Leo felt impatient at the wordy delivery of this platitudinous advice. Was he on to anything? Orsina was missing, she was probably in great danger, and there he was, studying the centuries-old scribblings of a very strange mind in a drafty hotel room. He was getting colder, as if wearing an extra layer had had no effect on his body temperature. Yet he was compelled to read on, as if the manuscript itself called him back.
Cesare’s commentary now moved on to the subject of control over the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. The Hero supposedly developed a “magic touch” in which he conveyed some sort of energy through his hands. This energy was then wielded in specific gestures that Cesare likened to those of a swordsman, and cast, or flung, at their intended recipients. Using obscure fencing terms, he described how the magic touch was to be used for energizing plants, and for controlling hounds, horses, and wild game. Then the same principles were extended to the control of men, and here Cesare certainly meant males, for he stated that “the secret of controlling women is something that I will not write down here, lest it be abused by the concupiscent, to the great danger and disgrace of the weaker sex.”
Finally, he addressed the achievement of the “firm, not falling soul,” which supposedly put the Hero’s soul beyond the reach of death. At this point, Leo felt his concentration waning. In any case, he thought, most of the fruits of the Tree of Life were things he could well do without. There was only one that he wanted right now, and that was what Cesare called “vaticination,” after the Latin word for prophecy. Leo himself had spoken about it to Orsina during their last conversation. He remembered it only too painfully. And he had come to Italy on the tenuous hope that, once having the forbidden book in hand, he could read what secrets the author had not unveiled in the regular edition. For by “vaticination” Cesare meant the ability to see, beyond the boundaries of time and space. In his own words:
The possibility of vaticination follows immediately from the premise that beyond the sensible or elementary order, the magical world of the Hero also contains the possibility of a knowledge that is no longer bounded by the scythe of Chronos, the all-devouring god of Time. This first fruit of the Tree of Life was possessed by the ancient vates, to whom past, present, and future were laid open like a book, and which the Hero can read both forward and back.
Leo did not care to see into the future; he could leave that to God. He desperately needed to see into the present, to discover what had become of Orsina.
It did not seem much to ask, just a bite at the first fruit of the Tree of Life. Of course Cesare’s instructions for enjoying those fruits assumed that one had already graduated with first-class honors as a Hero. Would they work for someone who had not? Leo could only try.
He left the book open on the table and hung the “Do Not Disturb” notice on the outside of his door. There was probably no need for that: it was eight in the evening and already dark. He went back to the manuscript and repositioned the reading lamp so as to brighten the pages as much as possible. The room was as silent as the grave, and now colder. Steam, he noticed, came out of his mouth. He thought fleetingly that he should have gone to a better hotel, and began to read the instructions on how to vaticinate.
****
The Baron was to drive personally to his doctor’s office in Verona. Since the first tragedy, his health had left much to be desired; the doctor, his old trusted friend, was to accompany him to a private clinic, for a checkup. The phone call in which he had set up the appointment with his doctor had been recorded and listened to by the police, without arousing suspicion. But instead of heading toward Verona, the Baron had taken the highway. He had business to attend to in Milan.
As soon as his assets had been frozen, the Baron had begun to receive visits from friends and acquaintances. These were supposed to be old-fashioned condolence calls, but some financial details were also being discussed. Most visitors left with unwritten but firmly agreed-upon bills of exchange. They would pay another visit very shortly to the Baron and bring him a certain amount of money in cash. Their discretion was essential. Within a year, he would pay them back with a 50% interest on the principal. Emanuele’s wealth hinged chiefly on real estate, and not only in Italy. The creditors knew that he could and would meet his every financial obligation. And so, under the nose of the police (two agents still patrolled the villa), the Baron had succeeded in raising the money for the ransom, in cash. It was now stuffed inside a briefcase, waiting to exchange hands in the center of Milan.
The appointment was at 6 p.m., in Piazza Cavour, precisely between Via Palestro and Via Manin, at the entrance of the Public Gardens. After negotiating rain along the highway and intense traffic in the city, the Baron was parked by the entrance of the gardens a little less than half an hour ahead of time.
“You’ll see a kiosk there,” he had been told on the phone by the kidnapper. “At 18:00 sharp you’ll take the money right there. Somebody will be expecting you. Now, tell our friends the police who are listening in that if they show up with you, you’ll get a piece of your niece in the mail; shall we say, a finger? An ear? Both? Be there with the money, alone.”
The Baron looked at his watch. He got out of the car and walked to the kiosk. It was dark, cold, and the gardens had closed an hour earlier. He was now standing beneath the tin roof, as it had started to rain, holding on to his briefcase. Some people passed by, but did not approach him.
He must have spent twenty or thirty minutes in the same place. It continued to rain. There was a man across the street who seemed to be staring at him, but it was hard to say in the dark with sheets of rain pouring down. Now the same man was lighting a cigarette, under his umbrella.
Suddenly, the Baron was grabbed from behind. Two men held him by the arms, and lifted him. Moments later, he was inside a van. His briefcase had already been snatched from him. Two more men were inside the van.
