Quest for the Ark

by Taggart Rehnn

  Only when she was done did David realize these were the Countess’ private apartments. And then, he felt a bit uneasy: he knew many French women are fiercely liberated; the Countess knew about Irènes nymphomania, and had little problem with it; and she had also said to Sól that Conrad’s buns were made for sandwiches at the table, and what not. All of the sudden, he felt an irresistible urgency to leave.

  Before he could act on that impulse, the Countess showed him the bust of Theodosius II the Calligrapher and a Persian column capital.

  “Persian…as in Darius, Xerxes or Cyrus’s the Great, Persian…? Is it really that old?” he instinctively mumbled.

  Looking at him with a mixture of bewilderment, indignation and amusements, she replied: “Bien sûr, Monsieur, qu’il est authéntique! Bien sûr! Of course! We are not a junkyard here. We have no fake Renoirs or fake Time covers here, sapristi!”

  He apologized, laughing at the same time. “Touché! This place is stupendous, Votre Grâce!” he started, sheepishly. But she shook her head, playfully annoyed.

  “Now, Monsieur David, don’t mock me. King Conrad is old and he calls me what would have been appropriate back in his day. You are not a thousand years old.”

  David blushed. She caught his drift and laughed out loud. “Pas du tout! Non, Monsieur David: I have not brought you here to seduce you,” and kept chuckling for little while. “I realize that, as my late husband used to say, ritualism is not righteousness—and rationality, mind you, is neither. But you might think me one of those very religious people who know the Bible or the Torah by heart and is, all the same, an ocean of depravity,” she ironized.

  “You know where I come from. In my country we have very public figures that…” he began.

  “Of course. We had those too. They are everywhere. Religions made to provide a moral code and to bring people together have been turned into ways to twist into knots tax codes and to scapegoat minorities to distract from depravity and malfeasance of all sorts. If nobody gets hurt or coerced or abused, we don’t judge loose morals. As I said, my late husband said something, in Ancient Greek, that loosely translates as ‘repudiating what’s wrong by the deeds and the words is what approaches deserving respect’. Remember that when you’re alone in the depths, when no one will see what you think or do or say, but only the One who sees it all. I try to do that. Act with your heart, not with your ritualism for only guide, and you probably should be fine,” she added.

  “You and Haim sometimes speak as if you were twins. He told me something very similar just yesterday,” commented David.

  “I would not presume so much, but will take a compliment when I can get it. Now, please take a seat. I have to show you something. Then you will understand,” she finished, as she kept shaking her head, and went to get a box, the size of two stacked full computer keyboards.

  Once she brought it along, she sat near him. “You will have to be alone with vampires in what looks like an immense grave. Severian will take some blood bags into the tunnel to feed, in case he needs to. Conrad says he does not need to feed for long periods of time. And., at least for now, it seems we can take his word for it.”

  “Thank you for reassuring me,” joked David.

  “Not my intention. Not trying to alarm you either. But you might stumble on Conrad’s blood-son. So, to help you in that case, I have a small gift for you,” she replied.

  “A talisman?” asked David.

  “You can call it that,” said she. “I intend to give this to you. But first, please let me tell you what it is. Relax and don’t worry: my hands are busy holding the box!” she whispered, blowing a small laugh out of her nose. Being so close to her, David was a bit overpowered by the mixed smell of expensive perfume and pastis. But by now, his original ‘cougar’ fantasy had been replaced by childlike eagerness to know what that box contained.

  “I am beyond ashamed, Countess. Please forgive me,” said he, sitting beside her in the Louis XIV settee, admiring the rich imagery in the tapestry used to upholster it.

  “Never mind. You are forgiven. Now, you might not know, but one of my hobbies is to prepare all manner and mode of very French dishes with mushrooms. We have great specimens in the oak forest, even some superb truffles—so many in fact their antibiotics kill the grass—and other fungi in different parts of the Domaine. However, for the sake of variety, from time to time, I love to go mushroom-picking to the shaded areas in the pine forest across the river—although, technically speaking, that is part of the animal preserve.

