by Basu, Kanal
Antonio corrected him, speaking slowly to sound as clear as possible. “It’s a common disease, not rare. More common than pleurisy or scarlet fever, epilepsy or pneumonia or paralysis, even the inflammation of the spleen. More people have died of it than from tetanus or jaundice.”
“So doctors must already know how to cure this common disease.” Dr. Xu put down his bowl and smiled at Antonio. “Have you come to find a quicker way, or one that is less painful to the patient?”
“Syphilis has no cure.” He gave Joaquim Saldanha a quick look. “No known cure, that is. It causes a painful death. Many call it God’s punishment, but we doctors know it to be no worse than typhus or plague, nothing less than a nightmare.”
“No cure?” Dr. Xu’s eyes gleamed. “Who treats the patients then, or are they left to die untreated?” Joaquim Saldanha spoke to him quietly about sellers of “miracle potions,” making him nod and grin. “Yes, we have those fools here as well. “Quacks,” as the Americans say!” Then he turned back to Antonio. “You must tell me all about this disease. Is it a short illness or a long one? Does it bring fever or bleeding? Does it puzzle the doctor with many symptoms, and recurs when you thought the patient was all but cured?” He stopped to pour himself another bowl. “You must tell me what causes this disease.”
Where shall I start? Dr. Martin’s voice floated into the courtyard: It is the disease of “congress,” most unfortunate. Some call it the price of sin, when it’d be fair to view it as the fruit of ignorance. Not God’s punishment, but the failure of science. … Antonio mulled over the “cause.” Should I tell the Chinese doctor about King Charles of France, who entered Naples with his mercenaries in 1494 and started the pox epidemic? Should I skip over a few centuries and talk about the present? Or simply name the “cause” that was as vital then as it is now? He rose from his seat and started to speak, as he would to his assistants at the All Saints.
“It’s caused by the poison that passes during lovemaking from an infected woman to a man or from a man to a woman. A sick mother could poison her nursing child; an infected child his wet nurse. We don’t know what this poison is, but once inside the body, it becomes its supreme enemy.” His pulse quickened and he paced the courtyard. “It’s the craftiest of enemies. The first sign almost always goes unnoticed – a small bud on the private parts, like a cactus flower. It attacks the surface, setting the skin to rot, blackens nails and teeth, then ravages the organs. A great pretender, it evades detection. Treat the patient for a damaged liver, and it escapes to the spleen. Cure the spleen and it seeps into the bones, mangling them like trees in a storm. If the victim complains of a heavy heart, it means the poison has hardened his arteries. Purge the stomach for colic, or bleed him for infection, he recovers for a day or two before suffering the most horrible fit of vertigo. Rid him of his pains and he complains of blindness. There are days when he eats like a horse, and others when his appetite …”
Joaquim Saldanha interrupted him. “There are reasons for us to believe that the cure for syphilis might be here in China.”
“Why doesn’t your patient tell the doctor what he’s suffering from?” Dr. Xu had heard Antonio in silence, casting sidelong glances at the younger eunuch lighting the kitchen stove across the courtyard.
“Because he’s ashamed.” Antonio spoke in a low voice.
“Ashamed of what?”
“Of being discovered. Being shunned by his family. Never ever being able to love anyone except a whore.”
He heard the lion dog barking and a voice scolding it. Cocks crowed, and the short tread of donkeys could be heard as they came to supply the kitchen from the market stalls outside the palace. Flies buzzed around the courtyard’s shrine, which held a piece of painted rock and the offering of a pig’s head, guarded by a clay warrior.
Antonio wondered if he had made a mistake. The sailors on Bom Jesus might’ve been plain lucky, perhaps the Chinese were as clueless as Europeans in treating the pox.
“Do you have this kind of disease in China?” Joaquim Saldanha asked Dr. Xu, who let out a small laugh.
“We call it by a different name. Canton rash.”
“Ah, like Spanish itch! Named after the carrier?” Joaquim Saldanha seemed encouraged by Dr. Xu’s answer.
“The foreign carriers who come to trade. In Canton it’s known as Portuguese pox, spread by sailors who spend nights in Hog Lane infecting their lady friends.”
