City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  It didn’t help my distress that, while we were trying to chew these unappetizing victuals, our host’s wife was bedded down in the very same room, separated from our table only by a curtain, so that the moans and wails of a woman in labour punctuated our every bite, accompanied by the noisy encouragements of the two midwives attending her. Maître Sanche appeared in no wise troubled by these distractions, but simply raised his voice to allow us to hear his Latin dissertation on a new remedy he had devised, which he claimed to be a certain cure for inflammations of the stomach. Nevertheless, at one point, hearing a scream more urgent and higher pitched than the previous ones, he turned his head towards the curtain and said in Provençal: “My poor Rachel seems to be having a hard time making a son for me. Balsa, go fetch me the bottle of agrimony from my pharmacy—you’ll recognize it as yellow poppy flowers.”

  Balsa, mouth still full of dinner, rushed off and returned with a phial, which he handed to his master, who, in his turn, called one of the midwives and said with the gravest authority: “Good lady, I beg you rub this ointment on the insides of the birthing mother’s thighs and recite, as you rub, the paternoster. My wife’s delivery will be greatly facilitated.”

  After having bowed deeply and made a sign of the cross three times, the lady took up the phial with the greatest respect and withdrew behind the curtain as she was ordered.

  “Maître Sanche,” I said, “I knew that agrimony was highly recommended for curing ulcers of the cornea, but I didn’t know that it could be used so effectively for childbirth.”

  “Indeed it can!” he enthused. “I have it on great and worthy authority that the use of agrimony should be applied in such cases and is expressly recommended by Bernard de Gordon in his learned book, Lilium medicinae. I myself have tried it many times, not without success, in the parturitions of my late wives.”

  Fogacer, sitting to my right, broke out laughing hilariously. Whereupon Maître Sanche said, “Medice, visne castigare ridendo medicinam meam?”‡

  “Non decet, magister illustrissime,” replied Fogacer, his demonic eyebrows fleeing towards his temples. “Felix est qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”§

  “Well then, why are you laughing?” continued Maître Sanche, though he was interrupted by a terrible cry. “My good woman,” he shouted, turning his head towards the curtain, “continue to rub! Rub in the ointment! And don’t spare your paternosters!”

  The two remedies being applied, I imagine, with all the energy the two midwives could muster, a remission soon took effect, and in the ensuing silence, troubled only by a few moans, Fogacer said in Latin, “Illustrious master, first of all I do not contest the efficaciousness of agrimony. Secondly, I am too good a Christian to dispute the benefits of the paternoster. But I do question the alliance of the first with the second! It’s one of two possibilities: either the agrimony is soothing the pains or else it’s the pater. In the first case the pater is unnecessary, and in the second it’s the agrimony.”

  “Medice,” Maître Sanche returned, “navita de ventis, de tauris narrat arator.¶ But winds and bulls are not the same thing. A woman experiences labour pains, but the pain is as much in her spirit as in her body. Ergo, it is beneficial to mix the two remedies: agrimony is the body’s balm, the pater soothes the soul.”

  He was about to continue, when poor Rachel suddenly emitted a series of ear-splitting cries.

  “My good women!” cried Maître Sanche in Provençal with great irritation. “We can’t hear ourselves think in here with so much racket! Rub! Rub harder! And don’t be stingy with the agrimony. For my good wife no expense shall be spared!”

  “Master,” I asked, when the cries had subsided a bit, “I heard you declare as something absolutely certain that your wife would bear you a son. May I ask on what you have based this certainty?”

  Fogacer, taking advantage of another outburst from the other side of the curtain, which distracted Maître Sanche, leant over and whispered with a smile, “Bene! Bene! Haec est vexata questio!”||

  But to tell the truth, it didn’t appear to vex Maître Sanche in the least, for he replied, “There is not the slightest doubt, and even less discussion. She who delivers during a full moon will have a son and she who delivers in the new moon, a daughter.”

  However, despite the agrimony and the many paters, poor Rachel’s wails grew more strident every minute. Maître Sanche finally decided that he’d better rise and go behind the curtain to offer his young wife the benefit of his great knowledge.

