When I’d written to Ben about the OR being intense, he’d made a joke about it. But I hadn’t been joking. At first, my extra sense had been a background hum, such a natural and useful extension of my work that I’d barely noticed it. That moment in the OR with Linney three years before, when I’d noticed a problem before the monitors did, was the first time my abilities had crossed the line. The ventricular tachycardia episode had been worse—my emotional response to a patient’s condition had overwhelmed me enough to interrupt my ability to work. And things kept happening, things I no longer told Linney. I was afraid to tell Ben, who might worry too much from too far away. While I was operating, I’d know a hidden blood vessel was leaking because I could feel it in my own head. I’d wake up sweating at 3:00 a.m. to realize a postop patient had a brewing infection before the nurses called with reports of fever. And now, after that moment in the piazza, that tendency had broken into the rest of my life, outside the confines of the operating room. How far could this empathy go? And would it take me with it?
I can’t help thinking that having been a twin, even so briefly, might have something to do with it. Maybe I feel what others are feeling because I’ve got an open edge where she used to be, and instead of having her at my side, buffering and shoring me up against the outside world, I absorb everything. Or maybe she is my window into other, because I knew, once, deeply, before I knew what it meant to know, how it is to be identical to someone else.
* * *
Ben witnessed the first time it happened, though neither of us realized what it was at the time. QUIET ZONE the sign read at the edge of the steep path leading up to the Cloisters, marking the entrance. Every Sunday Ben and I walked to the transplanted medieval abbey in Fort Tryon Park from our apartment in Washington Heights, on paths that opened to a view of the Hudson River through the trees. We entered through a doorway in the stone walls and up a steep dark winding staircase, then emerged into the sudden sun of the magical twelfth-century cloister garden, centered around a quiet fountain etched with lichen.
While we walked through the museum, Ben told me stories of knights, feudal lords, and the Annunciation—but the unicorn tapestries were always my favorite. This is probably true of all kids who visit the Cloisters—the hunt for a mythical creature beats paintings of a bunch of old dead saints any day. I’d sit in the gallery, staring at the intricate patterns of flowers woven into the background of the tapestries, imagining myself as the maiden who invited the unicorn to dip its horn in a woodland stream. When I was twelve, my brother decided I was old enough to hear the real story behind the tapestries, and I sat on a wooden bench at the side of the gallery listening in the high-ceilinged room.
Ben told me the story while I looked at the series of tapestries that told the story of the hunt for the unicorn: the hunters brandishing their weapons, the dogs sniffing out their quarry, the maiden who’d lured the unicorn to lay his head in her virginal lap. And near the end of the cycle, when I saw the unicorn’s limp body draped over the hunter’s horse, his white coat stained with new blood, I felt suddenly dizzy, and the sounds around me muffled. I smelled the sharp scent of horses, felt the bristling of a wiry mane under my hand, and heard the barking of hunting dogs. I saw dense forest undergrowth coming up to meet my face, then suddenly I was lying on the cold stone floor of the gallery, blinking up at Benjamin.
Ben helped me up and sat next to me. “Little B, what happened?”
“I fell off the bench,” I said. “Did the maiden know what was going to happen to the unicorn when she agreed to act as bait?” Ben didn’t answer. “She would never have agreed if they had told her!” Adolescents are very intense as a rule, and I was hardly the exception; I was almost at the point of tears. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known they were going to kill him, KILL him! Never, never, never. . . .” My voice cracked, and I looked down at my shoes. One lace had come untied and I busied myself with it, not meeting Benjamin’s eyes.
“B, the unicorn comes to life again”—he lifted my chin with one hand and with the other pointed at the final tapestry—“and the red on its coat is not blood. It’s pomegranate juice, dripping from the tree above the corral.”
“That doesn’t make it OK! It’s, it’s . . . BETRAYAL!!!” He nodded mutely while I ranted. I stayed away from the tapestry room after that.
