“They can’t do much now, it’s hard enough to clear the bodies of the dead,” I said. Sforno shucked off his tunic and camicia and lathered himself with the soap. His broad chest was solid and covered with hair, and though I had seen many men unclothed, I turned away.
“It’s best for you to avoid groups of people,” Sforno said. “A crowd can turn murderous.”
“Ten men turn into a community of God,” the Wanderer said.
“There aren’t ten people who would gather together,” I noted. “They fear the plague. Half the city is dead. Signore Sforno, there’s a man I know who needs a doctor. Will you come?”
“I’ll come,” the Wanderer said, yawning. “I need a diversion, and I hear the sound of chariot wheels turning. Moshe, do you think your pretty wife made lamb for dinner?”
“I don’t know what she found at the butcher shop today.” Sforno frowned. “Or if she found any meat. She trades with the other women and the one Hebrew butcher still working.”
“Jews are lucky they have each other to trade with. There’s little food,” I said. “You can comb the whole city and not find three eggs. No one’s coming in from the contado with new food and meat. The markets are deserted. People are hungry.”
“There’ll be problems when plague survivors begin to die of starvation,” Sforno said. He and the Wanderer exchanged a grim look.
“Jews are the scapegoats of the world,” the Wanderer said wearily, his mirth dissipated in an instant. His face seemed to melt like wax held above a flame, and he looked old, impossibly old, centuries old; he looked as if he’d seen more pain and suffering than any man could possibly observe and remain sane. Then his face reassembled itself into its usual ironic lines. “Think what a service we provide for those who must have someone to blame! They ought to thank us while they burn us.”
“Jews aren’t the only scapegoats,” I said. “Witches are blamed and killed. Cathars, too.”
“Cathars? There’s a name I haven’t heard in many turns of the wheel,” the Wanderer boomed. “They might as well have been Jews, for all the kindness they received at the hands of their fellow Christians. Indeed, they were friends to Jews. They lived alongside us in France!”
“Do you know where they came from before that?” I asked.
“They wandered the earth, seeking safe haven, even as we Jews do,” the Wanderer said. “Centuries ago there were Jews among the Cathars, though the Cathars called themselves by other names then. There aren’t many of them left.”
“The ones who are left have secrets,” I said. “And treasures.”
“Don’t we all?” asked the Wanderer. “The Cathars made no secret of their belief that the material world was evil, ruled by an evil God, while heaven and souls were the good God’s domain. They split in two what we Jews believe is one: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.’”
I was uninterested in abstruse matters of philosophy. “We all have secrets, yes, treasures, not necessarily,” I said, then remembered that I, too, had a treasure: Giotto’s panel.
“Depends on how you define treasures,” said the Wanderer, with his sly grin. “There are treasures of the mind and heart, treasures of a life lived so that it means something both to the individual and to the community….”
“Jews have to have portable, countable treasures in the form of gold, precious stones, and a trade,” Sforno said darkly, “for when exile calls us again, as it inevitably does.”
“There’ll always be a new country to flee to,” the Wanderer rejoined.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” Sforno muttered.
“So be it,” the Wanderer said.
Chapter 10
THE NEXT MORNING, I brought Sforno and the Wanderer to Geber’s. I led them up the stairs and through the door that always mysteriously swung open at my arrival. The usual pulsing array of objects littered the tables, with pots boiling and beakers rattling and pink mist tapping against the ceiling and sweet, pungent scents intermingling in the air. Geber stood with his back to us. His shaggy black-and-white head was bent over a large illuminated manuscript with a brown leather binding; a vellum page covered with rose and quatrefoil miniatures peeked out from his elbow. When he turned to face us, he and the Wanderer cried out at the same moment. The next moment, they were hugging and exclaiming and pounding each other on the back.
“My old friend! The last time I saw you, you were shimmying down Montségur in the Languedoc with a treasure on your back!” the Wanderer roared. “You were weeping over the power of Satan and flesh, and railing against the terrible war between good and evil!”
