The Alchemist's Gift

by Martin Rua

  We had all looked at one another, that name made clear reference to the star shape on the matter in the alchemical vessel, but lacked something.

  “If I might be so bold, Master – star is… too obvious,” I objected, timidly. I was one of the youngest, but Matteo had great respect for me. All fell silent and waited for me to continue. “Why not the Silver Shadow? The Lodge of the Silver Shadow.”

  A smile had appeared on Matteo’s face, and, one by one, on the faces of all the others. At that moment, the journey of our lodge of alchemists began.

  I pushed aside the memories. He had been gone for ten years, but he had left us an immense legacy and his formidable lifetime companion. Alma the poetess, the sensitive writer, his muse. The house was exactly as it had been, apart from some small, necessary changes. His things were still around, in the same positions as I remembered. It was not that Alma simply, and understandably, refused to resign herself to the situation, it was more a desire to perpetuate the greatness of that man. Philosophy professor by day, alchemist by night. Tireless, until the day that his smoking had gained the upper hand on his battered body and choked his fragile breath. He had been seventy years old.

  “So, the Aragona brothers – I thought you’d forgotten about this poor old lady,” said Alma, sitting in the chair that had once been Matteo’s after putting the coffee machine on the stove.

  “How could you think that?” I replied, crestfallen.

  “Four years is a long time, Lorenzo.”

  “I know, but…”

  “But coming here since he died has always been a burden for you, I know.”

  I sat there in silence and smiled sheepishly.

  “Plus, you’re an idiot!” she burst out, unexpectedly. Alex struggled to hold back his laughter. “You're both idiots,” Alma resumed, and this time Alex looked as embarrassed as I did.

  “But I live in Tuscany,” said my brother, in his defence.

  “But you’re always here in Naples, don’t deny it,” teased Alma. We were silent, and it was she who burst into laughter. “It’s so much fun teasing you two! I’m sorry, I’m only joking – no matter how long it’s been, I’ve always known I was in your thoughts.”

  “Of course,” I answered.

  Alma went to the kitchen to pour the coffee and I took the opportunity to pull out the bronze key and set it down on the low wood and glass coffee table in front of me.

  She returned with the coffee and some chocolates.

  “Forgive me, I have nothing to offer you.”

  “Don’t be silly!” said Alex, picking up one of the small cups. Alma saw the key.

  “What’s this?”

  “A woman gave it to me, saying that you had the lock.”

  The smile disappeared from her lips and she put her cup on the table and picked up the key, turning it over in her hands.

  “One day, not long before… before he died, Matteo told me something,” she murmured, as though bewitched by that key. “Something strange and mysterious. At the time I took no notice – I knew him, and I knew that sometimes you had to interpret his words and actions, and especially his thoughts. I believe that on that occasion he’d realised the end was coming and felt the need to deal with that one thing. He told me that one day you, Lorenzo, would come with a key and that I should take you before his lock. That it was necessary to wait until the time was right. Naively I told him I could do it whenever he saw fit. I didn’t read between the lines, I thought… God, I deluded myself, that he could somehow be immortal.”

  A tear glistened on her cheek.

  “All those alchemical experiments to find the universal medicine, as you call it. And it killed him,” she resumed, unburdening herself of her dismay. She probably had little opportunity to talk about her husband freely in front of people who had known him as well as we had. I rested a hand upon her shoulder and she calmed down, wiped away her tears and smiled.

  “Forgive me, I’m being childish.”

  “No you’re not, it’s perfectly natural. It’s human. We all miss Matteo,” I said, trying to comfort her.

  With a shudder, she seemed to pull herself together.

  “Oh that’s enough of that! I’m happy that you are here. Finish your coffee, and then come with me.”

  We followed her through that old house full of memories, along a corridor which ended at a thick wooden door. Upon it were carved two letters – M and R – and beneath them was a complicated alchemical drawing. His laboratory. I knew it well.

  “I almost never go in there. But today I’m happy to go in there again with you.”

  I squeezed her hand and she opened the door and pulled a switch. In the dim light I saw the narrow ascending flight of stairs I remembered so clearly. Matteo had built a loft over two of the four rooms of his house.

  Once we were inside the laboratory itself, I shuddered. It was moving to be back there. On one side of the room were the shutters, slightly open and allowing a thin beam of faint light to illuminate a table covered with instruments and tools. The rest of the laboratory was almost in darkness. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a familiar object: the athanor, the alchemists’s oven. Inside which everything was possible, as Matteo often said.

  “I feel a bit dizzy…” said Alma, suddenly.

  There was a stool next to the table.

  “Sit here,” suggested Alex, taking her arm. “Shall I bring you some water?”

  “No, no I’m better now, thank you,” she answered, running a hand over her forehead. “It was just a moment.”

  I walked over to the small window to open the shutter. I had to force it. The old wood creaked slightly, then gave, and light filled the room.

  “Wow…” murmured Alex, looking around him. He had never been in there.

