The Forbidden Book: A Novel

by Joscelyn Godwin

  Leo had no clue that he aroused such interest. One day, Claire had gone to his office to discuss a paper with him, but had found it empty. She sat down, having decided to wait for him. On his desk, on top of a pile of papers and junk mail marked “M.R.—Please shred,” lay a sealed envelope. “Professor Kavenaugh” was written on it in a calligraphy she recognized: Orsina’s. The letter had been hand-delivered. She picked it up and smelled it. A faint fragrance of roses hit her nostrils. She thought about it for a moment, and then slipped it inside her backpack and left the office.

  Claire walked briskly to her dorm room, resisting the impulse to read the letter on the way. In her room, she ripped it open with her fingers. Paper cuts made them bleed as rose petals poured out of the envelope, but she did not care. She read the letter once, then reread it. She became flushed as tears streaked down her cheeks. When her fingers stopped bleeding, she folded it carefully, tucked it back inside the envelope, and swept the rose petals away.

  Now, years later, first she had witnessed the Professor’s strange behavior in class, and associated it with the news about Orsina’s kidnapping. Then she had read the notice Mrs. Reed had posted on the lecture hall: “Professor Kavenaugh has gone to Italy on urgent business. All his classes are canceled.” Mrs. Reed had judiciously omitted “indefinitely.” “Please check with your adviser for alternate classes.” Claire had left at once, heading not for the counselor, but for her room off campus. She took Orsina’s letter from her locked files, made a photocopy of it, and walked back to the university.

  When Claire reached the office of the Dean of Georgetown College, the receptionist warned her that it was almost impossible to see Dean Throckmorton on a walk-in basis. “I’ll wait here, all the same,” said Claire, and sat down in the anteroom. Finally, she was admitted and took a seat, facing the Dean.

  “Dean Throckmorton, I have something to confide.”

  The Dean was taken aback; she said nothing, but showed that she was intrigued.

  “What I’m here to tell you may be of vital importance. That said, my … disclosure may jeopardize my status here. So, before we proceed any further, I have to ask you for a note in writing in which you promise that this will not be the case.”

  “What?” The Dean looked carefully for the words. “This is not a joke, is it?” The young woman looked too serious for it to be a joke. “Well, Ms. Staines, in my many years I’ve never come across such a request. Don’t you think this is a bit unorthodox?”

  “It is, Dean Throckmorton. But I have an outstanding academic record, and I’m close to getting my M.A. I can’t risk it.”

  “I understand, but I’m afraid I can’t promise what you are requesting.”

  “Please! It may be a matter of life and death!” Claire had raised her voice, and now dropped it as she leaned forward over the desk. “It has to do with Professor Kavenaugh,” she added.

  The Dean yielded to the student’s request, and scribbled down a note on her own stationery. Claire read it over, and asked the Dean to date it. She did.

  Finally, Claire explained the whole incident of the letter Orsina had written for Professor Kavenaugh, and personally delivered to him. The Dean was aware of Orsina’s kidnapping, and of her sister’s death. She also knew that the young aristocrat had been an intern at the Italian Department, and that Professor Kavenaugh had just left, very suddenly, for Italy. And Mrs. Reed had had a quiet word with her about an Inspector from the Italian police who had questioned her on the phone about the professor in relation to Orsina. This was no time to reprimand the student for her action. Could she see the letter? Claire handed over the photocopy of it, and left the office with the promissory note.

  The Dean put on her reading glasses:

  My dearest Leo,

  I got an extra glimpse of the truth, this morning, staring at my breakfast; I thought I heard it say: “What’s the point, Orsina? What’s the point in pretending?”

  Here’s the scenario for a match made in heaven: the sun and the moon finally meet, and there is instant recognition; so much so, that the first time they look into each other’s eye, planets change course and collide. But then, oddly, they engage in hide and seek.

