by Umberto Eco
It was as if I had drunk too much alcohol: I could no longer see my companions, who were lost in the shadows, I could not recognize the forms gliding past me, hazy, fluid outlines.... Then I felt my hand grasped. I didn't turn, not wanting to discover that I had deceived myself, because I caught Lorenza's perfume, and only then did I realize how great was my desire for her. It must have been Lorenza; she had come to resume the dialogue of fingernails scraping on my door, to finish what she had left unfinished the night before. Sulfur and mercury joined in a wet warmth that made my groin throb, but without urgency.
I was expecting the Rebis, the androgynous youth, the philosopher's salt, the coronation of the Work of the White. I seemed to know everything. All my reading of the past few months was, perhaps, now resurfacing in my mind, or perhaps Lorenza was transmitting the knowledge to me through the touch of her hand. Her palm was moist with sweat.
I surprised myself by murmuring obscure names, names that the philosophers, I knew, had given to the White. With them, perhaps, I was calling Lorenza to me, or perhaps I was only repeating them to myself, in a propitiatory litany: White Copper, Immaculate Lamb, Aibathest, Alborach, Blessed Water, Purified Mercury, Orpiment, Azoch, Baurach, Cambar, Caspa, Cherry, Wax, Chaia, Comerisson, Electron, Euphrates, Eve, Fada, Favonius, Foundation of the Art, Precious Stone of Givinis, Diamond, Zibach, Ziva, Veil, Narcissus, Lily, Hermaphrodite, Hae, Hypostasis, Hyle, Virgin's Milk, Unique Stone, Full Moon, Mother, Living Oil, Legume, Egg, Phlegm, Point, Root, Salt of Nature, Leafy Earth, Tevos, Tincar, Steam, Evening Star, Wind, Virago, Pharaoh's Glass, Baby's Urine, Vulture, Placenta, Menstruum, Fugitive Slave, Left Hand, Sperm of Metals, Spirit, Tin, Juice, Oil of Sulfur...
In the pitch, now grayish, dark, an outline of rocks and withered trees, a black sun setting. Then an almost blinding light, and sparkling figures reflected everywhere, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. Now the smell was liturgical, churchly; my head ached; there was a weight on my brow, I saw a sumptuous hall lined with golden tapestries, perhaps a nuptial banquet, with a princely bridegroom and a bride in white, then an elderly king and queen enthroned, beside them a warrior, and another king with dark skin. Before the dark king, a little altar on which a book was set, covered with black velvet, and a lighted candle in an ivory candlestick. Next to the candlestick, a rotating globe and a clock surmounted by a tiny crystal fountain from which a liquid flowed, blood-red. Above the fountain was a skull; from an eye socket slid a white serpent....
Lorenza was breathing words into my ear. But I couldn't hear her voice.
The serpent moved to the rhythm of slow, sad music. The king and queen now wore black, and before them were six closed coffins. After a few measures of grim bass tuba, a man in a black hood appeared. At first, in a hieratic performance, as if in slow motion, the king submitted with mournful joy, bowing his meek head. The hooded man raised an ax, and then the rapid slash of a pendulum, the blade multiplied in every reflecting surface, and the heads that rolled were a thousand. After this, the images succeeded one another, but I had difficulty following the story. I believe that all the characters in turn, including the dark king, were decapitated and laid in the coffins. The whole room was transformed into the shore of a sea or a lake, and we saw six vessels land, and the biers were carried aboard them; then the vessels departed across the water, faded into the night. All this took place while the incense curled, almost palpable, in dense fumes, and for a moment I feared I was among the condemned. Around me many murmured, "The wedding, the wedding..."
Lorenza was gone. I turned to look for her among the shadows.
The room now was a crypt or sumptuous tomb, its vault illuminated by a carbuncle of extraordinary size.
In every corner women appeared in virginal dress. They gathered around a cauldron two stories high, in a framework with a stone base and a portico like an oven. From twin towers emerged two alembics emptying into an egg-shaped bowl; a third, central, tower ended in a fountain....
