The Book of Madness and Cures (30 page)

“Good evening, Widow Certeau. These are the guests I mentioned, Dr. Mondini and her servants. Will you show them their rooms, please? I’m sure they’ll be more tranquil lodgers than that last group, the Hollanters bound for the New World.”

“Yes, thank you, sir.” She nodded and blushed.

“I bid you good repose, then.” He turned to us and bowed slightly. “Send me word when you’d like to meet again.” He strode back to his house at a strong, confident pace, seeming less an academic and more nearly a captain of the guard.

A young boy of eight or nine, probably Widow Certeau’s son, for he possessed her creamy complexion and almond-shaped blue eyes, peeked out from behind her skirts.

“Show this good man where he can stable the mules, Dreux,” she told him firmly, “and don’t wander!”

He skipped out from her skirts and stared at Lorenzo with curiosity. When my man handed him the reins so he could lead Fedele, the boy smiled broadly. The two headed down the cobbled street, pulling the mules to one side to avoid the central gutter, where a runnel of dirty water backed up behind refuse clogging the drainage hole.

The widow directed us inside. “Come and I’ll show you good people your rooms.” As she walked briskly down a badly lit corridor, then up an even dimmer set of stairs, the keys tied to her skirt strings swung and jangled brightly.

“I see that you have another set of keys,” I observed.

“Yes, my lady, in case a guest should breathe his last in the room, you know, we must have a way of getting him out.”

Olmina balked at her frankness and asked, “Has anyone expired lately?”

“Oh no, this last bunch, they were lively as larks! But we did have one a few winters ago. An old papermaker who’d been coming for years to sell his wares to the university folk.”

“Oh! And did he keep company with an Italian doctor, an older man?”

“Why, yes, now that you mention it. A Dr. Mondiale or something like that. They were often together. Is he your friend?”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully, without correcting the name, “he is my friend. How did he look? Was he in good health?”

“Well, honestly I never paid much mind, but he seemed well enough, though he paced a good deal in his room and was always shifting the little bit of furniture around.” She ran her words together, all in a rush, the way shy people do sometimes. “Mind you, there’s only a bed, chest, desk, and chair in a tiny space, so I’m not sure what he was arranging.” She paused for breath and smiled. “Has it been long since you’ve seen him?”

“Yes, it’s been long,” I said.

“Well, the poor papermaker was not in good health. Poor fellow hadn’t heard how badly the medicine school had been gutted. I think he was heartbroken at all the books that had been burned. But he never locked his door, so I didn’t need the extra key. Here you are,” she said, and she pushed open each narrow, creaky door in succession, three in a row. “You’ll have to buy your own candles. When the warm days come, we keep the shutters closed and the rooms stay cool. Oh, and if you like, you can take your meals downstairs in the common room. Mainly pottages, bread, and wine.”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

She turned and left as quickly as she had come, hurrying on to other tasks.

Our rooms resembled the cells of ascetics with their floors and walls of squared gray stones. Still, we were content to each have a bed, a chest, a chamber pot, a ewer, and a basin. The rugless floors would be a shock at night and in the morning, to bare or even stockinged feet. The only fireplaces were downstairs in the kitchen and common room. I was grateful that it was May rather than December. These cold buildings of the living seemed more deathly than those of the cemetery on the hill as the evening light dropped.

In my dreams that night I glimpsed candles lit by mourners, flickering there as if in an ancient, faraway city. The houses of the dead appeared alive.
La morte guarisce tutti i mali,
my father would say in serious jest.
Death is a remedy for all ills.
Except in dream.

Wilhelm lies faceup on the slab in the blue light of the anatomy theater. I can’t tell where the light originates, but it doesn’t fall from the windows. It seems a kind of light from stage torches. I try to order my cutting tools on a small table, for I must find something in his body, though I’m not sure what it is. I’m terrified before his clean, uncut flesh, for it’s like a huge blank piece of paper. My scalpel becomes a quill. I don’t know where to cut. I don’t know what to write there.