  The dinner having long since finished, Luc, his sister Typhème, Balsa, Miroul and my beloved Samson had gone off to bed, and the only ones remaining at table were Fogacer and myself, when Fontanette brought us a pitcher of simple infusions she’d prepared.

  “Ah, Fontanette,” whispered Fogacer, “your master is going to scold you: an infusion! And sugar as well! And by your own decision?”

  “I shall tell him I ordered it,” I said.

  “A thousand thanks, my noble friend,” breathed Fontanette, with a grateful smile and a quick bow. Then, pivoting on her heels, she flew off to the kitchen. I followed her with my eyes.

  Fogacer, raising one black eyebrow, leant over and touched my elbow, saying in a low voice, “Nec nimium vobis formosa ancilla ministret.”**

  “Amen!” was my only response, since I didn’t know what to say and my nose was in my goblet, but I smiled secretly at this feminine attention, and also at the delicious infusion that I was careful to drink slowly, while eating another crust of bread, for I had an appetite enough to start dinner all over again, so meagre were the servings here.

  “The man,” said Fogacer, pointing his bony index finger at the curtain, and lowering his voice (though this precaution was unnecessary given the diapason of lamentations that continued behind it), “has a few odd ideas, but he is a good person. Nevertheless,” he cautioned, “empty your goblet so he doesn’t scold the poor girl.”

  Just as I finished drinking, the curtain opened and Maître Sanche appeared, one shoulder lower than the other, his back bent over more than ever, but his two hands joyously combing his long grey beard. He stopped in front of us and crowed triumphantly: “It’s almost over. I’ve seen the little rascal’s hair!”

  He’d scarcely finished his announcement when his wife let out a series of cries that would have awakened the deaf, and these were followed by a dramatic silence that astonished us all. Then, raising the curtain, one of the midwives entered, her head hanging low and her visage ineffably sad.

  “Maître Sanche,” she said in a mournful voice, “Madame your wife begs your humble pardon. It’s a girl.”

  “What?” cried Fogacer, rising and feigning surprise at such a scandal. “A girl! Beneath a full moon!”

  “Then necessarily,” intervened Maître Sanche, without batting an eye, “another planet, sent by God, has mixed its rays with those of the full moon and undone her efforts.” And, rising with great dignity, he added, “Astra regunt homines, set regit astra Deus.”††

  * “Illustrious master, I am Pierre de Siorac, the son of your friend, and this is my brother Samson de Siorac.”

  † “This is Jean Fogacer, bachelor in medicine and dean of students.”

  ‡ “Doctor, do you dare make fun of my medicine?”

  § “That would be inconceivable, illustrious master. Happy is he to have been able to penetrate the deepest causes of things.”

  ¶ “Good doctor, the sailor understands the winds, the farmer his bulls.”

  || “Good! Good! This is a very debated question!”

  ** “Never let yourself be served by a girl who’s too pretty.”

  †† “The stars govern mankind, but God governs the stars.”

  4

  AH, WHAT A SWEET awakening I had the next morning when Fontanette, entering my room, opened the oak shutters, which, from the inside, shaded the room. The windows, like those at the Two Angels in Toulouse, were made of oil paper, which blocked the view but not the warmth of the rising sun
, which turned them a rich golden colour.

  “By the belly of St Anthony, Fontanette,” I said as I quickly combed my hair with my fingers, “how did you get in here? I bolted the door last night!”

  “By this one, which opens onto my little room.”

  “Ah, Fontanette,” I cried, “you’re going to give me ideas…”

  But Fontanette, who laughed and smiled so easily, became suddenly as serious as an abbess in Lent, and, putting on a grave face, made me a real sermon.

  “Monsieur, if your ideas are what I suspect they are, you should not be having them. I am not one of those servant girls in inns who throws herself at men, but a chambermaid in a respectable Christian household. The door I used to enter your room can be bolted on my side. And as for me,” she blushed, lowering her eyes, “I am a virgin.”

  “So, you’re locked up twice over, my brave girl,” I smiled. “But aren’t you seriously inconvenienced by this state? Do you intend to persevere in this like a nun?”

