The Last Cato Read online

  Finally I noticed that the far end of the stone was out of the tunnel. The slope was very steep. I could barely push the block; it kept falling back against me. With my last effort, I gave it a big push, and the stone fell into the void, immediately hitting something metallic.

  “Done!”

  “What can you see?”

  “Wait till I catch my breath.”

  I shined the flashlight through the hole. I didn’t see anything, so I inched forward and stuck my head in. It was a cubicle identical to the one we had seen in the catacombs, but this one was completely empty. At first glance, it was just four empty walls, dug right into the rock, with an even lower hung roof and a floor covered by a strange plank of steel. Right then, I didn’t register that everything was spotless, and I didn’t notice I was leaning on the same rock I had pushed up that long ramp. The rock’s height was approximately equal to the distance from the floor to the hole I’d emerged through.

  Taking a deep breath like a pole-vaulter about to jump, I twisted myself into an outlandish knot and threw myself inside the cubicle, clattering onto the ground. Then Farag made his way through the hole, immediately followed by the captain. He looked pretty foolish—his body was too big, so he had to slither down the path, dragging his backpack. Farag was almost as tall as he, but he was thinner and moved through it more easily.

  “A very unusual floor,” mused the professor, tapping his shoe on the steel plank.

  “Give me the flashlight, Doctor.”

  “It’s all yours.”

  Then something shocking happened. No sooner had the captain come through the hole than we heard a rough screech, like a painful twisting of old rope and gears slowly being set in motion. Glauser-Röist spun around, lighting up the entire cubicle, but we didn’t see a thing. It was the professor who discovered it.

  “The stone! Look at the stone!”

  My beloved stone, the one I had so lovingly followed for the length of the corridor, was lifting off the floor on a platform and was deposited at the mouth of the tunnel. It slid back down and disappeared faster than you could say amen.

  “We’re trapped!” I shouted in anguish. The stone slid nonstop down the conduit until it fit back into the stone frame at the entrance. From the inside it was impossible to get back out. At that point I realized that that frame was not made to hide the entrance, but rather to seal up the exit.

  Another mechanism had also started up. In the center of the wall across from the opening, a slab of stone turned on its hinges like a door, revealing a human-size, vaulted niche. You could clearly see three colored steps: white marble, black granite, and red porphyry. Above the steps, carved into the rock, was the enormous figure of an angel lifting his arms in prayer; over his head, pointing to the heavens, was a sword. The figure must have been painted once. In the Divine Comedy, the angel’s long robe was the color of ashes or dry earth; his skin, pale pink; and his hair, a very dark black. Sticking out of holes in the angel’s palms, which were raised imploringly, were two chains of equal length. One was clearly gold, and the other was silver. Both were clean and shiny and sparkled in the light of the flashlight.

  “What does this all mean?” Farag walked up to the figure.

  “Hold on, Professor!”

  “What’s the matter?” The professor jumped, startled.

  “Don’t you recall Dante’s words?”

  “His words?” Boswell scowled. “Didn’t you bring a copy of the Divine Comedy?”

  The Rock had already taken it out of his backpack and opened it to the right page.

  “Falling devoutly at his holy feet,” he read “in mercy’s name I begged to be let in; but, first of all, three times I smote my breast.”

  “Please! Are we going to mimic each and every one of Dante’s gestures?” I protested.

  “The angel then takes out two keys, one silver and one gold,” Glauser-Röist continued. “Using the silver key first, then the gold, he opens the locks. He says very clearly that when one of the keys doesn’t work, the door won’t open. One is more precious, but the other needs wisdom and skill before it will unlock, for it is the one which unties the knot.”

  “My God!”

  “Come on, Ottavia,” Farag cheered me. “Try to enjoy this. After all, it’s still a beautiful ritual.”

  Well, he was partly right. If we hadn’t been so many meters underground, buried in a crypt with our exit sealed up, maybe I would have seen the charm Farag was talking about. But captivity upsets me, and a sense of danger rose sharply up my spine.