“Do you know how to cure Canton rash?” Antonio asked Dr. Xu, as the sun stood above them. Still casting looks toward the kitchen as if he expected the attendants to bring over a dish or two, the Chinese doctor did not answer his question directly.
“It’s less common in China than elsewhere. Here the number of victims is almost half that of Malacca or your Macau. Just the port of Nagasaki has more sufferers than all of China. There’s a saying that you won’t find Canton rash in Canton, but in London!”
Antonio breathed a sigh of relief. So it could indeed be true … a Chinese cure for syphilis. Maybe he hadn’t erred in his judgment after all, nor wasted months on his journey. It seemed all too easy, sitting face to face with the man who might pass on the secret to him within moments.
“How do you treat a patient to rid him of the syphilis poison?”
Dr. Xu thought for a moment then spoke cheerfully. “By treating the real reasons for his sickness.”
“Real reasons?” Antonio looked perplexed. Dr. Xu nodded and brushed away a fly.
“Do you mean the actual symptoms rather than the poison itself?” Joaquim Saldanha tried to get Dr. Xu to say more, to relieve the confusion that showed on Antonio’s face.
“The real reasons why a man is prone to sickness ever since he’s born,” the Chinese doctor replied.
“You’re not born with syphilis. No! You can get it from a whore who’s got it from some fool.” Antonio spoke quickly, as if dismissing the diagnosis of a novice.
“Man is born with health and sickness. To help him we must know the reasons for both.” Dr. Xu continued in his cheerful tone, as if he hadn’t heard Antonio.
“And what might these reasons be?” Joaquim Saldanha tried to revive their discussion. “How would you spot the most important reason? And what do you do when you’ve found it, by what method would you remove it completely?”
“The reasons lie in the four seasons and the five elements; the twelve channels of the body and its eleven organs. The Chinese doctor knows about these things. He is able to treat a sickness even before the patient has been struck.” Dr. Xu turned toward Antonio and spoke in a kind voice, as if placating a sulking child. “Then he can treat the liver, the spleen, the heart, the nerves–everything, all at once.”
From the silence of the courtyard, Antonio could hear a duck cackling in the kitchen yard, and his attendants laughing among themselves. He was sleepy and yawned; Dr. Xu scratched his back over his tunic with a rattan cane. Once again, it was left to Joaquim Saldanha to restore a degree of purpose to their meeting.
“And you can help our friend here learn about all that you say … the seasons and elements, the channels and the organs?”
For the very first time since they had met, Dr. Xu looked truly pleased with his visitors. He had received a letter from Macau’s governor introducing Antonio Henriques Maria – the genius – who had left his patients back home just to be able to learn the mysteries of Nei ching. He isn’t a curiosity seeker or an idle scholar hoping to rustle up some Chinoiserie for his friends back home, Dom Afonso de Oliveira had written, but “an adventurer like the great Vasco da Gama himself.”
“It’ll be my privilege to help the most famous doctor of Portugal.” Dr. Xu offered his hand, embarrassing Antonio into silence with the governor’s exaggerations, then spoke like a real American. “You can call me Xu. Just like what you put on your foot!”
“Will you come to teach him every day?” Joaquim Saldanha rehearsed the arrangements with him. Dr. Xu nodded.
“Will our friend have a chance to
visit hospitals, to see the patients in person?”
“Yes.” The older eunuch came with another round of tea, but Dr. Xu waved him away and stood up to leave.
“Will he have the chance to test his skills before he leaves?”
“If we can find him a victim of Canton rash, then yes!”
“How long will it take him to learn Nei ching?” Joaquim Saldanha had saved the most important question for last.
Dr. Xu stopped on his way out. “As a genius he won’t take too long. It might take him just four seasons to become the best doctor in China!”
The elder of the two eunuchs was almost a giant, with a Roman nose and wrinkled skin like parchment. He looked older than his forty-odd years, and spoke in a singsong as if giving a performance to empress dowager. He was a eunuch of a lower rank, not fit to present her with petitions from her subjects, and allowed to retain one tenth of the sum – the “squeeze”–that passed through his hands. “Not fit to strew sand on her path!” The younger one smirked behind his back. Gossip had him addicted to ya-pien – opium – to the dowager’s horror. She had spared his life but banished him from her entourage to serve lowly visitors to the palace. Snorting snuff in the kitchen, he bossed over his young friend and made fun of his stammer–‘Chu, chu, chu, chu … shi, shi, shi, shi … !” – imitating the clucking of a hen. He’d stick out his tongue at him, who was young enough to be his son, at his grinning face unmarked by even a single line. At times he showed the skill of a mind reader and spoke for his partner, who stood with his mouth open, nodding rapidly at the precise delivery of his very own words.
