The Mirror Thief(192)

They will try to board you in the lagoon. Likely they will try to blockade you at San Nicolò. They may fire on you from the Lido, as well. The crew of the Lynceus is well-armed and lawless, disinclined to surrender. I think you will escape.

The sbirri will see me on the quarterdeck. They’ll know I’m aboard, and they’ll infer the presence of the mirrormakers. Thereafter, the spies of the Council of Ten will track me wherever I go. Their assassins will seek my trail in every Mediterranean port.

Trist?o moves his hand from Crivano’s arm to the back of his neck. The skin of his palm is dry and smooth. If you can leave Christian lands entirely, he says, it would be better for you, I think.

I may not be welcome in Constantinople any longer.

It is a large world, my friend. With many places in it, and great empty distances for vanishing. You could sail for Alexandria, for instance. Or Tripoli.

Or Cyprus.

Yes. There is always Cyprus.

Crivano shrugs off Trist?o’s hand, moves along the counter to examine the athanor. The fluid in the cucurbit is motionless, its color unaltered, but liquid is beading in the alembic above. How long does it take? he asks. Your method?

The time varies. No less than three weeks. Often a month or more.

And yet you intend to depart tomorrow night?

Yes, Trist?o says. This process yields reductions and coagulates that are stable and portable after sixteen hours. I intend to collect them before we go. Also, if sbirri crash through our doors tonight, I want to be able to show them this, and to say: No, of course I am not planning to flee your city! Look here—I have just begun a complex operation that is to last a full month!

Crivano manages a sour smile. He presses a knuckle to the cucurbit’s warm glass, then withdraws it. Lowering his eyes, he scans the assemblies of vessels and devices, the use-disordered rows of chemicals and herbs. Though his limbs remain still, his muscles flex and extend, recalling the automatic gestures of a working magus. To open a window onto a world of ideal forms, to know the mind of God: these are the goals of his art. But Crivano is surprised at how many of his fond memories of the laboratory are bodily—akin to his recollections of janissary calisthenics, or of kick-ball games he learned as a boy. The rules were arbitrary; you practiced until you moved without thought. Those were ideal worlds, too, weren’t they?

I’ve been thinking of your mirrored alembic, Crivano says. And also of a passage in the Corpus Hermeticum that the Nolan saw fit to cite, about the instance of reflection that induces Man to descend from Heaven and inhabit the Earth. He looks down; He sees His own perfect shape reflected in Her waters. So arises our double nature: mortal flesh, housing immortal souls.

Trist?o nods, but seems distracted. He reaches for the water-pitcher and empties it into the chamberpot, rinsing the wooden rod and the long spoon as he pours. When the water is gone, he sets the pitcher on the counter. Then he lifts the chamberpot, swirling it in his right hand.

Indeed, he says. But here we should be cautious. Often we are told, and rightly so, that we can know God by knowing ourselves, for we are made in His image. We are not base, it is said, but divine. Yet this, perhaps, is saying too much. For even in our baseness—in our excrement—we might discern the work of our Creator.

All things come from God, Crivano says. Even shit can be sublimed.

But should it be?

Trist?o fixes Crivano with a fierce glare. Then he steps to the windows, and with a smooth sudden motion slings the chamberpot’s contents into the canal below. The liquid strikes the surface with a weak slap.

Should it be sublimed? Trist?o says. Should it be transcended? When we seek to do this, is our desire truly to know God? Or is it to know that God truly is as we always have imagined him: the perfect distillate of our corrupt selves? So—we are made in the image of God. Have we considered what this might mean? Innumerable are the egos in man, Paracelsus writes, and in him are angels and devils, heaven and hell. Perhaps God too is like this. Pure and impure. Is it so difficult to imagine? A God of flesh and bone? A God that shits?

His voice chokes off, as if overwhelmed by some passion: rage, sorrow, Crivano can’t guess which. Trist?o drifts away, toward his own approaching form in the mirror-talisman; the image of his torso gradually fills the glass. With the silver window eclipsed the room seems to grow smaller; Crivano shuffles his feet to keep his balance.

I want to know, Trist?o says, how God is unlike us. I want to know how our eyes become traitors. To know what they refuse to see. I no longer seek to transcend, nor even to understand. I want only to dirty my hands. To smell. To feel. Like a child who plays with mud. I believe the key is here—

His fingers brush the flat glass before him; they’re met by fingers from the opposite side.

—but not in the way that others have said. The Nolan warned us of this. Do you remember? He said the image in the mirror is like the image in a dream: only fools and infants mistake it for the true likeness of the world, but likewise it is foolish to ignore what it shows us. Therein lies the danger. Do we look upon these reflections without delusion, like bold Actaeon? Or, like Narcissus, do we see only what we wish to see? How can we be certain? With love in our hearts, we creep toward each shining surface, but we are all haunted, always, by ourselves.

Trist?o raises his other hand to the braided-glass border of the mirror. Then he lifts it from its easel and turns, bearing it before him like a platter. Crivano glimpses the top of his own head just inside its frame; he backs away in alarm.