City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  Thus deprived of my brother, my tutor and of Thomassine, I returned to my room quite downcast, where I found the heat—even at night—almost unbearably oppressive. I gazed out of my window at the rising moon and thought that at least she could keep me company—as she had once done for Endymion in his cave—and, naked as I was, hoisted my straw mat on my shoulders and made my way up the staircase to the terrace at the top of the house where the stone floor was still warm from the afternoon sun, but there was at least a cooling breeze. However, my efforts had covered me with sweat, so I returned to my room to splash some water on my body and, may Uncle de Sauveterre forgive me, spray myself with some perfume that Thomassine had given me. Thus refreshed, I returned to the terrace, making more noise in my comings and goings than I would have liked.

  Oh, how beautiful and white Montpellier appeared in the moonlight, with its superb terraces, and how friendly was this silence, for all the noise of the day’s bustle had quieted. No street vendors’ cries, no sounds of boots on the uneven paving stones, no shouts between friends, grinding cartwheels or hoof beats. All were happily and snugly ensconced in their beds behind tightly closed doors. But as moved as I was by the nocturnal beauty of this unique city, my pleasure was incomplete, for I had no one to share it with. My unhappy thoughts were redoubled when I caught sight of the clock tower of Saint-Firmin, which made me think of a needle, which, of course, brought to mind the needle shop and Thomassine, busily occupied, as you may imagine, behind her red velvet bed curtains. And the more I thought about it, the less I liked it, especially since it was with a papist.

  I lay down on my straw mat, clasping my hands behind my neck, and abandoned myself to thoughts of Rondelet’s death and that, in turn, brought back memories of little Hélix, whom I’d loved so tenderly. But I realized that, in the long run, the generous and naive love that she bore me while alive had gradually turned into bitterness, stricken as I was by the belief that her death meant that I would never find such complete satisfaction again.

  “But, by the belly of St Anthony!” I cried out loud, sitting up on my mat. “I refuse to dwell on such melancholy! It’s the mother of all the inclemencies of the body and any good doctor must begin by healing himself!”

  Having said this, I arose, and, naked though I was, walked back and forth on the terrace, and, though my throat was in a knot, I held my head high and, fists on my hips, took up the pose I’d so often seen my father adopt. Which made me feel better, no doubt, but I felt better still when I caught sight of Fontanette, barefoot and in her nightgown, her hair falling about her bare shoulders, standing at the top of the staircase. “Oh, my noble friend,” she gasped, seemingly terrified, but surely not by my nakedness, which she’d seen before. “What strange behaviour! What goings-on in your room and over my head! Are you a madman, that you prance about naked as a babe, sleeping up here like a wild man in Arabia under the moon, with no roof to protect you from the contagions of the air and the pestilence of the night? You’ll catch your death!”

  “Ah, Fontanette!” I breathed, happy to see her in such charming disarray. “The contagions of the night are nothing but vulgar superstition; the night air is as good for you as the air of the day, and much cooler and fortifying if the day has been too hot.”

  “Well, of course I’m just a silly, unreasonable girl, unable to read or write, while you, Monsieur, are already a learned doctor, speaking Latin and reading your enormous books. Nevertheless my mother and grandmother taught me that that the moon is the hares’ sun, and hares are mad as everyone knows who’s watched them hopping around the fields. And where I come from, they say the March moon is mad, and if she’s that crazy can’t she make you so loony as to run around naked on a rooftop instead of sleeping in your room like a good Christian?”

  “Fontanette,” I said jokingly, but with a serious face, “it’s August! And in August the moon isn’t nearly as mad as she is in March; she’s madly in love and dreams only of running amok and seducing all the rascals she pleases. That’s why I’m up here on this roof tonight in my sadness, hoping to accommodate her.”

  And saying this, I went and sat down on the right side of my mat, leaving room on the left side, as if I were expecting a night-time companion.

  “Sweet Jesus!” cried Fontanette. “Is it true you’re plunged in melancholy? Oh God, is it possible that the moon will come down here to caress and be caressed by you?” And so saying, she dropped down on the left side of the mat and placed her plump hand on the covering of the mat to feel it, saying, “But I don’t feel anything!”

  “That’s because the moon has only sent her beams to caress me, but soon she will be here in person, cool and golden, having taken the form of the prettiest girl who was ever seen in Montpellier.”

  At this, Fontanette’s eyes grew wider. “But that’s villainous blasphemy!” she cried, making the sign of the cross. “And satanic magic! With all due respect and friendship,” she cried, “I must flee!”

  I grabbed her arm to restrain her. “Stuff and nonsense,” I said. “You should be ashamed of such silly terrors! The moon is every bit as Christian as you or I! If it were otherwise, would God have hung it up there in His firmament when He created the world? Would He have tolerated all this time a pagan or impious moon, He who can do anything?”

  “Even so,” she said, somewhat reassured, “I don’t think it’s good when the moon comes down and takes over the functions and pleasure of the poor wenches of this world. So if you’re plunged in your melancholy, my noble Monsieur, isn’t there some earthly woman who can comfort you? I’ve heard you’re very much in Thomassine’s good graces…”

  I did not expect this, and was so taken aback by her words that I couldn’t think of a thing to say and just sighed deeply.