  So, this one day, when the river wasn’t as high as it is of late, yet still quite powerful, I saw with my binoculars a few stupendous clumps of Lactarius and other fungi I much appreciate, and decided I must absolutely go harvest them.

  However, I slipped on the rocks, fell, knocked myself unconscious on a piece of wood, and taken by the current, I ended up, face down on the water, cornered in a part of the river that is almost like a little cove.

  Fortunately for me, pauvre Irène was on that same side of the river, making love to one of the forest rangers, and she saw me fall. She pushed him out and ran, naked from the waist down, jumped into the river, gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and saved my life. Pauvre chère Irène, if her underwear had been a national flag, she would have lived in perpetual national mourning. Say what you will, but aside from colossal breasts, a hyperactive pelvis, and insatiable orifices, she also had a big heart.

  Once I was safely out of the woods, she rested me, face up on the upper part of the beach, called for help on her cellphone; and, only then, when she saw I was perfectly safe, went back to finish what she had started with the stunned ranger. When the sapeurs pompiers arrived, she had finished her ‘activity’ with him—and was ready for more: after she explained to the sapeurs pompiers what had happened and who I was, and I was taken back to the castle, she went again into the woods, this time to entertain one of the firemen as well. When she came back from this last romp, she even brought me the mushrooms I had originally intended to pick up, and even recovered my beloved wicker basket.

  That day I waited for her to freshen up and, before she returned to her ‘more regular’ tasks, I called her to my room. And I gave her what I am going to give you now.

  She told me she didn’t want it, but since I insisted, she said if I could donate its value to help poor children instead, she would be delighted. So I did, and I kept this.”

  “That was a very tender and noble gesture on her part, indeed,” admitted David.

  “Indeed, Dr. Leib, indeed! For all her loose morals, she exuded tenderness. Do you Americans, who seem to spend so much time seething, scared or shocked—with good reason, mind you—ever stop to think what tenderness even means?” the Countess asked.

  “I really would have to look it up in the dictionary, to be honest. Of course I know what it means. My wife, I’d say, exudes that too—and my children sometimes when they are not naughty…” replied David.

  “Good examples. No need to get defensive. I have two lovers in Paris, Dr. Leib. I don’t need a third one. No worries, as you say in America, massacring Shakespeare’s tongue,” she said, stopping to clear her throat and briefly blushed, as she shook her head. She had clearly sipped too much pastis. “In any case, Irène and I had a few very philosophical discussions. She thought that tenderness is a natural reflex to protect that which is lovely and fragile but also contains in it the promise to develop into something even more beautiful. By protecting it, she used to say, we help fairness prevail, we preserve beauty, and we give hope to others that ugliness in this world would someday be less than today. That is the reaction of a normal brain vis-à-vis fragile beauty. Perverts, on the other hand, see tenderness as vulnerability; and vulnerability, as easy pickings. The ability of humans to protect the frail instead of preying on them will one day determine whether our species survives or is doomed. That sort of thing is what Irène used to say when she insisted I give to orphanages the value of what’s in the box. So you see, she might
have been a bit ‘overly liberated’, but also had a beautiful soul,” the Countess said, her eyes glistening as she rubbed an indiscrete tear off her eyes. “Excuse me, David.”

  “You loved her very much…” David said.

  “She was a decent human being. There are not that many, nowadays,” scoffed the Countess. “In any case, to understand why I want to give you this: First, you realize the dagger Conrad gave you has very sharp electrum edges, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Yes,” agreed David, “He said that is quite deadly to vampires. It’s seems it’s more the metal alloy than the sharpness or hardness of the blade. Now, there are many classes of electrum: the more gold the more gold-like, the more silver I guess the deadlier to vampires. Or maybe not, because on that logic, silver alone should be the deadliest?”

