by G. L. Baron
The woman was surprisingly friendly. She had not spoken much, but during the short trip to the airport, she had brushed her hands against his several times.
Cassini had tried to ignore her. In the end, however, when they said goodbye, she held him in a long embrace.
Whatever it meant, he was not willing to find out. At least, not anymore. Perhaps he had not been mistaken about her after all. Perhaps she had felt something for him, but had chosen to appear detached because she was following orders.
The professor shook his head. He slumped back in his chair and stared out of the large windows at the runway; an aircraft with the white livery, and black, red and green tail, was landing.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of two hundred euro banknotes; he had fifteen thousand euro with him. ‘A small compensation,’ explained the Sheikh. Just to make sure he would get home safe and sound.
Cassini had acknowledged him with a smile when, along with the money, Julia had given him the small volume of Purgatory dated 1898. It was probably not worth much, but the simple fact that the Arab had decided to part with it, made him think.
He wondered if all that coaxing had a second end. He decided against it. After all, if they wanted to submit him to other tests, they would not have let him go with all those gifts.
For a moment – just one – the professor felt sorry for the man, hanging on with little hope to the thoughts of overcoming his illness. ‘You know, we took a step at a time… many small steps that we believed would lead us to our goal,’ he had said before saying good-bye to him. ‘You know more than any other that I’m not mistaken. Nevertheless, I apologize.’
I apologize.
He stood up to stretch his legs, waiting for the Emirates attendants to start the boarding of the flight. He took the small volume of the Purgatory and began leafing through the pages at random. It was a beautiful edition, with a leather cover and gold engravings. Even the layout was refined, with exquisite depictions of the landscapes described by Dante.
He tried to think about how many times, during the recent days, random phrases from the Divine Comedy had come to mind. Many, too many…
He reached the last canto and reread the most important verses, which had been the reason why he had investigated the poet’s metaphors five years earlier.
‘And when thou writ’st them, keep in mind, Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been spoil’d.’ – ‘And remember, when you’ll write, do not keep silent about seeing the plant, twice stolen.’
His idea of interpreting the word “plant” as if it were a map, had been the cornerstone of everything. Al Husayn, however, had found a new way to read those verses, co-ordinating them with the works of the sixteenth-century painters. Needless to say, his theories, the astronomical triangles, the clues in the paintings of Leonardo, Botticelli and Raphael, had certainly fascinated him.
He kept on thinking while he was walking along the gleaming floors of the terminal. There was also another passage that was very dear to him. The one he had always considered the spark that pushed him into understanding the work in more depth; the only point where Dante, at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, gave precise geographical indications regarding his trip to the East. In the twenty-seventh canto, the poet says, in fact, that the road to heaven went straight upwards. The sun was setting behind it, and its shadow lay before him. A word game just to say that he was walking east.
He found the canto and read it
CANTO XXVII
Our way upright within the rock arose, and fac’d
Such part of heav’n, that from before my steps
The beams were shrouded of the sinking sun.
‘Our way upright…arose,’ he repeated to himself.
Then he stopped suddenly. For a moment he thought he had made a mistake. He checked again, turning the page back and forth with great emphasis. The triplet he had just read was on the beginning of the page and corresponded to verses sixty-four to sixty-six.
Could it be so simple?
He looked at the book again; the edition of Purgatory quoted on the top of each page the canto number for reference – in this case it was XXVII. Coincidentally, he had just reread the passage that began on a new page, and at the beginning of the triplet the number of the verse was stated: sixty-four.
Could it be so simple?
He tried to recall the image depicting the Icelandic rivers, displayed on Al Husayn’s screen. In the last enlargement, the one in which the excavation point was marked, were indicated the exact co-ordinates of latitude and longitude. The latter he could not remember, but the first, incredibly, he remembered: 64 ° 27 ' 11".
Sixty-four as the verse he had read, twenty-seven for the twenty-seventh canto, eleven as the “hendecasyllables” that compose the Comedy.
