The Apothecary's Shop

by Roberto Tiraboschi

  He woke up at matins, a leftover of the habit he’d had as a cleric at Bobbio Abbey, and got ready for the event.

  He imagined a large crowd forming in the gardens outside San Geminiano in order to see the body of the virgin of the beads on display, and wanted to be one of the first in line.

  A blanket of pitch still shrouded the contours of the huts, the profiles of the belfries, and the edges of the boats moored along the canals. The only sound escorting him was the viscous swish of his footsteps in the mud, which had been softened by hoarfrost.

  His mind was clouded, as though affected by the opium vapors. Consequently, when he approached the Rivoalto, he didn’t immediately notice the horrifying spectacle before him.

  In a niche next to Santissimi Apostoli, he noticed, faintly lit by an oil lamp, a dark, hairy mass streaked in bright ruby-red. Over it he could make out a form, leaning forward, with unclear contours.

  A slimy sound was coming from the creature, like a thousand leeches at work on the carcass of a skinned cat.

  Edgardo drew a few steps closer. What he saw made him think he was still immersed in the nightmare of an endless night.

  On the ground, an animal was lying on its side, possibly a bull or an ox; the belly was ripped open, showing the bowels. A little farther was the head, which had been cleanly severed from the body, its sad eyes staring at him.

  Hunched over the deep wound, her head plunged into the belly, into the intestines, Edgardo recognized a woman’s form, even though it was hidden by a dark tunic. She was avidly digging out the animal’s tripes and, after tearing out shreds of meat and insides, she was lifting them to her mouth, swallowing them with an eerie sound, like the sucking of a whirlpool.

  What made the apparition incomprehensible at first sight was a kind of unreal extension behind the woman.

  Behind her, as though generated by her back, rose a kind of bush, made of branches and boughs, through which you could make out wide areas of pink skin and a pair of hairy legs.

  The bush man had lifted the woman’s dress, exposing a large, white backside, and, his penis inserted into the ravenous creature’s cleft, was pushing and charging into it over and over, forcing the woman’s head to sink deeper and deeper into the animal’s belly with every thrust, although this didn’t seem to bother in any way the God-fearing woman who, unperturbed, carried on sucking a piece of bowel full of shit.

  Repelled, Edgardo moved away, leaving the night shadows to repossess that monstrous vision.

  What was happening to his beloved Venice? Her morals seemed to be degenerating by the day, and perhaps even darker times awaited him.

  Drawing nearer San Marco, walking down the long Calle delle Merzerie*, he came across other extraordinary-looking individuals. Lying on the ground, in the mud, their faces were covered with masks of pigs, stags, and bears. They weren’t disguises manufactured by skilled craftsmen but real animal heads emptied of brains, with two holes in the place of eyes. Many were snoring loudly, and others were regurgitating food and wine, leaving no doubt that they were drunk.

  Only then did Edgardo realize why this deforming epidemic seemed to be taking possession of the city.

  Shrovetide had started, the period preceding Lent, when celebrations, disguises, dances, music, and abuse of wine and food grew out of all proportion, condoning all carnal excesses.

  Even though the celebrations had started right after Saint Stephen’s Day, during those so-called Carnival days the entire population seemed prey to an uncontrollable desire to transgress every rule. Perhaps in this Year of Our Lord, since Venice was still without a doge and afflicted by great scarcity, the desire for excess had reached previously unknown heights, so much so that, rather than joy, it suggested a deep sense of despair and mourning, like wanting to enjoy oneself while waiting for death.

  Edgardo reached the brolo and walked across the Batario canal. Outside the church of San Geminiano several people had already gathered, waiting to see the remains of the virgin.

  He got in line. Next to him, a wrinkled, bony old woman with a face made up like that of a young girl sported a swollen, disproportionately large, fake belly that made her look like a goatskin. She was laughing boisterously, showing her gray, toothless gums.

  The time was drawing near. As soon as the gates opened, the truth about the virgin’s identity would finally be revealed, and his torments would cease.

  Once again, Edgardo asked himself what feeling dominated his heart. His mind was wandering from one thought to another, and the wait was becoming increasingly unbearable.

  He felt deeply offended by the jokes and disrespectful comments bystanders were making about the virgin’s face, treating her like a curiosity at a fair, displayed to the people on the occasion of the Carnival.

  The line was growing, and didn’t just contain ordinary people but also noblemen and ladies accompanied by their female servants.

  In all that confusion, Edgardo had no trouble recognizing, concealed under the large, ruby-colored cloak, the imposing figure of Magister Abella; she was standing in line, just like everybody else.

  He watched her attentively, wondering why she was there, looking all innocent, with a pure smile. She turned to look in his direction, and Edgardo tried to hide behind the pregnant old woman. Too late. She had recognized him.

  Quicker than the time it would have taken a frightened lizard to find shelter in the crack of a tree, she appeared before him, imposing, ruddy, bursting with energy to the point of being irritating.

  “I never imagined I’d find a learned scribe standing in line since dawn in order to enjoy the kind of spectacle one sees at a fair,” Abella said, taunting him.

