The Alchemist's Gift

by Martin Rua

After shaking hands with Ricciardi, it was my turn. “A really beautiful interpretation of The Magic Flute, Monsieur Cassan – and certainly out of the ordinary.”

  “I just tried to bring out what is hidden in the music of Mozart and the libretto by Schikaneder, Mr Aragona,” demurred Cassan.

  “Well, as you said on stage, what you see and hear is never the whole story… non hoc totum.”

  Cassan laughed and the women nearby sighed, fanning their flushed necklines.

  “Exactly, Mr Aragona, exactly!” was all the conductor remarked.

  I couldn’t interpret his reaction. It could have been spontaneous bonhomie or a clever way of disguising his discomfort at my reference to his speech. In any case there was no time to investigate further, because we were immediately invited to take our place at the tables.

  “Charming and gallant as well, eh?” I said to Àrtemis, as we walked to ours, giving her a pinch. “Will you be simpering over him all night?”

  My wife gave me a piercing, sensual look.

  “Ah! Finally you’re warming up, Lorenzo Aragona.”

  6O Isis and Osiris, give / the spirit of wisdom to the new couple! / You who guide the steps of the travellers / strengthen them with patience in danger.

  7And upon you too, Prince, the gods impose a healthy silence / without it you are both lost. / You will see Pamina - but never speak to her; thus begins / your period of proving.

  8Hellish vendetta burns in my heart, / death and despair blaze about me!

  Chapter 19

  Naples, 16th of June, 22:00

  Five days before the summer solstice

  Àrtemis and I sat at the table with Filippo Ricciardi and the three policemen. Oscar had outdone himself and somehow managed to keep us all together.

  “You didn’t notice anything strange, Lorenzo?” whispered Andrea Kominkova to me at one point while my wife distracted Professor Ricciardi.

  “In all truth, Andrea,” I muttered, looking around distractedly, “I did, yes, including the opera they invited us to. The Magic Flute is full of references to ancient Egypt, and even the conductor’s words left me somewhat perplexed.”

  “‘What you see is never the whole story’, just like on the little scroll on the watch. You noticed that too, then,” said Andrea.

  “Yes. And look at this hall, look at these columns. It’s as if we were inside an Egyptian temple.”

  It was really all very disturbing. The murder of Hašek, the hoax organized in order to leave the message, the theft of the alchemical watch, the invitation to see the famous Mozart opera and attend the gala dinner. What did these people want? Just to get their hands on two sheets Hašek had taken from the de Sangro to Saint-Germain letters and the black vial that I hadn’t been able to analyse? But what could they contain that would make someone willing to kill for them?

  Meanwhile we enjoyed our meal without incident, until, while the guests were moving slowly towards a long table where a huge buffet with dessert and liqueurs had been prepared, the waiter who had been serving us came discreetly up to me.

  “Sir, there is someone here who wishes to speak to you.”

  “Ah. Where?”

  “Follow me, please.”

  Andrea saw the exchange and touched her ear. It was the signal that I should turn on the microphone I was wearing. It might be time to record something interesting – and possibly have some people arrested.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” I said to Àrtemis. “Stay with our friends.”

  The look on my wife’s face suddenly darkened. “Be careful, Lorenzo.”

  I brushed her cheek with one hand to re-assure her before following the waiter.

  We crossed the ballroom and walked down some of the many corridors and up the flights of stairs which wound around the parts of the Royal Palace usually closed to the public. After traversing a final, dimly-lit corridor, we reached a secluded room. The waiter knocked on the door, then, without another word, walked away with a slight bow. After a moment someone opened the door and to my great surprise I found myself in front of a man in a tuxedo wearing a grotesque mask. A mask that resembled the face of an Egyptian deity, with the long thin beak of a bird.

  An ibis, the animal sacred to Thoth.

  I could not suppress a chuckle.

  “What is this, a joke?”

  “Sit down, Mr Aragona,” said the very serious Thoth, in an affectedly deep voice, ignoring my question. “We just want to talk.”

