Where Tigers Are at Home (52 page)

“If I didn’t have such trust in you,” he said gravely, “I could believe that my orders have been disobeyed. There are evil effluvia in this room from which I foresee many setbacks for our undertaking. Are you sure you have not neglected to carry out any of my orders? It would be a tragedy to fail so close to our goal.”

Sinibaldus had gone pale. Prey to the most horrible doubt when faced with the alchemist’s extraordinary powers, his knees
were knocking & he was sweating profusely. Especially since Mei-li, far from maintaining her usual impassive expression, also seemed extremely perturbed, looking as if she expected anathema to be pronounced against her. Sinibaldus made a great effort to reassure the alchemist but he became so flustered as he lied that he noticed the weakness of his argument himself & eventually fell silent.

“I will not insult you by doubting your word,” Blauenstein went on, with marked skepticism, “I could be wrong … But all this will be quickly verified: a simple action will reveal the plain truth to me immediately.”

He took the bezoar stone out of his pocket & went over to the furnace, followed by his wife & Sinibaldus. Then holding it above the athenor, he declaimed:

“By Kether, Hokmah, Binah, Hesod, Gevurah, Rahimin, Netsh, Hod, Yesod & Malkuth! By the seventy-two secret letters of the name of God whom I now invoke, may this final testimony of the purity of our bodies & of our souls bring us the elixir of immortality!”

At that, he cast the bezoar into the bubbling elements. Deliberately prepared for this, the mixture immediately exploded, sending up a shower of sparks & a thick cloud, which concealed the furnace from them. Whilst Sinibaldus, in terror, was praying out loud to God & dashing from window to window in order to ventilate the room, the alchemist took advantage of his preoccupation to operate an ingenious mechanism.

Once it was again possible to see sufficiently, the three of them, coughing, blackened with soot, hurried over to the crucible. Blauenstein immediately drew back with screams of horror. When he went to look, Sinibaldus thought he would drop dead on the spot; his heart missed a beat & a mortal chill spread through his bones—there was a living viper in the athanor!

“Treachery! Treachery!” the alchemist bellowed, his face contorted with fury.

Sinibaldus had not had time to recover before Mei-li was clinging to her husband’s coattails, begging his forgiveness & confessing in detail to all the ignominious acts she had committed in his absence. More dead than alive, completely bewildered by the malice of his tormentors, Sinibaldus wished the ground would open & swallow him up: he could not believe his ears as he heard this woman, who had sworn eternal love to him in transports of ecstasy, now accuse him of every evil in a brazen travesty of the truth; he realized it would be impossible for him to clear himself of the accusations. Struck dumb by her infamy, his legs gave way and he collapsed in an armchair, overwhelmed by the extent of his misfortune.

“Passing over the fact that you have wasted all our efforts,” the incensed alchemist said, “after all, it’s your money that has gone up in smoke, but to skewer my wife, indulge yourself with her, & against her will, in the most vile sorcery! I will report this to the Inquisition, sir, you will see that this kind of crime is not treated lightly. Justice! Justice! Send for the guard!”

Alerted by the tumult and worried about her husband, Sinibaldus’s wife was making a racket outside the door. Looking up, Sinibaldus caught a smile of complicity between Blauenstein & his Chinese she-devil; all at once he realized how he had been duped & that none of his pleas would loosen their clutches into which he had fallen.

He managed to find the strength to murmur, “All my wealth, monsieur, all my wealth if you remain silent.”

His words had the desired effect.

Sinibaldus hastened to reassure his wife, speaking to her through the door, & then returned to Blauenstein to drain the bitter cup to the dregs. Under the contemptuous stare of the
woman whom he had taken for Isis herself, he submitted to the will of the alchemist. He had one week to realize the whole of his wealth & hand it over to these two scoundrels; once he had done that he would be guaranteed their silence for ever. If he failed to do so, he could be equally assured of denunciation, scandal &, consequently, the stake.

It was the day following these disastrous events that Sinibaldus returned to the College for the first time. Kircher was surprised he had remained absent for so many weeks, afraid he had perhaps been a little too brusque at their previous meeting. He therefore welcomed him with sincere pleasure & an astonishment he could not conceal: the man before him had aged by fifteen years, was bent low beneath his misfortune & repentance, and had come to ask for confession.

