The Last Cato (54 page)

“They aren’t still inside there, are they?” I asked apprehensively.

“No,
Basileia.
Almost all the niches were stripped of their contents before 1900. As you know, in Europe, mummy dust was considered an excellent medicine for all types of illnesses, until well into the fourteenth century. Worth its weight in gold.”

“Then you can’t be sure there wasn’t another entrance in addition to the main one,” the Rock commented.

“It has never been found,” Farag replied, annoyed.

“A fortuitous cave-in,” the Rock persisted, “revealed the Caracalla Hall. Why couldn’t there have been another undiscovered chamber?”

“Here’s something!” I said, looking at a nook in the wall. I’d found our famous bearded serpent.

“Good, now all we need is Hermes’s
kerykeion,
”
*
Farag said, coming over.

“The caduceus, right?” the captain asked. “It reminds me more of doctors and pharmacies than messengers.”

“Because Asclepio, the Greek god of medicine, carried a similar staff but his had only one serpent. In a mix-up, doctors adopted the symbol of Hermes.”

“We’re going to have to go down to the third level,” I said, heading for the spiral staircase, “I’m afraid we’re not going to find anything else here.”

“The third level is closed,
Basileia.
The galleries are flooded. When I worked here it was already very difficult to study that last floor.”

“So what we are waiting for?” the Rock declared, following me.

The stairs going down to the deepest part of the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa were, indeed, closed off by a small chain with a metal sign saying
no entry
in Arabic and English. The captain, brave explorer that he was, never let convention stop him. He ripped the chain out of the wall and started down the stairway with Farag Boswell’s grumbling as background music. Above our heads, an advance team of Japanese tourists was excited about reaching the second level.

Right then, poised on the last step of the staircase, I noticed I’d stepped in a pool of lukewarm liquid.

“He who warns is not a traitor,” Farag joked.

The vestibule on that floor was a lot bigger than both of the upper vestibules and the water came up to our waists. I was starting to think maybe Farag was right.

“Do you gentlemen know what this reminds me of?” I asked in a joking tone.

“Surely it’s the same thing I’m thinking,” Farag shot back. “It’s as if we’re back in the cistern in Constantinople, right?”

“Actually that wasn’t it,” I answered. “I was thinking we never read the text of Dante’s sixth circle.”

“You two may not have read it,” Glauser-Röist rushed to answer contemptuously, “but I certainly did.”

Casanova and I gave each other a guilty look.

“So, tell us about it, Kaspar, so we know what’s going on.”

“The test in the sixth circle is much simpler than the previous ones,” the Rock began, as we entered the galleries. There was an intense stench of decomposition, and the water was as cloudy as the cistern in Constantinople. Fortunately, this time, its off-white color was due to the limestone, not the sweat of hundreds of fervent feet. “Dante utilizes the cone shape of Purgatory Mountain to reduce the size of the cornices and the magnitude of the punishments.”

“May God be listening to you!” I exclaimed, hopeful.

The reliefs on this level were as strange as those on the first and second levels. The Alexandrians of the Golden Age did not have religious problems or limiting beliefs. They left their remains in catacombs under Osiris’s watchful eye, yet decorated with reliefs of Dionysus. That well-developed eclecticism was the basis of Alexandria’s prosperous society. Sadly, all that ended when primitive Christianity, which violently rejected other religions, became the official religion of the Byzantine Empire.

“The sixth circle includes Cantos XXII, XXIII, and XXIV,” the Rock continued. “The souls of the gluttonous go around the cornice incessantly. On opposite ends of this cornice are two apple trees whose treetops are in the shape of an upside down cone.”

“That closely resembles the Egyptian papyrus plant,” Farag pointed out.

“Certainly, Professor. You could take that as a veiled reference to Alexandria. In any case, from those treetops hang abundant, mouthwatering fruits the penitents can’t reach. Plus, an exquisite liquor drips from them and they can’t drink it either. So they go around and around the cornice, their eyes sunken and their faces pale due to their hunger and thirst.”

