The Book of Madness and Cures

by Regina O'Melveny

  “Oh.” I laughed uneasily. “He often did that at home, working out his ideas aloud. Though it troubled my mother, so that she put cotton wool in her ears. ‘What decent man converses with the air?’ she’d say. It never bothered me, because that is how I knew him. Maybe I thought all fathers did that. Didn’t he speak to himself when he stayed with you?”

  “Hmm, well, since my room’s on the other side of the house, I suppose I didn’t hear him. But he was never unsociable.”

  “Maybe he and Dr. Fuchs had a disagreement.” I didn’t want to believe that my father had gone austere or, worse, bereft of reason.

  Dr. Cardano opened the top letter, one of the first ones I’d received, and began to read it aloud, as if to read it silently was a breach of privacy.

  Dear Gabriella,

  The decline of the body is certainly a sorrowful thing, as you mentioned in your last letter, especially in the elderly poor, for it is also the decline of the will. This may terrify me more than anything else, for I have found myself capable of bearing pain, but what if I were stranded without recourse to affect my condition? What if my family and means were taken by the plague? I have seen many a starving old wayfarer blank-faced with hunger, hunched in a ditch, hand stuck out like a stick of wood for alms. The eyes of such a person are no longer the eyes of a grandmother or a grandfather but rather the ravaged sockets of permanent grief or hard rage. I fear them, for it is beyond me to help, but for a small bit of bread. The beggar may be the god in disguise, as the Greeks once believed. If so, the gods are everywhere among us, gaunt and withering . . .

  He went on, but I no longer heard the words. I’d read them often enough at home in my room, trying to evoke his company. The fire spent itself and the room grew dark. Outside, the sunlight bled from the red-tiled roofs and left them ashen.

  “. . . Tübingen, December twelfth, 1580.” Dr. Cardano stopped reading. Olmina finished my hem.

  “Gabriella?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Why take this trip to foreign cities to find your father after all these years?”

  “If I could persuade him to return, things would greatly improve for us. My mother frets beyond reason. My life in Venetia is a prison. I can no longer practice medicine there, and my father’s last letter proved a fine gadfly, stinging me to change things as they are.”

  “I’m an old fool, but I ask you, is this really the best course to follow?”

  “Ah, you’ve been troubled by the worry in my father’s letter. ‘Of what use is grief?’ he used to ask in times of disquiet. ‘It’s for holding each other,’ I said as a girl of ten. It can bring us to that calm when we know we’re not alone, that affection that can even bind strangers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I find solace in every stranger I help with my art of physick.”

  “Oh, Gabriella, that is dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “Because as you well know, there are those you can’t help.”

  “But one must try.”

  “The doctor is not a sister of charity, but a scientist, and what you want—even if it’s communion with another—is irrelevant.”

  “Not communion, Dr. Cardano, but recognition.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of pain, brokenheartedness. The more we can openly bear, the more we can cure.”

  “I heartily disagree. We must keep the proper distance, my dear.”

  Olmina sighed loudly with disapproval.

  “What is it, Olmina?”

  “Well, I’m no doctor and no educated person.” She shot Dr. Cardano a glance that verged on audacity, and I was glad the fire burned low. Maybe he didn’t see it. Years ago, Dr. Cardano had reprimanded me for allowing—and even encouraging—my servants to speak freely. My father never seemed to care much about it, though he didn’t interfere with his friend’s reproach.

  Olmina continued, “Sometimes you folk make too much of a thing that’s simple.”

  “So what do you say, my smart maid?” asked Dr. Cardano.

  “I’m no maid, to begin with.” I held my breath at that statement, but Dr. Cardano only narrowed his eyes. Olmina continued, “Smart in what way, I’m not sure. But if you ask me what use is grief, I’d say it’s got no use. There’s no mincing of doctors or ranting of frocks at the pulpit that’ll convince me otherwise. We don’t know the use. And that’s why, Gabriella, I think your father kept asking the question.” She looked at me sadly. “It burdened him. I like the answer you gave as a young one best. We may as well hold each other.” She hugged her belly for emphasis and stared back at the fire.

