The Bestiary (23 page)

“I know about the ones in his journal of the Magellan voyage,” I interrupted him.

Marczek smiled. “Evidently he saved up some others for the bestiary: the ocean bird that slumbered underwater—”

“That’s the rukh.”

“And the ‘invisible monkey’ of Java, so green it blended into the jungle foliage. And the bai ma, a white horse with one eye and eight legs. Pigafetta noted that the
Caravan Bestiary
had been an integral part of the first bestiary, the long-lost Book of Life. An astronomer in Lisbon told him that the
Caravan Bestiary
was initially compiled at the Monastery of Saint Jacob at the foot of Mount Ararat in Armenia, where Noah landed in the ark and founded a city called Ani. What do you know about Ararat?”

“It’s seven miles high. Snow-covered. Part of Turkey now.”

“In Pigafetta’s time, the ark was still visible on top of the mountain, six hundred feet long, embedded in dark ice. A lone monk had supposedly scaled the mountain and returned with a petrified plank, which was displayed at the monastery. Many of the entries in the bestiary were provided by pagan sources—Persian magi, Indian shamans, and Tibetan sorcerers crossing Asia along the Caravan Route—so the monks who recorded them were branded heretics, and the bestiary was repeatedly ‘lost’ as it made its way across Christian Europe. Pigafetta said the
Caravan Bestiary
was initially translated from Aramaic into Armenian, and once in Europe, expanded in Greek and Latin. Even these later entries had pagan roots, drawing on the Greek historians and Egyptian storytellers.

“All of this impressed Byron enormously. He never expected to stumble on such rich material while working on a grammar in a monastery: the mysterious book, its arcane history, Pigafetta’s selflessness in the face of death. Byron had already written two verse dramas steeped in Venetian history; in his letters he mentioned wanting to write a third—with Antonio Pigafetta as its protagonist—and until now, no one knew why. But here’s where the story gets really interesting. Byron urged Father Aucher to complete Pigafetta’s interrupted mission by arranging for the bestiary to be transported to Armenia. He thought Pigafetta had been honoring, not just the book, but Armenia herself, in undertaking such a mission, and that his last wishes ought to be respected. In Byron’s translation, Pigafetta cites a dream in which he clutched the bestiary while descending a snowy mountain
among thousands of divers animals.
Certain the mountain was Ararat, Pigafetta took this as a sign that the bestiary should be
returned to the site of its creation, rather than knocking about the world like forgotten cargo. For the sake of completeness, it must be so,
he added cryptically. Byron saw the repatriation of the bestiary more as an issue of nationalism, not mysticism: first and foremost, the book belonged to the Armenians. Father Aucher agreed, and when Byron finished translating Pigafetta’s notes, the abbot enlisted a young monk named Adolphus Sarkas to be the courier. Aucher had written to the Metropolitan Zakalian in Ani and informed him that Brother Sarkas would be bringing the gift of a rare book to the Monastery of Saint Jacob. Here on San Lazzaro, Sarkas was an icon painter. He ground gold, lapis lazuli, and cinnabar into a base of egg tempera which he applied to thin blocks of cedar. He painted the chapel mural and the altar panels of Saint Clement and Saint Mark that you so admired.”

“They’re amazing,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“They would be better known if this weren’t the city of Tintoretto and Veronese. Few people come out here.”

Unlike the typically austere renderings of the saints, with their baleful undertones, Adolphus Sarkas’s panels were detailed with vivid colors—green wings, vermilion robes, yellow hair—the faces radiating light so real it seemed not to be composed of paint. I had seen portraits that lifelike in museums, but never from the brush of an ecclesiastical painter. His mural was equally bold: extending the length of the side wall, it depicted Saint Veronica in her cave conversing with the Angel Gabriel. The composition was perfectly balanced, the perspective calibrated to pull the observer in, so that I felt as if I were standing inside the cave with the two figures. A myriad of elements were working in unison, but three immediately caught my eye: over Gabriel’s shoulder, outside the cave, the raging storm his whirlwind had set off; the golden glow of his fiery wings that illuminated the cave; and the black spiders on which Veronica subsisted that covered the walls, red crosses on their backs and their eyes the same amber as her own.

