“You and your Romans,” sighed Giuditta. “You better get ready to meet one now—a live one. Here comes the proprietor.”
Niccolo looked up at the dirty man who was approaching. He was covered with black printer’s ink, dirt, but a more noble kind of dirt than the common dirt in which most of the Roman populace wallowed. And the bookseller was no thief or fool, either. He knew what the book was worth and drove a hard bargain, forcing Niccolo to pay a fair price.
“You want to buy something else,” he grinned.
“Not today,” said Niccolo.
“Then make it soon,” said the bookseller. “These may not be available in the future.”
“Why?”
“The edict,” said the man with bitter resentment. “The pope, the most Christian pope is concerned about the spread of error—doctrinal error. The edict declares that no book can be printed from now on without the permission of the church. Violators subject to excommunication, fines, possibly imprisonment and death.”
The city was in utter moral chaos, and yet the Holy Father was concerned about the spread of false doctrines! Romans were menaced every day in the streets by assassins, and the pope was worried about purity of dogma and the danger represented by books. But Niccolo thought he saw the logic behind this papal decision. It was the logic of absolute power. With the printing press and the dissemination of ideas that it made possible, another phenomenon was born—censorship.
As the bookseller wrapped his purchase in a dirty cloth, he looked at Niccolo and said, “Did you hear about the monster?
“They found it this morning on the banks of the river,” said the ink-stained little man with relish. “It had an ass’s head with long, long ears and a woman’s body covered with scales. The face of a man, a bearded man, was growing out of its stomach!”
“Did you see it?” asked Giuditta skeptically.
“Didn’t have to,” said the man unruffled. “Didn’t have to consult an astrologer either to know that something’s going to happen. Something evil.”
“Come on,” said Giuditta, dragging Niccolo away from the bookstall. “You’ve got what you wanted. We don’t have to stand around and listen to superstitious nonsense all day.”
“I wasn’t . . .”
“Have you ever seen some of the things that wash up on the banks of the Tiber? His ‘monster’ is benign by comparison. They’re in the habit here of throwing men and animals—cocks, rats—into the river—sewn up in leather sacks together. The animals eat into the men, or vice versa. They drown or gnaw each other to death. Then, a week later, the bloated, stinking sack washes ashore. By that time, it’s usually burst and the whole rotted, swollen, decomposing mess, full of hungry little fishes, is exposed. That’s probably what someone saw.” Niccolo thought that, on balance, he would have preferred the monster.
From the bookseller’s, it was not far to the Hospital for Incurable Diseases, and Niccolo and Giuditta made their way there, pestered all the time by swarms of ragged, rabid children, begging and clawing at their clothes.
The hospital, like everything else in Rome, was run down and in deplorable condition. They entered through the main door and immediately found themselves in a huge, cavernlike room. Large, high, open windows admitted light and air, but the sights and smells that greeted them were still overpowering. An odor of putrefaction and decay struggled with the sharp, astringent tang of alcohol and acid and lime.
The patients were scattered about in confusion on cots and mats spread on the floor. They looked less like human beings and more like a hapless jumble of broken, discarded dolls. While Niccolo stood paralyzed, taking in this horrific scene, two men pushed past them from the street door behind. In a mason’s wheelbarrow, they were transporting a third man. Making their way into the hospital, they found an empty space and, without ceremony, dumped their charge onto the floor.
The hospital was quiet, unnaturally quiet. Most of its inmates were too sick, too weak, and too close to death to cry out. As they walked among the incurably ill, Niccolo scarcely had the courage to look at them. The French disease and leprosy and a host of revolting ailments had rendered them far more pitiful than anything he had ever seen before. The aftermath of the Battle of Mordano was civilized by comparison. Only the description of Giuditta’s “monster” seemed equal to the horror of this place. It was a room full of bloated, rotting carcasses, a room full of bones stripped of their meat, a room full of monsters.
The only figure who seemed to be stirring in the late-afternoon heat was a man bending over one of the incurables. Giuditta called out to him, “Senta, Dottore!”
