I cannot understand why it is necessary not to employ force. I have an immense fief, soldiers and treasures. If, as I have been told, it is in this time and in this country that evil will be incarnated and radiate with a force unprecedented in the history of the world, why should I not struggle against it with the material armaments at my disposal? I am ready to fill my prisons and erect pyres in all the squares in Toledo.
Every member of the Order of the Rose-Cross must choose a successor at the moment of his death. Who shall I designate?
Should it be the cleric Ambrosio or Almazan? Ambrosio is more reflective and more laborious. Almazan is more intelligent—but he is handsome, and beauty is a trap that nature extends to humans to make them fall. Oh, if I had been ugly, what would not have happened to me?
It is true that he has Moorish blood in his veins. To the Moorish race, for eight centuries, Christian Rosenkreutz affirms, the guardianship of the world’s intellectual treasure has been given.
I cannot believe that. When I remember his words on the subject, I began to doubt again. Christ’s enemy race might be an elect race! The followers of Mohammed had a mission higher than that of the defenders of the Cross! Evidently, it is in Arabic manuscripts that I study philosophy, my palace in Toledo and that of Alcala were built in accordance with the rules of Arab architecture, and it is through the telescope constructed by the Caliphs of Cordova that I gaze at the color of the planets.
The rose and the cross! Amour and knowledge! I am a blind man for whom a ray of light is commencing to filter through.
The rules of the Order of the Rose-Cross:
To relieve suffering in a disinterested fashion. I have not relieved any suffering.
To love God, in the sense of wisdom and verity, above all things. I have loved my own self above all things.
To be patient, modest and silent. I have been violent, proud and loquacious.
To devote one’s life to the progress of the spirit, in others and in oneself. I have not enlightened any man, and it seems that my ignorance had increased.
To gather once a year in a given place. I shall not go to Granada.
To choose as a successor a man of pure intelligence. Neither Ambrosio the stupid nor Almazan the skeptic. No one is worthy to succeed me.
I have resumed the Great Work. It will not serve any purpose. Putting the formulae that have been sold to me into practice has produced nothing but smoke. The majority of pretended sages are only charlatans.
I can no longer doubt. They exist, those whom Christian Rosenkreutz calls black magicians. They exist, they know that I know of their existence, and they have designs on my life.
Tomas de Torquemada…his ascetic youth…the unlimited passion for dolor…the void of the eyes…the mask of Satan...
Is he Satan incarnate?
There is a mystery in that Torquemada.
Christian Rosenkreutz is mistaken. It is necessary to bring about the triumph of good by force. I have just replied to the Queen. I shall set forth tomorrow to join her. I shall reform the Spanish Church.
How blissful solitude is! I understand here why the Arabs cherished box-trees and always planted them in their gardens. In their shade there is a kind of philosophical reverie, and the man who lives in their proximity thinks with more force. Arnaud de Villeneuve gives a recipe in his Thesaurus Thesaurorum for a beverage made with the root of the box-tree and a dozen ingredients that are violent poisons. Doubtless those poisons combat one another. Their mixture produces an incomparable spiritual exaltation, according to Arnaud de Villeneuve.19 Fortunately, the Thesaurus Thesaurorum is among the books that I have ordered Pablo to put on his horse.
Christian Rosenkreutz had received my message. He has come. I have talked to him about Almazan and my hesitations. He replied to me that there is no urgency, since I shall doubtless live for a long time. I find his insistence that I go secretly to Granada singular. What if that hides some monstrous trap? We are at peace with the Moors, but the Archbishop of Toledo would be an invaluable hostage for Sultan Abul Hacen. Nor do I understand why Christian Rosenkreutz showed such great anxiety when I told him about a few intoxications procured for me by box-tree root and Arnaud de Villeneuve’s twelve ingredients.