“Acchiappato, con la grana; adesso cosa?” Caught, with the dough; now what? one of the men said in a small microphone; the reply came into his earphone. The Baron could not hear it.
The van’s door slid open, and another dripping man hopped in. “Good evening, Baron.”
“Ghedina! You, here!”
“May we take a look at your briefcase?” One of the agents passed it on to him. “Let’s see, what do we have here? Let me guess: one million Euros, in 500 Euro bills, all two thousand of them?”
The Inspector gave the briefcase to one of his men: “Count the bills,” he said, and added, turning to the Baron, “what am I to do with you? You’ve broken the law; you’re obstructing justice; you’ve done business with illegal money-lenders. And the list could go on.”
“You have used me,” said the Baron. “You made me wait for half an hour before closing in on me. The kidnappers must have noticed you, and called off the pick-up. My poor niece will now be maimed. It’s all your fault. I despise you, you stupid good-for-nothing, and I wish eternal ill on you and all your loved ones.”
Something in the way the Baron had uttered these words, with a solemn yet sinisterly calm menacing tone, made the agents shudder.
Ghedina parried the affront, and the curse. “You’ve also offended a public official. If you shut your mouth now,” he continued, barely controlling himself, “I’ll make nothing of it. You realize that I could arrest you right now. But watch it: my patience has a limit.
“We’re as concerned about your niece’s safety as you are, but you’re not going to help her any by giving in to the demands of the kidnappers. Your money is confiscated. One of my men will drive you back to the villa in your car. You’ll sit in the back, with another of my men.” The two agents the Inspector had chosen to drive the Baron back were getting out of the van, in the rain.
“Before you step out,” Ghedina added, “know that I’ll have to keep closer watch over you from now on. You’ll keep us informed on your whereabouts and your movements. I didn’t like your stratagem of the doctor’s appointment. I mean, I’d hoped more would come of it, an
d so I let it go. But from now on, you’d better not lie anymore.”
As Ghedina was being driven back to Bolzano late in the night, he could not help mulling over the day’s events. He had hoped that the kidnappers would show up. They did not, or perhaps they did, but spotted the police. Obviously he was not dealing with amateurs. Was the Baroness really in more danger now? The law that freezes the assets of the family made sense in principle. But it had probably been drawn up by little people like himself, who would never live through the experience of a loved one being kidnapped. The feeling of utter impotence must be terrible. He would have felt sorry for the Baron, but not after that reptilian curse. The man had broken a few laws, but arresting and putting him away would serve no purpose: the investigation needed him as a decoy for the kidnappers. As for the Baroness, he did sympathize with her, and worried about her safety. He knew from experience that she was in a very dangerous situation. What a pity they hadn’t kidnapped her uncle instead!
The Inspector had arranged for an officer from the polizia tributaria to come to the police headquarters in Bolzano to impound the money the Baron had raised for the ransom. Then there was a new report to write. An exhausted Inspector Ghedina finally checked into his apartment in the outskirts of the city after 3 a.m. He looked forward to a few hours of sleep, and crashed to bed.
At 6:37 in the morning, as he was about to enter the REM phase of sleep, the phone rang, and rang again.
“Pronto,” Ghedina answered in a hollow voice.
“That passport number you were looking for.”
“Yes?”
“It’s turned up.”
“Where?” Ghedina was suddenly awake, groping for the lamp switch.
“In Venice.”
TWENTY-ONE
According to the rabbinic targum on the Book of Genesis, the ancient Hebrews obtained this fruit by stealth, in the following manner. They cut off the head of a firstborn child, preserved it with salt and spices, and mounted it upon a wall. Beneath its tongue, they placed a leaf of gold inscribed with mystical letters. The head, which they called theraphim, would then answer questions that were put to it concerning past and future things.
Leo felt a strong revulsion, both at the notion itself and at Cesare’s giving credit to what must be, he hoped, a legend. He read on:
There are also those, even in our own day, who, being underprivileged aspirants, perform vaticination through the art of necromancy, not slaying their own firstborn but obtaining the cadavers of those recently slain, whether in battle or through the power of the secular arm, and emulating the ancient science of haruspicy or divination through the entrails. Such uncouth methods may suit those as bloodthirsty as tigers and as vile as toads, but the Hero will have no traffic with them; for our Tree of Life is not to be sought among the dead, but among the living, and by those who are more than living.
The author was irked by the crudeness of these necromantic practices. Once more Leo was alarmed by Cesare’s lack of moral concerns: divination through entrails was not loathsome because it required a human body, but rather owing to its “uncouthness.” In addition, Cesare went on to explain, he was dubious of the results of any magic performed with material means. Such methods may create without the operator’s knowledge a crack or fissure through which “chaotic and sub-personal” forces can enter. “These are a great peril to his soul, for they can lead to its disintegration and loss, which the superstitious call eternal damnation,” whereas all his efforts should aim for an integration of himself in a superior form, a “more than living” state.
