Chapter 9
A Peugeot 207 dark it slipped in the darkness. Crossing the woods of the Brianza, it licked up plants that stretched out him on the street, they almost wanted to grab her/it.
There were no lights, few cars flowed in the other sense of march.
Closed in the cabin, Angel listened to the diaphanous voice of David Gilmour. Remember that night... White sails in the moonlight. They walked it too, through empty playground, this ghost's town.
A world was built around him, made of turned looks to the future, of applications of help, of vague hopes. Children again on rusting swings getting higher, sharing to dream on an Island.
The music wound him/it and protected him/it hiding the vernacular din of the motor. The cabin rippled following the road, cradling him/it; the lights of the lighthouses split a dark sea. It was as him same sailing without tools but without uncertainties, with the eyes and the heart well firm on that only star able to drive him/it.
Of forehead, not far, the island.
He/she knew that there was: over the kingdom of the servant, hidden in the depth of every man. It has many names, the island that is: who calls her/it peace, who love, who well. It is not in sky, it is not reached with words; the fear doesn't reign you, since you/he/she cannot have of it who pursues her/it. It has only a meaning: to live.
Away from the evil, away from the sea. A serene hermitage, to reach for being free.
Others brave as him, that evening you/they would be united to his/her crossing. And perhaps, one day, all the men of this Earth navigheranno united verse of her, without fears, without hypocrisies, without hysterias. Because nobody can destroy impunemente the possibility of an island.
Nessun'altra distraction that night: standing on the deck, the narrow rudder in hand. Second star to the right.
Let the night surround you, we macaws half way to the stars. Ebb and flow, let it grow, feel the warmth beside you...
Of a line the plants that made wall opened. To their place a gate appeared in front of which a man attended. You/he/she would not even have noticed him/it, if you/he/she had not known that there was, shade among the shades, living obscurity.
The address was correct.
Angel and turned toward the gate without putting the arrow.
It approached in front of the man and it lowered the car window.
The vivacious air entered to reawaken him/it from the numbness of the dreams. Gilmour meanwhile he/she caressed the ropes of his/her guitar and the electric and vibrating notes as next waves of the sea to the beach they rippled him, on which the music concluded falling through its course.
The man exhibited an impeccable double black breast that wound him/it as a caress. The gun was there surely, from some part under the jacket.
«Good evening» it said and attended. It was also polite, the gorilla.
«Arabesque.» It slipped out of the open car window.
«You arranges. And spends a pleasant evening.»
The elegant man premises a button and the gate you/he/she opened humming.
The path still continued for different meters dipped in the vegetation. The gravel of the pavement scalpicciava under the wheels of the Peugeot that it was penetrated in the ownership of the guest. In the middle of an ample garden, as a star come down by the sky, the villa of Ottavio Barletti beamed, magnate of the bagged brianzolis.
It won the darkness, with the external lighthouses to illuminate the white walls. And the windows, to the first one as per second plain, they shone of a heat and trembling natural shine: a waste of candles had been select to recreate a fictitious but fitting atmosphere.
Angel you have to overcome a line of derisions chilometriche, SUV and coupe, and it immediately parked after a black BMW with the darkened glasses. Some autos of small capacity it was present however: the young researchers, the dawning stars of the science and the knowledge, were not held to display symbols of a power yet well away from the attainment.
Angel Sastri went down from the car and stopped him an instant.
The damp air breathed: greedily you/he/she could feel until in the mouth the natural humors of the plants, of the earth, of the air. Hidden animals uttered incomprehensible verses: frinivanos, whistled, they snarled to the air and the moon, reawakened in the depth, also them waiting for the conclusion.
On the other side, the house shone wound in the silence.
They were all inside, surely, but from the illuminated atrium a sense originated of only attended.
The entry was preceded by a parvis. There stazionava another keeper in bourgeois.
«Arabesque» it repeated Angel for the second time, without attending asks for of it; the man removed him without saying nothing. Of the two, the first one dissuaded. This probably killed.