Inside the base of the framework the bodies of the decapitated were visible. One of the virginal women carried a box and drew from it a round object, which she placed in a niche of the central tower, and immediately the fountain at the top began to spurt. I had time to recognize the object: it was the head of the Moorish king, which now burned like a log, making the water of the fountain boil. Fumes, puffs of steam, gurgling...
Lorenza this time put her hand on the back of my neck, caressing it as I had seen her caress Jacopo in the car.
The woman brought a golden sphere, turned on a tap in the oven, and caused a thick red liquid to flow into the sphere. Then the sphere was opened, and, in place of the red liquid, it contained an egg, large, beautiful, white as snow. The woman took the egg out and set it on the ground in a pile of yellow sand. The egg opened, and a bird came out, still unformed and bloody. But, watered with the blood of the decapitated, it grew before our eyes, became handsome and radiant.
They decapitated the bird and reduced it to ashes on a little altar. Some kneaded the ash into a paste, poured the thin paste into two molds, and set them in the oven to bake, blowing on the fire with some pipes. In the end, the molds were opened, and two pretty figures appeared, pale, almost transparent, a youth and a maiden, no more than four spans high, as soft and fleshy as living creatures but with eyes still glassy, mineral. They were set on two cushions, and an old man poured drops of blood into their mouths....
Other women arrived, with golden trumpets decorated with green garlands. They handed a trumpet to the old man, who put it to the lips of the two creatures still suspended in their vegetable lethargy, their sweet animal sleep, and he began to insufflate soul into their bodies.... The room filled with light; the light dimmed to a half-light, then to a darkness broken by orange flashes. There was an immense dawn while the trumpets sounded, loud and ringing, and all was a dazzle of ruby. At that point I again lost Lorenza and realized I would never find her.
Everything turned a flaming red, which slowly dulled to indigo and violet, and the screen went blank. The pain in my forehead became intolerable.
"Mysterium Magnum," Agliè said calmly at my side. "The rebirth of the new man through death and passion. A good performance, I must say, even if the taste for allegory perhaps marred the precision of the phases. What you saw was only a performance, but it spoke of a Thing. And our host claims to have produced this Thing. Come, let us go and see the miracle achieved."
59
And if such monsters are generated, we must believe them the work of nature, even if they be different from man.
—Paracelsus, De Homunculis, in Operum Volumen Secundum, Genevae, De Tournes, 1658, p. 465
He led us out into the garden, and I felt better at once. I didn't dare ask the others if Lorenza had come after all. Probably I had dreamed it. After a few steps we entered a greenhouse; the stifling heat dazed me. Among tropical plants were six glass ampules in the shape of pears—or tears—hermetically sealed, filled with a pale-blue liquid. Inside each vessel floated a creature about twenty centimeters high: we recognized the gray-haired king, the queen, the Moor, the warrior, and the two adolescents crowned with laurel, one blue and one pink.... They swayed with a graceful swimming motion, as if water were their element.
It was hard to determine whether they were models made of plastic or wax, or whether they were living beings, and the slight opacity of the liquid made it impossible to tell if the faint pulse that animated them was an optical illusion or reality.
"They seem to grow every day," Agliè said. "Each morning, the vessels are buried in fresh horse manure—still warm—which provides the heat necessary for growth. In Paracelsus there are prescriptions that say homunculi must be grown at the internal temperature of a horse. According to our host, these homunculi speak to him, tell him secrets, utter prophecies. Some revealed to him the true measurements of the Temple of Solomon, others told him how to exorcise demons....I must confess that I have never heard them speak."
They had very mobile faces. Th
e king looked at the queen tenderly.
"Our host told me that one morning he found the blue youth, who had escaped somehow from his prison, attempting to break the seal of the maiden's vessel.... But he was out of his element, could not breathe, and they saved him just in time, returning him to his liquid."