  “I am as ignorant as you on that account, cher Docteur,” confessed the Countess. “However, this, although a mostly feminine piece of jewelry, is a tassel collar with a whole-neck choker. Originally, the choker doubles to the front to hold an emerald brooch, which sits, pretty much, around that part of the neck where a man’s Adam apple should be.

  But, if you remove the emerald brooch and you flap it backwards, you can insert the locking pins, and so, accommodate a man’s broader sized neck, so you can breathe comfortably. This is about ten centimeters wide—four of your inches, give or take—so it should cover most of your neck’s length. And it’s made of high quality electrum.

  Clearly, I imagine you wouldn’t want your wife to see you wearing it—but please, I beg of you: wear in the underground. When you come back, you can put the emerald brooch back on, and take it, to give it to your wife—a little gift from a crazy old countess, a small token of gratitude for you saving us all. I’m sure Irène would approve if you do. Four inches for her would have been perhaps too much, I guess…” Suddenly realizing what it could mean in English, the Countess didn’t finish the phrase, chuckled, and blushed.

  “I doubt it very much,” replied David, blushing as well, and then, the two started laughing. “Well, I doubt anyone would see me wearing it; and, quite frankly, the added protection, I wouldn’t mind at all,” he finally confessed.

  “So, put it on and I will help you tailor it to your neck,” she suggested. “It will be our little secret—unless Conrad reads your mind, but hopefully he won’t mind either.”

  David nodded, the Countess took the choker out of the box, and, after some fumbling and failure, they eventually managed to fit it to David’s neck perfectly.

  “I don’t know if Barthé would approve of you wearing this…” said the Countess while helping David take it off, “not wearing matching bracelets, rings, brooches and a broad belt...” she chortled. He snorted, complicitly. For the length of the entire maneuver and a few minutes afterwards, the two became prey to uncontrollable laughter, letting themselves go not so unlike naughty children up to some serious mischief. When she was able to stop giggling, the Countess added: “…but pauvre petite Irène sure would,” now resting the box on the settee and standing up.

  Gently, but repeatedly, David kept nodding.

  “See Docteur, we French maybe are crazy but sometimes are good thinking ‘outside the box’” the Countess chuckled.

  “I have an enormous respect for French culture,” David admitted, almost apologetically.

  “Of course! Everyone who has study History should. We’re far from perfect, but we value freedom and use it well also. It’s not just the food, the arts, the wine, the science, our common Mother, Marianne, La France: She is a very generous Lady. My father—come to think of it, as crazy as me, if not more—used to say Marianne wouldn’t ever let me die away from Her,” the Countess added pensively.

  “How so?” David asked.

  “Once, when I was a little girl, I was playing by the Grotte, and I fell down the cliff into the lip of the cave. If I had fallen on the rock, I would have instantly died of head trauma. But one of our farm workers had stolen a massive cache of olives, and left this entire tarp—which in those days were made of waxed cotton duck—filled with lots of olives, at the entrance of the cave, guess to prevent getting caught, hoping to steal them gradually or to take them across the river, who could say. So I fell on the tarp, made tapenade of the olives, but got just a few minor bruises and scraps. Since then my father started calling me ‘p’tite presse-à-huile’, little oil press, and telling everyone that Marianne had sent her olives to save me, for she would never let me die outside her soil. That a million more things like that might explain why I loved my late father, as much a nutjob as I am,” she said, getting a bit emotional.

  “I guess your father wanted you to travel the world, so you could live forever,” David commented.

  “Maybe. But I can’t stay too long away from home. This castle, and our family are very old. As old as Theodosius II if not older, to the times of Ascaric and Merogais, Clovis, Charlemagne…I’m not surprised you had some misgivings about us: the Codex Theodosianus was quite anti-Semitic. But our Carolingian ancestors, Charlemagne and Louis le Débonnaire were so protective of Jews that the bishops started undermining the power of the king. When Louis the Pious kicked Saint Agobard of Lyon from his see in 834, Rome wasn’t happy. The Capétiens were quite anti-Semitic as well—and, during the Crusades things got really strange: after expulsion, Philippe II Auguste recalled the Jews to Paris, maybe to do what one British theologian said around that time: ‘Jews are the sponges of kings, they are bloodsuckers of Christian purses, by whose robbery kings despoil and deprive poor men of their goods,’ in short kings used ‘your people’ to tax people, and so avoided charging interest themselves. The church did much the same, by similarly circuitous routes. So, the Templars getting Jewish people to help them mitigate the power of untrustworthy kings should not surprise anyone,” the Countess said.

