“Did you have intercourse with him during the night of the 4th to the 5th of August?” asked the PM.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell us when you were questioned at the villa? Watch what you say, because now you’re in trouble, as an accessory after the fact.”
“I … I didn’t want to compromise signor MacPherson.”
“Really? Yet you don’t care about compromising him now, do you?”
Ghedina took over the questioning. “What made you change your mind?”
Samanta, the articles related, had stuck to her version, and had reported to the media waiting outside the court all that she had confessed during the interrogation. No embellishment was needed. Signor MacPherson was a generous lover, she declared. The last night they had sex, he had waited for his wife to fall asleep, then had slipped out of his bed, and out of their room. He had stolen away toward the staff’s sleeping quarters, and had been with her almost until dawn. She remembered that distinctly, as she had urged him repeatedly to go back to his wife, or he might be caught. But signor MacPherson was so horny …
As a result of Samanta’s confession, Nigel finally had an alibi. It strengthened Leo’s belief that his vaticination had not been a hallucinatory delusion: he too knew that Nigel had not killed Angela. Nigel’s release, therefore, seemed imminent. How could he be detained any longer?
Another unforeseen event was in store, Leo learned as he read the more recent newspapers. Nigel had been interrogated once more, this time jointly by Inspector Ghedina and the PM, as the GIP herself presided over the proceedings. In the end, the GIP had granted the PM’s request: Mr. MacPherson was to remain detained.
An outraged Alemanni rushed to sue the PM, the GIP, the Court of Bolzano and even the Minister as well as the Ministry of Justice for the protracted and in his view illegal and unconstitutional detention of Mr. MacPherson in the investigation of the death of Angela Riviera della Motta.
A celebrated editorialist from the Corriere obtained an interview with the PM himself. The reason for Mr. MacPherson’s continued provisional detention was simple: during the preliminary investigation, he had lied repeatedly, and was therefore not to be trusted. He had omitted to speak about his many jaunts in wine country in the company of the victim; he had lied about his activities during the night in which the murder had taken place; now, he wanted the world to believe in the belated confession of the chambermaid. Had he arranged for her to be paid handsomely for her lies? He could afford the type of money that changes a person’s life and might well induce her to lie on command. Avvocato Alemanni could have quietly conveyed the offer to her and reached an unwritten agreement. His career read as a long list of court victories, but more than once he had shown that his approach to the law was Machiavellian. The chambermaid’s belated confession, which contradicted her earlier one, was an instance of inculpatory evidence: evidence that without a specific and/or particular fact cannot be proved. Reasonable doubt did persist. Neither Ghedina, the PM, nor the GIP were even remotely satisfied by the latest alleged evidence as conclusive proof of Mr. MacPherson’s innocence.
More pressing but less useful news concerned Orsina. Her uncle’s pathetic attempt to pay the ransom despite the explicit ban to do so and the freezing of his assets had won him the sympathy of the public. Letters and e-mails continued to reach the newspapers: couldn’t the police have turned a blind eye and allowed the wretched man to pay the ransom? Since the aborted attempt to pay the kidnappers, no news had been heard of Orsina. But at least, Leo was relieved to read, no part of her body had arrived by mail so as to induce the Baron to pay up, no matter what.
On a more international level, more repentant desecrators of Christian holy sites continued to turn themselves in. Self-incriminating confessions were raining in from all sides. Young militants from the ultra-right admitted to the recent desecrations of Europe’s most hallowed places of pilgrimage. They said that their intent had been to blame such sacrileges on the Muslims, so as to escalate the tension and usher in the creation of a modern Holy League, whose goal was to kick the invaders out of Europe.
Leo wondered at this strange phenomenon, but was nevertheless relieved by the news. The good tidings somehow had filtered through to the monks, who were giving thanks to God and the Blessed Virgin, patroness of their monastery, for having instilled wisdom in their lost sheep. It wouldn’t be long, thought Leo, before the Pope seized the moment and capitalized on the very Christian penchant for forgiveness.
