by Basu, Kanal
The play of light on their faces made them seem both awake and asleep – drooping like a field of poppy. Antonio watched their sculpted foreheads, bone-ivory teeth and quivering nostrils. A head brushed his legs. Skipping over the mass of limbs, he tried to spot known marks of blemish – an angry rash or a ripe ulcer, an ugly abscess. It must be there, he thought, hiding under the loin cloth, the old fox.
“They die like flies; the ocean bed must look like a Chinese graveyard!”
“What do they die of?”
The quartermaster rolled his eyes. “Everything. Burning stomachs and feeble bones, rotten lungs and sick brains.”
“And syphilis?”
In the years he had spent on the China run, there had been just a few cases of the pox, too few for him to remember, the quartermaster said. “They die from what’s in and over the belly, not under it!” He let out a laugh. “For that you’ve got to go to the Carreira do Brasil, taste the dark honey!”
A ship full of opium but no syphilis! Antonio marveled as he rode back on the muletta. The pox was the disease of sailors, he had learned at the Faculdade. Like fine Madeira wine carried by fleets of clippers, it had spread from port to port, from the New World to the old and back. None could resist it, least of all the sailors and their shore wives. In half a mind to dismiss the quartermaster, he raised the matter with the talkative assistant.
“Those from Goa and Aden do go down to the pox and raise a scare among Baixa’s brothel owners. No captain wants them back for fear of an epidemic. The Chinaman gives us trouble over gambling and opium, but not the pox.”
No syphilis! Antonio sensed the veil lifting. The Yellow Emperor … His laws of medicine are older than our oldest ancestors. … Did they include the miracle of a cure, a secret recipe that resisted infection, capable of stopping the pustules from infesting the body like wild weed? Is this the supreme quackery that the baby-faced Scot had spoken about?
Antonio Maria spent the next few days stirred up and restless. A Chinese cure for syphilis! Four hundred years of shame erased by the miracle of the opium sod! He could imagine Dr. Martin’s eyes twinkling, and the relief among fellow doctors. And his father? There’s no hope for him. The pox had gone beyond simply scarring his skin, it had ruined his organs and nerves. He was no longer the father he knew, but a demented soul capable of causing grave harm to himself and others. It was better that he should die, end his suffering and that of Rosa Escobar.
What if he asked loyal Ricardo for his help in reaching the China coast? His friend would probably show his dismay at first. “Why China?” He’d suggest the Biblioteca Nacional instead. Antonio imagined him arguing: “The grand libraries of Florence and Paris, London and Heidelberg contain all that’s known to mankind. We Europeans know as much as there is to know about the yellow race, more than they know about themselves!”
Reaching Cabo São Vicente on the anniversary of his mother’s death, Antonio found the cottage empty. For the first time in years, he hadn’t received an invitation from his father and wondered if he still remembered the occasion. On arrival he found the house in perfect order. Things had been moved back from the parlor, and rearranged with care. There was no sign of the medicine cabinet full of jars and ointment pots. The table had been set for tea, and a small fire burned in the grate. He called for Rosa but there was no answer. Running up the stairs he found his room empty, the windows shut and curtains drawn. Where has she taken him? He couldn’t imagine his father leaving the house by himself and a million thoughts raced through his mind. She might’ve forced him out to visit her favorite quack. They must be torturing him now with enemas or singeing his skin with hot coals, bloodletting even, in the hope of draining the poison. Maybe she has passed him off to a hospice, to die in the care of nuns. A noise made him rush out into the backyard, scattering a flock of birds.
Antonio roamed among the cedars. The evergreens loomed high above the grounds covered with mature cones, crunching under his feet. A drizzle had wetted the leaves, and made them glow in the fading light. His father sat in an armchair under a tree, dressed in a woollen smock like a priest’s habit. The rash had cleared and his face was clean, except for a dark spot between the eyes beneath his bald head. Antonio approached his father with caution. Will he know who I am? Is he well enough to be outdoors? His father smiled and made a sign for him to come closer and sit on a stool beside him.