After my incident in the Cloisters, Benjamin took me to a lot of doctors. At the time, I thought I had done something wrong, something dangerous. I saw our family doctor, then a general cardiologist, then a specialist in cardiac arrhythmia. They all proclaimed me to be a perfectly ordinary twelve-year-old, at least from a cardiac perspective. Seeing Benjamin’s worry, I vowed to stay in the present, far away from the fanciful imagination that had triggered my outburst. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood the source of his anxiety—his own, unpredictable, vulnerable heart.
* * *
Instead of attempting another trip to the library, I spent the next day at home making Ben’s house feel more like mine. I started in the kitchen with its dark wood-beamed roof meeting thick white plaster walls. I spent a peaceful hour cleaning the old cast-iron stove while the breeze blew through the open shutters. I organized the small collection of chipped yellow and black enamel pots. As I picked up the smallest one, I remembered the first time Ben had taught me to make polenta in it. Finally, standing by myself over that piece of twenty-year-old kitchenware, I managed to cry.
When I could navigate the stairs safely again, I headed to the guest room—the room Ben had intended for me. I loved the metal-framed twin bed and its faded linen sheets, the creaky oak armoire where I hung my clothes, and the tiny sitting room that looked out onto the street. I found an old package of nails and a battered hammer and put up a few pictures I’d found at an antique store near the house, reproductions of old maps that showed how little the city plan had changed since the fourteenth century. As I hammered in the last nail, it crossed my mind that redecorating was the sort of thing you do when planning to stay somewhere for a while, somewhere you might consider calling home.
It was nearly two by the time I made it to the ground floor. I dusted off the chairs and tables in the sala and then went to the back. This had been Ben’s study, his private sanctuary. The desk was his only extravagance, an antique Biedermeier drop-front made of satinwood and ebony. I turned the small brass key in its lock and dropped the leaf to reveal six drawers adorned with ebony pulls. The first held a collection of fountain pens, nibs dry. Another was filled with scribbled notes on bits of scrap paper and old envelopes, and the next held obsolete Italian coins grouped by size in small glass jars. The fourth was devoted to scissors: small gold ones engraved to look like a stork’s beak, larger steel-bladed shears more useful than decorative. In the fifth drawer I found inks in every color of the rainbow—my fingers itched to dip one of the pens and write. The sixth drawer stuck, and I edged it slowly open to avoid cracking the veneer. Inside was a linen-wrapped package, and within that, a heavy cardboard folder with a card tied to the front that read: UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA. “Hello,” I said out loud. I’d been alone long enough to start talking to inanimate objects. A single page of parchment was pressed between the covers.
Florence, Italy, September 1347
To Messer Salvestro de’ Medici
My dear Cousin,
I am writing to you as I know not where else to turn. Since the death of his father my little Iacopo has been full of strange and troubled thoughts. I err in calling him “little” as he has attained the age of twenty-eight, but it is always difficult for me to remember that he is fully grown. Perhaps that is a mother’s lot. A mother of a son, that is—I have heard that daughters seem to mature well before their youth should be spent! In truth, Iacopo has always had a strangeness about him, even when he was a boy. Such serious ideas, and held so fiercely. I could never distract him from a grudge. I recall when he was three years of age, he deliberately upset his cup of milk, something that every child has d
one at least once. But I, heated from too many tasks clamoring for my attention, took his cup from him and would not give it back, despite his screams. When I relented he refused to drink. It was months before he agreed to have milk again, and I worried for his health.
Ever since the misery that has befallen his father, my husband, the execution that has become the tragedy of our noble family, Iacopo has withdrawn into himself. He broods alone and writes endless pages in a small cramped hand. I do not know what he writes. It does not appear to be a letter. He avoids the company of his peers, and of the women of good families I suggest to him, hoping that betrothal might brighten his future. If you think perhaps you might advise him, from the perspective of a gentleman, I would be grateful if you would write to Iacopo. Perhaps he will listen to another man, now that his father is gone. I pray to see the joy return to my son’s face, and lighten the shadow that weighs upon all our hearts.
