by Basu, Kanal
“What news?”
How’d Ricardo know …? Did Rosa Escobar write to him as well? He was perplexed by his friend’s jolly mood, waving to the vixen and making eyes at her, in the face of Antonio’s tragedy.
“That you’ve decided, finally, to get married!” Ricardo laughed out loud, drawing a few glances to their table. “I know why you left the dolphin girls and rushed away from the festa. She must’ve called you over? Given you just hours to make up your mind?” He narrowed his eyes and quizzed Antonio like a teacher. “What did you do to her, Tino? Don’t tell me she was about to deliver your baby at the All Saints?”
Antonio sat looking at his cup. Ricardo ignored his sullen mood and delved into a plate of freshly baked pasteis. “You can tell me who she is. I can’t let you marry a nurse, mind you, or your favorite matron, even if she’s bribed you with all the sardines of the seas.” A hint of anxiety crept into his voice. “You’ll simply have to change your mind if I don’t approve.”
Antonio looked up. “My father is dying of syphilis.” He muttered the line he had rehearsed for Dr. Martin, and fell silent again.
Ricardo choked on a pasteis, and his face turned as red as the vixen’s lips. It took several cups of tea for both to recover their tongues. Then Antonio spoke with the urgency of someone who must attend to a patient in crisis.
“I want you to find me a doctor.”
“A better doctor than you?” Ricardo seemed truly surprised. “There’s none in Portugal, Tino.”
“Not in Portugal.” Antonio tried to explain to his friend what his teacher had told him about heretics. Ricardo listened in wonder as he went on about spirit doctors and shamans from parts of the world known only to sailors and unfortunate readers of Camões with his gory tales of savages.
“We have doctors here but no heretics.” Antonio concluded with a glum face.
Ricardo disagreed. “There’s no shortage of them in Lisbon at Alfama’s pox bazaar who claim they’ve found the magic potion and promise their patients a full recovery: clear skin to go with a fresh crop of hair, an iron constitution and the virility of African kings.”
“They aren’t heretics but quacks.” Antonio smiled wryly at Ricardo. Sitting at the pastelaria, both recalled how they’d once got lost at the Alfama as they strolled in the dead-end alleys listening to the melody of twittering canaries and fadistas who strummed their guitars behind the mysterious walls of the huddled tenements. Ricardo had gone to meet the master saddle maker, an Arab who supplied his private stables, and had managed to persuade Antonio to leave the hospital for a lazy walk to recount their exploits with young nurses at the Faculdade and taste the Moorish delights from the street vendors. They had passed the Thieves’ Market and stopped on their way up the terraces for a few drags of the Egyptian water pipe to blank out the stench of the open gutters. From the hilltop they could see a bustling square, queues of confession seekers before the church of Santa Engracia and throngs of brothel visitors lured by the beauties brought over from the four corners of the world. They had thought to join the throngs for a look and a laugh on their way back from the saddle maker, but the cacophony in the nearby lanes had drawn them instead to the hustling shopkeepers pressing handbills into the crowd that promised “God’s cure” to all men suffering from the curse of the beauties. A toothless man in a priest’s smock and smelling of the gutters had nudged them on toward the stalls, which looked like miniature apothecaries. “Couldn’t you do with a few of these at the All Saints?” Ricardo had pulled his friend’s leg as they took in the rows of jars under the incessant chatter of the hopeful salesman.
Ordering themselves some more tea, Ricardo tried to distract Antonio from heretics: “Call them quacks, but couldn’t they have discovered God’s cure purely by accident?”
“No, because even you, a failed doctor, should know that cow dung on your jewels won’t cure pox but will kill your reputation at the dance halls.”
It took a few more patient explanations for Antonio to convince his friend. Then, just as before, Ricardo had thrown his might behind him. “If savages know how to cure the pox, then the lords of savages would know it too,” he assured Antonio. Lisbon had no shortage of viceroys and governors, bishops and members of the magistracy who had served overseas to plant the padrões – the cross of Portuguese sovereignty in the colonies. “You can find all the secrets that you need right here without setting foot on a ship!”