What has just happened to me is extraordinary. Just now I thought I heard a sort of rustle in the room next door to the one in which I read and sleep, like something soft rubbing against the wall. I picked up the bronze lamp, opened the door and looked out. I saw, or thought I saw, a giant rat with an extremely pale human face, which gazed at me for a second and fled through the other door of the room, which opens to the staircase. I set down the lamp and tried to pursue it, but I stumbled in the darkness. I heard its hairy tail brushing the stones. Then I remembered the Antichrist and his advent.
There is also a bat of extraordinary size that walks like a man over the gallery of the house. It is extremely fearful. At the slightest sound I make as I open the window it flies away over the roof. But when I extinguish the lamp it comes to adhere to the shutter and it listens for hours to my respiration. I regret not having a sword. I would deliver an immense thrust through the wood of the shutter and nail it. Yes, a sword, a sharp sword. I shall send Pablo to ask Almazan for one. It is necessary that I see at close range these first human exemplars, the annunciators of the reign of the Beast.
Since my arrival in this ancient dwelling, I have only conversed with Almazan and Christian Rosenkreutz. Pablo goes to Cantillana every morning to seek provisions. All three of them must know. Why have they not said anything? Are they afraid of the disturbance that it might cast into my mind? Have they noticed a commencement of the horrible evolution in my own features? There is only one mirror here, which is in the Mabeyn on the ground floor. It is an old, damaged mirror that only sends back deformed mages of which I cannot be proud. Last night, I contemplated myself in it at length by the light of a smoky lamp. In my philosopher’s tunic I look like a great white owl devoid of wings. There was a disquieting quiver of felt around me. Do the bat and the rat also come to adhere to the mirror in order to see their increasing animality?
I have gone to the stables, unhitched the horses and chased them away into the countryside. Why should they be the slaves of their fellows? I saw a shepherd in the distance with a cloak of black feathers. He had a crow’s beak and croaked as I approached. He fled, hopping on his feet, when I tried to seize him.
Jesus Christ said: Immediately after that day of affliction, the sun will darken and the moon will no longer give any light.
Now, the twilight has just been singularly brief, and the moon, which ought to be high in the sky, has not appeared. The unfortunate Pablo’s eyes are strangely shrunken, and just now I heard him barking in the courtyard. A dog, a wretched dog!
It isn’t worth the trouble of writing anything, for beasts cannot read.
Almazan almost let Archbishop Carrillo’s notebook fall from his hands, so full of amazement was he. He formed new hypotheses. Perhaps his master had poisoned himself with Arnaud de Villeneuve’s beverage, and it was the beverage that had troubled his mind. But he really had seen a circular hole in the shutter of the room. The Archbishop might have pierced it himself in order to keep watch on what was happening on the gallery. What about Pablo? Perhaps he had also made him drink the same poison with the aim of procuring him a salutary spiritual intoxication. Why had he sent him to Seville by night? Perhaps simply to satisfy his whim to have a sword in order to nail a chimerical bat to his shutter.
Christian Rosenkreutz remained, for Almazan, an enigma that he could only clarify in Granada—for he thought that, in spite of everything, his duty was to obey the Archbishop’s last will and to do so with the precipitation that the latter had recommended.
Holding his horse by the bridle, he had arrived while reflecting at the end of the avenue of poplars that led to the road. In the direction of Seville he could see someone in the distance heading toward him. It was his servant Guzman, coming to join him as he had ordered.
He brought him up to date with what had happened. Guzman was to go to Cantillana, where there was an officer of the Sainte-Hermandad. It was him, initially, whom he was to inform of the Archbishop’s death. Afterwards, he would go back to Seville, go to see the governor on his behalf, tell him about the night’s events and take care of Pablo’s burial.
Almazan would head for Granada immediately, taking the road via Carmona and Marchena.
At the moment of quitting Guzman, he thought that his departure might seem inexplicable, and he gave his servant the piece of paper on which the Archbishop had written his supreme desire. Guzman was to put it in the hands of the governor of Seville.