  “I suppose,” Farag continued, “the Staurofilakes chose the three alchemic colors in a purely symbolic sense. For them, as for anyone who got this far, the three phases of the great alchemic work matched the process the aspirant was to go through on his journey to the True Cross and earthly paradise.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple. Throughout the Middle Ages, alchemy was a very highly regarded science, and the number of wise men who practiced it was vast: Roger Bacon, Ramon Llull, Arnau de Vilanova, Paracelsus… The alchemists spent a good part of their lives closed up in their labs surrounded by water pipes, chemical retorts, crucibles, and stills. They were searching for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of eternal life.” Boswell smiled. “Alchemy was really a road to inner perfection, a type of mystic practice.”

  “Can you be specific, Farag? We’re trapped in a crypt with no way out.”

  “I’m sorry…,” he stuttered, pushing his glasses onto his forehead. “The great students of alchemy, such as the psychiatrist Carl Jung, supported the idea that it was a path to self-knowledge, a process of searching for one’s self, that went through the stages of dissolution, coagulation, and sublimation—in other words, the three works or alchemic steps. Perhaps the aspiring Staurofilakes had to suffer a process similar to destruction, integration, and perfection. The brotherhood may have gotten its symbolic language from that.”

  “In any case, Professor,” the captain cut him short, crawling over to the guardian angel, “we too are now aspiring Staurofilakes.”

  Glauser-Röist bent down before the figure and touched his forehead to the first step. I have to admit it was quite a sight, to the point that I even felt a bit embarrassed for him; but then Farag imitated him, and I had no other option but to follow his lead to avoid starting an argument. We each struck our chest three times as we begged the angel to be merciful and open the door. But of course it didn’t open.

  “Let’s try the keys,” murmured the professor. He got to his feet and climbed those impressive steps. He stood face to face with the angel, but his eyes fell on the chains in the angel’s hands. They were thick; three links hung from each palm.

  “Try pulling the silver first, then the gold,” the Rock said.

  The professor did as he was told, and with the first tug, another link came out. Now there were four in the left hand and three in the right. Farag took the gold one and tugged on it, too. The same thing happened: A new link appeared. But that wasn’t all that happened. We heard a new screech, under our feet, under that cold steel floor, much louder than the one from my stone’s platform. It gave me goose bumps, although nothing seemed to happen.

  “Pull again,” urged the Rock. “First the silver and then the gold.”

  I couldn’t see clearly. Something wasn’t right. We were missing some important detail, and I sensed it wasn’t a good idea to go on playing with the chains. But I didn’t say anything, so Boswell repeated the process. The angel now had five links in each hand.

  Suddenly I felt very hot, unbearably hot. Glauser-Röist, unaware of what he was doing, took off his jacket and dropped it on the ground. Farag unbuttoned his collar and started to breathe hard. The heat increased at a dizzying speed.

  “Something strange is happening, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “The air is almost unbreathable,” warned Farag.

  “It’s not the air…,” murmured the Rock, looking down. “It’s the floo
r. The floor is heating up!”

  He was right. The iron plank was radiating heat. Were it not for our shoes, our feet would have been burning as if we were walking on hot sand at the beach in the middle of summer.

  “We have to hurry, or we’ll be roasted alive!” I exclaimed horrified.

  The captain and I jumped precipitously to the steps, but I kept climbing to the porphyry stone and joined Farag. We stared at the angel. A light spark of clarity began rattling around in my brain. The solution was there. It had to be. But God knows where. In a matter of minutes the chamber was turning into a crematory oven. The angel wore a slight smile, like the Mona Lisa’s, as if what was happening was a joke. With his hands raised toward heaven, he was enjoying himself… His hands! I had to focus on his hands. I carefully examined the chains, but they didn’t seem to have anything special. They were thick, normal, everyday chains. But his hands…

  “What are you doing, Doctor?”