The next morning a light breeze brought us the salt trace of the sea as we walked to meet Dr. Joubert. Since the day was fine, he offered to show us the Jardin des Plantes near the Cathedral of Saint Pierre, for it was the pride of Montpellier and still under cultivation. As we approached the groundskeeper’s brick house, flanked by crenellated walls outside the city, I also mentioned my desire to see the octagonal anatomy theater designed by the illustrious Guillaume Rondelet.

“Oh, but that is shut up and surrounded by a garden of neglect. Wild grasses overrun the medicinals, though the fennel continues to thrive.”

By contrast the Jardin des Plantes appeared a well-fortified garden.

“The Huguenots,” he went on, “had also attempted to despoil this royal garden, for King Henry IV was their sworn enemy, but thank God, they weren’t successful.”

“How sad, to assault the poor plants of Languedoc and the herbs that would heal Papists and Protestants alike,” I said. “The flowers don’t discriminate. Only men with their superior reason.”

He smiled a little, putting me at ease.

“The excellent doctor and botanist in the king’s employ, Monsieur Richer de Belleval, whose work found its highest achievement here, has given us a great gift—a living compendium of plants!” exclaimed Dr. Joubert as he extended his left hand toward the walls.

Lorenzo and Olmina strolled behind us, arms linked as they admired the outlook of low hills and fields, pines, oaks, and sweet chestnuts and of woolly clouds drawn thin as if carded by the invisible combs of the wind.

“My father must have enjoyed this garden, though he made no mention in his letters. Have you heard any news of him, then?” I inquired.

“No, I was only an acquaintance.” He stroked his waxen black mustache with thumb and forefinger. “The professor who knew him well—because he corresponded regularly with doctors in Padua, Salerno, and Bononia—left but a year ago.” He shook his head regretfully, and as he did so, his round wide-brimmed hat suddenly lifted from his thick, straight hair with a gust of wind. He ran after it with surprising alacrity, black round cape flapping above red breeches and striped hose. After he retrieved it from the wayside brambles, he grinned at me boyishly, his face flushed, then quickly returned to his former posture of authority.

I couldn’t resist laughing and marveling at how foolish we all were, poor, scrambling creatures with but a thin veneer of dignity. I retied my own straw hat more tightly.

Now he held on to his own as he launched into another subject.

“Dr. Mondini, you must join the first class to be initiated again in a long time at the university. Perhaps as a guest professor? You can tell us about the book you’re compiling. Don’t be concerned that you’re a woman. Who will protest, since I’m the only remaining faculty? As far as the students are concerned, I’ll vouch for you.”

I continued to walk on the gravel path beside him, considering his kind offer. “And when does instruction begin?”

“October eighteenth, the feast day of Saint Luc, physician and artist, patron of painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, notaries, surgeons, and doctors, as you undoubtedly know. The bells will call us to study at six o’clock, and there will be no classes Sunday or Wednesday, the day dedicated to Hippocrates.”

“Thank you, but no, I must press on. It’s only May and I can’t delay my search for so many months.”

Dr. Joubert looked crestfallen.

Then Olmina piped up close behind us. “Or perhaps the good signorina will soon tire of this journey altogether and take us back to Venetia.”

“Ah, you’ve been wishing us back to Venetia ever since the day we departed.” I stopped and turned round to smile at her.

But she wasn’t smiling, only scolding me with her watery blue eyes. Lorenzo said nothing and simply stared off toward the hills, though he held on to her arm and patted it.

For a moment I let in the sinking possibility of a return without my father. “We won’t be staying long in Montpellier,” I said, turning back to Dr. Joubert. “It’s true that I’ve grown weary of this journey.” I lowered my eyes toward the hard-packed gravel, then looked back at the gentleman. “When does a wise adventure become a foolish one? When does daughterly devotion become untoward obsession?” These questions had risen and fallen under my thoughts yet startled me as I asked them openly.