  “I never imagined I’d find an illustrious physician among all these people in the mood for celebrating, either,” Edgardo replied. “In any case, I hear that it’s not just some monstrous invention held up to be ridiculed, but a real corpse that has remained intact for many years.”

  “Yes, I heard that rumor too. That’s why I’m here. My profession demands that I study all extraordinary events.” Abella stared him straight in the eye. “How about you?”

  Edgardo shook his curly head, clearly embarrassed, naturally unable to tell the truth. “Simple curiosity,” he stammered.

  The Magister swelled her cheeks and emitted a kind of whistle. “So you’ve given up searching for your Costanza, if you find the time to go after a simple oddity.”

  The insinuation made him flare up. “I haven’t forgotten Costanza in the least, and you know that very well. I’m convinced she’s held prisoner in the Alexandria merchant’s house. I must find a way of exploring it again, more carefully.”

  “Without my help,” Abella said.

  “I haven’t asked you.”

  At that moment, a shudder ran through the crowd, there was confusion, then a group quickly thronged the front door of the church, outside which two soldiers of the doge had appeared alongside the parish priest.

  In the middle of all that bustle, Edgardo saw the deformed, warty head of Sabbatai, who, taking advantage of his height, was sneaking between people’s legs and reaching the front position, next to the entrance.

  The soldiers pushed back the throng with sticks, allowing the parish priest to open the door just enough to let one onlooker in at a time.

  The virgin was being displayed in the crypt beneath the high altar at the end of the nave.

  Just a few more minutes, and Edgardo would see the body.

  He let himself be tugged, pushed, and crushed, and finally stepped inside San Geminiano. Intimidated by the sacred nature of the place, the line was now moving slowly and silently, as in a procession.

  Edgardo reached the altar and went down the narrow steps that led to the crypt.

  The stone walls were oozing cold moisture and a smell of diseased flesh. Once underground, he stopped.

  A circle
of people of all ages was standing around an open stone sarcophagus, supported by four pillars.

  Everybody’s eyes were glued to the tomb and a spectral silence was infecting the air.

  Edgardo went forward. For a moment, he felt his legs go weak, and he closed his eyes. Finally, he would know the truth . . .

  Trembling, he leaned forward and opened his eyes.

  An icy wind froze his heart: the sarcophagus was empty.

  XVII.

  CARNEM LEVARE

  She’s resurrected!”

  “Go to hell, you fool, she was never dead, she didn’t even smell.”

  “Listen to me, you ass, it’s a well-known fact that during Carnival, corpses escape from coffins and go around playing tricks.”

  The voices interrupted one another, each putting forward its theory, but the one certainty was that the virgin’s body had disappeared.

  In addition to the fantastical hypotheses circulating among the people, the authorities were inclined to believe that the corpse had been purloined overnight by some criminal, through the gratings that were found uprooted, even though the reason for such an act could not yet be fathomed.

  An act that, per se, was not all that serious, since the girl was a total stranger and didn’t belong to any noble family; what was unacceptable was the offence to the authorities, the obvious proof that, without respect, one could mock power and its representatives.

  In addition to this, the very rumors that the display of the corpse aimed to contradict were growing: that the young woman was a demon capable of being born again, possessing supernatural powers able to deeply undermine the government of Venice, already deprived of a doge and afflicted by serious scarcity.

  All this prompted the Great Council, and Tommaso Grimani was among the most adamant to order that all military forces should be used to find the virgin of the beads.

  So they began to comb every district, beat the canals, check every kind of boat, and search houses and shelters.

  This event also caused concern in the Grimani family: another worrying, obscure sign in addition to those that had already appeared. As a representative of the authorities, Tommaso took the outrage personally, and Magdalena couldn’t help but look for a connection between her sister Costanza’s disappearance and that of the Metamauco girl’s body.

  The person who suffered most in body and mind was Edgardo, numbed as though he’d been in armed battle with a band of barbarians.

  The illusion of finally having done with the past, and the hope of touching his Kallis’s beloved face one last time, had vanished.

  Edgardo had built around that presence a dream of rebirth that had been dissolved in the blink of an eye. He was ashamed of himself, he, the former cleric, a skilled and learned copyist, carried away by the fantasy that the virgin of the beads had come back to life and was wandering through the streets of Venice.

  Was there any truth in the age-old superstition that during Carnival some of the dead came out of their graves and walked among the living? And if that was Kallis’s body, why had she returned? Was it to see him one last time? To atone for the terrible sin that had stained her soul? To ask for forgiveness?

  He could not believe his mind could indulge in such thoughts. The dead do not come back. Only Our Lord was resurrected.

  Even so, while roaming near the Alexandria merchant’s house, hoping to detect any suspect goings-on, he harbored the illusion of miraculously coming across Kallis’s ghost.

  Celebrations were at their height and the city was prey to all kinds of excesses.

  Outside the convent of San Lorenzo, his attention was caught by a strange company that was coming forward, dancing along the bank.

