The Book of Madness and Cures

by Regina O'Melveny

  Irmina’s fur resembled brown water pouring, bending across stones until it reached the top of her loose chemise. I asked her if I could brush it, to gain her confidence, and she nodded. She closed her eyes as I drew the brush through her fur in careful strokes. I almost thought she would purr. After a little while my father steered me back to our purpose. He recommended that we examine her urine and saliva, and then we would suggest a course of remedy. I touched what I believed to be her shoulder and explained that we wished to help her. She shrank from my hand and pleaded with us to convey her to a cave. A small leather-bound Psalter lay near the toes of her red slippers, which protruded from a bristly layer of darker fur on the tops of her feet beneath the hem of her dress.

  I thought of Santa Caterina of Siena in her white robes and black cloak, praying in her underground stone chapel at night, while in the hospital rooms of Santa Maria della Scala above her, the ill and the mad suffered in their beds. How did she bear it in the half dark, kneeling before the Man of Sorrows after spending all day tending the wounds, the gangrenes, and the invisible festerings? I once visited the little windowless cave of her chapel and unexpectedly found its half light to be like a hand laid upon the heart. Only a candle, a prie-dieu, and two small paintings, the Christ and the Magdalena completely covered in her own hair, occupied the room. But more than anything it was the odor of inevitability in the stone that strangely lifted my heart. One escaped doubt in the tomb. Here the saint found respite, silence, a recess from the sounds of pain, and acceptance.

  After my father pronounced Irmina’s waters barren of happiness, he requested a sample of her spit. When he saw it, he shook his head. “The nine disappointments here originate in her father’s bloodline—discontent in love, in ambition, in beauty, absence of dreams, of wit, of friends, paucity of courage, of perseverance, of spirit. We can’t cure her, my daughter. One of the most important things you’ll learn in the art of physick is the recognition of God’s puzzles or, as some might call them, devil’s knots. He has created someone here who loves animal darkness. We can’t cure her.”

  When my father spoke in this manner, I always felt uneasy and feared that the council might hear of his words. But I also sensed some wisdom turning in him like a wobbly wooden wheel. It rolled along but always seemed about to throw a rim and leave us waylaid. We consoled the parents, and as they were a family of some means, my father suggested that they could acquire land near Bagnoregio, a region reputed to contain many caves. The father received our proposal very badly and shouted at us, “My daughter will never leave this house, do you hear! Leave us alone if you can’t cure her! Charlatans!” The mother wept. As we left I glimpsed Irmina at the window, the curtain of her hair separating at the sill where her yellow sleeve and hand appeared, a clenched paw cuffed with lace.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Sap That Slows the World

  The night before we reached Montpellier, I turned to this letter in unspoken appeal. Give me a hint in correspondence, give me some fresh direction, Papà.

  My dear Gabriella,

  My friend the papermaker has departed Montpellier and now I’m mostly alone. The majority of the professors have also left the city for want of students. After the full moon when I am better (for I’ve been keeping to my room for many days now, gnashing upon my own bitterness and illness, my loss of single-mindedness), I shall also leave for the mountains, which they say have benefits far beyond their waters. The ascent, I hope, will prove salutary. Now I have a chance to test my desire for the solitary life, and yet while alone in my bare room, all I can think about is the fresh loaf of bread, salted butter, and wine that the woman here brings me once a day. Imagine! Not that I expected panoplies of angels, but perhaps some insight into melancholia, the discomfiting routine of folding suffering into a day, the way one folds a very letter. I write and expand upon my notes for The Book of Diseases. Maybe that’s all there is in the end. Papers on a desk. Papers in a volume. Pages turning in the mind, one after another, or scattered by the wind of moths. I think of those great black emperor moths with crescents marked upon their wings, emblems of night. My mother always said when she spied a moth in the house, “Someone is going to die!” My father would answer, “Someone is always going to die!” And if you can imagine, we laughed. Now, what am I saying, my dear? That one must laugh at melancholia?

  14 October 1588

  Your humble father

  We approached the town in the late afternoon, glimpsing the roofs and towers near the coast, though we couldn’t see the Gallic Sea. It was a place that appeared lit not only by sun, but by some dull refraction of light through water, maybe the long, unseen fingers of salt marsh to the south, for I could smell its languid tang. We saw egrets standing on the backs of white horses in a luminous green field, and as we rode closer, four gulls rested motionless, one upon each corner of the clock tower that pointed skyward, along with the steeples of Notre Dame des Tables, Les Généraux, and Saint Denis. My father would’ve delighted in the symmetry of the birds. And Hamish, like me, might have wished to see them lift from the tower, then light on their corners again, lift and alight.

  We passed by walled orchards and lush vineyards, through the archway of the eastern stone gate, and on to the quarter of Saint Firmin the Constant, where the small gray stonework buildings of the university of medicine stood, abandoned.

  We knocked at the heavy wooden door of Dr. Joubert’s address, a plain stone abode. A young man in his thirties emerged and greeted us with enthusiasm, like one who hasn’t conversed with peers in a long while. He wore a mustache rather than a beard and appeared to be in excellent health, of sanguine temperament.

  “Welcome, Dr. Mondini, splendid to meet you and your companions!” he proclaimed. He bowed to me and Olmina, then nodded to Lorenzo and stepped out into the street. “I have the keys here, there are two—this large iron key is for the front door, and the smaller brass ones are for your rooms. I don’t intend to frighten you, but you’ll want to lock the doors at night for safety. You never know when the Huguenots might come round again, seeking to denounce or detain anyone they think is a Catholic.” He looked right and left in the street, though it was completely empty.

  “Thank you, sir, we’ll follow your good advice. As strangers we’re unaccustomed to the ways of your town. But tell me, why do the streets appear so vacant at this early hour?”

  “Ah yes. This quarter once housed over three thousand students, and now, since the university was ransacked”—he paused here, looking down out of deference and then back up at us—“there are fewer than a hundred left. Most of the university’s books and furniture were destroyed by the Huguenots, you know, the French Calvinists, during the religious wars.”

  I’d heard about this but didn’t realize the extent of the ruin.

  “I’m so sorry to hear of it.”

  “Well, best not to speak of it any more,” Dr. Joubert said in a low voice. “You never know who’s listening. And since I myself converted, I must forget the old life.” He hastily changed demeanor, moving with a quick, light step as we approached our lodging in one of several pale gray two-story buildings with dark slate roofs, just down the street. He knocked at a worn wooden door, and a young widow with flaxen hair opened and smiled at us shyly. She had a remarkably fresh complexion and lively blue eyes that contradicted her black mourning dress.

  “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 comple
xion 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 dis criminate. 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.”