  Dr. Cardano shrugged and raised an eyebrow in mild disapproval, though after all these years he was familiar with Olmina’s homely wisdom.

  “You may not like my methods, Dr. Cardano, but I must pursue my vocation as much as I pursue my father.”

  “You were always headstrong, Gabriella. Why should I think you altered now?” He smiled fondly, then lapsed back into his own thoughts, creasing his brow.

  Lorenzo poked his head in the room a moment later. Noting our solemn faces, he said, “I don’t want to disturb your cheer, but supper’s on the table, and I for one am going to eat!”

  CHAPTER 4

  A Tether

  After a week as Dr. Cardano’s guest, I broached the subject of departure at midday dinner. When one has waited a long time, I reasoned, suddenly one can wait no longer. Even the small delays prove intolerable. Dr. Strozzi, a peer of my father’s, joined us for dinner as well. I turned to address Dr. Cardano at the end of the long oak table. “Have you heard any news of snowmelt in the high passes?”

  “Hmm.” Dr. Cardano mulled the question over, frowning a little.

  “Are the oxen drawing logs on the roads through Bressanone yet?” I persisted, for that is how they test for avalanches, and the treacherous snows had been heavy this year.

  Dr. Cardano glanced at me sternly, holding a spoonful of pottage midair. “Surely you’re not thinking of leaving already?”

  I stared down at my bowl, at the peas and beans in their thick mess. “I must cross through the mountains within a few days, so we can reach Tübingen—one of my father’s early stopovers, I believe—before the bitter weather comes. The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll find him.”

  Professor Strozzi stared at me from across the table, the scowl lines on either side of his down-turned mouth a permanent sign of disapproval, so that in fact it was difficult to tell what he really thought. I recalled that the first time I’d seen him (I was a child of only five or six) I’d dubbed him the Statue, for he resembled one of the formidable patrician busts that lined the corridors of the University of Padua.

  To my amazement, he said, “But the moon is waxing, and we’ll have to tie you to the quince tree like your father!”

  Dr. Cardano shot him a look of such rebuke that it could’ve been a slap.

  “Tied to what?” I was sure I’d misheard him.

  “Nothing, my dear, nothing,” muttered Dr. Cardano, swiftly turning toward the kitchen and exclaiming, “Ah, here’s the next course—bread, wine, and company makes even fickle Fortune smile!” One of the servant girls carried in a fresh basket of bread, which saturated the air with rosemary, while the other girl brought an egg erbolata studded with parsley and flowers.

  “Ah, celestial dish!” squealed Professor Strozzi, whose enthusiasm for astronomy was only surpassed by his gluttony. “A constellation worthy of Cassiopeia’s table, though the queen thought a bit too much of herself!” he said, eying me across the table. “The last time I saw you, Gabriella, you were only a wisp of a girl at twelve, hanging on your father’s every gesture!”

  I ignored his gibe. “I’d like to know why he was tied to the quince. Was that some practical joke?”

  “Oh no, no,” the professor mumbled uncomfortably, shifting in his chair.

  Dr. Cardano intervened. “Leave it alone, dear girl. The limonia chicken is here!”

 
“I just want—”

  “Listen to Dr. Cardano,” chided Professor Strozzi. A tiny bit of egg hung from his chin as he hunched forward.

  “I just want a simple answer—why was my father tied to a tree?”

  “The only thing that could subdue him,” Professor Strozzi offered dryly. “He was on a tether, you know.”

  Dr. Cardano slammed both hands on the table. “The chicken grows cold and the boiled sturgeon is here. We’ll not speak another word till we’ve enjoyed our food!”

  “A tether?” I felt my voice rising incredulously.

  The professor nodded and began sopping up the garlic sturgeon sauce with a small chunk of bread. Some of his teeth were missing and so he masticated very slowly, though with evident gusto. A distressed Dr. Cardano held the edge of the table as if it would leap away from him.

