“An alchemist. You may call me Geber,” he said. “The hand of fate is upon you, and it commanded me to speak to you. Otherwise I would not have taken the time from my work; I must have done something wrong to be so afflicted.”
“How could you tell that about me from up here?” I circled the room, staring at the moving sea of objects washing over the tables as if by some magical tide. Little implements for poking and cutting and stirring lay alongside mortars and pestles, vials of dye, lumps of clay, needles and thread, books with illuminated pages, parchment and quills and ink pots, small tin boxes filled with powders both coarse and fine, stones of all colors, bottles of colored liquids, a bag of salt, and jars full of oils. The scents of sweet clove and anise mixed in with the acrid odor of sulfur, which still smelled better than the dead. A beheaded rat lay on one table, a cloth-covered jar of beetles on another, and on yet another was a pigeon with its wings neatly cut off. I stopped to stare at the pigeon because the cuts were so precise and the body was neatly sewn up where the wings had been removed. One of the wings was fanned out alongside the body.
“Distance is no obstacle to knowing,” he said with a sly smile. “Distance is just a fabric that dissolves in the acid of merging. You know. You’ve traveled great distances to see things.”
I started. His words seemed to allude to the traveling I did when I worked at Silvano’s, but I had never spoken of that to anyone. I would not have confessed it to God, if I were the kind to confess, for fear that He would end my journeys for His own private amusement. It simply wasn’t possible that this Geber could have guessed about them. I gave him a sharp look. “Is magic your art?”
“Nature is my art, and it will reveal everything to one who looks with the eyes and sees with the heart,” he replied obscurely. “Heaven is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it. Nor, of course, do minimally intelligent boys.”
“Hell is spread upon the earth now, with plague-stricken bodies everywhere.” I shuffled over to another table. On this one lay an open book, a heap of dried violets, the furry brown paw of some small animal, an earthenware cup filled with white eggshells and another filled with blue shards, and a bowl with a translucent triangular stone soaking in cloudy water.
Geber sighed. “This is an evil plague. But so are all things of the earth.” I had begun to finger a device of three interconnected glass vessels, when he barked, “Careful! That’s a three-beaked still, exactly to the specifications of Zosimos himself. It’s for distillation…the release of the spirit from the matter which has entrapped it.”
“Like death,” I commented.
He nodded. “Death isn’t the end of the story in alchemy. The spirit, the pneuma, can be reintegrated into the body after purification. On that table, I have built Zosimos’s kerotakis, for sublimation…Come, let me look at you. Even with this wondrous invention, my eyes are weak.” I hesitated, running my fingers over the delicately colored pages of a book, and he beckoned impatiently. “Come, boy. I’m ill, but it will take the plague some months to kill me. And you are immune to it, as you know.”
He seemed to know so much about me that I obeyed, warily crossing over to him. He examined me with thoughtful blue-green eyes. I reached out to touch the things that rested on his nose. A round piece of glass, secured by metal wire, hovered in front of each eye. “How do you know I’m immune to the plague?”
“You wouldn’t be working as a becchino if you weren’t,” Geber said, pulling down the lower lid of my left eye, then my right. He stuck his index finger into the corner of my mouth and I opened it. He inspected my teeth and then picked up my hand and looked at my nails. He turned my hands over and traced some of the lines on my palm. He laughed shortly and tapped on the mount of my thumb. He seemed satisfied as he crossed his arms over his middle.
“There are many becchini,” I noted, stepping back uneasily. What had he seen in his examination? What secrets of mine did his eyeglasses reveal to him? I spoke to distract him. “Many becchini will get the plague.” I thought of Rosso. “Some of them want to die.”
“Not me,” he said shortly. “I’ve spent years laboring to cheat death. Only to find the plague cheating me of the fruits of my hard work.”
“None of us can cheat death.”
“You’ll make a grand effort, though,” he said, with another short laugh. “Your parents were magicians of the second race of men. You’ve inherited their talents, though you’ve not had anyone to guide their development. It’ll take some effort on your part to earn them.”
