I looked once again at Atto as he spied avidly on the meeting between the three cardinals. He was worried, and I knew why. Were those meetings, at which the election of the future Pope would almost certainly be decided, impartial? Barely two days before, we had learned that Albani was in cahoots with the Imperial Ambassador, Count von Lamberg. As for Spada, being the Secretary of State of a Neapolitan pope, he was naturally pro-Spanish. Spinola, as I had read in the Abbot's last letter, was pro-Empire. French interests, or so it seems, were not represented. This could certainly not please Atto. As though that were not enough, Lamberg and Albani had got hold of the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave and probably intended to use it against Atto.
"And now, what are we to do?" I asked.
"There's no point in sticking our noses in over there and being seen by Torre's guards."
"So?"
"I declare myself defeated. By now the festivities at Villa Spada are at their last gasp and tomorrow all the guests will leave. We shall never know what those three were confabulating about."
The seraphic resignation with which Atto had replied to me only reinforced my conviction. I already knew that, opinion or no opinion, conclave or succession, something quite different lay behind his presence at the Villa Spada: the mission of love with which the Most Christian King had entrusted him, in the hope of persuading Maria Mancini to see him once more.
"Let us go and take one last look at the picture," said he at last, "even if I despair of getting anything more from it; then let us go and see whether Buvat has found Cloridia."
We descended the little iron staircase, but just as we were about to enter the service stairs once more and descend to the second floor, we heard that voice:
This work I call a looking-glass
In which each fool shall see an ass.
The viewer learns with certainty ;
My mirror leaves no mystery.
It was Albicastro's inimitable timbre, although slightly muffled. It came from within the little penthouse from which the balcony was suspended.
"Again that Dutch lunatic," moaned Abbot Melani. "As if that fiddle were not enough, now he must needs pester us again with his damned Sebastian Brant. But what's Albicastro up to in there and how did he get in?" he asked, thoroughly vexed.
"Oh, to the Devil with him," said Atto, opening the door to the little penthouse which we had not even noticed before that. It was then that it all happened.
The penthouse was empty. Albicastro was not there. Curiously, the light was very dim. It came from two windows on the side facing Saint Peter's. The glass was partially blackened, so as to reduce the light drastically and - so I suspected - to make the visitor's steps uncertain. The space was quadrangular, with two pillars in the middle, perhaps supports for the little balcony. We were just next to one another and it was comforting in that strange place to feel Atto's by my side. Then we heard the Dutchman once more.
Whoever sees with open eyes
Cannot regard himself as wise,
For he shall see upon reflection
That humans teem with imperfection.
A disembodied voice, quite impossible to place. True, those verses were typical of Albicastro's usual inane ramblings, yet it was as though, in order to reach us, they had passed through some alien dimension in which sound is drained, washed free of its very properties. It was (to give the reader a fair idea) the voice of Albicastro's ghost. It seemed to come from the left.
We therefore turned to the left, and we saw.
It was there, or rather, they were both there looking at us. What cruel comedy there was in that sharp vision, I thought in a sudden flash of humour, as I beheld the being both one and double, and he looked at us. After Albicastro's ghostly voice, the Tetrachion overwhelmed us with the evidence of its utterly carnal presence, its stolid bestiality.
They stared at us as one, both with that dazed expression which only the Habsburg chin, that monstrously protruding jaw, can confer upon a human visage. Moreover the eyes were mismatched, the one sticking out, the other caved in, while the neck was twisted, the bodies deformed: one was stunted, as so often happens to beings ill-favoured by nature, the other, bloated. The flanks fused together, the legs wavering and horridly twisted one against the other, almost like the tentacles of some marine monster, gave that being the miserable destiny of twins who share the same body.
Incapable of opening my mouth, I raised my hand to shield my sight, and saw that the wretched creature (or one of them, but which?) gestured towards me, greeting me or begging perhaps to be left in peace. Then their features, as though made of quicksilver, became even more distorted, so that the chin of the one protruded absurdly, while the other collapsed on itself, and one chest was contorted in a horrendous spasm, while the raised hand of the other became a paw, a hoof, a stump. What nauseous and horrifying force dominated that flesh, those skins, those bones, and deformed them with the same cruel mastery as a taxidermist exercises upon the cadavers of the beasts which he stuffs?
Without a care for the sad spectacle of the monstrum Tetrachion and the horror it inspired, Albicastro's voice rang out as mockingly and ferociously as those paintings in which Death, a walking skeleton shouldering a scythe, walks calmly amongst the plumed knights and ladies whom he is about to harvest:
He's stirring at the dunces' stew;
He thinks he's wise and handsome too,
And with his mirror form so pleased
You 'd think he had a mind diseased;
Indeed he cannot see the ass
That's grinning at him from the glass!
