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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Edizioni E/O
This edition published in arrangement with Grandi & Associati
First publication 2015 by Europa Editions
Translation by Katherine Gregor
Original Title: La pietra per gli occhi. Venetia 1106 d.C.
Translation copyright © 2015 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
Cover photo by Franco Gatti
ISBN 9781609452667
Roberto Tiraboschi
THE EYE STONE
Translated from the Italian
by Katherine Gregor
To my friends
“Se pareba boves,
alba pratalia araba
et albo versorio teneba
et negro semen seminaba.”
(He drove the oxen by himself,
Tilling a white field
Holding a white plow
Sowing black seed.)
8TH–9TH CENTURY VERONESE RIDDLE
“No light, but rather darkness visible.”
—JOHN MILTON
I.
BOBBIO ABBEY
I saw a shadow teetering atop one of the towers. It was mumbling a prayer as it swayed over the abyss, against a night sky black as tar. A winter’s night in the year of Our Lord 1106.
The bells had just summoned the monks to Lauds. Ademaro was walking through the cloisters, his head down to protect himself against the icy wind that eddied beneath his habit. Every so often, he glanced at his brothers as they advanced in single file, and searched for Edgardo, whom he had not seen join them. Perhaps he was already inside the church.
Eighty-six prayers. Thirteen for the Blessed Virgin Mary, thirteen for the day, thirty for the living, and thirty more for the dead.
Edgardo had not arrived yet, which was puzzling, since he risked a severe punishment of twenty lashes. An icy whirlwind penetrated the slits in the aisle, raising a cloud of dust. The monks bent double in the pews, withdrawing their heads into their hoods like frightened tortoises.
After Lauds, Ademaro left his brothers, who were on their way to the refectory, and climbed the stairs to the library scriptorium, above the chapter house. It sometimes happened that Edgardo, seized by a kind of frenzy, would spend the night stooped over his parchment, finishing a copying task.
It was still dark, and Ademaro groped his way up, supporting himself against the stone wall of the staircase. His frozen fingers had turned blue. In the library, covered in books and manuscripts, the outlines of the lecterns looked like the petrified remains of a forest ravaged by ice. He walked into the scriptorium. It was deserted. He was about to leave when, next to one of the lecterns, he noticed sheets of parchment scattered on the floor, as though blown there by a gust of wind. At the end of the hall, the tiny door leading to the library tower was open, something which never happened. Nobody ever went up there. He approached and looked up the winding staircase that led to the top. A soft lament, like a litany, came from above. He started to climb the narrow stone steps. The moaning, something between a prayer and a sob, grew louder.
When he reached the bastion, he glimpsed the outline, wrapped in the night mist, of a shapeless mass swaying on the parapet like the branch of a tree shaken by the wind, and emitting a low, animal lament. He lunged toward the shadow and hugged it by the legs.
“Brother, stop! For the love of God, stop!”
The man turned, and in the darkness Ademaro recognized Edgardo.
“May God forgive you, Edgardo. Come. Hold onto me.”
Edgardo dropped into his arms, exhausted and drained of all strength.
“My God, what were you thinking?”
Edgardo looked pale and was having trouble breathing.
“What happened to you? Why . . . ?”
In whom could he confide, if not in Ademaro, his only friend? They had grown up together at Bobbio Abbey. All those endless days spent hunched over manuscripts, studying, then the long apprenticeship under the tutelage of the oldest master copyist. Only Ademaro would understand his torment.
When, at dawn on that autumn day in the year of Our Lord 1081, they snatched him from his mother’s belly and his father, proud of having sired a son, lifted him, still covered in blood, toward the sky, no one noticed that his body was as crooked as the root of a sick olive tree. Together with the other noblemen of the county, the family feasted for three days to celebrate the firstborn, Edgardo d’Arduino, heir to the seigniory.
As he was growing up, however, everyone quickly realized that Edgardo would never become the knight his father hoped for. A rounded, graceful hump on the breastbone and a deformed pelvis that did not quite fit the right leg gave him a skipping, pendulous gait that was more appropriate to a jester than to a knight. Out of deference to his noble origins, he was nicknamed Edgardo the Crooked, instead of just being called the Cripple.
At fourteen, he expressed the wish to retire to Bobbio Abbey as a cleric, in order to devote himself to studying and writing, a decision that made his father happy and relieved not to have to bear the sight of the little monster any longer.
For seven years, he studied the art of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, taught by Benedictine monks, and applied himself to the art of copying.
Edgardo thought this would be his destiny for the rest of his life. God had deprived him of a strong, well-proportioned body but given him a steady hand and sharp eyesight. So why had He abandoned him now?
“I don’t want to live anymore, Ademaro. My eyes . . . ” he touched his eyelids, “I can’t see anymore. I can’t make out letters and words, everything is blurred. I’m going blind.”
Ademaro hugged him.