Finished with his morning meeting with Joaquim Saldanha and Xu, Antonio left for a stroll around the pavilion and entered the kitchen. The eunuchs were busy with their morning supply. “You must make friends with the Wangs,” Joachim Saldanha had advised him. “It is they who’ll keep you alive.” By his tone, Antonio knew Big Wang was scolding Little Wang as the day’s produce had turned out to be below par. They dropped their voices in Antonio’s presence. He heard a pot boiling on the wooden stove, spreading the aroma of some unknown species. “A nation of a thousand smells!” Dona Elvira had prepared him for his visit. Besides Pékin-les-odeurs – the smell of gutters – he was likely to discover countless bouquets unfamiliar to his European nose. His attendants took his visit as a prompt for his hungry stomach, and rushed to bring over a plate of shrimp eggs. He stood with them in the kitchen and spoke the Chinese he had learned at the Jesuit College, making them laugh with his well-rehearsed lines.
Big Wang was less keen when it came to talking, kept his eyes lowered before Antonio, while Little Wang wasn’t shy to correct his Chinese or ask him a question or two.
“Have you to come to repair the empress’s clocks?” Little Wang asked Antonio, who was busy eating the shrimp eggs with his chopsticks.
“Clocks?” The empress loved clocks, Joachim Saldanha had told him. The kind that showed singing birds and flowing waterfalls; men and women poking out their heads and bowing at the strike of the hour. Foreigners bribed her with ingenious pieces to win her favor.
“Shut up!” The older eunuch hushed his young friend before Antonio could answer. It was rude to ask such questions.
“Can you make the clock people take off their clothes?” Little Wang ignored his partner and giggled. Big Wang slapped him on his cheek and made him run from the kitchen.
Antonio laughed, but Big Wang shook his head. “His name is a mistake. He doesn’t have any gifts to speak of, none whatsoever to merit the name Tianfen – the gifted one – that his mother gave him. Better to call him Tianzhen, the fool!”
So he isn’t Little Wang but Tianfen, or Tian in short. … Antonio finished his bowl and asked for a refill. “And you? What’s your real name? It isn’t Big Wang, is it?”
The eunuch’s face broke out into a smile. “Wang is the emperor. I’m just Wangsheng – the strong one.”
“How strong?” Antonio tapped his muscles, making him turn serious again.
“Strong enough to strangle our enemies.”
Leaving the pavilion, Antonio crossed the bamboo bridge to wander in the gardens along the tree-lined path dotted with stone animals. Gardeners in blue smocks and wide-brimmed hats swept away dead leaves, and glanced up as he passed. He stopped by a rosebush. The empress allowed none to pluck flowers from her garden, he remembered Joaquim Saldanha telling him. She loved to wear natural blooms in her coiffure, and had a keen eye in choosing the right hue. You’ll be neighbors at her Summer Palace, but she’ll be invisible.
He was tempted to visit a tiny island on the lake that he had seen on his way over, ringed by a fleet of barges and streaming with flags. Perhaps his attendants would come running after him, and he’d have to outrun them to cross the marble bridge. The hill at the back of his pavilion seemed more inviting than the island. Shrouded in haze, it took a hard climb to reach the temple on top. It was empty; a rusted bell hung over a vacant seat. The Buddha was once there, the giant Buddha of the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas, before it was hurled down by foreign invaders from the hilltop to the bottom of the lake with a splash of ten thousand ripples and rising tides of great blue waves.
Antonio thought about Xu’s words. Man is born with health and sickness. … It’d be hard for him to forget what he’d learned at the Faculdade Medicina, the certainties that had given him the strength to cut open a man’s stomach or to shed his blood. The Chinese doctor is able to treat a sickness, even before the patient has been struck. He wrestled over the mystery of such a power. Sitting on the hilltop he sensed the spirit of the heretic as he peered down to spot the sunken Buddha among the lotus leaves. He thought his journey had finally ended, from the far corner of Europe to this unknown land.
