by David Hewson
‘What is?’ she asked.
‘I never did know,’ he replied, looking at her with eyes clouded by some distant memory. ‘It was not what one might term a conventional upbringing. I had a brother. I know that. The family tree ends there. Children were never easy to father. I think that’s part of the condition. But enough self-pity. Are these quotations true? Of course. You can buy the books and read them for yourself, along with plenty of others. You might want to track down an obscure work from 1905 by a Scot, Andrew Lang. Published in London by George Smith, a man you may also know as the publisher of the Pall Mall Gazette, the favourite newspaper of Sherlock Holmes, and, in real life, as you would think of it, the first employer of the most ill-tempered vegetarian I ever met, George Bernard Shaw. These things are mostly in the public domain now, which is one of the benefits of age.’
The BlackBerry appeared in his hand, and a business card.
‘I have scans. I can send you PDFs if you like. Once we’re close enough to civilization to get a signal.’
‘Email from a three-hundred-year-old man,’ Teresa Lupo said, taking the card and handing over hers in return. ‘Now there’s a thought. What I meant was . . . how can this be true?’
He frowned, seemingly puzzled himself, and when he did so Saint-Germain’s appealing features seemed clown-like in their obvious frustration.
‘I can understand why you’d think I ought to be able to answer that but in all honesty I can’t. Not fully. It’s not magic, if that’s what you mean. Prick me and I bleed. Shoot me and I die. I’ve been very careful over the centuries to avoid physical harm. It wasn’t always easy.’
‘How?’ she insisted.
‘I was born this way. Do you ask a man with red hair where he got it? My first memory is of the monastic orphanage in Beaumont-de-Lomagne in southern France where we were brought up. Pierre de Fermat came from the same town, which is how I know so much about him. My first language was Occitan, the second French. The monks taught me to follow a very specific regime. No alcohol except wine, red preferably and that in moderation. Only hard cheese, never soft. Water from a known source. Regular exercise, never too violent. I am, I should say, a very fine swimmer, strong and with great resilience.’
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small antique glass medicine vial with a silver stopper.
‘Oh, and this. The monks made it for sale to the locals. They disappeared in one of Napoleon’s purges, and their note of the formula with it. My copy is the only one that remains, though a competent chemist could surely reverse-engineer the ingredients from a sample. This is the elixir to which Pushkin and so many others refer, not that I ever flaunted it in their faces. In fact I only ever offered it once to another human being, and that was a beautiful lady called Maria Cerny in Vienna in 1793.’ His expression became bleak. ‘Not that it made a blind bit of difference.’
‘I’m sorry. What is it?’
He shrugged and said, ‘Herbs mainly. It tastes rather like a Calabrian bitter, Vecchio Amaro del Capo, but with a different kind of kick. Very similar ingredients too. Hyssop. Ginger. Cascarilla. Quinine. Cochineal, the real thing, from Lanzarote beetles, not a test tube.’
‘Calabrian bitter has kept you alive for three centuries?’
‘Of course not!’ he said quite crossly, only to apologize immediately for his ill temper. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t spoken of this with anyone much. Ever, really. Least of all a knowledgeable scientist. Perhaps these things help, but on their own . . .? I don’t know and I’ve never sought an answer. I take them. I stay alive. Would you stop just to see what happens?’
‘I imagine not.’
‘The truth is . . .’ He wiped his forehead with a hand. There was a bright, strong moon in the night sky now. Whoever this strange man was he looked remarkably handsome under its silver light. ‘I didn’t understand what was happening until I was in my sixties and people started to notice. Then . . .’ His hands opened wide in despair. ‘Those same people were no longer there. Until that point, until I saw death begin to cross Maria Cerny’s lovely face, I regarded myself as an artist. A composer. A violinist. I painted. I wrote, discourse and poetry and fiction. When I was unable to save Maria, and felt and looked not a day older myself, something changed. Since that day I haven’t touched an instrument, written a note, or a word without good reason.’
