Part IV
(Read earlier chapters.)
The cobblestone streets of the inner city of Mantua were slick with the alternating mist and rain that had been constant since morning. The main gate to the Palazzo Ducale towered before the three of them, an impressive structure of brown stone with a row of v-shaped turrets at the top and bullet-shaped arches at the bottom. The gate looked like a small medieval castle in its own right. Or perhaps not so small. Drawing closer, Reuben realized that the arches were 15 feet or higher. He followed the old man and his associate — who had been introduced earlier that day as one Iskandar Ahmad from Indonesia — under the central arch, which led to the palace’s main entrance.
Reuben thought of his trip to the monastery with Betty. The gate looked sturdy enough, but overall the fortifications seemed flimsy compared to the massive walls at Zagorsk. He pointed the difference out to the old man.
“It’s true,” Keyes smiled, appraising the walls as they passed under the arch and into a manicured green courtyard. “Two different histories; two different approaches to warfare. The Russians had to defend themselves from the Mongol hoards thundering down on them from the steppes. Old Gonzaga, what did he have to worry about? A spat with the big cheese over in Verona? Some spillover from the war between Venice and the Ottomans?”
Reuben stepped back to get a better view of the palace's outer wall.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Keyes continued, “I’m sure this castle saw its share of bloodshed. But the Russians were up against a completely different kind of enemy.”
“Maybe not so different,” said Reuben. “I think I read that it was at this very castle that Attila the Hun agreed to terms of surrender.”
Ahmad slowed his pace as this exchange unfolded. He had been walking a few steps ahead. He was a distinguished-looking Malay man, impeccably dressed in his Armani suit. He was an inch or two taller than the old man and (Reuben estimated) twenty or so years younger.
“Forgive me, Reuben,” he said. “But that isn’t entirely accurate. What you are describing happened long before this castle was built. And it was a few miles from here, along the road that eventually leads to Rome. That’s where Attila was stopped.”
“Is that right?” said Reuben. He wasn’t surprised that he had his facts wrong. History had never really been his area.
“Yes,” Ahmad continued. “And he didn’t surrender. He simply met with a delegation of ambassadors and agreed not to sack Rome.”
“A delegation?” Keyes asked.
Ahmad nodded.
“That’s correct. Pope Leo among them.”
“And what, they just talked him out of it?”
Ahmad nodded again.
“Well, there’s your difference,” Keyes said, with a chuckle. “What do you think Genghis Khan would have done with that delegation?”
Ahmad seemed to think about this for a moment.
“Attila was a businessman. Of sorts. The delegation persuaded him that sacking Rome would destroy the economy, which would leave him with very little to plunder elsewhere in the Empire. Sacking Rome would have been like killing the queen in a beehive from which you still want to gather honey. But the Mongols cared nothing for plunder. They wanted only to destroy. Had they ever captured the Pope, I doubt they would have shown him any more respect than they did the Caliph of Baghdad.”
“Really?” said Reuben. “And what did they do to him?”
“They tied him in a sack and ran over him with their horses. Over and over and over.”
Keyes let out a low whistle.
“Yes,” said Ahmad. “But in any case, that was hundreds of years after the time of Attila. I think I must agree with you, Michael, that the city of Mantua never faced anything so dire as the Mongols.”
He led them on into the main building. The foyer was both a souvenir shop and the entrance to the palace museum. Several tables were laid out with books: some specifically about the palace’s collection, a few others about Venice or Milan or Lombardy in general. A tired-looking Italian woman sat behind the cash register. Behind her was a turnstile leading into the Palace.
Ahmad approached the counter and spoke to the woman in Italian. She reached under the counter and handed him three CD players with headphones. Reuben looked pointedly at Keyes.
Had the old man dragged him all the way down here just to show him the sights? He hadn’t been in the mood for much of anything the past few days. But a self-guided tour of an Italian castle would be close to the top of the list of things he wasn’t in the mood for.
Before Reuben could say anything, Ahmad handed the audio sets back to the woman, telling her something apparently intended to clarify their purpose there. The woman nodded gravely. She stepped gingerly around the turnstile and disappeared down the hall. She re-appeared a few minutes later with an old man in a shabby gray suit.