It entered. In front of him, a main staircase brought to the superior plan, to the right as to the left new rooms they trembled of lights and of presences. It was everything a to go and to come, a to look and to look at himself/herself/themselves respectful and nevertheless distant.
They were decently people from the mediocre aspect, that wandered wary and anxious: some chatted among them, others were alone; few accompanied by kind ladies and anchor there were alone women. There was not any exhibition of luxury any sign of particular distinction.
And nobody could not even imagine him that, if in that instant a bomb had bursted in the villa, the industrial, political and economic vertexes in Italy would have been reseted.
Overall, each had the tendency to avoid him. To conform himself/herself/themselves, Angel went toward a room from which you/they originated notes in distorsion and slim lights of various colors.
There, two only candelabra maintained the environment in faint light, concealing the identities of the presents. On a wall you/he/she was projected meanwhile a video, connected to boxes hidden in every angle, from the floor to the ceiling.
It was an old video of the first Pink Floyd, still without that Gilmours that you/he/she had accompanied him/it in the trip but with a flashing Syd Barret to drive the group through the deep space, recreating from the nothing the foolish and magic sounds of Astronomy Domi of it. Squirted sequences, stacked images the one on the others, naked women and congested faces, absorbed in psychedelic colors, they were projected on the naked wall as a joke of a secret and unknown dominus.
You/he/she was still enchanted when a hand leaned him on its shoulder, making to jolt him/it.
«Angel! You/they have told me that you have arrived.»
«Ricciuti. You have made me frighten.»
«Me? Who knows then that effect they will make you the souls of the corpses.» it altered the voice, as who wants to try to terrorize to baby without succeeding us. Out on to be born a childish laughter, it was found to quadrate afoot afresh it. It observed the friend wear with boldness a dark suit of a discreet elegance, with a clear white shirt.
«You are also until too refined for the evening» it commented. «You know him/it what you/they risk too much here the expensive heads?»
«Memory.» it admitted detached.
«You don't remember enough, if for you the fashion remains a principle irrinunciabile, also in occasions in which to vomit is set it is the least one that can happen. You come of now I have there someone to introduce you,» it was the definite call of Emilio, that made road.
Angel abandoned unwillingly the musical deliriums of the crazy diamond, you/he/she again crossed the entry and you/he/she entered the opposite room.
It was twin of the preceding one, but richly furnished and disseminated of appreciated antiquity.
The attention of Angel fell on a panel wooden place on a table in the middle of the room and exhibited with particular care. You understood that for his/her master it didn't represent any wedge of the collection.
It was a plate for woodcuttings, sharp pain of images and writings: it represented a separated circle in seven segments superscripted to a triangle, endowed with le
gs and surmounted by the wings of a bird. Anywhere, in the spaces, symbols were engraved alchemici; around the circle, a writing in negative, that Angel easily recognized.
«Visit Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem» he/she read to tall voice.
«Vitriol. It is the witticism of the alchemists» it commented Ricciuti, convinced to be able to impart to Angel a lesson of which it didn't have need. «Our guest is a stubborn esoterista. It is convinced that the symbolism and the language alchemicos prefigure what we am realizing now.»
«And it doesn't have all the blames.»
A voice of sudden it played again to their shoulders. Turning himself/herself/itself, the presence of a smiling and elegant man they were found to.
«Angel» it introduced satisfied Ricciuti. «Allow to introduce me you doctor Charles Pezzali, manager of the clinical laboratories of the Furnaces Pharmaceutics.»
Angel and Charles learned. Here disclosed the one to the other two perfect strangers, united by a mysterious and seductive tie. They felt nearby it, as not never; but nobody wanted to mention of it: she was not of that evening.
«Angel Sastri» he/she introduced him reaching out.
«Honorable. I have very felt to speak of her, even if I have to admit not to have ever seen to the work her/it.»
