“You’re here!” Magdalena exclaimed. “I’ve finally found you, sister. I was worried.”
Costanza neither replied nor looked up, her mind intoxicated by the magic signs formed with ink on the rough surface.
A voice emerged from the shadows and slid from the dark corner of the little room toward the intruder. “We’re copying Severino Boezio’s De Consolatione Philosophiae.”
Like the sudden blow of a saber, the fire cast a light on a creature with a twisted body, which seemed to have lost its life force to the devil in a game of dice.
The suffering face, concealed by a neglected beard, the vacant eyes, and the mass of red curls that fell over his brow gave the impression of a bundle of old, scorched clothes that had formerly belonged to a wealthy prince. What made that form even more unusual and unnerving was the bump protruding from the sternum, under the cloth jacket.
“Oh, it’s you, Edgardo d’Arduino—I hadn’t seen you,” Magdalena whispered, trying to conceal her unease.
Although Edgardo, the scribe, had been known at the house for many years, she still wasn’t fully accustomed to his mysterious presence, which she found unsettling. A man of thirty-seven who kept intact a diseased youthfulness. A tile she was unable to fit into the mosaic of her soul.
She harbored conflicting feelings toward him: her respect for the inspiring spirituality he radiated and his gentle manner were sometimes counterbalanced by a sense that this man’s soul was in the grip of deep torment, an open wound the origins of which nobody knew and which, someday, could become infected and spread death all around it.
“Costanza is an attentive and accurate pupil. There’s a delicate touch in her writing that only women possess. She’ll be a model copyist,” Edgardo added calmly, putting the miracle contraption he always carried with him back into a leather case.
“The pupil is a mirror of the master,” Costanza replied.
Only then did the young woman lift the goose quill from the sheet and raise her head, her face lighting up with a faint smile of gratitude.
Magdalena couldn’t help giving a start of anxiety. Never had she seen her so pale and thin. Their mother too had suffered from that same exhausted pallor, but in Costanza’s case, the illness had reached its peak, giving her skin an ivory transparency through which you could see the path of her veins, the relief of her bones, and the texture of her flesh.
A pair of liquid eyes protruded from this evanescent mask adorned with fine hair the color of dried grain.
Notwithstanding all that, the young girl, who had recently turned seventeen, emitted an air so gentle and serene that it would envelop and conquer everyone’s spirit. People were charmed and surprised by her body language, the warmth of her voice, and the tenderness flowing out of her eyes.
Ever since, left alone after their father’s death, Costanza had been welcomed into their home, Magdalena lived in a permanent state of anxiety about her sister’s health. When she herself had arrived from Bruges, in the far north, she had found it difficult to get used to the customs and the climate of this city risen from the swamps, suspended over the waters, which every day fought hard to snatch land from the marshes and canals that ate away at everything, including your will to live.
When she thought she was succumbing, Costanza had found salvation in her curiosity for learning and writing; thus, with stubbornness and after much insistence, she had managed to gain the right to dedicate herself to an art to which very few women were allowed access.
Tommaso Grimani, a rich and powerful merchant belonging to the influential class, had agreed, albeit reluctantly, to deprive the crews aboard his ships of Edgardo d’Arduino, the administrator scribe, and keep him ashore so that he would teach his sister-in-law.
“Honestly, what do you think?” Costanza held out the parchment to Magdalena, who took it closer to the lamp.
“It looks very tidy, the signs are clean and sharp, but you know very well that unfortunately I can’t read.” She looked up at Edgardo, almost as though she held him somewhat responsible for not having included her in that fascinating, inaccessible journey.
“If you wanted to, I’m sure you’d learn quickly,” Costanza said. “It’s not hard.”
Edgardo nodded, thereby signaling he would be ready to teach her too.
“No, it’s too late.” Magdalena regretted arousing her own hopes. “Besides, I wouldn’t have the time. I have too many chores, the responsibility for our home is such . . . ” She sighed. “In any case, Tommaso wouldn’t allow it.”
