The Egyptian (19 page)

The old man scowled. “I know of their work. Can’t say that I’m a fan.”

“Why not?”

“Alchemy is about tradition, honor, history. Not a desperate grab for fame and glory.”

Viktor decided to keep his own opinion to himself. Some alchemists had contributed to the advancement of science, but far more would have given up their first-born for a glimpse of the philosopher’s stone.

“Do you know some of the things Lazarus is exploring?” the old man said. “Disembodied heads in glass jars? Induced biostasis? Artificial intelligence? They’re looking for answers in a computer program, in shortcuts. That’s not what alchemy is about.”

“Is there a difference between a computer program and a test tube? Is not the purpose of alchemy to explore new ideas, even if they derive from modern technology? Why does it matter where the answers are found?”

“Because real alchemists understand that the test tube is just a vehicle. Alchemy is about the process of transformation, my boy. Not of lead to gold, but of the spirit. Understanding the universe. Applying the secrets of the ancients to the follies of the present. The elixir, the philosopher’s stone: they’re not just recipes. They are life itself.”

Viktor started to swirl the liquid in his glass, then remembered it was beer. “Are you familiar with a company called Somax?”

His scowl deepened. “I’m far too old and impotent to control with whom our members associate. If I had my way there’d be no other organizations. There would be The Guild, and entrance would be rigorous.”

“I’m working on a case that might involve Somax. I know the Lazarus Foundation donates to Somax. I wanted to come to you first.”

He settled into a defeated slouch. “We give money to any organization that claims to be researching life extension. I don’t think it matters whether or not the claims are true. We have certain very wealthy members who are rightly concerned with the limited longevity of their greedy souls.”

“What about a biotech based in Cairo, New Cellular Technologies?”

He began to chuckle.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Eh? No. Cairo, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I find it ironic that an Egyptian biotech is trying to produce the elixir of life in a laboratory. I assume that’s where this conversation is going.”

“Why do you find it ironic?”

“Because some of us believe that it’s already there.”

Viktor sat back. “That’s not a legend I’m aware of.”

The old man cackled. “Would you like to hear it?”

Viktor’s eyes slid to the array of bottles standing on the bar, emerald promise waiting inside. “Certainly,” he murmured.

“To understand the search for the elixir you must understand the origins of alchemy itself.” The old man gave a rapt sigh. “Ah, where to begin? We could discuss this point alone for weeks.”

“I don’t have weeks. The beginning, but quickly. I’ve heard much of it before.”

“Let me just let chappie know we’ll be staying for another pint… ah, yes. He saw me. Now. Alchemy has been with us for a very long time. Lao Tzu’s China, the Greeks, the rituals of the ancient Vedic and Dharmic texts, the great Arab alchemists, and of course medieval Europe—all students of alchemy. But all of these places were successors. Children. Do you know where the concept of alchemy arose?”

“My guess at this juncture would be Egypt.”

“
Chemi
, the Black Land, is the ancient name for Egypt. The Arabs adapted the word to
al-kimia
, the art of transformation. But linguistics will only take you so far. The word has always had a hidden meaning of its own, the
alcamistere
of Chaucer’s day. Mystery, my boy. Something secret, something so important that a conspiracy of silence must be kept. Something that only the most persistent and talented of adepts could ever hope to discover. Alchemy has never been a science for the dilettante. It’s a lifelong journey for enlightenment.”

“And a quest for unlimited gold,” Viktor said.

He snorted. “For real alchemists, transmutation of metal was an offspring of the quest for eternal life. Do you know why the ancient alchemists sought to turn lead into gold? Gold was thought to be immutable, eternal: the most powerful anti-aging substance on earth. The alchemists sought to transmute gold into a purer form, one with even more potential.”

Viktor pursed his lips. “And the elixir?”

“Some view the elixir of life as a divine quest unto itself. Others see it as a substance that can be produced with the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“And your opinion?”

“My opinion is that the elixir of life has no relation to the philosopher’s stone. My opinion parallels the legend of which I spoke.”

Viktor spread his hands. “You’ve piqued my curiosity, Professor. That’s not easily done.”

