Nubar squeezed his fists in a frenzy.
Lies. All lies.
God in the twentieth century, Stern? The genie in the nineteenth century, Strongbow? The two of them having something about the eyes that showed they were father and son?
And worst of all, that vision of Haj Harun in 930 B.C. Haj Harun as a little boy, peeking over the shoulder of an imbecile scribe and noting that the scribe was happily adding a few thoughts of his own to the original Bible.
Nubar clenched his fists and exploded. He staggered to his feet, shrieking.
Lies and more lies. They think they'll get me but they won't. I'll get them.
In a fury he hurled more reports into the fire that was raging in the pit at his feet. The smoke swirled around him and he fell back weakly on the couch.
So weak after fighting everybody for years, especially those three evil criminals who had set up the Great Jerusalem Poker Swindle to deprive him of immortality. Why had there been that disaster in Gronk simply because he liked to dress up a little? Those three depraved criminals in Jerusalem dressed up, he had read about it in reports long ago. They all dressed up and had their fun, so why had it been wrong when he wanted to wear a uniform? And why did he have to fight everybody in life? Fight endlessly?
Nubar's roving fingers found the tin of rouge and the tube of lipstick in the pocket of his housecoat. He took them out and began to play with them idly, applying a little bit here and there, wondering what Paracelsus would have done in this damp murky cellar on an evening such as this. Ignored the icy drafts and the water dripping on him and gone on to repeat his mercury experiment a thousand times in search of the unique set of circumstances? Two thousand times? Three thousand times?
Breathing those heavy mercury vapors anew on a gloomy winter evening in Venice? Yet again inhaling his beloved fumes beneath the Grand Canal? At last dreaming his way into the philosopher's stone of immortality?
Nubar's gaze fell on a crate that had surfaced from under the stacks of reports he had dumped into the fire, a crate with a vaguely familiar shape. He crawled over and opened it.
Cinnabar. Mercury ore.
A whole crate of cinnabar from his alchemist's workshop in the castle tower room in Albania. Left over from the days when he had performed mercury experiments, shipped here as part of the UIA archives.
Odd that it should happen to turn up in front of him now, just when he was thinking about mercury.
Alchemy in the steps of the master. Six years ago, only that?
Happy days and nights then, he remembered them well. Long hours spent alone at his workbench in his castle tower room, communing over mercury with the master, Bombastus Vonheim the Celsus of Parahohen.
Was that right or was it Bombastus von Ho von Heim?
Parabombast? Paravon? Paraheim and Paraho?
No no, it was Parastein of course, Nubar Wallencelsus Parastein. The incomparable Parastein. What had happened to him in six short years? Where had he gone?
Nubar pushed the crate of cinnabar over to the pit and watched it tumble into the roaring fire. Smoke, fog, dreams. Mercury vapors. Swirling new fumes in the subaqueous archives of the Uranist Intelligence Agency.
Nubar found the medallion depicting Mussolini and the Virgin Mary in his housecoat and turned it over and over, looking for a similarity between the two faces. He found the three one-lira coins and put them into his mouth to suck. He pushed more reports into the fire.
Something was missing. In order to see clearly in the billowing smoke and mercury fumes he needed the third eye of occultism. But where was his small obsidian sphere, the precious ball of black volcanic glass, his primitive third eye?
Lost. He'd never find it now. His fingers touched something round in the pocket of his housecoat. He held it up.
The single earring, fake lapis lazuli, the color of the sky. It looked like a robin's egg.
Nubar attached the hook of the earring to his skullcap so the robin's egg would rest on his forehead. Yes, that was better. His head was expanding, his supernatural powers of perception were beginning to return.
He could feel his brain growing, swelling like an egg to encompass all of life.
Ultimate thoughts now in the underworld, the time had come. His left eye, the eye that had bothered Wallenstein men for three centuries in times of stress, automatically sealed itself shut as Nubar considered the ultimate enemies arrayed against him.
Ahura Mazda, chief of the gods of goodness, the secret owner of the Middle East who had also been known as Strongbow, a giant genie who was implacably pursuing him from the nineteenth century. Why?
Why had he, Nubar, been singled out for persecution by the giant good genie?
God his son, father of the genie, Himself, in the twentieth century disguised as a petty gunrunner and morphine addict named Stern. Years ago Nubar had dismissed Stern as too insignificant to bother with.
And lastly, Haj Harun, that timeless ghostly figure who had witnessed everything, even the writing of the original Bible.
Nubar smiled and his right eye also sealed itself shut. With both eyes closed in the smoke, in the billowing mercury fumes rising from the pit, he could at last see the universe as it was through his mystical third eye.
And? Was it going to turn out the way that maniacally prancing baking priest had suggested at the beginning of his epic tale? Were the ultimate enemies arrayed against him the Holy Trinity? The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost?
An idea came to him. Even though the Holy Trinity was arrayed against him, that still left the Virgin Mary, and where was the Virgin Mary? Was he the Virgin Mary in disguise? It was true, after all, that in some parts of Greece there was the belief that when Christ was born again He would be born of a man, which was why the men there all wore trousers with a large sack in the seat, to catch the Savior when He appeared.
Extraordinary. A fascinating new possibility with limitless ramifications, not only for him but for the world.
As he turned over the medallion in his hand the black volcanic eye in his forehead stared blindly at the roaring fire in the pit, oblivious to the smoke and the flames and the fumes in the cave.
A move to Greece at once? The sun and the sea, lucidity and the Savior?
Nubar grinned and the grin froze.
The astounding event that was the talk of Venice that winter occurred precisely at twelve o'clock noon on December 22. Some claimed it had to do with the fact that the previous night had been the longest night of the year. Others, calling this mere superstition, argued that darkness and night had played no part, rather high noon and broad daylight had.
In any case, whether one or the other, Nubar would never have been found without it, his strange fate never known.
The heavy fog that had hung over Venice for days began to clear toward the middle of that morning, December 22. Tourists eager to see the wonders of the city were quick to take advantage, and by eleven-thirty a modest but steady traffic of gondolas was plying the Grand Canal.
In one of the gondolas was a party of Argentines, of German descent and strongly in favor of Mussolini's Fascist policies, the only actual witnesses to the event
What made it seem so eerie, they said later, was that the stately palazzo had collapsed without a sound.
One moment they were admiring its beautiful lines as they passed through the water, an ornate and dignified structure on the Venetian skyline that was typical of what they had always imagined a palazzo on the Grand Canal would look like, and the next moment it was simply gone, no longer there, having silently disappeared before their very eyes in a puff of smoke.