The Tower

  ‘I would do anything for my bride to regain her lost reason . . . anything. You cannot understand my torment, Amir. To see her body at the height of its splendour and then to look upon those empty eyes, staring into the void . . . to hear the agony in her song whenever the nightmare takes over . . .’

  ‘Then allow me to leave as soon as possible. There’s no more time. And let Arad leave as well. I will meet her in the Horse’s Crypt on the third day of the new moon of Nisan.’

  ‘Arad!’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Amir. ‘Your daughter and I have tested ourselves thousands of times. We cannot fail.’

  ‘You’ve thought of everything then. You’ve been planning this for a long time . . .’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Your daughter cannot bear her mother’s folly.’

  ‘But it’s a terrible risk, Amir. How can I risk the life of my daughter to save her mother?’

  ‘Life itself is a terrible risk, Rasaf, from the moment we first see the light. Let us leave now, I beg you. The time is right. We cannot abandon the task that lies before us. It is not by chance that our people have managed to survive for so many centuries in this marvellous and forgotten place. We must win. Please, allow us to take the keys and to go.’

  Rasaf lowered his head. ‘Does Arad know you want to leave so soon?’

  ‘Arad wants it as well and is ready to leave at any moment to reach the appointed place. I shall speak to her this very night.’

  ‘Go, then,’ said Rasaf. He opened a coffer of cedar wood, rimmed in iron, and took out a small rosewood case. He opened it and showed Amir two arrowheads lying on red leather. One had a square tip, while the other was shaped like a star.

  ‘Choose your arrowhead, Amir. Arad will take the other.’

  Amir gazed at the two shining steel tips, then chose the star.

  ‘The most difficult and the most deadly,’ said Rasaf. ‘The wound it provokes is devastating. Incurable. Do not fail, Amir. I could not bear it.’

  ‘I will not fail,’ he said. ‘Farewell, Rasaf. Tomorrow I shall leave as soon as possible.’

  ‘Farewell, Amir. May God protect you.’

  AMIR LEFT THE ROOM, walked down to the courtyard and headed towards the spring, sure that he would find Arad there at this hour. There she was, her sheer white gown fluttering in the moonlight on the evening breeze that had descended upon the oasis. Her gracious figure and long gazelle’s legs showed through the light fabric. She was a ravishing sight in the glow of the full moon reflected in the crystalline spring: she seemed to be bathing in the diaphanous light which flooded the air as if it were a lake without shores or a bottom. She could remain in silence for hours, listening to the voices that came from the gardens and the desert, breathing in the wind-borne scents of blossoms hidden in distant, arid valleys.

  Amir loved her profoundly, with a proud, moody love, and even if Arad had never spoken to him openly about her own feelings, he was sure that no woman could prefer another to him in all of Kalaat Hallaki. No one could rival him in courage, generosity or devotion. He was certain that one day he would sway her, that passion would consume her like the fire that devoured the endless plains of grass beyond the sea of sand at the end of every summer.

  ‘Arad.’

  The woman turned towards him and smiled.

  ‘Arad, your father has agreed. We will open the Horse’s Crypt and take what we need from the treasure accumulated by our ancestors. And when the time comes, I will open the way to the Tower of Solitude so that your mother may regain the reason that was stripped from her the day she was kidnapped and held prisoner by the Blemmyae. I will leave tomorrow. And you too must leave as soon as you can, if you want to be at the appointed place on the third day of the new moon of Nisan.’ He stretched out his hand and showed her the tip of the arrow. ‘It’s a game we’ve played since we were children, but this time the tips will be of tempered steel. Neither of us can fail.’

  ‘I am not afraid,’ said Arad, taking the arrowhead into her own hands.

  ‘Will you love me if I lead the warriors through the Sand of Ghosts and your mother’s reason is restored?’

  ‘Yes. I will love you then.’