«Me of it dispatch deeply» he/she annotated the actor
«I fear to have interrupted you: I have seen that you were admiring one of the jewels of the collection of Barletti. That plate goes up again to the first decade of the XVI century: you/he/she is perfectly preserved because you/he/she has never been used. It is pure and uncontaminated.»
«Uncontaminated as our search?» Angel alluded, the pure madman.
«Really this way.» The doctor picked up the challenge. «We are pursuing the Stone Filosofale, dopotutto. And it is not bargain from few.»
«Mr., The marvels me!» he inserted Ricciuti. «They are only old legends! Our walk is very more concrete, it is a to act material.»
Shook Pezzali the head.
«The" old legends" they were him/it the same. The alchemists worked on spirit and subject on body and soul. The Stone hidden in the bowel of the earth is the same one hidden in the depth of the man. Macrocosm and microcosm coincide. "What is aloft it is as what it is in low, and what is in low it is as what it is aloft".»
«The Table of Emerald» it recognized Angel. «Magic words of author, that explain the Vitriol and they are explained of it. Only in the depth of the earth, straightly acting, it is possible to find the hidden stone.»
«But that earth we are us» he/she wanted to add Ricciuti. «Therefore, that the search ends In Internal Hominis.»
«There is no need to say him/it, Emilio: it is not an essay of medicine» taken back Angel. «In to know hermetic, every word is sign, and it has a boundless and only value that every alchemist knows: there is very more of the earth and very more of the man. You deals only with realizing him/it. And to live him/it.»
Emilio Ricciuti accepted of good degree the lesson.
«You see to thing they serve the humanists?» he/she sketched to Charles Pezzali.
He didn't respond, neither some of them would have continued in the discourse, since the deep sound of a bell filled the house, repeated five, six, seven times.
It was the call, everything had beginning.
Spin her some people, from every head of the villa, they poured again him toward the entry.
Angel, Emilio and Charles didn't have anything else other than to follow and there to gather himself/herself/themselves together with everybody.
For first thing, they saw enchanting creatures go down the staircases and to stay himself/herself/themselves along the steps. Marvelous young girl, dress up to the right of jewels and cloths in silk transparent, they distributed smiles to the presents. To the left strong young people towered to naked torso, hairless in face and on the breast, shiny for the essences that anointed the graven muscles of it.
From last, in the silence, they came down the staircases two men.
One of the two had not withstood the greed to be delighted, and it exhibited an impeccable tuxedo.
A curious and severe look embraced all, the crafty and mature face was embellished of the completely trimmed skull and of the strong neck.
He immediately taken the word.
«It is Ottavio Barletti, our guest» it whispered for time Emilio in the ear of Angel, that had not labored to realize him/it.
«Dear friends and brothers» it began, articulating the priestly sentence with bold voice. «It is with immense honor that is allowed me to entertain you once more in my ownerships, to complete together a new it covers of our eternity walk.»
While words of proud rhetoric ploughed the air, the eyes of Angel delayed around. Too and too much strong the situated distractions cleverly or casually welcomed by the amphitryon: people of so disparate origin and aspect enmeshed the curiosity of Angel.
Hastened Emilio and it took advantage to become himself/herself/themselves protagonist of it.
«From what I know Barletti, I assure you that it will still have for a beautiful of it po.' Oltre a essere convinto di avere un cervello straordinario, è innamorato della sua voce.»
«I started to also fear him/it me.»
«There is tonight the public of the great occasions. Do you know someone of the guests?»
«Almost anybody. Perhaps someone of sight» it admitted Angel.
«To the feet of the staircase there is the chief physician of oncology of the Policlinico» it started to list conceited Ricciuti. «To his/her side, that elegant woman is ordinary in National of medieval history.»
«I admit the ignorance, I have never seen them.»
«A more known face serves you? It looks apart then at that elderly gentleman next to the door of the other room. Have you recognized him/it?»
Angel followed with the look and you/he/she could not hold back a motion of surprise.