  He stepped aside and invited me to enter. Crossing the threshold, I found myself in a fairly large room: a sort of study with large shelves full of books and valuable furniture. The whole place was virtually in darkness, because the only light came from two candlesticks placed on a desk opposite the door and another candle on a table next to some armchairs. We were quite a long way from the busy parts of the palace at that moment, and there was no sound to be heard except for a strange, constant hiss. At that moment I gave it little thought, however, and kept my concentration focused on what was happening.

  Behind the desk there sat another man in disguise, and other figures with their faces covered stood about the room. I counted six or seven of them. If I hadn’t seen the mangled body of Hašek, I would have laughed at this circus. I appeared to have ended up in the party scene in Eyes Wide Shut.

  “Forgive the masks, Mr Aragona, but we cannot be too careful,” began the man behind the desk, remaining seated and perhaps reading my thoughts. I could not identify his accent – it was flat and uninflected, and his voice was deliberately hoarse. A devilish whisper.

  The door was closed and I was left standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by the masked figures dressed in long black robes which covered their clothes.

  “Egyptian deities, The Magic Flute, etc. etc. You are the ones behind IPSI – the murderers of Hašek,” I said, overcoming my fear.

  The man behind the desk, whose mask was a simple golden face covered by the typical ancient Egyptian headdress, the nemes, with black and white stripes, raised his head slightly.

  “Murderers…” he said, pronouncing the word slowly. “You have no proof of that, Mr Aragona, and it’s not like you to jump to conclusions.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “Oh, but you are a celebrity among the few intellectuals who have remained in this forlorn city.”

  “Really? I had no idea. I have to assume that you too must be quite well known if you need to hide your faces. So who are you?”

  Another sigh from behind the mask. “Who are we, who are we…? We are a phratry, Mr Aragona. Do you know what a phratry is?”

  I assumed a questioning air. “An ancient association of citizens and families? A little like those that existed in the Greek Neapolis?”

  The masked man chuckled. “Good, well done. The phratries of Neapolis were the district sedili in the medieval town – its administrative institutions.”

  “Too bad that neither the phratries nor the sedili have existed for several thousands of years, Mr…”

  “You can call me Asar. You see, Mr Aragona, it is not entirely true that the phratries disappeared, and I’m surprised that you, so fond of esotericism and secrets, are unaware of the fact. Three at least still survive, and the families who were part of them managed to pass down their customs and religious practices. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “It's ridiculous, Mr… Asar, and the very idea is insane.”

  “And yet it is the truth, whether you like it or not,” he replied drily, and slightly annoyed. “In what is now known as borgo dei Vergini, for example, there was once the phratry of the Eunostidi. But the Eunostidi still exist, Mr Aragona, you know? Just like Parthenopeans, which is not only the word sometimes used to define the Neapolitans but also the name of another mysterious phratry, of which little is known, who are devoted to the siren Partenope. Do you know that they still meet up in the area where you, my dear antique dealer, have your gallery, somewhere near monte Echia?”

  I folded my arms. I
’d had enough of all this tourist-baiting nonsense.

  “And then there’s us. Our history has left almost no trace, because scholars have confused us with another phratry – that of the Kumei, the mythical Cumanian founders of Naples. Ask around, you’ll find there are various inscriptions in which our name is mentioned.”

  He paused and leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “Ours is the phratry of Isidei, Mr Aragona, although today we use the acronym IPSI – In Parthenope Societas Isidis. We are the only true custodians of Egyptian-Neapolitan tradition and have been for thousands of years. The public know us as notables, businessmen, industrialists, politicians. Some call us the Camorra…”

  After another chuckle he stood up. He wore a long cloak that covered him from head to toe. I suspected that the people in that room were all guests at the gala dinner and had hidden their clothes and faces so that I would not be able to recognise them – and, of course, because they were involved in a murder.

