Inside the base of the framework the bodies of the decapitated were visible. One of the virginal women carried a box and drew from it a round object, which she placed in a niche of the central tower, and immediately the fountain at the top began to spurt. I had time to recognize the object: it was the head of the Moorish king, which now burned like a log, making the water of the fountain boil. Fumes, puffs of steam, gurgling…
Lorenza this time put her hand on the back of my neck, caressing it as I had seen her caress Jacopo in the car.
The woman brought a golden sphere, turned on a tap in the oven, and caused a thick red liquid to flow into the sphere. Then the sphere was opened, and, in place of the red liquid, it contained an egg, large, beautiful, white as snow. The woman took the egg out and set it on the ground in a pile of yellow sand. The egg opened, and a bird came out, still unformed and bloody. But, watered with the blood of the decapitated, it grew before our eyes, became handsome and radiant.
They decapitated the bird and reduced it to ashes on a little altar. Some kneaded the ash into a paste, poured the thin paste into two molds, and set them in the oven to bake, blowing on the fire with some pipes. In the end, the molds were opened, and two pretty figures appeared, pale, almost transparent, a youth and a maiden, no more than four spans high, as soft and fleshy as living creatures but with eyes still glassy, mineral. They were set on two cushions, and an old man poured drops of blood into their mouths….
Other women arrived, with golden trumpets decorated with green garlands. They handed a trumpet to the old man, who put it to the lips of the two creatures still suspended in their vegetable lethargy, their sweet animal sleep, and he began to insufflate soul into their bodies…. The room filled with light; the light dimmed to a half-light, then to a darkness broken by orange flashes. There was an immense dawn while the trumpets sounded, loud and ringing, and all was a dazzle of ruby. At that point I again lost Lorenza and realized I would never find her.
Everything turned a flaming red, which slowly dulled to indigo and violet, and the screen went blank. The pain in my forehead became intolerable.
“Mysterium Magnum,” Agliè said calmly at my side. “The rebirth of the new man through death and passion. A good performance, I must say, even if the taste for allegory perhaps marred the precision of the phases. What you saw was only a performance, but it spoke of a Thing. And our host claims to have produced this Thing. Come, let us go and see the miracle achieved.”
And if such monsters are generated, we must believe them the work of nature, even if they be different from man.
—Paracelsus, De Homunculis, in Operum Volumen Secundum, Genevae, De Tournes, 1658, p. 465
He led us out into the garden, and I felt better at once. I didn’t dare ask the others if Lorenza had come after all. Probably I had dreamed it. After a few steps we entered a greenhouse; the stifling heat dazed me. Among tropical plants were six glass ampules in the shape of pears—or tears—hermetically sealed, filled with a pale-blue liquid. Inside each vessel floated a creature about twenty centimeters high: we recognized the gray-haired king, the queen, the Moor, the warrior, and the two adolescents crowned with laurel, one blue and one pink…. They swayed with a graceful swimming motion, as if water were their element.
It was hard to determine whether they were models made of plastic or wax, or whether they were living beings, and the slight opacity of the liquid made it impossible to tell if the faint pulse that animated them was an optical illusion or reality.
“They seem to grow every day,” Agliè said. “Each morning, the vessels are buried in fresh horse manure—still warm—which provides the heat necessary for growth. In Paracelsus there are prescriptions that say homunculi must be grown at the internal temperature of a horse. According to our host, these homunculi speak to him, tell him secrets, utter prophecies. Some revealed to him the true measurements of the Temple of Solomon, others told him how to exorcise demons…. I must confess that I have never heard them speak.”
They had very mobile faces. The king looked at the queen tenderly.
“Our host told me that one morning he found the blue youth, who had escaped somehow from his prison, attempting to break the seal of the maiden’s vessel…. But he was out of his element, could not breathe, and they saved him just in time, returning him to his liquid.”
“Terrible,” Diotallevi said. “I wouldn’t want such a responsibility. You’d have to take the vessels with you everywhere and find all that manure wherever you went. And then what would you do in the summer, on vacation? Leave them with the doorman?”
“But perhaps,” Agliè concluded, “they are only Cartesian imps. Or automata.”
“The devil!” Garamond said. “Dr. Agliè, you’re opening a whole new universe to me. We should all be more humble, my dear friends. There are more things in heaven and earth … But, after all, à la guerre comme à la guerre…”
Garamond was awestruck; Diotallevi maintained an expression of cynical curiosity; Belbo showed no feeling at all.
To dispel my doubt, I said to him, “Too bad Lorenza didn’t come; she would have loved this.”
“Mm, yes,” he replied absently.
So Lorenza hadn’t come.
And I was the way Amparo had been in Rio. I was ill. I felt somehow cheated. They hadn’t brought me the agogo.
I left the group and went back into the building, picking my way through the crowd. I passed the buffet, drank something cool, though I was afraid it might contain a philter. I looked for a bathroom, to splash cold water on my temples and neck. This accomplished, I again felt better. But as I came out, I saw a circular staircase and, suddenly curious, I was unable to resist the new adventure. Perhaps, even though I thought I had recovered, I was still looking for Lorenza.
Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne’s thread to lead him out.
—Artephius
Descending, I came to a room below the ground, dimly lighted, with walls in rocaille like those of fountains in a park. In one corner I saw an opening like the bell of a trumpet. I heard sounds coming from it. When I approached, the sounds became more distinct, until I could catch sentences, as clear and precise as if they were being uttered at my side. An Ear of Dionysius!
Evidently the ear communicated with one of the upper rooms, picking up the conversation of those who stood near its aperture.
“Signora, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. I’m tired…. I’ve worked with cinnabar, with mercury, I sublimated spirits, did distillations with salts of iron, fermentations, and still I haven’t found the Stone. I prepared strong waters, corrosive waters, burning waters, all in vain. I used eggshells, sulfur, vitriol, arsenic, sal ammoniac, quartz, alkalis, oxides of rock, saltpeter, soda, salt of tartar, and potash alum. Believe me, do not trust them, avoid the imperfect metals; otherwise you will be deceived, as I was deceived. I tried everything: blood, hair, the soul of Saturn, marcasites, aes ustum, saffron of Mars, tincture of iron, litharge, antimony. To no avail. I extracted water from silver, calcified silver both with and without salt, and using aqua vitae I extracted corrosive oils. I employed milk, wine, curds, the sperm of the stars which falls to earth, chelidon, placentas, ashes, even…”
“Even…?”
“Signora, there’s nothing in this world that demands more caution than the truth. To tell the truth is like leeching one’s own heart….”
“Enough, enough! You’ve got me all excited.”
“I dare confess my secret only to you. I am of no place and no era. Beyond time and space, I live my eternal existence. There are beings who no longer have guardian angels: I am one of them…
“But why have you brought me here?”
Another voice: “My dear Balsamo! Playing with the myth of immortality, eh?”
“Idiot! Immortality is not a myth. It’s a fact.”
I was about to leave, bored by this chatter, when I heard Salon. He was speaking in a whisper, tensely, as if gripping someone by the arm. I also recognized the voice of Pierre.
“Come now,” Salon was saying, “don’t tell me that you too are here for this alchemical foolishness. And don’t tell me you came to enjoy the cool air of the gardens. Did you know that after Heidelberg, Caus accepted an invitation from the king of France to supervise the cleaning of Paris?”
“Les façades?”
“He wasn’t Malraux. It must have been the sewers. Curious, isn’t it? The man invented symbolic orange