  Amir lowered his gaze and seemed to be watching her reflection in the water of the spring. ‘Why not now?’ he asked, without daring to look her in the eyes.

  ‘Because . . . it’s what my father wants, it’s what our people want, but . . . my soul is oppressed by sadness whenever my mother’s madness flies from the highest tower of Kalaat Hallaki.’

  ‘Arad, every time I have risked my life in battle, I’ve wondered if I might die without having tasted your lips, your breasts, the rose between your thighs, if I might die without ever having slept in your hyacinth-scented bed and, every time, the thought filled me with despair. I would die without ever having lived. Can you understand me, Arad?’

  The woman took his face between her long fingers and kissed him. ‘Lead the warriors through the Sand of Ghosts, Amir, and you will sleep in my bed.’ She slipped off her light muslin gown and offered her naked body to his gaze for an instant before she dived into the spring and disappeared in a trail of silvery bubbles.

  ARAD LEFT TWO DAYS LATER, accompanied by a small group of warriors. She was dressed and armed as a man herself, but with her she brought many gowns and jewels because her journey would be long and because only she had the authority to pass the many barriers that protected the Horse’s Crypt.

  It took Amir six days instead to prepare stocks of water and food, to load the packs on the camels and to choose the best warriors and horses of Kalaat Hallaki. The journey that awaited him was different from Arad’s and even more arduous. He would have to cross the driest parts of the desert until he reached the banks of the great Nile. From there he would have to push on through arid and inhospitable lands until he reached the sea, where he would find the fishing boats he needed in the villages that lay in the shadow of the mysterious ruins of troglodytic Berenike.

  From there he would cross the sea and then traverse the most desolate stretches of the Higiaz until he reached the Horse’s Crypt, on the third day of the new moon in the month of Nisan.

  When he left, his heart was heavy because he was leaving the oasis undefended. He knew that he would be away from Kalaat Hallaki for months and months, for the first time in his life. That was the worst sacrifice.

  The men of the oasis knew that cities and villages, lakes, seas and rivers existed beyond the sands, but they considered their hidden valley the dearest place on earth, and they knew they were the only human beings in the world capable of fending off the fierce, monstrous Blemmyae. They were certain that they would succeed, one day, in invading their barren land and annihilating the ghastly creatures.

  The caravan left at dawn and all the warriors, before mounting their horses, drank from the waters of the spring, still cold from the long night, so they would carry with them the taste of that life force and the memory of its coolness before facing the endless reign of thirst.

  Amir carried in his soul the taste of Arad’s last kiss, in his eyes the vision of her naked body reflected in the shining waters, and the ardour that consumed him in the expectation of possessing her was stronger than the burning rays of the sun.

  He never looked back and, when a wind as scorching as the breath of a dragon enveloped him all at once in a cloud of dust, he knew that the golden walls of Kalaat Hallaki had disappeared behind him.

  6

  PHILIP GARRETT TURNED ON the red light in the darkroom, took out his camera and extracted the film that he had shot underground at the Franciscan monastery. He immersed it in the developing solution, anxiously watching for the chemical reaction. Just a few seconds passed and his tense features began to relax. His eyes lit up: images were beginning to appear on the strip of film. What he cared about most was the papyrus he had photographed on the table in the tablinum; it had been his last shot. He put on his glasses and saw the dense script that filled the sheet of papyrus emerging on the film?
??s surface. It was cursive Greek, the same type that appeared in some of the graffiti etched on the walls of the Vesuvian city, as well as on the papyri of Herculaneum that Italian scholars had been patiently unrolling for more than a century with the aid of the machine developed by Father Piaggio.

  As soon as the negative had dried, Philip moved on to the enlarger and printed a much bigger photograph. His initial joy swiftly changed to disappointment: the emotion of finding the papyrus, along with his assumption that he would have been able to take the original, had made him careless about the angle and the shot was not perpendicular enough to the table, making the last lines out of focus.