  The walls were literally covered with drawings, notes and writing and wooden shelves stuffed with books of all sizes and containers containing every possible kind of substance. There were even pipettes, alembics and stills still caked in the residue of Matteo’s final experiments.

  “It was his life,” said Alma, sadly observing the key in her hand. “And it was his death.”

  She looked over at me as if she suspected I might have the same symptoms. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’m very careful.”

  She nodded, then pointed to a box in a corner of the room, a sort of chest of about forty centimetres by twenty.

  “There's your lock.”

  I walked slowly, as though my steps might disturb Matteo’s spirit, which still seemed to be in that place. I slipped the key that the Janara had given me into the large rusty lock and opened the casket.

  Inside there was a notebook, some images of cathedrals with their mazes, musical scores and small glass containers labelled ‘my Boiled Dew’. I opened the notebook and from inside it fell a few letters and a photograph of two men. I recognized Matteo immediately, a handsome fifty-year-old with a beard which had only just begun to turn grey. The other person, who wore a faint goatee, looked familiar, but I could not place him.

  The material was disturbing – it seemed incredibly closely linked to what was happening to me.

  “What have you found?” asked Alex, who in the meantime had walked over.

  “Pictures of cathedrals, glass containers, a diary and letters,” I said, indicating the contents of the box. “Alma, do you know anything about this stuff? It's almost as though Matteo had begun to investigate the mystery I’m involved in at the moment.”

  Alma shook her head and she too approached the small wooden box.

  “I’m sorry Lorenzo, but he was always strangely secretive about this chest. Let me see what you’ve found, maybe something will come to mind.”

  I showed her the diary, the images of cathedrals and the photos of Matteo with that familiar looking man.

  “Ah yes, I know him, but I can’t remember his name. He was a Russian researcher. Or perhaps Polish, but certainly from Eastern Europe. Once he even came to visit us in Naples.”

 
A researcher from the East. I looked at the picture again and finally recognized him.

  “Could he could be Czech, or from Czechoslovakia? This photo might date back to when Czechoslovakia still existed.”

  “Czech…” murmured Alma, “yes, yes – he might.”

  “Does the name Vladislav Hašek mean anything to you?”

  Alma thought a moment, then nodded several times.

  “It’s him, that’s his name. Hašek.”

  Chapter 30

  From the letters of Vladislav Hašek to Matteo Rinaldi

  Prague, 13th of December, 1993

  My dear Matteo,

  I am so glad that you found my work interesting. Talking to someone who finally understands the importance of what we study is priceless. Here in Prague there are many brilliant minds, so let us hope that the separation from Slovakia does not affect the progress of certain projects in which I am involved. One of them most certainly being the one upon which we are collaborating.

  By the way, do not hesitate to inform me of your progress. At this point, finding the document you mentioned to me seems fundamental…

  Prague, 7th January 1994

  My dear Matteo,

  It was with great interest that I learned from your last letter of the good progress you are making and the hard work of your lodge. Of course, you are perhaps exposing yourself a bit too much, and over here there are already rumours, but what can I say? Proceed along your way, my brother, do not turn back…

  Prague, 24th March, 1994

  Dear Matteo,

  Rejoice! If what you wrote to me in your last letter corresponds to the truth, we are on the right track! I shall await the outcome of your ‘mission’ in Paris as one awaits news from the front. Oh, this is a war alright! A hermetic one…

  Prague, 30th April, 1994

  Dear Matteo,

  Your words have filled me with joy but at the same time with obscure foreboding. The document you came into possession of is crucial for our research, but the fact of its previous owner’s death is very disturbing. Who in their right mind would not decide at this point to give up the enterprise? Yet we have a unique opportunity, and we cannot stop now.

  The copy you sent me is clear, but I share with you the difficulty of interpreting the part in code. We must work on both, combining our knowledge…

  Prague, 3rd July, 1994

  Dear Matteo,

  Sharing the summer solstice in that place with you was a unique experience. Unfortunately we were there as tourists. With the code yet to be deciphered, the Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors will remain for us like an open gateway into the king’s locked palace…

  Chartres, 21st June, 1995

  Dear Matteo,

  It has been more or less a year since we last wrote to one another. For me the research is still ongoing. I will keep you informed of every little piece of progress and I beg you to do the same.

  I have decided that, with or without the solution to the riddle, I will come here every summer solstice. In the footsteps of the count. Perhaps I will be inspired.

  Prague, 15th September 1995

  My brother,

  Your invitation to Naples was one of the nicest parts of this year. Seeing you in your city is like studying a rare animal in its natural habitat! Please do not misunderstand me – I say this with all the admiration I feel for you. And your delightful Alma, what an extraordinary woman! You’re a lucky man, my friend…

  Prague, 6th February 1999

  Dear Matteo,

  I am sorry to read of your poor health. I beg you, for a while leave well enough alone retort stands and alembics and get yourself well again – we all need you! You know, some friends convinced me to use that devilry called the internet. Apparently it can permit virtual conversations between people who are very far apart in total anonymity. I’ll see if I can work it out it and let you know. It might be useful for our research…

  Prague, 23rd April, 1999

  Dear Matteo,

  I am pleased that you are feeling better and it fills me with joy to know that you have decided to join me for the next summer solstice. I have great news. My studies are continuing on the document and I believe I am close to the solution, although I have the impression that there are secrets hidden among the original pages of the correspondence which my otherwise excellent photocopies will not allow me to penetrate. I would be grateful if in June you could bring the original document with you so that we may analyse it together.