  Asar approached me until his masked face was a few centimetres from mine. “Mason is a definition that amuses me. I always imagined the Masons, the real ones, would be furious to be associated with us. The champions of true esotericism! Well that is no longer true – it hasn’t been for a couple of centuries now, Mr Aragona. The dear Freemasons now just have their meetings, pat each other on the back and exchange favours, recognising each other as true, loyal initiates and brothers. Bullshit!”

  He shouted the last word, abandoning his self-control for a moment and making me jump.

  “And yet…” Asar continued, suddenly calm again, “and yet a small group, a small independent Masonic lodge, led by a hateful character, has begun to create problems for us, and come very close to discovering the details of our secret history – sometimes things even we were unaware of. A Masonic lodge with a curious, distinctive title: The Lodge of the Silver Shadow. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I winced. That was my lodge. That man knew me very well.

  “Yes, Mr Aragona – or should I call you ‘Worshipful Master’? He paused for effect, then, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, continued. “Your lodge seems to attract eminent cultural personalities like flies; it seems to be the last true lodge of hermetic scholars of the city, if not the country. A Masonic lodge of alchemists. We shouldn’t need to worry that much, it’s true. We are too powerful, we have existed for centuries. We are the ancient soul, the spine, the belly of the city. No, I said to myself, no poor little masonic lodge can bother us. And yet…”

  “And yet?” I asked, beginning to get truly tired of that never-ending nonsense.

  “And yet it is always a good thing not to underestimate your enemy.”

  I shook my head, disgusted. “Look, why don’t you tell me once and for all what it is you want from me? Thank you for the invitation to the theatre and to the dinner, but I’m neglecting my wife and my friends in order to listen to this.”

  “Ah yes, your friends. The beautiful Czech policewoman and your Neapolitan colleagues, am I right?”

  I thought I had misheard, but there could be no doubt. They knew everything. I swallowed with difficulty.

  “Do not be surprised, Mr Aragona – do you take us for amateurs? Can you hear the slight noise in the background? That constant, rather annoying hiss? It’s a gift from one of our fretors – a brother. A sophisticated device that US intelligence uses to shield the president’s conversations and prevent any bug intercepting his phone calls.”

  He was referring to the microphone I was wearing. No, they were not amateurs.

  “Okay, since you’re that good, what the hell is it that you want from me?” I asked for the umpteenth time, now that I had been unmasked.

  “Your help. You and your lodge don’t worry us, it’s true, but when we heard that you were in possession of the missing part of the de Sangro to Saint-Germain correspondence, we decided to take action to get rid of you in order to recover it. But then you managed to escape from us – by the way, not bad for an antique dealer – and so we took that as a sign. We decided that you and your brothers might be useful to us.”

  He had only mentioned the missing part of the manuscript and not the vial. Perhaps they were unaware of it’s existence, and I took care not to mention it. “Useful for what? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  Asar nodded his head in the direction of one of the figures in the room. An individual wearing a mask of Anubis, the Egyptian god with a dog’s head, went to the desk and leaned over a book. Asar invited me to examine it.

  “Here it is, the de Sangro to Saint-Germain correspondence. All that’s missing are the pages in your possession. It is the treasure map, Mr Aragona. Look at it.”

  I leafed through the yellowed pages of that collection of letters and short notes, trembling with the idea that the manuscript and the sheets in my possession had cost the life of the great Basile Cobalière. The styles of handwriting were different, but both were very clear. I paused on some passages which seemed to be describing an alchemical process to create an artificial gem, or something similar. One of those stones that the Prince of Sansevero manufactured to impress the ladies of the Kingdom of Naples. There were words like ‘ruby’, ‘catalyst’ and ‘sun stone’. There were pages with strange drawings and sketched maps, pages with Celtic and Egyptian symbols, with runes and hieroglyphs. A true esoteric pastiche. Finally, there was a long account of the Count Saint-Germain’s travels, with notes in the margins by the Prince of Sansevero, where the French alchemist reported that he had finally found something important which must have been the purpose of his mysterious journey. The words that struck me were ‘wouivre’, ‘centre of the world’ and ‘elixir’.