“March 16, 1244, the day after my wife and friends, the other Perfects, were burned alive in a wood-filled stockade. Along with children and infants. ‘Kill them all. God will recognize his own,’ that’s what the Pope’s representative said.” Geber’s narrow, intelligent face contorted into a mask of pain. “I still hear her praying in my dreams, as I know she did in death.”
“Love is seen as heresy by the Church and brings down the bloodiest wrath,” the Wanderer said, squeezing Geber’s slight shoulder with his big hand. At a table by the window, two doves flew against the door to their cage and broke it open, and then they flew around the room, cooing and weaving in and out of the crackling pink fog.
“Was it that the Pope despised our beliefs, or that he coveted our treasure?” Geber asked, bitterly. “The Languedoc was rich and fertile, sparkling with education and tolerance, radiating Cathar ideas out into Flanders and Champagne and München. The Church couldn’t have that. It was never about faith. It was about secular power, as always!”
“You two know each other?” I interjected. The space between them vibrated with old memories and fresh feelings, debated ideas and shared jokes. I was, as always, on the outside, looking in at other people’s tender connections.
“I’ve known—what are you calling yourself these days, my Perfect friend?” the Wanderer asked, with rough affection in his voice.
“Geber.”
The Wanderer laughed. “Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan would be pleased!”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Geber’s face softened and lost some of its anguish. “I’ve expounded some principles which he might not approve of, though I didn’t know him as you did. And you, rogue Wanderer, have you taken a name?”
“I would not put one on; I would not give to others the means to any magic over me,” the Wanderer said seriously, and it was the only time I ever heard him answer a question directly. He said, “Geber, let me introduce you to my good friend, the physician Moshe Sforno.”
“I am honored to meet any of the Wanderer’s friends,” Sforno said, with a serious smile that reminded me of his daughter Rachel when she was most intent upon something.
“Well met, physician. You’ve come at Luca’s request,” Geber said, looking at me.
“He said he had a friend who was sick.” Sforno’s eyes went to Geber’s throat. “I see the plague is upon you.”
“I don’t want you to die,” I said to Geber. “Signore Sforno is an excellent physician!”
Geber shook his thin, ink-stained finger at me. “You take too much upon yourself, boy. I would have spared you the trip here, physico. There is nothing that can be done for me. Though I am greatly heartened to see my old friend!” He squeezed the Wanderer’s arm.
“I should have guessed you were the boy’s teacher!” the Wanderer said. “He comes home bursting with more self-importance than dragging corpses around ought to earn him.”
“I am not self-important!” I objected hotly. “I’m doing honorable work for the city—”
“The world is full of impudent boys, which convinces me that my old beliefs were correct, and evil is equal to good. From what I’ve seen of this particular boy, time won’t be enough to make a dent in his thick head,” Geber said wryly.
“He’ll have enough of it for the attempt to be made,” the Wanderer said, with great mirth. “He is one of those that your people protected?”
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p; “A son from one of those families of whom we were the guardians.” Geber nodded.
“What families? Whose son?” I demanded. “Why did the Cathars protect them? Are you talking about the second race of man? What does it mean to be of the second race?”
“All these questions, as if answers would solve anything.” Geber sighed. “He may be studying with me, but he’s not learning.”
“Answers solve questions!” I said. “I want to know about my family!”
“The right answer creates more questions,” the Wanderer said. He looked at Geber. “I wish I’d known earlier that you were in Florence!”
“The Inquisition burned Cecco d’Ascoli at the stake only twenty years ago,” Geber said. “He was a fine fellow, though he shouldn’t have made a fuss about the star of Bethlehem being a natural event. The priests protect their miracles. They made a big fire and smiled as the flames melted the flesh and fat from his bones. It’s better for alchemists to stay hidden.”
“But I would have liked to spend time with you,” the Wanderer said, sadly, staring at the black spot on Geber’s throat.
“Why don’t you come near the window and let me examine you in the light, Signore Geber,” Sforno said, gently leading Geber over to the window. “I would like to check your pulse and hear your history, and if you’ve some urine in your chamber pot, I’d like to see that.”