The man straightened up and looked at the two intruders from across a sea of broken bodies. He was an odd sight. His hair was long, much too long, even for an anarchical Roman. When he started toward them, Niccolo saw to his disbelief that the man wore his long hair parted down the middle of his skull and gathered in two thick plaits on either side of his head. Che fantasia! What fantasy! What a fantastic!
As the man in charge of the incurables made his way across his domain, he stopped several times to examine or inspect a patient, including the new arrival. He seemed to be in no hurry. When he got closer, Niccolo could see that his strangeness was not limited to his eccentric hairstyle but extended to his clothing as well. He was wearing what appeared to be a doublet decorated with some sort of beadwork, but of a design that even in the licentious circles of the Borgias would have seemed exotic. In bold colors—reds, blues, yellows, and whites—there were birds, fantastic, angular birds depicted on the garment. Feathers hung from the sides of the thing, and it seemed to be decorated with—Niccolo could scarcely believe his eyes—bones!
“This is the man who has the cure for the French disease,” he thought. “It must be an unusual cure, indeed.” Skeptical as always, Niccolo hung back. This was not his affair. He was only here to accompany his beloved. Giuditta advanced to meet the man. As she began to explain the nature of her errand, the man removed the gauze mask that covered his mouth and nose.
“Madre di Dio!” Niccolo’s involuntary cry caused Giuditta to spin around in dismay.
“Machiavelli!” said the bizarre doctor, breaking out into a smile. “Machiavelli! Here in Rome! Caccasangue!”
This month is deadly for fat people.
—POPE ALEXANDER VI
Niccolo tasted it and grimaced. It was the sulfurous white wine that came from the hills outside of Rome, not nearly as good as the Trebbiano he took in Tuscany, but it was cool. By the second or third swallow, his pallet had become accustomed to the acrid aftertaste, but he could not dissociate it from the legendary brimstone native to the one place that was even hotter than Rome in summertime.
Callimaco had ushered the little group through the back of the hospital and up a worn staircase to the garret that served as his living quarters. Looking around, Niccolo noticed that he had managed to assemble for himself the same devil’s workshop he had had in Florence, complete with the penned animals and walls lined with vials and jars and smudge pots. Giuditta took in the laboratory, but with a more educated, professional eye.
Callimaco, meanwhile, was recounting his adventures to his fascinated guest, who could only speculate as to who this bizarre creature was and where he had been. “Pirates!” she said in disbelief.
“Pirates,” he affirmed. “If I hadn’t been kidnapped by pirates, I probably wouldn’t be here. Well, they weren’t really pirates so much as Spaniards, but Spaniards at sea all tend to piracy.” Suddenly aware of Giuditta’s dark coloring and the Moorish cast of her clothes, Callimaco stopped short and blushed, “The lady isn’t Spanish . . . ?”
“Not strictly speaking,” said Giuditta.
Turning to Niccolo, he said, “After I left you, I followed Charles’s glorious descent to Naples, patching up some of the wreckage the army left in its wake. But when the king turned north again with the intention of marching all the way back to France, I gave up. My old teacher, Maître Albert, assured me I could set mys
elf up in Paris and practice in peace, even turn a modest profit, so I booked passage on a merchantman out of Naples bound for France. That’s when my troubles began.
“I quarreled with the captain, who was an overbearing Frenchman, before we were even out of port. He was shorthanded and wanted me to pull ropes and trim sails and generally assist in all this sailorly work. Stand watch. Of course, I refused. I told him I was a physician and a man of science.
“When we sailed past Gibraltar out into the open ocean, we were accosted by a Spanish ship of the line. It was a touchy situation, and the captain feared for his cargo. Finally, he struck a deal with the Spaniards. He bartered several barrels of stores and me for his safe passage! Without having any say in the matter, I was on my way to the New World.