  He cursed, banging his fist on the table, but there was nothing he could do; the only information he could get was there in the image. He would try to transcribe the blurred words as best he could and decipher the text down to the last readable word.

  He worked for days and days, locked in his room, stopping only when Lino came in with some coffee or something to eat. When he had to go out to consult sources at the National Library or the Papyrus Institute, El Kassem would take his place in the bedroom he’d equipped as a study and stand armed guard, with orders to allow no one in. The postman, who lived in the same house, had the bad luck to enter one day. He needed to deliver a registered letter and Lino hadn’t answered the unlocked door. Finding no one inside, he peered around the bedroom door and nearly coincided with El Kassem’s scimitar. He was back at the front door in no time, pale as a rag, and he raced down the stairs two at a time, as if he had seen the devil in the flesh.

  As the text gradually became comprehensible, Philip’s mood worsened. He became tense and irritable and couldn’t sleep at night, tormented by nightmares. One day, at the National Library, Philip was consulting a collection of Etruscan inscriptions, in the hopes of finding the phrase in Etruscan that appeared at the end of his papyrus, which he was guessing might be an invocation of a religious nature. He hadn’t noticed that there was a young man looking over his shoulder. He was staring at the letters that Philip had transcribed on a sheet of paper and he stopped in his tracks as though he had seen a ghost.

  ‘My God, an original, unpublished inscription!’ he gasped.

  Philip spun around, instinctively hiding the sheet with his hand. The young man before him was thin, not very tall, with dark eyes that glittered from behind his glasses and a tower of heavy books in his arms.

  ‘Do you read Etruscan?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s what I study.’

  ‘Well, you see,’ said Philip, ‘this is nothing but a transcription of some eighteenth-century scholar, almost certainly spurious.’

  The young man gave him a penetrating look. ‘Don’t worry, sir, I don’t want to meddle with your research. I’d just like to say,’ he added with a knowing expression, ‘that the inscription, in my opinion, is authentic. It’s a religious invocation that perhaps accompanied the sound of an instrument . . .’

  Philip started. ‘A sistrum?’ he blurted out.

  ‘Could be,’ said the young man. ‘It’s hard to say.’

  ‘I’d like to thank you for giving me your opinion, which I will certainly take into account,’ said Philip. ‘You’re very clever for your age. What’s your name?’

  ‘Massimo,’ replied the young man. And off he went, bent under the weight of his books.

  That evening, Philip closed himself in his study and started to write out the definitive translation of the document:

  The Immortal One, origin of all evil and source of all human knowledge, is alive in his tomb. I, haruspex Avile Vipinas, have seen him. After he had sated himself on the blood of all the companions who had left Cydamus with me, I was able to read what was in his mind. He has witnessed all the evil of the world, and he revels in suffering and remorse. He knows the secret of immortality and of eternal youth.

  For one thousand years he has lain in this tomb, which rises in the place where he first stained his hands with blood. He massacred all my companions, but allowed me to leave. The sound of my sistrum saved me, and I alone reached the shore of the sea.

  I would speak to none of those who had sent us out against such a formidable enemy, but I searched among the Judaean wise men of Alexandria until I found Baruch bar Lev, a priest, son and grandson of priests. He told me of the man of the seven tombs: He who cannot be killed. Only the fire of Yahweh, God of Israel, the fire that destroyed Sodom, can destroy him.

  Before I breathe my last breath, I, Avile Vipinas, hereby hand down this memory, should someone, some day, dare to set out to destroy the lair of the beast. His tomb is shaped like a cylinder and is topped by a Pegasus. It is called the Tower of Solitude and it rises on the southern edge of the sea of sand, at thirty-seven days’ march from Cydamus, near the land of the . . .

  Philip sat still and silent before this missive, his eyes staring into nothingness, damp with tears. He thought: ‘It was you, then, Avile Vipinas, who lured me into your home, so you could impart your message. It was you, wasn’t it? Or was it my father who drove me to discover your secret?’

