It was hours later when Leo felt that it would be safe to exit. The day had been a physical trial of cold and discomfort, but the satisfaction of having burgled the palace and successfully abducted the book sent thrills up and down his spine.
At the stroke of eleven he levered the iron door open once more, closed it, standing on the narrow canalside step, and jumped up to grasp the top of the garden wall. After a few agonizing edgings from arm to arm, he was able to drop down onto the fondamenta and scuttle across the little bridge. Moments later, a crowd began to emerge from Ca’ Rezzonico, the baroque palace next door, and he blended into it as it moved towards the vaporetto stop.
Venice goes to bed early on weekdays. Ravenously hungry, Leo resorted to the only place open near his hotel: the railway station buffet. Back in his quarters, he had a hot bath. Finally, he took the tome out of the backpack and laid it delicately on the small table. He sat down, switched on the old lamp with its greasy parchment shade, and unlatched the book’s tarnished silver clasps.
TWENTY
Everyone was surprised when Felipe walked into Madrid’s police headquarters to confess a crime. The Commissioner began to pay close attention as the anxious, shortish and skinny young man explained how he had blown up the statue of Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moor-Slayer. He expressed deep sorrow for the damage and the human suffering he had caused, and insisted that he was responsible for it, no one else.
A few hours later, Felipe was being interrogated by the Inspector in charge of the Santiago investigation, who had flown in from Galicia the moment he was notified. All sorts of details emerged that only the perpetrator could be aware of. There was no doubt: Felipe was the culprit, and had acted of his own volition.
El Pais, El Mundo, La Vanguardia—all the Spanish newspapers were quick to report the development, echoed by the TV and radio. Traveling rapidly, it bounced around the newsrooms of Europe and the rest of the world. No Islamic militant faction had had anything to do with the bombing of Santiago: it was the work of a lone Catholic fanatic!
In the meantime, Inspector Ghedina was following a new lead. In Verona’s old center, once the forum of the Roman city, he was in the car beside Colucci, both dressed in plain clothes. Four other plain clothes agents, on loan from the local police force, were ready to close in on the suspect. The phone call had arrived a few days before. A gruff male voice with a Roman accent had asked the Baron for a million Euros in cash if he wanted to see Orsina alive again. A specific time for the drop-off of the money had been given as well as an address, in Milan. The Baron had managed to keep the extortionist on the line long enough for the police to trace the number. It came from a cell phone, registered to one Rossella Bortolan. She lived in Verona, in Piazza delle Erbe. At exactly 18:00 the four policemen, as well as Ghedina and Colucci, were to knock on her apartment’s door.
The Inspector checked his watch: 17:56. He got out of the car. With his assistant and the four agents, he climbed to the third floor. The agents brandished their Beretta PM 12S submachine guns. At 18:00 on the dot Ghedina banged on the door.
There was a distinct aroma of polenta coming from the apartment. A middle-aged woman wearing an apron opened the door. The Inspector showed his credentials and said: “I have reason to believe that Rossella Bortolan lives here.”
The woman was terrified at the sight of the guns and started to cry. “Of course she does, she’s my daughter. What has she done?” she managed to ask through her tears.
“We’re here to find out,” Ghedina replied, collectedly. These were the things he hated about his job. Assuming this was not a crafty front, here was a housewife cooking and he had to threaten her with the artillery.
Two agents had found Rossella in her room, poring over a schoolbook. They escorted her to the Inspector at gunpoint. The plan had been to take her to the nearby station for questioning. The threatening call to the Baron had come from her cell phone, there was no doubt about that. But was it possible?
Ghedina was looking at a frightened fifteen-year-old with glasses and freckles. “Signora Bortolan,” he said to the mother, “do you mind if we ask your daughter some questions?”
“What have you done, Rossella? What have you done, figlia mia?”
“Mama’s a drama queen,” thought Ghedina. Aloud to Rossella: “Listen, you don’t need to be afraid; just answer my questions, and don’t lie. We’re here to help.” To the agents: “Lower your guns, will you?”
Rossella did not look reassured at all. What was he going to ask her? If she had made an extortionary call to Baron Riviera della Motta about a ransom payment in a gruff male voice with a distinct Roman accent? He took the roundabout approach. Where did she go to school? what grade? did she like the teachers? and the classmates? Finally, he came to her cell phone: could he take a look at it?
“No.”
“No? And why not?”
“Because it’s been stolen.”
“What?”
Rossella repeated her reply word by word, but sotto voce, as it had annoyed the Inspector.
“When? When was it stolen?”
“About a week ago.”
“A week?” and, in his mind: “Shit!” Aloud: “You don’t know who stole it, right?”
Rossella, however intimidated, gave him a commiserating look.
“Touché,” he thought. Too much fast food, too little sleeping, too many false leads: he was fed up. Anyway, he asked: “Where was it stolen, would you know that?”
“I think at the tearoom, downstairs. I was having a hot chocolate, on my way back from school. I’m pretty sure I’d laid it on the table. When I left, it wasn’t there, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Have you found it? Can I have it back?”
