AFTER LEAVING ANNA BASURKO IN GENEVA, Pat Kennedy headed back to London. During the flight he thought about Simmonds’ manuscript and its possible link to the fabulous Florentine Codex held in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. Had they been written by the same persons under Bernadino’s supervision or had another Franciscan friar been involved?
On arrival in London he headed directly for the Gould Tower where Liam Clancy was waiting for him. They had a number of serious questions linked to the situation in Hong Kong and the risks related to the newly voted laws which posed problems for the future relations between the UK, Hong Kong and China.
Pat’s concern had been accentuated by China's latest demonstration of force, following the suspension of the IPO planned by the billionaire Jack Ma’s for Ant Group, an online payment service, an extension of his business empire, when the Communist Party once again reminded all private entrepreneurs that no matter how rich and successful they were it could, at any time, pull the rug out from under their feet.
That evening something about Anna Basurko’s story told of the codex's author, Bernardino de Sahagun, continued to dog him, it was his longevity, she had remarked that he and the other Franciscan friars close to him, had lived long lives, a strange coincidence for that time when life was short and many Spaniards, recently arrived in New Spain, died young, from illness and disease.
He made a mental note to speak with Michel Morel and Henri Ducros at LifeGen, maybe there was something worth following up once Anna had completed the translation.
LifeGen, situated in the South of France, was headed by Michel Morel and Henri Ducros, the former a geneticist specialised in cell research, the latter a botanist whose domain was plant biology and pharmacology.
Founded by Pat Kennedy, LifeGen’s goal was not simply to slow aging, but to reverse the aging process. Its research into life extension was concentrated on various cellular mechanisms that regulated ageing, and how to control them.
Pat spoke with Michel Morel about Anna’s difficulty to identify plants in Simmonds’ manuscript, which he now referred to as the Wallace Codex. Morel explained that whilst they carried out research on plants they did not have an in-house botanical expert. However, in nearby Grasse, the world centre of perfumery, they worked closely with a botanist named Luis Gutierrez.
‘He’s an American by the way, Southern California, speaks Spanish and French,’ Morel told Pat. ‘Luis works closely with the perfume industry, you know a lot of their essences come from plants. He travels all over the world in search of new specimens.’
‘Great, he can help us?’
‘Yes Pat, I’ve also spoken with Anna, so I’ve taken the liberty to inform Luis you’ll be coming down. He’s suggested we meet for dinner, he lives in Juan-les-Pins that’s about fifteen minutes from her hotel in Cannes.’
‘That would be great.’
*
Gutierrez was a tallish man in his late sixties, he looked very noble, with his short beard and very fit, in fact every bit like what a Conquistador would have looked like, thought Pat. His family originally came from Seville in Andalusia in the 17th century, first to Mexico, then after the Mexican-American War, which saw the annexation by the United States of a vast territory that englobed what would become the future states of Texas, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Washington, and Oregon—the family moved to California.
Gutierrez grew up in Sacramento and studied botany and plant physiology at the Faculty of Biological & Biomedical Sciences at Humboldt State University in Arcata before specialising in desert flora and ecosystems.
He ran a successful business, Phytotech, in Grasse, not far from Nice, supplying the perfume industry with essences extracted from desert plants used by many major cosmetic firms in their products. His essences were imported into France from the US and Mexico, like those of many other suppliers and from a wide range of ecosystems.
The collection of plants at his botanical gardens and greenhouses near Palm Springs in California included thousands of specimens native to the deserts that covered a huge geographical region, which stretched from Nevada to the Gulf of Mexico, to New Mexico, Chihuahua and Durango, a vast hot dry biosphere covering more than 500,000 k/m2 of deserts.
*
They arrived at Chez Vincent a smart beachside restaurant where Luis was waiting for them. Michel did the presentations and they were shown to their table.
‘It’s a beautiful evening so I thought it would be nice to eat outside,’ said Luis, gallantly inviting Anna to a seat overlooking the sea.
They ordered drinks and after the small talk Anna described her project, vaguely explaining it was linked to an historical research programme, carefully avoiding the story behind the Wallace Codex.
