The Alchemist's Gift

by Martin Rua

  “I’ll have the same as the gentleman and please do not accept any money from him – he is my guest.”

  The waiter smiled and walked away. Michele looked at me and raised his hand again. All of his gestures were filled with conviction, and when he made his mind up there was no changing it.

  “Don’t complain,” he resumed, “you are in my neck of the woods so it’s my treat.”

  “"All right, all right,” I agreed, without another word.

  “Well,” said Michele, settling into his chair and taking off his sunglasses, “How can I help you?”

  As was his habit, he wanted to get right down to business. He didn’t need pleasantries when he was in the presence of true friends and just as he was willing to do anything to help them, he would not hesitate for a moment to mercilessly point out their mistakes. He was crystal clear, sincere and perhaps a little too blunt, but he certainly wasn’t ambiguous. For him, things were either black or white, and he was rarely wrong in his classifications.

  Adapting myself to his style, I immediately took out the contents of the packet I had received in Prague and laid them on the table. Michele leaned forward slowly and with a single glance recognized the handwriting on the sheets. His cocky expression turned to surprise.

  “Where the hell did you find them?”

  Meanwhile his wine had arrived and without taking his eyes off me, he took a sip almost without realising it.

  “They were given to me in Prague. They are part of a correspondence between the Prince of Sansevero and the Count Saint-Germain. The previous owner received them from a mysterious Italian alchemist who in turn had bought them in a flea market in Paris.”

  Michele touched the papers with almost religious respect, his eyes sparkling. “I was sure that some correspondence between the two existed somewhere. Where’s the rest?”

  “Stolen.”

  Michele’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  “What? By who?”

  “Maybe by the same people who killed the previous owner.”

  My friend went white, then smiled nervously and took another sip of wine.

  “Ah. It’s getting interesting.”

  “Yes – interesting and dangerous. The police are investigating, and I’m already embroiled in it up to my neck.”

  He shook his head and continued to look at the sheets. “Unbelievable… But what can I do for you?”

  I took the two sheets, put one on top of the other and held them out to him again.

  “Look at them against the light.”

  We were sitting under a large umbrella and Michele jumped up and lifted the sheets towards the light of the sun, repeating, “Unbelievable.” He remained motionless for a few seconds, then returned to the table. “It’s a message from the Prince! This is incredible! How did you find out?”

  “By chance, but that’s beside the point. The geographical indication, Parthenope, is very precise, but I don’t know how to read the rest: PH. and those numbers after it, III, II, 3.”

  Michele smiled. “You were right to ask me, because to my eye it’s as clear as day. It refers to the placement of a book in the library of the Apartment of the Phoenix in the Sansevero building, where Raimondo de Sangro kept his most precious books and scientific curiosities.”

  I shook my head, confused and suddenly demoralised.

  “But that apartment and all its books no longer exists.”

  Michele smiled again. “To be precise, the apartment itself no longer exists, but the books do. I know the person who owns the entire library and is familiar with the exact original location of the volumes on the shelves.”

  I regained heart.

  “Really? And who is this person?”

  “Why, he’s sitting right in front of you!”

  Chapter 15

  Naples, the last days of spring 12:17

  I arranged to meet Michele again in the afternoon and then, before going to lunch with Àrtemis and my in-laws, I took a taxi to the Églantine, my antique gallery, in via Chiatamone.

  A few years earlier I had lost my partner and friend Bruno von Alten, who had been murdered in the same convoluted story during which I had met the doctor who had saved Àrtemis’s life. After I had recovered from that experience, I had been on the lookout for an assistant, and an antiquarian colleague of mine, perhaps thinking that he was passing off a lemon on me, had introduced me to a young graduate studying conservation of cultural heritage who he claimed was a phenomenon – a kind of living archive of everything concerning antiques. Indeed, Bartolomeo Pacifico, known as Bart, was a walking database, fond of antiques and already experienced in distinguishing a good piece from a piece of worthless wood. In my opinion, however, he had one infuriating habit.