“My heart is beating, my history is health until the plague contacted me, and my urine is the stinking piss of men with the Black Death upon them,” Geber grumbled.
Sforno stifled a smile. “Your history is something more complicated than that, if you’re really more than a hundred years old. Is it true that alchemists have discovered an elixir of life?”
“Even as Hermes Trismegistus himself instructed: use the intellect to render oneself immortal,” Geber answered.
“If this elixir was part of the Cathars’ secret knowledge, that would be one reason the Church persecuted your people,” Sforno said. “They see immortality as their domain.”
“Secret knowledge, treasures, ancient artifacts, our friendship with the Sethians; they had many reasons to hate us,” Geber grumbled. He sat on the bench by the window and Sforno bent over him, looking into his eyes and throat. They conversed in low, private voices.
The Wanderer went to Geber’s illuminated manuscript. “In every word shine many lights,” the Wanderer said, running a bulbous index finger over the delicately limned page. Flowers and little animals trembled at his touch. “Do you know what this word is, Luca of the many questions?”
“Pan-ta-rhe-a,” I read haltingly.
“Everything flows,” the Wanderer said, stretching out his thick arms to indicate the whole world, almost bursting the twine that belted his gray lucco over his big gut. “Even your reading. You owe Moshe’s daughter a debt of gratitude, though if her mother discovers what the two of you have been doing, there’ll be trouble. Not that Leah Sforno has anyone to blame but herself; this is what comes of educating women.”
“We’ve been doing nothing,” I said stiffly, though the image of Rachel’s mouth flashed before my eyes. “Rachel is an honorable girl.” I moved to the next table and fingered the pyramid of flat gray stones that lay beside a heap of chestnuts and a row of dried apple cores with faces carved into them. Beside the apple cores was a tiny shriveled head—and I wondered if it was really the head of a small human, as it appeared to be. There was never any telling what I would find lying on one of Geber’s tables. There was always something new and strange, and never the same rare object twice. I wondered where Geber obtained his objects, or if he simply manufactured them in his stills and flasks as he wanted. I asked, “Why did you call Signore Geber ‘perfect’? He doesn’t seem so perfect to me; do you consider him perfect?”
“Who am I to judge another man’s perfection?” The Wanderer smiled, thumbing through the manuscript. The gilded edge of a white vellum page flashed as it stood vertical, then fell flat. “Do I look like the living embodiment of the Sefira of Gevurah, divine judgment?”
“I guess not,” I said, wishing the Wanderer would simply answer my questions, instead of throwing more questions at me like stones that must shatter the glass containers in my head.
“Wrong,” he said promptly. “I’m the living embodiment of Gevurah. I’m the living embodiment of all ten sefirot, the holy emanations or attributes of God, as all men are, each of us formed like Adam Kadmon in the image of God.”
“You speak with formal phrases, like a priest canting,” I said fiercely. “And what do priests know of God? A great master told me that God was laughing at me, and he was right. God, from His great remove, laughs at everything. We know that because something wonderful happens in the midst of something too terrible for words, like a vision of a painting when an atrocity is happening. Then something terrible unfolds in the midst of joy, like the plague killing a man’s beloved wife and children. There’s contradiction everywhere. Remorseless contradiction. In some way, when you subtract everyone’s feelings, it’s funny. Bittersweet, and funny.”
“Finally,” the Wanderer said, staring with admiration writ openly on his big-boned face with its shrewd eyes and full, shaggy beard.
Moshe Sforno came over, shaking his head. “I’m afraid Signore Geber is correct, there’s not much I can do for him. I’m sorry for you, Luca. And for you,” he said to the Wanderer.
“It will be a while yet,” Geber said, straightening his black lucco as he joined us.
“Such a waste.” The Wanderer sighed.