“Alas, Father,” said Sinibaldus, “when they met me coming out of chapel, this monster spun his web so well there is nothing left for me but to let them strip me bare.”

“No, no, my friend, you mustn’t lay down your arms so quickly. And it seems to me I can see a way of—”

“Oh, Father,” Sinibaldus exclaimed, grasping his hand, “if there is such a way, set it in motion. I will obey you in everything & my gratitude, you can be assured—”

“Forget your gratitude, at least for the moment, & do what I am going to tell you. Never let it be said that the Church capitulated before the creatures of the Fiend. You will go back to your house & persuade this accursed alchemist to come & set about making gold here. Continue to play your role of dupe, allay any suspicions he might have by begging him to pardon you for the adultery of which you were guilty, play up to him … Finally, tell him that I have heard of his extraordinary talents & would like to see him demonstrate them. And above all do not forget to hint at my credulity in such matters nor
to paint in glowing colors the advantages he stands to gain by convincing me. You are well aware that the Emperor himself is interested in alchemy & does me the honor of granting me his friendship & his favor.”

Cheered by the hope my master had revived in him, Sinibaldus hastened to put Kircher’s plans into action. They worked beyond all expectation: blinded by his sense of his own superiority, Blauenstein fell into every trap set by Athanasius & less than two days had passed when the acoustic tube announced his presence, with Sinibaldus, at the entrance to the College.

Kircher received his visitor with a great show of courtesy as he led him to the laboratory where we then shut ourselves away. Feigning naïveté, my master pretended to be enraptured by the supposed exploits Blauenstein brazenly boasted about, although he did so beneath a façade of indifference & wisdom that had so deceived Sinibaldus.

“Gold, of course …” the alchemist said in contemptuous tones, “there’s a word that brings many foolish men running. What if I were to tell you that for me it is the basest of metals? A strange paradox, don’t you think? But to make it one must first of all understand the vanity of all the riches of this world; the very moment one knows the secret of transmutation, one realizes how futile it is …”

“True, sir. However I believe that your uncommon knowledge in matters of alchemy could help to explain much that is obscure in the workings of nature & I know a very worthy man of very high rank—it would not be appropriate to name him yet—who would be very happy to profit from your wisdom. But for that, you would have to deign, solely as a guarantee for the procedure I am undertaking here in his name [Kircher pronounced these last three words with sufficient gravity to make the alchemist feel he was acting in an official capacity], to repeat for me the
experiment my friend Sinibaldus has spoken of with such admiration.”

“Nothing simpler,” Blauenstein replied, happy that he had come to the point and not at all put out by this request, “it is with great pleasure & all the respect due to … this person that I agree to demonstrate my paltry knowledge.”

“I believe our laboratory is equipped with everything you need,” Kircher said &, as the alchemist turned to the huge cast-iron boiler bristling with retorts roaring away in the center of the room, added, “This furnace of my own design has sixty-six separate crucibles but, as you see, they are all being used to distil medical essences. Take this one, which I use specifically for my chemical experiments. As for the ingredients, you have but to ask and my assistant will be happy to fetch them for you.”

Never happier than in this situation, Blauenstein strutted over to the furnace and majestically set about starting it up, all the while enumerating the ingredients he would need:

“Realgar: five ounces, cinnabar: five ounces, sulphur: one & a half ounces, the same for saltpeter & Turkestan salt, twice as much mercury & orpiment …”

Athanasius & Sinibaldus watched the alchemist throw all these substances into the crucible as I brought them, after having duly weighed & prepared them according to his instructions. When the mixture was complete and starting to boil, Blauenstein opened a little case he had brought with him & took out a long jade spoon & a vial of transparent liquid. “In this flask there is what remains of a liquid I made when I was in China some years ago. Its power is such, that a single drop poured into the appropriate mixture will immediately bring about the transmutation.”

“And this magnificent object?” my master asked, looking as if he would like to examine the jade spoon.

“It has no effect on the process whatsoever,” the alchemist said, readily handing it to Kircher, “it is a present from the Grand Imperial Physician, my late brother-in-law. I merely use it in honor of his memory & to benefit from its intrinsic virtues.”