Was it possible that the first and only geographical indications provided by Dante on his arrival in the divine forest also contained its co-ordinates?
Cassini returned to his seat, excited.
If there was a reference to the longitude in those verses, there must be an indication somewhere for the latitude.
He tried to think… the path followed by the poet, from his entrance in Eden to his encounter with Beatrice, was reported in the last six canti of Purgatory. Moving eastward, Dante had met enigmatic figures such as Matelda. He had also crossed rushing rivers and dense forests in a symbolic procession. His final destination was narrated in canto XXXIII, the last: a spring in which he had immersed to purify himself, and from which two rivers – the Lethe and Eunoe – arose.
He flipped through the pages forward to canto XXVIII: ‘Already had my steps, though slow, so far into that ancient wood transported me, I could not ken the place where I had enter’d.’ Those lines – where the poet says that he had penetrated so far into the divine forest that he was unable to find his way back to the entrance – had already come to mind many times during the previous days. Although there were no precise geographical indications, there were references to his movements inside the garden.
There was also an expression that did not sound at all new: ‘slow steps.’
The word “steps” had bounced into his mind often in the last few days. He had even thought about this same passage in the car with Sforza.
Slow steps. Small steps.
On second thoughts, even the Sheikh had used those words… He wondered whether randomly or not.
He reflected on the fragments of the Comedy he recalled in his recent visions, and began frantically leafing through the tome. He stopped at canto XXIX; he could remember that passage very well and found it immediately: ‘I, her mincing step observing, with as tardy step pursued…’ – ‘Where with small steps I began to follow her.’
He reread it slowly several times; it was another indication of movement. It was the point where Dante, after meeting Matelda, began following her into the garden to get to the spring and Beatrice.
The slow steps there had become small steps. Could they represent some kind of measuring unit?
Not yet convinced, he flipped backwards through Purgatory and stopped at another quite-well-known passage of canto XXVIII, fifty-four. It began with ‘One step before the other.’
Small steps, slow steps, feet.
Here was the answer to all the questions, what the Sheikh called ‘The key to Dante.’
It had to be that way; those indications, although incomplete and fragmented, were a unit that just had to be deciphered and measured.
Cassini stopped to think, at that point he was sure: the co-ordinates found in canto XXVII were the entry point into the Garden of Eden. Starting from that point, the poet provided more clues to reconstruct the exact path to the spring, the point of arrival.
Of course, the text had identified only the latitude, but the fact that it coincided with the area where Al Husayn had dug six months earlier, was significant. He did not know how to locate the longitude between the lines. If he managed, however
, he was sure he would arrive at the location identified by the astronomical triangles.
At those co-ordinates the Sheikh had not found anything. And perhaps the reason was just that… they had dug in the wrong place! They had dug at the point of entry into the Garden of Eden and not at the spring, the arrival point.
He forced himself to remain calm, but his hands started tingling with excitement. His mind was like a raging river, unable to stop.
Then he wondered if it was possible to reconstruct the exact journey narrated by Dante. Maybe, if only he could find all the clues of the poet’s movements in the last six canti of Purgatory. To do so, however, he needed a detailed map of the area… and more than anything, someone who had studied the Comedy as much – if not more – than he had.
He could only find the spring this way, by starting from the entry point’s co-ordinates, the place where, perhaps, the treasure of the Templars had been hidden.
Cassini got up from his seat and without even thinking about what he was doing, reached a soldier guarding the entrance to the VIP room.
The man did not speak English, but after repeating several times the same name, he was accompanied to a three-by-three metre room.
An officer in uniform with an olive complexion sat before him. ‘So you need to speak with Sheikh Mohamed bin Saif Al Husayn?’ he asked, with a stupid smile painted on his face. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I may have found a way to save his life.’
73
Dubai, January 5th. 10:28 p.m.
