It was blazing hot in the large square, which still lay in sunshine. The girl and the old woman turned the corner into Calle del Pistor, and disappeared in Ramo delle Zotte, where the green waters of a canal could be seen glinting at the end of the alleyway, with the cabin of a black gondola gliding past.
To cut a long story short, five days later the fat, wrinkled, little old woman in the rose-trimmed hat had already with great cunning got our prudent young fellow to part with forty lire of his available funds.
Irene was truly a goddess of seduction. When she stood at full height, Gioacchino’s half-bald pate only came up to her oval-shaped chin. But she stooped so gracefully! She was like a panther in the way that she bounded forward, and the way her body flexed and swayed; and she had the slinky sinuousness of a snake. And besides she was so high-spirited. Her upper lip remained naturally upturned, especially at the corners, in an adorable curve that put one slightly in mind of a dog, and always revealed her very white teeth. Her incisors must have been as sharp as knife-blades, and her canines were surely as pointed as daggers. It suited her so well to laugh: her eyes sparkled with what seemed a wild quiver of gaiety.
Gioacchino had lost his head. He would go over to Calle delle Zotte straight after he had eaten and stay there until a quarter to eight, when it was time for him to return to the bank. He would have gone there during the day as well, had he been able to get away from the bank, even for ten minutes. He would have returned there late at night if the young lady and her old mother had not forbidden it, telling him that they always went to bed extremely early, and they had no intention of putting their reputation as honest women at risk in the neighbourhood. The fact is that a week after their first encounter, the old woman extracted another thirty lire from the young man. But Irene loved him so much, and threw herself at him with such passion, he was enchanted! And she had the charming habit of giving him little bites; when Gioacchino undressed at night he examined the marks on his own flesh with infinite gratification.
One afternoon (they had known each other for nine days) the girl was even more lively and Gioacchino more inflamed than usual.
Irene suddenly cried, ‘I want to show you once and for all how much I love you!’ And she came up to him, and taking him by the shoulder turned him round, and with those sharp, pointed teeth of hers gave him a big bite below the nape of his neck. ‘Blood, blood!’ she said repeatedly, hooting with laughter.
Although it hurt a little, and he was sorry to get his shirt-collar and neck-tie stained, pale, gaunt-faced Gioacchino laughed, too, and wiped the wound with a handkerchief.
It was almost eight o’clock. He left, a happy man, using his handkerchief at brief intervals to dab his neck, on which the drops of blood kept welling up again. Since it would not stop bleeding, he went into a chemist and had a bit of yellow plaster put on it. It felt sore during the night, which kept him awake.
The following evening Gioacchino was burning with love, although throughout the day he had felt a very great weariness in his every limb. The old woman was waiting for him as usual at the street door. When Gioacchino saw her, he whispered to himself, ‘Here we go again!’
Sure enough, the old woman drew him into the kitchen, where two pots, a small kettle, five or six round plates and a few sets of rusted cutlery were displayed on the dresser. Then the lamentations began. Irene knew nothing about it, poor thing, but there were some very urgent debts, some insolent creditors to be kept quiet. Thirty lire would be enough. He was so good, so kind. She swore on the image of St Brigida that she would never trouble him again. Gioacchino remained unmoved.
Then the old woman planted her hands on her hips and, dispensing with the studied kindness of her wrinkled face and unnatural sweetness of her shrill voice, she continued shrewishly. Irene depended on her. It wasn’t love that paid the bills. She should have kicked him in the pants and then closed the door in his face, for ever and ever, Amen. And what a face! If he wanted to continue to see her daughter, he, too, would have to contribute to the household expenses. After all, she was such a pure, innocent girl that he had all to himself. And besides, it was only a matter of a few lire. He was just being mean and petty. Anyway, who did he think he was dealing with? People should be valued at their worth, and she and her daughter wanted to be treated like respectable women. Was that clear?
Gioacchino handed over the last twenty-five lire. All that was left now of the savings on the salary he had allotted himself were a few miserable cents. But the young man was so ardently in love that he did not think that dipping into the twenty thousand lire that his investments were supposed to bring in that year, for another one hundred lire, was the worst thing in the world that could happen.
