by Laurie Sheck
What Venice did she hold inside her mind? The real one where I walked in which one of the few remaining kindergartens had recently been turned into the island’s 231st hotel, or another made of words as much as buildings? In 1850, Gautier wrote of the “four species of blackness” he observed as he moved through a canal at night for the first time: first the water’s oily darkness; then the tempestuous darkness of sky (he arrived in a storm); the black opacity of narrow walls on one side of the canal made briefly erratic by his boat’s reddish light; and finally, on the other side, looming and disappearing at once, the darkness of grilled doors.
I wandered the February streets. Decided I’d look for the doctor, see what I might find on my computer.
All I knew of the doctor was what she’d mentioned in her note—that he was an epilepsy specialist in Venice who also studied her condition. And though she claimed he couldn’t help her, how could I not try to find him? But as I searched the internet, no one in Venice fit that description. I came to believe she was slightly mistaken—the man she had in mind was Dr. Elio Lugaresi, Professor of Neurology, but in Bologna, not Venice. I downloaded his CV:
Birth date: July 1, 1926. Marriage: August 24, 1959.
Children: Alessandra, Nicola.
Editorial Board:
Journal of Sleep Research
Italian Journal of Neurology
Sleep
Membership in Medical and Scientific Societies: Italian Society of Neurology, Associazione Italiana di Medicina del Sonno, Ambassador for Epilepsy for the International League Against Epilepsy, President of the Italian EEG Society, 1969-1972, President of the Italian College of Neurologists, 1996-2000
Etc.
He had published 500 scientific papers in international journals. Was coeditor of: Abnormalities of Sleep in Man (Gaggi, 1968) and Evolution and Prognosis of Epilepsies (Gaggi, 1972).
One of his specialties was Dostoevsky syndrome, a form of epilepsy with ecstatic seizures.
On the last page of the CV, I came to this:
Responsible for the discovery of a hereditary autosomnal dominant disease characterized by loss of sleep.
I was sure this must be the man she meant.
Then:
Current work includes conducting ongoing studies of Agrypnia Excitata: a term that aptly defines a peculiar clinical condition characterized by loss of slow-wave sleep.
Agrypnia Excitata sounded feverish, archaic, almost desperate. By then it was late at night when the sounds and shapes of words most frightened and unnerved me.
I reminded myself she wanted me to find the lost notebook, not the doctor, though I still wondered if the doctor might help her.
I resolved that the next morning I would try to think about the notebook as she asked. Then I turned off my computer, listened to the slowing rain, its gray erasures.
The task was absurd, I knew this. How could I possibly look for a notebook I knew nothing about?—not one page of it, not one hint of its condition or contents—except that it was written by someone in Venice who seemed to be suffering in some way. True, she had hinted at a canal in St. Petersburg, but how could that help? And besides, who knew what kind of fever she was in all those weeks of not sleeping?
Yet I also knew that, viewed from certain angles, I, too, seemed improbable, even absurd: the endless cycles of breakages and silent cracks; the blue sea around each pupil, no eye-whites at all. So how could I judge something on improbability alone?
By this time, I noticed that the devil in Bulgakov’s book also has strange eyes, each a different color, the right one black, the other green. What would he think of mine? I noticed, too, that, being a traveler and historian, Bulgakov’s devil understood there is no such thing as safety, and that all plans are in a certain sense ludicrous, futile, though some, of course, can still be beautiful.
I suppose I believed, in the end, that my task, though ludicrous, was also in its own way beautiful. My searching would enact a kind of faithfulness, a promise made and kept, some sort of striving. I wasn’t sure, but on balance it seemed best to press on. At the worst I would know more of Venice, and maybe of my own mind, my ways of thinking; also maybe more of hers. (I touched the envelope beside me). And when I considered all the minutes, hours, days, I’d “wasted” in my life, as almost anyone does, just hanging around being bored, or complaining, worrying, would doing this be any worse? (Again, I wondered what opinion the devil in Bulgakov’s book might have on the subject. He seemed rather thoughtful, informed.)