She leaned toward her sister, and as though afraid to damage the perfection of that absolute pallor, gave her face a light caress.
“My heart is full of joy that you, sister, should become the family scholar.”
A loud knock echoed through the small study. A boat was mooring in the narrow canal. There was a screeching of ropes. A hastily abandoned oar rolled on the bottom of the boat. Someone leaped from one bench to the other. There were hasty footsteps.
“What’s this racket?” Magdalena rushed to the steps, followed by Edgardo and Costanza.
They found themselves facing a frightened-looking, glassy-eyed young man, covered in mud.
“Alvise, where have you been? Your mother needed you,” Magdalena said, annoyed. “When my husband returns, I will tell him how you behaved.”
“Forgive me, Signora, something’s happened. I got the fright of my life.” He stood there, mouth open, looking breathless.
Edgardo intervened. “Come, tell us.”
“I went crabbing and stopped in a patch of shallow water.”
“And?” Edgardo said.
“And . . . And . . . instead of crabs I caught a human—a woman, in fact.”
“A woman?” Magdalena said.
“A beautiful woman.”
Costanza approached the boy. “Was she alive?”
He shook his head. “No, no, God bless her soul, she was dead, she’d been dead a long time, or at least so it seemed . . . except that later—how can I put it?—the lagoon gave her up again and she rose once more, perfect, as though preserved in brine. She was even wearing a little glass necklace. Alive and as beautiful as a young virgin.”
The young man looked at Costanza and gave her an apologetic smile.
They had all fallen silent. Everybody was studying Alvise’s face, unsure as to how to interpret what he had just said: whether it was the imaginings of a fool, the hallucinations of a drunk, or the tall tales of a youngster.
Magdalena broke the silence. “So what did you do?”
“I ran like a bat out of hell and went straight to tell the gastald. I don’t want people to think I’m crazy.”
“Alright, alright,” Magdalena said abruptly. “Go to your mother now. It’s past Vespers.”
Alvise gave a little bow, stole another glance at Costanza, and was about to run away when Edgardo stopped him. “Wait. Where did you find this beautiful woman?”
For a moment, Alvise seemed not to understand, then he lit up. “In the new marshes, the ones that came up in front of the mouth of the Medoacus. Where there was once the wonderful island of Metamauco.”
Magdalena and Costanza had already walked away, so neither of them noticed anything. Only Alvise saw Edgardo’s expression change, his face ravaged by a spasm, his body crumpling and shaking.
The young man thought the scribe was about to collapse, so much so that he put his arm out, ready to support him. “Are you alright, Signore?”
Edgardo did not reply. He was panting, a faint hiss escaping his lips. His mind was being dragged down a vortex, to the seas of a distant past, tossing him about among recollections he wanted to erase. All it took was that name, Metamauco, to reawaken within him a boundless sense of longing.
“May I go?” Alvise asked.
Edgardo could only muster the strength to make a gesture with his
hand, then he closed his eyes in the hope that his memory might dissolve the dreadful image he had been carrying around for over ten years. A woman’s body emerging from the sands of the muddy sea. A ghost returning.
III.
THE APOTHECARY’S SHOP
He couldn’t get to sleep. His mind was possessed by the image of that woman who’d emerged intact from the depths of the lagoon. One question had been haunting him since he’d heard Alvise’s story: was it her? Was it the only woman he’d ever loved, who’d vanished in the waves during the storm?
If the body that had appeared amid the ruins of Metamauco was that of his beloved Kallis, he would have solid proof of her death: this would set him free and, after so many years, allow him to cast away the ghost eating at his soul.
But what if this wasn’t Kallis’s body? It could be anyone, a stranger; after all, so many people had perished in the cataclysm that had erased the island of Metamauco from the lagoon. In that case, he could carry on hoping, dreaming that she was still alive.