“Are you familiar with Hermes Trismegistus?”

“A syncretism between the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.”

He wagged his finger as if chastising a student. “Not just a god. Thrice-great Hermes. Once a man, then a caste, then a god. The one who drank of the white drops, the white gold, the elixir of life.”

“And author of the Hermetic writings, one of which is the legendary Emerald Tablet, the alleged key to alchemical transmutation. ‘That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above,’ I believe is the famous quote.”

The old man chortled his approval. “So you do know a thing or two about alchemy.”

“At times my specialty and yours coincide.”

“It is said the Hermetic secrets of ancient Egypt are hidden within these texts, including the origins of alchemy. Seekers of esoteric knowledge came to Egypt by the boatload, from Asia Minor and Greece and even more distant shores, because they believed the Hermetic priests had the answers to the eternal mysteries. To the secrets of immortality.”

Viktor smirked. “I don’t suppose any of them discovered it?”

“It is said that Nicholas Flamel, a 14
^th
century French alchemist, found the elixir, and also the Comte de St. Germain. Both, or men claiming to be both, have been seen in various places around the world hundreds of years after they should have died. A man claiming to be the Comte St. Germain appeared on French television in 1973. Are you familiar with another adept, Rabbi Judah Loew, who lived and worked on this very street during the 16
^th
century?”

“In Jewish folklore, the creator of the legendary golem: a homunculus molded into human form from clay gathered at the banks of the Vltava, brought to life by inscribing the name of God on its forehead. A monster created by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jews in Prague’s ghetto from religious persecution. The golem grew too powerful, and the Rabbi deactivated the golem by erasing the first letter of the name of God.”

The Professor clapped. “Bravo. But you left out one other very important ingredient Rabbi Loew used to create the golem.”

Viktor snapped his fingers. “The breath of life. In some versions, the elixir of life. Sprinkled over the name of God.”

“Good, good. Now for my long and windy point. The three adepts I just mentioned, Flamel, the Comte, and Rabbi Loew, have something in common in addition to being attributed with using the elixir of life. A detail you won’t find in the textbooks.”

Viktor folded his arms. “I couldn’t be more in suspense.”

“Weeks before Nicholas Flamel and the Comte allegedly discovered the elixir of life, each took a trip. To Egypt.”

Viktor started to chuckle, but the old man leaned forward, his eyes intense. “Documented by reputable historical sources. The Guild has the correspondence to prove it.”

“And Rabbi Loew?”

“We have the diary of one of his contemporaries. Before the Rabbi made the golem, Rabbi Loew sent messengers to select Jews in various countries—common knowledge. A cry for help for the persecution of the Jews of Bavaria. A week before the golem appeared in Prague, Rabbi Loew received a visitor. Another Jew, but from a faraway land. And do you know, old boy,” he crowed, “where this visitor called home?”

He uttered the word with the vigor of a zealot. “
Egypt
.”

This time Viktor did chuckle, and the old man took a long draught. “Not convinced?”

“The golem is a fairy tale. And I’d need to see verifiable proof that two European alchemists in the Middle Ages traveled to Egypt.” Viktor shrugged. “In every myth and legend there’s truth to be found. Whether or not the truth behind the myth has anything to do with extraordinary or supernatural forces is a different question entirely. We must separate reality from desire, or truth will forever remain hidden.”

“Still the nonbeliever, I see.”

“You know my work better than that. I don’t discount possibilities, nor do I take my personal beliefs into account.”

“The forgotten dungeons of alchemy are not the only source of the legend. The legend of a liquid that grants the gift of immortality is one of mankind’s oldest and most persistent myths.”

“Of course,” Viktor said, and ticked off the names as he spoke. “The waters of Eden, the Pool at Bethesda in the Gospel of John, the Hyperborean and Antediluvian legends, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Pool of Youth in Hindu legend, the Qur’an’s Al Khidr, the writings of Prester John, the cauldron of Medea, the quests of Alexander the Great for the restorative spring. And of course, all the later versions, the search for the fountain of youth in the New World, Ponce de Leon and Bimini, countless other seekers of myth.” Viktor flourished. “And yet to be named, of course, is the oldest source of the myth of all. Would you like to do the honors?”