The Casa da India should be their first port of call, Ricardo announced confidently, and took Antonio to meet his uncle, Dom Salvador Correia, the chief of the Eastern trade. “It’s a treasure trove, no less!” Ricardo spoke under his breath as the two waited in the courtyard of the grand building with numerous wings and gardens, laid out like a palace. “Spice, sugar, silver, tea – everything’s here, crammed into the Casa’s vaults waiting for greedy merchants to name their price and carry them off to warehouses.”
“And the treasure keeper?” Antonio asked.
“He’s a sad soul, whose only dream is to make the king the richest man in the world.”
A line of stevedores waited patiently to show Dom Correia their precious bounties, for the elderly man with a monocle to pronounce their true value as he turned every item over in his hand, smelled a root to judge its power or passed a beam of light through a rock to see if it trapped it inside and glowed like a precious diamond. His conical head, bald and shining, reminded Antonio of the abbot of Santa Engracia, but his eyes spoke of the sea.
“He’ll be the first to know if a ship’s captain has chanced upon a native potion that could cure his poxy sailors on board,” Ricardo whispered to Antonio as they waited their turn, flashing his winning smile at his uncle.
“Will you tell him who it’s for?” Antonio asked his friend.
“For one of your patients, of course. Don’t worry, he’s used to dealing with unusual requests.”
“How unusual?” Antonio arched his eyebrow.
“Magical cures for baldness, touchstones that turn lead into gold, even Amazon monkeys that can bear human babies!”
Dom Correia examined Antonio sternly, taking him for a dandy who wished to buy an unusual gift for his lady friend. He said in an imperious voice, “The Casa doesn’t sell anything, for that you’ve got to go to the merchants,” meaning the rare African sapphire that was in high demand or tiger’s teeth that the recently betrothed wore around their necks to ward off the evil eye. Ricardo spoke in his ear, and the elderly man’s expression turned even grimmer.
Does he have it here . .? Antonio waited anxiously for the Casa’s chief to speak. How amazing if the cure was just under their noses, not in the lands of savages but inside the pretty white mansion flanked by elegant gardens. The stevedores were unreliable when it came to delicate matters, Dom Correia announced, regaining his imperious voice, then led them to a cabinet of drawers that held questionable items. One can never be sure about syphilis, but he could offer a “possible cure” for the other great tormentor, he said, then took out a tiny root resembling a shriveled worm and placed it on Antonio’s palm.
“It comes from Goa, and is claimed to cure impotence.”
The worm seemed to spring to life on Antonio’s palm, spread tentacles and pierced the skin with razor-sharp fangs. He dropped it on the floor, smashing it under his boots, then stomped out of the Casa.
Loyal Ricardo didn’t give up the challenge and took Antonio next to visit Dom Miguel de Sousa, a member of the Society of Jesus who had spent a lifetime in Brazil as the Bishop of Peranambuco. “Nature provides the remedy in the very same place where the sickness arises.” The friar spoke wisely, giving words to the commonly held belief that only savage Indians could solve the mystery of the pox which was their revenge on the conquistadors. But he had little to offer beside tales of fornicating savages and that of the lusty Portuguese who had joined the gold rush in droves. “The old fool’s a syphilitic himself.” Antonio cursed under his breath, and left before Dom Miguel could finish his tales.
He took pains to explain to Ricardo later that the hobbling priest wasn’t a victim of gout but tabes dorsalis, which showed in the final stages of the pox.
“Your father won’t be the first to die of syphilis, Tino. Nor will he be the last.” Ricardo Silva tried to calm his friend after they had made their rounds of viceroy s and governors, bishops and members of the magistracy, after their efforts had failed to yield any result. “Search every family and you’ll find a story of shame. Every cemetery will show unmarked graves, hurriedly dug in the middle of the night. The pox isn’t just the disease of pickled whores and their rotting friends, but of kings and merchants. How could one more death matter?”
“It matters because he’s my father,” Antonio spoke gruffly.
“He is, but you can count yourself lucky that you aren’t the one with pox.” A cloud of suspicion passed over Ricardo Silva’s eyes, and he hesitated before asking, “Do you …?”
