Chapter 9 – Iris Luna
After the turmoil of the last days this morning I woke up eager to return to the lab and allow a good dose of work to wash away my anxiousness and put some rational order in my frenzied mind. I walked briskly while elaborating a plan for the day, and when I reached the lab I set myself up for the next experiments with methodic enthusiasm and mirthful curiosity.
I had been unable to decipher the nature of the gas produced by the hydrolysis of Iryssa Celata by analyzing it as it was, but what if I oxidized it and studied the products of the reaction? Perhaps that was the key to the enigma! I placed a flask on a hot plate and heated the water while adding ammonium persulfate, a potent oxidizer.
During the first instants nothing happened, but then what I saw was pure wonder! Flower –shaped crystals formed on the walls of the flask, and their colour was not uniform. Rather, it changed from deep carmine at the bottom to bluish tints towards the top. It was almost lunch time, but the excitement had chased the hunger away and I proceeded to analyze the crystals without delay. The effort was worth it! There are still many pieces missing from the puzzle, but at least now I have enough clues to make guesses on the nature of the gas.
But there is more than this to my day…let me tell you about a strange coincidence. But was it a coincidence? I’ll tell you the story and you can decide for yourself.
On my way back home I crossed the library, and knowing I could not resist stepping in I surrendered to my wishes without opposing much struggle. Just surrender, I told myself, wondering a moment later at the reasons for which I had formulated my thought so.
I silently slipped in my usual spot down in the rare book section, and when my book opened on the page where I had left it I was not surprised. This book talks to me, I tell you, strange as it may seem…
We shall not omit the wondrous discoveries of a woman, the identity of whom we will conceal at this point of our account.
This woman extracted the rarest compounds of medicinal plants and, with the intent of improving their curative properties, combined them with mercury compounds. The minutest amounts of the compounds have beneficial properties, and yet they are destructive and deadly if not used with the greatest caution! Because of such properties we will not reveal the nature of the compounds, their methods of preparation, or the name of their discoverer.
We shall however not leave unspoken some hints, which can be deciphered only by the most brilliant minds. We confide in those minds to put the compounds to the best use, and faithfully hope that our trust will not be betrayed.
In her notes the woman describes the formation of a rainbow of crystals, with a multi-coloured flair ranging from tones of blue to deep red, that manifest chromatically the fingerprint of the chemicals from which the crystals had originated.
Now, oh reader, no more words shall be pronounced or written on this lethal subject!
That woman was I, I whispered in my mind. What had I known about the rainbow of crystals when I lived? Oh no! I am screaming oh no! in my unstable mind now and I screamed oh no! did in the library, as I sat silently meandering amid implausible conjectures.
I was grasping my red curls with both hands, my head bent, to hush the nonsense but when I raised my eyes I saw him…and it was real. I saw the man who had looked at me through the jeweler’s window. The charcoal eyes, the glossy slick locks of hair falling sensually along the cheeks, the curved mustache and…
…the ring. I noticed it for the first time, with the red rock held captive by flaming tongues of gold. The red rock, I could swear it was cinnabar. I looked at my necklace, at the beautiful pendant, clear as water, holding the small speck of the red mineral within itself. How had I not realized it? It was cinnabar I had been wearing! I let the pendant slip along my neck and shivered.
The charcoal eyes were transfixed on me now, and the fine mouth was bent in the slightest smile. I began leafing through the book feverishly, raising my gaze now and then to make sure he was still there. And finally I found it! The portrait of Cesare Mercurio lay in front of me. I raised my eyes one more time, but at that very instant the man stood up from the table where he had been sitting and walked away.
I gathered my coat hastily and ran up the stairs, swallowing them away two steps at a time.
“Wait!”, I called out, but Cesare Mercurio did not stop and disappeared in the dark streets, in the meanders of his mysterious existence.
I am writing these words in the street, leaning my back against the library columns. I am afraid of my attic tonight, I am afraid of my lonely presence in it and of the voices I hear, the truthfulness of which I shall especially doubt.