  Uneasily I recalled my father’s rages—especially the moods that erupted out of nowhere in the months before he left. There was also the rumor whispered by my mother, which I’d ignored for years, since she invented tales for her own amusement. Yet I began to question whether some truth shot through this rumor like a bright thread in monotonous silk. As a young girl I’d overheard her speaking in low tones to a friend near the open drawing room window. I played in the courtyard just below, out of sight, arranging a fleet of small wooden ships Lorenzo had carved for me on the sea of gravel.

  “Well, it’s no wonder his wits have gone astray. You know about my Cipriot mother-in-law? She told me in a letter that she hung silver spoons from the twisted tree in their courtyard against the evil eye. Against the moon. Her husband railed against her, for more often than not, the spoons would be gone in the morning.”

  “How could that be?” asked the friend.

  “Oh, I guess the young men—including Bartolo, before he was my husband, of course—got a firm hold in the wall, climbed into the ancient mastic tree, and pocketed what they could reach. Later he broke nearly every window in the house, throwing pilfered spoons at the moon’s reflection.”

  “But why did he do that?”

  “I don’t know, he was angry!”

  “At what?”

  “ ‘Too many moons,’ he said. Watching him. He was drowning. Can you imagine? He said that in recollection to me. And after that incident he made himself scarce. He caught a ship to Venetia and soon began his studies in Padua. My father arranged the marriage after he became a doctor. A young man of such promise . . . I thought him handsome even if fanciful. His foreignness, his strangeness, was attraction.”

  I’d always dismissed the family madness as colorful hearsay. But I was also troubled by another possibility hinted at by my mother. When does fancy become lunacy? And what of this tether? Had these men fabricated this story to harm my father out of jealousy? Not Dr. Cardano, surely. Nor even Professor Strozzi, who lived solely for stars, planets, and supper. It was something else.

  For the moment, I decided to bide my time, and like the astronomer, I ate with a kind of vengeance, as if food could sate my apprehension—tart chicken, sturgeon boiled in wine, followed by pungent fennel-and-onion salad. Dr. Cardano didn’t pursue the subject of my journey or my father. I would speak to him alone later.

  After we finished eating, I stood from the table as the gentlemen relaxed in postures of satiation. “I believe I’ll take a walk in the famous garden of cures,” I announced.

  “The sun will overpower you,” Dr. Cardano warned, “and most certainly bring on dyspepsia and an ill temper.”

  “I’m already feeling a little ill tempered.”

  Dr. Cardano rose. “Young woman, your father would not approve. You should be taking your repose like your sensible servants.” He stood in the doorway that opened onto the inner courtyard, where the terra-cotta walls and paving bricks radiated heat. We could hear Olmina’s cheese-grater snoring in the kitchen and Lorenzo’s frightening gasps outside as he slept, stretched on a bench under the stout, gnarled quince tree.

  “My father is not here,” I reminded him plainly. “Besides, I have a great desire to see the garden again, to observe the medicinals in full leaf and bloom. And let’s not forget, for those who are napping, that onions and garlic bring on nightmares.”

  Dr. Cardano patted my wrist with his brittle hand, a brief gesture of conciliation, and then lifted his palm to his mouth to suppress a small belch. “You must see the exotics that have arrived from the New World. The patate, the curious sunflowers, and the tomatoes.” Here he paused for a few moments as if he had fallen into reflection. “If you lived here, Gabriella, the garden of cures would always be at your disposal.”

  Dr. Cardano hinted at his desire for marriage (a winter groom–spring bride affair, though I was swiftly approaching my summer) in nearly every letter he sent to me. “Ah, and if you hadn’t guzzled wine, you’d know better than to suggest such a foolish thing to me again,” I gently rebuffed him.

  “I won’t accompany you, then,” he said contritely, his long face reminding me of some great flatfish. “Giannetta will attend you.”

  “Wait.” I lowered my voice. “What’s this about my father being tied to the quince tree?”

  Dr. Cardano looked away. “Your father hid his strange moods from you well, Gabriella, although it wasn’t so troubling early on. As he grew older it . . . worsened . . . and perhaps that is also part of the reason he left you.”

