The Serpent Papers (25 page)

IV

EMILY SHARP

Professor Emily Sharp, American Doctor of English Literature at the University of Barcelona, lectures in the morning. I arrive early and install myself in the back before she introduces the material. I settle into my seat unobtrusively. There’s a slow trickle of students arriving. Many are my own age – postgraduates, PhD candidates, fellowship researchers. I blend easily into the crowd. We sit like the congregated citizens of a roman amphitheatre, stuffed into metal desks.

Professor Sharp does not hold back. She commands the assembled army with abrupt consonants, her colouring Nordic, her features youthful; her skin silvery, translucent blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail behind pink ears. Eyes spread like a pretty fish. She blinks behind tortoiseshell horn-rimmed spectacles; the lines of her tailoring are simple, her chest flat. Elegant grey slacks, thin belt, loose blouse, high on the collar. She’s not showing much flesh, in a demure, slightly nervous way, but her voice is strong, unwavering. She lectures in English, for the advanced students. The course for the semester: ‘The Art/Nature debate in English Poetry’, beginning with the emergence of alchemy as a literary trope.

‘
Al
is the definitive article in Arabic, while
Kimia
originates in one of two potential sources.’ Professor Sharp clicks through – the opening slide of her lecture. ‘The first is
kmt
 – or
chem
in Greek – the Ancient Egyptian name for Egypt, meaning “black earth”, referring to the ebony soil of the Nile, in contrast to the yellow sands of the desert. Thus rendering the true name of alchemy “of Egypt” or the Egyptian Art.’

The students wriggle in their desks. I watch her. Can she pluck me from the crowd? Can she strike out by my bearing, or does my face read infantile, betraying a certain youthful naivety? Am I one of them? Or an outcast on the periphery? The hawkish students, pencils poised over notebooks, scratch words into paper.

Professor Sharp scans the multitude.

Is that a smile? Did the corner of her mouth twitch?

‘
Kimia
may also be derived from a second source word – the Ancient Greek
chyma
suggests a more science-oriented definition. If we take
chyma
as the base for “alchemy” meaning to “fuse” or “cast together”, we can see how
Alkimia
has given birth to our modern “chemistry”. Over the course of this semester we will follow the repercussions of this linguistic metamorphosis in the arts and sciences, studying the emergence of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment through the eyes of English poets from Chaucer to William Blake.’

A poem flashes up on the lecture screen behind the pulpit. Chaucer:
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
. ‘I’d like to draw your attention to lines 773–77 in your Riverside Editions.’ The crunch of turning pages.

‘When you were reading the poem, did anything jump off the page? What do you make of Chaucer’s stance on the alchemical arts?’ Professor Sharp checks in with the class. ‘Any takers? Thoughts? Feelings? Throw something at me.’

When the lecture is over, students rustle as they leave their seats. A healthy chatter. Plans are made for the evening, phone numbers exchanged. Giggles and flirtations ignited. Who was that handsome fellow in the corner? That enigmatic girl with the plaited hair? I stand and walk down the wooden stairs to the lecture pit, making my way through the crowd.

‘Professor Sharp,’ I say when I reach the bottom.

She looks at me vaguely.

‘Anna Verco, from Picatrix.’

The haze lifts.

‘So glad you could make it.’ She reaches out both hands and takes mine. ‘It is such a relief you are here. Finally I can share the burden – maybe even unload it entirely.’ She laughs: a little chiming bell. Suddenly she is very, very pretty. ‘Do you mind waiting a moment while I gather my things?’

Professor Sharp opens the door to her office, clutching her notes in a brown satchel, the strap broken and retied at her shoulder.

‘Welcome to my lair.’ She slumps into the plush velvet chair behind her desk. ‘Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable.’

The room is large, fitted with glamorous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that suit a library. A medieval folio is framed on the back of the door and a series of research awards are arranged on the windowsill behind an opulent desk. The desk’s oak surface is mounted with green felt. A stapler, paper clips and a small figurine of Santa Eulàlia in gold rest beside the computer. She checks her watch.

‘I’m slightly more cramped for time today than I had hoped.’ Emily takes off her glasses and looks at me closely. Her eyes squint in the half-light. ‘You have written some very provocative papers in the past, and I am sure that if you really have the talent your colleagues seem to grace you with, then you will handle this material well. Though it does strike me as somewhat outside your remit. There, are, however some rules I’m going to lay out.’

This isn’t unusual. She offers coffee. I accept. I listen to her speak quietly; she wants trust, faith, a degree of respect, privacy and to not be named. I afford her all this. She wants the private material we go over – her relationship to the boy who walked into the sea, their living arrangements and her long dead friendship with his sister – to be off the record. I agree – to a certain point: I won’t be bullied. If it is integral to the story, I say, then I will have to relate some of the details so that the picture is complete.

I make my own position clear: I don’t hang people’s underwear out in public unless I really don’t like them. She takes the pill, but then, of course, her eyes flash. ‘You might not like
me
.’

I laugh. ‘I swear to behave in a respectable manner with your story.’

The conversation eases. Emily Sharp explains that she had come to Barcelona in 2003 to assist one Professor Guifré (now deceased) in the classification and analysis of a well-known Mallorcan mystic by the name of Ramon Llull.