****
A few more days went by at the monastery. Leo, feeling more confident, told Father Teresio that he would be staying only another week. September had turned nippy and crisp as the chestnut trees of the Euganean Hills were beginning to shed their leaves. One night, unable to sleep, he left his cell and walked outdoors, into the garden. It was cold, cloudless, moonless. But the stars shone keenly.
His mother had taught him stargazing. “Look for Polaris, the North Star, and think of it as your guiding light. A long time ago, sailors would be lost without it.” This was the first thing he had learned; and the North Star was found within the constellation of the Little Bear—in Italian, Orsina. It’s as if one of his fondest memories had prepared him since childhood for her. He suppressed a sigh; this was not the time for regrets, but for action.
Back inside his cell, Leo wondered what his next move might be. By association, another constellation had come to mind: Leo. He remembered suddenly that Hercules, in one of his labors, had been asked by the goddess Juno to kill the Nemean lion—leo in Latin. Hercules had strangled it to death and then placed it in the sky, as the constellation Leo. He shuddered: what if The Magical World of the Heroes was not asking him to be a hero by emulating the labors of Hercules, but rather one of his victims?
Both this belated insight and his experience of vaticination made him reluctant to reopen the Forbidden Book, now smeared here and there with his own blood. Of one thing he was certain: he was not going to try any more of its magical exercises. The last one had nearly killed him. But his fate was now inexorably tied to the book, and Cesare della Riviera, for all his inhuman qualities, seemed to be the only person capable of guiding him in rescuing Orsina.
The next day, after trying in vain for hours to come up with a plan, Leo retrieved the book from his backpack. For all its beauty and erudition, he felt a physical revulsion for it, and knew that he could no longer study it as he had done before. Orsina was still missing; time was too short. The tools of scholarship seemed feeble in comparison with the door that it had opened to other levels of being. He remembered the ancient divinatory practice of the Sortes Virgilianae, in which one opened Virgil’s Aeneid at random and took as counsel the first line that appeared. Why not give it a try with the forbidden book, and see what it had to say? “It’s a start,” he said to himself, half-believing in it. “It’s already a giant step for me to be able to reopen the book.”
The volume fell open near the end. Here, in the penultimate chapter, called “The Powers of the Cave of Mercury,” was the sentence:
Not only will the Hero enjoy the fruits of immortality, but his happy influence will forever rain down on his descendants, if only his four witnesses stand in his stead.
Leo had paid little heed to these four witnesses, but Cesare’s commentary now riveted his attention:
Know that the four witnesses are the four bodily humors: the sanguine, being blood; the choleric, being yellow bile; the phlegmatic, being phlegm; and the melancholic, being black bile. The Hero shall extract them in moderate quantity from his own body and hermetically seal them in four vessels. These shall be placed on the ara gentis in a convenient location where none but the firstborn shall enter, protected by sigils of the four elements and by the ancestral fasces of the Riviera.
So that was the meaning of the shrine in the Palazzo Riviera, with its axes and four vials. Ara gentis meant “altar of the family.” Like an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, it preserved the physical relics of the Hero, in th
e belief that his influence was thereby captured in some occult way. What exactly these humors were, and above all how Cesare had extracted them, were matters that Leo did not care to think about. He read on:
Let the firstborn seek the descensum arduum Averni, to whose gate Mercury jealously holds the key, having first learned the pharmacopoeia of the Art. Let him tend the ara gentis and ensure that no harm come to the four witnesses. This shall be the place of his most solemn resort, for the practice of our mysteries. Thereafter he shall enter and leave at will through the broader path, seeing to it that no swine force their way thither, to snuffle up our precious pearls; nay, not even Hebe, the companion of his bed, shall know of this. But our Tree shall send its roots into the magical earth, and guard it from all harm.