“The Spanish captain, the crew, all of them were the worst sort of brutes. Prisoners pressed into service for a long, doubtful, and dangerous voyage. Pigs. I can still see those black-bearded sons of bitches, sitting on deck, gnawing on moldy jerked beef while the fish were almost jumping out of the water into the ship. When we were out two months, they all got scurvy, which did nothing to improve their dispositions. The ordinarily surly and mean became sadistic. They blamed me for not being able to cure them. I can’t even describe the humiliation I was subjected to, not in front of a lady.” Callimaco paused for breath.
“We made land after two and a half months at sea. A beautiful, tropical place, lush vegetation, plenty of fruit and game, friendly inhabitants. The first thing the Spanish wretches did was to rush out and look for gold. When they didn’t find any, they were furious. At that point, the seasons were beginning to change, and the ship left to go back to Spain. They were supposed to return in the spring with livestock for the fledgling settlement.
“I was left behind with the ‘colonists’ who were among the most nasty and brutish members of the party. At first things went well enough. We had a good relationship with the inhabitants, who showed us where to find food and water. The native men were friendly. The women were even friendlier . . .” Callimaco’s eyes twinkled knowingly, but he flushed when he saw Giuditta looking at him.
She laughed at his embarrassment. “You don’t have to feel ashamed in front of me,” she said. “I run a brothel.”
A surprised “Oh,” was all Callimaco could muster in response, and then recovering, he continued with his tale: “When it came time to start building some sort of shelter, the Spaniards agreed the best way to do this was to enslave some of the locals, whom they referred to as savages, since they weren’t Christians.”
“Didn’t you try to convert them?” asked Giuditta.
“Oh, efforts were made, but they didn’t seem the least bit interested. Nor were they much more interested in applying themselves to slave labor. The Spaniards had to beat them to make them work, and even then, they weren’t much good. Most simply ran off. The ones who stayed caught the grippe from the Spaniards and died. It’s odd from a medical point of view: None of the Spaniards died of the grippe, but the savages succumbed.”
“Well I suppose we struck a good-enough bargain with them then,” said Niccolo. “Our grippe in exchange for their French disease, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Ah, the pox,” said Callimaco. “Of course, all the nasty Spaniards came down with the pox, although most had already left the island before they discovered it.”
“And you?” asked Niccolo.
“I told you, I’m a man of science,” said Callimaco proudly. “Before the voyage, I was already seeing the devastation of the pox in Italy. When six-toed Charles brought his army down into Italy, he brought more than just new kinds of cannon and bad French ideas about Charlemagne and empire. He brought the pox. That army was the poxiest army ever assembled—mercenaries from all over, the worst kind of men, worse than Spaniards. And everywhere they went, they left a lasting legacy.”
“True,” said Niccolo. “When the great Charles left Italy, everyone promptly forgot about him. The only permanent thing he left behind was his cursed French disease.”
Giuditta interrupted. “You were saying, you didn’t contact it because . . .?”
“Because he kept himself chaste,” injected Niccolo.
Callimaco ignored his remark. “The lady has a professional interest in these matters, I presume?”
“Of course. Anything that can cut down on the spread of the disease is good for my business. Besides, I dabble in medicine.”
“Ah,” said Callimaco, drawing closer to her in a spirit of collegiality. “Well, from my observation of the spread of the disease, I started to draw some conclusions about how it was transmitted. What I was able to learn from the inhabitants of the Indies confirmed my guess. If someone is infected with the pox, he—or she—can only pass the disease along when the ulcers and pustules are visible. No ulcers, no contagion.”
Giuditta spoke, “So in the early stages of the disease, before the pustules appear, there’s no danger of passing it along.”
“Exactly,” said Callimaco. “But in the later stages, when the pustules and sores get worse and worse, it’s almost inevitable that the disease will be passed on. Of course, by that time, it hurts so much, at least for the man, that it tends to dampen the desire.”
Giuditta looked thoughtfully at him. “So as long as there’s no contact with the sores themselves, the disease won’t spread. That must be Pasiphae’s secret.”
“Pasiphae,” said Callimaco, puzzled.