Will he ask me to examine him? Observing him closely, Antonio prepared to tell him the cruel truth about the disappearance of outward signs, that it didn’t indicate a recovery from the disease. He might not know that he’s still in danger. …
“Do you remember the pranks we played on the night of São João?” His father asked him, and feigned raising a hammer to hit someone on the head.
Antonio was taken aback by the question, but his face lit up. He remembered the wild evening that had followed the parade for John the Baptist at Porto’s festa that he had visited as a child. His father carried him on his shoulders as they jostled with the crowds in the narrow and winding lanes, blowing whistles, singing songs and hitting people on their heads with stalks of wild garlic and leeks following a centuries-old pagan custom.
“You were too young to know it was only a prank,” his father mused.
Even to this day, Antonio could remember his panic watching the revellers as they pretended to scream in pain when he hit them – a young girl who was barely older than he was, a mulatto from the dancing band, and a dwarf who had dressed up as St. John, holding up a cross that was twice his size.
“I wanted you to be happy like everyone else and bought you a hammer made of soft dough.”
“And you made me hit you with it, even though I didn’t want to.” Antonio recalled bursting into tears seeing his father slumped on the ground pretending to be dead.
His father spoke again. “That’s when I knew you’d become a doctor.”
Surprised, Antonio kept silent.
“You suffered at the pain of others, just as a doctor suffers for his patients, suffers more than them.” He rose from the chair, his body straining from the effort, but he refused Antonio’s help and hobbled over the slippery cones, continuing to speak in a calm voice. “I knew you’d be different and your friends might not know who you really are, that you’d stop at nothing to cure suffering, that you’d never give up.”
He followed his father back to the cottage. Stopping to rest in a clearing, the smell of burning logs reached them, and they caught sight of Rosa hurrying in through the door with her shopping basket. His father held on to his arm and spoke just as firmly as he would when Antonio was no more than a child, “But I want you to promise not to come here and see me die.”
Antonio shook his head vigorously. “You are my patient, and I can’t abandon you.”
“No, Tino, I am just your father. I am a doctor and I know I’m dying.” His father released his arm and kept walking. “It doesn’t matter which stage of syphilis it is. What matters is that one prepares to die.” He glanced sidelong at Antonio, “If you come to see me, I’d want to get better, to recover even and be the father I was. I’d want to go hunting with you, do all the things I did when your mama was alive. I’d fight the disease, knowing that I couldn’t win. I’d hope I could become a doctor again.”
“Maybe there’d be a reason to hope if …”
“No.” His father stopped him. “You shouldn’t make me suffer any more by tempting me to keep on living. You must go back and do what’s best for your patients, do whatever you can to help them.”
His father clapped his hands to scatter the birds pecking in the garden shrubs, bringing Rosa out of the kitchen. Entering the parlor, they smelled cinnamon cookies and his father smiled broadly at Antonio, “Ah! Just what your mama would’ve made if she knew her Tino was coming.”
He sat with the two of them drinking tea, barely listening as they talked. The elderly doctor seemed to be in high spirits, praising Rosa for the sweet and crunchy raivas and making her b
lush. Shadows had lengthened over their cottage, and it was time to light an oil lamp and hang it from the ceiling. Antonio saw his father’s hand shake as he turned the wick, saw his eyes light up with pain as the glass fount slipped from his fingers and went crashing down on the floor.
So this is the last I’ll see of him. … When the sickness returns, he’d become mad again, unable to recognize his Tino. He might become blind, or bedridden with paralysis. He might change his mind and look for me, unable to utter my name. This could be the last meal they’d share together, he thought, helping Rosa put away the shards, the very last evening with his father.
Antonio left the table and ran up to his room, curled up on his bed and filled the house with the sound of his sobbing.