  “Hey, how are you Lorenzo, how did it go in Prague, what was the show like, did you enjoy yourself, everything here is great, I sold the two late nineteenth century bedside tables which I told you about on the phone and…”

  As I entered the shop I was submerged by a barrage of words coming at me at an unimaginable speed and without giving me time to distinguish one word from the other. Bart didn’t have a tongue, he had a machine gun loaded with vowels and consonants.

  Imitating the gesture of Michele de Sangro, I tried to stem the flood of words by closing my eyes and raising my hand, just like a policeman at an intersection. Incredibly, Bart suddenly stopped.

  Why had I never thought of that before? I asked myself. Had I finally found the spell that could halt off his murderous logorrhoea? I hoped so.

  “Good work, Bart,” I said, opening my eyes and speaking slowly. “Let’s have a quick look at the paperwork, because I’m busy for the rest of the day.”

  The boy, who despite his healthy physique possessed an innate grace, walked calmly to the office, and I followed him with a smile on my lips. I missed Bruno and his discreet, professional presence, but Bart amused me. Especially when he managed to keep his mouth shut for more than thirty seconds.

  *

  After sorting out a few things at the Églantine and cutting off another verbal assault from my young assistant, I headed on foot towards Piazza Amedeo, passing through the Chiaia neighbourhood, with its beautiful Art Nouveau buildings. Àrtemis and her father had insisted we try a new Greek restaurant that had recently opened, and I had agreed, even though I trembled at the thought of what would await me there: whenever I went to a restaurant with Dimitris, who we all called Mitzos, I never knew when I would be released, nor in what condition. He was quite capable of sampling every dish on the menu – and forcing me to do the same.

  I came to the tavern, the Dioscuri, crossed the threshold and found everyone already seated inside. Àrtemis waved me over and Mitzos leapt up immediately to greet me. His vast frame took up half the restaurant, and to greet me he had to ask two people sitting at the adjacent table to stand up to make room.

  “Kalòs ìrthes, Lorenzo!” he cried, grabbing me and embracing me forcefully.

  He was nearly eighty years old, but still a force to be reckoned with. I called him the ‘Lion of Athens’. He had been one of the most respected Greek language and literature teachers in the Greek capital’s university and had passed on his talent to his daughter. Thanks to his studies and his publications, he had received accolades from all the most important cultural institutions of the old continent and was an honorary member of numerous associations in various parts of the world. His final satisfaction before retiring had been demolishing the fanciful theory of an Englishman who was convinced he had found evidence of the existence of Atlantis in the middle of the Cyclades islands.

  “It’s all nonsense!” he had thundered during an international conference organized by the Sorbonne. “The evidence mentioned by Dr Gonland simply does not exist, or if it does it refers to the Minoan civilization which, as far as I’m concerned, merits much more interest than your mysterious island.”

  All the professors of the old school who had been present – and who were in the majority, truth be tol
d – had exploded in applause after Mitzos, giving more and more evidence, had concluded his speech. Dr Gonland and his colleagues had abandoned the theory with their tails between their legs.

  That was Dimitris.

  And Hrista, his wife, was not far behind in terms of character. She was a talented violinist, born in Santorini, who had left Greece as a teenager and had played mainly in Germany and Italy, enjoying considerable success. Once, during rehearsals for a concert in Bayreuth, she had broken the bow of her violin on the conductor’s music stand.

  “Why did you do that?” Dimitris had asked her afterwards.

  “He kept saying nein, nein, nein and telling me that my playing was awful,” she replied angrily. “But he was the one who knew nothing about music.”

  She was right. Two days later the conductor had been relieved of his duties and replaced.

  My wife had inherited the best and the worst of those two characters. An explosive mixture.

  “So, how is our antiquarian of mysteries?” said Hrista, as soon as I sat down, her face – framed by the same curls as her daughter – still fresh despite her age.

  I smiled. “Nobody has ever called me that before.”

  “It suits you, Lorenzaki!” said Mitzos. “As long as the mystery doesn’t get you into trouble the way it usually does.”

  “You know how it is – if I do things in a normal way, I get bored.”