“A girl who works for me who claims to be immune to the disease,” explained Giuditta. “If she were very careful, very expert in her craft, she could avoid contact with the infected areas and preserve herself from the disease.”
“She doesn’t even have to be that careful,” said Callimaco.
“What do you mean?”
Callimaco was on his feet and moved quickly across the room to a trunk. “She doesn’t have to be that careful if she uses one of these,” he said triumphantly, producing an object that looked like a transparent, flabby, deflated penis.
“No contact, no contagion,” said Callimaco proudly. “This is nothing but a piece of sheep gut, tied securely at the end with a fine thread, but it works.”
“And it would offer the added advantage of preventing pregnancy,” observed Giuditta.
“This woman grasps the most fundamental implications of my science immediately! Where did you find her, Niccolo? Where did you find such a gem?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I wonder what else your science tells you about the French disease,” said Giuditta tactfully. “I heard a rumor that there was a man here who had a cure for the disease.”
“If I had a cure, would I be at the Hospital for Incurable Diseases?” said Callimaco sadly, all the enthusiasm draining out of him. He was left as deflated as the thing he held in his hand.
Sensing his friend’s chagrin, Niccolo sought to change the subject. “Enough medical talk,” he said. “Callimaco, I want to know how you got back from the New World.”
“The ship with the livestock and the seed returned the next year, only there was no livestock and no seed. The crossing had been longer than expected, and the crew had eaten everything on the way over. There was no reasonable way to start a proper settlement, and besides, the would-be settlers were disgruntled and ready to go home. We poked around a few more islands, looking for gold, found none, and then sailed for Spain.
“Since there is a steady flow of Spaniards into Rome, I had no trouble getting passage back here. And since I know as much, if not more, about the French disease as anyone, what more logical place for me than a hospital full of its victims?” Callimaco shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “What else can I do?”
“Ah, Callimaco, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Niccolo. “Your clothing, your hair—it’s a little extravagant, even for Rome.”
“You like it?” said Callimaco, brightening. “I brought it back from the New World. This is how
the men wear their hair there. And this shirt was given to me by a very special lady.”
“It’s different,” said Niccolo skeptically.
“It’s lovely, Callimaco,” said Giuditta, shooting a sidelong glance at her beloved.
“I have several more, if you’d like one,” he said eagerly.
“I wouldn’t dream of taking such a valuable thing away from you,” said Giuditta. “You keep them. They have a special meaning for you.”
“I do have something I can share with you, though,” said Callimaco. “Food from the New World!”
Niccolo groaned, but Giuditta expressed interest, and Callimaco was soon racing around his room, setting the table and preparing something to eat.
“I don’t have much in the house, just some cheese and bruschetta—and the little golden apples,” he apologized. The bruschetta was one of the Roman staples that Niccolo had found acceptable, if unexciting. It was a dry, circular, flat piece of bread made of coarse flour. To reanimate the desiccated bread, it was soaked in olive oil and rubbed with garlic and salt for seasoning. The resulting flavors were simple, but bold. And bruschetta was filling and cheap.
Callimaco put the various ingredients on the table, along with a serious lump of cacciacavallo cheese. He then went to a window where a few pots of soil held several leafy, climbing plants that Niccolo had idly taken for some sort of lemon trees. Harvesting the yellow fruit, Callimaco returned to the table with a handful of it.
Niccolo examined the fruit suspiciously. It was round and yellow, about the size of a walnut. He sniffed. Acidic. “You brought these back from the New World?” he inquired.
“The seeds,” corrected Callimaco. “If I had tried to take the fruit, the Spanish sailors would have eaten them. Go ahead, taste one.”
Giuditta did so first and frowned. “It’s piquant,” she acknowledged.
Against his better judgment, Niccolo bit into one next. “Bitter,” he said. “Too bitter. Maybe if you cooked them?”
“Nonsense,” said Callimaco. “Rub it on the bruschetta. The flavor’s excellent mixed with the garlic and oil.”
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 47