“With a glazier from Murano,” Marczek went on, “Sarkas collaborated on the stained-glass window in the dining hall. Clearly the monk had a sense of humor, executing such a sumptuous version of the Last Supper for his brothers to gaze on while they ate. But, all in all, he was considered an industrious member of the community, a loner who expressed his devotion with his craft. Father Aucher thought him efficient, pious, trustworthy. The perfect emissary to the Metropolitan.

“Byron was a shrewder judge of character, and his take on Sarkas was not so positive. Though he admired Sarkas’s artwork, he observed that Sarkas had the annoying habit of staring at his feet when he spoke.
Some might deem this a sign of humility,
Byron wrote,
but I think the opposite: his pride is so overweening, he cannot look you in the eye. I have known many such men. However they contain it, in the end their dishonesty must prevail…

“Events bore him out, for apparently Sarkas never reached Ani, or even set foot in Armenia. He got as far as Izmir on the Turkish coast before veering south to Cyprus and Rhodes—then disappearing. And the bestiary with him. It’s certain he left Rhodes, but his ultimate destination remains a mystery. Father Aucher waited for him to turn up, or to send a message explaining his actions, but he was never heard from again.”

Marczek sat back with a sigh. “That’s all I know. Maybe more than I thought I knew,” he said drily. “But I’m sure you have a few questions.”

“A few hundred.”

My head was racing, and I hadn’t even noticed that darkness had fallen over the lagoon.

Marczek glanced at his watch and stood up. “The monks would offer us accommodations, but I’d prefer to catch the last vaporetto. Then, over dinner, you can tell me everything I don’t know about the
Caravan Bestiary.
”

I smiled. “It will be a pleasure.”

T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT
, the twenty-eighth of February, Marczek and I had been invited to attend Talmet’s monthly séance as his personal guest. This was an honor, seeing as the other participants paid 200,000 lire each. The séance was to begin at eleven
P.M
. in the Palazzo Mocenigo, which had once been Byron’s Venetian residence.

Marczek and I took a water taxi up the Grand Canal in a soft rain. We passed crowded vaporetti, their glowing windows salt-smeared. At San Samuele, disembarking passengers were indistinct, outlined in charcoal. The invitation said formal attire, so I had put on a black suit and black shirt. In the taxi’s cramped cabin, over the roar of the engine, Marczek told me some of the palazzo’s illustrious history. The Mocenigo family had produced seven doges and played host to a stream of distinguished visitors. Two centuries before Byron leased the place, Giordano Bruno, the alchemist, was the houseguest of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo. Mocenigo attempted in vain to learn Bruno’s al-chemical secrets, then out of spite denounced him to the Inquisition as a heretic. Imprisoned and tortured for eight years, Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome on orders of Pope Clement VIII. His ashes were scattered in the Tiber, but his angry ghost returned to Venice to roam the Palazzo Mocenigo.

“Perhaps,” Marczek concluded, turning up his collar, “Bruno will appear for us tonight. Unless we’re truly lucky and Byron materializes.”

A sprawling five-story building, the palazzo was ocher colored, with green shutters and a terra-cotta roof. Its upper windows were brightly lit. Smoke curled from one of the chimneys. After bounding across the canal, we stepped onto the submerged landing, thick with algae, where a footman held open a heavy door. The dimly lit room we entered was spacious, bare of furniture, with a low ceiling. Portraits of the Mocenigo family stared down at us. I also noted an image of Saint Theodore, atop his crocodile, on a marble tile embedded in the wall.

“This is where Byron kept his menagerie,” Marczek said, leading me to a stairway, and I tried to imagine those animals coexisting in that dank space. I wondered if any of their spirits would be making an appearance at the séance. My grandmother hadn’t required a ceremony to commune with them. One of the few items from my childhood I still possessed was her music box containing the white whisker.

