If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 9

Faust finished his meal and returned home. Before Marguerite's arrival, he took the opportunity of sprucing up his chambers. He carried to the back door the trash from the last week's experiments—dead cats that he had been trying to get to dance for him, old borscht and porridge containers from his most recent take-out meals, and a big pile of scholar's gray gowns that the servant had been supposed to wash and press. He pulled back heavy curtains all the way, opened shutters, and gave the place a good airing.

Women, not being scholars themselves, cared about such things. When he had the room to his satisfaction he burned some frankincense in a copper basin, filling the air with pungent sweetness. Then he heated water and, stripping off all his clothes, scrubbed himself thoroughly. He felt a little foolish doing it, but what the hell, it was spring and he needed a cleaning anyhow after the long winter's funk. He put on a fresh gown and combed his hair, which had become wiry and unruly since his rejuvenation at the Witches' Kitchen. An unaccustomed yet familiar excitement suffused his newly young body. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd had a date.

Marguerite came to him shortly after eight, at the time of deep blue twilight, and her entrance into Faust's chambers seemed to be accompanied by a pink spotlight that hovered around her as she darted here and there, exclaiming over his alchemical equipment, gazing with wonder at his books and manuscripts, and, with her womanly and sweet-smelling presence, spreading an air of general well-being withal.

Faust's good spirits were tempered only by his sense of loss and outrage at the criminal carelessness of the infernal powers. Mephistopheles had apparently not even asked the impostor for any identification!

He had just taken him at his word! It was outrageous.

A little later, Faust found himself telling the story of his grievances to Marguerite as they lay nicely curled together in his narrow scholar's bed, with a flagon of barley wine close to hand to stimulate merriment and amorousness. Marguerite was sympathetic to his tale, though her mind tended to race off on tangents of its own.

"What a wonder it would be," she said, "if you could regain the riches that Mephistopheles was no doubt going to offer you. For then, if you had a girlfriend, you could shower her with largesse and other fine gifts, and her appreciation of these things would bring you much pleasure."

"I suppose that's true," Faust said, "though I never before thought of it that way. But speaking of gifts, have you ever seen this one?" And he took a copper ring and spun it in the air and muttered certain words and the ring came down shining with the white fire of a diamond, though it was only a zircon in this case, the spell being a minor one. Marguerite was delighted, and although the ring was a little big for her small hand, declared that she knew a jeweler who would size it for a smile. And did Faust happen to have any other tricks like that? Faust obliged by turning a bunch of dried hollyhocks into a bouquet of roses with the dew fresh on them, and Marguerite said that was a good one, too, but did he have any more of the jewelry ones, which especially captured her fancy? Faust had several, and showered her with pins and brooches of showy workmanship but no great value, since there is a limit to what even so great a magician as Faust can do while lying in bed in a state of tumescence, with his head on a woman's soft bosom.

"That's amazing!" Marguerite cried. "How do you do that?"

Faust rippled his fingers. "It's all in the hands. And in the know-how, of course."

"If you can turn out stuff like that," Marguerite said, "you could be rich. Why do you live like this?" Her gesture embraced the chamber that, though sufficient for Faust's needs, did nothing to enhance the reputation of his interior decorator.

"I've never wanted riches," Faust told her. "My treasure was knowledge, and I sought the Philosopher's Stone, which is wisdom, not gold as the unenlightened believe."

"I understand that," Marguerite said, "But what's the payoff?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, people always do one thing in order to get another. Haven't you noticed? They raise grain because they want to eat bread. They march to war because they want peace. They murder in order to save lives.

It's always the other thing they're doing it for, the other thing which is the payoff."

"Bless you, my child," Faust said, "in your untutored way and all unwittingly you have raised a question of rather interesting philosophical implications. You are asking, what is the goal or purpose of my quest for wisdom?"

"You say it so well," Marguerite said.

Faust smiled. "Knowledge, wisdom, these are goals in themselves and require no 'payoff,' as you pungently but delightfully put .it."

"In that case, why are you so angry at this impostor you told me about? His taking your reward doesn't hinder your pursuit of knowledge."

"Hmm," said Faust.

"What were you going to do," Marguerite asked, "when you became as wise as you needed to be?"

"Become wiser still."

"And when you had all of it you could have?"

"Dross or not," Marguerite said, "after you've got wisdom, what other payoff can they give you? Body and spirit, Dr. Faust. When you're through feeding the one, it's time to feed the other."

"There is religion, of course," Faust said. "It is thought highly of as an end in itself. Not for me, of course; accepting what is handed down, dogma, that which is traditional and generally accepted without question, interferes with the spirit of free enquiry that Faust stands for, and which tells him to follow his own judgment and the dictates of his reason, not what some superstitious priest may have said to him."

So intoxicated with his words was he that Faust jumped out of bed and, wrapping himself in a long cloak, proceeded to walk up and down the room, reasoning aloud.

"It is the perfection of the moment that a philosopher seeks, if truth be told. He wants to come across a moment so perfect that he would say to it, Stay a little longer, O precious moment. If someone could provide me with that, that man or demon could have my soul. It was probably some such matter that Mephistopheles came to talk to me about. He came here with some kind of offer. And it involved great things, because why else would Mephistopheles cause me, or rather, the impostor me, to be rejuvenated at the beginning of it? Damn it, he's going to show that man the wonders of the worlds, both visible and invisible, and probably give him plenty of luxury to wallow in, too, because that's the sort of thing devils do, not realizing, apparently, that it takes far less than a seductive woman to entice a man from the true path of virtue. Usually temptation is easy; you just have to make the merest suggestion and the sinner will run to his sin. But I digress. He's taken all that from me! For this was the grandeur of Faust, that he knew that someday he would be discovered in a big way. Do you understand, Marguerite? It was a chance to play the big time, and it will not come again."