“Dante must run into tons of old friends and acquaintances, as usual, right?” I asked. At the same time I thought I spotted the figure of the caduceus on the back wall of a chamber. “Let’s go that way. I think I saw something.”

“But how does he complete the test?” Farag insisted.

“An angel in red, flickering like fire,” the Rock concluded, “shows them the way up to the seventh and last cornice, and then erases the mark of gluttony from Dante’s forehead.”

“That’s it?” I asked, fighting against the water to advance more quickly to the wall where I clearly saw a large caduceus of Hermes.

“That’s it. Things are getting simpler and simpler, Doctor.”

“I’d give anything, Captain, for that to be true.”

“So would I.”

“The
kerykeion!”
Farag blurted out, putting his hands on the image the way a devout Jew puts his hand on the Wailing Wall. “I swear this wasn’t here two years ago.”

“Come, come, Professor…,” the Rock rebuked him. “Don’t be so proud. Admit you might have forgotten it.”

“No, Kaspar, no! There are too many chambers to remember them all, it’s true, but a symbol like that would have caught my attention.”

“They must have put it there for us,” I said ironically.

“Doesn’t it seem odd that we found the reproductions of the Medusa, the serpent, and thyrsus on the second floor and the one of the caduceus on the third floor, far from the rest?”

The Rock and I thought that over.

“Just a moment! What did I tell you?” said Farag, showing us the palms of his hands. They were covered in mud.

“The wall is crumbling,” the Rock added perplexedly, poking his hand in and drawing out a handful of doughy mortar.

“It’s a false partition! I knew it!” Farag said. He started to tear it down with such fury that he was soon covered in mud up to his eyebrows, like a little boy. By the time he was out of breath and sweaty, he had opened a big hole in the wall. I wiped my wet hand over his face several times to clean him off a little. He looked so happy.

“We’re so smart,
Basileia!”
he repeated, wiping plaster off his chin.

“Come see this,” the Rock’s voice said from the other side of the partition.

Glauser-Röist’s powerful flashlight lit up a spectacular sight. Below where we were standing was an enormous hypostyle room with numerous Byzantine columns forming long, vaulted tunnels. It was half submerged in a calm, black lake that gleamed in the captain’s beam like a moonlit ocean.

“Don’t just stand there,” the Rock said. “Get in this oil deposit with me.”

Luckily, it was just water collected in a dark tank. The off-white spot of water seeping smoothly from the catacombs stood out against the water in the tank. We squeezed around what was left of the mortar wall and climbed down four big steps.

“There is a door at the back of the room,” the captain said. “Let’s go over there.”

With the water up to our necks, we advanced silently down one of those corridors. You could have sailed a fishing boat down it without any problem. Clearly we’d come to the city’s old cistern. The Alexandrians stored drinkable water so they could survive the annual drought when the water level in the Nile dropped all the way to the delta, dragging along red soil from the south, the famous plague of blood that Yahweh sent to free the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.

When we walked over to the sturdy, ashlar stone wall where the door was, we came across the first of four other steps that, when we climbed them, took us out of the water. We weren’t surprised to find Constantine’s chrismon etched in the wooden door; it would have actually surprised us
not
to find it. With complete confidence, the captain grasped the iron handle and pushed. We froze. We found ourselves before a funeral banquet room identical to many on the first floor of Kom el-Shoqafa.

“What in the world is this?” Glauser-Röist roared when he saw the stone benches covered by soft damask cushions and a table in the center filled with exquisite food.

Farag and I went to one side and entered. Several torches lit up the chamber. The walls and floors were covered by precious tapestries and carpets. Although you couldn’t see another door anywhere, somebody had left very quickly, since the food was steaming on the plates, having just been served up. The alabaster glasses overflowed with wine, water, and
karkade.

“I don’t like this!” the Rock kept bellowing, very upset.