We climbed to the third floor, where the ceilings were higher and the rooms large. The butler took our coats and led us down a corridor to a circular room with drawn curtains. On the black table candles were burning. The ceiling was a mural of the night sky, with the Roman goddess of night, robed in stars, standing astride a pair of streaking comets. A fire was crackling in the marble fireplace. We were the last guests to arrive, but the room was strangely silent. There were nine other people scattered around, formally dressed, sipping tea—no alcohol permitted before the séance, and no conversation. Talmet was not among them. Some of the guests were more ghostly than any ghost: an old couple with yellowing white hair; an ashen, bearded man beribboned with medals gazing at a bust of Giovanni Mocenigo (hatchet-faced, slit-eyed, he looked like an informer); a grim young woman smoking on a couch beside a fat woman in a tiara. The fat woman was so pale she could have been wearing whiteface.

Our hostess, a tall blue-eyed woman with silver hair and a gown to match, glided over.

“Welcome, Count. Mr. Atlas.”

Marczek kissed her hand. “Signora Camarelli.” After she moved on, he murmured, “Her husband used to control the bauxite monopoly in Italy.”

Now he was one of the spirits Talmet hoped to summon.

The lights went down and Talmet entered the room. He wore a burgundy velvet jacket with shoes to match. Stitched on his pocket in gold was a lightning bolt crossed by a dagger—instruments for tearing the fabric of time, and a symbol of life after death. Talmet shook hands solemnly with everyone. When it was my turn, and our eyes met, there was no acknowledgment of the scene I had witnessed at the nightclub. Just a quick handshake and a pat on the shoulder.

The lights went down. I took the seat assigned me, between the beribboned gentleman—a retired general—and the elderly lady. The grim young woman was sitting opposite me. Talmet was at the head of the table, Marczek to his right, Signora Camarelli to his left. The butler tinkled a bell and set a large glass sphere in the middle of the table. It was midnight blue, capped with glittering gold crystals. If all went well, the crystals would shoot rays far out into the night, communication lines to the dead.

Talmet laid his palms flat on the table and fixed his gaze on the sphere. His face was calm. In a role so easy to overplay, he stayed within himself, projecting both humility and command. His body language sent a clear message: I’m indispensable here, but I’ll remain detached enough so you can judge the proceedings for yourself. He offered no speeches, and his instructions were simple: join hands, close your eyes, and concentrate on the person you want to contact; he would see to the rest.

He joined hands with Marczek and Signora Camarelli, and the rest of us followed suit with our neighbors. The old lady’s hand was dry, the general’s damp. Keeping my eyes partly open, I watched the young woman, grimmer than ever, bite her lip. There seemed to be much at stake for her.

I followed Talmet’s suggestion and concentrated on my mother. At first, nothing happened. Every few minutes, Talmet compressed his lips and hummed deeply, fell silent, and hummed again. This went on for some time. No one else made a sound. The blue sphere was his only prop; there were none of the special effects or elaborate paraphernalia I had expected. This was more an exercise in collective meditation than theatrical illusion. The fire crackled. Rain pattered the windows. Talmet hummed. And I picked up no frequency on which I could contact my mother. Nor did I feel emanations from the spirits of Byron and Giordano Bruno. I began to drift.

The voice that broke into my reverie was decidedly human. “Michael!” the fat lady cried, pointing at the window.

“Please sit, Signora Starza,” Talmet said gently. “If you break the circle, you won’t see him at all.”

She looked bewildered. “You’re right—he’s gone now.”

“Please join hands again,” Talmet said.

And she did.

This was the dramatic high point of the evening. If anyone else spotted a dead relative or friend, they didn’t let on. Near the end of the séance, the elderly lady and the general claimed to hear voices. She said her mother had identified the mastermind behind the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The general reported that his late wife told him a massive explosion in Antarctica in 2027 would mark the end of the world.