Returning to Lisbon, Antonio visited Ricardo at his quinta determined to tell him all about his remarkable discovery, about Bom Jesus, the captain’s ulcers and Chinese sailors who seemed to be miraculously free of the pox. His friend was in a jolly mood, having convinced the star cavaleiros of Lisbon to ride one of his Lusitano horses during the annual bullfights. Sitting under the shade of mature trees and drinking their favorite sparkling wine made from local grapes, the two friends were joined by Clara and Ricardo’s little sister Arees. They chatted all morning till it was time for Clara to leave them for her rounds of the local markets. When Antonio finally brought up the curious case of Bom Jesus and its healthy sailors, Arees threw him the challenge he had least expected. A rebel among horse breeders, she was her brother’s favorite despite being his very opposite – in looks and in taste; the sole republican in her royalist family, who was just as fond of arguing as Ricardo was fond of stunning the ladies at the dance halls – a rebel hard to ignore given her exquisite form.
“How do we know that syphilis isn’t in all of us, a sleeping giant waiting to be roused?” Knowing her strange views about most things, Ricardo ignored her question, but it silenced Antonio.
“Perhaps it’s no different to love, simply waiting to be felt!” Arees threw him a teasing look, as he kept on drinking his wine.
“My brother only feels love for horses, which can’t have syphilis because they aren’t allowed to mate till they’re old or crippled!” Ricardo grinned at his sister’s obvious ignorance of his favorite animal.
Antonio thought he’d tell her about the Berber women claimed by Alfama’s brothel owners to be immune to the pox even though “they’ve slept with a hundred rotten sailors,” then stopped himself. The Arees that he met infrequently at her favorite haunts – smoky cafés full of rebels and poets – might tease him in public for being “the doctor who was brave enough to risk the fate of his patients.”
He wished he could confide in Arees, have her on his side and rely on her razor-sharp wit during his arguments with Ricardo. She was the only one he knew who wasn’t in awe of the brilliant Dr. Maria, who made him feel ignorant as she chattered on about Voltaire and Rousseau and recited poetry that made no sense. He had found it hard to diagnose her symptoms: whether she teased him on purpose, or made a clever ploy to trap him with her arguments.
“Even if it did reside in us, it’d still need curing.” This time, he decided to accept her bait.
“But what if it was immortal?” She gave Antonio a playful look, drawing attention to the mocking lips that she parted to let out thoughtful rings of smoke.
Immortal? Did she mean a recurring infection? She smiled seeing the confused look on his face. “Just like our royals here. What if it was cured then came back under a different name, with a suffering just as unbearable; a pain that couldn’t be treated while the patient was living? What if syphilis is the price we must pay to be alive?”
Antonio wondered why they always ended up arguing – he and Arees – when half of Lisbon expected them to get married. Ricardo was keen too, he knew for a fact, putting up a merry face and playing along with Tino’s indiscretions, hoping all the while that his wayward friend would settle down finally with his sister after he’d had his fill of nurses and tramps.
“Death is the price for getting the pox,” Antonio said glumly, wishing he hadn’t fallen for Arees’s bait.
“And pox is the price one pays for rebelling and to be free”–she nudged Ricardo–“the very thought of which makes my brother weak.”
“Rebelling?” Ricardo frowned, unable to follow.
“Just as Syphilus, the poor shepherd, was punished with pox by Apollo for his defiance, and gave the disease its name.” She raised her glass to toast “cruel, fickle and reckless syphilis,” then read the despair in Antonio’s eyes and called for truce, closing her arguments with an olive branch: “Let’s hope our blessed doctors can save us from our gods and cure us of heartaches too.”
Ricardo surprised him when he returned to the subject of pox, riding the mustard fields later in the afternoon. The two had exhausted their mounts, trudging through the soggy land. Peasants dredged channels, crisscrossing the fields, to drain the water and revive the shoots that had drowned in the untimely rains. Their noisy calls distracted Antonio. He felt ready to argue with his friend no matter what objections were raised by him.
“The Chinese know a secret cure for pox, and I must go to them to find it.”
“All right, Tino,” Ricardo replied, when he had had time to digest his friend’s words. “But first you must get married.”
“Marry! Marry who?” Antonio thought Ricardo was pulling his leg. “Marry and be sorry?” He recited the phrase common among bachelors.