"Terrible," Diotallevi said. "I wouldn't want such a responsibility. You'd have to take the vessels with you everywhere and find all that ma nure wherever you went. And then what would you do in the summer, on vacation? Leave them with the doorman?"
"But perhaps," Agliè concluded, "they are only Cartesian imps. Or automata."
"The devil!" Garamond said. "Dr. Agliè, you're opening a whole new universe to me. We should all be more humble, my dear friends. There are more things in heaven and earth ... But, after all, a la guerre comme a la guerre..."
Garamond was awestruck; Diotallevi maintained an expression of cynical curiosity; Belbo showed no feeling at all.
To dispel my doubt, I said to him, "Too bad Lorenza didn't come; she would have loved this."
"Mm, yes," he replied absently.
So Lorenza hadn't come.
And I was the way Amparo had been in Rio. I was ill. I felt somehow cheated. They hadn't brought me the agogô.
I left the group and went back into the building, picking my way through the crowd. I passed the buffet, drank something cool, though I was afraid it might contain a philter. I looked for a bathroom, to splash cold water on my temples and neck. This accomplished, I again felt better. But as I came out, I saw a circular staircase and, suddenly curious, I was unable to resist the new adventure. Perhaps, even though I thought I had recovered, I was still looking for Lorenza.
60
Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labvrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out.
—Artephius
Descending, I came to a room below the ground, dimly lighted, with walls in rocaille like those of fountains in a park. In one corner I saw an opening like the bell of a trumpet. I heard sounds coming from it. When I approached, the sounds became more distinct, until I could catch sentences, as clear and precise as if they were being uttered at my side. An Ear of Dionysius!
Evidently the ear communicated with one of the upper rooms, picking up the conversation of those who stood near its aperture.
"Signora, I'll tell you something I've never told anyone else. I'm tired.... I've worked with cinnabar, with mercury, I sublimated spirits, did distillations with salts of iron, fermentations, and still I haven't found the Stone. I prepared strong waters, corrosive waters, burning waters, all in vain. I used eggshells, sulfur, vitriol, arsenic, sal ammoniac, quartz, alkalis, oxides of rock, saltpeter, soda, salt of tartar, and potash alum. Believe me, do not trust them, avoid the imperfect metals; otherwise you will be deceived, as I was deceived. I tried everything: blood, hair, the soul of Saturn, marcasites, aes ustum, saffron of Mars, tincture of iron, litharge, antimony. To no avail. I extracted water from silver, calcified silver both with and without salt, and using aqua vitae I extracted corrosive oils. I employed milk, wine, curds, the sperm of the stars which falls to earth, chelidon, placentas, ashes, even..."
"Even...?"
"Signora, there's nothing in this world that demands more caution than the truth. To tell the truth is like leeching one's own heart...."
"Enough, enough! You've got me all excited."
***
"I dare confess my secret only to you. I am of no place and no era. Beyond time and space, I live my eternal existence. There are beings who no longer have guardian angels: I am one of them...."
"But why have you brought me here?"
Another voice: "My dear Balsamo! Playing with the myth of immortality, eh?"
"Idiot! Immortality is not a myth. It's a fact."
I was about to leave, bored by this chatter, when I heard Salon. He was speaking in a whisper, tensely, as if gripping someone by the arm. I also recognized the voice of Pierre.
"Come now," Salon was saying, "don't tell me that you too are here for this alchemical foolishness. And don't tell me you came to enjoy the cool air of the gardens. Did you know that after Heidelberg, Caus accepted an invitation from the king of France to supervise the cleaning of Paris?"
"Les façades?"
"He wasn't Malraux. It must have been the sewers. Curious, isn't it? The man invented symbolic orange groves and apple orchards for emperors, but what really interested him were the underground passages of Paris. In the Paris of those days there wasn't an actual network of sewers; it was a combination of canals on the surface and, below, conduits, about which little was known. The Romans, from the time of the republic, knew everything about their Cloaca Maxima, yet fifteen hundred years later, in Paris, people were ignorant of what went on beneath their feet. Caus accepted the king's invitation because he wanted to find out. What did he find out?