  “I appreciate your sympathy. I know we, as Jewish people, have been prosecuted. But Haim and I are Americans, as American as anyone else, and get a bit tired when we are singled out as anything else. Are all Muslims automatically Saudis or all Catholics automatically Vatican citizens? Of course not; but neither one needs an Aliyah to give their prosecuted a home; and neither is surrounded by much more powerful neighbors who at the first opportunity would try to wipe them out of the face of the Earth. So, yes, we’re Jewish and happy to help Israel because in this particular situation this is key; but the Americans among us are as American as the Statue of Liberty—maybe more because she’s, in fact French,” said David, smiling.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to put your misgivings at rest and irritated you. Maudite boisson! I think I drink too much. Even worse, our relatives from the Holy Roman Empire—the First Reich—were on the same boat as the Capétiens. The Hohenzollern, not much better. In Notre Dame de Paris, there are the two statues ‘Ecclesia’ triumphant and ‘Sinagoga’ disheveled. Jews sucking from a saw are depicted in Wittenberg. But possibly the worst offender, is that cross on the Charles Bridge in Prague. Can’t blame you for finding old Europe a bit unsettling sometimes; but those horrible, horrible things, are from centuries ago—the Jesus of Prague from 1696, I believe. I truly don’t know what else to say,” sighed the Countess.

  “Well, after all this, I’d say…would you do me the honor of playing some more Rameau? It sounded hauntingly ancient yet so…perfect to prepare my mind for spending a few days underground surrounded by vampires.”

  “Well,” she replied, “if it pleases you—and it helps, here’s the ‘Gavotte avec six doubles’ from his Suite en A.” Holding the box, David sat and listened and the unpleasantness gradually dissolved following those delicious mordenti, which the Countess expertly, and hauntingly, played.

  David was clapping immediately after the Countess finished playing the Gavotte when Pierre softly knocked on the door. “Madame, Messieurs Conrad, Severian and Mircea are back and request you and le Docteur David join them all at the laboratory”.

  When the Countess and David reached the laboratory, they found everyon
e looking at some incredibly precise sketches, clearly showing an underground structure. Conrad had shared his thoughts with an architect, and the architect then had traced the tunnel system to scale on paper, his hand guided by Conrad’s memories when was following the Templars and sketches of those tunnels drawn on numerous manuscripts now lost to fires, violence, neglect, rot, theft, or simply, time.

  As the Countess and David arrived, the carefully unfurled sketches were very slowly and very precisely been scanned into the castle’s mainframe. The next day, when the two ‘undies’ would arrive from Berlin, all available knowledge on those tunnels would be thus ready to be digitally input in their databanks, and the artificial intelligence on both units would be paired with the more sophisticated one at the castle, to design an optimal drilling strategy. Once the best possible route chosen, they would be able to estimate times and compute requirements in food, water, oxygen, blood, metallic supports, volume of soil to displace, and a whole host of related items. Maximizing speed while minimizing volume and weight of materials to transport, noise generation, chances of city street cave-ins and tunnel flooding, and so on would be critical for the mission’s success—and safety margins, all the same, would be rather thin at best.

  Completing scans and making all necessary calculations would now probably take a couple more hours—a time they would use to inspect the trucks, fill out some bureaucratic paperwork, check drone imagery from Saint-Pierre’s surroundings and go over a very long to-do list created by Severian.

  Before they set to work on that, to the delight of everyone, the Countess notified everyone she had had an unmitigated success with her friends in Paris and Chartres, which, Tony agreed, had also helped make his bosses in Rome far less apprehensive.