“I would wish for such a daughter as you.” He paused to knock at the groundskeeper’s thick oaken door, where we now stood. “But I am a bachelor and know nothing of these things.”

My spirits were dampened, since it seemed I’d obtain scant news of my father here. Still, I walked where he had walked. I traced his atmosphere like a hound on a scent. But now I was eager to see the contents of the garden for my own purposes.

The young steward, a man in grass-stained clothing, let us in. He held a rusted pair of shears in hand. We walked through the brick corridor to the other side, where the courtyard and its arcade overlooked one of the most remarkable gardens I’d ever observed. A triangular mountain of earth was terraced into six levels and supported at regular intervals a variety of vegetables, herbs, and trees, as well as the plants of Languedoc.

We descended the pathway that had been excavated around the small mountain. Other raised beds stood to the south, and all presented the solace of order. The crenellated wall enclosed the entire design, so that one also had the sense that we were in a garden of walls. How distinct from the round open gardens of Padua! One could feel the atmosphere of siege here and the bulwark of science raised against it.

After a long silence beneath the mounting heat of the midday sun, I asked the doctor, “If I knew the name and form, the habits of any flower,
Papaver somniferum,
for instance, could I alter events or even stop a war?” I motioned to the pods of those white poppies whose sap slows the world for those who taste it.

“No plant can stop a war, though many have started one. Think of the spices that are so precious to us. How many have died in their procurement. Saffron, cinnamon, mace, cardamom! Still, if any herb or flower could stop us, perhaps this one could. They say that those under the influence of its unripe pods are cured of overexcited nerves. Though others suffer paralysis.”

“Whole armies could be fed forgetting, forgetting all sense of offense and defense, and then they might return to their families whole.” I was not unmindful of my father’s choleric humor dormant in me.

“Forgetting, though, is a dangerous thing, don’t you think, Signorina Mondini? Would you have us all be docile cattle, our minds a series of stomachs?”

As Dr. Joubert and I spoke, Lorenzo and Olmina followed close behind, admiring the flowers, yet attentive to what we were saying.

“No, no.” I laughed, picturing my companion on all fours engrossed in vetch. “But I’ve seen too much of quarrel and abandonment.”

I walked on to view the singular harebells, mostly gone to seed, except for a few five-petaled bells hanging from delicate stems in a patch of shade. Unlike varieties I’d observed before, these were a stronger blue, chips of sky.

“They’re old man’s bells. Said to belong to the devil and to be coveted by witches for their fey qualities,” he cautioned.

“Those witches who turn into hares and shake the flowers?” I smiled. “All I know is that the roots make an excellent compress for healing wounds. I’ve used them many times myself.”

He glanced at me suspiciously. “Be very careful, signorina, very careful. I’ve never practiced the art of medicine myself, though as a professor I have the knowledge to do so. I believe in a fidelity to books and antiquity, no midwives’ remedies for me.” Then with a tinge of sadness he added, “Perhaps I envy you your experience,” and he bent to the harebells for a closer look at the hidden interior.

“No need,” I replied. “I’m not content, though I’m glad of my vocation. There is an abundance of sorrow in this profession.”

“Still, you have firsthand experience of infirmity and death. Does it not bring you some wisdom among the days of despair?”

“I’m benumbed now and don’t know what has happened to my wisdom.”

“Now, signorina,” interrupted Lorenzo, “I’m no educated man, but I’ve seen you do much good in our city and along the way here on our travels. And you too, my lively wife. You’ve picked up quite a few things here from our doctor, haven’t you?”

For a brief instant, Olmina shared a nervous glance with me, fearing that she’d been found out, but because his tone was gentle, she simply said, “I have, haven’t I?”

“Are you thinking of turning toward home, then?” Dr. Joubert asked.

“I don’t know.” I regarded Olmina and saw weariness that mirrored my own. “I haven’t yet exhausted the geography of my father. One of his letters came from Hispania and another from Barbaria. We must depart to the west.”

She sighed, for this wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear.

CHAPTER 19