“You’ll be sorry later if you don’t. Who’ll want to give you their daughter if they know about your father?”
“What does my poor father have to do with …”
“Like father like son, they’d say. As good a doctor as his father, and as rotten as him.” Ricardo made a grim face. “Once people find out about him, you’ll no longer be the most eligible bachelor in Lisbon.” They stopped under a tall baobab tree, brought by Ricardo’s grandfather from Madagascar, where he was rumored to have been a slaving baron. Its trunk had swollen with rainwater, and Ricardo tapped it with his whip as if expecting it to break and drench them in a fountain.
He’s in a hurry to marry me off to Arees. How clever of him, trying to infect me with the shame of pox. …
“You must marry someone you’re familiar with, from a family that knows you well. Those who can vouch not only for your talent but also your soundness to produce healthy babies and lead a long married life,” Ricardo announced, putting on a serious face.
He’s ready to vouch for me to his little sister!
“Maybe your wife can go with you to China. She can save your stomach from their ghastly treats!”
Maybe my wife will stop me from going! Antonio smiled to himself. That’s what Rogue Ricardo thinks. Married men will do anything to please their wives. Once married, I’ll forget about China.
“You couldn’t simply disappear like your father, could you? What would your friends think? Your fellow doctors and nurses? And the matron? After marrying, you can go on a long holiday to somewhere strange like China. There you can do your business …” Ricardo smirked. “I mean the business with your wife and your business with pox.”
Does he know the way it is with me and Arees? Antonio wondered if he should confide in his best friend about his sister, how they’d stood on the brink of a courtship for months, whether he should tell Ricardo what he truly felt about her, the fact that he was drawn to Arees but confused by her ways. He didn’t know what she truly felt about him, if she took him to be no more than her brother’s friend. He hadn’t had too many arguments with her when she’d come to see him at the All Saints and awaited her turn like a patient. She’d met him in his chamber with her gift – a volume of Voltaire’s Candide – then played the doctor, holding the monaural stethoscope to Antonio’s chest and listening to him breathing through the ivory earpiece. She had made fun of his surgical box when he visited her back at the Nicola. “Behold! Dr. Maria’s forceps could rid us of the House of ‘Bragança!
’” Her friends were plainly suspicious of him, he could see, perplexed at their extraordinary mismatch. Ricardo would know certainly, by the way he looked at her when she blew smoke through her fine nostrils or when she pranced about the room in her anarchist’s black, that his practical mind was trying hard to solve the problem of Arees, the dreamer.
“Maybe the one I know will wait till I’ve returned. Maybe she won’t worry about my reputation or that of my father.” Antonio looked up at the tall baobab reputed to live for five thousand years. His friend patted his horse and turned the animal around to make their way back.
“You can try, but I must warn you about China, that you may come back a different man.”
Antonio laughed as he rode along. “You mean come back with a Manchu pigtail and eyes like sardines?”
“You may no longer know who you are, even your friends may avoid you like a stranger.”
“Even a certain horsebreeder, the rogue who eats like four men and dances like a deer?”
Ricardo sighed. “I don’t know, Tino … all I know is no one returns from China smelling of Parfum de Grasse!”
Later at night the two sat drinking, after Clara had left to put the children to bed. The sound of Arees playing her viola came from the garden’s tree house, aching but full of inner harmonies. Is it the sound of love that’s waiting to be felt? Antonio wondered. The sound she makes when that love is near? His friend sat quietly, having argued all evening with his sister over royals and republicans, over the merits of a “French Revolution” to upturn their Christian kingdom won ten centuries ago from the Moors.
“You’ll miss it all if you go now,” Ricardo seemed sad at Antonio’s plans.
“You mean miss the grand opening?” Antonio thought Ricardo was talking about Campo Pequeno, the new bullring that was due to open soon.
“No, the assassination of the king.” He sighed, then looked away toward the tree house. “I know why you’re going. It isn’t the Chinese cure you’re after. It has nothing to do with treating your father. You are too good a doctor not to know that he’ll die soon. You’re going away because you can’t bear to see him die.”
