Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

80 Kerry Greenwood
glad when the rabbi finally managed to open his door and she
could go in.
It was bare and poor and dusty, but it smelt of old books. On
a kitchen table stained with ink was piled a treasury of leatherbound
ancient volumes, and there were more on the floor,
stacked up, open at illustrations of dragons and lions. She saw
the Tree of the Kabala again in a folio tome on which a scatter
of pages lay. ‘Please sit down,’ said Rabbi Elijah, in a rusty social
manner. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to sit, so Phryne stood
and watched as the old man sorted the leaves and laid them out
in piles. His hands were long and fine, with pale knob-knuckles
which spoke of arthritis. His skin seemed untouched by any sun.
His fingernails were clean and cut slightly long.
‘These,’ he said, pushing one stack over, ‘are illuminations
from a medieval textbook on alchemy, and I cannot decipher
them, except to say that they show various stages in the composition
of the philosopher’s stone. The ancients believed that
it rendered all things perfect.’
‘I thought it turned base metal into gold,’ commented
Phryne.
‘Certainly. Gold is the perfect metal. Therefore the lapis philosophorum
would make lead into gold. It was also believed—’
Phryne noted with glee that Rabbi Elijah, a teacher, could not
refrain from teaching, even though his auditor was a shiksa and
probably unclean—‘that it could cure all diseases and make men
immortal.’
‘By raising them to their perfect state.’
‘Good.’ He raised his eyes, saw Phryne, and blinked when
he realized to whom he was talking. But it was too late for him
to slip back into his shell, so he continued. ‘They described it as
being as fine as oil and solid as glass, and no one has ever managed
to make it. A dream, but men must have dreams.’
Phryne wondered what dreams the old man had dreamed,
to bring him to Australia, and how they coincided with this
poor drab place.