Forget Me Not Read online

FORGET ME NOT

  A Novel by Erica Pensini

  Contact: [email protected]

  I tell you these things are real…beyond is anything. – Ern Malley

  I’m with you in Rockland

  where you’re madder than I am

  I’m with you in Rockland

  where you must feel very strange…

  -Allen Ginsberg-

  we must bring

  our own light

  to the

  darkness.

  nobody is going

  to do it

  for us.

  -Charles Bukowski-

  There are no intact men – Pete Dexter

  The trial: May 15, 1966

  The defender

  Your honor, Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the facts and you have heard the testimony of Iris Luna Celati.

  Iris Luna Celati does not perceive the world the way you and I do. She suffers from an acute mental illness which alters her spatial and temporal perceptions. Iris Luna Celati believes she belongs to another century and another continent!

  If you ask Iris Luna Celati who she is, she will depict herself as a character who you might have read about in a fairy tale as a kid, or perhaps in a novel. Iris Luna Celati is unaware of her own identity! I have already interrogated Iris Luna Celati to prove this aspect, but you are more than welcome to repeat this exercise to convince yourself.

  If you asked Iris Luna Celati who you are, she will portray you with vivid fantasy, and you will gasp with bewildered surprise at your own portrait. Will you recognize yourself in that portrait? I challenge you to! Iris Luna Celati’s vision of those who surround her is as distorted as the vision of herself.

  Of all the witnesses you have listened to, Iris Luna Celati is the one who without any doubt damaged her own reputation the most. I already highlighted the doubts, the shades and omissions, undeniably weakening the reliability of all testimonies but one. The testimony of Iris Luna Celati.

  Iris Luna Celati’s testimony is an unconfutable proof of her guilt.

  But is it? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your honour, is it?

  If the answer to this question is yes, then you must accept to view yourself as a lady or a gentleman from the 18th century, because this is who you are to Iris Luna Celati! Remember her testimony, all of it!

  When I asked Iris Luna Celati, “Who do you see in this court?”, what was her answer? “I see the same people Iryssa saw on May 15, 1866”

  I see the same people Iryssa saw in 1866!

  When I asked Iris Luna Celati the cause of her actions she told me that a man named Cesar Mercury is.

  Is this true? Nobody knows because Cesar Mercury is nowhere to be found!

  Ladies and gentleman of the jury, your honour, the only guilt Iris Celati can be accused of is mental weakness. And for this guilt she should not be punished, but rather receive compassionate help in an appropriate institution. I confide in the law and in your well-pondered judgment.

  The Judge

  Does the defendant have anything to add?

  Iris Luna Celati

  I am sinful, not crazy, and you must punish me for my sins.

  Chapter 1: Iris Luna

  I live in the attic of an old building built at the end of the last century, abandoned for a while and finally renovated to acquire its current appearance. The location is quite central, but my street is strangely quiet for this city.

  My attic barely fits my bed, a tiny desk, a table to eat and a doll-sized bathroom, but this is really all I need. I also have a small balcony, from which I sometimes listen to the whispers of the city at night, after spending the day in the lab.

  My laboratory is also in an old building, hidden in the meanders of the basement, where I spend my days unaware of the weather, the time and the flow of life outside my small world. The meager stipend I receive is barely enough to cover my monthly expenses, and yet I wouldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. The thrill of the discoveries I make in my reign of neatly aligned chemical bottles, beakers, syringes is worth more than any pot full of gold. Yes, there are also the frustrating times when day after day that result you long to see eludes you, and your failures haunt your sleepless nights. But then the lucky day will come, and the idyll of that much desired result will outshine the struggle. Oh, how beautiful it all seems then!

  If you look close enough, what may appear ugly to the untrained eye will begin to appear fascinating, perhaps addictive. My addiction is mercury cyanide. To you mercury cyanide might be nothing but a potent poison, one that leads to death when touched or inhaled. But do you know anything about the dark beauty of mercury cyanide when, exposed to fire, it dies and revives in new forms? Pharaoh’s snake is the name of the twisted, mysteriously repulsive and yet hypnotizing being that mercury cyanide turns itself into when it is ignited. And do you know about the playful concert of sizzling bubbles mercury cyanide produces when it reacts with aluminum in liquid ammonia?