“You’re probably tired,” he said, trying to cheer him up. “You’ve been working on the copy of De Consolazione Philosophiae for months without a day’s respite. The waxed canvas over the scriptorium windows only lets in a pale light that’s tiring to the eyes . . . ”
“No, I started getting the first signs a few months ago, and recently they’ve become worse. I can’t manage more than three or four pages a day and even that’s a great effort, whereas before I never did fewer than twelve. Everything I’ve built over years of study and hard work is disappearing. There’s nothing else I can do except copy, copy and copy. Only then does my life acquire a meaning. I’m happy only when I’m bent over a parchment, quill in my hand, surrounded by the pungent smell of goatskin and ink.” He drew his face closer to his friend’s and stared at him. “What can I do with this crippled body if I can’t copy or read? It’s pointless carrying on living.”
“Calm yourself, I beg you. There must be a way to stop this disease that’s eating away at your eyes. I know there are ointments that can restore the sight.”
“Our herbalist brother has given me a balm I rubbed on my eyes for days on end, but there‘s been no improvement.”
They leaned against the crenellated parapet to shelter from the wind. Edgardo’s face had a deadly pallor.
“I always thought that Our Lord chose to give me a cripple’s body in order to distract me from the vanity of the world, and thus show me the path to glorifying Him by passing on the written words of wise men and poets to mankind. Now if my eyes fail, my life has no more meaning, no mo
re purpose. A copyist with no eyes is a joke on God’s part. What sin have I committed to provoke Our Lord’s wrath and deserve such a terrible punishment? God cannot be so cruel.”
“Don’t blaspheme, Edgardo,” said Ademaro. “Everything has a reason.”
“Then tell me what it is,” Edgardo implored.
Ademaro knew the love and self-denial with which Edgardo devoted himself to copying. Although he was only twenty-five, he was considered a master among the Bobbio copyists for the precision of his lines, the quality of his lettering, his fidelity to the text, and his ability to memorize the pericope, that part of the text that could be learned by heart, increasing the scribe’s speed at transcribing. Ademaro would have liked to find a clear and easy answer to boost his friend’s faith. However, all he could say, in a faint voice, was, “The ways of Our Lord are unfathomable.”
“I cannot accept that,” Edgardo shouted in despair. “I don’t believe God would punish me like this. If I have to be blind, then it’s better to die.”
Ademaro put a hand over his mouth to silence him.
“Enough. Be quiet. There’s always a light at the end of even the darkest tunnel. Listen to me . . . ” He hesitated before continuing. “I don’t know if I’m right in telling you this . . . I don’t want to give you false hopes . . . ”
“I beg you, tell me.”
“Some time ago, during one of my trips in search of manuscripts for the library, I met a merchant who traded with the Orient. He said that a traveler from Alexandria in Egypt had told him he’d seen with his very eyes, in the library there, elderly wise men who used a stone, clear as water and transparent as air, to help them read. He said they used it precisely to heal eye diseases caused by old age.”
“A stone for the eyes?” asked Edgardo, anxious to know more. “Is it some kind of amulet? Or a substance to take with medicine?”
“I don’t know any more than that. At the time, I didn’t think to ask more about it. It sounded like one of those absurd daydreams made up just for fun by travelers from faraway countries.”
“And what if it’s true? What if the eye stone really exists?”
Ademaro fell silent. The seed of hope had wormed its way into his friend’s mind and would now never cease to torment him.
Edgardo insisted. “Do you think a stone that restores eyesight really exists? Have you ever read anything about it in any treatise?”
“Don’t delude yourself.”
“I am not deluding myself but I don’t see any other way, don’t you understand? I’d do anything to continue to see.” He grasped at his friend’s habit. “Ademaro, tell me where this merchant lives.”
Ademaro rubbed his face.
“I must go to collect some manuscripts from the Abbey of San Giorgio soon. His shop is nearby.”
Edgardo did not hesitate. “Take me with you.”
“I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing.”
“I beg you, in the name of our friendship.” Edgardo sought his hand and gave it a powerful squeeze.
Ademaro bowed his head. He could not deny hope to a friend.
“I’ll tell the abbot I need help to choose which manuscripts to buy. And you have a lot of experience.”
“It’s a good excuse.”
“I think it’ll be a fruitless attempt,” Ademaro added with severity.
Edgardo hugged him. “Let God decide. Is it far to the Abbey of San Giorgio?”
Ademaro’s voice grew deeper, softer, but also more uncertain, as though remembering a dream he had had as a boy.
“Two days from here, along the coast of our sea, where several rivers flow together and interweave in an inextricable labyrinth of basins and canals, lakes and pools, a city rises, built on water. Its inhabitants move about only on boats and ride the waves faster than galloping horses. They know the names of all the fish in the ocean, they can govern the winds and are not afraid to push their ships beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The name of this city is Venetia.”
II.
MEDOACUS MAIOR
He awoke, hit in the face by the rays of scarlet light peering through the branches of the birches along the bank. Edgardo opened his eyes and saw Ademaro sitting in the bow, examining the sky. He looked around, trying to remember where he was. For years, he had woken in the same place, surrounded by the gray stones of his cell, wrapped in the stench of dank straw that covered the floor. He breathed in deeply the humid river air and felt a shudder of pleasure, as though conscious of having a body for the first time.