After more hunting on the internet I learned that the doctor who lived and worked in Bologna sometimes came to the Venetian Lagoon, to the small island of San Servolo, where there is a conference center and an annual seminar on epilepsy. Still, how would that help me find the notebook? I didn’t know. But “knowing” seemed so little of anything, and myself more and more a stranger to the wisdoms and attitudes of reason.
And then my right ankle broke. Or more precisely, the right talus—that small bone between the calcaneus and the tibia and fibula of the lower leg. Such terms had accompanied me since childhood, and though I tried to find in them some hint of Ambrose’s sweetness, in truth they tasted more of bitterness or the acrid, industrial smell of burnt computers.
I didn’t want to live again within that acrid taint. But what choice did I have?
The first time I broke my talus I was 10. After it was bandaged I looked up “talus” and found it had “an odd humped shape, somewhat like a turtle.” That night I lay awake for many hours marveling at how, concealed within the outer humped shape I was beginning to develop, and with which I met the world—and by which the world largely saw and judged me—there was another hidden hump, and not just within myself but others. That it was normal to possess a small hunched site within the body. I stared at the ceiling with a sensation that felt new to me and strange, but which years later I came to think of as a kind of almost-comfort born of that new knowledge.
But now I looked at my four walls, the rigid lines of my confinement. My ankle was unbruised but swollen. I knew to wrap it in a splint from toes to upper calf. And though I knew that staying immobile is often harmful to the injured body, I also knew my fractures, bred in secret quiet, were different from those in normal bone. Experience had taught me I’d have to stay in my room at least a week, maybe two, before I even tried to go outside.
I already missed the street names I was learning: Calle della Mandola, Calle del Scarliatto, Calle de Riformati. And the fondamente, the bridges, the canals. The ground beneath my feet an odd echo of her voice, her longing, though I reminded myself I knew almost nothing of her at all.
My ankle throbbed. The walls grew dim, then dark. All Venice seemed a world away.
How would I spend my time within that room? My search for the doctor would have to wait, and the lost notebook. Whatever wandering I did would have to take place inside my mind.
Or maybe she would send another letter.
Dear A,
I suspect by now you will have read The Master and Margarita (though maybe you read it years ago before I even mentioned it). Why do I go over and over it in my mind? All these sleepless hours, and I trace the plot again and again, though “plot” I suppose is the wrong word—rather, I move inside the world Bulgakov made, its scents and textures, events, characters, chapters, shifting back and forth through time—many centuries can pass between two chapters.
I find it very beautiful how he begins a new chapter with the words that ended the chapter before it which took place in a completely different era and location. As if he is sewing a thread between the two, a kind of tenderness of mind—subtle, receptive linkages, connections.
It comforts me, this threading. (I wonder if it comforts you.) As if everything were somehow not separate after all.
Even in my sleeplessness I hold the book’s brief outline in my mind. It begins in the 20th century with the devil as a visitor to Moscow, sitting on a bench, conversing with two men of letters. By the end of this first
chapter, the devil has claimed to be a specialist in black magic, a consultant, a historian, the only expert in the world who can authenticate a certain manuscript, and has pulled from his pocket an enormous gold cigarette case while predicting one of the men’s deaths in gory detail. So of course the men are thinking he’s insane or an imposter of some kind, maybe even a spy. In any case, his voice softening as if offering a fairytale, the devil begins to tell Pontius Pilate’s story, “Early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood-red lining…” And as I said, the next chapter begins with the same words—but who is speaking? Is it still the devil or someone else? Who is the narrator of this book? Is there one, or several?
In this second chapter we are no longer in Moscow but Jerusalem, which Bulgakov calls Yershalaim. Pontius Pilate is meeting with Yeshua Ha-Nostri, who will be put to death beside two others, crucified for his subversive acts (though those acts are forms of love).
