It was busy.
She redialed, and again, for ten minutes in a row.
When he finally answered, she had to control herself from scolding him for having been on the phone with someone else—who and what could be more important to him?
Leo listened with awe to her account of the black room. When she asked him the same question she had asked herself, he thought for a moment.
“Didn’t the book mention a key? I’m almost sure it did. Let me go look at it again. I’ll call back in a little while.”
Fifteen minutes later, Leo said: “Yes, here it is, in the chapter before the ‘Cave of Mercury’: Jupiter gave Mercury a lot of treasure for the benefit of mankind, but Mercury locked it up in his cave, and flew back to heaven, carrying the key with him. Orsina, I think you should take a closer look at the flying Mercury. Will you?”
“If I do it right now, will you stay on the line with me, Leo? I’ll take the phone with me.” A minute later she had returned to the Cave and was already up the ladder.
“Here I am,” she chronicled on the phone. “But the flying Mercury is above my head. Let me shine the flashlight on him … Oh my God, he’s got a key in his hand! It’s three, four feet away at the most, but I’m already at the top of the ladder. I’ll have to get something else to stand on.”
“Don’t be crazy, Orsina, please! You’ll fall off. Go and get a broom, or something with a hook on it. Orsina? Are you there? Orsina!”
THIRTEEN
Leo heard a crash, and the telephone in his hand went dead. Desperately, he redialed Orsina’s number, but a metallic voice told him that she was “not available at the moment.” In overreaching, Orsina had teetered, dropped the cell phone, and fallen sideways onto the mountain of folding chairs, from which she had slid to the ground. She was not badly hurt, but was shaken, as much by her uncle’s revelations and her own discovery as by the accident. She limped to the bathroom and examined her scrapes and bruises, then poured herself a stiff drink and sat down to think.
She was about to call Leo from the house phone when her husband returned. Something, what exactly she could not say, made her reluctant to tell him about the Cave of Mercury. For the first time in their married life, she lied to him, saying that she had slipped while reaching into a high cupboard for some old childhood photographs. Nigel comforted her, and offered to get them down for her. “No thanks, at last I got them down,” she said, and had some in a dresser drawer that she quickly produced. Why was she doing this? Lying to Nigel, and then going out of her way to corroborate her lie?
Her husband kept her company for the whole evening, so no opportunity occurred for a private call to reassure Leo. Only after Nigel had gone to sleep did Orsina creep to the house phone to call him.
Leo had suffered agonies of the imagination, compounded by his own impotence to save her. When he heard her voice, it was as though she were his savior. She told him what had happened, “But I’m not trying again until I’m really prepared for it. By the way, Nigel knows nothing about this.”
“You really shouldn’t try it alone,” he said, then regretted having invited himself, by implication, to the Palazzo Riviera.
Orsina did not hesitate: “I could wait until you come and visit us in Venice,” she said. “By then we may understand the book better, and be ready for whatever is through that door.” They said good-night to each other, but then lingered on the phone for another half an hour, speaking of this and that.
Over the following days, they talked several times about the progress they were making with The Magical World of the Heroes. Or rather, the lack of progress. Leo knew all about Greco-Roman mythology, as well as the writings of the major saints. These had an important role in the book. He understood the language perfectly, down to its baroque nuances. Yet many passages baffled him. The author, he concluded, simply belonged to another world, not only historically, but culturally and philosophically. So to penetrate the book, perhaps he should try to penetrate Cesare’s mind, which meant first of all to learn about alchemy.
But alchemy is not taught at universities. Rather than invite ridicule from his colleagues by speaking about his new preoccupation, Leo decided to go back to the Library of Congress.
Hanna was wearing not her glasses but contact lenses, and wondered if the professor would notice. He did not. A little disappointed, she heard his request. It surprised her that he would be interested in esoteric books. She eyed him appraisingly, and said: “Maybe you should start with C.G. Jung? I’ve read a few of his books. He became very involved in alchemy, of all things. But he had an orthodox scientific background, so his take is supposed to be well-balanced.”
“Well-balanced?” That adjective stuck in Leo’s throat as he plowed through Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, Alchemical Studies and Mysterium Conjunctionis. To his lucid Jesuitical mind, there was nothing well-balanced about alchemy, even as explained by Jung. For days he perused the thick books, diving into a universe of weird metaphors and outlandish symbols. Salt, Mercury and Sulfur; Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo; Coagulation, Sublimation, and Condensation; Chemical Weddings and Mystical Unions; the Alembic; Hermes, Aphrodite and the Hermaphrodite; Signatures, Signs and Seals of the oddest sorts; the Philosophical Egg and the Matrix; Kings and Queens, Suns and Moons and so on and on. Was there a method to the madness? he asked himself when he finished reading. Or were the alchemists, with Cesare Della Riviera and even Jung among them, deluded or outright mad?
On skimming through a biography, Leo learned that Jung himself had had visions and come close to losing his mind. After his own vision and the blindness that had followed it, Leo could well believe that the whole thing was a byproduct of mental illness. And what was more, Jung readily admitted that many of his notions stemmed from patients who were schizoid or borderline psychotic.