  His hands weren’t normal. Not at all. His right hand was missing the index finger. The angel was mutilated. What did that remind me of?

  “Look at that corner of the floor!” Farag shouted. “It’s turning red!”

  A muffled bellow, a roar of furious flames, rose from the lower floor.

  “There’s a fire down there,” muttered the Rock. Infuriated, he demanded, “What the devil are you doing, Doctor?”

  “The angel is mutilated,” I explained, my brain functioning at top speed, searching for a distant memory I could not quite recall. “He’s missing the index finger on his right hand.”

  “So what?”

  “Don’t you get it?” I shouted, turning toward him. “This angel is missing a finger! It can’t be a coincidence! It’s got to mean something!”

  “Ottavia’s right, Kaspar.” Farag took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt all the way. “Let’s use our brains. It’s the only way to save ourselves.”

  “He’s missing a finger. Terrific.”

  “Maybe it’s a kind of combination.” I thought out loud. “Like a safe. Maybe we should put one link on the silver chain and nine on the gold chain. That would be ten fingers.”

  “Come on, Ottavia! We don’t have much time!”

  With each link I pushed back into the angel’s hand, you could hear a metallic clack. I left one silver link showing, and tugged on the gold chain until there were nine links. Nothing.

  “The corners of the floor are bright red, Ottavia!” Farag shouted.

  “I can’t go any faster. I’m going as fast as I can!”

  I was dizzy. The air, almost like the strong odor of burning cleaning solution, was really getting to me.

  “One and nine doesn’t work,” the captain ventured. “Maybe we need to look for a different answer. There are six fingers on one side and three on the one missing a finger, right? Try six and three.”

  I tugged on the silver chain like a possessed woman and left six links exposed. We’re going to die, I told myself. For the first time in my life, I was sure the end had come. I prayed. I prayed desperately as I stuck six gold links back in the right hand, leaving only three hanging loose. Nothing happened.

  The captain, Farag, and I looked at each other, panic entering our minds. A flame surged from the floor. The jacket the captain had dropped on the floor caught fire. Sweat poured over my body, but the worst was the buzzing in my ears. I took off my sweater.

  “We’re running out of oxygen,” the Rock announced in a neutral voice. In his gray eyes I could see he also knew the end was near.

  “We’d better pray, Captain,” I said.

  “You all at least have the consolation of…,” sighed the professor, watching the jacket burn, his hands pushing locks of damp hair off his forehead, “believing that soon you will begin a new life.”

  Fear flooded me. “You’re not a believer, Farag?”

  “No, Ottavia, I’m not,” he apologized with a shy smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been preparing for this moment for many years.”

  “Preparing?” I was scandalized. “You should turn to God and trust in his mercy.”

  “I’ll simply go to sleep, that’s all,” he said with all the tenderness he could muster. “For a long time, I was afraid of death, but I didn’t allow myself the weakness of believing in God to save me from that fear. Then, I realized that each night when I went to sleep, I died somewhat. The process is the same, don’t you think? Do you recall Greek mythology?” he smiled. “The twin brothers, Hypnos * and Thanatos,† sons of Nyx, the Night… Remember?”

  “For the love of God, Farag!” I moaned. “How can you blaspheme like that when we’re about to die?”

  I never would have dreamed Farag was not a believer. I knew he wasn’t what you’d call a practicing Christian, but from that to not believing in God there was an abyss. I hadn’t known many true atheists in my life, and I was convinced that everyone, in his own way, believed in God.

  I was horrified to realize that his stupidity was gambling away eternal life.

  “Give me your hand, Ottavia,” he begged, extending his trembling hand. “If I’m going to die, I’d like to have your hand in mine.”

  “Captain, shall we pray?”

  The heat was infernal. There was hardly any air. I could barely see, not just because of the sweat streaming in my eyes, but because I was feeling faint. A sweet stupor, a burning dream was overpowering me, leaving me weak. That cold steel plank that had received us was now an overpowering lake of fire. Everything glowed orange and red, including us.