Over the course of the book the chapters move back and forth between what happens in Yershalaim—Pilate’s torment over his cruel treatment of Ha-Nostri, who he’s sentenced to death yet feels a pained attachment to, and the adventures of the devil in 20th-century Moscow who comes to know the man who calls himself the Master, and his companion Margarita. The Master has written a book about Pontius Pilate and suffers for that book. Burns it, walks out into the cold. Gives up Margarita and his name (though in the end Margarita finds him, helps him to heal, but only partly).
Throughout, there are many strange, fantastical acts. A large cat rides a streetcar, Margarita rubs a magic lotion into her skin. The sky over Moscow blackens with storm clouds and soot from raging fires. In Yershalaim there are also many storms, and when they come Pilate sickens with migraines, even the scent of roses makes him ill.
Underlying all of this are many questions which Bulgakov weaves in and out like the sentences linking his chapters. Among them: what is peace, what is tenderness and care, what is good and evil and can one wholly separate the two? (The devil himself does many kind deeds in this book.)
Of course there is much I have left out. But you see, in my sleeplessness these people come to me and these places. How Margarita comes to feel suffering and joy and deep care for another. How the Master’s burned book somehow endures.
I still picture you in Venice. Like Bulgakov’s threaded sentences, this comforts me.
This not-sleeping still feels strange to me. I suppose I will never get used to it—will just see more and more before my eyes (even now I smell the scent of Pilate’s roses) then slowly, maybe, nothing. I don’t know.
There is so much to come to in this sleeplessness, this silence—so many places I can go, must go—
I am tempted to sign my name, yet for some reason I can’t bring myself to do it. Why did the Master give up his name, why do I?
I think of you somewhere among the many canals of Venice, their many beautiful names—
To this day I don’t remember how that letter came.
But I remember that from the moment I read it, it was as if for a second she was beside me, even as I knew she was an ocean away—even as I didn’t really know her. Not one word had ever passed between us. But in her sleeplessness, she used the word “comfort.” She wrote of questions threading through storm clouds and fires. Of subtle, receptive linkages, connections, and subversive acts that are a form of love. Of a life she would never get used to, yet it was hers.
I once read that our DNA is a series of folds precisely structured for the efficient storage and accessing of information. But that night in my room, her thoughts were like Bulgakov’s tender threading, but through a text I couldn’t see.
Confined as I was to my bed, I kept thinking of how she’d written tenderness of mind—in some sense wasn’t that what I felt for her? As I thought this, I pictured Margarita, alone after The Master’s disappearance, walking through Patriarch’s Park where she finds herself in conversation with a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, is the devil’s representative. Though she’s been desperate, bereft (I touched the letter in my pocket, thought again of the one across the ocean) shortly afterwards she discovers she can fly.
There’s such joy in her flying.
She sails over Moscow’s rooftops, over oil shops and traffic lights, over “rivers of hats” and lit windows, street signs painted with black arrows—she doesn’t have to follow their directions.
I wanted to picture the one across the ocean flying like Margarita. But the thought of her sleeplessness and weakness wouldn’t let me.
If only I wasn’t stuck in my room…if only I didn’t break so easily…if my foot weren’t damaged and bandaged…I could seek out the notebook and the doctor from Bologna, though she’d been adamant he couldn’t be of help.
After a few days, I tried to stand for a few minutes, and glimpsed by mistake my humped back in the mirror. With a rawness that surprised me, I felt a sudden hatred for what I saw.
The longer I stayed inside my room, the more confounding the notions of absence and presence became. In many ways the absence of the one across the ocean seemed a kind of presence. Challenging, accompanying, haunting. Prior wrote of a “Presence which no space can bind.” And I felt nearer to her than when she stood just a few yards away in the office. Still, I understood I didn’t know her. Didn’t feel the air between us as a kind of skin—something I could know or touch—but as an element that held the absence of another and made palpable that absence; only the slightest hint of pulse moved through it.