The Inspector told the girl and her mother that everything was fine, and not to worry. He could not wait to get out of the apartment, and away from the four agents, who were now eyeing him with something less than respect. He had quite a reputation, already. Not only was he in charge of Italy’s two most talked-about investigations, about which he seemed not to have a clue, but he was also the one who insisted on detaining a group of penniless students because they practiced martial arts, as if that were a crime.
“To hell with it,” thought Ghedina, “nobody said it was going to be easy.”
****
The book that lay before Leo was bound in dark green vellum, gold-stamped with the heraldic achievement of the Riviera: the Tree of Life and the spring issuing from its roots. The leather was stretched over wooden boards, to which the elaborately fashioned clasps were firmly anchored. The book’s size had already raised his suspicion that it was not the same as the private edition of 1757 that he had encountered in the library of Villa Riviera—In fact, it was not even a printed book, but a manuscript. The title page read: Il mondo magico de gli heroi. Opera dell’illustrissimo Barone Cesare della Riviera. Manu proprio, Anno MDLXXXIII: the work of the illustrious author himself, written in his own hand in 1583!
The cover was rubbed, but the pages inside were scarcely marked by the fingers that had turned them—not many, Leo supposed, in over four hundred years. How had it survived in such fine condition? Perhaps it was never opened, but kept in its velvet-lined casket like the bones of a saint in a reliquary—and on an altar, too. Moreover, the pages were not paper, but fine parchment, on which the handsome script of Cesare della Riviera stood out in dark brown ink.
Leo was exhausted, but this unhoped-for discovery revived him. He leafed through the book to get a sense of the whole presentation. The familiar text, written in large Roman letters, occupied the center of each page. Framing it was a commentary, written in smaller italics.
Now Leo turned back to the first page and began skimming the main text. It was noticeably shorter than the version he was used to, missing all the references to biblical passages, Catholic doctrines, writings of the saints, and the activity of demons. This streamlined text confirmed his intuition of earlier in the day: that those had been the icing on the
cake offered to sweeten the Church’s censors when the book was printed, twenty years later. How young had Cesare been when he wrote it? He must have been a prodigy of esoteric learning, thought Leo as he started on the commentaries.
If the book was to yield any useful secrets, this is where he would find them, or so he hoped. But as he returned to the reality of the situation, exhaustion overwhelmed him at last. If he tried to read on in his present state, he could miss subtleties and hints, perhaps even codes, that might be there. Reluctantly, Leo fastened the book shut, put it in his suitcase, and went to bed.
Early the next morning he got up, dressed, breakfasted, and returned to his room for a session of serious study.
By the standards of the 21st century, the commentaries were wordy, but they soon made it plain that the alchemy in question had nothing to do with turning lead into gold. The “laboratory” was nothing more or less than the human mind, and the equipment was the will and the imagination:
Pay no heed to the puffers, to those who at immense expense build furnaces with mighty bellows and purchase curiously formed, fire-resistant vessels into which they pour I know not what dross and ordure, thinking that through its cooking and the foul stench it emits they are bringing the First Matter to the state of nigredo, then, adding dew gathered with difficulty and great labor at dawn, they consider that their precious matter is nourished and purified thereby. Not so, for they are ignorant mountebanks and great deceivers of humanity. Yet the common crowd loves to be deceived by the promise of great riches, little heeding that in pursuit of these, what little gold they already possess is quickly spent, and that they are left poorer than before. The fire-resistant alembic of the true alchemist is his imagination, when his eyelids are closed, his ears covered, and all distractions put far from him. He should enter his secret chamber, to which none other possesses the key or even knows the entrance, and there he should sit conveniently in a chair, his feet planted firmly on the floor and his hands laid in an orderly way upon his knees. Let him be cautious and moderate in his practice, and not strive too soon for too high a goal. The initial practice should not exceed the time that others, in their childlike ignorance and superstition, dedicate to the vain repetition of the Rosary. Now, the fire of the alchemist is nothing other than the great desire he has for the conquest of the Second Tree of Life. Without this secret fire, all his efforts are in vain, for he does not care sufficiently whether he achieves it or not. Only the Hero, for whom the conquest of the Tree is more desirable than food or drink, more alluring than a beautiful virgin’s bed, more precious than life itself, can light this fire and, with the bellows of the breath, fan it into ever more ardent flame. Then, when the fire is raised to its highest degree of ardent aspiration and contempt for the lowly condition of common mankind, let him begin the separation.
Cesare della Riviera went on to detail how this separation was to be imagined, and what imagery would be helpful in the process. It involved a kind of self-analysis, in which the various parts of one’s being were methodically scrutinized. One tried to perceive the procession of visual and verbal thoughts as if one were a detached spectator, letting them rise and fall. Likewise, one watched one’s emotions, especially as aroused by emotion-laden images or memories, which would be different for every person. In this way, one came to know what prejudices, habits, knee-jerk reactions, and obsessions made up one’s personality.