«But that is the minister.»
«In person. When it counts, it never misses.»
«Some that the coverages always serve.»
«I am the base of our survival and they have to involve all the aspects of the public life. Do you for example see that man in the middle of the group, that with the curly hair with that bad dye color pitch? It is the vicequestore in Milan.»
The eyes of Angel moved of face in face, asking himself/herself/itself how much to be able that evening was present, but asking above all himself/herself/itself for what authentic motive every of that powerful persons had gone down to compromises with the devil.
«Then that is the most interesting of all: it looks well at the old bad suit with the glasses. There, next to the blank grassona, that all unstuck.»
Angel lengthened the look. It also realized that the ragazzona was scrutinizing him/it, as a disturbed animal that feels the draw near of a raider.
«I should know him/it?» it considered Angel worrying only himself/herself/itself about the old one.
«You/he/she can be, if I met him/it in cowl hemmed of purple.»
Angel started.
«A cardinal?»
«One of the papabilis. It is an extraordinary person: for him the eugenic search and the human clonazione are a moral obligation that every good Christian should pursue with all the strengths.»
«You are telling me that in Vatican there is still someone who reasons with his/her head?»
«And how much reasons! If the science, sustains, it is the language with which God has written the universe, the genetic code is the deepest essence of it. He finds absurd that God has given the possibility to improve him and then to the man pretends that I/you/he/she don't exploit her/it. He/she thinks that its dream is to extract the genetic code from the traces ematiche of the shroud and to clone Our Lord.»
«Until again I will come to you from the sky.» it found natural annotated to Angel.
Meanwhile, the prayer of th
e guest set out to conclusion.
«I leave the word to our brother now, professor Danilo Bevilacqua, ordinary of botany to the university in Milan, that will introduce our evening from a more scientific point of view.»
«Bevilacqua is a giant. I recommend you to listen to him/it» it whispered Ricciuti falling through, almost to want to disappear to the presence of the professorial one. Which found immediately the way of attracting the attention.
It lifted aloft well the braccias.
«Mr., gentlemen» it announced. «I introduce you the queens of the party.»
In every hand, the teacher exhibited a small leaf: from that distance, for an a little accustomed eye as that of Angel, they seemed identical. They were small, thin, lanceolate, of power on green color. Yet they were not the same plant.
«In my right hand, you see a leaf of Psycothria viridis. This plant from the innocent air contains abundant doses of dimetiltriptamina, for the friends DMT, a hallucinogenic hormone that our brain already secretes in small doses. We would owe therefore to be already all hallucinated ones, but in our body an enzyme exists, also the monoamminaossidasi, that destroys to the contact every potentiality of the DMT. And it is here, gentlemen, that it enters scene her.» And it exhibited the second leaf, that well narrow estate in the left hand. «Banisteriopsis caapi. Superb sample of the Amazonian giant lianas, of the family of the Malpighiaceaes. But for all of us, it will simply be ayahuasca, or" cries some souls", as the indioses call her/it that draw benefit of it from millennia. Of it, it won't be the leaf but the body of the liana, that, essay, will opportunely free in our body substances able to disarm the inhibiting enzyme, leaving so free to act the active principle of the DMT.»
The public assisted in silence. Few words, very concrete, and here revealed the trick. Chemistry, biology, sensible experiences and necessary demonstrations came to break millennial beliefs.
But was it already everything explained indeed? It was the same Bevilacqua to reopen it brings her/it to the magic.
«80.000 plants exist in Amazzonia. About ten thousand of years ago, our ancestors not only individualized a hallucinogenic plant, but they discovered whether to make her/it effective crossing her/it with another. A combination that, if submitted to the case, you/he/she would be verified in a case on six million and four hundred million. To ask him/it to the sciamanis, the answer that is gotten it is amazing: they are the spirits of the same plants that teach them as to use her. They are the beings inside of us to illuminate who evokes them, that same unknown beings that from years by now we strive there to meet, to question; from which is ours supreme wish and our to have to learn.»