I jumped back, shocked and confused. “How do you know about my parents?” I cried. Had he met them? Did he know secrets about my origins, and if so, would he tell them to me?
“There is a light that pours forth from people, and that light is who we are,” Geber said fiercely, leaning toward me. “This is what alchemy is about, truly. Ignorant folk think it is about turning base metal into gold, or perhaps manufacturing the elixir of life. But these are the grossest veneer. Alchemy is the search for what not yet is, the art of change, the quest for the divine powers hidden in things! The divine powers reveal themselves as light…he who properly cultivates himself will see the yellow light shine forth as it should!”
I didn’t know how to respond to his strange and passionate words. It seemed to me that few things could be more important than turning base metal into gold, which sustained life. I could believe in a light that poured out of people, because didn’t Giotto paint people thus, luminous? I looked away. I said, “You don’t look ill.”
“Don’t judge by first appearances, it makes you seem common,” Geber said sharply. He raised a lean arm and indicated his armpit. “Go on, feel for yourself. Direct experience is always the highest!” So I reached out and felt a squishy lump under his black tunic. “The plague’s just beset me. I can resist it, but not forever. I will succumb.” He spoke calmly, without fear.
“Maybe not. Some people recover, you could be one of them.”
“I won’t recover. I’ve seen it.” He shrugged. “My own light has been tainted, weakened. As the light from within goes, so the body inevitably follows. You can see it, too, son of magicians, and so verify my words with direct experience. Look around my arm and head.” He spoke softly and with elegant command. I found myself gazing almost sleepily at the outline of his outstretched arm and the roll of his shoulder into his neck, and then there was a pulse of blue light out from his head. He was murmuring, “As above, so below; as within, so without.” Another blue pulse traveled along his arm and then the light widened into a yellow umbra shimmering out from his form, but the yellow luminosity was speckled with black spots—
“Stop!” I cried. “I don’t want this, it makes me stranger than I already am!” I stumbled backward against a table. Geber brought up too many odd topics, most disturbingly, my parents. I blinked at the mist rising above a bubbling pot. The mist flowed into soft shapes like a river. My eyes followed the little pipes draining off into a closed flask. I wondered if this alchemical boiling was part of changing lead into gold, and if I could get this Geber to teach me how to do that. It would be a useful skill. Geber didn’t seem to value it, but I knew the importance of gold in a man’s life. If I could persuade Geber to teach it to me, I would never again have to fear hunger or being indentured into a corrupt life. Geber had to be saved, he had secrets to teach me. I said, “I know a physician, a good man. I can bring him to examine you.”
“No physician can help me.”
“You can let him examine you. You have to try to live,” I argued.
“Because life is valuable even with hell spreading itself upon the earth?” he asked. He shook his head. “I won’t waste your good doctor’s time. I’ve stretched my allotted years long enough. But I will talk more with you. Come again tomorrow. Bring me something.”
“Bring you what?” I asked.
He smiled. “You’ll think of something.” Dismissing me, he looked at the door with eyes which I did not believe to be weak. I fled.
LATER, SCRUBBING MYSELF IN SFORNO’S BARN by the weak light of a single oil lamp, I looked up to find the Wanderer watching me. I knew immediately that he wasn’t titillated, but still, I didn’t want him there. I had had enough of men watching me perform ablutions. I’d only been free of Silvano’s for one day, after all.
“I’d like to be alone,” I said. My head was full of sensuously textured and richly colored fabrics, raised black welts, the yellow light around Geber’s body, the sickening odor that seeped out from corpses, and the raggedness of the row of bodies we’d laid in trenches, sprinkled over with quicklime, and then covered over with another row of the dead. My arms, back, and shoulders ached from carrying, dragging, digging. My stomach roiled and I wasn’t sure I could eat, though I was famished in a way I hadn’t been in years, and I could smell Mrs. Sforno’s good cooking from out here. But this was a refuge: the dark barn with a milky scrim of starlight flowing into its windows, the golden bubble of light radiating outward to blend into the stars, and the bleatings of warm-blooded animals around me. I didn’t want the fragile peace disturbed.
