The Alchemist’s Code (2 page)

“Hello darling – sleep well?”

“Extremely well, I'd say. If it wasn't for the smell of coffee, I'd have stayed buried under the covers a little longer.”

My wife put her arms around me and gave me a passionate kiss, which took me by surprise. “Really? And you'd stay in bed without me—?”

With a single gesture she undid her robe and let it fall to the ground, then stood naked in my arms.

'Well, if you put it that way—” And I lost myself again in her black curls.

*

It seemed that winter had arrived, bringing with it a promising assortment of all its aromas, flavours and pleasures. That alone would have sufficed to put me in a good mood. For a while now, though, strange nightmares – or, better, vividly coloured dreams – had disturbed my nights, though the memory of them almost always faded upon waking.

My extreme sensitivity had made me particularly receptive to certain, let's say,
out-of-the-ordinary
subconscious signals and phenomena, and in fact, many times during my forays into the world of the esoteric in search of mysterious artefacts, it had been dreams which had cast light on things which would otherwise have been difficult to understand.

In short, I've always had a fairly lively dream life.

In an attempt to keep my turbulent psyche a little more under control I'd started taking some pills, which I would have forgotten every morning if Àrtemis hadn't been there to practically put them into my mouth.

“You really are incorrigible, Aragona,” she told me that morning, calling me by name as she did every time she wanted to tell me off, as she stopped me at the door with a glass of water and the magical tablet.

I took a sip and swallowed the pill, then grabbed my wife and kissed her passionately. “I know – that's why you love me.”

She pushed me away with a mischievous smile. “Away with you, art dealer, or I'll be late for university.”

Ah my Àrtemis! Her students considered her a living legend - a kind of be-skirted Indiana Jones, always ready to get her hands dirty and stir up any amount of hornets' nests just to prove a theory. She was one of the few scholars in the world to have managed to decipher the obscure language of the ancient inhabitants of Crete, Linear A, and certainly one of the first to have been able to read it, winning the respect of her researcher colleagues around the world. Her bond with her Greek homeland had given her a kind of sixth sense for all that was Hellenic. She had made more than one luminary look a fool with her radical theories, and had inflamed the field with dozens of pioneering academic publications. She was unique, and, with her beautiful black curls and feline looks, as intense as the depths of the Aegean, as beautiful as one of the dancers of the palace of Knossos. I adored her.

I left my lovely Greek struggling with her morning preparations and before going to the car I walked to my favourite newsagent.

“Good morning Fausto – the usual please.”

“Here you are, Mr Aragona. Have a good day.”

Fausto's friendliness always put me in a good mood, even though the dense downtown traffic, on the rare occasions that I decided to travel by car instead of taking the funicular, could plunge me into abject despair. That day, however, it seemed that everything was going for the best, and on the way to the art gallery I met very few cars and didn't encounter a single traffic jam. Curious, it being so near Christmas.

That morning, however, I had no desire to ask myself too many questions and decided to abandon myself to the gentle caress of a perfect day.

*

Upon entering the store I found Bruno, my partner, in the thick of negotiations for the sale of a valuable Louis XVI console table. It seemed that things had got off on the right foot even as regarded business that morning. I greeted the customer, whom I knew well, and walked towards the small office that we had at the back of the shop.

After about fifteen minutes, Bruno came in with a smile. Hands on the desk, he leaned towards me and pushed his angular face, which reminded me so much of Chopin, forward. His small dark eyes stared into mine with penetrating insistence.

“Hello again, partner. Apparently I've just set a new record for sales. I only opened half an hour ago, and Doctor Ciliento has already written the first cheque for the purchase of that console.”

“I've always said that you're an extraordinary salesman.”

“Oh, I'm just a salesman, am I? Well in that case, you're just a shopkeeper.”

“Thin skinned as ever, I see! Calm down, we all know that you're also a master antiquarian with a flair for rare pieces.”