  How many art house movies have we seen together? And the concerts! Do you think I didn’t notice that you only picked harpsichord recitals and contrapuntal music from the most Teutonic of composers? So many times I felt that those pieces may actually improve if played backwards. God forbid if we should listen to Schubert or Chopin. But it didn’t matter at all. What mattered was being together, in our proper place in the firmament.

  The other day I was at the cherry blossom festival. Spectacular to say the least; and you, silly one, why didn’t you come? Promise me at least that we will go together to the Valle del Jerte in Extremadura, in Spain. I’ve seen cherry blossoms in Japan, now here in Washington, but the ones in Extremadura are heavenly. I was little more than a child when I went there with my parents, and I remember running from tree to tree on a carpet of petals, euphoric, inebriated. Shall we get the plane tickets, Leo?

  Why am I not addressing you as “Professor”? Do I still need to explain? It was absurd even on our first meeting. By the way, you’ve never drunk wine in my presence. Were you afraid of what you might reveal? But then, afraid? How could a “Leo,” a lion, be afraid of wine? You aren’t a Protestant, for God’s sake! The Sufis did nothing else, though Islam prohibits it—and good for them!

  When I was a child I used to help out during the vendemmia, for fun. We have a villa in the Veronese with acres and acres of vineyards. I was given shears and a pail and was set loose, on my own. How many bunches of grapes would I collect? Not many. I loved to wander from vineyard to vineyard, eating grapes here and there. Then, when the grapes were gathered in one of the many tuns, I and other children would wash our feet with detergent, jump in and squish the juice out of the grapes by stomping on them. Then we would drink must, so much of it, even if we were told not to. And at night we would be sick.

  Our houses then were full of old servants. Many of them have died since, but one survives: Marianna, the villa’s housekeeper. I had been assigned an English nanny, a spinster who would have preferred to be in charge of a boy. She was so cold, I often wondered if it was all an act? It seemed impossible to me that one could be so unfeeling. Anyway, Marianna was all the opposite, so whenever we were in the countryside, I spent time with her. She always washed her hair with vinegar, and sometimes mine too, not with vinegar, of course. She spoke to me in her dialect. At first I didn’t understand, but I wanted to, so I learned it. Of the many things she said, one I remember in particular: la Baronessina l’è dotata, angioleto. I, the “little angel,” was gifted.

  Then, one day, Marianna suffered a stroke. She was taken to the hospital, and the diagnosis was hopeless. Not that anybody let me know, but I overheard my parents say so. I felt very sad. I wanted so much to help her, but wasn’t even allowed to go visit her at the hospital. So, I began to want her to get well. I did not pray; I simply wished her well with all my heart and with all my mind.

  To make a long story short, a few weeks later Marianna was back at the villa, healed. Her recovery had made no sense to the doctors, and the word “miracle” had been the only explanation.

  I was overjoyed, but not surprised. Somehow it made sense that I could help her where doctors could not. Remember, I was a child. There were other episodes in which I was able to influence events at a distance. I won’t go into them now, but I want you to know that I have never told any of this to anyone.

  As I grew up and began to reason the way I was taught at school, I distanced myself from all this. It no longer made sense to me, on the contrary: it scared me. So, I decided to neglect my “gifts” altogether.

  From time to time there was some strange talk in our house, particularly from my uncle, Hermeticism and the like. He needed a lot of words to grasp what was obvious to me with no training whatever. Moreover, I would look at him, and see that he was not
really “there,” try as he might, always gloating on a mass of ill-digested esoteric erudition. My father was more like me, I think, but for some odd family tradition he was not supposed to delve into his brother’s field of studies, and never did. Whatever: I was a free spirit, and found most places in Europe stuffy. That’s why I came to America: to go riding with the buffaloes—but instead I stumbled on you!

  And even in Rome, you were already beaming your message, though you didn’t realize it, and perhaps still don’t, but I doubt that very much.