Then there remained nothing, only horror, folly and desperation, my scream, our disorderly, precipitous flight down the stairs and then down the road, each paying no attention to the other, and at last the pain of having found in the mysterious abyss of the Vessel a second abyss peopled by monsters, sad morbidity, incest and death.
"Do you know who Ulisse Aldrovandi is?"
"No, I do not," I heard my distant voice reply, as pale and empty as my face.
We were in Atto's apartments at Villa Spada, where Buvat had summoned Cloridia. My legs were still trembling, but I had come back to myself sufficiently to hear others' voices, or at least to pretend that I heard them.
"But what ails you, husband?"
"Nothing, nothing," I answered, indicating Atto's frowning forehead with my glance and gesturing that only later would I be able to explain. "Now, tell us."
Cloridia had found out at once. She had found, not the book, but something better: now, at last, she could explain to us what the Tetrachion was.
"'Tis a very curious business indeed that your secretary has asked me to advise you on, Signor Abbot Melani," she began.
"Why curious?"
"It is something reserved for the very few, a matter that's almost obscure, I'd say. These are things which midwives are in fact not even obliged to know; even if we do, in the end, learn a little of everything: medicine, anatomy, natural philosophy. . ." said she with a knowing grimace.
"And what is this subject that's so unusual?"
"It is the science of abnormal foetuses and the generation of prodigies and portents: the science of monsters."
"Monsters?" asked Atto, on whose face I could for an instant descry the same terified expression as it had taken on when faced with the Tetrachion.
Cloridia then explained that the literature on the subject was most extensive. Among the most exhaustive works, one must mention the Deux livres de chirurgie by Ambroise Pare, first chirurgeon to the King of France, published over a century ago, and the more recent Monstrorum historia by the learned Bolognese Ulisse Aldrovandi, which listed the most famous cases of monstrous births and unnatural features.
"There is, for example, the celebrated case of an Ethiopian born with four eyes, one next to the other, or that of a man who came into this world with the neck and head of a crane, and there was another born with a dog's head. . ." said Cloridia, apparently savouring our reactions
.
The list of monstrous births, in nature and in man, continued with hairy little girls, infants with horse's legs, new-born babes like fishes enveloped in a monk's habit, creatures in the form of scorpions, with two hands on each arm and huge asses' ears, or with the face of a wolf; or others with the features of a goat-like biped, raptor's talons, flaccid breasts, demon's wings, eagle's claws and canine chest; with mermaid's characteristics (but masculine) and with a devil's head, horns, goat's ears, great bestial fangs, protruding tongue, hands with thumbs but no other fingers, crested fins on the arms and back, seal's tail; or again, creatures with a woman's belly, one foot a pig's trotter and the other made like a hen's, or with the whole body covered in feathers; even gruesome entities formed like fish-pigs, with webbed and clawed fins, human eyes emerging from their scaly sides and a mouth full of fangs; and, to end with, a fine exemplar of the monstrum cornatum & alatum: with a bear's head, no arms, an enormous spindle-shaped penis ending in a point, one leg feathered, eagle's wings, an eye on the knee and the left foot webbed.
"Enough, enough, that will do for me," Atto protested at length, as disgusted by the descriptions as I. "So, what then is the Tetrachion?"
"The Tetrachion, Signor Abbot Melani," replied Cloridia in a subtly sarcastic tone of voice, "might prove somewhat indigestible for you, like some of those poor beings of which you have just heard, almost all of which miscarried or were stillborn."
"And why is that?"
"It is another kind of misfortune of nature. In the language of the specialists, it concerns a well-known case that occurred in Paris in 1546: a woman six months pregnant gave birth to a creature with two heads, four arms and four legs. Doctor Pare, who carried out the autopsy on the child, found that it had only one heart. From this he concluded, on the basis of Aristotle's well-known statement, that it must really be one infant, not two. The malformation was probably caused by a material defect, or by something wrong with the womb, which was too small, so that the seed was hard pressed and coagulated into a globe, producing two infants connected and united."
"And those two beings, or rather, that being, had... four legs?" asked Atto.
"Two heads, four arms and as many legs."
Atto lowered his eyes and scratched his forehead, while with the eyes of thought he returned to the infernal vision he had shared with me.
"But," continued Cloridia, "there have been less grave examples of a Tetrachion."
"What do you mean?"
"There have been cases of twins, perfect in every way, but united in some part of the body solely by their skin; or joined by a member, an arm or a leg, which is thus deformed. Both such cases cannot, however, be distinguished at birth from the more severe cases, for they cannot be separated as that might kill them. They must be allowed to grow. If they attain adulthood, they may be operated on with little harm. At most, they will be crippled."
I could not have said whether the being (or beings) which we faced in the little house on the terrace corresponded in all details to the image cited by my wise spouse: too great was the horror that had seized me upon seeing it. At least one detail did, however, correspond: the number four; the four contained in the Tetrachion, the being that stands on four columns, as in the (clearly stylised and beautified) image of the two marine deities on Capitor's dish.