‘As you know Anna, I’m a botanist, specialised, generally speaking in desert flora in a biosphere that includes a large part of Mexico. But Mexico is a big country, one of the most biological varied on the planet, from deserts to jungles, alpine to coastal biosystems, and something between 5,000–7,000 plant species.’
Anna was surprised, she hadn’t counted more than a couple of hundred or so illustrations in the codex. She opened her handbag and pulled out a couple of folded colour photocopies.
‘This is what I’m working on,’ she said smoothing them out on the tablecloth.
‘Ah, Solanum lycopersicum,’ said Antonio picking one up, ‘what we commonly know as the tomato plant, a species that originated in western South and Central America, in fact as you can see in this transliteration of the Nahuatl word tomatl into tomate in Spanish and tomato in English.
‘Nahua...?’ asked Pat.
‘Nahuatl, that’s the Aztec language, which was written in hieroglyphs,’ he said pointing to the second column.
‘Yes, I get you.’
‘Now there are dozens of plants related to the tomato, for example Atropa belladonna, commonly known as belladonna, or deadly nightshade, which has been used since antiquity as a poison,’ he said with a frown. ‘It was known in ancient Rome, where the Empress Livia Drusilla poisoned her husband, the Emperor Augustus with a concoction made from the juice of the berries.’
Luis picked one up another sheet. ‘Ah, Sahagun if I’m not mistaken.’
Anna nodded.
‘Let me see, Spanish and Nahuatl,’ he said examining the texts.
‘Yes, 16th century Spanish.’
‘And Nahuatl.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Yes, Nahuatl is still spoken today, in parts of the Federal District—that’s Mexico City, Durango and other states. I worked a long time in those regions when I was younger, collecting plants, and was fairly fluent in Nahuatl. What they call classical Nahuatl was spoken in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital,’ he added for Michel Morel's benefit. ‘There were and still are many dialects.’
‘So you can understand it.’
‘Some of it, that's the romanised version, developed by the Spanish Franciscans at that time. It’s changed a lot, but I get the gist of it.’
‘Fantastic. I’m having it translated by a couple of linguists so your knowledge of the plants would help.’
He smiled indicating his agreement.
‘Would it be difficult to identify the plants and their usage?’
‘In theory no, unless of course there are plants we don’t know.’
‘By the way, I don’t know if Michel has told you, but all this is very confidential.’
‘Don’t worry, in my business we’re used to trade secrets.’
‘We’re interested in certain plants, part of our research programme in gerontology, related to developing anti-ageing drugs, a promising market,’ explained Michel.
‘So do you think you can help us Luis?’ asked Anna.
‘No problem, Michel has told me Sir Patrick would like to us to treat this as priority, so I’ll get one of my research assistants on it tomorrow. Angela, she’s also Californian and speaks Spanish. Her family originally came from Spain, Galicia, La Coruña I believe.’
‘Ah, a Celt,’ Anna said with a smile.
They laughed.
‘How long will it take?’
‘A couple of weeks should do it.’
‘Great.’
‘Do you know very much about California?’
‘Yes, I’ve been there a few times, the last time was about a year ago with my friend Pat O'Connelly. Research work. Pat has a place in San Francisco, Telegraph Hill.'
‘Well let me know the next time you’re there and I’ll have you visit our botanical gardens in Palm Springs, we have a huge collection of desert plants and trees.’
That sounded like a good idea to Anna and she made a note to speak with ‘Dee’, as she called Pat O'Connelly.
‘Michel tells me you’re here for a few days, so we’ve set up a meeting with Angela tomorrow morning, if that suits you.’
‘Perfecto.’
‘Can you leave me these photocopies.’
‘No problem.’
*
The next morning Michel drove her to Grasse, where Luis was waiting with Angela.
His laboratory was a research and production centre where essential oils were extracted from plants for blending and trials. In addition work was carried out for the identification of new molecules that could have cosmetic or medical applications.
After introductions they set off for a tour of the facilities whilst Luis gave a running commentary on their work.
‘We carry out phytochemical studies on the kinds of medicinal and aromatic desert plants known and as yet unused. Generally speaking, to start with we use simple extraction methods, maceration and hydrodistillation, using solvents like hexane, methanol, dichloromethane, acetone, petroleum ether, ethanol, and water.