Keyes greeted the old fellow with a handshake and a hearty buon giorno. The elderly Italian gentleman seemed genuinely pleased to see Keyes. The two of them talked for a moment. Reuben smiled at this. The old man seemed to have connections and acquaintances everywhere.
“Reuben, Iskandar, this is my friend André,” Keyes said, turning to face them. “He’s going to show us what we came here to see.”
“Which is what?” asked Reuben.
Keyes beamed.
“The Camera degli Sposi,” he said.
“Si,” said André, “La Camera degli Sposi.” He gestured to one side of the turnstile.
Reuben didn’t move.
“Am I supposed to have some idea of what that means?” he asked.
“It means the ‘Room of the Newlyweds,” Ahmad explained.
That’s helpful, thought Reuben.
“I see,” he said. “But that doesn’t exactly tell me why…”
“Per favore,” André interrupted, once again motioning them towards the turnstile.
Ahmad, Keyes, and then Reuben mimicked the gift shop lady’s earlier maneuver, taking a sidestep around the turnstile and starting down the hall. Their guide led them on a seemingly rambling trek through the twisting stone corridors of the palace. The hallways were dark and musty, which Reuben knew was to be expected. But even so, he got the impression that they were taking the back route to wherever it was they were going.
He decided not to pick up his earlier line of questioning. The old man had awakened him early that morning, telling him that they had “work to do.” Keyes had driven them from the lake home to the train station (Betty was otherwise occupied) where they met Ahmad. From there, they had boarded the train to Mantua. Along the way, the old man had kept the conversation steered to neutral subjects. Who Ahmad was, and what their purpose was in coming to this place, would apparently be revealed in good time. Reuben found that he had little patience for the mystery.
The walk ended with a climb up some steep stairs. Reaching the top, André turned to face them
“La Camera degli Sposi,” he said once again, his voice now hushed with reverence.
They entered a room with paintings on the walls and ceiling.
No, Reuben corrected himself. Not with paintings. With painting. The room itself was the canvas.
Keyes and Ahmad strolled to the center of the room. Reuben walked around the perimeter, taking in its strange beauty. The design was intriguing: an enclosed room painted to look like an open-air pavilion. The walls were decorated with soldiers and hounds and stately noblemen. Tradesmen conferred; children played. A family posed for a portrait, one member of which was an extremely disgruntled-looking dwarf wearing what must have been an uncomfortable dress. Behind them the town and countryside stretched off into the distance. Puffy clouds floated by in the sky overlooking it all.
Reuben joined the others in the center of the room. He looked up. The ceiling was a dome, in the center of which was painted another opening. It was a false oculus, the ancient Roman answer to the skylight. Cherubs, winged and diapered in the traditional style, were climbing in and out of the opening. There were girls standing around the edge of the oculus, looking down into the room. They were accompanied by an ominous black bird and a sly-looking fellow wearing a striped turban.
After a while, the old man cleared his throat.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
Reuben tried to formulate an answer. An appreciation of the skill that had created the room momentarily took the edge off his impatience. It was an oddity, that much was certain. Beautifully rendered. And not without a certain sense of humor, or at least whimsy. But he couldn’t imagine what it was that he was supposed to see in it.
“Magnificent,” said Ahmad.
Reuben realized that the question had not been directed at him.
“I have reproductions back home in Jakarta,” Ahmad continued, “but they can’t do it justice. Look at how he has — ”
Ahmad stopped abruptly. He turned to Reuben.
“Take all the time you wish. When you have finished, we will leave.”
“Finished what?” said Reuben, his patience once again beginning to wane.
Ahmad looked puzzled.
“When you have finished looking.”
Reuben blinked.
“Okay,” he said. “But is there anything in particular that I’m looking for?”
“Just look,” Ahmad said simply. “We can talk about it later.”
Reuben turned to Keyes for help. The old man simply shrugged, and returned to studying the room.
Reuben sighed. He continued to look.
___
The rain had stopped, but it was still too wet to sit outside. Reuben, Ahmad, and Keyes were seated at a cramped table in a café just across the city square from the entrance to the palace. There were only a few tables; the place was crowded and noisy.
