engravings from the book, until he had all nine. He looked at them closely. “It’s a pity you can’t follow me where I’m going. As the fourth engraving states, fate is not the same for all.”
“Where do you believe you’re going?”
Borja dropped the mutilated book on the floor with the others. He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle, checking strange correspondences between them.
“To meet someone” was his enigmatic answer. “To search for the stone that the Great Architect rejected, the philosopher’s stone, the basis of the philosophical work. The stone of power. The devil likes metamorphoses, Corso. From Faust’s black dog to the false angel of light who tried to break down Saint Anthony’s resistance. But most of all, stupidity bores him, and he hates monotony.... If I had the time and inclination, I’d invite you to take a look at some of the books at your feet. Several of them mention an ancient tradition: the advent of the Antichrist will occur in the Iberian peninsula, in a city with three superimposed cultures, on the banks of a river as deep as an ax cut, the Tagus.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“It’s what I’m about to achieve. Brother Torchia showed me the way:
He was bending over the circle on the floor, laying some of the engravings on it and removing others, which he threw away from him, crumpled or torn. The candles illuminated his face from below, making him look ghostly, with deep shadows for eyes.
“I hope it all fits together,” he muttered. His mouth was a line of shadow. “The ancient masters of the black art who taught the printer Torchia the most terrible and valuable mysteries knew the path leading to the kingdom of night. ‘It is the animal with its tail in its mouth that encircles the place.’ Do you understand? The
“I want my money.”
“Have you never been curious about these things?” Borja went on, not hearing, peering out from shadowed eyes. “To investigate, for instance, the devil-serpent-dragon constant which has reappeared suspiciously in all the texts on the subject since antiquity.”
He picked up a glass object next to the circle, a goblet with handles in the shape of two linked serpents, and he raised it to his mouth and took a few sips. It held a dark liquid, Corso noticed, almost black, like very strong tea.
Corso stuck out his jaw. He was standing, still and thin in his coat. The shadows of the candles danced between his half-closed eyelids and made his unshaven cheeks look sunken. He had his hands in his pockets, one touching the pack with its remaining cigarette, the other around the closed switchblade, next to his flask of gin.
“I said, give me my money. I want to get out of here.”
There was a threat in his voice, but Corso couldn’t tell if Borja had heard it. He saw him come to unwillingly, slowly.
“Money?” Borja regarded him with renewed contempt. “What are you talking about, Corso? Don’t you understand what’s about to happen? You have before you the mystery that men throughout the centuries have dreamed of. Do you know how many have been burned, tortured, and torn to pieces just
for a glimpse of what you are about to witness? You can’t come with me, of course. You will just stay still and watch. But even the most vile mercenary can share in his master’s triumph.”
“Pay me. Then you can go to the devil.”
Borja didn’t even look at him. He was moving around the circle and touching some of the objects that had been laid next to the numbers.
“How appropriate that you should send me to the devil. So typical of your down-to-earth style. I’d even honor you with a smile if I wasn’t so busy. Although your remark was ignorant and imprecise: it will be the devil who comes to me.” He paused and turned his head, as if he could already hear distant footsteps. “And I feel him coming.”
He muttered, his speech interspersed with strange guttural exclamations, or with words that at times seemed addressed to Corso and at times to a third dark presence near them, in the shadows.
“ ‘You will go through eight doors before the dragon....’ Do you see? Eight doors come before the beast who guards the word, number nine, possessing the final secret.... The dragon sleeps with its eye open, and it is the Mirror of Knowledge. Eight engravings plus one. Or one plus eight. Which coincides with the number that Saint John of Patmos attributed to the Beast: 666.”
Corso saw him kneel and write out numbers in chalk on the marble floor:
666
6 + 6 + 6 = 18
1-8
1 + 8 = 9
Then Borja stood, triumphant. For a moment the candles lit up his eyes. He must have swallowed some kind of drug with the dark liquid. His pupils were so dilated that almost none of the
iris was visible, and the whites had taken on a reddish tinge from the light in the room.
“Nine engravings, or nine doors.” Shadow once again covered his face like a mask. “They can’t be opened by just anyone.... ‘Each door has two keys.’ Each engraving provides a number, a magic element, and a key word, if it’s all studied in the light of reason, the cabbala, the occult, the true philosophy.... Of Latin and its combination with Greek and Hebrew.” He showed Corso a piece of paper covered with signs and strange links. “You can take a look, if you like. You’ll never understand it.”
Aleph
Eis
I
ONMA
Air
Beth
Duo
II
CIS
Earth
Gimel
Treis
III
EM
Water
Daleth
Tessares
IIII
EM
Gold
He
Pente
V