  “You’re sighing,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “Did I say something bad? Did I make you angry?”

  “Not at all, Fontanette,” I replied. “I’m looking at the moon,” I added, raising my eyes, “and now I know she won’t come, having found provender elsewhere. So I’ll just sit here alone and naked, rejected by all.”

  “Oh, Monsieur! Don’t say that! You’re loved here. Of course, you’re not as handsome as your brother, Samson, but he’s so dreamy he doesn’t even know he’s here. But here you are, and very much here, lively, funny, saying such clever things, seducing young girls with stories of the moon.”

  “Oh, Fontanette!” I sighed, speaking from the heart, all joking and tricks aside. “I’m not trying to fool you. I love you with great friendship and I have such a great appetite for you, you can’t imagine.”

  “Oh, yes I can!” she cried, her eyes shining in the soft light of the moon. “Of course I can imagine, since I feel the same way! And so violently! Ever since you arrived, I’ve thought of you every night the Devil has made. I toss and turn a thousand times in my sleep, twisting my sheets into knots and making a complete mess of my bed. Holy mother of Heaven, what fevers, what sighs, what disorder!”

  She spoke with such simplicity that I was altogether moved by the naive way she dismantled all her bulwarks and defences. And as tempted as I was to take her in my arms and bed her in the place I’d reserved for the moon, I did not do it—at least not yet—my heart was so rueful at seeing her so defenceless, and regretting having told her such tales that she’d believed without really believing them, good girl that she was, so pretty and prim, her hair falling about her shoulders and her nightgown all askew.

  “Monsieur,” she said in her Montpellier accent, so much more sing-song than our Périgordian dialect, “have you nothing to say?”

  “Fontanette,” I replied softly, taking her hands, “what can I tell you except that there’s a very simple remedy for the sickness from which we both suffer.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “it’s so easy for you to say, being a man and a nobleman. But I’m a chambermaid, as closely watched by Dame Rachel as a field mouse by a falcon, and risk being sent away and, worse, sent away pregnant.”

 
“Oh, as for that,” I whispered, “I know all about certain special herbs and where to put them. A very safe precaution that my father taught me.”

  As I whispered this, my lips were so close to her ear that I gave her lobe a little kiss, and then a second, and then a little nibble that made her laugh. And, laughing, she melted into my arms and offered her neck to my kisses.

  “Oh, Monsieur,” she said, as I laid her down beside me, “what is this? I’m sharing your bed! This is a great sin!”

  “Which you can confess to your priest.”

  “Heavens no! He’ll go straightaway to Dame Rachel to repeat it.”

  “Then tell it to another priest.”

  “But I know no other. Oh, Monsieur, if it weren’t a cardinal sin, I’d love this. But since it is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to!”

  Her hair falling loosely around her pretty face, she kept repeating “don’t want to” more softly with each kiss, until finally, with the help of the moon, her silence and the softness of the night air, she was mine and I was hers.

  Cicero must be wrong when he states “ignoratio rerum futurorum malorum utilior est quam scientia.”‡ For if I’d been able to foresee the terrible consequences that were to devolve onto my poor Fontanette as a result of our embraces, I would have forcefully pushed her from my arms, to which she was attracted—I wouldn’t say like iron filings to a magnet, for the magnetism belonged both to her and to me, and was, for each of us, irresistible, given the bloom of our youth.

  But how could I not have marvelled to have enjoyed this flower in its first burgeoning, and to have had her all to myself at a time when I had to share Thomassine with three or four fat merchants and a canon who was flogging indulgences? Alas, of all the pleasures I’ve enjoyed on this earth, this was to be the briefest, and ended in a way that broke my heart. We were to enjoy this delicious secret relationship for only three months—but I must ask my reader’s forgiveness for not saying any more about it, for even today I cannot even think about what happened without my throat tightening and tears coming to my eyes, given the awful sequel that fate reserved for our lunar love.

  As Fogacer had foreseen, after Rondelet died, Dr Saporta was elected to serve as chancellor of the Royal College of Medicine. Accompanied by Fogacer, I went to see him at the end of September.

  Although he was very well-to-do, Saporta, a Sephardic and a Huguenot, lived more simply than any other physician in the city, lodging in an unremarkable house in the rue du Bras-de-fer, which was so steep that it was known in Montpellier as “the slide”; neither horse nor wagon would have dared attempt it, and so the street would have been very quiet had it not been for a bunch of noisy kids who frolicked there day in, day out on little wooden discs on which they slid from the top of the street to the bottom at considerable risk, for they would frequently crash into a wall, collecting bruises and wounds and leaving their discs in splinters.

  All of this activity made a deafening din in the rue du Bras-de-fer. And this noise, which died down as the urchins went off to their beds, was replaced by another that was even worse, produced by the oaths, quarrels, fights and filthy songs that emanated from a tavern known as—may Christ pardon it!—the Golden Cross, where Montpellier’s worst rabble gathered to drink, gamble, fornicate and brawl the whole night through.