Xu arrived next morning with rolls of parchment under his arm. Without his turban, he looked different, resembling more an elderly courtier in his cap and gown. The attendants helped him lay out the China ink drawings on the courtyard, holding them down with rocks stolen from the palace gardens. His sharp orders woke Antonio, and emerging from his lodge he found the ground covered in brushstrokes like a giant painting: the delicate drawing of the gall bladder, like a fine China vase; the small intestines resembling a puff of cloud; an upturned lotus for the liver; the spleen like a fanged serpent. His teacher walked him along the parchments, pointing at each with the end of his stick, and they spent the whole morning going over the courtyard like two peasants inspecting a plot of saplings.
Raising his voice, Xu scolded Wangsheng for his careless handling of the medical charts and Tian for spilling a pot of tea over them, adding a delicate wash to the milky parchments. “They’re just bums, as my American friends would say.”
“Tell me about your friends.” Antonio asked him. “And what you do for the empress. Is it true what they say about her?”
“What people say about our empress is false, because no one’s seen her except a handful,” Xu replied with a twinkle in his eye.
“But who’s she hiding from and why?” Antonio thought to tell him about the King of Portugal who had banned the carrying of firearms for the fear of assassins.
Xu grinned and patted Antonio on the back. “You are just like an American, asking questions that shouldn’t be asked! It’s better that she remains invisible. There might be trouble if you saw her. It’s better for all of us, who can go about our business without worrying about the empress.”
“But she knows that I’m here, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, yes …” Xu tried to get him back to the medical charts. “You’ll have all your answers, but we must start with the question that’s brought you here.” He called the younger attendant over to roll away the parchments and clear up the courtyard. Settling down on his “teacher’s chair,” he asked Antonio to hold out his hand.
“The pulse tells the health of each organ. To feel it correctly, you must place the patient’s hand on a cushion with the palm facing up. Then press down with your middle, ring and index finge
rs. Force should be light at first, then moderate and finally heavy.” Xu checked Antonio’s pulse then asked him to hold his fingers of one hand on the wrist of the other.
“A normal pulse is neither shallow nor deep, neither slow nor quick. It beats unnoticed.” He cocked an ear as if encouraging Antonio to listen carefully. “The Chinese way is different from the European. You must tell me what you hear, if it’s the same kind of sound that I’ve heard. If you aren’t careful, you might miss it completely. Might hear your breathing instead!”
Antonio heard his own throbbing head. He had spent yet another sleepless night battling insects. Crawling ants had marched like explorers drawn by the taste of spilled wine, braved the sudden drop of the shoulders to reach the deep well under his throat. The touch of feathery antennae had woken him and he had risen quickly, disappointing the ant army with his undulations.
“You should hear a different note if you press harder.” Xu edged forward on his stool. “Go on, check my pulse.” He thrust his hand toward Antonio.
He heard the low growl of the lion dog, watching the two of them through the kitchen window. The superiority of a race, he believed, lay in its power to invent machines. A European doctor didn’t have to rely purely on his own senses, there were smart devices to help him read the signs accurately, such as the percussor to amplify the rhythm of the heart and the lungs; ophthalmoscopes to check the retina for damage; the dynamometer, the thermometer and many more.
“In Europe we’ve heard our patients’ pulses for centuries. But we have the sphygmographs to help us record the arterial wave, which is much better than relying simply on one’s ear.”
“Ah, but does your machine tell you which disease makes what kind of sound?” Xu looked at him playfully. “Can it tell when the pulse is groaning under an excess of blood, when it’s roaring because of a fiery liver?”
“What do you mean by a kind of sound?” Antonio sounded sceptical.
“Let me show you.” Xu called Wangsheng over from the kitchen and made him sit beside Antonio. The older eunuch gave a nervous smile. “His pulse, as you’ll see, is different to mine.” Xu placed Antonio’s palm on Wangsheng’s wrist. “With me you heard the Fumai, the floating pulse, the pulse of an elderly man whose only sickness comes from his eyes. With him though, you’ll hear the irregular Xumai– like a knife scraping bamboo – that worries the doctor about a hidden disorder.”