Antonio shook his head. “No.” They looked slyly at each other as they recounted their own bouts of quackery: wrapping their organs in wine-soaked cloth hours before they went raiding the brothels of Coimbra on the night of a festa.
“Could your father be cured if you did find your heretic?” Ricardo Silva looked Antonio in the eye. “Can he still be saved?”
Save me, Tino. … He heard his father beg him.
The change in Antonio was puzzling to his friends and admirers. To the young nurses at the All Saints, it was as if he had undergone surgery to remove the most vital of his organs, or taken the severest of vows before the Virgin of Nossa Senhora. Gone were the furtive glances across crowded wards and sweet games of hide-and-seek under the very nose of the elderly matron. It affected Maria Helena the most. The poor girl had dreamed big dreams on the eve of the festa. She pleaded with the matron to be left alone with Dr. Maria when he conducted surgery on his patients. She wanted simply to feel his breath and “accidental” touches, and to die from his firm grip as he helped her carry a sick patient or turn him over on the bed. Perhaps he’d want more from her, ask her to meet him at the Avenida for a ride on the Americanos – the recently arrived horse-drawn carriages – followed by a quiet meal serenaded by the famous fadistas of Chiado. Maybe he’d ask her to visit him secretly at his home, at his doctor’s chamber even, whenever they could hear the matron snoring. Seeing her condition, the “old owl” had given in to Maria Helena’s plaintive requests, and relaxed her vigil. But the real Antonio had fallen far short of the Antonio of her dreams. He had barely looked at her, let alone played his tricks, when they were together during long and inviting hours of surgery. He had turned out to be no more than a pair of eyes and hands, a mere slave to his surgical box and a better doctor than before.
His father occupied Antonio’s thoughts completely: his dull syphilitic eyes, syphilitic teeth blackened by mercury, scarred syphilitic cheeks. He heard his deep sonorous voice reduced to a whimper, imagined his bald head bent in shame. He’d wake up in a cold sweat dreaming that his father shared his bed, filling the room with the smell of death. It was a scent that hung over the city, filled the hollow domes and the cracks in the cobblestones, refused to be blown away by the ocean breeze. Wherever he went, Lisbon stank of rotting genitals.
He must be awake now, he thought about his father, rising from his nightmare. Awake and delirious, battling a seizure or bleeding from the eyes. He must have difficulty speaking, begging Rosa for a drop of morphine. He might be struck next with peculiar obsessions. Like a miser, he might hide his possessions then forget the hiding place, grow suspicious of Rosa, accusing her of seducing his Tino. Might even kill his nurse. … Antonio shuddered as he imagined his father in a mad fit thrusting poor Rosa’s head into the fireplace. Syphilis will stop torturing its victim soon, he knew only too well, pretend to disappear as suddenly as it had arrived. Ah! The Great Pretender! The time will come when it’ll poison his heart, choke the arteries and bring him closer to death.
He didn’t blame his father but blamed his sickness, dreaded nothing more than letters written by him in the hand of Rosa Escobar. For eleven days I haven’t eaten or drunk even a sip. I wander lurching and exhausted from my chair to my bed and back again. Even if I eat something, it comes right back up. Rosa is treating me. Here is my end. Visiting Cabo São Vicente, he returned more troubled than before. He couldn’t bear to look at his father, or listen to Rosa Escobar’s fearful reports. As much as she tried, he refused to examine her potions. He went instead on long and gloomy walks among the cedars before climbing back into his carriage.
“Don’t let the pox kill you too, Tino.” Ricardo pleaded with Antonio not to turn down invitations to game shootings and boating on the Tagus. “At this rate, you’ll be taken for a monk or a poxy yourself.” He tried to distract his friend with an invitation to visit Vila Franca de Xira and join the red-coated campinos chasing bulls on their horsebacks.
“How can a mad bull help me?” Antonio asked him.
“It’ll clear your mind when you see it charging towards you. It’ll remind you how lucky you are to be alive!” Like a doctor himself, Ricardo had suggested the perfect antidote to Antonio’s depression, but Clara, his wife and mother of their two children, had stopped them from going to the feast of the mad bull.