  HE PASSED DAYS and days looking through books in search of a monument that might somehow resemble the description he had read in the papyrus of Avile Vipinas, but he found nothing. A tomb shaped like a cylinder topped by a Pegasus . . . a Pegasus, the figure of a winged horse . . . What could that possibly mean?

  He realized that there was no reason for him to stay in the city any longer. It was time to leave with El Kassem, in search of his father.

  Before leaving, he went to say goodbye to the guardian at the Franciscan monastery.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be back,’ said the friar. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve seen you here.’

  ‘I’ve been spending my time in libraries. There’s something I’ve been working on,’ replied Philip.

  ‘Well then? Are you satisfied? Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Philip. ‘What I’ve found . . . has bewildered me, put me in touch with a dimension I didn’t know existed.’

  The friar smiled. ‘Don’t tell me you discovered the secret behind the earthquake bells?’

  ‘And if I told you that I had?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. But if that’s so, what could be so terrible about unravelling such a small mystery? There’s one in every place in Italy: secret passageways, cursed treasures, sunken cities, ghosts, werewolves, golden goats that appear on stormy nights, witches and wizards, souls from purgatory, statues that weep tears or sweat blood . . . Mystery is the rule, not the exception, my friend. That’s what you scientists don’t understand.’

  ‘That may be. But then why are we even capable of rational thought? Just to make us realize that it’s all no use? Are you saying that the only road is blind faith? Is that the solution?’

  The monk did not respond to this provocation but fell silent for a few moments, as if devising another strategy for making himself understood. When he raised his eyes, his gaze was steady and unexpectedly serious. ‘What did you find down there?’

  Philip hesitated for an instant, then said, ‘A terrifying message. There is a place on this earth where Evil is present with the same mystical intensity as Good is supposed to be present in the tabernacle of your church.’

  ‘And what do you intend to do?’

  ‘I have to find my father.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘And then I’ll find that place.’

  ‘And will you destroy it?’ asked the friar anxiously.

  ‘Not before I’ve understood it. Have you ever thought that Evil might be the dark face of God?’

  He turned and walked quickly towards the door.

  The friar watched him walk off down the corridor as two tears ran down his bristly cheeks. ‘May God assist you,’ he murmured. ‘May God assist you, son.’

  When Philip’s steps had faded into the shadows of the cloister, the guardian descended into the crypt, took a lante
rn and went underground. He proceeded at a steady step to the point where the apotropaic eye stood out on the tunnel wall. He knelt on the paving stone, the same one that Philip had put back in its place before returning to the light. He leaned his bald head against the wall and collected himself in prayer. Then he got to his feet. ‘You’ve delivered your message,’ he whispered, ‘after such a long time. Your mission has finally been accomplished. Rest now, my friend. Sleep.’ He lay a hand against the wall, almost a caress, then took up the lantern. His shadow disappeared, as did the sound of his shuffled footsteps, in the silent hypogeum.

  PHILIP REACHED THE HOUSE and went into his study. He found El Kassem on guard duty, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and his back against the wall, his scimitar poised on his knees.

  ‘We’re leaving, El Kassem. As soon as we can.’

  ‘Finally. I can’t stand it any longer inside this box. I need the desert.’

  ‘I think I’ve discovered what my father was looking for in this city. Now I have to find him and tell him.’

  ‘There is a man called Enos who was with me the last time I saw your father. He knows the road we must take and he is expecting you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Aleppo.’

  ‘One of the oldest cities on earth,’ said Philip. ‘A fine place to start.’

  He was thinking about how the difficulties he’d succeeded in overcoming had changed him profoundly. He felt ready now to solve the mysteries that his father had sown along his path, like a horseman prepared to jump the fences on a racecourse. He knew that the distance separating him from his father was growing shorter with each passing day. There was only one shadow looming on his path: Selznick.