Irene was lying on the couch. The heat was oppressive, humid, and suffocating. She was dressed in a rather short slip and a robe with almost all the buttons undone. Gioacchino brightened up when he saw her. His little eyes widened, and his pallid face took on a good rosy colour.
He whispered in the young girl’s ear those eternal words, ‘Do you love me?’
She answered aloud, laughing, ‘I adore you.’
‘Am I the only one you love? Are you always thinking of me? You know I would give every drop of my blood for my beloved Irene.’ And he gently chided her for the bite she had given him the previous evening, saying that his neck was still very sore.
He had laid his head in her lap. Lost in a kind of blissful stupor, he stared, unthinking, at the thick dust that had lain undisturbed for several months beneath the few sticks of furniture; at the griminess of the floor that would have scandalized even Zaccaria’s good wife; and at the filth clinging to the curtains at the window. An acrid stench rose from the almost dry canal. Something white and shiny, behind one of the skewed legs of the wardrobe, caught Gioacchino’s eye.
‘Look, what’s that under there?’ he asked, and without waiting for a reply he went and picked up the object. It was a dog-collar, with a buckle and the three letters F.A.Q. on it.
Gioacchino’s face turned pale. ‘A dog? There’s been a dog in this house? Answer me.’
Irene laughed, showing her teeth.
‘There was a dog here, and it lost its collar? When?’
‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Yesterday?’
‘Yes, yesterday.’ And the young woman thought for a while and added, ‘It came in from the stairs – in this heat, Mama always leaves the door open. But I’m not afraid of dogs. In fact, look!’ And she pointed to two long, parallel flesh-wounds, close together in her right calf, which had not yet healed.
‘It was the dog that did that?’ cried Gioacchino, his eyes popping out of his head.
‘Yes, it was the dog. I’d almost forgotten about it.’
‘And you didn’t have the wound cauterized?’
‘You must be crazy! I’d be left with the scar for the rest of my life.’
‘And where’s the dog now?’
‘I don’t know! I’d never seen it before. It ran off, and good riddance to it.’
‘It ran off straight away?’
‘Straight away, and in such a frenzy it might have been rabid.’
Rabid! Rabid! And he touched the bite on his neck, which for the past minute had been burning his flesh like a hot coal. He put the collar in his pocket and fled, rushing down the stairs, racing through the streets, over bridges, along the canalside, pushing everyone out of his way, until he reached the Main Hospital, where he asked for the duty surgeon. He wanted to have himself treated with a hot iron and scalpel, but the surgeon said that nothing could be done now since the wound was already healed. Besides, having been informed of the circumstances, he categorically maintained that rabies was not transmitted between human beings, and telling Gioacchino that he need not lose any more sleep over it, he walked off.
Gioacchino thought, ‘It’s a lie, a white lie. I must know the truth.’ And as he hurried home, he passed by the Santa Fosca Dispensary. Knowing the pharmacist, he went straight in. When
he got to the counter, he sneezed. The air, which was filled with the smell of drugs, unguents and medicines, tickled the nerve-ends in his nose.
The Santa Fosca Dispensary is famous. Its miraculous pills on several occasions came to the attention of the Grand Council of the Republic of Venice, no less. It occupies a rather large room of very solemn appearance. A perfectly preserved survival of baroque art, it has big, heavy, wooden cupboards all the way round, with pilasters, cornices, pediments, elaborate panels and curved volutes. Over the door in the middle, opposite the entrance, is the bust of an elderly sage in the act of consulting an enormous pharmacopeical tome. Above the door on the right stands the bust of a young man holding a retort, and over the one of the left, that of another young man with a pestle and mortar. On top of the pediments are a number of allegorical, gilt figures of reclining women; with dolphins and caducei here and there. There is not a single cobweb on the ceiling, whose regular beams are painted with yellow flowers. On the shelves are white porcelain jars decorated with blue leaf-work, bearing inscriptions in black Gothic letters. The largest and most full-bellied jars stand on the top shelf, medium-sized ones on the middle shelf, and small ones below – a hand used to weighing out small amounts with scrupulous exactness is evident in the way the jars are all neatly lined up next to each other.