The books Leo had read were illustrated with drawings both by the alchemists themselves as well as by mental patients. The images exuded that alien and icy atmosphere that he had encountered in his vision. Maybe it was better to leave The Magical World of the Heroes undisturbed, even in its incomplete version. But by now he had an obligation to Orsina to take the plunge—dangerous, perhaps, for him, but even more for her. He must prevent her from getting into trouble. Having become familiar with the images and symbols employed by alchemists, he went home and reread The Magical World, penciling in notes around the margins.
“I’ve been trying to make out what these philosophic substances are,” said Leo in one of his clandestine phone calls to Orsina. Again, they were attempting to decipher the book, and comparing notes. “Take Vinum, for instance,” he elaborated. “It’s apparently another name for the magical Egg. I wish everything weren’t the same as something else, talk about misleading! Anyway, it appears in the perfect colors of red and white wine. It’s extracted from the magical Grape, and takes the same time to make as common wine, and like that it foams, boils, and digests, thanks to the internal and invisible fire. You can tell that it’s perfect when its colors become gold and silver. Then it says that its name comes from Vis, Latin for force or energy, because all the magical energy is contained in it.”
“And the rest of its name comes from one of those cabbalistic phrases, VIs NUMerorum, the energy of numbers, because this magic depends on number,” added Orsina. She had come to the same conclusion. “I think it must be describing an inner process of some kind, done with two opposing forces.”
“Gold and silver are equivalent to the sun and moon. Solar and lunar energy. Could they be like thought and feeling? One has to blend them to create a new kind of magical energy. How does that strike you?”
“Sure, why not? As though solar thought were directed and masculine, but it takes the feminine component of emotion to arouse it.”
“Maybe …” Changing tone: “Don’t you get the feeling we are off course, Orsina? Jung’s writings have been growing on me, but I fear that’s a dead end. It may be one aspect of alchemy, I mean as a kind of pre-psychoanalysis. But isn�
��t this supposed to be the real thing—magic?”
“Wasn’t Jung a bit of a magician?”
“So one biographer tries to make out, but—”
Orsina had hung up. Perhaps Nigel had come home. This was getting ridiculous, Leo thought as he made a note of what he was about say, and saved it for the next time.
“The next substance is vinegar, acetum,” Leo told Orsina the next day. “I remember that was one of the first things we talked about, when I suggested the book was a manual for newly-weds.”
“I’ve grown out of that idea.”
“Yes, well, so have I. Cesare Della Riviera says that this acetum is made from the wine through ‘mechanical Magic,’ by getting rid of its spirits. Then he gives the clue: acetum comes from A CAElo TotUM, ‘everything from heaven.’ In other words, it still contains spirits infused in it from the heavens, and he calls its power ‘great and incomparable.’ That’s high praise. I wonder if it’s a more intense inner state.”
Orsina was riveted; Leo could tell, and was glad to intrigue her so. “This is beautiful, what he says next:” he continued, “the vinegar causes the separation of the magic gold and silver, turning the latter into a water colored like finest azure or emerald, and the gold into tiny golden scales. This makes the magical solution that is the principal basis and key of the heroic Magistery.”
Orsina made no reply, so he said: “If you were to meditate intensely in these terms, I wonder if that’s what you’d see with your inner eye.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know unless we actually try it,” said Orsina. “And something about it scares me.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me, Orsina?” he asked, adding in his mind, “Am I not the ideal confidant?”
“Of course, Leo!” Which question was she replying to? Was she reading his mind? “You realize,” she elaborated, “that you don’t have the book’s secret edition.”
“Ah, that,” he said, again in his mind. “Yes, I do;” and aloud: “Why? Is the forbidden book so different?”
“I can’t answer that. Uncle has told me things about our ancestors that anyone would have a hard time believing. I myself wouldn’t have, only a few years ago. Or maybe not: now and then, when I was much younger, I had … Oh, never mind. Anyway,” Leo recognized an impending mood swing, one of the traits he enjoyed so much about her in spite of himself, “keep doing your homework, now. Be a good boy. Good-night, my dearest.”
Leo hung up, repeating the last two words over to himself, trying to get their exact intonation.
****
With electrodes attached to his head, Leo had taken the VEP, or visual evoked potential test. Dr. Elander had explained that the VEP’s objective was to test the optic nerve’s ability to send information to the brain. He was checking the results before Leo’s eyes. The neuropthamologist had a long record of research work conducted in hospitals and, especially, in psychiatric wards.
“I see nothing remarkable here, Professor,” Dr. Elander commented at last.
“Good.” Leo breathed with relief and added, “Could you take the electrodes off my head?”
“Not yet. Let’s try something else.”
The next test, Leo was told, was called ERG, or, electroretinogram. “It tests the rods and cones, a group of receptor cells around the macula.”
Leo realized that he was sweating and that his heartbeat was rushed as Dr. Elander and his assistant, an equally thin and serious young man, busied themselves behind a complex-looking machine. They both acted in a very methodical way, which exasperated Leo. Maybe he did not want to find out what had caused his blindness anymore; maybe he should be content with the fact that it had not happened again, and stop looking into it. Had he imagined being unable to see? What was he thinking? He remembered vividly his vision with Angela, naked and inviting; then the abyss; then the impenetrable darkness that had lifted from his eyes only hours later, at the hospital.