With best wishes for the success of your business ventures in Venezia,
Immacolata Regate de’ Medici
Why did Ben have a more than six-hundred-year-old letter from a Medici woman with an executed husband and a troubled son? Did it have anything to do with Siena’s downfall? The letter made me apprehensive, but I didn’t know why.
Siena, June 8
Dear Nathaniel,
Today I went to the University of Siena, and met the archivist you recommended—Fabbri. He was helpful but looks like he’s spent enough time in the dark to develop vitamin D deficiency. I told him I was looking for information about the Plague in Siena. He was expecting a visit from me—thanks to your introduction. He actually bowed (so medieval!) and said he was delighted to provide me with material that would help me “imagine with great clarity the horror of the time.” I guess you’re bound to get some creepy reactions when you specialize in the Black Death. But Ben wasn’t creepy. Maybe someday you’ll come visit me here? I’m missing my old life. Or at least I’m missing you.
Love,
Beatrice
As soon as I started reading about places and dates, it became obvious that I needed a diagram. Referring to multiple sources, I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started to sketch a graphical representation of the Plague’s path through what would eventually become Europe, with Italy’s boot at the center. I hunched over my sketched map, adding different-colored, multidirectional arrows labeled with dates. Fabbri periodically looked in on me courteously. I wondered whether he might have thought I was going to deface original manuscripts with Magic Markers. My chart looked like a kindergartener’s drawing, but it was just what I needed. I have a good memory for many things; dates aren’t one of them.
Over the next few days, I pored over modern epidemiologic treatises on the origins and spread of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria blamed for the epidemic, and learned about the digestive system of the infected flea, the main vector for transmission of the Plague from infected rats to humans. I read medieval chronicles describing the buboes—armpit or groin swellings—that burst, spewing purulence. People spouted blood from every orifice and worsened so rapidly that they might go to sleep well and never wake. I went home with a headache and thrashed around most of the night, imagining lumps in my armpits and wishing the sun would rise. But it made me feel a satisfying connection to Ben, who must have followed these paths many times before me.
On my third day in the archives, I began to feel like an underground animal. I attached myself to a hard wooden chair and took notes furiously. After three hours I got up and looked for Fabbri, but couldn’t find him. I wandered through the aisles of books with faded titles and soon I was deep into unknown territory.
The books got darker and shabbier, and I began to feel an odd sense of unease. I ducked under a low doorframe into a small windowless room. There the feeling got stronger, as if someone were speaking just under the threshold of my hearing. The books were so crowded here that there was hardly space to walk, and nowhere to sit. I could feel my heart accelerating. It’s a library, Beatrice, not a haunted house. Most of the books had no words stamped on their bindings. I picked up a small leather-bound journal, smooth from handling. I closed my eyes, dizzy, and put the book back on the table where it belonged.
I kept one hand on the table until I felt steady, but the book waited to be picked up again, inanimate but irresistible. As I reached for it, I heard a hollow sound in my head, like the echo in a tunnel, and smelled the scent of damp plaster and paint. When I opened the book the faded handwriting seemed unaccountably familiar. I glanced down at the first page and read:
Anno Domini 1343
Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi
Gabri-EH-leh. He would have said it the Italian way.
My good mother, I am told, lived more in the spirit than on the earth. With her final breath she carried me to the threshold of this world, then left me for the angels. I still bear the marks of that loss upon my heart.
I recognized the quiet hum, then the heightening of perception, and then I was flooded by this fourteenth-century writer’s loss. It’s one thing to read the words and sympathize—how tragic, he lost his mother as he was being born, just like me. But I didn’t just think. I felt his grief, despite the fact that he had been dead for centuries. I closed the book but could not put it down. I made my way back to the table I’d huddled over for three days. As I was packing up my things, a voice behind my right shoulder made me gasp. I turned to see Fabbri standing at attention. His head came barely to my chin.