Any magical working is hazardous, Cesare noted in an underlined sentence, the first Leo had encountered so far in the manuscript. Even when successful, it may cause “eruptions and fluxes.” He named several herbs useful in treating these, agrimonia, lysimachia, potentilla, verbascum. As a general protection, he urged the Hero to preface any magical work with an oratio, for the purposes of banishing “unnecessary spirits,” and an invocatio for attracting “necessary” ones. These spirits, he added, are not “demons and angels such as the Church believes in,” nor are they to be called respectively “evil” and “good”; they are simply spirits at large in nature that can either help the Hero, or hinder him.
Since the mind has difficulty in imagining impersonal forces, Cesare allowed the use of time-honored formulae of invocation and banishment, complete with names and the traditional gesture of the flaming pentagram.
He should turn to the corners of the earth and invoke them by the names of their four winds, which are well known to all, saying: “O Boreas (or the other names), I command you to keep wrapped within your bosom all detrimental and deceiving influences.” So doing, he should make the sign of the pentacle with the index finger of his right hand extended, reaching first to his left foot, then to the place above his right shoulder, then the place above his left shoulder, then his right foot, then the place directly above his head, back to his left foot, and finally point to his heart, making in his imagination the symbol of the fiery five-pointed star. And thus he should do with the other winds.
Then, having once settled himself, the Hero discards his Sulphur and his Salt, and enters the Cave of Mercury.
Leo knew that these last instructions referred to the state of inner concentration favorable to the play of images. He began the breathing routine that was prescribed in the commentary: “breathe in for the count of four beats or steps of a moderate pavane, hold the breath for two beats, and expel it in the time it takes to make six such steps.” This sequence was to be repeated twelve times, inducing a mild hyperventilated state.
Following the instructions, he then visualized the wall of the cave as covered by a black curtain embroidered with stars. Beside it, one was supposed to imagine the figure of Mercury himself, and at the appropriate time, when one’s concentration was perfect, ask the god to draw the curtain back.
The first time Leo tried it, his unconscious mind played a trick on him. What appeared behind the curtain was the very room in which he lay, the banal hotel furnishings all seen as through a camera obscura.
The second time, the curtain revealed his own face, as he saw it every morning in the shaving mirror. It was as though the effort to send out his energy had backfired and bounced back upon the sender.
He tried it several more times with similar results, each attempt preceded by a good ten minutes’ breathing and concentration, then got up and paced around the room in frustration. Despite the intense breathing and the furious pacing, he was even colder now. After drinking a glass of water wishing that it were hot tea instead, he returned to the book and reread the section of the commentary that gave instructions for achieving vaticination. It contained in passing the phrase “having enclosed the greater world within the lesser one,” which he had overlooked as typical Hermetic jargon. Now, on a more careful reading, he recognized it as a reference to the instructions contained in the first part: the lessons in reversing the normal relationship of self to world.
This was the trouble, thought Leo the Italian teacher, with trying to use the subjunctive before one had learned the present tense. It was sheer arrogance to think that he could skip half the exercises and expect instant fluency in the magical language of heroes. But then, did he not possess the “secret fire” of desire, raised to fever heat? His residual Catholic superego added as a palliative “and my intentions are pure.”
Leo looked away from the book, his head in his hands. He thought about the reversal of worlds, and of the diagram in which Cesare had shown the head of the Hero containing the concentric circles of the elements, planets, and stars. His imagination expanded to interstellar spaces, deepest blue, with the floating planets crisscrossing in their orbits. In the background was a multitude of stars: red, violet, green points of intense brightness. These too formed into galaxies, spun in their spirals, condensed into clouds, and shot a burst of white foam across the sky that Leo, in some inarticulate part of his mind, knew to be the Milky Way. Then, practicing the sol
ve et coagula, he returned to the physical reality of his head, resting on his hands. He felt the tongue in his mouth, the eyes swiveling in their sockets, the wrinkling of his nose, and the slight rustling as he flexed the tiny muscles in his ears. Then he reentered the cavernous spaces of his brain. Here was the stellar world again, more vivid than before. The planets were dormant, and the stars more constant, forming themselves into constellations like those on celestial globes, the shapes of Bears, Orion, Scorpio, and so on, visible beyond their component stars.
Leo’s consciousness returned to his head, and again expanded to the cosmic vision, in slow rhythmical sequence. As he did so, the question occurred to him: “Who is controlling this?” Could there be something outside both microcosm and macrocosm deliberately timing their alternation, like the puppeteer pulling the strings? The answer came instantly and without articulation of the word: it is the Will. As Cesare’s commentary had said, “in the magical world, the Hero’s will has precedence over knowledge, and in his liberty he despises the Goddess Necessity.”
The exercise had already put Leo into a state of semi-trance, in which the inner events were more real than either his physical environment or his mental activity. The introduction of the concept of an overarching Will seemed to expand his field of inner vision, as though he were a great balloon that had suddenly been inflated. With it came a sensation of intense cold, far beyond the mundane chilliness that Leo had felt at the beginning of his exercise. This was a cold against which clothing and even fire were no protection. It was the absolute coldness of interstellar space.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 20