"After Caus, Colbert sent prisoners down to clean the conduits—that was the pretext, and bear in mind that this was also the period of the Man in the Iron Mask—but they escaped through the excrement, followed the current to the Seine, and sailed off in a boat, because nobody had the courage to confront those wretches covered with stinking slime and swarms of flies.... Then Colbert stationed gendarmes outside the various openings of the sewer, and the prisoners, forced to stay in the passages, died. In three centuries the city engineers managed to map only three kilometers of sewers. But in the eighteenth century there were twenty-six kilometers of sewers, and on the very eve of the Revolution. Does that suggest anything to you?"
"Ah, you know, this—"
"New people were coming to power, and they knew something their predecessors didn't. Napoleon sent teams of men down into the darkness, through the detritus of the capital. Those who had the courage to work there found many things: gold, necklaces, jewels, rings, and God knows what else that had fallen into those passages. Some bravely swallowed what they found, then came out, took a laxative, and became rich. It was discovered that many houses had cellar trapdoors that led directly to the sewer."
"Ça alors..."
"In a period when people emptied chamber pots out the window? And why did they have sewers with sidewalks along them, and iron rings set in the wall, to hang on to? These passages were the equivalent of those tapis francs where the lowlife gathered—the pègre, as it was called then—and if the police arrived, they could escape and resurface somewhere else."
"Légendes..."
"You think so? Whom are you trying to protect? Under Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann required all the houses of Paris, by law, to construct an independent cesspool, then an underground corridor leading to the sewer system....A tunnel two meters thirty centimeters high and a meter and a half wide. You understand? Every house in Paris was to be connected by an underground corridor to the sewers. And you know the extent of the sewers of Paris today? Two thousand kilometers, and on various levels. And it all began with the man who designed those gardens in Heidelberg...."
"So?"
"I see you do not wish to talk. You know something, but you won't tell me."
"Please, leave me. It's late. I am expected at a meeting." A sound of footsteps.
I didn't understand w^hat Salon was getting at. Pressed against the rocaille by the ear, I looked around and felt that I was underground myself, and it seemed to me that the mouth of that phonurgic channel was but the beginning of a descent into dark tunnels that went to the center of the earth, tunnels alive with Nibelungs. I felt cold. I was about to leave when I heard another voice: "Come. We're ready to begin. In the secret chamber. Call the others."
61
The Golden Fleece is guarded by a three-headed Dragon, whose first Head derives from the Waters, whose
second Head derives from the Earth, and whose third Head derives from the Air. It is necessary that these three Heads belong to a single and very powerful Dragon, who will devour all other Dragons.
—Jean d'Espagnet, Arcanum Hermeticae Philosaphiae Opus, 1623, 138
I found my group again, and told Agliè I had overheard something about a meeting.
"Aha," Agliè said, "what curiosity! But I understand. Having ventured into the hermetic mysteries, you want to find out all about them. Well, as far as I know, this evening there is the initiation of a new member of the Ancient and Accepted Order of the Rosy Cross."
"Can we watch?" Garamond asked.
"You can't. You mustn't. You shouldn't. But we'll act like those characters in the Greek myth who gazed upon what was forbidden them to see, and we'll risk the wrath of the gods. I'll allow you one peek."
He led us up a narrow stairway to a dark corridor, drew aside a curtain, and through a sealed window we could glance into the room below, which was lighted by burning braziers. The walls were covered with lilies embroidered on damask, and at the far end stood a throne under a gilded canopy. On one side of the throne was a sun, on the other a moon, both set on tripods and cut out of cardboard or some plastic material, crudely executed, covered with tinfoil or some metal leaf, gold and silver, of course, but effective, because each luminary spun, set in motion by the flames of a brazier. Above the canopy an enormous star hung from the ceiling, shining with precious stones—or bits of glass. The ceiling was covered with blue damask spangled with great silver stars.