  To me mercury cyanide was nothing but the malevolent encounter between one atom of mercury and two atoms of carbon and nitrogen. But my perception of mercury cyanide gained complexity, of course, the day I was assigned the task of discovering how it triggers the formation of glycosides, Janus creatures resulting from the ambiguous embrace between sugar and another type of molecule which is often not as sweet.

  Today has been one of those days that leave me exhausted, and yet flaming with adrenaline. I am not there yet, that result I have been chasing for one year still eludes me, and yet I feel I am close, so close, to finding the key that will open the doors to the mystery room. Fragments of what I can experiment tomorrow race through my mind, but I am much too tired now to make a coherent plan.

  And so I try to pause. I dine with a light soup in the dim light of my small room, a cozy shell surrounded by the humid dusk of this winter night, while I wait for a new dawn.

  Chapter 2: Cesare Mercurio

  Last week I feared I might not receive the mineral salt I had asked for, my precious cinnabar from Monte Amiata. My lustrous cinnabar, red with passion. There has been some turmoil in the cinnabar mines of Monte Amiata, the workers complain about suffering from what they call mercurialism. They are nauseous, weak, shaky and if they neglect the warning signs mercury give them, they die. And so those of them who are still half healthy have raised their voice, they refuse to work. The ignorant! In small doses mercury purifies the body from sores and contagious diseases. But mercury will kill the man who treats it like a vulgar element, because it is virile and violent.

  I have a sacred respect for mercury, my beloved enemy. I seek its soul, its hidden properties, its innate purity. Yes, its purity! I have been testing ways to eliminate every molecule of impurity from mercury, days and night, and today I have finally succeeded!

  Most chemists and even alchemists – the charlatans! – know how to extract mercury from cinnabar, in which sulfur, the negative pole, and mercury, the positive atom, are bound to each other as complimentary souls, as good and evil in this world. When cinnabar is crushed, then heated to temperatures as hot as the earth’s devilish intestines, sulfur dioxide evaporates as a cloud of evanescent pink, which mutes itself into a foam of whiteness as soon as it meets oxygen. Such innocent colours shall not confound you! The vapour mist is toxically malodorous, and the clever chemist will ensure that it is collected in tightly enclosed tubes, and diverted away from the laboratory. When the rotten fumes evaporate, mercury remains in the ampoule, drawn to it by its heavy solidity.

  But purity cannot be achieved by most chemists, let alone by alchemists. In truth, no chemist, not even the most skilled one, was able to isolate mercury, distilling every atom of impurity out it. No chemist but one, and that was I! I have created a complex l
abyrinth of tubes, in which mercury is redistilled in multiple purification cycles till nothing but glossy drops of its noble atoms are collected in the last ampoule.

  Whiffs of wind are pushing against the windows of my room, their chilled voice echoing in the house where I live alone. The flame of the candle flicker, its dim halo illuminating my words as I write, and the moon, full and mysteriously sensuous, is looking upon me with the smile of an enigmatic lover. How beautiful is nature!

  My eyes are burning and my energies are fading, spent as the candle melting away at my side. I shall rest awhile now, and shall my night be populated with the inspiring and oracular dreams of the wondrous reactions that will spark in my laboratory tomorrow, now that I am the only man in this world to own pure mercury!

  Chapter 3: Iris Luna

  They say that night brings council, and although I don’t much believe in common proverbs I found the most ingenious ideas during the fruitful lullaby of dreams and the starry blanket of the night. When I woke up this morning after a quick breakfast I walked briskly to the lab. I had seen the reaction during my sleep, it was all in my head, but I needed to replicate it in the daylight to celebrate the discovery.

  My apparatus was waiting for me. I have built it myself, it is simple enough in principle, although it appears as a labyrinthic forest of tubes. The tubes convey each chemical in my ampoule at the right moment, one drop at a time, till I obtain that one special blend that can give birth to the glycoside I want. With my apparatus I have first recreated good-tempered glycosides, the curative glycosides of the saponine family, with a frothy appearance and an evanescent fragrance of fruit, and the cheerfully yellow flavonoids. Then I began experimenting on the evil cyanogenic glycosides, the creation of which is triggered by the colorless, odorless and deadly mercury cyanide. I thought my first cyanogenic glycoside should be the oldest glycoside known, Prunus amygdalus (Amygdalin), the poisonous compound found in bitter almonds and apricot kernels. Then I synthesized many others, from Lotaustralin to Taxiphyllin. I have been able to emulate nature!