“The Egyptians,” the old man said, with a gleam in his eye. “Worshippers of the eternal waters before other cosmologies had even sprung to life, a culture whose lust for immortality inspired the Pyramids. The oldest attempt on record to create an anti-aging ointment comes from a sixteenth century Egyptian papyrus. That’s sixteenth century
B.C.E
. Alchemists have long suspected Egypt was the source of the legend. Now what the alchemists of old found there, that is the question.”

He touched Viktor’s arm. “What you must ask yourself, what anyone who seeks the origin of myth must ask, is
why
did this legend arise? What is the basis in fact? Did waters once exist, a drop left over from the birth of the universe, a forgotten spring from the garden of Eden, an elixir that restored life, that restored soul? Do these waters exist still? The Kabbalists discovered something in Egypt, and what is the legend of the golem but a recasting of the myth of the mummy brought to life—think about it!”

Viktor stood and shrugged into his overcoat. He laid money on the table. He agreed the origin of myth must be sought, but this conversation had taken a turn for the absurd, and he could wait for his spoon and his glass no longer. They would have to catch up on memories another time.

He took the old man’s hand. “It’s been a fascinating evening. As always, I’m amazed by your scholarship.”

Viktor could hear him cackling all the way out the door.

T
hey walked through the night. Grey felt as if he had fallen asleep and entered a giant forest dream world, dank and verdant and never-ending. They stumbled forward as the hours slipped by, surrounded by trees and insects, cocooned in a vast arboreal shell.

Grey worried they were hopelessly lost, but Stefan assured him he had roamed these woods as a child and knew them as if he had painted them. Twenty minutes after dawn they passed through a soft emerald glade sprawled beside a gushing stream, and Stefan announced that the monastery lay half an hour ahead. Then he sank to his knees beside the stream and shoveled water into his mouth. Veronica looked wary, and Stefan chuckled and drew a line with his finger from the stream to the mountain range in the distance, chipped grey peaks piercing the morning clouds like flint arrowheads.

They drank and pressed forward, renewed by the water and the promise of dawn. The forest had released its tenebrous grasp, and offered a gentle cloak for the remainder of the journey.

Fifteen minutes later they spied a magnificent sight through the trees, a tabletop of limestone cliffs stretching to the horizon in either direction. At the base of the massive shelf, on the far side of a clearing, they saw the curved arches and brightly colored cupola of an orthodox church, surrounded on three sides by forest and backed by the cliffs.

“There are many caves in the limestone,” Stefan said with a proud murmur, as Grey and Veronica stared at the beautiful sight. “During the revolution these cliffs hid our freedom fighters, and the monasteries provided food and arms.”

“It’s stunning,” Veronica said.

As they neared the ancient chapel a black-robed monk approached. Stefan called out, and a look of recognition overcame the monk. They embraced, and Stefan chatted with the monk in Bulgarian.

The monk gestured at Grey and Veronica to follow, and then walked arm-in-arm with Stefan towards the monastery. Stefan turned his head as he walked. “He’ll take us to spare rooms to sleep. No one will find us here.”

Grey spotted a barn and stable at one end of the clearing, and he pointed at a narrow dirt road that began on the other side of the stable, paralleling the cliffs and then disappearing into the forest. “Where does that road lead?”

“To a village many miles in the other direction.”

They drew closer, and Grey realized that behind the chapel a two-storied wooden structure had been built against the vertical shelf. The contiguous doors and stairways reminded Grey of an ancient hotel.

The monk led Grey to a sparse closet of a room, and Grey tumbled gratefully into bed. A few minutes later he started as Veronica opened the door. Without a word she crawled into bed next to him and buried her head in his chest. He held her as she trembled, and then they slept.

•  •  •

Grey woke late, leaving Veronica still asleep as he wandered into the small courtyard between the chapel and the monk’s quarters. A blue-hued fresco dominated the chapel wall nearest Grey: an artistic rendition of a wheel depicting the various stages of life. Angels on either side turned the wheel with ropes, carrying humans through life’s circular stages.