‘So, the co-ordinates where we dug are not correct!’ exclaimed Al Husayn, from his chair. ‘Or at least… they indicate the entrance to the forest and not where Dante ascended to Heaven.’
The meeting room on the 107th floor of the Burj Khalifa had suddenly become animated. With Manuel Cassini’s unexpected return, it seemed to resemble the editorial office of a newspaper about to go to print.
Next to the Sheikh, around the table, Prince Ibrahim sat, a bewildered expression on his face, with Julia, Dempsey and Cassini at the head.
Workers handling large maps, transparent slides and squares were everywhere.
‘First thing’s first,’ began the Sheikh, much more excited and happy than the speech synthesizer’s emotionless voice let them imagine. ‘The first stage is to define the unit of measure. If Dante provides references to a certain measure unit with the word “step”, we must understand what it corresponds to.’
‘But the steps aren’t the only clue,’ corrected Cassini.
The fervour of that strange treasure hunt – suddenly appearing so concrete – made him forget, for the moment, all the suffering he had endured; as with the astronomical triangles, the clues had suddenly become clear in his mind. The adrenaline, the excitement, the desire to know more, had done the rest, and he had forgotten the vicissitudes of the recent days and had called the only man who seemed able to help him in the quest.
‘In the other passages he talks about the position of the sun indicating the characters’ movements,’ he pointed out. ‘And in canto XXXII he mentions “three flights”…’
‘We could isolate parts of the text where the characters move, and compare them with the map,’ suggested Timothy Dempsey, with a laptop in front of his nose. ‘Maybe we can understand what a “small step” or a “slow step” corresponds to.’
The professor stood up and grabbed one of the maps spread out on the table. He could see the course of the two rivers. Next to the Jökulfall, on the left, the entrance to the divine forest was traced with an x. ‘He’s right! Let’s start with the twenty-eighth canto, after entering the Garden of Eden. The first reference is on verse four, where it says that Dante leaves the shore to go east.’ Cassini drew an arrow starting from where they had dug six months ago, facing eastward.
‘Dante walks in the forest and then finds himself in front of a river blocking his way,’ continued Al Husayn, already guessing the professor’s intentions.
‘That’s right!’ agreed Cassini. ‘So he gets this far.’ Where the river intersected the arrow, he wrote number “1”. ‘This is the first point of reference.’
‘From the x up to there, it’s eight hundred and seventy metres,’ added Dempsey, calculating the distance with the help of Google Maps.
‘Ok, let’s go on,’ urged Cassini, sitting down and starting to browse the Purgatory. ‘After Dante stops, a woman appears to him on the opposite side of the river.’
‘Matelda,’ the Sheikh added in that strange game of roles. ‘And when she reaches him, the two begin to follow the river upstream.’
‘Going up-river, meaning that they proceed in the opposite direction of the flow,’ said Julia, who was carefully studying another map. She had been in that area and was certain the Jökulfall flowed northward. ‘So, they’re going south.’
‘I agree, the twenty-seventh canto is very clear; the waves of the river bend the blades of grass leftwards, therefore, the river flows north,’ said the professor again. ‘Dante and Matelda proceed south until the river turns to the east. Here.’ Cassini drew another number on the map: “2”.
Prince Ibrahim listened to their comments, detached. In his opinion, they were just wasting time; the treasure hunt was an idiotic lunacy.
‘According to my text, the word “step” appears once again in this passage…’ clarified the professor, his eyes glancing up from the Purgatory to the computer screen.
‘“Between us not an hundred paces trod”,’ recited Cassini. ‘They walked less than two hundred yards.’
‘Great!’ cheered the American. ‘This is a great reference point.’
The image of the map on which the young man was working appeared on the OLED screen on the wall. He could see a blue line connecting point “1” to point “2” and in the midst, an indication of a measurement.