  “I just don’t know,” she lamented with a charming naivety. “I simply haven’t made up my mind.”

  And for once, I, who normally have a ready tongue, found nothing at all to say in response, so divided was I between very conflicted feelings—my wicked desires and sweet pity haranguing each other inside me like two fishmongers. And to tell the truth, I thought then, and I still think today, that it’s quite unfair that we ask these girls to clothe themselves in a virtue, just because they’re girls, that one never seems to demand of men. But what would we do if they were always so strict? So I fell silent, and watched her coming and going in my room, so fresh and pert, arranging my affairs, which were in complete disarray, and, when she’d done with this, stopping to admire my various weapons.

  “Monsieur, what do they call this short arquebus?”

  “A pistol.”

  “And this short sword?”

  “A pricker.”

  She giggled and blushed when she heard this name and so, observing her shame, I decided to change the subject: “So what do we eat to break our fast here?”

  “Soup.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, grimacing. “Soup? No milk?”

  “Ah, Monsieur, milk? You’re not in Périgord any more! The flat countryside around Montpellier is all stone, sand and dust. Vines and olive trees do well here, but your cows wouldn’t find much provender.”

  “So no milk. Does your soup at least contain some nice morsels of pork?”

  “What, Monsieur, pork? You’ll never find a shred of pork in this house! My master won’t have it.”

  “What? No bacon, no ham, no sausages. What about pâté?”

  “Not an ounce. But, now that I think about it,” she confessed with some confusion, and I appreciated her transparency, for she was not one to play-act or pretend like some people, “the reason I came in was that Monsieur Fogacer desires to speak with you.”

  “Now you tell me, Fontanette! You must away before he comes looking for me!”

  “Mayn’t I stay, Monsieur, while you get dressed?”

  “But, Fontanette, you’d see me naked!”

  “I see Monsieur Luc stark naked every day and you’re much better looking, better built and stronger than he!”

  She went on like this while I was dressing. It was, I judged, her innocence that made her babble on, and though I was embarrassed to be dressing in her presence I didn’t have the heart to send her away. So she remained, watching me the whole time, admiring my body in such a candid way; and clearly the poor girl in her naivety saw no wrong in telling me what she thought straight out, like a hen might do to a rooster if she could talk.

  I found Fogacer slurping up his soup, which consisted, sadly, of vegetables without a scrap of meat, but I was still so hungry from the evening meal that I fell upon my breakfast with relish. Of Luc, the beautiful Typhème, Balsa or Maître Sanche there was not a trace, and when Fogacer had eaten his fill he said:

  “Siorac, let’s not stand on ceremony. Don’t call me ‘bachelor’ and I won’t call you ‘Monsieur’. Finish your bowl and I’ll take you up on the roof where we can speak our minds.”

  Little did I imagine that this roof, which we had reached by a narrow winding staircase, was in fact a wide and beautiful terrace from which one could enjoy various similar terraces spread across the city of Montpellier. In the distance I could discern a dark-blue line cutting across the sky blue of the horizon and shimmering with thousands of tiny fires from the rising sun—the Mediterranean. I, who in my young life had never seen such an expanse of water except on a map, stood transfixed before this spectacle.

  “Ah, Fogacer,” I cried, overcome with emotion, “should we not thank the good Lord for having created this miracle among all the wonders He has given the earth?”

  “Certainly we should,” he replied, raising his satanic eyebrows, “but we shouldn’t stop there! We must also thank him for storms, hurricanes, flooding rains, droughts, lightning, volcanoes, earthquakes; give thanks as well for the vegetable kingdom: hemlock, belladonna, ranunculus, nightshade and the other innumerable plants from which we make our poisons; and for the animal kingdom: the bear, the wolf, the wild boar, the fox and the African cats of prey, not to mention the viper, the asp, the tarantula, the scorpion and the thousands of bugs, worms and fungi that attack the most useful plants. Is that all? Oh no! We also have to account for all the great benefits the Lord has visited upon us in the form of whooping cough, mumps, smallpox, dropsy, swamp fever, leprosy, consumption and those jewels of our human condition, syphilis and the plague.”