“Dottoressa Trovato, does this book have bearing on your research?”
“It’s very informative, Signore,” I croaked, unaccustomed to speech. “It comes from just the right time period.” I think he expected me to hand him the book for safekeeping, but I didn’t.
“Do you think I could take it home rather than try to get through it here?” Fabbri puffed his cheeks out once, started to speak, stopped himself, then started again. I hoped the internal battle he was having would end in my favor.
“I would hate to see any damage come to it in your hands.”
It was time to name-drop. “I don’t know whether I told you—I’m Beniamino Trovato’s sister. I’m working on a project he left behind when he died.” Fabbri’s jaw dropped.
“You are that Trovato? Of course you know how to care for a manuscript! Under the circumstances I think the archive’s policy can be waived. But might you be so kind as to leave some form of identification?”
I beamed at him and handed him a credit card I wouldn’t miss. “Thank you so much.” He helped me wrap the book carefully, and I headed back out to daylight. I walked home, holding the little book against my chest.
June 11
Dear Nathaniel,
Every night I dream stripes, stripes, stripes. The green and white cathedral has invaded my sleeping life. All this reading is really getting under my skin. Ben’s project has become mine, and everything else fades to insignificance next to it. I’m so absorbed in Siena’s past I feel like I’m actually there . . . or, maybe more accurately, THEN. Maybe I should have been a historian after all—Ben would be so smug if he could see me now.
This Franco Signoretti guy has become more insistent—somehow he got my address and sent me a letter that on the surface looks pleasant but between the lines reads as a threat. Probably an academic competitor who doesn’t want me publishing what Ben dug up. So of course I will do just that, once I figure it out. The other option my lawyers are pushing doesn’t look good either—passing Ben’s research to a local Sienese scholar who looks like he just finished high school. I’m not rolling over for any of these guys.
The guidebooks say Siena’s glory is frozen in time, suspended in the Middle Ages unchanged—all because of the Plague. Can you imagine what it would be like if more than half the inhabitants of New York City died within two years? It might be a lot easier to get a dinner reservation. Sorry, morbid humor. Actually, it’s true—people ate a lot better after the Plague than before, with at least half the population gone. Poor
consolation for losing half your neighbors and family, I know, but at least there was an upside.
I found an interesting book—I think it’s actually a diary—from the 1300s. It’s really bringing the past to life. Don’t you just love primary sources?
Love,
B
I was hanging my long-neglected laundry in the courtyard behind the house when I noticed someone watching me. A little girl sat in the fork of the orange tree, staring silently as I struggled. I couldn’t find any clothespins and the wind kept blowing things off the line, so I’d resorted to tying knots in my bras.
“What are you doing to your underwear?” she asked, and then, “Do you live here?”
It took me a minute to understand her little kid’s version of Italian. “Now I do. This is my brother’s house.”
“Beniamino is your brother?” The girl snagged an orange blossom from a branch above her head and tucked it into her shirt, then scrambled out of the tree. I decided not to discuss death with a child I’d never met.
“Yes.”
“I like him,” the girl said. “He gives me really nice pens.” She paused. “Do you have any pens?”
“I think so,” I said, which apparently satisfied her. She came over and introduced herself. “I’m Felice Guerrini, and I’m five and two-thirds,” she announced. “Want to come have some gelato? We’ve got nocciola.”
I met the Guerrini family over hazelnut ice cream. Felice proudly announced her discovery of Beniamino’s sister, and the Guerrinis welcomed me warmly. Donata, the mother of the family and an art historian at the University of Siena, looked like a figure from a Botticelli painting with her long golden hair tied up in a careless knot, but she acted like an ordinary human being. She pulled me aside to confirm what had happened to Ben, but we postponed further discussion.
The Scribe of Siena Page 3