He shook the little black book at her.
‘I read you a few of the interesting parts. There’s much more. I was there in Bologna when Galvani thought he might reanimate a frog with static electricity. Go and read Darwin’s diaries from the Beagle and look for mention of a Frenchman with unusual opinions on what you would now call genetics. In Strasbourg with Pasteur. With Pierre and Marie Curie in fin-de-siècle Paris. Watching Fleming work on staphylococci at St Mary’s in London.’
‘Arnaud . . .’
‘You think I’m mad?’
‘I think this is . . . improbable.’
He gazed at her for a long time, silent underneath the watchful silver moon. Then he said, ‘Doubt and faith are bedfellows, inseparable if only they knew it. I was in those places, Teresa, never under my own name, naturally. I could no longer use it in official circles any more, and I possessed enough money to own a multitude of identities. But I was there. Read their notes. If you can’t spot me I’ll be very surprised.’
‘And then . . .?’
Nothing that he came to encounter, he said, in universities, laboratories and private institutions spanning the globe, provided a single clue to the strange condition that kept Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain, alive.
‘After the Second World War, which I spent in Paraguay by the way, ever more desperate for answers, I returned to England again. Cambridge. A beautiful city, my favourite in that cold, nervous country. One day in 1953 I was sitting in the saloon bar of the Eagle pub, with a half-pint of warm bitter and a cheese and pickle sandwich. Francis Crick ran in from the Cavendish Laboratory, looking like a lunatic and bellowing to all and sundry that he and his colleague James Watson had, in his words, “discovered the secret of life”.’
Saint-Germain tapped the side of his nose.
‘Cambridge is a wonderful city, full of answers for those with the sense to ask the right questions. Whatever birth gave me it includes, as you may now appreciate, a fortuitous sense of timing. You know as well as I what Crick and Watson achieved that morning. They had unlocked the structure of the DNA molecule, the double helix. Our hereditary gene map. The secret code behind every creature, great and small. Where else in the world was I supposed to be at a moment like this?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Not,’ Saint-Germain continued, ‘that things happened quickly thereafter. So much of the science I needed had yet to be invented. Researchers required money. Biotech companies had first to be invented and then plied with resources. Half of my time was spent seeking answers, the other half applying my several fortunes placing bets on where some new breakthrough might lie. How else do you think I got to know those nice Google lads? Stanford is a wonderful place, full of the brightest and the best. All the same it was forty years before I was able to view my own DNA sample in a way anyone might begin to analyse. And then . . .’
He sighed and poured her a little more prosecco.
‘It’s different?’ she guessed.
‘Very. Strictly speaking, I wonder if I’m human at all. Not that the casual bystander, or even pathologist, would notice. It’s very subtle indeed. You have to look very hard.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about pathologists, Arnaud.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he conceded. ‘Nevertheless, as I have already said, like the beautiful Camilla Dushku, if she exists, I am a freak. In ways that, try as I might, I cannot begin to comprehend.’ He watched her intently. ‘This is all beyond me. I was born to be a violinist and a poet. When the true nature of my affliction became apparent I turned to studying mathematics, physics, computational science, medicine, anything that might he
lp me understand what makes me this way. I’m aware that some freak of nature inside my genetic code means that I simply do not age beyond what . . . fifty or sixty? There’s nothing sinister or supernatural in this. I am what I am, a genetic oddity, perhaps the result of some recessive disorder, like an albino.’ He pointed a slender, tanned finger at her. ‘If you accept this, as I’ve said, you must also realize I cannot be alone. That’s impossible. The others . . .’ His face grew sombre. ‘I thought I met a woman by accident once. There was something in the way she spoke. The way we . . . were. She committed suicide. One understands the temptation after a while.’ He shook his head. ‘The lack of sleep. Time dragging. Dead lovers . . .’
There was a long, awkward moment of silence, then he resumed.