Reuben drained his espresso in three quick sips; he was thinking about having another. The other men nursed theirs in a more dignified fashion.
Ahmad talked about his long fascination with the room they had just visited. He told them about Mantegna, the artist who had created it, as well as the Gonzagas, the family who long occupied the Palace. Keyes listened with keen interest, asking frequent questions. Reuben listened indifferently. They couldn’t come to the point too soon for him..
“But enough of all this local color,” Ahmad said at last. “Reuben, I would very much like your impressions.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m really not much of an authority on art…”
“All to the good,” said Ahmad. “Being an art connoisseur might only get in the way. I want you to tell me what it was that most struck you about the Camera.”
Reuben considered this.
“I’d say it was the way the artist merged the painting with the room. The way a curtain or a window frame would start out as real and continue as part of the painting. It reminded me of the guy who drew that picture of the hands drawing themselves.”
“Escher,” said Keyes.
Ahmad nodded, looking quite pleased.
“Excellent,” he said.
Reuben shared a puzzled glance with the old man.
“What,” he asked “did I get it right?”
“You did,” said Ahmad. “You did indeed.”
“So then maybe you’d care to tell me…what exactly did I get right? And what does it mean?”
He took an abortive sip from his now-empty cup.
“And what the hell am I doing here?” he added.
“Bear with me for a while, Reuben,” said Ahmad.
From his coat, he produced a deck of cards. He dealt four of them face up on the table in front of Reuben. These were not playing cards. Each was printed with a colorful and elaborate geometric pattern.
“This quality you described,” said Ahmad, “of one thing merging into another: is it present in any of these designs? And if so, in which one is it most present?”
Reuben looked at the cards. There were no pictures, just shapes and colors: a red cone here, a green cube there, a maze of lines and angles. He studied them for a while, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t see that quality in any of these designs.”
Ahmad considered this. He started to gather up the cards. Then he stopped and looked at Reuben again.
“Are you sure about that?’ he asked, returning the two cards he had picked up to the table. “Look deep, Reuben. You’ve come a long way only to give up now.”
“I never said I was giving up. I just don’t see the point in any of this.”
“Please, Reuben.” Ahmad gestured at the cards. “Which one?”
He looked at the cards again. He stared at each one, trying to recapture the sensation he had had when looking at the diagram in Coffey’s book on the train, and a few days before on the terrace at the lake house.
Look deep.
He studied the background of each of the cards. The geometric designs sat in a field of black spattered with gold and silver to resemble the night sky. He changed his focus, trying to bring the background to the fore. As he did so, the black spaces between the “stars” began to emerge, defining lines and shapes of their own
Reuben picked up one of the cards and held it half an arm’s length away from his face. He fixed his gaze on the background as though it were a great distance away. The black spaces began to cohere into a shape of their own. It was a circle. No a, cylinder. It was a hole in a ceiling. Cubes and tetrahedrons, the shapes from the foreground, were climbing in and out of the opening. There were polygons standing around the edge of the circle, looking out at Reuben. They were accompanied by an ominous pyramid and a sly-looking sphere.
Reuben laughed. He turned to the old man.
“Do you see what this is?”
Keyes was frowning. He shook his head.
“It’s one of those holographic 3-D puzzles. You find the picture inside the picture. They’re scenes from the Camera. This is the oculus.”
He set the card down in front of the old man and picked up another one. He stared at it for a moment.
“This is…what? Several people. It’s the family portrait. See the dwarf?”
He set that card in front of Keyes and picked up the next.
“A guy on a horse. No, a guy standing next to a horse. And there are the dogs.”
He set it down and picked up the last one.
“It’s a landscape,” he announced after a moment. “See, there’s a hill with a wall running along in front.” He set the card down and turned to Ahmad. “That’s an interesting test you’ve got, there. How did I do?”
Ahmad cleared his throat.
“You have not responded to the test yet. You might be interested to know that these cards were designed more than 300 years ago. So while, yes, they are similar to the holographic puzzles you mentioned, they are not exactly the same thing. I’m afraid that it is no great accomplishment to see the patterns within the cards and to match them up with images from the Camera, although this ability has been taken for arcane knowledge in the past.”