‘Things don’t happen in life as you plan. Originally I hoped to get a research fellowship at Oxford, but another member of my cohort won the position and I had to look for something else. I was in the fourth year of my PhD, read Latin, spoke Catalan and Spanish after completing my undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature. I applied for a Fulbright in Spain to work with Guifré and when the grant came through . . . I leapt at the chance. To some people in my programme the choice seemed illogical. I, however, could always see the through-line, though I didn’t think I’d ever wind up being a professor here. When the call came in from the Universitat de Barcelona . . . I thought why not. I moved back here in 2011. It is a shame you can’t speak with Guifré about this.’ Her eyes cast down. ‘He passed away three years ago, just after offering me this position in his faculty . . . But I’m getting off track.’

She catches herself. Redirects.

‘You wanted to talk about those letters. At the time it wasn’t unusual for me to receive manuscript files from Guifré to analyse. As his research assistant I often dealt with primary resources. But even I, lowly student that I was, recognized that these were particularly strange papers. I received scans of four letters sent through by the police. Parchment pages illuminated in a traditional style . . . They had no author and no context. They were eerie and unsettling. Laden with a deliberately obfuscated meaning. I remember . . . there was something electric about them.’

She sighs. ‘That summer has never been a place I permit myself to return to, despite the fact that, years later . . . I’m living here. Though nothing is ever quite the same? Is it?’

* * *

In the library on the morning of Friday, 20 June 2003, Emily opens her email and downloads the files sent by Jorge Guifré. She compiles a list of the images. Colours, postulated dyes, associated symbolic meanings. She is surprised by the fact that the diagrams on the second page of each letter are immediately recognizable. Each circle drawn within the other, divided into nine sections, creating three thin rings around a central image – three overlaid triangles. The numbers 3 and 9 are magic numbers, with important significance.
Three for the Trinity – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and nine for the Llullian elements of God.

There can be no mistaking the charts.
This she confirms in an email to Guifré. She cites them as being exact reproductions of
Figure T
of the medieval philosopher Ramon Llull.
I’m equally certain that they are direct copies
,
Guifré responds. Emily’s eyes scans the outer ring of the diagram, fixing on the two-headed snake coiling into itself. Her eyes linger on the curves of its twin belly. With a few hits to the keyboard she enlarge the image. A golden serpent swallowing its tail, shimmering on the page.
Interesting
, she writes to Professor Guifré,
even a little bit clichéd. Without a doubt a reference to the Hermetic Arts. Ouroboros. Not a difficult reference to find. Well done.
He replies:
You are correct. Can you do a survey of the reference for noon? I’d like you in a meeting with the individual who sent through these files. Come fifteen minutes before. We’ll discuss at 11.45.
A shiver of delight runs down her spine.
An ouroboros.
Symbolically, quite like a dragon, often even synonymous.

Emily leaves her desk and speaks to the earnest librarian at the special archives collection. She hands over a set of call numbers to the woman, who says the batch will be ready in the Secure Reading Room in forty-five minutes to an hour.
The books will be put aside for the rest of the day, you may return at any point . . . 
The woman frowns severely.
But you are not allowed to bring anything in with you.
All pens, pencils and personal items must be left with the security guard at the door. Emily thanks her profusely and returns to the notes on her desk.

It is at this precise moment that Emily Sharp’s peace is disturbed by the angry buzzing of her phone on the desk beside her. Emily answers it.

‘Can you come home?’ Núria Sorra asks breathlessly.

‘Can’t. Busy,’ Emily whispers, cupping her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m in the Athenaeum.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s Adrià.’

‘What’s he done—’

Núria cuts her off. ‘I really need you. Now.’

‘Call your uncle,’ Emily says fiercely. Núria’s uncle lived around the block from her apartment, a grand flat tucked behind the Picasso Museum.

‘Emily, I need your help.’

‘I have a meeting. I can’t leave.’

‘This is more important than a meeting.’

‘More important than a meeting?’ The library monitor raises an eyebrow.

‘No, seriously, I need you to come over. I need you to be here soon,’ Núria continues.

‘He needs help.’

‘I need help.’

‘Call your mom. Call your dad.’

‘I can’t reach them.’

Emily ducks into the women’s toilets on the library floor. Núria’s voice wells up with tears.

‘I need you to come now.’

‘You realize how important this is, don’t you?’

‘I’m scared.’

‘Of your brother?’

‘I’m frightened.’

‘I don’t have time—’

‘
Capitalista!
’ Núria shouts and hangs up.

In the toilets of the library, Emily turns on the lights and looks at her face in the mirror. Her make-up has streaked – the mascara has left a fine black powder that emphasizes the circles forming beneath her eyes. She has struggled to sleep at home for the past few nights, even with earplugs, and the signs are showing. She feels disgusted at herself, at the smell of sweat she discovers under her armpits, clinging to her from the morning run – her tight brown dress, a size too small, the one she had bought on sale at H&M for twelve euros. Cheap metal necklace round her throat. Her breasts bubble up over the top rim of fabric – goose-bumped and raised, like skinned apples. She pushes them back down, into place. Emily runs her fingers in the water of the tap and began to clean away the black streaks of mascara beneath her eyes.