"You can't let them get away with that!" Marguerite cried.

"I shall not!" cried Faust, and then, in a lower voice, "But what can I do? Mephistopheles and the impostor could be anywhere!"

Just then the bells of the churches of the city began to toll for the evening service. Their great brazen tones and quivering and long-resonating reverberations and their little rippling evanescent overtones vibrated in the deep labyrinths of Faust's ear, bearing with them a message of import, if only he could decipher it…

Easter services. Celebrated on Earth and in Heaven. And among the Powers of Darkness, it was the time of the great anti-Easter Sabbat…

And that, of course, was where he'd find them, Mephistopheles and the impostor!

"I know where they must be!" Faust cried. "I shall go after them and pursue my destiny!"

"How wonderful!" Marguerite said. "Ah, if only I could share some tiny part of that destiny with you!"

"And so you shall!" Faust cried. "You, Marguerite, shall accompany me and help me on this mission, and share in my reward!"

"That's just what I'd like," Marguerite said. "But alas, sir, I am but a goosegirl who was only recently made serving wench. I know no alchemy."

"You don't need alchemy to run my errands to the pharmacy," Faust said. He pulled on his scholar's gown. "Come, get dressed, let's begin!"

And so Faust embarked on a frenzy of preparation. First he needed a list. Sitting down at his desk, and dipping his quill in the inkwell, he wrote down all the items he would need to produce a really first-rate Traveling Spell. Then he sat back in dismay. It would take him months, years, to assemble the ingredients he required for a spell of sufficient power to take him to the Witches' Sabbat and wherever else he might want to go after that. He had to take Marguerite into consideration, too, for he meant to take her along.

The trouble was, there was no time to acquire this stuff by legal means. But he had to have it, else the Faust story, the great story of human ability and creativity against Otherworldly machinations, would never be toy.

It seemed to Faust that if he wanted to win his point, it was time to consider desperate expedients, even if they were not entirely legal. If, in the long history of argumentation, the ends have ever justified the means, this was one of those times.

Then, abruptly, he knew what he had to do. He rose and picked up a packet of alchemist's tools that sometimes came in handy when Unlocking Spells weren't working. He also took a sack of Spanish wine, for he might need some fortifying before the end of this enterprise.

"Come," he said to Marguerite, "we've got work to do."

The Jagiellonian Museum, a great mass of gray stone set by itself in the Parque of the Belvedere just to the right of St. Rudolph's Gate stood dark and deserted. Marguerite stood by as Faust muttered an Unlocking Spell at the tall bronze doors of the front entrance. As he had feared, something was off tonight. Sometimes a wrong intonation will throw off a spell entirely, to the extent that wizards and magicians with head colds frequently have to desist lest they call up their own destruction through the production of a snuffling sound in the wrong place. Whatever was wrong, it didn't matter, for Faust had come prepared. Taking out his packet of little instruments, Faust made short work of the lock, and, taking a swig of wine for courage, pushed open the door enough to let him and Marguerite slip through.

They were in the museum's great central hall, but the exhibits were swathed in gloom. The darkness was relieved only to a minor extent by the great windows set slantwise in the sloping roof that permitted errant rays of moonlight to enter. But he knew this place well enough to pull Marguerite along—she was gawking at the tableaux of ancient Polish kings—until the corridor ended in a stone wall.

"What now?" she asked.

"Watch. I'll show you something about the Jagiellonian most people don't know."

He felt along the wall until his fingers encountered a familiar indentation. He pressed it in a certain way.

With a low rumble a section of wall rolled back on well-balanced hinges, revealing a narrow passage ahead.

"Where does this lead?" Marguerite asked.

He led her down the passageway. It took them to a lofty room crowded with exhibit tables. In this place even Faust was in awe, for it was said that this chamber had existed long before Europe had reached its present state of civilization. Faust and Marguerite tiptoed down the aisles, and saw mystical copper rings from Ur of the Chaldeans, bronze divining rings from Tyre, sacrificial flint knives from Judaea, multiuse Egyptian wish-granting scarabs, sickle-bladed sacrificial knives of the rainbow-worshiping Celts, and more modern objects, such as the brazen head of Roger Bacon, Raymond Lull's machine of universal knowledge said to be useful for converting the heathen, several of Giovanni Battista Vico's Seals and Shadows in easy-to-interpret form, and much else besides.

"This is more like it," Faust said. Already his arms were full of magical objects.

"They'll hang you for this!" Marguerite said.

"They'll have to catch me first," Faust replied. "That's the original Mantle of Turin over there. I wonder if we should take it."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Marguerite said, draping it over her shoulders nonetheless.

Just then there was a clang of metal from the door by which they had entered, and there was the loud stomping noise of metal-toed shoes of the sort guards wear to prevent enraged criminals from stamping on their toes.

"They have us!" Marguerite cried. "There's no way out!"

"Watch this," Faust said, and put the objects he had taken in a certain order. He waved his hands, words issued from his lips, words which must never be repeated lest they upset the natural order of things.

Marguerite's lips parted in wonder as she saw a nimbus of glory arise from the objects and engulf first Faust, still holding his sack of wine, and then herself.

And so, when the guard arrived, out of breath and with pikes at the ready, trotting into the Closed Chamber, there was no one to arrest.