  I thought back to how they had suffered because of Àrtemis’s illness and their joy when, despite there being almost no hope left, they had seen her health improve. A miracle, in part thanks to the mystery of which we were speaking.

  Meanwhile, the table had begun to fill up with dozens of dishes, just as I had feared, until I was on the verge of collapse from all the souvlakia, moussaka, feta, rice rolls in vine leaves, tzatziki sauce and chtapòdi sta Karvuna – grilled octopus.

  “God, I’ve eaten too much,” I said, loosening my belt at the end of the lunch, “I'm about to explode.”

  “Dad, you have to stop stuffing Lorenzo like this, you know that he can’t say no to you,” said Àrtemis, coming to my rescue. “Next time, we’re doing the ordering!”

  Mitzos raised his glass full of tsipouro and his big Brezhnev-like face took on a sage air. “My dear daughter, who knows if I’ll still be alive tomorrow. Let’s enjoy ourselves while we can. Opa!”

  And to his expression of pure epicureanism, there was not much to add.

  Chapter 16

  Naples, the last days of spring, 15:35

  I returned to the old town and headed towards Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, passing by the Baroque spire and along the San Domenico Maggiore alley, past the Palazzo Sansevero and the chapel of the same name. It was about four in the afternoon, the heat was intense and there were few tourists around, so Michele de Sangro stood out in the middle of the deserted street.

  “Do you want to go inside the chapel?” he asked me.

  “No thanks. I might pass out in front of the Veiled Christ.”

  “Why? You’ve seen it thousands of times – are you still suffering from Stendhal’s Syndrome?”

  “No – it’s my father in law’s fault.”

  “Why, what did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything, but the amount of food that he made me eat would have floored a horse.”

  Michele laughed and we set off towards his house. He lived in the building next door to the family chapel, which housed the Real Monte Manso di Scala, a college for the education of young noblemen founded in the seventeenth century by Giovan Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, a nobleman from Amalfi. Michele had explained that according to his research, before the Manso family began renting the building in the mid seventeenth century to house the College of Nobles, one of the wings of the palace belonged to the de Sangro family. Moreover, the chapel of the College is located right above the Sansevero Chapel, according to Michele – right in the wing that belonged to de Sangro, where the famous and brutal murder of the lovers Fabrizio Carafa and Maria d’Avalos – killed by la d’Avalos’s husband, the madrigal composer Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa – took place.

  “I don’t understand why you insist on staying here among all these ghosts when you have an apartment in Palazzo Sansevero,” I said, as we went through the door together.

  “There are ghosts there too, but above all there are too many masons,” he replied with a wink.

  I smiled and shook my head.

  We entered his luxurious apartment and immediately received a warm welcome from little Raimondo, his son. He ran to his father and threw his arms round his neck.

  “Here’s my little heir!” exclaimed Michele, embracing him affectionately. “Five years old and he already speaks two languages perfectly – this little boy is a phenomenon. Where’s mummy, Ray?”

  The boy dashed towards the interior of the house dragging his father by the hand. “Come on, daddy, come on! She’s getting ready for a walk!”

  “No, wait, Ray! I’ve got things to do with my friend. Tell mummy I’ll be in my private library, ok?”

  “Ok! Hello, daddy’s friend,” said Raimondo, dashing away.

  “He speaks very good English – it’s handy having an English wife,” I said, following Michele through rooms and rooms full of antique furniture – some even bought at the Églantine – and priceless objets d’art.

  “Especially when travelling,” said Michele, “With her around, I can go more or less anywhere without making too much of an effort. But you can only go to Greece.”

  “Very funny. I’ll have you know that I speak English.”

  “Come on, are you really going to compare your English to that of a native speaker?”

  We entered the library I had seen so many times before and I gave vent to my curiosity with a question that had been buzzing in my head for a few hours. “How come you never told me that you have the Prince of Sansevero’s books, even those from the Apartment of the Phoenix?”

  “You never asked,” was his ironic answer, to which, at the sight of my unamused expression, he added, “and also because they came to me… secretly.”

  “Secretly?”

