The Tower (17 page)

His quarters opened onto the upstairs gallery and consisted of a room with flaking plaster walls that might have once been whitewashed and a straw mattress lying on a bed of bricks. The boy who accompanied Philip left him an old lamp in exchange for a few coins and the dim light it cast revealed the bedbugs and cockroaches that would be keeping him company for the night. He shook out the mattress, beating it as best he could to get most of the parasites out, then tried to treat his wound with some methylene blue that he kept in his haversack. He reapplied the bandage, pushed a bench up against the door so he’d be sure to wake up should anyone try to get in and fell back onto the mattress as his fatigue finally got the better of him. In that filthy place, without the support of El Kassem, and with no hope of seeing the woman who had unsettled his soul and his mind, he felt terribly alone. He dozed off, drained of all energy, and soon fell into a leaden sleep.

F
ATHER
H
OGAN POURED
the steaming coffee into cups and handed one to Father Boni. The priest half-closed his eyes as he sipped the boiling liquid, then set the cup down and finished his story.

‘The sons of Tubalcain prospered in that boundless land, but they built no cities – other than the one on the mountain – or other stone structures, except for the Fortress of Solitude. It was from there that the attack on the Guardian Angel was unleashed on the night of the Scorpion . . .

‘The text is quite difficult to interpret at this point, Hogan . . . What I could understand is that they somehow succeeded in reining in the energy generated by a conjunction of the stars and combining it with an artificial device they had created to produce an explosion of indescribable power. The result was disastrous: the basalt barrier cracked and crumbled, flames spewed forth and cut a path through the desolation as a shrill whistle tore through the air, devastating the land of Delfud. A whirlwind raised a huge cloud of dust and sand and the whole countryside became an arid wasteland. The current slowed in the rivers and the great lakes evaporated. The shores were covered with vast stretches of salt, scattered with thousands and thousands of skeletons, bones bleaching under an ever more relentless sun.

‘But this disaster did not subdue the sons of Tubalcain. They did not give up. They built canals and dams to distribute the waters and cisterns to gather the rain whenever it fell. They grew plants more resistant to drought and used them to produce food. They tamed animals that could withstand hunger and thirst. But all of their efforts did nothing but prolong their agony.

‘Sure now that their race was doomed to vanish for ever, those among them who knew the secrets of science concentrated all their knowledge into a single mind that shot up towards the highest heavens and disappeared into the abyss of the firmament.

‘On the earth remained only the Tower of Solitude, all alone in the middle of an endless desert . . . Even the Garden of Immortality had been destroyed. The basalt barrier collapsed, and the sands covered everything. They say that a single pool of clean water survived, so cool and fresh that not even the sands could prevail over it, but that those who chanced upon it could no longer find the road of return. In other words, anyone who reached it never came back. Since there was nothing left to watch over, the Guardian Angel sheathed his sword and fell asleep.’

The priest fell still, listening to the bell of St Peter’s slowly chiming the hour. Then he continued.

‘Those who had survived were tormented by the scarcity of their resources and by the unbearable heat. Some of them set off in search of lands where they could give birth to a new life. They took the forefather – “He-who-must-not-die” – with them so they would never forget their origins and never lose the hope of achieving knowledge.

‘Others refused to leave their lands and settled around the Tower, the only trace of their past greatness, but God punished them by taking from them their faces and their human expression. They became the “People-without-a-face” and they sought refuge under the ground.

‘Those who had left in search of a new life walked for months and months under the blazing sun. They carried in their souls the memory of boundless plains, of the majestic flow of their lost rivers, of the flight of birds and the galloping of herds, of their parched lakes that had once reflected the golden clouds of the sky . . . At first, they fed upon the animals that fell to hunger and thirst, and they drank their blood, and then they fed upon each other, taking those who collapsed along the road, overwhelmed by weakness and hardship.

