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.