The references to the Palazzo Riviera could not be clearer. Leo did not want to know what “mysteries” Emanuele had been practicing there, with or without his niece. The Commentary had already stated outright that “as Jupiter chose as wife his sister Juno, so a kinship of blood is favorable to the practices of the weaker kind. For though they cannot contain their alembic within themselves, let it be a work shared with a soror mystica.” A mystical sister? Leo shuddered: having lost one companion of his blood, might the old monster be hoping to pursue his magic with Orsina? Ironically, her having been kidnapped could be seen as a blessing in disguise. But what was he thinking?
This little act of divination had brought Leo no closer to discovering her; yet it had pointed him straight to the palazzo on the Grand Canal, which, in Orsina’s words, seemed to be interconnected with the book. He would try it once more, with the clearly formulated question: “Where is she?”
This time, the book fell open at an earlier page, with one of those familiar cryptograms: MENSTRUUM, derived from the phrase MENsura STRUcturae Verae Magiae—“Measure of the structure of true magic,” or equally, “Measure of the true magic of the structure.”
Leo had already “measured the structure,” pacing off the rooms in search of some chamber hidden among them, yet the chamber he had found was not thus concealed: the Cave of Mercury was a regular room, with a door that people passed by every day. And as for the primary meaning of the word, he thought wryly, had he not himself bled? He turned to the commentary, in which Cesare concluded the chapter with a typical piece of mystery-mongering:
As the menstruum is hidden securely in the womb, prepared by Nature for the nourishment of the fetus, so the Hero, at need, will find a secure and secret place through due measure. Coli umbras inaccessas.
That phrase, with its multiple meanings of “worship/frequent/cultivate/inhabit the inaccessible shades/shadows,” sounded promising in the context, but had yielded only the meaningless COLUMBINA, from Coli umbras inaccessas: “dove-like” or “dove-colored.” It did not seem to get him any further.
TWENTY-THREE
“I never know with what name you sages call him who too willingly obeys his heart: for he certainly is no hero; but is he perhaps a coward for this?” Leo knew many passages from Foscolo’s Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis by heart, and this one seemed appropriate. The world, however, considered him neither a hero nor a coward but, in one word, a criminal. The reporter from the Gazzettino di Venezia had published the strange circumstances in which room 331 of the Hotel Luna had been found. Professore Kavenaugh had already been wanted by the police for questioning in relation to the kidnapping of Orsina Riviera della Motta; now, he might well be wanted for murder.
The next day, Leo read echoes of the article in both the Corriere and the Repubblica, adding some embroidery to it as well as his photo, downloaded from the Georgetown University website. It was in black and white, about five years old, and reproduced in low definition. Leo caressed his thickening beard and hoped it would be enough to disguise his identity. The monks did not read the papers; Rafael had read them, and not made the connection. Or had he? He had been looking at him in a funny way, lately. Leo took a deep breath: maybe he was just being paranoid.
Among others, there was an article in the Repubblica entitled “Deeds and Misdeeds of Ispettore Ghedina.” Much of the Inspector’s conduct in the dual investigation was being criticized, including his abuse of custodia cautelare, provisional detention, though for that he had found good accomplices in the PM and the GIP, both in Bolzano and in Verona. The accusation of breaching the civil rights of ordinary citizens was not meant to break a lance for the chief suspect, Mr. MacPherson, but rather to call attention to the Baron’s seven students; they were still being held.
But the next day, Leo learned that the PM in Verona had revoked the provisional detention of the students, and set them free. Being himself unjustly suspected of various crimes, Leo sympathized with the students, whose only fault, probably, was being near the villa when the murder was committed. That was assuming it had taken place there, which, according to Inspector Ghedina’s investigation, was far from certain. The papers reported no news about Orsina, other than that she was still missing. Leo was thinking about her day and night, and was prepared more than ever to do anything that might help her. Perhaps revisiting the events he was aware of might be uesful.
“If the Baron killed Angela,” Leo began to ponder, “he could be the one who’s kidnapped Orsina, or at any rate staged her kidnapping. It sounds so improbable, what with borrowing to pay the ransom, and even going personally to the drop-off place, only to be humiliated by the police … Still, why would he have kidnapped Orsina?”