‘Thus they pushed on until one day they found a valley confined between two arid slopes. On the bottom of the valley a great river flowed between palms and sycamores, fig and pomegranate trees. They drank that water and ate of those fruits and regained their strength, so that their race multiplied and spread throughout the valley. They hunted wild animals and built villages with reeds from the river and mud from the banks, saving the stones to build a tomb for “He-who-must-not-die”.’

Father Boni dropped his head and was silent.

‘It’s a legend,’ said Father Hogan. ‘Dreadful, fascinating, but a legend nonetheless.’

‘It is an epic tale,’ said Father Boni. ‘That’s different.’

‘That may be. But even so, what changes? We’ll never succeed in knowing if there’s a glimmer of truth in all these ravings. The book clearly has great value, but only from a literary point of view. If it’s authentic, and if it’s true that it’s older than the pyramids, older than Sumer and Accad, that’s where its value lies. We’ll announce its discovery at a big conference and let the philologists and linguists have a go at it.’

‘Listen to me, Hogan. I have proof, do you understand? Proof that the signal we’re receiving is the last voice of the civilization that produced this text. We can’t make it public until we’ve understood the message that’s coming from space. And maybe not even then. The signals we’re receiving are only the prelude. Something much, much bigger is on the way, a message the likes of which man has never received, in all of his existence.’

‘Greater than the evangelical message, Father? Greater than the message of Christ?’

The old man hung his head and when he lifted it again all his anguish and bewilderment were plain on his face.

P
HILIP
G
ARRETT WAS ROAMING
the bazaar of Aleppo, with its gabble of shouting and chattering voices, amid the dust lifted by the trampling of countless feet and the hooves of mules and asses laden with goods. At every corner he found another souk with dozens and dozens of stands, some of which were so small they seemed like boxes. Merchandise spilled out everywhere and the odours that wafted on the air were so strong they could knock a man out. An olfactory orgy of pungent spices, fragrant incense, cedar and Aleppo pine resins, the stink of the excrement and urine of the pack animals, the stench of the tanneries. There was a dominant smell in each souk coming from the goods on display, but the mix of odours in that enormous covered and mostly closed space was often impossible to identify.

He found himself all at once in the spice market and he wandered from one shop to the next until he found a tiny, anonymous emporium where an old man with a long white beard was crouched between the multicoloured bowls and sacks.

Philip looked at him closely, then said, ‘I like the odour of sandalwood, but it’s difficult to make it out in the midst of all these smells.’

‘If it’s sandalwood you seek, you must come to where it is kept separately from the other essences. My name is Enos.’

The old man had got to his feet and, making a little bow, turned towards the rear of the booth and disappeared behind a curtain. Philip stepped over the sacks with their rims rolled down, full of ginger and coriander, saffron and curry, and hurried after him. They went down a narrow hallway that soon opened onto a little courtyard, surrounded by tiered Moorish arches, with a gurgling fountain at its centre.

The old man turned to him. ‘Are you Desmond Garrett’s son?’

‘Yes, I am. My name’s Philip. Do you know where my father is?’

The man shook his head and frowned. ‘Your father is searching for the man of the seven tombs . . . Do you know what that means?’

‘No. I come from a place where we study only what we can explain and we seek only what we can touch with our hands. But I know that my father has long travelled different roads. I don’t know if his search has a meaning. Who is the man of the seven tombs?’

‘No one knows. It is a mystery that my people have been pursuing for millennia. Many have died terrible deaths over the centuries trying to get to the bottom of it. The man of the seven tombs has fierce, cruel servants who protect his hiding places, but when the last of his tombs is destroyed, his evil influence will cease for ever.’

The old man approached a curtain and pushed it aside, then opened a cupboard in the wall, extracted a scroll and unwound it on a rosewood book-rest. ‘It is written that when the evil enclosed in that fortress of death is reawakened, it brings grief, war and famine upon mankind. It visits a violent fever upon humanity, a fever that grows for years and years until it reaches a peak . . .’

A golden light filtered in from outside through the lacy iron of the double-arched windows and shone on the old man’s white hair and beard.

