Inquisition Read Free Page A

chest.
    He instinctively jumped backwards, giving a cry of horror that sounded all the more anguished in the empty hall.
    Looking round, he stared at Gerardo, who was standing behind the bench almost as if it were a normal anatomy lesson, but there was no sign of surprise or derision in his blue eyes. Just an attentive look, as though he knew exactly what the other man was feeling.
    Mondino wanted to say something but abhorrence silenced him. Taking control of himself, he went back to the table and looked at the tormented breast again, without giving in to the impulse to turn away. What he saw, between the dried blood and the broken bones, took his breath away, but in a certain sense calmed him down somewhat. It was ghastly, yet perfectly explicable.
    ‘Someone wanted to have some cruel fun with this poor fellow,’ he said, in a strained tone that was meant to sound relaxed. ‘And I agree with you that to desecrate a human body in this way makes one think of trade with the Devil. The murderer wanted to transform the chest into a blasphemous tabernacle, sculpting a heart of iron to substitute the one of flesh and putting it in the place of the holy pyx with the communion wafers.’
    ‘It’s not a sculpture,’ said Gerardo, in a voice so low that Mondino thought he hadn’t heard properly. ‘What?’
    ‘The heart. It’s not a sculpture. Have a better look.’ Mondino looked again at the man’s gaping breast and saw clearly what in reality he had noticed before but had blotted out because he couldn’t justify it.
    The heart in Angelo da Piczano’s breast was a real human heart, transformed into a block of metal.
    It couldn’t be otherwise, given the precision with which it was welded to the veins and arteries connecting it to the other organs. There was absolute continuity, with no joins to be seen. It was a work of art that reflected a perfection more divine than human, but twisted and oriented towards death rather than life. At that moment Mondino did not doubt that he was contempLating the work of the evil one.
    He turned to Gerardo. All the certainty he had felt before deserted him, leaving a sense of parching thirst that prevented him from speaking. Hurriedly, he brought the four pedestals with the lamps closer to the table. He had to see more clearly. He had to know. To think. He was no longer interested in keeping an eye on Gerardo. He only had eyes for that open thorax, full of dried blood, the now motionless organs devoid of the glimmer of life, and that heart converted into an abomination.
    The perpetrator of the revolting spectacle was human, of that Mondino had no doubt. You could see the marks left by the teeth of the saw on the bones of the thorax, and the Devil, as far as he knew, wouldn’t use such crude instruments. But the murderer had certainly acted from an evil impulse. Why? What did he hope to accomplish?
    All of a sudden he looked up, fearing that Gerardo would take advantage of his inattention to try to overpower him. But the young man hadn’t moved. He was staring at him with his hands resting on the sloping surface of the desk where Mondino usually put his study books and the sheets of paper on which he made notes.
    ‘I won’t do anything to harm you, Master,’ Gerardo said, reading his thoughts. ‘If I had wanted to, I would already have disarmed you.’
    ‘Try, and you’ll get a surprise,’ countered Mondino, but without hostility in his voice.
    He was distracted by a thought that made his insides vibrate with curiosity and fear. It was clear to his scientific mind that the transformation of Angelo da Piczano’s heart was not the result of the shadowy spell of a witch, but the much more concrete art of alchemy. Although a distorted alchemy, it was true. None of the treatises that he had read during his medical studies had referred to the possibility of converting human blood into metal. At the time, Mondino had even got hold of a copy of Liber Aneguemis , the Latin translation of