“Really?” said Keyes, who was holding one of the cards in front of his face and squinting at it. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“You have to let your field of vision go blurry,” said Reuben. “Look at the image on the card as though it were a great distance away.”
The old man continued looking at the card. A half a minute or so passed.
“Nothing,” he said, flipping the card back onto the table.
Ahmad took a sip from his coffee.
“In truth, the patterns are a bit more subtle than what you would see in holographic puzzle. And not everyone can find the pictures even in those.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” said Keyes. “I’ve never heard of holographic picture puzzles. But never mind. Reuben, answer the question. Which one of these cards is the most Escher-like?”
Reuben considered this. He reached in front of Keyes and picked up the first card he had looked at, the one that contained the image of the oculus. It was different from the others in the way it used elements from the foreground to complete the picture. On the other cards, the image simply emerged from the background with no reference to the geometric pattern that lay in front.
“This one, I suppose.”
Ahmad nodded. He picked up the remaining three cards and stacked them to one side. He took the card that Reuben was holding and placed it on the table in front of him. Then he thumbed through the deck and placed four more cards around it.
“They’re all the same,” said Reuben.
Ahmad smiled.
“In fact, they are not. Each card in the deck is unique. All I can tell you is that one of them holds the key. Which one?”
“What do you mean, holds the key?”
Ahmad shook his head. He had nothing more to say.
Reuben sighed. As before, he began to pick up each card from the table and look at it. It was true, each one was slightly different. Only the geometric pattern in front was the same. The background images were all different. One was the oculus from the Camera. Another was an ornate cross, studded with jewels represented by the shapes in the foreground. The third was a five-pointed star.
Reuben looked at that one for a moment. Could it be the key? It was hard to say, since he had no idea what that meant. He set the card down and picked up the next one. He frowned. The image appeared to be the oculus again. But there was something different about it. It wasn’t really the oculus; it was some other circular pattern. He blinked, and that image was gone, replaced by the star. Reuben held the card back at a little more distance from his face. He blinked again. Now the star and the circle had merged. This was a familiar shape.
Reuben stared hard at the image. Something was stuck, he thought. Something was not quite right. He rotated the card 180 degrees. That was better somehow. The image seemed right at this orientation. It could be loosed now. As he looked intently at the image, the now-familiar sensation washed over him. Slowly, gracefully, the pattern — which was of course the same as the one he had seen in the old man’s manuscript and repeated twice in Coffey’s document — began to rotate. It made three full turns before coming to a halt. Then, just as slowly and gracefully, the little café itself began to rotate.
Reuben closed his eyes and shook his head. The spinning subsided. He flipped the card down on the table in front of Ahmad.
“That’s the one,” he said.
Ahmad nodded.
“Indeed it is,” he said. He picked up all the cards and placed the deck back in his coat pocket.
“I apologize to both of you for this rather idiosyncratic exercise,” he said. “An organization such as mine depends on secrecy for its survival. We have been protecting a secret for a very long time. Over the years we’ve developed a number of practices required to keep it safe. One of these is the validation of an initiate.”
“So we’re initiates?” asked Reuben. “Looking to get validated?”
Ahmad smiled. “Initiates no longer,” he said. “And your validation is complete.”
He extended his hand.
“Reuben, it is my honor to welcome you to the Congrigatio in Ars Magica Magnae.”
Reuben declined the handshake. He sat back in his chair.
“Say what?” he finally managed.
“You have met the criteria. Both you and Mr. Keyes are invited to become brothers in our fraternity.”
“The Society of the Greater Magic,” said Keyes.
Ahmad nodded.
“Well,” Reuben said after a moment, taking hold of Ahmad’s hand. “I’ll be damned.”
He shook Ahmad’s hand and then sat back in his chair. He looked from Ahmad to Keyes, and back to Ahmad again.
“So it’s real?” he said.
“Yes, Reuben,” Ahmad answered. “You have found that which you set out looking for some time ago.”
Reuben laughed, although there was no humor in it. He shook his head and sighed.
“I’ll be damned,” he said again.
Posted by Phil at February 29, 2004 11:59 AM | TrackBack