Philip felt a jolt of emotion. Could this Enos be speaking about the same ‘Immortal One’ that Vipinas the Etruscan haruspex had warned about before dying of suffocation in his home at Pompeii? A being enclosed in a tomb topped by a winged horse?

In just two days, since Philip had passed through the Gate of the Wind, he had already come into contact twice with a dimension that had never even crossed the threshold of his conscious mind before, as he had always considered superstition unworthy of his attention. So El Kassem had been wrong: Bab el Awa was not a door which opened onto nothing; it was a gateway to the infinite. The pit of his stomach churned with the sensation that all of his convictions were about to crumble.

‘I know,’ said the old man, ‘you think it’s all just ancient legends . . . You’re a man of science, aren’t you?’

Philip hesitated, no longer sure what to think of the science he had always trusted in. ‘I want to find my father,’ he said slowly, ‘and save him, if I can, from the dangers that threaten him. He’s exploring a world that is alien to me. I haven’t even thought of such things since I was a boy. But I need to know if something still binds us together, to know if he really does need me, why he wanted me to follow his tracks after having disappeared for ten long years. Tell me, please. What do you know about the man of the seven tombs?’

The old man lowered his head. ‘Since the dawn of time, his body has always been preserved in different places, each time within the domain of a powerful civilization. Whenever this power went into crisis and was no longer able to ensure the secrecy and inviolability of his tomb, he was transferred to a new mausoleum, watched over by obscure forces, guarded by a new, rising power . . .’

The rays of the setting sun that entered from the window lit up the jet from the fountain, while the rest of the square was in shadow. The gurgling of the water was the only sound to be heard as the clamour of the bazaar faded into a distant buzz, like the droning of a swarm of bees in its hive.

‘But . . . who was that being? Who was the man of the seven tombs? A great king, perhaps? A cruel tyrant cursed by his people? There must be some meaning at the heart of the legend,’ said Philip, as if talking to himself. He then stared straight into the eyes of the old man in front of him and said, ‘Baruch bar Lev. Does this name mean anything to you?’

The old man started, as if taken by complete surprise. ‘How do you know that name? Where did you find it?’

‘On an old piece of paper, found by chance in a buried city.’

Enos considered him with a solemn expression. ‘Nothing happens by chance. Baruch bar Lev was one of the hunters of that monster . . . a long time ago.’ He began to read from the scroll that he now held open on his knees. ‘The first tomb was destroyed by Simeon ben Yehoshua, a high priest at the time of King Solomon. Baruch bar Lev, rabbi of the great synagogue of Alexandria, found and destroyed the second and the third. Levi ben Aser destroyed the fourth at the time of Diogenes, Roman emperor of Byzantium. I, Enos ben Gad, am the last. I have found the fifth tomb and I have indicated it to your father, because my strength no longer sustains me. He has asked you to follow him so that, if he should fail, you can complete the task. That is why, I believe, he wants you to find the trail he has left for you.’

‘The fifth tomb,’ said Philip. ‘Where is it?’

‘Here. In Aleppo.’

‘Where, exactly?’

‘You will see it this very night. If you feel up to it.’

‘I’m ready,’ said Philip.

‘Then come at midnight to the courtyard of the Great Mosque. I’ll be waiting for you there.’

Philip nodded. The old man led him through the house and out through a door that gave on to the coppersmiths’ market. The young man walked down a long corridor that resounded with the deafening din of dozens and dozens of hammers rhythmically beating shining sheets of copper. He disappeared into the blinding light of the western exit.

P
HILIP
G
ARRETT MADE HIS WAY
through a maze of city streets lit by the full moon and cut by the long shadows of the minarets. He emerged into a vast square where the portico of the Great Mosque stood. A series of arches and columns portioned the nocturnal light and framed the inner courtyard with the font for the rite of ablution at its centre. Philip entered into the large silent space dominated by the looming dome and by the daring elegance of the minarets and a profound sensation of peace came over him. The white glow of the marble and the soft murmur of the fountains entered his soul like gentle music and the supreme harmony of the architecture engaged the moonlight like a sublime song in the darkness.