  I’m glad that you have decided to make ‘the great leap’ – this is the address that you must enter:

  http://www.leviathan.com/alquimia/forum.html.

  You will find it easy to manage, you’ll see! You will easily understand which one is me from my pseudonym.

  Prague, 20th November 2003

  Dear Matteo,

  The news I have to tell you could only be communicated like this, using good old paper and ink. In these three years of working together on the Alquimia forum we have enjoyed many successes, you have introduced me – virtually – to your associates, and I have introduced you to mine. I know, I was not as lucky as you: there is something truly special about Lorenzo Aragona, but I too have a promising apprentice who I may initiate in the Royal Art. He is a Sicilian called Riccardo Micali who moved here to Prague, and he is even helping me to improve my Italian! Always remember not to reveal who is behind my pseudonym. The time is not yet ripe.

  But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve done it, Matteo, I believe I’ve actually succeeded, and all thanks to you! Giving me the correspondence was not only a hugely generous gesture on your part, but also provided valuable help for our research. I was right, between the authentic pages I found clues hidden in the paper itself, in the watermark. Only in that way was I able to understand where I had gone wrong. I beat you, my friend! I found the missing, fundamental element, and – I hope you will understand – I then removed it from the manuscript. This thing is too risky. Using that ingredient I prepared a boiled dew, but beware! It is different from what you have been using so far with the same name. When we see one another I will give you a little. Now we can create the prince’s ruby, and the next summer solstice…

  Chapter 31

  Naples, 18th of June, 12:30

  Three days to the summer solstice

  We stood in silence looking at one another, unable to make sense of that confused picture whose outline we could sense but whose individual components eluded us.

  The first thing that was clear to me was why Hašek had decided to involve me. I suspected, although I had not told Riccardo this, that he had decided a long time ago – well over two or three weeks – that it would be me who bore the burden of continuing the investigation he and Matteo began.

  “It’s a promise I made to an old friend,” or something along those lines, he had said to me when I asked him why he wanted to entrust to me the precious thing of which he had spoken. The old friend was Matteo.

  After a moment, Alma leaned back into the sofa where, after returning from the lab, we had sat to read some of the letters we found in the box.

  “I never knew anything about this correspondence. I remember meeting Hašek, of course – a very nice person. He spent a few days in Naples, but other than that I knew nothing of all these letters between him and Matteo. And I knew nothing of my husband’s journeys with him.”

  “You don’t need to justify yourself, Alma,” I said with a smile, “I haven’t said anything to anyone, at the express request of Hašek. And in light of what’s happened and what is happening now, I think I did the right thing. Hašek and Matteo had started studying the de Sangro to Saint-Germain correspondence after having managed to recover it. According to Riccardo, the Sicilian mentioned in the letters, Hašek received the manuscript from a mysterious character, but in reality it was Matteo who gave it to him. Perhaps Hašek wanted to conceal the identity of his Neapolitan colleague. In any case, the two discovered that the place that de Sangro and Sai
nt-Germain called the Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors is in fact Notre-Dame de Chartres. And there, presumably, is hidden a mysterious thing known as the Sevenfold Solar Circle or the fountain of eternal youth or something. I have absolutely no idea how great the power hidden in this obscure object is, but someone killed Hašek to discover the secret.”

  Alex, who meanwhile had stopped to look at one of the photos found in the casket, gestured to me. “Have you seen this, Lorenzo?”

  “21.06/12… Hmm, it looks like a date followed by a time.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “It looks like the photo of a stone or the fragment of a floor over which the floor plan of a church has been drawn. And that arrow seems to indicate a specific point on the floor plan itself. Maybe it’s supposed to indicate that something happens in that church on the twenty-first of June. The day of the summer solstice… I’m tempted to say that the church could be Chartres, but I don’t remember anything about any particular phenomena taking place there on the twenty-first of June.”

  As I spoke, Alex was already on his smartphone and within seconds he had found the news that confirmed my suspicions.

  “There you go, big brother – no need for any more conjecture.”

  … Among the many mysteries of Chartres Cathedral is one which has always fascinated esotericists. On the twenty-first of June, the day of the summer solstice, at around noon, a ray of sunlight penetrates from the so-called window of Sant’Apollinare, in which the glassmakers deliberately left a gap. The beam moves to a marble slab which is lighter than those around it and, curiously, is set sideways (the work of the masons in accordance with the wishes of the glassmakers?). As it advances along the slab, the ray of sunlight reaches a point where there is a small metal tenon… Why?

  I looked admiringly at my brother.