When I heard him, fear took hold of me. Suddenly, without knowing why, I detected something sinister in that chamber so delicately laid out, filled with aromas from the exquisite meat, greens, and vegetable dishes.

“Dear God!” babbled Farag behind me. “No!”

I turned as fast as lightning, alarmed by the anguished tone in his voice. He had bared his chest and was holding on to each side of his shirt. His torso was covered with some strange black, wriggling lines, thick and long like fingers.

“My God,” I screamed. “Leeches!”

In a frenzy, Glauser-Röist set the flashlight on the table and grabbed at the buttons on his shirt. His chest, like Farag’s, was covered by fifteen or twenty disgusting worms, which, due to the warm blood they were ingesting, seemed to grow fatter before our eyes.

“Ottavia! Take off your clothes!”

I could have made a joke, but it wasn’t the time for it. I unbuttoned my blouse with trembling hands, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while Farag and the captain took off their pants. They both had pretty hairy legs, but that didn’t seem to bother the leeches; they’d stuck to their skin in untold numbers. My body was also covered with those repugnant creatures. Gagging in disgust with my stomach churning, I grabbed at one of the nine or ten on my belly—it was soft and warm like gelatin and wrinkly to the touch—and tugged at it.

“Don’t do that, Doctor!” Glauser-Röist shouted. I didn’t feel any pain, but no matter how much I stretched it, I couldn’t get it loose. Its round mouth was cupped to my skin and was simply not letting go.

“You can only remove them with fire.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, tears of disgust and desperation streaming down my cheeks. “We’re going to burn ourselves!”

The Rock had already climbed on to one of the benches, stretching up as high as he could and grabbing a torch. I saw him come toward me in a decisive gesture with a fanatical look in his eyes that made me shrink back in fear. I experienced an indescribable urge to retch as I backed against the wall and felt the sticky, elastic mass of worms plastered to my back. I couldn’t control myself and vomited. Before I had time to recover, Glauser-Röist brought the flame next to my body and the animals started to fall like ripe fruit. I, too, was burned and the pain was so intense I couldn’t hold back, my screams of pain changing to alarm when the Rock applied the torch a second time.

Meanwhile, the leeches on Farag’s and the captain’s bodies grew more engorged. They grew round and puffed at the head. I don’t know how much blood those creatures could swallow, considering the number stuck to us, but we must have lost liters and liters.

“Put the torch down, Captain!” shouted Farag suddenly, appearing from behind the Rock with an alabaster cup in his hand. “I’m going to try something!”

He dipped his fingers into the cup holding a liquid that smelled like vinegar. He smeared one of the leeches on my thigh with the liquid. The leech writhed like a demon under the blessed water and fell right off my skin.

“On the table there’s wine, vinegar, and salt! Mix them together and brush it on like I did to Ottavia!”

Repeating the process, Farag moistened the creatures; they dropped off me and fell lifeless to the ground. I thanked God for that solution because the parts of my body where the Rock had applied the torch hurt so much it was like someone had stuck knives into me. But if the burns hurt, why didn’t the leeches’ bites hurt? I couldn’t feel a thing and hardly noticed that they were still sucking my blood. The only thing that got to me was the sight of our bodies covered in those disgusting black creatures.

Instead of applying the mixture to himself, Glauser-Röist walked over to Farag and detached the worms on his back, one by one. Some worms were now as fat as rats. But there were too many. The ground was covered with them. The worms moved heavily due to the enormous amount of blood they had sucked out of us; however, it didn’t seem that their numbers had decreased. When one of them detached from our skins, it left a star-shaped mark (similar to the Mercedes-Benz logo) from which blood continued to flow abundantly. That is, on top of sucking blood, they also had bit us with three sharp sets of teeth.

“The torch would be better, Professor,” the Rock observed. “I believe a leech’s bite bleeds for a long time. The fire will stop that. And don’t forget the sixth circle of Dante: The angel who pointed out the exit was red and fiery.”