‘We also use new methods such as supercritical CO2 whenever we discover new molecules in small quantities,’ he said pointing to a mass of stainless steel tubes and pumps behind a glass screen.
‘Once plants are identified as being of interest we have them collected by local peoples or buy them in markets such as the Mercado de Sonora in the centre of Mexico City, very famous with a long tradition for herbal medicines. They not only sell dry and fresh plants, but also animal parts like dried rattle snake, skunk and starfish.’
They listened attentively discovering a fascinating new world of plant chemistry of which they knew almost nothing.
‘Today the pharmaceutical industry, is very interested in the traditional medicinal plants of indigenous peoples almost everywhere for the active ingredients that can be used in modern medicines.’
They arrived back in the reception area and Luis pointing the way to the office area invited them into a conference room.
‘Here we can discuss the work with Angela,’ he said inviting them to be seated around a large table.
‘Let’s start with your photocopies Anna. As you told me you are translating a work which is represented here by these images,’ Luis said examining the copies Anna had given them. ‘If the rest is of the same style then I would describe it as a botanical encyclopedia, the equivalent of an herbarium, that is to say collections of preserved plants and their scientific descriptions.’
They listened attentively.
‘It’s a very old human science you know, one that goes back to Theophrastus’s Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum, which dates from 350BC and describes 500 species of plants and their use.
‘As a matter of fact the largest herbarium in the world is here in France, at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, in Paris.
‘The people who made this herbarium,’ he said referring to the copies, ‘probably collected and preserved plant samples which they used for the illustrations and descriptions.
‘We have our own data base of desert plants, a complete description of all known plants in our biosphere, which by the way we update constantly as new plants are discovered.’
Pat seemed surprised.
‘Yes, we discover new plants all the time.’
‘We can check most plants from an image in a few seconds, of course it takes an expert to differentiate between lookalikes,’ he said smiling at Angela.
‘The biggest database in the world is The Plant List,’ Luis told them. ‘It covers over one million species, and amongst other things it sorts out a century-old taxonomic jumble where non-standard names were a constant source of confusion, often provoking rivalry and disputes in specialised and non-specialised botanical circles.’
‘Where is this?’ asked Pat.
‘Well, it’s the work of two organisations, the British Royal Botanic Gardens and the Missouri Botanical Garden.’
‘So every plant is described in this database,’ Pat enquired.
‘No … in spite of this extraordinary work, there is still a large number of trees and plants that are non identified and not described.
‘In total, there are as I speak, 1,064,035 scientific plant names, of which 350,699 are species names, made up of 642 plant families and 17,020 plant genera.’
Pat whistled. ‘I see that leaves lots of room for confusion.’
‘Unfortunately yes,’ Luis said with a reluctant smile. ‘But the positive thing is we still have much to discover, new molecules, new cures, and many other things. Nature is very bountiful.’
They all nodded in agreement.
‘Perhaps we can make a demonstration with the plants shown on these two papers,’ he said picking the photocopies and looking questioningly at Angela.
*
Pat Kennedy was not only concerned about his own health, he seriously believed the world was heading for disaster, collapse, which was perhaps not imminent, but near, very near, all the signs were there—climate change, runaway demographics, pollution, disease, political confrontation on both national and international fronts with wars and strife.
The pandemic confirmed his vision as politicians seized the power of state to enforce their half-baked ideas. To gag voices so soon after they had been freed by internet. The flames of fear were stoked by leaders in search of authoritarian power, promising protection from the virus and conspirationists. It reminded his friend John Francis, an eminent economist, of Lenin who had once said politics is about who will overtake whom. John was no communist, far from it, but he didn't buy the kind of simplistic ideas preached by economists like Yanis Varoufakis, who like so many others sought to impose his own radical version of the truth.
The facts were there, humanity was an uncontrollable monster, a species unwilling to share its gains, a wild beast without a soul, ready to devour its fellow creatures, without the least sign of mercy. Humanity reminded him of the shrill hard eyed hawks pouncing on their unsuspecting prey, the kind he had watched as a boy on the wind swept hills of Connemara, tearing them apart with their hooked beaks without a tear in their heartless eyes.