“You stink,” the Wanderer said, combing his long beard with his fingers.
I gestured with the chunk of lye soap in my hand. “I’m scrubbing.”
“No.” He leaned against the stall of the gray donkey, for whom he seemed to have a fondness. “You smell like sorcery and immortality.” He grinned wolfishly at me as he stroked the animal’s ears. “You reek of splendor and the hidden way, like someone who has crashed into the tree of life and knocked down an apple. Do you have a bump on your head, lucky cub?”
“Today there was anything but life and immortality around me,” I replied wearily. “And nothing fell on my head. See, no bumps.” I ran one lye-greasy palm over my scalp.
“So literal! Well, there’ll be things to see later,” the Wanderer chortled, and when I looked back up, he was gone, with his laughter still ringing in the barn.
Chapter 9
THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE to find Rachel standing over me, staring. Her auburn hair was neatly combed back into a single long braid that she’d wound around the back of her shapely head, emphasizing her slim white neck. She wore a simple sleeveless yellow giornea over her green gonna. “I’m going to teach you how to read and write, Luca Bastardo,” she said, in her serious way. In one hand she held a small wooden board with squiggles carved into it; in the other hand, she held a wax tablet. “Get up. We’re starting now.”
“Right now?” I sat up slowly, dislodging the fat gray barn cat and wiping stray pieces of straw off my face. The air was cool and pearly gray, as if the sun was just under the horizon. “Does your mother know you’re here?”
“Papa does. Come by the window, there’s better light here. We don’t have much time before breakfast and I want to show you the letters. Papa says you’re clever and that you’ll learn quickly. We’ll see.” She sat down by the window. I kicked the blanket away and went to sit beside her, but not too close. Her presence unnerved me. She was a girl but on the brink of being more than that, and that something more floated around her like rose perfume. She was all soft rounded lines, soft red-brown hair, and not-so-soft self-confidence. I wasn’t used to girls like her. I wasn’t used to any girls, really. I was getting more nervous by the second.
“Your father said I was clever?” I asked. I was pleased by the compliment, but it made me feel more tentative, because now I had something to measure up to. No one had ever expected much of me before. Silvano had thought the worst of me, Giotto had thought the best of me, and patrons had expected only that their lust be slaked.
“Uh-huh, Papa thinks you’re probably the lost son of a nobleman. Sit here, or you won’t be able to see,” she ordered, pointing to a spot closer to her. I scooted closer. She held the board so I could see its face. “This is la tavola, the hornbook. I’ll show you the letters, and then you’ll copy them on the wax tablet, with this.” She showed me a small implement like a sharpened stick. “I don’t have a quill and ink and parchment for you, so we’ll have to do it this way. I’ll teach you rotunda, which is the easiest form of script.”
“Rotunda?” I asked, staring at her mouth, which was pink-lipped and full.
“Yes, because the letters are rounded!” she snapped, and I could tell her patience was already wearing thin. I took my eyes off her disturbingly pink mouth and trained them on the tavola, sat straighter, and sucked in my stomach. She went on, “When you’ve filled up the wax tablet, you’ll smooth it out again.”
“Fill up the tablet?” I repeated stupidly.
She gave me a sardonic look from dark eyes much like Mrs. Sforno’s. “I would rather find my father right about you than my mother, but so far, you’re not impressing me, golden hair or no. Maybe you’re the lost son of an idiot.”
“I’ll try harder.”
“See that you do. Now, this is the alphabet.” She pointed to the squiggles.
“That’s a cross,” I said, pointing to the first mark on the hornbook. I was glad to know something, anything, though I was surprised to find the mark of a cross in the home of a Jew. “I thought Jews didn’t revere the cross?”
“Christians think if they show us enough crosses, we will see their truth, give up our ancestral beliefs, and convert,” Rachel said, her voice wry and delicate. “Now, for every sound there’s a letter in the alphabet. Let’s start with your name. What sound does it begin with?”
“Bas?” I offered.