  A monstrous creature, half goat, half human, was leading the group, his head hidden inside the muzzle of a ram with antlers, wearing heavy hooves over his feet. He was holding a long stick at the extremities of which hung a bag full of water, which he used to strike anyone who happened to pass near him. The rest of the procession was formed of shapes wrapped in large black cloaks, their faces hidden under a thick layer of white ceruse that erased all their features. They were swaying about, dragging their feet, as though under a spell: they were like larvae, supernatural beings from the hereafter.

  The procession crossed the campo outside the convent in a chilling silence. There was something gloomy and dismal about that presence.

  Anxious, Edgardo stood aside and let them overtake him.

  He was about to resume walking when he noticed a detail that had escaped him earlier.

  He saw something shining around the neck of one of the larvae: it was a small bead necklace like the one Alvise said he’d seen on the virgin of Metamauco.

  An image flashed before Edgardo’s eyes which he thought he’d forgotten: Kallis in her refuge on the abandoned island of San Lorenzo, opening her little box and pouring out a myriad of colorful beads like the ones in that necklace.

  Was it her? Was that half-dead, half-living larva Kallis come back to life?

  A second later, the dismal group had already moved away.

  Abandoning any shame for his paradoxical, blasphemous thought, Edgardo ran after them.

  It was hard to make his way through the crowd. The calli were swarming with monsters, deformed shapes, scary animal masks. It seemed that all the inhabitants of Venice had poured out of their houses, seized by a kind of frenzy that was dragging them from one bank to the other, from one campo to the other, as though in search of something that would give this folly a meaning. Everybody was pursuing excess just for the sake of breaking all the rules.

  Along the canals, a few steps away from the soldiers who were checking every passing boat, Edgardo saw people sitting at makeshift tables with the little food they’d been able to find in those lean times. They were all stuffing themselves unrestrainedly with smelly leftover fish, bones of lagoon birds with the flesh stripped off, and shreds of rancid pork.

  Barely had some gulped down the food with large sips of watered-down wine than they suddenly turned around and vomited in one jet everything they’d just eaten.

  Edgardo was struggling to advance, risking slipping on that slimy carpet of food leftovers that irreverent stomachs had just brought back up to the light, and every kind of excrement abandoned by intestines devoid of any dignity.

  Without any shame, on the contrary, with a large dose of provocative excitement, between courses, the table companions exhibited asses of various shapes and colors, and were shitting without restraint in every corner, or competing as to who could piss farther into the water. It was as though you were watching a universal blend of fluids and human matter going in and coming out of every orifice in a kind of perpetual dance.

  Engulfed in that chaos, Edgardo was afraid he’d lost them, but, as though by miracle, the larvae reappeared, mingled with gnaghe, corpulent, hairy men dressed as matrons, who went about shouting obscenities or miming unnatural mating acts.

  He elbowed his way to the larva with the bead necklace, who was moving in a light, slinky way, brushing against the ground like a thread of wool.

  Under the thick ceruse, he thought he recognized Kallis’s oriental features, her high cheekbones, her eyes like crescent moons.

  He reached out with his hand until he was nearly touching her, and even thought he could smell her amber scent.

  “Kallis . . . Kallis . . . ” he called softly, but the larva was dragged away by the band and disappeared once again.

  They were now all advancing in single file, down a narrow alley between houses made of rotting timber, in a kind of procession that had slowed their pace. At the end of the bottleneck, Edgardo understood the reason for the slowing down. As they reached the final hut, every member of the line had to perform the ritual of the osculum infame.

  From the ground-floor window of that den was protruding not a beautiful girl’s face, but an enormo
us naked, shriveled behind, the only treasure of an old shrew. Every passer-by was obliged, on pain of being caned, to bend over and kiss the holy orifice.

  Everybody seemed to subject themselves to this shameful kiss with much hilarity and enjoyment, but Edgardo didn’t like this ritual at all.

  When his turn came, he tried to sneak away, but a broad-shouldered gnaga grabbed him by the neck and forced him back in line.

  He bowed his head, held his breath, closed his eyes, and plunged his face between the two flaps of flabby, hanging flesh that stank like baked eel vomited by a dog.

  Never would he have imagined that he, the first-born son of a noble family, would have to humiliate himself in such an abject act. Still, they said that the ritual heralded wealth and honor for the year to come. He certainly needed that.

  He wondered if, with that act, he’d touched the pit of his abjectness.

  He paid homage, the throng dissolved, and, once he’d left the narrow path, he came to a wide, green campo with trees.

  They’d arrived at Santa Maria Formosa.

  The place brought back sweet memories: there, with Kallis, he’d been to the Feast of the Marys, and that same day, a little later, in a scaula in the middle of the lagoon, he’d asked her to be his wife. Twelve years had since passed, and yet that moment was still so vivid in his mind that he might as well have lived it a few days earlier.

  He looked around for her ghost. The campo looked very different than before. It was bursting with people, like for the Feast of the Marys, but the atmosphere had very much altered.

  He was right in the middle of a bull hunt, a cruel, very violent game, one of the people’s favorites during Carnival.

  At that moment the tiradori, dressed in short black velvet dresses and red jackets, were entering. They were dragging the animal into the middle of the square, among the crowd, with ropes tied around its horns. Here, other tiradori started provoking the bull with straw fires, tying them to his horns and ears. