The Lost Book of Wonders

by Chad Brecher

  “Rumors, innuendo, the muttering of fools, I’m afraid.” Dr. Foucault removed his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’m perfectly content to continue with my research and teaching.”

  “I suppose introductions are in order. I would like to introduce Dr. Eleanor Griffin, daughter of Harold Griffin and a very accomplished scholar in her own right, I might add.” Ellie smiled and extended her hand. Dr. Foucault accepted it and shook it with a faint nod. “This here is Alexander Stone, not quite a doctor of philosophy, but you’ll find him to be a precocious soul — he’s quite gifted really.” Alex quickly seized the professor’s hand and shook it. “And you may remember Jonas.”

  “The muscle,” Dr. Foucault tersely summarized. Jonas gave forth a smug smile, crossed his arms, and puffed out his chest as if to appear even more intimidating.

  Ellie sized up Dr. Foucault. He seemed to be the French version of any number of academics back at Oxford, down to the mossy green Tweed jacket with suede brown elbow pads, vaguely unkempt gray beard, and messy hair.

  He looked curiously at Ellie and Alex.

  “Let me guess. Dr. Clay has you convinced that the great Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, died with an earth-shattering secret — so monumental it has been hidden for centuries awaiting discovery. What was it — everlasting life, the Garden of Eden, magical trees, and all that nonsense?”

  When summarized in that fashion, the sheer ridiculous nature of their expedition caused Ellie to blush and look guiltily at Alex. The expressions on Ellie and Alex’s faces made the professor chuckle. “I can postulate from your expressions that our modern-day Ponce de Leon has sold you on his quest for the legendary fourth part of Polo’s manuscript. As someone who sunk five long years into Redmund’s fantasies with nothing to show for it, I would caution you to shake off his spell.”

  “Fourth part?” Alex interrupted. He cast a confused glance at Clay, who simply ignored it.

  Clay approached Dr. Foucault, put his hands on his shoulders, and peered into his eyes. “Bertrand. We found it.” An enormous grin spread across Clay’s face. “After all these years of searching, we found it.”

  “It?”

  “It, man! The original manuscript!”

  The professor backed away with a ghostly pallor. He pulled aside a chair and sat down with exhaustion. “I don’t believe it.” He suddenly sprung to his feet and looked around the room with agitation. “Where? How?”

  “Bertrand, we are here because we need your help…and your confidence. I must request the highest level of discretion in this matter.”

  The professor grew impatient as he searched around the room with his eyes for any sign of the manuscript. “Oui…of course…discreet. You can trust me. I must see it.”

  Clay silently nodded to Alex. Alex casually strolled over to the long conference table in the center of the room and deposited his satchel upon it. He carefully reached into the bag and withdrew the leather-bound volume. He retreated slightly from the table to allow the professor to squeeze his rotund form past a series of chairs. The professor stood before the text with a look of religious awe. He wet his lips with his tongue and with tremulous hands delicately lifted the cover. His eyes opened wide as he explored the pages.

  “Can you translate it?” Ellie asked and immediately wished she had not.

  The professor paused and gave Ellie a glance tinged with annoyance. “Translate? But of course. It’s Franco-Venetian. I translated the oldest known version of Monsieur Polo’s travels, The Book of Wonders, also written in this vernacular. All I need is some time. You leave it with me and I will not only translate it but verify its authenticity.”

  “Unfortunately, that won’t be possible. I must insist that this manuscript not leave our sight. This is non-negotiable. I hope you do not take it personally.”

  “Not to be trusted, why take it personally?”

  “Yes, I am sorry. There is another matter. It has become apparent that there are those who are keen to discover Polo’s secret, so keen that they will take any measure to achieve their goals.”

  “Redmund, what are you saying?”

  “Just that if you agree to help us, you are taking a risk. You could be a target.”

  “A target? From who? A bunch of bifocaled academics?”

  Jonas placed the balls of his hands on the edge of the table beside Dr. Foucault and leaned in. “Professor, I’m afraid that these are not academics hurling pretentious criticisms at you. These are killers who will stop at nothing to get their fingers on this manuscript.”

  “Collectors?” Dr. Foucault asked with confusion.

  “So to speak. We’ve been a step ahead of them so far. The quicker we can have this manuscript translated, the better.”

  “It’s not something one can do well quickly,” the professor protested.

  “I know but these are extenuating circumstances. You’ll have a capable team assisting you. I have been pleasantly impressed by the outstanding capabilities of our two stars, Ellie and Alex.”

  “I think you are asking for a lot,” the professor complained.

  “Yes, yes, but if I didn’t think you could do it, we wouldn’t be here.”

  48

  “Next page. ‘Now to Kublai Khan. He is of the Imperial lineage being descended from Genghis Khan, the first sovereign of the Mongols.’”

  Ellie listened as Dr. Foucault read from the manuscript, intermittently pausing to formulate the most accurate translation into English. The professor stared at the text with a palpable intensity in the shadows of the darkened Scalle Ovale. The library had long since closed its doors to the general public and they had the vast and elegant reading room to themselves. Alex, functioning as a scribe, frantically transcribed the professor’s translation upon a white piece of paper. Behind them, Ellie could hear rhythmic snoring and she turned around to find Jonas slumped over in a plush leather armchair. Clay sat silently across the table, listening to Dr. Foucault’s reading of the text.

  “What did you mean by the missing fourth book?” Ellie asked, breaking the professor’s train of thought.

  He sighed and pushed the text slightly away from him. The professor removed his glasses, placed them on the table, and rubbed his eyes with fatigue. “I guess this is as good a time as any to take a break.” He lifted his glasses off the table, huffed on the lenses, and wiped them with his handkerchief before placing them back on. “When Marco Polo and Rustichello collaborated in creating The Description of the World, the account was divided into parts or books.”

  Dr. Foucault reached out and lifted the manuscript off the table and positioned it between Ellie and Alex. He carefully flipped through the pages until he arrived at the beginning of the manuscript. Ellie stared down at the beautifully written text — block-like and written perfectly straight as if perched on an invisible line. The letters were predominately written in a crisp black ink with the ink of some of the letters appearing to be contaminated with golden flecks. She had earlier noted the exquisite penmanship of Rustichello and wondered aloud how a prisoner in a jail had the capability of crafting a text of such beauty. Alex was quick to explain that her image of a sordid jail cell was likely far from the reality of Polo and Rustichello’s incarceration. He explained that their confinement was more akin to house arrest for nobility.

  Dr. Foucault continued. “The narrative begins with the prologue that serves as a concise summary of the Polo family’s adventures, first describing Marco Polo’s uncle and father’s initial trip to the East and later their return to the court of Kublai Khan with a young Marco Polo in tow. It of course ends with their voyage back to Venice after many years in the service of the Great Khan. It touches on the core features of the story to follow, without all the details that will be fleshed out in the remainder of the work. The prologue, however, leaves us with a mystery of sorts.”

  The professor pointed to the first page of the manuscript. “The work begins with the famous introduction: Emperors, Kings, Dukes,
Marquis, Counts, Knights and people of all levels of study who desire to obtain knowledge of all the varied races of mankind and the diversities of all the great regions of the World, take these Books and have them read. Livres not livre, books not book.”

  “The remainder of the narrative is divided into three ‘books.’ The first book follows the Polo family’s voyage from Armenia across the Silk Road into the heartland of the Mongol Empire. The first book concludes with the Polos arrival at the grand summer court of Kublai Khan at Shang-tu or Xanadu for all you fans of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The second book provides a glimpse into the customs of the Mongols and their conquered lands to the East such as China or Cathay. The third book deals with the Polos’s trip through exotic Southeast Asia — the islands of Java, Madagascar, and Zanzibar — and India. The book concludes with the Polos making their way back to Venice.”

  “Now if you look further in the prologue you find the following: ‘Confined to a prison in Genoa, Messer Polo caused Messer Rustichello of Pisa, who was also imprisoned, to write of his travails. He divided it into four books.’ Four books. Thus arises the mystery of the legendary fourth book.”

  “I’ve seen versions of The Description of the World that have a fourth book. It has material on Turkey and Russia…” Alex offered.

  Dr. Foucault interjected, “…and random vignettes of military battles amongst the Mongol tribes. It is true that some later versions have added material and wrapped them up into a fourth book. Go back to these versions and note the asterisk next to them, questioning if they are indeed a part of the original manuscript. Read them over again and you will be left with the creeping realization that they are fragments of text, patch-worked together like a quilt. It will be apparent that they were added later.

  “I for one believe there was a fourth book. I do not believe that when Rustichello ‘divided it into four books’ that this was a typographical error. You could see how a scribe producing a copy of the work might find only three books and omit the line or change it to ‘divided it into three books’ or something like that. You could also see how later scribes embellished the work with a hodgepodge of information on Mongol military tactics within a new fourth book. For most, I imagine, the assumption was that there were only ever three books.”

  “What if Rustichello considered the prologue to be the first book?” Ellie asked.

  “Smart girl. It is a legitimate question but I think it is unlikely that this is the case. The first book after all is labeled as such and comes after the prologue.” The room grew silent, interrupted by the wavelike ebb and wane of Jonas’s snores. “Now I said that many assumed that there were only ever three books. Many, but not everybody. There were those that searched in vain for older and older versions of the text in hopes of discovering this fourth book.”

  “Marin Falier?” Ellie asked.

  “Probably the most famous of searchers. There were those whose imaginations ran wild. What was in the fourth book? To some this mystery became an obsession.” Dr. Foucault paused and glanced up at Clay who smiled. “We know that Marco Polo remained under the service of Kublai Khan for seventeen years but know little of what occurred during that period of time.” Dr. Foucault flipped through the pages and read: ‘From this point on, Messer Marco Polo worked in the service of the Great Khan for some seventeen years. He continually came and went, from here to there, often on secret missions. And sometimes he traveled for private matters, often with the consent of the Great Khan…and thus it came to be that Messer Marco Polo obtained knowledge of a great number of countries and cultures of the World more than any other man…’ Could the fourth book reveal more about what Marco Polo did during those seventeen years?”

  “Why keep it a secret?” Ellie asked. “Why write a fourth book if you intend on keeping it a secret? If he had found something so great, why all the subterfuge? Marco Polo certainly doesn’t seem like the humbles of souls—after all, he claimed to be the most knowledgeable man on earth. It would seem that he would be overjoyed to scream to the rest of the world about his accomplishments.”

  “He had his reasons,” Clay answered.

  “And what reasons were they?” Ellie inquired.

  “I don’t know.”

  “For someone with so little answers, Redmund, you are quite the zealot when it comes to Polo.”

  “I believe in Marco Polo.”

  “Yes, exactly. You believe in Marco Polo. You believe that he found the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life and all that. You’ve brought us all on this quest with you. Sure it is alluring, but what do you expect to do with all this knowledge if we are even able to crack Polo’s code?” Ellie barely realized her voice had raised, causing Jonas to gurgle and stir from his sleep. Jonas looked around the room glassy-eyed.

  “Cure the world.”

  “Oh, that’s all,” Dr. Foucault muttered and nonchalantly returned to the text.

  49

  “There you have it.”

  Alex’s hand ached as the pen slipped from his fingers and rolled across the table. A callous along the outside of his middle finger throbbed from where the pen rested against it while he wrote. He felt utterly spent, so tired that the roots of his hair hurt. They had been working non-stop to translate the text. Alex glanced at his watch. It was four in the morning.

  Alex looked over at the professor who let his face flop into the cradle of his palms. The room was silent. He could see Ellie sleeping on the floor with her head perched up on a small pile of books. In the darkness, he spotted Clay passed out in a chair, his legs propped upon the ledge of a bookcase. Jonas sat upon the leather chair facing their backs. He seemed to be watching them until Alex realized Jonas’s eyes were also closed.

  “There’s no fourth book,” Dr. Foucault pronounced. “In all, this version is very similar to the copy within this library — the so-called Book of Wonders — except for some minor differences. Bear in mind, though, this was a ridiculously quick submersion into the manuscript — probably a record translation. We should contact one of those World Record organizations. I could have missed something.”

  “This is so disappointing,” Alex complained. “I thought for certain that there would be something in it that hasn’t seen the light of day for centuries. I really thought we were in uncharted territory.”

  “I warned you not to get wrapped up in Redmund’s fantasy world.” The professor motioned to the old man in the corner.

  “From your whole lecture on the fourth book of Polo, I pegged you as a true believer.”

  “Let’s just say that, I’m a bit of an agnostic.”

  Alex smiled and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He read it again for the thousandth time.

  “What’s that?” asked the professor.

  Alex looked down at the paper and passed it to the professor.

  “It’s an inscription that we obtained that we think was left by Marco Polo.”

  “Let’s see…” The professor leaned over and positioned the slip of paper under the light.

  Adam’s Staff

  Eastward Go

  Illuminated Path

  Where King Interred

  Alex could detect a faint twinkle flicker in the professor’s eyes. “We think that ‘Adam’s staff’ refers to the Tree of Life and ‘Eastward Go’ the general direction in which the Garden of Eden would reside for a Westerner. The ‘Illuminated Path’ and ‘Where King Interred’ aren’t exactly clear to us.”

  The professor remained silent. His eyes left the paper and tracked along the pages of the manuscript. He reached out and picked up the text off the table and tilted it slightly in the light before putting it down. He smiled at Alex and handed the crumpled paper back to him.

  “Can’t say that anything immediately comes to mind, I’m afraid.”

  The professor looked around the room at the sleeping forms and back at Alex. He tapped his index finger against his chin.

  “Yes. Now that I think of it, there is a critical work written
by Sergio Palma on Gnostic teachings that refers to an ‘Illuminated Path’ of some sort that was popular with Nestorian Christians during Polo’s time. The book is up on the second floor. We should go get it.”

  Alex looked back at Jonas. Saliva was collecting at the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh let them sleep. We’ll just run up and look for the book,” Foucault said jovially and patted Alex on the back.

  Alex shrugged and rose from his chair. Dr. Foucault smiled warmly at Alex. “You might as well bring the manuscript. We might have need of it while we are up there looking for sources. It would be a shame to have to keep running down. Plus, I wouldn’t trust it with these narcoleptics.”

  Alex laughed and slid the manuscript into his leather satchel. He followed the professor to the elevator, clutching the satchel tightly to his flank. As the doors of the elevator shut, he could see Jonas stir slightly and once again drift off to sleep.

  50

  The sleek, modern elevator door had scarcely closed when Dr. Foucault gently tugged at Alex’s elbow.

  “It is this way,” he uttered, his voice hoarse from hours of translating.

  Alex glanced around. The second floor was dark. They walked down a long corridor that ran beside the aisles and aisles of bookcases. As they advanced, florescent energy-saving light bulbs triggered by motion-detectors sprung to life, giving forth a greenish glow.

  “You said you worked for Redmund for five years,” Alex commented as they strolled along the corridor.

  “Oui. Five years or so.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened at the end of those five years?”

  “I had already completed a critical edition of the earliest known version of Marco Polo’s travels when Redmund Clay contacted me. I was a hotshot young researcher ready to turn heads in the world of academia. Probably very much like you. As you are well aware, Polo’s accounts went by many names throughout history — Description of the World, The Travels of Marco Polo, Il Milione, The Book of Wonders. I imagine that the earliest French version had the title The Book of Wonders for a reason. Polo’s stories were thought by many people at the time to be, at best, the product of an overactive imagination and, at worst, a complete hoax. We now know that Polo’s descriptions of Mongolian and Chinese cultures are simply too accurate and detailed to be a work of fiction. When I read Polo’s narrative, I couldn’t suppress the feeling that there was a sense of ‘wonder’ for a lack of a better word in the work. It was not that I felt that subjects were being fabricated but…how can I explain it to you? It was the feeling when you sense something is not right and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.”