And yet wasn’t this possibility even more devastating? It would keep him chained to the past, and take away all desire to live, all hope of picturing a future. The diseased thought that had never left him surfaced again. Once before, in Bobbio, while he was still a clerk, he’d considered putting an end to his torment with death.
He turned over in his bed, trying to banish this nightmare. The boards under the straw mattress emitted a grim shriek. The bells of the church of San Leonardo rang Compline, the final prayer before nighttime.
Edgardo thought back with longing on all the years he’d spent at the abbey before relinquishing the habit. How calm were his days then, punctuated by prayer and his work as a copyist. Everything made sense, everything followed a higher order that was now irremediably lost. Now, his soul wandered through a hostile universe, unable to find a glimmer of light, tormented by remorse.
He threw off his damp blankets covered in mold and picked up the clothes strewn over an old trunk that, together with a worn lectern, made up the sparse furniture in the loft. He was about to reach out for the leather case he always kept nearby, but stopped. No point. He wouldn’t need it.
He’d promised himself over and over never to give in to temptation again, but the weight oppressing him was becoming unbearable.
He quickly got dressed.
The house was plunged in silence. Nobody would notice anything. He went downstairs in the dark: he knew the way. Down in the internal courtyard, he walked up to the front door. There was a creaking sound by the well. He froze and waited a moment before pulling open the bolt. He heard more rustling, followed by a dry, wheezing breath that grew closer.
The back of his neck was soaked in cold sweat. Finally, he sighed with relief. It was a piglet wandering about undisturbed, perhaps after escaping from an enclosure in the campo* behind the church of Saint Ermagora and Saint Fortunato.
As soon as he breathed in the soggy night air he immediately felt better. The sky was low and black with rain.
Turning his back on Ca’ Grimani he made for Rivoalto*. It wasn’t far, he’d taken this route so many times, yet he had to walk with care. The calli had turned into rivers of slime, the rotting planks of the bridges would split under every step, the support poles would sway, shifted by the canal currents that had swollen during the winter. He hadn’t brought any light: it was safer to walk around unseen. Not a single glow came from the surrounding homes—wretched, single-story, little wooden huts. He was immersed in a thick, dark liquid that slowed down one’s movements and clouded the mind.
Every night, Venice would turn into a sleeping octopus, cloaked in a huge jet of ink.
It was only the surrounding sounds that reminded him that he was going through a stretch of real life and not a nightmare. Ever since his eyesight had become so unreliable, his ability to pick up even the softest noises had sharpened.
He walked along a canal, allowing himself to be led by the swishing of the waves lashing against the bank, followed the rustling of a bed of reeds, and realized he’d arrived at a campo that, owing to the dirt track, had withstood the devastation of the rain better, because he heard that the gurgle of his footsteps in the slime had given way to a more echoey, more solid sound.
When he thought he’d already reached Rivoalto without encountering any danger, the black world around him was suddenly filled with a deep, dark cry, and a sharp pain pierced his chest like an incandescent needle. A powerful scream that enveloped the whole of Venice, echoing from district to district. The torment of a soul that doesn’t want to leave its body, he thought, the sound of life’s desperate struggle against death.
He hid in an archway, waiting for the evil of the world to calm down, and for anxiety—his constant companion—to allow him to resume his journey.
Silence returned. He left his shelter. After all that, he had arrived. Just a few more steps and he would reach oblivion: torments, memories, and ghosts would be erased, forgotten, at least for a while.
The front door of the Crowned Wolf was shut, but Edgardo knew how to be let in even at this time of night.
He picked up a pebble and threw it at the planks covering the second-floor windows. No result. He tried again with a larger stone. In the end, he heard noises coming from inside, a creaking sound, and a shadow looked out.
“Who in hell is coming to break my balls at this time of night?” It was a deep, fat voice, like a rumble of thunder.
“It’s Edgardo. Open up.”
“It’s you, Signore, God bless your soul.”