In any case, Almazan thought that his voyage would not be of long duration, and that he would be able to return in a few days.
And the two men drew away in different directions.
The brick tower of Cantillana was still visible behind him when Almazan remembered that he had not eaten or slept since the day before. He went past a posada at the confluence of the Vir and the Guadal, where boatmen gathered. He dismounted and went in.
He sat down on a rickety stool and a brunette girl, thickset and dirty, served him. The cool shade of the low-ceilinged room and the sudden influx of wellbeing that nourishment gave him caused him to become involuntarily drowsy. With his forehead leaning on his arms, he struggled for some time but then let himself slip into a kind of torpor.
In the midst of that transparent slumber, the girl, whose head and torso he could see between two earthenware jugs, began to smile, and that smile displayed luminous teeth. She leaned over, and a beam of light coming from the door, which stood ajar, played over her neck, which was thin and milky. She was not brunette. A bright gold flowed around her delicate head. She seemed to be reaching out toward Almazan and her smile had suddenly given way to an ardent expression. She advanced her lips lightly toward him and creased her eyelids, as if she were appealing to him before swooning.
He straightened up suddenly. He passed his hand over his face. He understood, by the light illuminating the room in the inn, that dusk was falling. The thickset girl had left the counter and was moving around heavily, her eyes dull.
He gave her a silver coin. He leapt on to his horse.
A delay of a few hours, he thought. It’s necessary for Aboulfedia to tell me where I can find her.
He did not want to reflect. His instinct was driving him. And it was along the road to Seville that he returned, through the twilight.
IV. The Sabbat at Aboulfedia’s House
Aboulfedia’s house was situated in the Triana district, near the extremity of a side-street that faded away into waste ground. It was surrounded by a high white wall that prevented it from being visible from without. Aboulfedia had recently had the entrance door remade in wood of enormous thickness, as if it might have to withstand and assault.
Almazan was surprised, after he had knocked on that door, to see the guardian who came to open it manifest no astonishment at his nocturnal visit. He did not ask who he was; he took his horse into a dilapidated stable that was to the left, between a few palm trees, and, holding his lantern aloft, he preceded him into a pathway that led to the house.
It seemed to Almazan that the servant was one-eyed and powdered, and that his unique eye was fixed on him amicably. Having arrived at the perron and fearing that he had been mistaken for another visitor who was expected, Almazan stopped and said: “Go inform Alboufedia that his former pupil Almazan wishes to speak to him.”
But no, there was no mistake. The one-eyed man made a slight movement of his shoulders, which meant that there was absolutely no need to inform Aboulfedia, and, as if to aid him to mount the three steps of the perron, he took Almazan by the arm, subjecting it to such a long and familiar pressure that the latter nearly sent him sprawling in the garden with a blow of his fist. But he contained himself.
The strange servant had just pushed him into a large room surrounded by columns, and had already departed at a run into the garden, doubtless to open the door to a newcomer, for distant raps had resounded at the portal.
The room that Almazan had just entered was dimly illuminated by two lamps that only emitted a confused light. There was stifled laughter, a rustle of fabric, and a form enveloped in a large chestnut-brown cape allowed a door-curtain to fall back and disappeared. Almazan only had time to see a white hand and the glint of a ruddy gemstone.
He was alone. He looked around. The walls were covered with precious hangings in laminated silk, which were faded and soiled. A disemboweled cushion had spread its feathers in a circle like the pale humor of a wound. In a corner, an empty pitcher had been forgotten, which must have contained wine.
Almazan waited for some time. In the end, impatiently, he approached the door at the back of the room. He lifted up the heavy cloth that covered it and was about to open it when it swung on its hinges and he found himself face to face with Aboulfedia.
He was clad in an Arab gandourah with broad sleeves, under which he was wearing a chemise in transparent pink silk, extensively ripped. His enormous and ridiculous belly could be seen through it, and even the graying hairs on his chest. His sparse jet black hair, recently dyed, was stuck to his temples by a moist cosmetic. He was puffed up, shiny with unguents, impregnated with aromatics, polished by massages and was trembling on the minuscule sticks of his legs like a painted gourd, in the midst of a perfume of Oriental rose and human fat.