The audience kept silent, of a vigilant silence: a new dawn of nightmares and wisdom you/he/she was about to rise. Induced hallucinations would again have tortured today's wise, confident in the streets of yesterday's knowledge, of tomorrow, usual.
Taken back the word Barletti.
«The teacher they swarm you/he/she is already attending us. You/he/she has worked for us since yesterday, treating the two plants and mixing the infusion to prepare her. Let's submit us to his/her guide.»
The staircases and the procession of the beautiful ones him accodòs went down to them. The mass of the presents widened for leaving them first to pass and then to follow them.
They crossed the villa and they went out on the back. Free from artificial constraints they were assembled in garden as roof the sky and for walls the hedges.
Under the leafy branches of the tallest plant a pot reboiled on a light fire. Close to it, an old benumbed Indian murmured songs with uninhibited voice, while it was mixing the magic watery soup.
From that divine abdomen it spread around him all a pestilential odor: still-life, rotten jungle, work to the black, aching and decomposed.
All the presents prepared him in circle while the pot was removed by the fire.
Sat for earth as disciplined schoolboys, the powerful persons of Italy attended. Who knows if never in their life these unprejudiced men of manifold business had had an attitude of so authentic deference for someone?
To the borders of the small crowd, the figurantis prostitutis attended standing, I excluded by the taste psicoattivo: them I spell that it was alone to delight the trip oltremondano of the privileged ones with every type of sexual complaisances, so that psychic energies were expanded by the sublime to like. Illuminating orgasms, wedding sacred, heritages of ancient depravations earned on the field by the old financiers of the last frontier of the science.
They swarm him/it, in the meantime you/he/she had gotten up, and with a brand of the fire you/he/she had lit up a cigarette, of tobacco, perhaps, or of who knows what other diabolic nature naturante.
The smoke puffed as a human turibolo, all around itself, then above the pot.
It finally came toward the presents and, hymning to the spirits in a language forgotten in the times, the sacred smoke breathed on everybody.
The wind had gotten up among the leaves: a tinkling sound now, now liquid, now sizzling it hypnotized the presents. Were they already the spirits? Were they the corpses that were poured again in mass on the alive ones? Or were they the alive ones that ignored volutamente the death, mocking the messengers of it?
They swarm him/it it returned then to his/her place and attended picked in himself, winding himself/herself/itself in a motley poncho.
Then, without not even lifting the look, it aimed an index.
It started so the call: a bony finger, twisted by rheumatisms malcurati, you/he/she was sharpened on the first one of the chosen. You/he/she was touched really to the cardinal.
As it was him of forehead, the teacher it dipped the ladle in the pentolone. It drew the dose of it to administer to the follower, that grabbed the ladle and tracannò of a breath.
A grimace of disgust painted him on its face. It won the efforts, and with calm he/she returned to his/her place, he sat and attended.
A new call, and a new follower tasted. These, nevertheless, not resistette, and he/she hardly vomited not everything returned to the place.
And so, one after the other, his/her brothers rose to their destiny, to them the privilege was granted to question otherwise hidden ghosts.
They swarm him/it it proceeded with an unnatural safety: without not even looking at them in face, he/she called every without never being repeated himself/herself/themselves, as if everybody it knew.
And from the nothing, without uncertainties, the turn of Angel came.
That finger unequivocally aimed against it was a sacred branch, it was the rod of a water diviner, and it didn't admit hesitancies.
Angel Sastri got up and drew near definite.
It maintained the look on the pot, before, and on the ladle then. The dark of the night seemed to be him liquefied, and decanted in that copper pot misterico.
Of a line, it perceived on itself the look of the old one. It didn't dare return him/it: a child felt him, unworthy to answer, you/he/she felt in that man the strength of mythological once, to that nothing had whether to make with the solo flow some years.