Leo thought that he recognized what the author was driving at: in his recent studies in Washington he had repeatedly come across an aphorism by Hermes Trismegistus: “He who knows himself, knows the All.” But as he continued to read, he realized that that was not it. Conventional reasoning, he should know by now, rarely applied in things esoteric. In fact, there was no question of changing the traits of one’s personality; this Leo found the most novel and disturbing element in the work. The alchemical path that the author was describing had nothing to do with moral improvement or curing one’s faults, once they were seen for what they were. The author wrote about this:
Take no heed for your sins, for all men are sinners and will ever be so, and their sins are like the innumerable heads of the Hydra, which grow again as soon as they are cut off. If you fast, you will acquire a sin; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do evil unto your spirits. Let the Hero pass on to his further labors, else he will never conquer the Nemean Lion, lift Antaeus from his parent Earth, or take the Apples from the Tree of the Hesperides.
The more he read, the more Leo felt distanced from the world of the senses. Gradually the author unfolded a series of meditations intended to reverse the normal attitude to reality. Instead of imagining the physical universe as the container for the individual body, and the body as the container for life and consciousness, one was to turn the whole thing inside-out. The outermost container was one’s own individual consciousness, before it contained any object. Inside that came the thoughts and desires of one’s inmost self. These, in turn, created the illusion that we know as the physical body; and this imaginary body, with its five senses, then exteriorized the final illusion of a physical world, in fact the whole universe as we know it.
Leo had studied enough philosophy to recognize the theory that “I” am the only reality, with all its dangerous consequences for “you.” But this was about taking the heavens by storm and going far, far beyond the human condition. In the more cryptic language of the commentary:
The body does not possess life, as the soul possesses life, for life is not a product of the body, but the body is a product of life. Let the Hero transfer the center of himself into this profound life, removing the limit that makes of it a finite quantity; let him strengthen it with the spirit and make its flame ever greater and higher, till he surpasses all those conditions and supports that come to him from without, of which he has need only so long as he is external to his own being, confined to the elementary order and active therein. When he is no longer separate from his own being, when his life is completely integrated, so as to be identical to the life of its life, there occurs the renovation and the restoration of the Hero. His body is in effect no longer a body, but is now in the state of a power that he fully possesses, hence it is free from all that which may affect its sensible manifestation; and this is the incorruptible, celestial, and radiant body.
There came a knock on the door. In fact, Leo thought that he had heard knocks, on and off, for a while. It felt as if he were being called back to the world. It was the maid, asking to tidy up the room.
“Just a moment,” he replied. He quietly closed the book, and placed it in his backpack. Then he opened the door and let her in. Shouldering his pack, reluctant to take any risk with the precious book, he walked to a nearby bar, enjoying the tepid air of a sunny autumn day, as he had felt somewhat cold in the hotel. He ate a panino, drank a cappuccino, then a glass of mineral water, then another one. Finally, he headed back to the hotel.
The concierge—a little old man with a hare-lip—gave him an inquisitive look. The last thing Leo wanted was to be conspicuous, so he improvised. “I’m still trying to get over my jetlag. I guess there’s no better remedy than sleeping it off, wouldn’t you say?” The concierge nodded in silence as Leo was already climbing the stairs.
In his room, he laid the manuscript carefully on the table, and plunged back in.
The text had a lot to say about the Labors of Hercules, all twelve of them, and the importance of the number 12 in the esoteric traditions, but the commentary explained that they were all just varieties of the alchemical principle of solve et coagula, dissolve and coagulate.
The method involved consisted largely of making some supreme physical or mental effort, then releasing it and entering a thought-free state that bordered on the higher consciousness. Gradually the gap and difference between the two states would increase. When the Hero had learned to enter the higher consciousness at will, he could perform actions in that state that resonated down through the lower levels of being, having their
final effects in the physical world, where they seemed to others—the uninitiated—to be magic.
The book was teaching attitudes and techniques that would take years to master, and then only if one were especially gifted. Leo’s heart sank, until he realized to his surprise that he had already done a lot of the meditative exercises, though in different modes and with very different intentions. He was familiar with the inner world of images, at first from practicing the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, and more recently in his devastating encounter with Angela and the abyss.
Ever since he had begun to read the manuscript, Leo had felt cold, though not enough to stop reading. But as he was not getting any warmer, he finished the first part and paused. He checked the radiator in his room: it was quite warm. And the window: it was not ajar. He opened his suitcase and reached for a sweater.
The second part of the book described the twelve fruits of the Tree of Life. In today’s world, Leo considered, some of these would be dismissed, or at best explained away as “paranormal.” They included clairvoyance (seeing things beyond the reach of the eye, as well as beyond the reach of telescope and microscope alike), precognition (seeing things to come), telepathy (the transference of thoughts from one mind to another), and psychokinesis (the power of the mind to move objects).
In another category was the power to heal oneself “without the assistance of those ignorant butchers, the barber-surgeons, or of those blown-up pig’s bladders of self-importance, the physicians who squeeze the pulse and scrutinize the colors of urine, hoping to extract the last possible ducat before their victim dies.” In place of this, Cesare recommended what he called the “Herculean regimen” of early sleeping, brisk walks or horseback rides, a diet rich in “peasant bread and weeds,” and the strict avoidance of brothels.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 19