  That flicker of recognition when our eyes met, it wasn’t “just” lovers’ recognition, though that would be magical in itself. You must have read Ficino’s De amore. There. You are as gifted as I am, Leo, but even more in denial. Don’t ask me why you’re gifted, I don’t know. I do know that we are not just like each other. It’s more than reciprocity; we are each other.

  We haven’t even kissed yet, you fool, and I’m proposing, what? Marriage? And a lot more. I’m proposing our hierosgamos. Even if you don’t know it rationally, you must sense that through our sexual union we can participate in the condition of divinity. This truth has found its way even among the official teachings of Christianity: think of Mary as the Bride of Christ.

  But maybe I’m saying too much. Let’s fly to Extremadura, let’s go see the cherry blossoms together, shall we?

  Soon my year in Georgetown will be up. Will you let me go? That would be against nature, I can’t think of any other way of putting it.

  I have written to you from the heart. Your intellectual deconditioning has been very thorough, I know. But it’s beyond human power to resist what is divine in us. Remember, we’re not only in each other: we are each other.

  Yours forever,

  Orsina

  NINETEEN

  There were long lines at immigration in Rome’s airport. Leo, who had come through it so many times, had never seen it like this. It was overrun with policemen and even soldiers brandishing machine guns, as if the country were under martial law. Because of the acts of terrorism and desecration, the reprisals and riots, security had become the first priority in Italy.

  Finally, Leo stepped up to the booth and handed over his passport. The policeman, a man in his twenties of dark complexion, looked at it and then at him. Watchfully.

  Once more, he checked the photo in the passport, and then tried to match it to Leo’s face. “Is this an old picture?”

  “Seven or eight years old, I think, I don’t remember exactly,” Leo replied.

  “And the passport was issued by the Italian Embassy in Washington. Why?”

  “I live there, and I have dual citizenship. My mother is Italian.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s the other citizenship?” he asked with a mistrustful tone.

  “US.”

  “American, ha? And why do you use the Italian passport?”

  “To avoid long lines when I come into Europe, though not this time, I guess.”

  The policeman did not seem convinced. He dialed a number on the phone, and spoke in an undertone for some time. Leo could not hear what he was saying, and was getting nervous. Was something the matter?

  Eventually, the policeman hung up the phone and said: “Make sure you renew your passport, and use a current picture. Next in line.”

  Leo went through security screening all over again, got on another plane and flew directly to Venice. Near the railway station, also heavily patrolled, this time by carabinieri, he checked into a cheap hotel. He wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible, and close to an escape route.

  The concierge asked for his passport and he handed it over. After some compliments on his Italian, he realized that he must have given him his US passport. But of course: it was blue, not burgundy. “No matter,” he thought.

  He was shown to a tawdry room with rickety furniture and light gray industrial carpeting. The bathroom was just adequate, the sheets were clean. He dived into bed and slept for twelve hours.

  It was four o’clock in the morning, Venice time, when Leo woke up, numb from the effects of the two flights and the long sleep. He was very hungry, but even more in need of fresh air and exercise. Why not walk around the magical city until the cafés opened? Many previous stays in Venice had thoroughly familiarized him with the city. He dressed and set off along the Strada Nova, then changed his mind. He would probably find breakfast sooner off the tourist circuit, in a workmen’s café, so he turned back and crossed the Grand Canal, heading southwest into the drab regions of parking lots, delivery docks, and decrepit warehouses.

  Leo went cautiously down the dark alleys, and felt more comfortable on the canalside fondamenta, better lit and more open to the sky. As it was, the only signs of life were some pantegane looking every bit as vicious as their reputation—teeth-gnashing rats the size of plump cats. Leo kept well away from them, and his mind was soon turned inward.

  His crazy decision to come and save Orsina armed only with a seventeenth-century book on alchemy had put him beyond the pale of normality, if his vow to be her savior had not already done so. He must take the consequences. Obviously the normal world was impotent in the face of recent events. But would he fare any better? In The Magical World of the Heroes Cesare Della Riviera had built a masterly labyrinth to lure the Hermetic wayfarer, only to bog him down in deliberate ambiguities; the threads of his quicksilver discourse constantly dispersed and then regrouped in the most inscrutable ways.