"In any case, there are worse things," commented Cloridia.
"Worse things. . ." repeated Atto, somewhat shaken. "What do you mean?"
Cloridia explained that she was referring to unheard of entities like the Monstrum triceps capite Vulpis, Draconis & Aquilae which was for some time to be found near the banks of the Nile and which, besides having an arm and limb like an eagle's, a horse's tail, feathered legs ending in two feet, one fin and one dog's paw, had three heads. There was also the Monstrum bifrons born to a Frenchwoman in Geneva in 1555: it had two faces, like the god Janus, with a head, arms and legs, both in front and behind; or again the Monstrum biceps caudatum born on 26th October 1598 in a citadel between Augeria and Tortona: two boys with two backs, but joined on the right side so that they had one arm and one leg for each head but, in the middle, instead of the other two legs, an enormous, horrendous fleshy excrescence.
"Tell me just one thing, Monna Cloridia," Atto interrupted her. "What causes such monstrosities?"
My wife explained that, if it was not to be defective, childbirth must satisfy five conditions: the infant must be born in the right position, at the right time, easily, with no sickness that cannot be cured by means of purges, and with complete, perfect limbs. Any delivery which fails to satisfy one of these conditions will be defective. If the infant is partially imperfect, it will be called a monster; if it is completely unsound, it will just be a formless piece of flesh.
But the principal cause lies in the mother's imagination. If the woman imprints the vestige of something desired in the unborn infant's body, it will come to pass, because she desires that greatly. Yet, what foolish woman would ever desire to have monstrous children? The answer is that one does not need desire to generate monsters, it is enough that the expectant mother should see something monstrous, even without desiring it.
"This comes of something natural which we see almost every day of our lives. If someone yawns, you too will yawn; if you see wine running from a barrel, you will want to urinate; if you see a red cloth, your nose will bleed; if you see someone else drinking medicine or buying it from the grocer, you will evacuate your bowels three or even four times. For the same reason, if you place a killer before the body of someone he has killed, more blood will gush from that corpse."
Atto made no negative comment on Cloridia's discourse. After all, he too had attributed to a similar theory (that of flying corpuscles) the apparition of Fouquet, Maria and Louis at the Vessel. Why, then, should he not admit that a mother's imagination, which is so intimately involved with the fruit of her womb, could determine so many mutations in the foetus?
"The midwife must, in any case, baptise monsters at once," continued Cloridia, "because most of them survive only a very short time. To be precise, a monster with two heads or two torsos should be baptised twice, but only once if it has only one face and four arms and four legs."
If in the monster one can recognise one distinct body, said she, completing her explanation, but the other cannot be clearly discerned, the first to be baptised will be that which clearly belongs to the human race, then the other, but sub conditione, meaning that, for the baptism to be valid, God must recognise the second one as being endowed with a soul, which only He will be able to see beyond the appearance of the deformity.
"As you have seen, I was not lying when I said to you that the subject of monstrous foetuses is somewhat curious," commented Cloridia; "and, what is more, rather an entertaining matter to tell of to women who have just given birth to fine, healthy infants. After all the travails of childbirth, while they are resting before the afterbirth and the purges, they'll be cheered up by tales and theories about monsters."
"Cheered up?" muttered Atto, whose greenish pallor gave us cause to fear an attack of nausea.
"But of course," trilled my little wife. "When they're resting under observation, we give them rather amusing descriptions of monstrous creatures, with dog's, calf's, elephant's, deer's, sheep's or lamb's heads or with goat's legs or other members resembling those of some animal. Or those with more members than usual, like two heads or four arms, as with your Tetrachion. Or monsters resulting from the crossing of two different species, like centaurs, half man and half horse, minotaurs, half bull, or onocentaurs, half donkey. Then there's the legend of Gerion, King of Spain, who had three heads, and. .."
"What's that?" Melani interrupted her again. "A King of Spain with three heads?"
"Exactly," she confirmed, noticing Atto's interest. "It is said that they were triplets born joined together, and that they reigned in great concord."
"Tell me more about this Gerion, Monna Cloridia," Atto requested, wiping the perspiration dripping fro
m his forehead with a handkerchief.
"There's no cause for surprise," said my wife. "Have not the kings of Spain a two-headed eagle on their arms? That is simply a memento of a defective birth of that kind which took place among the Habsburgs in long bygone days."
I held my breath. This would have been the time to talk and tell Cloridia what had happened.
But Atto said nothing. I understood that he was overcome by shame and even diffidence at the prospect of telling Cloridia of such an incredible event. In any case, in order to explain himself, the Abbot would be constrained to admit our dishonourable flight. For my part, I did not wish to break his silence: the secret belonged to us both.
Secretum Page 73