Not a day passed without him wondering whether he should confide his secret to the matron and fellow doctors at the All Saints. Should he bring his father to Lisbon’s Jesuit asylum? The thought of him among mad men and women troubled Antonio when he went for long walks along the Tagus, stopping only for a meal of smoked sardines by the river. The city of seven sisters glowed before him. He gazed at sumptuous quintas and dingy barrios, glamorous shops and tall cathedrals, and thought about syphilis. Does each of them hide a victim? A wife suffering in shame for her husband, a friend for a friend, a son for his father?
He hadn’t expected to meet Dom Salvador Correia again on the matter of syphilis, but the Casa’s chief sent him word for an urgent meeting. A talkative assistant rushed to the All Saints to fetch Antonio and took him to Bom Jesus, berthed in the Baixa docks. The ship’s stevedore had brought disturbing news to Dom Salvador. Captain Marcos da Cunha had fallen mysteriously ill on his return voyage from Canton, and the dreaded Asiatic cholera was feared. A lengthy period of quarantine was being discussed, the assistant rattled on, with every sailor held prisoner till proven healthy.
The ships were a constant headache, the young man confided in Antonio, each a depot of disease. Typhus and yellow fever, variola, icterus and enteritis, diarrhea and deliriums, all year round they kept doctors on their toes. The fear of an epidemic breaking out was never far away, with the memory of the last plague, the docks deserted and warehouses aflame.
“They bring in a new disease every year and confuse the doctors.” The Carreira da India and the Carreira do Brasil were both notorious for the natives infecting sailors at the ports of call, or if they had been recruited from the natives themselves. There was no greater danger, of course – the assistant had grimaced – than the southern passage – the African route – where the black gold came laced with the deadliest of germs.
“If cholera is detected, we might have to sink the ship. Shoot the sailors too as there’s no cure.” The assistant made a dramatic gesture with his hands.
“Nonsense!” Antonio retorted. “Cholera, Asiatic or otherwise, is treatable if detected on time.”
“Didn’t it kill thousands in Paris and in Palermo?” His companion seemed suspicious still. Antonio corrected him. “Madras in the East Indies has suffered most from cholera, with a quarter of its population dead. But it can still be arrested on ship if one knows the source of the disease – the rum puncheons, the water casks, or a rotting cadaver sold by crafty natives from their sampans.”
Dom Salvador received Antonio on a fishing muletta to take him over to Bom Jesus, in place of the usual cutter that would’ve risked the lives of his officers. The captain was sinking but alive. The Casa was in constant touch with the quartermaster, who
was holding the fort among the sailors. On board, they crossed over the deck quickly to enter the captain’s coop.
It didn’t take Antonio long to size up the old sea dog lying naked on his belly. The captain had fainted on deck as they entered the Tagus’s estuary, suffering from acute cramps, unable to crawl to the ship’s toilet as his bowels began to rumble with a painful burning and rapid watery discharge. Lifting up an arm, Antonio found it to be as cold as a corpse.
“Blood and rosy port,” he announced. “Just a little bleeding will do. Wild pheasants are the culprit here, not Asiatic cholera, which would’ve finished him off even before he left the shores of Asia.” He smiled at the assistant who had turned speechless, sending him off to fetch his mahogany-cased cupping set from the muletta.
“What about the sailors?” Antonio asked to see all those who’d been forced to remain in their quarters.
“They are Chinese,” the quartermaster said. They hadn’t partaken of the feast of pheasants, turning up their noses at the brightly winged creatures.
“They could be sick too, couldn’t they?” Antonio egged the quartermaster on, expecting him to spell out a list of diseases.
“Oh, yes, they are sick! All of them. A bunch of incurable Chinamen! Come, I’ll show you.”
Down in the hold they entered the crews’ quarters. A powerful smell rose from a sea of heads over two tiers of planks lit by oil lamps. The sailors were lying with arms and legs entwined, wedged against each other, heads nestled in the hollows of the bodies. A glowing bowl passed from one outstretched hand to another, sputtering for a moment at each stop. He heard a moaning, like breezes trapped in the sails.
“Opium,” the quartermaster whispered. “It’s their favorite medicine for their favorite disease. They don’t want to be cured, or to see the face of a doctor. If you try to stop them, they might throw you overboard!”