Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Nubar was aware of this. He knew perfectly well that his network had given rise to a whole new industry in the Balkans in the 1920s, the marketing of fake Paracelsus treatises and tracts by unscrupulous entrepreneurs who pretended they were selling him translations of original works that had been lost.

In order to mislead him these forgeries were often concocted in obscure languages such as Basque and Lettish, occasionally in dead local languages such as Old Church Slavonic, and at least once in a tongue so remote and archaic no one who ever spoke it could possibly have heard of Paracelsus, a ludicrous gibberish from central Asia known to scholars as Tokharian B.

Yet Nubar was so obsessed with Paracelsus he always paid in the end to have these outrageous forgeries checked by experts, this profitable sideline for academics being another whole industry he had created in the Balkans in the postwar period. For Nubar invariably preferred to waste money on a worthless sheaf of nonsense, no matter how illegible, rather than take the chance of letting one authentic remnant of the master slip by him.

Bombast Paraheim von Celsusho.

Nubar turned away from his workbench to gaze at the enormous sword that stood in the corner of his tower room, a replica of the one the great doctor had brought back with him from his mysterious travels in the Middle East, before he had gone to work in some Venetian mercury mines on the Dalmation coast, exact location unspecified, perhaps not that far from the Wallenstein castle.

The great doctor had claimed the sword was given to him by a hangman. In its hollow pommel he had stored a supply of his wonder drug, laudanum, made from a recipe acquired in Constantinople.

Laudanum had been Paracelsus' most valued treasure, and as a result he had never parted from his sword, not even in his sleep.

Nubar also kept laudanum in the hollow pommel of his sword and he also never slept without it, cold and hard and comforting as it was with him in bed at night.

Parabast Celsen von Heimbomb.

On his workbench lay several volumes of the master's Philosophia Sagax, and others of the Arch-wisdom. Nubar owned dozens of copies of both works and all the copies violently disagreed with one another. Paragraphs were misplaced or truncated, changing the meaning entirely. Formulae contradicted each other and proposals cancelled out each other. Whole pages were missing here, entire chapters added there. In short, a maze of discrepancies.

One problem was that the great doctor had never read anything he wrote, preferring to leave that task to others.

Then too, many of the works published under his name were transcripts of his lectures that had been recorded by dazed students, or dictations he had given to inept amanuenses, who hadn't been able to keep up with the master's brilliantly explosive diatribes. So scholars were in complete disagreement over which books should be recognized as genuine.

It was as if this great doctor of the soul, the magus, Faust, after penetrating all the mysteries, had thrown the ingredients of his knowledge into the air to let them reshape themselves in endless variations through the centuries, the indisputable truths he propounded forever as profuse and contradictory as life itself.

In addition, causing yet more confusion, were the code words.

Like all the alchemists of his era, the great Swiss master had disguised his discoveries by using metaphors to describe his successful methods for transforming base metals into gold. Thus soul and chaos could also mean gold. And chaos might mean essence or gas. As sulphur might mean gas. Or chaos used to indicate a certain element he didn't wish to name at the moment. While mercury was the first heaven of the metaphysical heavens to come.

Heimbomb Celsushohen von Para.

Discrepancies, clues, cryptology.

Omitted references in the sixteenth century.

Incomprehensible additions and deletions made by dazed scribes suffering from poor candlelight, weak from unbalanced diets, given to sudden attacks of vertigo as they struggled through the night with pen and paper in vaulted medieval laboratories, hopelessly trying to record the great doctor's mutterings, his whispered arcane wisdom that rose with the fumes spiraling up from his vast array of pelicans and alembics, crucibles and athanors.

Dizzy scribes numbly scribbling in the smoke as the great doctor now loomed up in the shadows, now shrank back in the shadows, now disappeared altogether in the darkness behind his workbench, mumbling as he sank out of sight, only to rear up a minute later in the haze in front of his workbench, bellowing out eternal formulae and startling truths that had never been heard anywhere before that moment. While all the time explaining the secrets of Mercury, both the god of knowledge and of the marketplace, and mercury the cure for syphilis and mercury the mother of metals, to be purified before long up through the seven stages to the gold of the seventh heaven. Gas and chaos and soul.

Gas, the magus. Chaos, the soul. Faust in the fumes peering into his pelicans and alembics, igniting ever new secret solutions in the crucibles and athanors of time.

Hohenbastus von Heim von Ho.

The gas erupted inside Nubar with a roar. A powerful fart lifted him off his chair. He belched loudly, painfully, and fell back in his chair to quiver through the diminishing explosions of thumping farts and fiery belches that were racing from his stomach in all directions, unloading his gas into the air.

Mercury poisoning, and merely one of its symptoms, the result of his chronic alchemical experiments with that metal. Certainly an excessive inhalation of mercury fumes over the years could be harmful, perhaps even dangerous. But Nubar accepted that possibility, knowing it was unavoidable when in pursuit of the great doctor's secrets.

Merely one of the symptoms, there were others. Gastrointestinal inflammation. Excessive saliva and excessive gas. Urinary complications. Tremors. Skin ulcers. Mental depression.

The master, chaos. The soul of secret fumes, a fart, gaseous gold, to be purified up to seventh heaven.

Magus and mystery, in short.

Ho Parabastus von Heimenbomb.

After six years laboring in his tower room, Nubar sometimes gloomily wondered whether he would ever reach his goal. How could he acquire all the great doctor's works when scholars couldn't decide which were genuine? When forging the master had become an entire industry in the Balkans? When analyzing those forgeries had become another entire industry? Both of those industries aimed at Nubar, exclusively supported by him. Whole armies of quacks and scholars living off his obsession.

Sagax, for example. Which was the correct version? Was there a correct version or were they all equally correct? Equally incorrect?

A case of Sagax you are if you think you are? Sagax as you like it?

A pelican of tremors and gas and ulcers? An alembic mixing urinary complications with the soul? A crucible of excessive saliva? An athanor of chaos and mental depression? Arch-wisdom into infinity?

Nubar shook himself. No. He had to be careful, he was drifting again. Slipping into that vague state of confusion that often followed the sour belches and pungent farts produced by a sudden racking attack of mercury poisoning. He had to get back to work, there was still a great deal to be done before lunch. For a young man of twenty-one, the tasks he had set for himself were awesome.

Nubar sat up straight in his chair on that mild December day in 1927. He busied himself rearranging the papers on his workbench. A limp pamphlet bound in pale violet velour, small enough to fit inside a coat pocket and not be seen there by anyone, caught his eye. Not the great doctor, surely? He retrieved it from the pile of documents where it was hiding.