‘My funding of certain biotech companies in the DNA field allowed me to examine my own without bringing it to the notice of others. As to how this sport in the blood works or what triggered the change . . . I’m at a loss. This is hardly surprising. You – and by that I mean the scientific community at large – still disagree about why human beings age in the first place. There are so many competing theories . . . telomere, somatic mutation, free radicals, mitohormesis, entropy . . . where does one ignorant and very old man begin testing what little he knows against any of them?’
‘You need a team, Arnaud.’
‘I need a team,’ he agreed then added hopefully, ‘So you do believe me?’
‘I don’t disbelieve you,’ Teresa Lupo said carefully after a long moment of thought. She glanced at the jetty where the Tintoretto had docked a few hours before. ‘That team was meant to be us?’
‘Meant to be. Where else was I likely to find so many distinguished scientists with knowledge of DNA and medicine and basic physiology? More fool me. I didn’t see the religious connection, any more than you. I thought if I lurked on the sidelines, met the right people. I’m desperate. I can’t . . .’ His eyes grew glassy. ‘My head won’t hold any more. It’s fit to burst already. Every answer begets a million new questions. It’s impossible.’ He stared at his feet, miserable again. ‘So I bribed my way into Ca’ Foscari to take a look at these men, my saviours, and my heart fell. If only I’d understood how dreadfully mundane they’d be. Such closed minds. Such a lack of basic curiosity. They’d probably want to dissect me and put the cadaver in a glass jar for an exhibition somewhere.’
‘That’s a little harsh,’ she suggested.
‘Is it?’
He took out the silver-topped flask. Then he removed a packet of tissues from his jacket, spat into one, and placed it inside the plastic cup. Saint-Germain’s dark, unfathomable eyes gazed at her as he held out both the elixir and the evidence of his DNA.
‘You were the exception,’ he said. ‘I’ve only ever offered this potion to one other human being. She was a woman I loved. It was a freezing January night in Vienna and what I gave her was as worthless as the talcum-powder remedies those plague-doctor quacks sold to the poor souls who lie beneath our feet.’ He shook the paper cup. ‘Not now. Not with this. It may take years to see the difference between your DNA and mine. You need to start work. Find the right people. They exist. Here . . .’
Dr Teresa Lupo didn’t move.
‘Imagine . . .’ He looked around them. ‘No more death, except by accident or design. No growing old, growing feeble, in the body, in the head too.’
She was silent. He placed the cup and the flask beside her on the grass of Poveglia and grasped her hands in his.
‘A life that lasts forever,’ he added.
He had long, strong fingers, without the hard pads they would once have possessed thanks to the unforgiving strings of a violin.
‘Would that still count as a life?’ she asked.
‘Of course . . .’
He struggled for something else to say. She hesitated, surprised by her own reluctance, yet, with only a moment’s thought, certain of its source.
His mouth hung a little open. She could see perfect white teeth, all real, she felt sure. There seemed nothing flawed about him whatsoever.
She felt trapped by the sharp sparkle in his eyes, and wondered whether he might reach forward at that moment and kiss her, and what she would do if that occurred.
‘Are you saying your answer’s no?’ he asked, bewildered.
‘I’m not quite sure, Arnaud . . . I thought I had unfinished business myself. Perhaps more pressing.’
‘Victor Carpathius Fingebat,’ he said.
She felt cold, frightened after a fashion. It was that old sensation, the one her mother always said was someone treading on your grave.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘The imperfect, the incomplete tense,’ he said. ‘The state we all live in, without knowing. Die in too.’
‘I’ve heard that somewhere before, I’m sure.’
‘You’ll hear it again if we’re to get anywhere with this. It seems to me . . .’
Saint-Germain stopped. Something had crossed his face. A sharp stab of physical pain.
