Where Tigers Are at Home (49 page)

Many hours were devoted to chemistry, an art that Athanasius pursued passionately in the laboratory he had set up in the cellars, below the dispensary. He prepared the Orvietan antidote & the sympathetic powders to cure the ills with which the great of this world, or simply our brothers in the College, were afflicted. He also had to entertain & guide the scholars who had come to Rome especially to see him & view his collections. Without forgetting, of course, all the physical experiments he regularly carried out in order to test his theories, or those of others, against reality.

At six he attended vespers, then we had our dinner. The hours after that were devoted to reading, conversation &, whenever the clarity of the atmosphere permitted, to observing the stars, an occupation that my master pursued persistently & that we did from a little terrace that had been put up on the College roof. Toward eleven o’clock we went to our well-deserved rest, but it was not uncommon to still see light in his study late in the night.

That year was marked by an episode that, all in all, was fairly pleasant but that was to cost Kircher certain unexpected vexations twenty-two years later.

There was in Rome a French doctor, Jean Benoît Sinibaldus, with whom my master was on good terms because he was a useful acquaintance. Sinibaldus, who had a considerable personal fortune, was a keen alchemist & spent a lot of money, to the great displeasure of his wife, acquiring the materials that were indispensable to the art.

One afternoon in the spring of 1647 Sieur Sinibaldus appeared at the College & asked to speak urgently with Kircher. My master, with whom I was working on a machine that was later to become famous, showed some irritation at being disturbed by this tiresome interruption; nevertheless, he received him with his usual courtesy.

“O joy! O happiness!” Sinibaldus exclaimed a soon as he saw Kircher. “I have seen the sophic sal ammoniac! I have seen it with my own eyes! It’s incredible! The man is a genius, a huge, profound genius, a truly sublime mind.”

“Now, now,” said Athanasius, who found the man amusing & could not stop himself from addressing him with a touch of irony, “take a hold of yourself, my dear friend, & begin at the beginning. Who is this individual who is so happy as to merit such praise from your lips?”

“You’re right,” Sinibaldus replied, absentmindedly adjusting his wig, “you must forgive my overexcitement, but when you know what brings me here, I am sure you will understand my agitation. This individual is called Salomon Blauenstein & the whole city is talking of nothing but him, for he knows how to make gold from antimony with an ease that says much about the extent of his knowledge.”

Suddenly he lowered his voice &, after a quick glance behind him, added in a whisper, “He says he is able to make the Stone, it’s only a question of time & the right method … His whole person exudes saintliness. He is a true sage & it’s clear that he is seeking neither gold nor glory: it was only after I had spent several days begging him that he consented to demonstrate his art to me, but grudgingly, as if he were lowering himself to a practice that was unworthy of his talents.”

“Hmm … You know my opinion on this matter. Also you must permit me to express some doubt as to the abilities of your … your … what did you say he was called?”

As we only learned much later, Sieur Sinibaldus was outraged by Kircher’s attitude. He could not understand how someone could dispute something, regard it with such skepticism, without even having taken the trouble to check the facts. As soon as he left the College, he determined to show my master how blind he had been. To do that he hurried off to said Blauenstein, whom he persuaded—not without difficulty, for the fellow pretended to be reluctant—to come and live with him. He placed both his laboratory & his whole fortune at his disposition, provided he would teach him to make the stone or the powder of projection, the mere contact with which, as he had established
de visu
, turned the basest matter into gold.

Blauenstein’s wife was a young Chinese woman called Mei-li, whose mysterious, silent beauty contributed to the alchemist’s
aura of unsuspected powers. Mei-li, Blauenstein said—while maintaining a discreet silence about how he had met her during a journey to China—was the sister of the “Grand Imperial Physician attached to the Chamber of Remedies,” a man who was versed in the art of alchemy & had taught him many secrets taken from ancient grimoires. To anyone who flattered him enough, Blauenstein would willingly, but with many signs of respect & precautions, show a pile of notebooks covered in Chinese characters that he claimed, with no great danger of contradiction, were a compendium of alchemical knowledge.