“Leave God alone and open up, Sabbatai. Hurry up, I need you.”
“It’s impossible, Compline rang ages ago, it’s forbidden, Signore, we can’t.”
Edgardo’s tone brooked no refusal. “You’d better open up, apothecary, or I’ll kick the door down.”
There was some rough grumbling, like hazelnuts shuffled together, then the moan of a bolt, and a ray of light slid out through the lower edge of the front door.
“Quick! Quick, Signore! Before someone sees you!”
Edgardo bent down and slipped inside. As always when he went into the apothecary’s shop, he had to defend himself against the attacks of the shadows of pottery vases, phials, and stills that, from the shelves, like a fragile army, seemed to want to assault the visitor at any moment.
He was enveloped by a disorderly multitude of vapors and scents that took his breath away.
The essences, tinctures, and herbs that were calmly resting inside bags hanging from the beams in the ceiling gave off fumes that had totally impregnated the walls, counter, and even the bare floor, intoxicating the mind of every customer.
The acidic fragrance of aloe vera, mixed with the tangy whiff of black mustard, was battling with the spicy aroma of ginger, diluted in the cool field of saffron and poppy.
After a little while, Edgardo’s torpor dissipated, and he approached the counter behind which the apothecary had meanwhile sought refuge.
“How can I help you, Signore? Do you need a purge, a pack, or a poultice?” he asked in a unctuous voice.
“Don’t play games, Sabbatai, you know perfectly well what it is I want.”
“At this time of night? But Signore, in the name of all the saints, it’s a concoction that requires time, knowledge, and skill.”
Edgardo leaned toward the apothecary, whose head only was visible behind the counter, and poured out a few coins in front of his face. “Perhaps these will help you find your skill.”
Sabbatai considered the money with a sideways glance. “You can’t buy skill, but in the case of time and will . . . Come back early tomorrow morning, and you’ll have what you yearn for.”
Edgardo lost his temper and grabbed Sabbatai’s hand, which was already sneakily picking up the coins.
“Tomorrow’ll be too late, I’ll have been eaten alive by nightmares by then.” Edgardo stared
into the cerulean-blue eyes of the malformed man. “Nature hasn’t been kind to either of us, so let’s at least help each other.”
A soundless laugh that revealed a set of horse-like teeth shone on the shopkeeper’s face.
“Even put together we wouldn’t make a proper man. And, in all honesty, I’d rather keep my dwarf’s body and big rod than have an average body with a hump right in front in full view.”
“Don’t be insolent, Sabbatai.” Edgardo let go of his hand. “So?”
The apothecary sighed. “Alright, God give me strength, wait here.”
Edgardo heard some bustling and saw the man’s head run down the counter. Then, after a little leap, the rest of the body appeared.
It looked even smaller in the faint light. Sabbatai was Venice’s most singular dwarf. Not just because of his height, just over three feet, like so many other dwarves, but because of the disproportion between the head and the rest of his body, as well as the structure of his face.
The body, arms, and legs were still those of a six-year-old child, while the head had grown into that of a thirty-year-old adult.
His oblong, misshapen face emphasized a series of deformities that were, in their way, unique: there was a large growth hanging over his left eye, like a ripe plum, that significantly impaired his vision, his nose was retracted like a frightened snail, and his mouth, framed by a wormy beard, formed a permanent laugh produced by unnaturally swollen lips that forced him to display his large, sparse teeth.
Sabbatai went down a narrow corridor and vanished into the backroom. Edgardo knew of the existence of the secret room but had never been lucky enough to visit it. He knew that back there the apothecary made up his concoctions, prepared the medicines prescribed by physicians, and shielded from curious eyes the equipment necessary for complex procedures aimed at producing remedies for ailments.
After what felt to Edgardo like an interminable wait, Sabbatai reappeared, holding a cinnabar-colored glass urn closed with a lid.
The Apothecary's Shop Page 2