Leo checked himself. Just because he had disliked the Baron, and now found him monstrous, he must not allow his emotions to interfere. Could Orsina have found out about her sister’s murder? But how, when professional detectives were at their wits’ end trying to solve it? During their last phone conversation, she hadn’t mentioned anything about suspecting someone, hadn’t even alluded to that. Someone else, however, had been suspicious all along. What had Marianna, the old housekeeper, told him, exactly? “The Baron is as sly as a fox.” But she’d also called Leo “as blind as a mole and as deaf as a post.”
Of course! How did he find out about it? Through the Book! The Baron knew that Orsina had the book; why, he had personally and solemnly given it to her; had been urging her to study it; he knew that she is “gifted.” He must have been terrified that she would gain the fruits of the Tree of Life, practice vaticination, and see what he, Leo, had seen.
No, that was not it. The Baron didn’t need to kidnap Orsina to prevent her from vaticinating. All he had to do was make her copy of the forbidden book disappear—and it had! Orsina herself had told him on the phone that she couldn’t find it. This once more confirmed the Baron as Angela’s murderer, but cleared him, in Leo’s mind, of suspicion as Orsina’s kidnapper. But then, had the book really been stolen by him, or had it just been misplaced by, say, Samanta? Once more, Leo was groping in the dark and wasting precious time. What was he doing, hiding away and mumbling prayers along with a group of peace-loving men who had renounced the world? Foscolo’s words did not apply: he was not a hero, granted, but he was a coward.
The next morning brought unexpected news about Nigel. In very orderly chronological fashion, Il Sole 24 Ore explained the surprising decision concerning the English billionaire. The very day after Angela Riviera della Motta’s death, Inspector Ghedina had gone to Villa Riviera to question her relatives, namely her uncle and sister. Within a few hours, Agent Gallorini had joined his boss and proceeded to search the villa. The police did not have a search warrant yet, but it was the Baron himself who exhorted them to do all they could to find clues leading to the murderer of his niece. This all sounded like privileged information, thought Leo. Perhaps the Sole 24 Ore had an informer within the police? Anyway, Gallorini had confiscated many items from the villa: the Baron’s computers; boxes and boxes crammed with letters he exchanged with scholars all over the world; essays he had written for his lectures; documents from the Romanian staff, even the chambermaid’s diary, only because an agent had found it in a peculiar place: under he
r mattress.
Most of the time since had been spent in going through the Baron’s formidable writings, a task for which Gallorini’s academic training, before he gave up hope for a classicist’s career, served him well. The letters and documents showed colossal erudition but no unlawful plot of any sort. Only after Samanta’s deposition had it occurred to Gallorini to read her diary. And there it was, in her own round and childlike calligraphy: the itemized chronicle of her affair with the Englishman. Gallorini had shown her diary to both Ghedina and the PM. One by one, the incriminated entries dated and minutely detailed her encounters with signor MacPherson, as she continued to refer to him, down to the various sexual positions they tried and indulged in. On that last fateful night, the couple had been experimenting with a variety of them, with long pauses in between. Samanta had written the last entry as soon as Mr. MacPherson had returned to his room. She was still shaking with excitement. The sex, the secrecy, Signor MacPherson’s very generous tips: all this kept her from sleeping and compelled her to write down her feelings. The diary had been confiscated a day and a half after she had penned that entry, and as no one had touched it since, this evidence, which had been in the investigators’ hands all along, conclusively exculpated Mr. MacPherson from the charge of having murdered Angela Riviera della Motta. When she had met with her death, he had been otherwise engaged.
The PM, with the GIP’s assent, was not only forced to revoke the order of provisional detention but, pressed by Alemanni, to issue a formal apology on behalf of the Court of Bolzano. The next day, however, the readers were told that Mr. MacPherson, once released, had asked his lawyer to drop all legal actions against the various judges, the court, and the Minister and Ministry of Justice. He was deeply ashamed of his own conduct, and hoped for his name to disappear from papers and tabloids. He said that he would put all his energy and means toward the search for his wife.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 23