There were four doctors sitting round a table in the adjoining room, talking, whilst the pharmacist was busy behind the counter, weighing out and wrapping up goodness knows what white powders.
Ashamed to enquire about himself, Gioacchino began to describe to the pharmacist the case of a friend of his who had been bitten by a woman, who had in turn been bitten by a dog that was very likely rabid. As he went on, getting carried away with the details of the story, his voice got loud and louder, so the doctors were able to hear through the open doorway. The point that Gioacchino wished to be enlightened upon was this: could hydrophobia be transmitted between human beings?
The pharmacist did not know what to reply. However, in the meantime, an old woman came in asking for three ounces of castor-oil. Leading Gioacchino into the adjoining room, the pharmacist put his question to the doctors, with the old woman tugging at his coat-tails to make him hurry up and give her the laxative that was needed to cure her daughter-in-law of colic, for today being a fast-day, the daughter-in-law, a fine figure of a young woman, had eaten too much cod.
The four doctors, who had been waiting in vain for a client, and meanwhile did not know how to pass the time, thought this was a good question, but very complicated. One of the them, the oldest, recalled having read in the periodical Experimental Medicine of a case of hydrophobia being passed on to a little boy bitten by a little girl before it was apparent she had rabies. Gioacchino turned white. It was true that the story was later denied in the same periodical. Gioacchino breathed again.
Meanwhile, the second doctor, a beardless fellow with long fair hair and spectacles, had started searching through the bookshelves that covered three sides of the room (the richest pharmaceutical library in Venice), and he had dug out the June 1880 issue of the International Journal of Medical Science. Abruptly interrupting his colleagues’ discussions, he began to read out slowly and gravely from page 488 the following short article: ‘On the Transmission of Rabies’ by Dr Raynaud. ‘Until now it had been considered indisputable that a person with rabies was not able to transmit the disease to other people. Today it appears that this matter has now reached a stage that is anything but reassuring. We may draw the conclusion from a number of experiments that the virus rabidus in man is contagious. The inoculation of rabbits with saliva or with scrapings taken from the saliva glands of a man infected with rabies after he had been bitten by an animal suspected of having the disease, had caused symptoms of rabies, and then death. From which we may deduce that rabies may be transmitted not only from human beings to animals, but also between human beings. And granted that this is so, it is clearly necessary to take the utmost care to guard against being bitten by patients suffering from rabies, and to beware of their saliva and of any objects that might be contaminated by it, especially in cases of cuts, scratches or sores on the hands.’
Gioacchino had turned as white and still as a corpse, apart from his trembling lips. But warming to their subject, the doctors paid no attention to him at all.
One of them, the youngest of the four, a small, hunched, little fellow with sharp eyes and tongue, remarked, ‘That article is of no importance. Admittedly, men are like rabbits in terms of their character, but are not to be confused with them physically. I’m afraid to say, I know all about this. Hydrophobia was the subject of my doctoral thesis: I had to consult a mountain of books, and I had the help of Professor Lussana, who has conducted some major experiments. You surely remember poor Dr Agostino Marin, the general practitioner in Cervarese Santa Croce – such a kind man, and so loved by everybody – who was bitten by a dog. When he began suffering the first symptoms of hydrophobia three months later, he took his horse and trap, and drove himself to Padua Hospital, where he calmly told the doctor on duty, ‘I’ve come to die here, so as not to distress my wife and children, whom I love very dearly, with the dreadful spectacle of my death.’ And indeed he did die a few days later, and Professor Lussana, who obtained a little of the unfortunate fellow’s blood, injected it into the femoral veins of two dogs. One of the dogs died shortly afterwards, the other was put down. They had both been infected with the so-called idrofobia lipemaniaca or taciturna.’
The fair-haired doctor broke in. ‘Well, then, if a human being can transmit rabies to rabbits and dogs, through saliva or blood, why not to another human being?’