He hastened to close the door behind him. His broad face had brightened at the sight of Almazan. He always seemed to be laughing because of the breadth of his mouth and the two wrinkles that framed it, but he seemed astonishingly sad as soon as one had perceived that that hilarity did not proceed from his humor but merely from the conformation of his features.
Immediately, he began speaking volubly.
He knew everything. News traveled more rapidly than cavaliers on the roads. People were looking for Almazan everywhere. An important individual whom he had visited that very morning had been found dead in the vicinity of Seville. Now he was in hiding. He had done well to think of his former master in medicine, the reproved Aboulfedia. Hs actions only concerned him. He was safe in that house in Triana.
Almazan could not help blushing, and thought for the first time how unusual his action was. He hastened to disculpate himself. He had nothing to fear. So many rumors ran around that had no foundation. The governor of Seville had a document in his hands that legitimated his absence. If he had come to find Aboulfedia...
He lowered his voice. He had a great deal of difficulty explaining the objective of his visit. He sensed its strangeness. And then, the atmosphere of the house, Aboulfedia’s costume, the heaviness of perfumes, the dirty sumptuousness of things, were causing him a physical malaise.
The eyes of the old physician were blinking now with irony, and his prominent chin cleft his mouth even more broadly.
“It’s with regard to this affair,” said Almazan. “I’ve come to consult you about the power of certain poisons. Do you believe that the atmosphere of a room can be rendered mortal to the extent of bring about an almost immediate decomposition of the blood on the part of anyone who breathes that atmosphere?”
But Aboulfedia took him by the shoulders and shook him gently.
“Why this lack of sincerity? Have I not taught you all I know about poisons? When I went to Rome to make that foolish attempt to convert the Pope to Judaism, I leaned that the masters of the art of poisoning are the Italians, who can make people die simply by brushing them with a fingernail or a hair. Life is such a little thing. You know that as well as I do. Be frank. You don’t care at this moment about the effects of poison on an old man who is dead. And you’re right. You’re only thinking about the joy of a young man who is alive...”
Almazan was about to protest. The old physician stopped him. He was sure of his fact.
“How lucky you are! You’re thirty years ahead of me. It took me all that time to perceive that pleasure as
the only certainty. When I was your age, I had such a great faith that I would gladly have been burned for no matter what idea that was dear to me. To the point of going mad, I adored the Jewish race, science, the Messiah. The messiah! I believed in him with all my soul. When the astrologer Avenar announced that he would appear at midnight on the second of March 1467, I recall that I had such a great spiritual intoxication that I had difficulty preventing myself from dancing. I fasted and prayed for three days in order to be worthy of receiving him, for I had no doubt that it was to my house that he would come first.
“All the Jews in the Santa Cruz quarter had left their doors open, and I saw their credulous faces and black bonnets in the tranquil night. I too left my door open. Well, when midnight chimed at the Giralda, who do you think came into my house? A poor prostitute that the alguazils were pursuing for some misdeed or other. I hid her and had her lie down in my bed while I continued to wait on my threshold. In the morning, I scrutinized the dawn anxiously, and the Santa Cruz quarter was full of square-shouldered men gazing at the sky. Avenar must have been mistaken by a few hours, and we waited during the following nights.
“Insensate that I was! I hadn’t understood that it was the revelation of my destiny that the astrologer had seen in the planets, and that my Messiah really had come for me in the magnificent form of a whore. I was waiting at my door and the Messiah was in my bed. Years passed, and it was only when my face had become as jaundiced as a rotten orange and my belly had swollen in a caricaturish fashion that I realized that all powerful pleasure is in youth and that there is no God to forbid it to us, nothing but death to steal it from us forever.”
The Angel of Lust Page 14