you need to take.”
“More tests?” wondered Leo in his mind. Two CAT scans and an MRI with “galadinium enhancement,” he was told.
The tests took hours.
Late in the evening, the ophthalmologist saw Leo in his office. With his file spread open on the desk, he said: “I can’t find anything wrong with your eyes, Professor.” He almost seemed frustrated, as he added, “I’m going to refer you to a colleague of mine.”
“What for? I trust your judgment, Doctor.”
“A second opinion can’t do any harm. I’ll call him, and let him look at your file. He is one of the country’s best neurophthalmologists.”
****
The MacPhersons’ routine was interrupted at the end of the second week, when Orsina picked up the phone and heard Emanuele’s voice. “I’m coming to the palazzo on Sunday. It’s against all my principles to set foot in Venice at the height of the tourist season, but I have urgent business. I won’t be bothering you and Nigel, but I want you, Orsina, to spare me an hour of your time for some family matters.”
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