“In that case,” Athanasius said, absentmindedly stroking the jade surface, “I imagine you will not see any inconvenience in using one of my own spoons. Look, this one was designed by … by the person of whom we were speaking earlier. He will be flattered, I can assure you, to learn that he made a contribution, however small, to the accomplishment of the Great Work …”

Never did a face change so quickly; in a few seconds nothing was left of the solicitousness & boldness that characterized Blauenstein’s expression. Without saying a word, he stared at Kircher with the suspicious, malignant look of a rat in a trap, while my master kept his eyes lowered, fixed on the instrument that seemed so essential to the alchemist.

“You must give that person my sincere apologies,” Blauenstein eventually said with ill-concealed wiliness, “but it is very important to me to use that spoon. Because … let’s say because I am very much attached to it. Transmutation is not a simple matter of chemistry, it also requires a certain … touch, you need to have the trick of it & in that one’s familiarity with certain objects, sometimes the affection one has for them, can play a decisive role—”

“Enough, sir!” Kircher said, slowly raising his eyes to fix them on the alchemist. All trace of the inane affability my master had affected until then had vanished: suddenly Blauenstein was faced with an inquisitor, a monster to make one’s blood run cold. “The trick of it is exactly what mountebanks of your kind have. Except that mountebanks don’t have the hypocrisy that is your true nature. You are an imposter, a common cutpurse & if
you have produced gold it is only by taking it from the pockets of those who are more credulous than I—”

“How dare you!” the alchemist exclaimed indignantly, in one final attempt.

“You turd excreted from the seminary! Do I have to reveal all your tricks one by one?” Kircher went on, seizing him by the collar. “Do I have to tell you why you insist on using this spoon? On your knees, you unfrocked monk, on your knees. The torturers of the Inquisition reserve special treatment for scoundrels of your sort.”

And if Sieur Sinibaldus was not yet convinced of the imposture of which he had been the victim, what followed would finally have opened his eyes. With nothing to fall back on in the face of Kircher’s attacks & threats, Blauenstein suddenly yielded & poured out all the tricks his evil imagination had invented. Nothing was so pleasing as to see this man, who had been so full of himself, tremble & to hear him go to any lengths to beg my master for mercy.

Once Athanasius had reduced him to this state, he pretended he had decided to let clemency prevail. “I am not going to ask you to make any promises—after this what person in his right senses would believe your word?—but I order you to leave this city at once with your prostitute & never return as long as you live. I beseech you to give up alchemy. As the price of his sins, Sinibaldus will make you a present of the money you acquired by such dishonest means—use it to mend your ways by taking honest work & save your soul by sincerely repenting your past sins. If I ever hear of your misdeeds again, I will not hesitate to hand you over to the jurisdiction of the Church.”

Blauenstein, as one can well imagine, did not need to be told twice. He swore to everything that was asked of him, poured forth his pathetic thanks & took to his heels.

Sinibaldus could not believe his good fortune. In a few minutes Kircher had given him back both his honor & the largest part of his wealth. Weeping tears of emotion, his eyes shining with gratitude, he knelt down to thank God. Athanasius went over to him, admonished him mildly & gave him absolution.

As for me, I congratulated my master for the exemplary way in which he had unmasked that dangerous swindler, but I also questioned him about certain points that were still unclear to me. How would Blauenstein have claimed to make gold if he hadn’t been stopped at the last moment? By what miracle had Kircher become aware of the alchemist’s former profession?

My master replied to my questions with a smile. “Make gold? Nothing easier.”

He went over to a furnace on which water was boiling in a glass bowl, plunged the jade spoon into it and started to stir slowly. To our great amazement we saw a shower of gold flakes appear in the clear water of the retort.

“A trick as old as the world,” Kircher said, “but that always works. Examine the spoon yourselves: a little channel has been made in it. All you have to do is to fill it with gold powder in advance & block the opening with a little wax. When the time comes the heat of any mixture will melt the stopper, releasing real gold into the crucible. Yours, for example, my dear Sinibaldus. As for the fact that the man had previously been a monk, I admit I took a few risks. I’m taller than Blauenstein & while he was talking I had the opportunity to observe the top of his head. I was struck by a curious anomaly. His hair was much thicker on the back of his head, which could be easily explained by him having had a tonsure for several years. All I did after that was to set him a trap in the course of our conversation by mentioning his suitability for religious service. He couldn’t
repress a slight look of concern, which confirmed my initial deduction. Child’s play, as you will agree. But that’s enough talk, this business has given me an appetite. What would you say to giving the
coup de grâce
to a few chickens from our friend Carlino just down the road?”