  Immersed as I was in reading, I forgot for a moment that I was in the presence of murderers and became fascinated by that document. “The letters are in French and Italian,” I whispered, “with the odd Latin word here and there. It seems that Saint-Germain had found the hiding place of some fountain of youth or something…”

  “Very good, you have already got to the crux of the matter. What you call the fountain of youth is also defined in the letters as the Septemplex Solis Rota.”

  “The Sevenfold Solar Circle? Mozart’s?”

  Asar nodded.

  “In The Magic Flute, the sun, a powerful symbol for the Egyptian religion, is portrayed as a talisman which Sarastro steals from the deceased husband of the wicked Queen of the Night. The Sevenfold Solar Circle, in other words.”

  Through his expressionless mask I looked into his eyes and Asar, in the dim light of the candles, seemed to be glowing with excitement.

  “Yes, Mr Aragona, according to the notes of his travels, it appears that the Comte de Saint-Germain had found the object that Schikaneder, at Mozart’s suggestion, described in the libretto of The Magic Flute, calling it the Sevenfold Solar Circle.”

  Asar came over and pointed to one of the pages of the correspondence. I noticed the ring on his finger, which bore the symbol of the cross of St Andrew with the IPSI initials inside. Further confirmation, if proof were needed.

  “You see?” he added. “The count gives the name of the place where he found it in 1770.”

  I read the name, which I had already heard from Riccardo, again, but nothing came to mind. It appeared to refer to something symbolic – an imaginary place like Camelot or Eldorado.

  “The Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors.”

  Chapter 20

  Naples, 16th of June, 23:45

  Five days before the summer solstice

  “The reference to this place,” Asar continued, “is not found in any known text of esoteric tradition, simply because it is an invented name Saint-Germain and the Sansevero agreed to use in order to conceal somewhere which actually existed. A place which has probably, for the last two thousand years, kept the secret of secrets.”

  I put the letters on the desk and stared at Asar with a doubtful expression.

  “Which is?”

  “What you called the fo
untain of youth, the secret of the Egyptians.”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “Mr Asar, we’re talking about a legend, about symbolic meanings. You can’t really believe this story. Not even I, who perform operative alchemy, could make the mad claim that my work in the laboratory could lead to this. The universal medicine, the elixir… Ok, maybe you can improve quality of life, as we read in the writings of Fulcanelli and his pupil Canseliet, but no more – and we can’t even be certain of that. Most alchemists have taken what they have discovered with them to the grave. This Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors and the treasure it houses is nothing more than a fantasy, a symbol. You’re insane – you have killed a man for nothing. For a myth or for the joke of two great alchemists from the past.”

  Asar sighed through his mask and returned to his chair behind the desk. “Human history is littered with senseless murders, Mr Aragona. And as I told you, you have no evidence upon which to base your claim that we are responsible. Because in fact we are not. At least not in this case. What matters is that the Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors exists.”

  “If you already know everything, why are we here? You asked me to collaborate, but I’m not going to help you, so we can stop this ridiculous meeting, unless you’re planning to kill me too.”

  There was a moment of silence and the tension seemed to rise like heat from the floor.

  “Unfortunately, Mr Aragona, things are not that simple,” said Asar, pulling a laptop from a drawer. He opened the screen and, for a moment, before he turned it towards me, an evil reflection was projected from it onto his mask.

  “Do you see these six shapes on the left? These six, small, insignificant green shapes? Well they represent the six people seated at your table. To be precise, you, your wife, Professor Ricciardi and the three guardians of law and order that you brought with you and who at this moment in time are looking for you. As long as these six shapes remain green, you will stay – how shall I put it? – alive. But if I move this virtual switch, here, you see? This small grey button… Well, let’s say if I move the one next to the shape that corresponds to your wife… look, how wonderful!”