This strange couple thus settled bag & baggage in the luxurious apartment Sieur Sinibaldus put at their disposal in his own mansion. No sooner had they arrived than a new athanor had to be constructed for the laboratory, the old one not being suitable, & a number of very rare & very expensive ingredients had to be ordered to start the long process that would lead to the Great Work.

When Sinibaldus admitted his ignorance of the products required & of the means of procuring them, Blauenstein offered to obtain them himself & at the best price, solely out of friendship for his host. The good doctor’s moneybags suffered a severe flux, but the alchemist insisted, despite his victim’s protestations of trust, on producing all the bills justifying his expenses: fifty thousand ducats for a pound of Persian
zingar
& ten ounces of powdered scolopendra; eighty-five thousand ducats for realgar, orpiment & indigo; the same amount for a small piece of bezoar from a llama; a hundred thousand ducats for tacamahac resin, Turkestan salt & green alum plus a quantity of other materials that were less rare but hardly less expensive, such as cinnabar, powdered mummy & rhinoceros horn, fresh sparrow-hawk feces or wolves’ testicles … Although substantial, Sinibaldus’s resources were dwindling dangerously;
&, as if by an effect of Divine Providence, those of the alchemist were increasing proportionately.

During Blauenstein’s planned absences, supposedly to seek out these inestimable materials but in reality to salt away the ducats he saved on his purchases, Mei-li & Sinibaldus had the task of looking after the alchemical furnace & watching over the slow sublimation of sulphur & mercury. Using the heat of the laboratory as an excuse, the beautiful Chinese always appeared in a silk négligée, which would fall open at the slightest movement, revealing, as if inadvertently, quivering charms deliberately left free. Her hair, exquisitely combed & tied at the back, was covered in pearls & topped with a little bamboo bonnet, with an outer shell of silk from which a tuft of red horsehair stuck up. In this transparent semiundress, she would prostrate herself, with much waggling of the rump, before a little altar she had made herself with Christ alongside hideous idols from her own country; also—still in order to encourage heaven to look favorably on the Great Work—she would shamelessly engage in lascivious & languorous dances.

It was not long before poor Sinibaldus was captivated by all this. Only three months after having taken the devil into his home, half-ruined, his willpower paralyzed by love, his senses inflamed by her courtesan’s tricks, he would have sold his soul for a kiss. But, although keeping his passion at boiling point with a thousand lubricious wiles, the hussy was careful not to allow him the least liberty; with her simpering ways, she seemed made to show the extent to which intemperate desires can be aroused when self-interest & avarice lend a hand.

These machinations lasted until the dupe was judged ready for culling & on St. John’s Eve Blauenstein announced that the Great Work was entering its final stage. All the necessary ingredients had been meticulously weighed out, filtered &
decanted prior to being added to the broth of sulphur, mercury & antimony that had been simmering in the crucible for so long.

“In two weeks to the day and the hour the mixture will have attained the sublime perfection extolled by the Ancients. Then all that will be left will be to precipitate this liquid matter with the bezoar stone & you will see—born before your very eyes!—the famous “Green Lion,” the wonderful substance that assures you both wealth & immortality. But the alchemical process is not simply a question of purifying inert materials, in order to work it requires an analogous decantation of the body & the mind without which we will not be able to witness the final miracle. To this end I am going to retire to a monastery with the bezoar stone & will pray without cease for these two weeks. My wife, who was initiated into the most divine secrets by her brother, will tend the alchemical vessel on her own. As for you, my dear friend & benefactor, you will retire to your room to pray, merely taking some food to Mei-li twice a day. The slightest infraction of these simple rules will put an end to our hopes for good …”

Much moved by this, Sinibaldus swore that it would be as the alchemist desired & that he would spare neither mortification of the flesh nor prayers to purify his soul.

Blauenstein spent the rest of the night “rectifying” the laboratory: with his wife & Sinibaldus on their knees, he drew on the floor & the walls all kinds of magic pentacles to prevent demons entering the room, recited a number of formulae taken from the Chinese cabbala & placed the furnace under the protection of at least three dozen “sephirotic spirits.” Gesticulating & chanting himself hoarse in the thick clouds of incense he had burning all the time, the alchemist seemed to Sinibaldus like the very incarnation of Trismegistus.