‘It’s six hundred and sixty-five metres,’ he calculated. ‘So we can deduce that one hundred steps is the equivalent of six hundred and sixty-five metres.’
‘No,’ said the Sheikh, puzzled. For a second he remained silent, he reread the verse that the professor had recited by heart. ‘A hundred steps in two means fifty steps each.’
‘He’s right,’ agreed Cassini. ‘Six hundred and sixty-five metres is the equivalent of fifty “small steps”.’
‘Okay, so a step corresponds to thirteen metres, point something… Then what happens?’
‘Canto XXIX, verses 12 and 13,’ replied Cassini after flipping through the tome.
‘Dante and Matelda continue to walk eastwards, following more or less an identical route as to previously.’
‘So, another six hundred and sixty-five metres,’ said the American, drawing another line on the screen.
Cassini watched him and then drew an arrow on his map facing eastwards, and a number “3”.
‘Now, the sun is rising in the divine forest, and dawn is breaking,’ added the Sheikh.
‘Interesting…’ The Prince muttered to himself.
‘Yes, this is an interesting observation,’ interrupted the professor, looking at him with an intense expression. He had never seen him before, but the young man’s visibly sceptical attitude was irritating him. ‘In verse one hundred and twelve, Dante says he sees his own shadow on the left of the river.’
‘We’re in Iceland, therefore the sun rather than rising in the east, rises in the south-east,’ added Julia, locking eyes in agreement with Cassini. ‘So if he sees his shadow on his left, it means that he’s going north. Indeed north-east.’
‘Here.’ Cassini drew another arrow pointing north. ‘But how long does he keep walking before stopping again? If I’m not mistaken, the landmark clues end here.’
There was a second of silence. Dempsey was to break it. ‘If the co-ordinates of the point of entry were indicated with the number of the verse, canto twenty-seven, verse sixty-four… maybe we should simply just check the number of the verse.’
The professor stroked his beard and shook his head. ‘We can try. Da
nte stops again when he sees a chariot drawn by a griffin appearing on the other side of the river.’
‘What verse is that?’ asked the American.
Cassini consulted his text. ‘This one: “there I stay’d my steps for clearer prospect.” It’s verse seventy-two and he uses the word “step” again.”
The young man made a quick calculation and then drew another line on the screen. ‘Seventy-two steps is equal to nine hundred and fifty-seven metres.’
Cassini smiled. It was possible that the young man was right because the line stopped right on the edge of the river, where the Jökulfall flowed into a wider body of water. ‘Okay. This is point “4”’
‘Dante hears the sound of thunder and a carriage stops in front of him. Then Beatrice appears,’ the Sheikh concluded, summing up the last part of the text.
The professor nodded. ‘In the two following canti the poet crosses the river, bringing him to point “5”. Here.’ Cassini drew a “5” on the other side.
On the screen, the American drew a line to symbolize the crossing.
‘Beatrice reprimands Dante in these verses,’ added the synthesizer voice of the Sheikh.
‘Right, then, in canto thirty-two, Dante watches the procession turning back and begins to follow the carriage for the “three flights” I mentioned earlier.’
‘“Three flights”, it’s obviously a unit of measure,’ deduced the American. ‘But what does it correspond to?’
‘A throw of a lance? An arrow?’ Ibrahim asked aloud, mockingly.
‘It could be…’ echoed Julia, ‘A bow shot corresponds to eighty, a hundred metres. Three shots… say three hundred metres at the most?’
Cassini nodded. ‘Where does it get us?’
‘In the middle of nowhere…’ replied Dempsey doubtfully, staring at the map on the screen.
‘But it’s not finished,’ said the professor. ‘There is one final movement; after tying the griffin to a tree, Beatrice takes another ten steps and reaches the spring. There, two rivers, the Lethe and the Eunoe, arise and the poet is drinking purified water from the river in the same place. Then he ascends to the white rose, his final destination: a rose-shaped amphitheatre where souls rest in Paradise.’