  I stared at Fogacer, surprised by this somewhat sacrilegious speech and by the mock seriousness with which he had pronounced it.

  “Assuredly,” I replied after a few stunned moments, “assuredly evil exists. But since God makes only good and right things, then evil itself must be some part of His plan.”

  “Plan?” mused Fogacer, raising his eyebrow even higher. “Plan? Of course there’s a plan. But which one?”

  “This is what we can’t yet understand,” I answered, “since God’s ways are impenetrable.”

  “Ah,” laughed Fogacer, “that’s a very good and orthodox response, and quite proper, as Calvin would say, for convincing sober and docile people. But observe, however, not your reply but the very spare way in which you proposed it: without the bother of deductive reasoning, absent of any sustained argumentation, unadorned with any art whatsoever, and concluded ex abrupto, drawn to a close with this opaque curtain of human ignorance. By my bachelor’s robe, we need more words to say that we know nothing! According to the rules of rhetoric, you should have pushed your position further, articulated your principles in syllogisms, used rigorous logic to reach your conclusion—the whole bolstered by an abundance of quotes from the ancient philosophers. ’Sblood, you can’t pretend to speak wisely when you go about it so tersely!”

  I blushed to see myself treated with such pleasant irony, and, seeing my scarlet face, Fogacer laughed even harder, and turning away sat—or rather threw—his large body on the stone bench situated next to the little overhang that sheltered the stairway we’d just taken from the rain.

  “Siorac,” he said, seeing me so silenced and flabbergasted, “come sit next to me here in the shade, out of the heat of the sun. It was not my intent to humiliate you or overwhelm you to test your knowledge. I cannot, however, in my capacity as dean, register you in the Royal College of Medicine until you have satisfied me that you have sufficient command of logic and philosophy.”

  “Very well,” I replied as I took my place beside him, quite crestfallen. “What is your opinion of my capabilities in these matters?”

  “Quite weak, despite your already remarkable knowledge of medicine, thanks to your father. But logic and philosophy being the two breasts by which the milk of knowledge is believed to flow into us, you will never be accepted to the rank of doctor if you haven’t learnt how to suck from these inept teats.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Inept? So you desp
ise them?”

  “Medicus sum et in medicinam solam credo.* As for the mammary glands to which I referred, I hold them to be empty, vain, insipid and scholastic. But this does not mean that I don’t know how to manipulate them. There is no better debater in the Royal College, in the opinion of all, than your devoted—but not humble—servant. However,” he added, “for reasons of courtesy as well as prudence, I concede this point to my royal professors.”

  I was dumbstruck to hear Fogacer bite so fiercely the venerable breast that fed him. So is this how it is? Philosophy is secretly despised by the very people that make such a public display of it? Here I am waiting in the wings to go on stage, wearing such wigs and make-up!

  “Meanwhile,” Fogacer added, “there’s no danger as long as you follow my advice. Today is the twenty-seventh of June and the courses in medicine begin on St Luke’s Day, the eighteenth of October: so I have all the time I need, if you’re willing, to whip you and your brother into shape.”

  It was not for nothing that I’d been raised according to a strict sense of Huguenot economy, and my hair stood on end as I calculated all of the gold and silver coins that I could hear jingling in the background of Fogacer’s apparently disinterested proposition. “I’ll tell you what, Fogacer,” I replied coldly, “Samson and I are younger sons and our resources are thus quite limited. So, as you invited me to do, let’s speak frankly. How much will it cost us to benefit from your lessons in logic and philosophy for the next three months?”

  “Ah, you son of a Huguenot!” laughed Fogacer, raising his diabolical eyebrow, if possible, even higher. “Are you a cheapskate pinchpenny? Do you suspect me of trying to fleece you? You’re wrong, Siorac. My fees are remarkably moderate. I’ll offer the two of you two hours every day of my time and it will cost you a mere two sols a day plus, twice weekly, a meal at the Three Kings inn at which the three of us can enjoy a delicious roast pork for only eight sols. So then, what say you? Dr Saporta will charge you much more than that to take his summer course for new candidates.”