Bruno nodded, a serious expression on his face. “That's better.”

As well as being an extraordinary antiquarian, my friend and partner Bruno von Alten, who had inherited his name from his German father, was an extremely refined man, as well as an excellent jazz pianist. When not in the gallery, he was always rehearsing with his trio or on a stage somewhere in Europe performing. A very cool customer.

That morning he had concluded the sale of the eighteenth century console table made by the school of Jean Henri Riesener, a German who had moved to France and who became the court cabinet maker in 1774. Half of the furniture displayed at Versailles that had belonged to Marie Antoinette was his work. Bruno loved to offer his customers pieces made by German artists, a kind of little homage of his memory of his late father, who he had lost when he was twenty. He was also obsessed with the furniture of the late eighteenth century, and each time he sold a piece he went through a little performance as he acted out the pain losing it would cause him.

I, of course I had no objections to all this, so long as it didn't interfere with the success of his negotiations. I myself felt the same attachment, moreover, to another style, which he, unrepentant snob that he was, classed as sheer vulgarity.

“How on earth can you compare the style of Louis XVI with that art nouveau crap?”

I shook my head and shrugged.

“Your problem is that you've never progressed, old man. Styles change, new things happen.”

I uttered those words with little conviction during our frequent spats, since I was the first to reject contemporary art and architecture. As far as I was concerned, it was all over in the thirties when Art Deco had exploded in America, and I considered Art Nouveau the highest possible synthesis of ancient and modern aesthetics. That it was my favourite style was demonstrated by the plethora of swirls, flowers, table lamps, stained glass and Guimard furniture which was my house. A house which, of course, he detested.

Bruno sat down at his desk, opened the sales ledger and simultaneously turned on the computer: he wrote everything down by hand and kept the original receipts and all important documents in a safe in his house. He viewed printers with suspicion and said he didn't trust that infernal thing called a computer.

“How many times do I have to tell you? You're stuck in the eighteenth century! Don't you want to keep up with the times?”

“The day when your computer or printer decide to stop working, you'll come crying to me, begging me to let you use my silly, old-fashioned notes. And at that moment I will open my most expensive bottle of
fine champagne
cognac and have a laugh or two.”

“Ok, you're on. For my part, I'll make an exception to the rule I've set myself against drinking absinthe and will toast you with a good Spanish bottle that I've kept aside for just this sort of thing.”

“Very well,” concluded Bruno. “Now that we have discussed liqueurs, if you don't mind I should like to do a cross-check with you of the pieces sold, optioned and those which we are interested in.”

I spread my arms in despair, groaning, “But we did it yesterday.”

“Yesterday, we had not sold the Riesener.”

*

At one, I went to lunch with Àrtemis at Donna Teresa's Trattoria, my favourite, which was only a.few minutes from my house. I would have walked miles just to savour the dishes they served there, and although the Églantine – my antiques shop – was in the centre of town, I willingly made the trek back up to the Vomero area at lunchtime.

“Mr Aragona, today we've got baked pasta, beans and escarole and a wonderful risotto with savoy cabbage.”

When Teresa, the granddaughter of the restaurant's legendary founder, listed the specials of the day, it was like music to my ears. It was poetry, pure gastronomic poetry.

“I've have the risotto,” said Àrtemis, anticipating my choice.

“Risotto for me too, thanks Teresa.”

The girl made a note and left.

“So, everything ok down at the shop?”

“For heaven's sake, don't call it a shop,” I said, holding up my hands as if to protect myself, “otherwise Bruno might appear and launch into one of his intolerable Teutonic harangues. The Églantine is an antique
gallery
.”

“All right, I didn't mean to offend anybody—”

“I know that, darling. But, if it weren't for Bruno—”

“That's right, I know how grateful you are to him. There's no need for me to remind you about the pile of strange objects which have been accumulating on your desk for years now.”