In the early hours of the morning Blauenstein locked his wife in the laboratory, then ceremonially handed the keys
over to his host, repeated his orders of the previous evening & left. Exhausted by the sleepless night, Sinibaldus went to his bedroom, where he soon fell asleep, lulled by fond hopes and delusions, beside himself with joy.

Waking around one o’clock, he immediately had a meal prepared, which he took himself to the fair Mei-li. Respecting the alchemist’s orders, he kept his eyes lowered & closed the door immediately after having placed the tray of food on the floor. Back in his bedroom, he flagellated himself for a good while, then immersed himself in prayer until the evening.

Returning to the laboratory with another meal at dinner time, he was so surprised to find the morning’s tray untouched that he could not resist taking a glance inside the chamber: only dimly lit by the reddish light from a little stained-glass lamp, Mei-li was lying at the foot of the altar. Was she ill? Perhaps dying?! Locking the door behind him, Sinibaldus dashed over to the young Chinese woman …

He had hardly shaken her than she opened eyes full of tears. Clinging to his neck with her head between his arms, she started to sob. Although reassured about her state of health, Sinibaldus was concerned by these irresistible tears. For a moment he thought she had committed some irreparable fault in keeping watch over the Great Work & turned to look at the crucible: the furnace was roaring as it ought to, nothing needed to keep it going seemed to have been omitted. His fears on that point calmed, he set about comforting this magnificent creature, who was leaning against his shoulder giving rein to the most intense sorrow. After many friendly words and chaste caresses he managed to get Mei-li to dry her tears & give him an explanation of her despair.

“Oh, signore,” she said, her voice still broken by sobs, “how can I tell you that without earning your contempt? You who are
so good & have shown us such trust. I’d rather die a thousand deaths … Why must I be the one to suffer such shame and misfortune?”

She spoke Italian fluently but with an accent that made her even more adorable. Sinibaldus did everything he could to get her to speak, assuring her that he would pardon her whatever she said. He had loved this young woman in silence for so many days & here she was huddling up to him in a most delightful state of abandon. The kind of oriental gown she always wore had become undone, revealing a warm, firm bosom he could feel throbbing against his chest. Her thick, jet-black hair gave off an intoxicating perfume; her imploring lips seemed to beg the tenderest of kisses & the ardor of her look expressed transports of love rather than deep distress. Beside himself with desire, Sinibaldus would have consigned the Great Work itself to the rubbish bin at the slightest sign from Mei-li.

When she saw that he had reached that state, the wily woman finally agreed to explain the reason for her despair: Salomon Blauenstein was a saintly man, a gentle, considerate husband, an alchemist unique in his knowledge & experience, but he would never manage to produce the elixir of life without one requirement she alone knew about. She had never had the courage to tell her husband about it, so certain she was that he would have renounced his quest rather than obey it. To bring about the true transformation, not that of gold, which presented no difficulty at all, but that of the elixir of youth, something other than inert matter was necessary.

“How could something without life,” the bewitching Chinese said, “produce immortality? You will clearly see that that is impossible & that is the reason why all alchemists had failed up to now. All, that is, apart from certain masters in my country
who were aware of the truth & made use of it for their great good fortune.”

“But this ingredient, signora? Tell me, I beg you.”

“This secret ingredient, signore, the true
materia prima
, without which no transformation can be completed, is human seed, that metaphysical concentrate of divine power thanks to which life is created & renewed. Even that is not of itself sufficient, it also requires love, the passion whose heat alone indissolubly unites man’s seed to woman’s & allows the Stone to coagulate at the last stage of the Great Work. That is the cause, the sole cause of my despair.”

Once more Mei-li burst out sobbing & it was only with the greatest of difficulty that Sinibaldus managed to draw these final words, punctuated by hiccups, out of her: ‘I respect my husband, my feelings for him are those of infinite friendship & gratitude, but … I do not love him. That essential ardor, that inclination, I have not felt until now … until now that … now that you have aroused it in me, monsieur. To my misfortune, to yours & that of my husband, I can see, alas, that you are far from sharing that emotion & that henceforward nothing can save our joint enterprise. It was for you that I was crying, imagining your disappointment after so many hopes, so many illusions; as for myself, I will not survive this calamity …”