  But today I have gone a step further, and I have produced my own creature, the cyanogenic glycoside that may one day carry the name of its mother: Irissa Celata, the chimera made real!

  I had seen it all: the voluptuous red, and the intense green and finally the whimsical disappearance of all colours, the birth of my infant, Irissa Celata. I have wanted it for months, and now…

  I knew I’ve made it, but before celebrating I needed the last proof. In a corner of our lab we have a spectrometer, a bulky machine with a tiny mouth into which the samples are fed. I was starting my final experiment with barely steady hands and excited expectation when Otto Hermes walked in the laboratory.

  “Hello Iris”, I heard behind my back, and I hardly managed not to spill my precious solution, startled as I was by the unanticipated interruption

  “Oh hello Otto, I didn’t expect to see you”, I replied

  “Well, sometimes it feels good to be back in my own lab”, Otto Hermes laughed

  Otto Hermes is my colleague. He moved here from Germany some months ago and is working on some topic I am not too sure about. Otto often roams in different labs to conduct analyses with a number of instruments, and even when he is working right next to me he keeps to himself for the most part. He is a pleasant enough fellow though, and I really don’t have any complaints about him.

  “Well, welcome back”, I said smiling

  I hoped Otto would leave, since I was tingling with the urge to see the signature of my Irissa Celata in the spectrum I was about to acquire. But he didn’t.

  “What are you looking at?”, he asked instead

  “I am pretty sure I have been able to generate a new molecule, and I am just about to prove that I am right”, I said, trying to contain my enthusiasm.

  “Oh really? This seems exciting”, he replied, out of conventional kindness I believe, since his voice had suddenly turned flat and his expression absent

  How can he not find this exciting!, I wondered.

  “Is something worrying you?”, I inquired, thinking he might have an unsolved problem on his mind

  “Ah no, I will have to run few more tests this afternoon. Lots of work to do, that’s all”, he replied as evasively as usual

  “Well, good luck”, I said, resuming my work without waiting for his reply

  I don’t think he was seeking sympathy anyways, and I heard him leave and close the door few seconds later.

  So finally I could work without interruptions! I placed the sample in the spectrometer and watched the spectrum form on the screen, one peak after the other. Wonderful! Magnificent! There, I knew it! Irissa Celata, my poisonous and yet beautiful glycoside, is undeniably born.

  And yet my work has barely begun, tomorrow I will have to sail out for the next part of my journey. I will start analyzing the personality of the molecule, its reactivity, its endurance to heat, its transition from one form to the other. I trust that my molecule will reveal itself as a fascinating and treacherous femme fatale, with a flickering and yet dominating nature, violently flamboyant. Yes, tomorrow I will investigate who is the creature I have generated, but today I shall let the feverish state I am in subside awhile.

  I had in mind to go straight back to my attic, but when I crossed the Elizabeth Cross library on my way back I felt compelled to walk in. The Elizabeth Cross library is a treasure well with books of all kinds and all times, from recent to ancient. The rare book collection is located in an octagonal room, with a dim central lighting system and green lamps aligned along the thick wooden oak tables. The visitors are invariably few, usually studious men and women with thick glasses and intensely abstracted expressions. This is the room I love the most, because of its soothingly muffled atmosphere, its mysterious smell, and of course the beautiful books. I walked along the shelves, reading the titles and admiring the fine covers, some well-kept, others tattered and perhaps all the more fascinating because of that. There are times when I simply look at the covers of the books and walk away, but today I was attracted to a manuscript. It was the rich red colour of the cover that caught my eye, but it was the title that won me: “The mercurial soul: an unusual odyssey of mysteries”.

  Rare books cannot be taken from the library, so let me take some notes while I sit here and tell you what the book says before I forget.

  Do you know the origin of mercury’s name?

  Hydrargyros is the element with a multiform nature, resembling water (hydra) because of its versatile liquid body, and silver (argyros) because of its moon-like argentate reflection. Due to its water-like side, hydragyros (Hg) glides rapidly, and is thus sometimes called quicksilver, sometimes mercury, being akin to the swift messenger of the pagan deities, Mercury-Hermes, the ineffable god with winged feet, son of Zeus and of the nymph Maya celebrated during the Ides on May 15, and to the planet mercury, which moves around its orbit with unparalleled celerity.