‘Had a twinge,’ the count confessed. ‘I’d quite forgotten what one of those felt like.’ He breathed deeply, rhythmically, for a few seconds then smiled the way some men did when wishing to hide a sudden discomfort. ‘It’s interesting in a way. I’m sorry. I’ve been dreadfully rude. This entire spectacle on Poveglia . . .’ He stood up, rather shakily. ‘Engineered by Alberto Tosi. I seem to have taken advantage of his outrageous deceit. This is just as bad, if not worse, though I wouldn’t have wished it otherwise.’
He closed his eyes and she thought he winced.
‘You must excuse me. I’ve been thinking of this moment for a very long time. It didn’t quite turn out as planned. I need a minute or two on my own.’
Saint-Germain retrieved his hat from the ground, placed it on his head, then turned to her and said, ‘I forget sometimes. Time for me is never in short supply. For you on the other hand . . .’
Teresa waited, unsure whether he lacked the words or the breath to utter them.
‘I fear the opposite may be the case.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because we’re both searching for the opposite sides of the same coin. And you are looking for mine, while I see nothing but yours.’
‘You’re too cryptic, Arnaud. Are you all right?’
He sat down again and he seemed pale.
‘Yes. Listen to me, Teresa, please. If I’m cryptic it’s because I have my reasons. Whatever you feel, I’m no nearer the source of the mystery than you. Why else do I send you these stories? To make you do what I cannot: think and then act. What we seek here is the trigger, the catalyst. If we’re to find that I require from you the specific, the balanced and sane. What you need of me is the general, the irrational, impossible, the foolish even, or at least foolish in your eyes. Do I make myself even a little bit clear?
She could think of nothing to say.
‘No,’ Saint-Germain murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’
He got up again, took off his hat, scratched his head for a moment, then said, ‘Here’s an idea. What if the trigger is something particular? An event, say. What if, as an infant, I was left out in the sun when there was an astronomical occurrence, the falling to earth of a meteorite, one of those alignments of the stars and planets they call a syzygy?’
‘Unprovable, surely? Unless you know the date of your birth.’
He broke into a brief and wan smile then said, ‘There goes the scientist in you again. Though I should point out you sound more like a fortune-teller. They need those dates, don’t they? In order to know your star. As to the scientist, you need to gag that child and leave her in the corner for a while. Sometimes she talks out of turn. Oh . . .’
He flapped his arms about himself in exasperation.
‘Why am I wasting your time like this? I need a lie-down.’
The idea of losing him alarmed her.
‘Don’t go, Arnaud!’ Teresa cried. ‘Please.’
‘What use am I? Really . .
.’
Some, surely. There was a picture in her head, an image, invented or perhaps a memory. Of sitting in front of a computer in a dilapidated apartment on the Zattere waterfront, feeling the building rumble as a cruise ship edged along the canal outside, searching desperately for answers to questions she had yet to formulate with any great conviction.
‘That bird in its glass case, looking down at you, has as much of a grasp of the matter as either of us at this moment,’ Saint-Germain said somewhat severely.
‘So you can read minds now?’ she shot back at him. ‘Then what am I thinking?’
He hesitated for a while, leaning on his stick, looked down at the ground and said, ‘You’re wondering why this should happen now, of all times. The other you, I mean. Not the one here, in this form of the present.’
‘I . . .’
‘Silence, please. You’re asking yourself whether the trigger might not lie in something so obvious, so large, so visible, so close that it has quite passed you by because you are looking in all the wrong places. As a scientist you’re accustomed to hunting for answers where you most expect to find them. Among microscopic detail. In the detritus, the debris that remains once your neat and tidy experiments are done.’
‘That’s just common sense,’ she complained. ‘Where else would I look?’
‘Then what you require is uncommon sense,’ he said. ‘What if the trigger were something so simple and everyday it seemed invisible? A habit? A ritual? A recurring date in the calendar?’
‘Like Christmas?’ she suggested.
He stared at her.
‘Like carnival,’ Teresa said.
‘Possibly. Or a place perhaps. The city itself. The stones of Venice are remarkable. Never forget those. They’re your world now. They enclose everything that matters. Including your answers.’