  Michele didn’t answer but walked over to one of his huge bookcases.

  “Come here, you’re going to like this.”

  His fingers ran over some of the volumes lined up on one of the shelves and stopped when he reached a small, yellow tome. Then he looked back at me and smiled. “I’ve never really liked Kremmerz, but I like the title of this book written by one of his disciples, and that’s why I decided to use it as a key.”

  I read the title – The Mystery of the Arcana Arcanorum – but didn’t understand.

  Michele shook his head. “You’re losing your edge, Lorenzo Aragona.” He pulled the top part of the book towards him and a portion of the bookcase spun round, like a door. Michele smiled in amusement at the surprise on my face, and went inside. When we were both in the secret passage, he re-positioned the bookcase and turned on the light.

  Before my eyes, something absolutely extraordinary appeared. The rectangular room in which I found myself was like a Wunderkammer, one of those places that sixteenth and seventeenth century collectors and intellectuals loved to create in their rich residences to gather together all sorts of bizarre objects. The first museums. Michele led the way through his personal ‘museum of curios’, and we passed anatomical machines similar to those found in the Sansevero Chapel, exotic stuffed animals, statuettes of pagan gods with monstrous features, ancient manuscripts, alchemical instruments and other artefacts worthy of a wizard. I paused in particular to examine a creepy, crowned skull, adorned with real wings complete with feathers, resting on a velvet cushion.

  Michele joined me. “Remind you of anything?”

  “Of course – the two skulls at the side entrance of the Sansevero Chapel.”

  “He did that.”

  “The Prince?”

  “In person. For fun, I guess.” Michele gestured with his arm as though presenting hi
s collection and added, “Welcome to the Apartment of the Phoenix.”

  My gaze went from one object to another, and it seemed that the curious artefacts multiplied endlessly in front of my eyes until finally I spotted the most interesting part of the hall. The library.

  “When Don Raimondo died in 1771, his parents had already planned to dispose of his scandalous collection,” said Michele, as we headed towards it. “Fortunately, the prince had been foresightful. According to his biographer Origlia, in a letter which is in my possession, for several nights before Raimondo died there was a coming and going of people carrying boxes from Palazzo Sansevero to an unknown destination. It was Raimondo’s friends and brethren, whom he had asked to empty the Apartment of the Phoenix to temporarily secure the precious books and artefacts it contained.”

  I smiled. “See? Freemasons can be helpful. You shouldn’t be so hard on them.”

  Michele raised an eyebrow. “Unfortunately modern masons are but a shadow of those.”

  “You’re right, I'm afraid,” I sighed, “but there is still the odd good one around.”

  “That’s why you’re here. Very few people know about this place, but what you have shown me deserves attention and it seems fair to allow you to enter. Also because I know that you are serious.”

  “I’m honoured. I promise you that if I were able to regain possession of the correspondence between de Sangro and Saint-Germain, I would hand it over to you. The Apartment of the Phoenix would be a marvellous place to keep it.”

  “That would be an incredible gift for me, and I thank you for the thought. But let’s get to work.”

  We had reached the great library that occupied the entire back wall of the Apartment, opposite the secret door through which we had entered.

  “Everything that was removed from the Apartment of the Phoenix was hidden in a walled in Greek cistern between the Sansevero Chapel and the bell tower of Pietrasanta, which was artfully concealed.”

  “And how did you find it?”

  “I didn’t, it was a member of my family. In 1943, he was looking for an underground shelter for the people of the neighbourhood to take cover in from the shelling and he happened upon the cistern. He didn’t tell a soul about it and at the end of the war he recovered everything. But the organisation of the books is my doing. Don Raimondo gave a copy of the register of the library to the secretary of his Masonic lodge, the De Sangro, which made it easy to trace the location of the volumes. The man had foresight and made two copies, one was kept in the State Archives and the other was kept for more than two hundred years in the Bank of Naples. I came into possession of the register and identified the books contained in the Apartment, all marked with the initials PH, identical to the one you found. That way I was able to recreate the position of the volumes exactly as the prince had planned.”