“Bastardo isn’t your name, and that’s more than one sound,” she said. “Try again.”
“Bastardo is my name,” I argued, though softly, because I wanted to please her.
“No, it isn’t, it’s sort of a description because you don’t know your parents. Think, Lluca,” she said, emphasizing the first sound.
“Lll?” I offered.
“Good. That’s the letter l. It looks like this.” She showed me the l. “Now you.” She put the wax tablet on my lap and then laid the cutting tool in my hand. I was looking at her pink mouth again instead of her hand and I immediately dropped the tool. She clucked her tongue.
“I’ll get it,” I said hastily, diving onto the floor. The tablet flew up in the air and Rachel caught it with an impatient exclamation while I scrabbled between the floor slats until I’d retrieved the cutting tool. I sat up with a foolish grin. “Here it is!”
The lesson wasn’t long, but it was unbearable. I couldn’t do anything right. Every time I attempted to copy Rachel’s letters, I dropped the tablet or the tool, or I said something stupid. I persistently copied her small fine letters backward. My hand of its own volition reversed the letters, making her cluck and mutter. I squirmed with despair. It was my first lesson in the power women have over men, though we men may wield the greater power out in the world. Later in my life I was to encounter the greatest power a woman wields: her love. But that was more than a century into the future, and on this day, I could only exclaim with relief when the lesson finally came to an end.
“That’s enough for today, Stupido—I mean, Bastardo,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. She tucked the tavola under her arm. “We’ll try again tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll do better.”
“Maybe the day after tomorrow?” I asked hopefully. “I need to rest. Reading is hard!”
“You need two lessons a day, not rest,” she sniffed, and flounced out of the barn, leaving me with the cutting tool clutched in my sweaty palm. I looked down at it and thought of Geber, who had asked me to bring him something today. Now I had something.
THE DOOR TO GEBER’S APARTMENT SWUNG OPEN, and threads of blue smoke trickled out, like fingers on a hand averting the evil eye. I entered and crossed over to where he stood at one of his long, profusely laden tables. “I brought this for you—” I began.
“Hush!” he commanded, so I replaced the tool in the waistband of my hose and watched as he carefully poured a golden stream of liquid out of a heated pot into a cool one. To hold the hot pot, he wore thick leather glove
s with extra leather pads stitched over each finger. “Do you know what I’m doing?”
“Is that gold?” I asked in response.
“It’s yellow, heavy, brilliant, extensible under the hammer, and has the ability to withstand assaying tests of cupellation and cementation,” he answered.
“Huh?”
“It’s gold.” He nodded. “I’m going to purify it with nitric acid.”
“Why?”
“Think, young man, what is the point of purification? To dissolve impurities, to reach quickly the perfection that nature intends…Purify me, O Lord, renew in me a right spirit,” he murmured. His eyeglasses had slid down his nose on a small sheen of sweat. “Do you remember what I told you yesterday about the purpose of alchemy, or will you grunt at me again?”
“You said, ‘Alchemy is the search for what not yet is, the art of change, the quest for the divine powers hidden in things,’” I quoted.
“Very good, no grunting. Do you understand what you’ve just said?”
“No, and I don’t feel like answering any more questions because I spent the morning appearing stupid to a girl who thinks she knows everything,” I said, sulking.
“A pretty girl?” Geber inquired with a laugh. I gave him a sour look and wandered over near the window, where gauzy curtains blew in to fan over a table’s surface. A small black-and-white dog with its legs amputated had been cut open in a long straight line from its throat to its penis, its skin cunningly held out around its body by pins so that the muscles underneath could be seen. I was intrigued by the way the muscles wove in and out together and fat veins ran over them like rivers over hills.
“You’ve cut this dog open so you could see its insides?”
“Yes, but don’t touch anything,” Geber warned. “It’s called a dissection. I’ve begun by opening the skin, and I’ll examine fascia and muscles and skeleton in turn.”
“Why are you doing a dissection to a dog?”
“There is so much to learn still, a hundred fifty years is not enough.” He sighed.
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