MOST NIGHTS I RETURNED to the Sfornos’ home late. There were so many bodies to bury that we becchini were kept outside the city walls digging graves well past sundown and long after dinner was served. Mrs. Sforno made no secret of not wanting me around, so, after scrubbing off the stink of death in the barn, I crept as though invisible through the house to the kitchen. There I scrounged up a leftover slab of chewy bread and a wedge of soft, strong-smelling cheese or slice of herb-roasted chicken breast. Sometimes there was some flavorful white bean, black cabbage, and old bread crust soup left out in a bowl on the table, or a savory stew of beans and garlic and tomatoes, or a plate of peas cooked with oil and piquant parsley. Mrs. Sforno also made a wonderful soft omelet with artichokes. She was a very good cook, though she followed an arcane set of Hebrew rules for food. I was grateful for whatever she put aside for me. As quickly as possible, I took the food with me and went back to the barn. There I took out Giotto’s panel from its hiding place and beheld it while I wolfed down my meal.
One night I was still hungry after a plate of fresh spinach sautéed in olive oil and I went back into the house for more. I ate in the kitchen, wearing only camicia and hose. By the pale gold light of a lamp on a chest in the foyer, I saw Moshe Sforno coming in from the barn after me. He looked grim and weathered, his beard down on his chest and his shoulders slumped under a mantello that looked huge and black in the shadows.
“Ciao,” I murmured, and he lifted his head and smiled tiredly.
“Do you have a good word for me, Luca? I just told a man that his wife and children were dying of the plague and there was nothing I could do for them. The best advice I could give him was not to catch it from them,” he whispered.
“Your wife made excellent spinach,” I whispered back. There was nothing more I could say; tomorrow I would bury the good folk he had examined today. Sforno waved good night.
“Moshe?” murmured a soft voice. “Caro, come to me.” It was Mrs. Sforno, and her voice was so sweet and sensual as it carried down the stairs that I flushed. Age and weariness fell off Sforno like a discarded cape and he stood a little straighter. He didn’t glance at me; he smiled and hurried up the steps. I was thunderstruck, imagining a woman calling to me like that, her arms soft and warm for my arrival. I knew at once that I must have that kind of sweetness for myself someday, just as, years ago, I had known that I must someday be able to smile Giotto’s smile of knowing acceptance. Life was full of pain, sorrow
, and horror, but a man could handle anything with a call like that awaiting him at the end of the day.
MONTHS WENT BY, and victims of the plague grew fewer. Rosso met me at the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo one morning with a black swelling on his full cheek.
“No, not you.” I was dismayed.
“It makes you wonder; will everyone die? Will man perish from the earth, every last one of us laid out on the ground, our bodies covered with black spots, our own blood on our lips?” He smiled, showing the rotting blue front tooth. “If this plague kills everyone, if everyone dies, the earth will be left empty, without music or laughter or children who play jokes, and what will be the point? We will have loved and labored and constructed in vain.”
“Not everyone will die,” I said. He gave me a keen look.
“No, this plague won’t take you, Bastardo. And for me, it’s not so bad, I’ll join my family at last,” he murmured. “If I know my wife, she’s waiting with ten important chores for me to do in heaven, and a soft embrace when I’ve completed them. My daughter’s hands will be beautiful again, and she’ll have a joke to tell me, some funny tale that Santo Pietro himself whispered in her ear. I can accept what is coming. I welcome it, even. God is good.”
“May it be so for you,” I said, humbled by his surrender. I couldn’t see myself surrendering so easily; I had promised myself I would stand and fight. Nor did I believe in Rosso’s heaven, or a good God for that matter, but if those beliefs comforted Rosso, who had only been kind to me, I was happy for him.
Two days later he didn’t show up for work. I searched until I found him lying on the stoop of a once-prosperous bottega. On the street, two shops were open, and a man even walked past and gazed into the window of one of them. Windows were unshuttered and the bells were pealing again for Mass, not just to warn of the plague. In a sunny autumn of cerulean skies, this city of gray and dun-colored stone palazzi, ancient Greek and Roman statuary, and bridges swept away periodically by the Arno, was taking its first few breaths of new life.
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