Yet if one meaning of presence is an influence felt, then how could she be absent? It seemed to me there was a different word I needed, a word I didn’t know. My mind was knotting.
And still I kept the few letters in my pocket. Read them, put them away. Waited for my bones to heal.
Each day of my confinement I learned more about the city I lay in but now missed:
“Venice was viewed in the Romantic and Victorian eras as the embodiment of erasure and decay.”
“During World War I, the city suffered greatly. ‘Bombers from Pola buzz over us nearly every night, dropping bombs for half an hour. Everything that shines is covered. Our gilded angels are dressed in sack-cloth. Our spires are dirty gray.’”
“Every hotel but the Danielis has been turned into a hospital.” This was in 1915.
“For 400 years Venice was the greatest trading power in Europe. Thus, it is just to compare the Republic to a joint-stock company for the exploitation of the East—the board of directors was the Senate, the citizens of Venice the shareholders, and as the majority of senators were men of business, their requirements and beliefs brought forth the regulations which governed all of Venice.”
“Although Titian was born in the Alpine district of Cadore with its rough terrain of gorges and defiles, he left at the age of ten to learn his trade in Venice.”
Again Titian appeared to me in a dream.
“For decades I was one of the most celebrated artists in all of Europe. My work was commissioned by Popes, Emperors, Kings. I soon learned to play one against the other, ingratiated myself, was comfortable with power. Often I worked on a grand scale, gave King Philip just what he wanted. But my late paintings are different—a certain mournfulness in them, a rougher finish. But no one sees this as mostly they’ve been lost, so how can anyone realize who I was?
And for all my maneuverings, nothing could save me from the plague (though some say I died of other causes).
I died just like the others. What swept through my city swept through me.
Thousands upon thousands were struck down, including my dear son, Orazio.
The silence you feel in yourself, surely it isn’t so different from the isolate silences that have plagued so many others over time.
These bolts of red cloth are still beautiful, aren’t they? So much brightness rising and drying in the wind—”
Outside my windowless room, I imagined the lagoon rising red with the legacy of plague.
>
Surely Bulgakov’s devil, Woland, that most polite and gentlemanly historian, would have witnessed the plague through his dark eye and seen a suffering beyond anything I could fathom.
Even though he now wore a well-made suit and spoke calmly while holding his walking stick, what redness still lived behind his eyes?
Titian’s cloth was red and streaming, the sky behind it tinged with faint pink blotches.
And the canals were filling with red water. Even a few cobblestones were staining, and the lower steps of the foot-bridges.
I felt my own walls growing red, then darker, redder.
The entire second chapter of Bulgakov’s book is also drenched in red—first as the “blood-red lining” of Pontius Pilate’s cloak, then the scent of roses that plagues and torments him.
He stands in his garden, helpless before “the hellish trace of roses,” that causes him such pain he’s afraid to turn his neck. Blood pounds in his temples, leaves streaks across his eyes. At the height of the migraine, Caesar’s head floats before him, a red sore on his forehead festering and spoiling. More and more he lives in a red torment, and the longer he feels this the more he’s filled with an overwhelming love that baffles and distresses him for the prisoner, Ha-Nostri, who he’s condemned to death—the one who wears a light blue chiton and a white bandage on his head—while the sight of Caesar conjures only revulsion.
What Pilate knows but can’t quite let himself know is that Ha-Nostri has shown a deep tenderness toward him, an uncanny understanding.
Once, when Ha-Nostri is brought before him, he refers clearly to the procurator’s pain. (But how can he possibly know this about me, the procurator wonders, then enquires if perhaps he is a doctor.) Ha-Nostri continues, “You are too isolated. Your life is impoverished,” then points out that his only earthly attachment is to his dog. “But how can you know I am thinking of calling my dog?”, and the prisoner replies, “That’s very simple…you wave your hand in the air as if you are petting something, and your lips…”