  I pulled him into the corridor, away from the prying eyes of the others. “So this is how you’re trying to dissuade me from my search, by playing up my mother’s gossip about the Mondinis in Ciprus? A clouded mind does not mean madness. Maybe it’s some tangled grief. Or maybe my father suffers an undisciplined heart. We don’t know.” This last statement startled me.

  “Oh, Gabriella, I know very little about your father’s family and their history, for your father never wished to speak of it. And yes, I’d heard from your mother once that a certain branch of the family there tended toward madness, though she never divulged the manner of their affliction. But this I know,” Dr. Cardano said. “Your father suffered intemperance of the moon. It . . .” He waved his hands as he searched for the right words. “It loosened his mind as it grew full. Often he planned his visits here during that time. Can it be that you never noticed that his absences began with the increase of the hunchback moon? That is when we bound him to the tree, to prevent him doing violence to himself. Or others.”

  I gasped. “I don’t believe you!”

  The doctor blanched and promptly turned away, his head sunken upon his shoulders as he retreated down the marble corridor toward his sleeping quarters.

  But I was unrepentant and could not bring myself to follow him. Instead I stepped out onto the hot cobbles of the street, striding toward the garden in the thick, humid light. I didn’t wait for the servant girl Giannetta (ignoring the custom that a woman must never walk alone in the streets) but yanked my straw hat onto my head and hastily tied it under my chin.

  In an empty corner of the Hortus Botanicus, beneath an ancient chestnut tree, I found a cool stone bench. Burdened with the heat, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the trunk. The geometer Daniele Barbaro had designed this garden with such perfection, circles within squares within circles, the whole earth and its four directions compassed, to mend the agitation and chaos of the world. I breathed in pennyroyal, dittany, rosemary, meadowsweet, mountain savory, and lemon balm—all excellent for calming the spirits.

  Giannetta appeared after a short while, her flaxen hair pulled back in two long braids tied together at the middle of her back. She greeted me with a quick curtsy, then in the smallest voice asked permission to join me on the bench, which I granted. We were the only two in the garden. Though I doubted that she would divulge anything, I asked, “How did you find my father the last time you saw him, my dear?”

  “Oh!” She turned the eyes of a startled animal toward me. “I can’t say, signorina. I was so much younger and . . .”

  “Don’t be frightened. We’ll keep it between you a
nd me.”

  She stared down at the petit-point work she’d brought with her, colored silks on a linen book bag for one of Dr. Cardano’s herbals. The half-completed embroidery showed a woman gathering herbs that towered above her all out of proportion —great trees of rosemary, fronds of anise, copses of basil. “I think he was a very sad man. I saw him pacing in his room one night when I brought him his tea, and he said that he longed for his own city. I didn’t say anything because it’s not my place, you understand, signorina, though I wondered why he’d leave it, then. That’s when he also mentioned you.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said, ‘I once had a daughter who . . . ,’ but then he didn’t want to say any more, and he seemed upset. He gestured that I should leave him.”

  “Did he ever say more, to Dr. Cardano, perhaps?” My voice remained calm, though my stomach clenched.

  “I’m not the sort who listens at doors. But sometimes I heard them speaking about things I didn’t understand. Mercury and flasks and fire, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry, Giannetta, I’m not going to lay blame on you. If you think of anything else, you can tell me, yes?”

  “Oh yes, signorina. You know, I never had a father, so I think you must be very lucky.” And after that, as if embarrassed by saying so much, Giannetta fell silent and turned diligently to her sewing.

  Lucky, I thought, cautiously turning the word around in my mind as if it were a barbed thing. The rhythmic clicks of her needle against the thimble, and the taut pull as it pierced the cloth, joined the sputtering fountain and the monotonous tick and whir of insects to lull me to sleep.

  I stand at the edge of an island. The rushes hiss warnings, shhh, shhh, shhh. Venetia floats before me like a dead stickle fish, her spines become toppled bell towers, cathedrals, the pitched roofs of the Ospedale degli Incurabili; all these protrude at odd angles from her bloated form. I wade through sedge grass along the shore. The edges of my sopping gown trail me with small delayed ripples as I search for something in the dull green water.