Illumined by a red reflection that colored the surface of the river, the sandolo* glided silently across the water. They had been sailing since Terce, following the course of Medoacus Maior until they had lost track of time.
“Does sunset in this region always have such fiery colors?” Edgardo asked.
Ademaro continued examining the sky. “I’ve never seen such a display. It’s as though the sun’s burst.”
The boatman bent forward. His oar cut through the water without a splash, like a blade.
“There’s a fire,” he said, sounding weary. “One of the districts is being destroyed by fire. You’ll see it soon, more or less at the last river bend.”
Transported by the current and surrounded by purple-red streaks, they were sailing downstream toward unknown places. A sense of anxiety crept into the initial feeling of pleasant exhilaration. Edgardo had never before left Bobbio Abbey. This was his first journey. His curiosity about visiting unknown lands was mixed with disorientation and the sense of being on the brink of a new world. Fortunately, Ademaro, whom he trusted wholeheartedly, was with him. He had always envied his confident demeanor, his balanced thinking, his sturdy, grounded body, and especially his absolute faith in God’s will.
The sandolo increased its speed, swept along by a rapid. Pieces of white bark, blown from the beeches by the dry wind, fell on the water like snowflakes. The riverbed grew wider and the despairing shrieks of seagulls reached them from the horizon. A gust of torrid air filled their lungs and their eyes blurred with tears. The monks withdrew their heads into their hoods and the boatman bent forward like a blade of straw licked by the flame of a torch. The vegetation grew scarcer and the riverbanks more distant. As the boat advanced, the waters of the Medoacus started to lose their clarity and became contaminated with putrid, muddy trails followed by floating lumps of green algae. The river, with its cortege of trees, had vanished and the sandolo was suddenly surrounded by an endless expanse of grainy, gelatinous liquid with metallic gleams, still and without ripples, which gave off a stench of putrefying flesh.
Scattered around, you could see, peering through the surface of the water, tongues of soft, muddy soil, covered in shells and fragments of crustaceans, and crisscrossed by natural canals. The banks, which were more compact, were overrun by sparse blades of rough, yellow grass. In the middle of the tiny islands, where the action of the salt water was less strong, there was a proliferation of veritable walls of rushes and canes interwoven like an impenetrable canvas.
As the boat advanced, the sky, more purple now, drew closer, and the air became difficult to breathe.
After several turns, they came out into an open space where you could see a deep red glow on the horizon.
The boatman lifted his oar and pointed into the distance. “There’s the fire.”
“The whole city’s burning!” said Ademaro.
“No, it’s up north,” said the boatman. “Perhaps an island in the muddy sea.”
Edgardo leaned cautiously toward the bow. “It’s like reaching the gates of Hell,” he said.
The boatman gave an amused sneer. “It’s no Hell, it’s Venetia. Our houses are all made of timber. The soil is too soft and treacherous to support stone. So all it takes is for a spark to fly through the air and everything catches fire, and if the wind is against us then the whole city is swept away. It’s
already happened many times. Don’t worry, though, we’ll keep our distance. We’re following the Vigano canal and going around Spinalunga, so we’ll come in through the back. I don’t want two monks in Hell on my conscience . . . ” He gave a sharp, sobbing laugh that sounded at odds with his mastiff-like body.
With one stroke of the oar he swung the boat south. Edgardo let himself fall to the floor. The bones in his legs were hurting. He lay down, cradled by the rustling sound of the sparse grass scratching the keel.
They moved forward in a world that was suspended and unreal, in a silence broken only by the distant crackling of the fire. Daylight was rapidly fading and the purple of the sunset blended with the cinnabar glow of the fire. To the east, like a mirage, a thick, luxuriant forest covering a large, protruding island suddenly appeared, and you could see other signs of thriving vegetation in the distance.
They were going along a narrow canal when they hit something with a jolt. The sandolo rocked violently and Ademaro grabbed hold of his friend in order to avoid falling into the water.
“A canker on you—what the devil have we hit?”
The boatman pulled out the oar and they all leaned over the edge to examine the surface. In the shadow of the rushes, Edgardo saw a dark mass emerging in front of the bow. With the help of the oar, the boatman tried to push away the obstacle. It was a shiny, slippery substance of an undefined gray. It looked like the back of a large animal, a cow, perhaps. Shells and crabs were clinging to the fur, their feast forming a living, swarming carpet. He pushed again with the oar but the mass, perhaps jammed in the riverbed, would not budge. Edgardo took the other oar and tried to lever the animal, which finally turned on its side with an eerie sucking sound.
“Merciful God!” said Edgardo.
Ademaro leaned forward. “It’s disgusting.”
Before them, legs up in the air, a cow floated, its belly full of air like a goatskin. Instead of udders, it had a second head sprouting from its intestines. It was a muzzle complete with open mouth, hollow eye sockets and a nose eaten by fish.
The Eye Stone Page 1