The Cloisters(21)

“Something in the air,” said Rachel, taking a sip of Negroni, the enormous ice cube clinking against the side of her glass.

“What about you, Ann?” Aruna dabbed at a bit of condensation that had dripped from her glass and onto her dress. “Have these two made you a believer yet?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.” I struggled to read the tone of these conversations, to understand the way Patrick and Rachel, and now Aruna, talked about tarot cards and divinatory practices like they might be real. It seemed like a joke. One, I worried, that would only be revealed when I finally agreed to believe the unbelievable. All of it at my expense, of course.

“Ah, not yet,” said Aruna. “Meaning there’s still time to convince you?”

“One need not be convinced,” interjected Patrick, now leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, hands wrapped around his glass. “One must be open to the process. To attempting to understand why these practices mattered. And how they still might. We’re talking about belief systems that shape the way we talk about fate, even today. Take tarot—”

“Yes, but tarot,” Aruna interrupted, “only became part of the occult in the eighteenth century. Before, it was a trump-taking game. Something like bridge, played by the aristocracy. Four people, sitting around a table, shuffling and dealing a simple deck of cards. It wasn’t until that charlatan Antoine Court de Gébelin got involved that tarot cards were transformed into something more”—she waved her hands—“mystical.”

“Gébelin,” said Rachel, facing me, “was a notorious eighteenth-century rake of the French court. And he suggested that Egyptian priests, using the Book of Thoth, not fifteenth-century Italians, were responsible for the creation of the tarot deck, which consists, of course, of four suits like our regular deck, plus twenty-two cards that we now call the Major Arcana. Things like the High Priestess card, for example. Which used to be the Popess.”

I had begun to notice flashes of light that zigged and zagged, leaving trails of neon as the twilight became darker. Fireflies, illuminating our conversation with the tangible magic of nature.

“Between the Egyptomania of eighteenth-century France,” Rachel continued, “and the atmosphere of a court that loved secrets and mysteries, tarot developed an entirely different use. But I think there’s still an argument to be made for occult use in the fifteenth century, especially somewhere between Venice, Ferrara, and Milan. An area that was a bit of a golden triangle for experimental, magical practices. You see, we know that aristocrats in the early years of the Renaissance were fascinated by ancient practices of divination. Things like geomancy and cleromancy. So why not cards? The Dominicans were staunchly opposed to tarot decks. We know that Henri III taxed them in France. We know that someone was arrested in Venice in the early sixteenth century for cartomancy. And we have numerous indications in the historical record that tarot cards gave rise to public scandals, a phrase I think we could parse in different ways.”

I looked between her and Patrick, who had returned to sitting back in his chair, his fingers steepled.

“And of course,” Rachel said, “we cannot look at the imagery of the Major Arcana—the Moon, the Star, the Wheel of Fortune, Death, the Lovers—without acknowledging that a pervasive interest in the occult in the fifteenth century in Italy may have influenced the imagery, if not the function, of tarot cards.”

Growing up, it had been impossible to believe that something like a horoscope or a tarot reading might give me an advantage, might show me the outlines of my future. That kind of belief was a luxury I didn’t have. And I found it too painful to imagine that the stars could have warned me about my father’s death, although I knew that the ancient Romans would have disagreed. Perhaps the three of them would, too.

“But of course,” said Patrick, “Rachel hasn’t yet been able to marshal all the resources she needs to prove this theory. And many of us have tried.”

There was an edge in that, in the way he said tried—clipped and hard and resentful. And in it I realized that it wasn’t Rachel’s project alone, but his as well. Perhaps a failed project. Patrick, at every opportunity, seemed to be implying it was something more than research, something real and tangible, while Rachel still harbored reservations. Although I had noticed she chose not to voice them around Patrick.

“Just think of the legitimacy it would give the practice today—if we knew that there was a deck of cards from the fifteenth century, an early deck, maybe even the earliest deck that was used for the same purpose,” Patrick concluded.

“But there are few arrest records,” Rachel said. “And even fewer mentions of the practice.”

“There probably wouldn’t be arrest records,” I said, finding my voice. “I can’t imagine Borso or Ercole d’Este arresting someone for something like that in Ferrara.” The d’Este family had set up shop in Ferrara in the thirteenth century, where they ruled over a libidinous and mystical duchy that was as superstitious as it was ambitious. “I can’t imagine them writing something like that down.”

“Neither can I,” said Rachel.

As the sun dipped into the Hudson, making the river look golden and black, Rachel didn’t look away, but kept an appreciative smile on her lips while she examined me, as if for the first time.