  Leo had reread the entire book during the flight from Washington, ending it with the usual feeling of bafflement and exasperation. He had stared for quite some time at the cover of his edition. It seemed to show the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus about to be rudely awakened by an Islamic bomb. He thought of San Petronio, Santiago, Chartres, the other churches in France, and, lately, the rococo Wieskirche in Bavaria and St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna; of the continuing assaults on mosques; of the demonstrations and riots in the streets of so many cities in Europe. A sleeping continent had woken up to the consequences of an alien presence, with no love for Western culture and no respect for the separation between reason and religion. But how was Leo to connect this with the book that he had just finished?

  His heart called him back to Orsina. Because he had linked his destiny with her and her ancient family, he had felt compelled to plunge into the abnormal world of their forbidden book. He had tried to understand it, decipher it, make sense of it. But that, he finally conceded, had proved impossible. He desperately needed elucidations, and to obtain them he must get hold of the real book, the family’s own manual of transcendence.

  He tried to call to memory every hint about the forbidden book. It passed down a single line, apparently, being given to only the eldest son or daughter of each generation. The rest of the family knew about it, because they witnessed the traditional presentation on the marriage eve, but it didn’t seem that they were much interested. He couldn’t know that Angela had been reading parts of it, despite her uncle’s prohibition. Did each possessor hand on his own copy, or was there a stock of them from which each received his or her own? Presumably the latter, for Leo recalled the unopened copy that he had handled in the villa library, “privately printed for the Riviera family in 1757.” It was doubtless presented in just this form, so that admiring relatives would gain nothing from looking at it. Aristocratic reserve and respect for tradition would do the rest—the sort of thing, in the Baron’s words, that must be “incomprehensible to an American.”

  As for copies in circulation, Orsina had one, and Emanuele must have another. In 250 years, probably no more than a dozen generations had elapsed, so there was almost certainly a cache somewhere, and the family secret must include knowledge of its whereabouts. It must be sufficiently hidden to prevent unqualified persons from blundering into it, but then what would happen if one of the heirs died before his eldest child was married and initiated? There must be a fail-safe system that would enable the heir, and only the heir, to find it for himself.

  Anyone could read
the incomplete 20th-century edition that Leo now had in his pocket. Maybe that had been released as part of the system, containing the necessary clues if only one knew how to apply them. But only a family member would know that there was anything relevant there.

  If the stock were hidden somewhere at Villa Riviera, Leo’s case was hopeless: there was no way he could enter and search under the eyes of the Baron, the servants, secretary, and probably the police. But, “it’s as if book and palazzo went hand in hand.” Those had been Orsina’s words, almost her last words to him. The recollection came with pain and urgency, both intense—almost her last words to him. He had lost his train of thought, but managed to recover it, and with an intuition. Of course, this must be the Cave of Mercury which she had discovered, and would have explored in good time, if only … He must take up her quest at the point where she had been forced to drop it, in the heart of the Palazzo Riviera.

  By now Leo’s meanderings had taken him through the maze of Santa Marta’s working-class alleys to the Giudecca Canal. A café was open, and Leo slipped in to pee and have breakfast.

  As he stepped out and walked along the fondamenta under the first rays of dawn, he tried to recall everything he had heard about the Palazzo Riviera and its inhabitants. It was understaffed, he knew that, with only an Indian couple as the permanent guardians. Orsina had described them during one of her nighttime conversations: “Like a pair of devoted dogs, who’ll do anything for the person who feeds them. All they care about is to make enough money to bring their children from India. Nigel spotted that right away, and bought their loyalty. They must be deadly bored in Venice, though. The house is empty for months on end, and I’ve no idea what they do with themselves.”