  “Of course, Doctor. Start the prayer and I will follow you.”

  But then I suddenly understood. It was so simple. It came to me as I cast a last glance at Farag’s and my clasped hands: intertwined, wet with sweat and shining in the light, our fingers had multiplied. My thoughts went back, as if in a dream, to a childhood game, a trick my brother Cesare taught me, a way around learning the multiplication tables. For the nines table, he explained, all I had to do was extend both hands and count from the little finger of my left hand to get the multiplier and double that finger. The number of fingers remaining on the left hand was the first number of the answer, and the fingers remaining on the right, the second.

  I turned loose from Farag, who didn’t open his eyes, and rose to face the angel again. For a moment, I thought I’d fall over, but my hope sustained me. There weren’t six and three links left hanging. There were sixty-three. But sixty-three wasn’t a combination that opened that safe. Sixty-three was the product of multiplying another two numbers, like Cesare’s trick. And they would have been so easy to simply guess! Dante’s numbers, nine and seven! Nine times seven, sixty-three; seven times nine, sixty-three. Six and three. There were no other possibilities. I gasped, and started pulling at the chains. True, I was delirious—euphoric, even—due to lack of oxygen; but that euphoria had given me the solution: seven and nine. Or nine and seven! My hands couldn’t push and pull the damp links, but a type of madness, a hallucinating fury, forced me to try again with all my strength until I got it right. A soon as the links fell into place, the stone slab that held the figure of the angel slowly sunk into the ground, uncovering a cool new corridor. The fire below us had stopped.

  We dragged ourselves along the ground, out of that cubicle. We gulped mouthfuls of old and rancid air, but to us, at the moment, it seemed cleaner and sweeter than any we’d ever breathed. We didn’t have a plan, but without realizing it, we had also followed the angel’s final commandment to Dante: “Enter, but first be warned: to look back means to go back out again.” We didn’t look back. Behind us, the stone slab closed again with a thud.

  The path before us was wide and ventilated. A long passageway took us to the surface. We were exhausted—battered, even—and about to pass out. Farag coughed so hard he nearly broke in two. The captain leaned against the wall and took wobbly steps. As for me, I was disoriented. All I wanted was to get out of there, look at the bright blue sky, and feel the sun on my face. None of us made a sound. We w
alked along in complete silence, and except for Farag’s coughs, we seemed powered by our mere instincts.

  After more than an hour, Glauser-Röist turned off the flashlight; enough light was filtering through the narrow skylights above us so we could walk safely. The exit couldn’t be very far. A few steps later, instead of reaching freedom, we came to a small, round esplanade, a type of landing about the size of my small bedroom in Rome. Its walls were covered with large Greek symbols carved in the stone. At first glance, the carving resembled a prayer.

  “Ever seen this before, Ottavia?” Farag’s cough had slowed.

  “I’d have to copy it and translate it.” I sighed. “It could be a common inscription, or maybe a Staurofilax text for those who made it into Purgatory.”

  The Rock, who no longer seemed as strong and invincible as usual, slumped to the ground, leaned against the epigraph, and took a bottle of water out of his backpack.

  “Want some?” he offered us, laconic.

  Did we want some! We were so dehydrated that, between the three of us, we gulped down every drop in the bottle.

  Barely recuperated, the professor and I planted ourselves in front of the inscription and shined the flashlight on it:

  “Πâσαν χαρàν γήσασθε, δελφοί μου…,” read Farag in very correct Greek. “‘Consider, my brothers…’ What is this?”

  The captain took a notebook and pen out of his backpack and handed them to the professor to take notes.

  “‘Consider, my brothers,’” I translated, guiding my index finger over the letters, “‘as motive for great joy to see you involved in all manner of tests, knowing that the test of your faith produces perseverance.’”

  “Okay,” the captain muttered sarcastically, without getting up, “I will consider it a reason for great joy that I was on the verge of dying.”