The infusion was among its hands finally. Also the noise, a squandering of cinders semiliquide, appeared repellent. It approached him/it to the mouth trying to hold back the breath, but that nauseating stench seemed to transpire through the skin.
It threw down, and rottenness exploded him in mouth, falling along the throat to devastate the stomach.
But nothing went out of him. Nothing of the precious liquid, viatico of eternal hopes.
Disoriented, Angel returned to his/her place and there he laid down, huddled up as a baby on the side, to protect himself/herself/themselves and to protect his/her thoughts.
They spent minutes, protected Angel in the shade attended. With the open eyes he/she watched over on the outskirtses. With the left half open eyes it was abstracted by the reality. With the closed eyes it recalled himself.
But a last descent of eyelids, really that and no
t others, were accompanied by a sudden lightning of light.
Here therefore: so it has beginning.
Over the retina, inside the visual ability of his/her look, they started to form him evident signs: right lines, to zig zag, curves. Geometric shapes and kaleidoscopic they rotated in his/her visual field.
I know you. Fosfemi, the science calls you. Phenomenons entottici, companions of our nervous system, last sentinels of a conscious neurology.
Wandering geometries in a space without more confinements painted curious representations.
It now felt him in the cage, it now crossed a submarine highway to the rallentatore, it now fell along a tortuous descent of mountain to perdifiato.
It was then in a forest.
Closed eyes? Open eyes?
Was it the wood around him or inside of him to welcome him/it?
Trees deformed prostheses to the ground fell toward the heart of the earth, they almost wanted to free their roots. And the lines, lightnings of light and shades, crawled anywhere. A ground reboiled of life.
It was life, sentient, wise and volitive. It appeared and it ran away to the meantime.
A floor of snakes that you/they ashamedly crawled the one on the others.
As me, each. Every and everybody. In every time.
It walked through the luxuriance a being.
A man, naked. Without genital. Between a plant and the other, shepherd of the serpents, as if from them it originated and on them he/she watched over.
The face not to hide me felon!
An unknown face; hair, hair, feathers. Shades, among the plants, inside and out. It swam in the air, in the middle of luminescent beads. And it observed.
It observed in the dark, since the head of that being, biped, bimane, was the head of an owl.
Gigantic yellow eyes from the black pupils as the abyss stared at Angel.
What do you want from me?
What do you want from me?
What do you want from me?
What do you want from me?
Questions; questions that were answers. Questions that you/they escaped answers. Who asked to whom? Who really wanted?
But do you exist?
But do you exist?
But do you exist?
But do you exist?
Two curious that didn't want to discover their papers him rimpallavano the same application. And they denied to the other one any answer.
What does it change between sensitive world and hidden world, if a dialogue is blocked in both? If the sentence to live in the irresponsibility is the only one unchangeable seal of the creator?
The owl from the human body got further, a bed of snakes welcomed him/it among manifold coils.
That being, half man, animal mean, had found the street of house; Angel Sastri, the human one, didn't have to be of great interest for him.
Yet you were inside of me. You are inside of me. Because? Who has set you in the depth of my mind?
And because you don't want to disclose you?
The sea of leaves, of branches, of trunks, of serpents it kept on rippling. A yellowish foam hooded the waves of it.
Tossed in on and down, to the right and left, Angel had lost by now the compass.
A gone crazy rudder rotated whirling in the sky, elusive and untamable.
A sharp smoke impestava the air. Lightnings of light articulated time and space.
Will it come down Ezechiele of it, the old man they swarm coward?
The unstoppable and sea-roving motion penetrated in Angel, it grabbed with red hot vice its brain, its breath, its stomach.
The island was there, among the impetuous billows. Over that red hot risk, on the shoulders of the man owl.
But Angel would not have arrived there. Not that night.
An empty abdomen refused his/her own acids, painful spasms complied to the waves.
The intimacy of Angel, liquid and malodorous, you/he/she was now scattered on the lawn. All, with it, once more enfeebled.