‘My dear doctor, why are horses, donkeys and cows subject to different diseases from those of the human species? Are there not some poisons that kill certain types of animals and have no effect whatsoever on others? Hertwig stated that only one in five of the men actually bitten by rabid dogs caught the disease: and Giraud, Bezard, Parvisse, Gauhier, Vaughan …’
‘No more, please!’ cried the pharmacist from the counter.
‘… Giraud and Babington all inoculated themselves without ever contracting the least trace of hydrophobia. None of the courageous dissectors who cut or scratched their hands while examining the bodies of hydrophobics ever suffered anything at all, with one exception apparently, if Andry is to be believed.’
‘The conclusion to be drawn is this,’ said the old doctor. ‘That we know nothing about it. But I admit that I wouldn’t like to put it to the test and let a hydrophobic person sink his teeth into my flesh – not even if I were to be showered with gold.’
Gioacchino had collapsed onto a chair. He was listening, but no longer daring to breathe. He plucked up courage, and stammered out a question to the little hunch-backed doctor sitting next to him. ‘Excuse me, is rabies always identifiable in men and dogs by their frenzy, their howling, the way they foam at the mouth, or by some other sure sign of the disease?’
Delighted to be able to show off his knowledge, the latter-day Aesculpius replied, ‘No. Rabies does not manifest itself in fits of rage. In fact, in its early stages it’s a disease that appears benign, but even from the beginning the patient’s saliva is virulent – in other words, it contains the infectious germ. And a dog, or indeed a human being, is undoubtedly more dangerous during this stage when licking you with its tongue, than for any tendency to bite. A lot of foaming at the mouth is apparently not always evident. Sometimes the throat is wet, sometimes dry. In one particular form of the disease, called rabbia muta, the lower jaw becomes very disjointed from the upper jaw, and you can see right down into the animals black throat. Often the dog walks unsteadily, with its tail slack and head bowed, with staring eyes, and a long, bluish tongue hanging out of its mouth. It lifts its head to bite and then immediately reverts to its moribund demeanour.
‘And has anyone come up with any other remedy since attempts to use curara proved unsuccessful?’ asked the old doctor, who was no longer inclined to keep up with the
dubious advances made in his science.
‘Tracheotomy,’ replied the hunchback.
‘Tracheotomy,’ Gioacchino murmured quietly. ‘What’s that?’
‘It involves cutting into the trachea …’ And the doctor pointed to below his collar. ‘The pathos eminens of hydrophobia consists of a laryingo-pharyngeal spasm. Since this obstructs breathing, the throat is cut open so that air can be drawn in below the obstruction.’
Gioacchino was filled with horror, but the doctor went on without looking at him. ‘It’s true that the patient eventually dies anyway, choking, epileptic, raging, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, and as in the case of delirium tremens, performing the most appalling dance of death.’
While his colleagues carried on their discussion, the fair-haired, bespectacled doctor had done nothing but take books down from the shelves, glancing through them and piling them up on the table. He was leafing through one, when, having skimmed half a page, he sat down, laughing, and said, ‘Listen to this, my friends, from Diderot and Alambert’s world-enlightening Encyclopédie, no less. It’s an article on rabies. Now there are seven types of rabies: four are curable; for the rest, there is only one thing to do: tuer le chien enragé – kill the mad dog. And how’s this for a quaint remedy: ‘Take six scudi’s weight of absinthe, two scudi’s weight of ground aloes, two scudi’s weight of roasted buckhorn, two drams of agaric, and six scudi’s weight of white wine – mêlez le tout ensemble et le faites avaler – mix together and give to the patient to swallow.’
At this point there was a prolonged burst of laughter. But the fair-haired doctor went on unperturbed. ‘Here’s a medicine to prevent rabies symptoms: ‘Take some milk fresh from the cow, infuse it with pimpernel. To be drunk every morning for nine days.’
His curiosity aroused by the doctors’ laughter, the pharmacist had come to listen.
Senso (And Other Stories) Page 19