“Oh come on! I am an antiquarian, after all – it's perfectly natural that I accumulate and conserve things. That's how they acquire value!”

“Yes, yes – the same old excuse.”

When Teresa brought our dishes, I put all other matters to one side and dedicated myself to making the risotto vanish, forkful by forkful. But as I was looking down, preparing to stick my fork into the creamy cabbage, something – or rather someone – at the entrance of the restaurant caught my attention.

*

I realised, in fact, that I was looking into the eyes of a beautiful blonde girl. We exchanged a look which seemed to last a long time and which made me feel immediately uncomfortable. I had the impression that she wasn't just gazing in my direction but that she actually wanted something.

Àrtemis noticed my reaction, and turned mechanically toward the door, but the girl had already disappeared.

“What is it? What did you see?”

“No, no – I thought I saw someone I knew, that's all. Let's eat, it's nothing,” I lied, preferring not to arouse her jealousy.

After lunch I accompanied Àrtemis to the university and then headed back to the Églantine. I was almost there when suddenly, that day – which until then had seemed so perfect – took an unexpected turn.

As I was driving along Via Chiatamone towards the garage where I parked my car, a scooter raced out from a building and cut in front of me. There was no way I could stop in time and I hit it head-on, throwing the driver out of the saddle.

“Shit!” I shouted, and jumped out of the car.

Luckily there were no other cars passing in that moment, so I ran round to see how the scooter's driver was. I found them in front of my car, lying on the ground next to their vehicle.

“Oh Christ, let him be okay!” I said as I bent down – and saw that the rider was a young woman. “Can you hear me? Hey, are you all right?”

I lifted the visor of the helmet and straightaway the girl opened her eyes, revealing two pools of intense blue that stared back into mine. At that moment I realised that I'd seen that face before – those eyes would have been hard to forget.

“The girl outside the restaurant! It's you!”

But before I could ask her anything, the girl slipped something into my jacket pocket and, with feline grace, stood up, easily lifted her scooter from the ground as though it was lighter than a bicycle and sped away before I had time to react.

I looked around me. Nobody else seemed to have noticed and so, somewhat confused, I returned to my car. Taking a few deep breaths to try and calm myself, I started the engine and set off back to the garage.

As soon he saw me, Bruno frowned. “Lorenzo, you look as though you've seen a ghost. Is everything ok?”

I flopped down in the chair behind my desk and told him about the accident. Bruno's initially tense expression gradually faded, and a moment later he had regained his composure.

“Thank God nothing serious had happened, I was worried. Right, back to work – come on.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “How can you say that nothing serious happened? I almost killed a girl, who then ran away without letting me see whether she was all right or not.”

Bruno shrugged. “She was probably just some idiot, Lorenzo.”

Trying to put the accident out of my mind was perhaps the best thing, but first there was something I had to check.

“Ah, maybe you're right. I'm going to rinse my face.”

I locked myself in the bathroom and pulled out the note that the girl had put in my pocket. It read:

I stood staring at the piece of paper for a few seconds, trying to organise my thoughts and figure out whether I was dreaming or whether all this was really happening. And what if that accident had all been a set-up? If all that the girl had wanted to do was give me this message? I put the piece of paper back in my pocket and left the bathroom. And found Bruno standing like a phantom outside, staring at me with a concerned look on his face.

“Are you sure you're ok, Lorenzo?”

I put a hand to my chest, and let out a sigh.

“Damn it, Bruno! You nearly gave me a heart attack! Of course I'm ok – really.”

“Yeah, you're right… I was just worried. Put that accident out of your mind, ok?”

I nodded, dazed. “Of course, the best thing is just to forget about it. Everything's fine.”

“Great. Listen, I have to go out for a few minutes. You're staying here, aren't you?”

Bruno never left the shop, and wouldn't have even if someone had started shelling the place, but by now what had seemed like a perfect day had turned into a total mess, so I decided to stop being surprised.