  And so the chancellor of our school lived night and day in the noisy hell of this disreputable place—more ignominious even than the rue des Étuves, where an assembly of harlots held sway—but patiently tolerated all of these incredible goings-on since he was sole owner of No. 32 on the same street, a beautiful tennis court, and wanted to keep a close eye on this establishment, from which he drew a handsome profit.

  Having followed a summer course with Dr Saporta, I’d seen this terrifying regent, though from a distance since his lectures were so well attended, and I’d also caught sight of him from time to time while Fogacer and I were enjoying a game of tennis at his club, which we did partly because my tutor was convinced that one could never enter the good graces of the master unless one brought him his business. At each one of these visits, after a rapid glare from his dark and suspicious eyes at the players, without a single smile or sign of recognition to Fogacer, who bowed obsequiously to him, Dr Saporta, looking impossibly grim, spent his time in discussions with his manager, who, bent double in what appeared to be a permanent bow, accounted in a low and trembling voice for all the monies he’d received.

  When Fogacer had knocked at his door, a long moment elapsed before the sound of footsteps could be heard, then a peephole opened revealing a wrinkled and suspicious eye. “State your business,” growled a rough voice, though whether a man’s or a woman’s I couldn’t tell.

  “My name is Fogacer, and this is my tutee, Pierre de Siorac. The chancellor is expecting us.”

  The peephole closed abruptly and we heard the footsteps heading away again, and again there was a long wait.

  “Fogacer,” I said with a scowl, “can this be the house of a man who is said to be so well-to-do?”

  “Ah, but it is! He is wealthier than the other three professors of the Royal College, Bazin, Feynes and d’Assas, put together. Our Dr Saporta has vineyards, wheat fields, pasturage and mills, not to mention his very profitable tennis court, as well as shares of a merchant marine company, and, to top it off, some very beautiful houses in Montpellier that he rents to noblemen, contenting himself with this humble abode.”

  “Isn’t it a pity that a man of such wealth should live so badly?”

  “Badly? You’re not taking the pleasures of avarice into proper account! Avarice surpasses all the others in pure voluptuousness—including the pleasures you seem to prize so highly!”

  “Well, Saporta certainly can’t be insensitive to those since he’s marrying Typhème.”

  “Capable of love, you mean? I doubt it. All he wants from Typhème is children to whom he can leave his fortune, and nothing else.”

  “How’s that possible! Typhème is so beautiful!”

  “That’s how you see her, Siorac,” said Fogacer, raising his eyebrows and looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “because you’ve made skirts your pantheon, good Huguenot that you are. But for Saporta, who worships lucre, Typhème is nothing more than a girl from a good family who will bring him a handsome dowry and guarantee the perpetuation of his line. So goes the world: everyone has his own idol; for you it’s wenches, for him, gold.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly, “if that’s the way things are, then I pity the poor girl for having to come and live in this hovel with that miser.”

  “Pity her,” cautioned Fogacer, “but don’t go consoling her. He’d roast you alive. But why do I bother? You pay no attention to my advice.”

  And whether he was alluding to my secret commerce with Fontanette—whom he’d warned me about—I couldn’t tell, either from his expression or his tone, and had no time to consider the question, for we heard the footsteps returning and there was a loud noise behind the door of locks being unlocked, bolts unbolted and bars raised, as if we were entering a citadel.

  But if, as my father warned, the only good walls are good men, then the defence of this place was weak and precarious, for once inside, aside from the master of the house, we found only the old woman who had ushered us in, and she was a tiny, dried-up and fabulously wrinkled old prune. No Fontanette here to welcome you in with shining eyes, pretty face and gracious figure… Nothing but this poor old skeleton, flat as my hand, nearly bald, her beady eyes full of mistrust, her upper lip well moustached and her voice as rasping and hoarse as a man’s.

  This personification of Fate showed us into a small room adorned with neither tapestries nor rug to cover a cold floor of old cracked and broken clay tiles, devoid of any furniture other than a table and a few stools, and feebly lit by one small window, covered by a curtain, the houses on the other side of the rue du Bras-de-fer leaning so close over the street that you could have grasped the hand of your neighbour from one window to the other.


  She did not invite, but rather commanded us in her bass voice to be seated, and disappeared, but not before throwing us a nasty, suspicious look as if in her absence we would run off with the table, which, frankly, wasn’t worth stealing.

  The awful hag gone, the very walls of the room seemed so hostile that we sat in silence until the chancellor appeared. Which he did without the pomp or parading that we were accustomed to from Maître Sanche. By contrast, Saporta appeared almost by stealth, quietly slipping sideways into the room as though he were afraid to waste any air by moving too suddenly. Then, keeping the width of the table between us, he stood silently, arms folded, occupied not in looking at me but rather in inspecting me as though he would have liked to use his scalpel to cut up my face and study its fragments under a magnifying glass. I returned his gaze, having never seen him so close up, either during his lectures or at his tennis courts, and found him pretty terrifying.