“Good enough,” said Dr. Elander, and asked his assistant to remove the electrodes.
Without another word, the doctor concentrated on the results. Some interminable minutes later, he said: “Professor, nothing remarkable transpires from this test either.” Then, he gave him a piercing glance. Leo dreaded and yet expected the logical question: “Are you sure you went blind? Or did you only imagine it? Or invent it? And if so, why?”
Leo didn’t know what to think anymore. The doctor waited for a while, and since no answer came, he eventually told him to go to the waiting room and collect his thoughts there.
Sitting alone in the waiting room, Leo was no longer sure he wanted to know anything. Also, he was beginning to doubt his own version of the facts. Maybe he had fallen in the dark, hit his head, and remained unconscious for a long time. A contusion in the back of the head, he had been told, could account for temporary blindness. But no trace of contusion had been found. Again, he was sweating. He was now also beginning to feel embarrassed. What if the Doctor thought he was hallucinating? Or lying? Or—
“Professor, could you step inside?” the assistant asked. “Dr. Elander is ready to see you.”
The doctor’s face gave nothing away. Leo was invited to have a seat. They were now in his studio, with no machines in sight, but rather framed diplomas and shelves crammed with books. The doctor seemed still to be expecting an answer, but Leo kept quiet.
“Here’s what I can tell you,” Dr. Elander said at last. “I confirm that there is no organic basis for your episode, and no residual damage to your eyes or in their components. Now,” he added in a different tone, “Would you mind describing exactly what you remember doing before the episode?”
“I told you already, nothing special.”
“Are you sure, Professor?”
“Well all right: I was doing a sort of meditation,” Leo confessed at last, “but something completely harmless, like daydreaming, or—”
“What sort of meditation? Transcendental? Or something religious, like the Spiritual Exercises? I’ve been around Georgetown enough to know that those exercises can cause strange reactions.”
“No. I was meditating on the earth and its relation to the stars.”
“Yes? Go on, there’s no reason to feel embarrassed.”
“I was thinking about heat and light, and the ideas became very strongly visual. Then I seemed to go into a world of colors.”
The doctor tilted his head, as though a new idea had occurred to him. “Were you sexually excited?”
“Not before the episode, but during it, yes, I was,” and how on earth could you guess that? Leo added in his mind.
Finally, Leo told Dr. Elander nearly everything about his vision, except Angela’s specific words to him. The doctor listened making just enough remarks to encourage Leo and put him at his ease. At last he said:
“I want to put an idea to you that you should hold just as a possibility.
“The visions you have described show a gift for eidetic imagery. Now is it possible that the temporary blindness was also, paradoxically, part of the vision? You did dial 911, I know, but somnambulists have done as much. But perhaps you were not fully awake until your eyesight began to return, when you reached the hospital.”
“I suppose anything is possible …”
The doctor continued. “Then consider the idea for a week or two. It’s doesn’t matter whether you accept or reject it, but your attitude will affect how we proceed.” He held out his hand. As Leo took it, the question came unwanted into his mind: was it worse to be blind, or mad?
FOURTEEN
While Nigel was at the language school, Orsina was busy arranging for Angela’s move to England. Their uncle was reluctant to offer anything beyond economic support. Orsina felt that he did not look forward to Angela leaving home, so she had tactfully looked into the arrangements herself. She spent what seemed like hours a day on the phone with different offices and departments at the University of Bristol, and collecting paperwork from various dusty offices in Venice.
With Nigel’s course nearing its end, Orsina decided to reward all concerned by throwing a party. She invited not only his classmates, but the six or seven language teachers and all the other pupils. “The trouble is,” she said to him, “there are too many women. We need some men. Young men, preferably.” She suddenly grinned. “What if we asked Angela? She has plenty of young men in her villa-hopping crowd.”
Nigel expressed mild concern; she should propose it to her sister, but Angela must promise to bring only respectable males. “No drugs, and no Bunga Bunga,” he laughed, trying out the Italian slang for the louche parties of Silvio Berlusconi.
“Would you like me to ask Rupert, too?” Orsina said. Rupert was Nigel’s son, the only offspring from his previous marriage, now at an elite business school in Switzerland.
“Go ahead, ask him,” Nigel replied.
Typically Italian, the party was arranged at the last minute in a state of frenzy. The night before, Orsina and Nigel worked late with Soma, Bhaskar, and specially hired help. Orsina was giving directions in the kitchen when her cell phone rang. And rang. She had left it in the salone and could not hear it. Nigel at last picked it up, and was surprised to find Leo, that unassuming American professor, calling his wife at one in the morning, and from Washington. A few awkward pauses followed, then Leo had a brainwave and said: “I have the information she needed about Angela’s university. Could you please let her know I called?”
Leo hung up and punched his fist into the palm of his other hand in anger at his own stupidity. He had been excited about his progress with The Magical World, and could not wait for Orsina to know about it. It hadn’t crossed his mind that her husband might answer her cell phone.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 9