  The next page is blurred, before residing in the protective atmosphere of the library this book must have seen tempestuous moments. And yet I can still make out the words…

  To the ancient people mercury was an element with healing properties, but also a deadly one for the miners working in the Italian mines of Monte Amiata to extract cinnabar, the red salt of sulfur and mercury, from which mercury was distilled. Sophic Salt, sophic sulfur and sophic mercury: the savvy German Paracelsus thus described the principles of the Prima Triade, the first triad, the origin of all things. In the first triad Sulfur is soul, Mercury is sprit and salt is Material Body.

  And thus are the symbols of cinnabar

  mercury

  And sulfur

  Long ago I recall reading somewhere that the Prima Triade is the symbol of the union between man and woman, the ancestral dream of unity between the two poles of the world. When I think that cinnabar is the salt that contains sulfur and mercury, I am led to envision it as the unity of female and male, the two poles…but let’s read more.

  Giovanni
Battista Nazari, an eminent Italian alchemist, envisioned the Prima Triade as a dream (so there!), a fantastic creature carrying in itself the three seeds.

  The reader must be aware of the subtle meaning of the elements of the Prima Triade! Sophic sulfur is the male element, obtained from the purification of ordinary gold, and sophic mercury is the female element associated with Luna, the argentate moon, and is purified from silver. Quicksilver, or ordinary mercury, is the element that generates the sophic salt, the third principle, the material body.

  When the expert alchemists blends the three principles in the exact proportions, he will obtain the Philosoper’s Stone, the elixir of life, the treasure that will give immortality to the fortunate man who owns it!

  I don’t fully grasp the details of this explanation, do you? And yet there is something that touches me in these pages. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of the library, or the ancient feel of these words, their jagged edges on the yellowed background. I have grown intrigued and disquiet at once. I must leave this place immediately, don’t ask me why, I cannot explain my state of mind.

  Chapter 4: Cesare Mercurio

  This morning I was walking to the laboratory, sizzling with ideas after a night populated by imaginific dreams, which were an exalted exaggeration of reality but which nonetheless seeded my mind with creative chemical inspiration. Adsorbed as I was in the wondrous mist of my own thoughts I did not pay much attention to the passer-byes in the streets, still dusky with the unfading night. And yet, amid the early morning crowd, one woman could not pass unnoticed with her flaming hair, bold and yet languid, falling on her back in silky curls, her fine traits and supple figure, her feminine shyness. Ah, what a splendid creature! The women gene as a whole is inferior to the virile seed, and yet as a man of science I acknowledge that each golden rule has at least one exception, the wondrous anomaly, the singularity point. I do not possess direct knowledge of the intellectual stamina of this mysterious woman with hair the enchanting colour of cinnabar, and yet the poised allure of the woman indicates that she is indeed gifted with an intelligence superior to the average of her gender.

  I shall not however divert my mind from the science, which is the true language of the universe’s divine soul. Today what I have found is marvellous, and it brought me unexpected joy! I knew that the distillation of mercury to its purest state would have led to unparalleled advances in my quest, but never would I have imagined seeing the spectacle that presented itself before my eyes! Today I blend different ratios of mercury and hydrogen cyanide – the somber Prussian blue coloured gentleman, subtle and treacherous. I did so out of curiosity for a strange phenomenon I observed when I accidentally dropped a bottle of hydrogen cyanide and part of the fluid spilled in the mercury I had so carefully distilled! I felt my senses weaken as the hydrogen cyanide bottle broke, and I barely succeeded in departing from the lab, swaying like a teetering drunkard! I let the fumes evacuate, and I sat in the fresh air grateful for each breath of life I received. Ah science, how much I am willing to risk for the love of you! Upon my return in the lab I found that my mercury had transformed itself into a white powder upon contact with the droplets of hydrogen cyanide. I smelled the powder but I could not detect any distinctive odour. The taste of the powder was bitterly metallic, as I detected by placing a minuscule amount of it on the tip of my tongue. To reveal the nature of a chemical compound, one must subject the compound to the four fundamental proves: the proof of water, alias its dissolution in aqueous media; the proof of air, alias its fugacity and propension to volatilize; the proof of earth, alias its attraction to earth and its heaviness; and the proof of fire, alias its resistance to the flames and its transformations upon contact with them. I began with the proof I am fondest of, the purest one: the proof of fire.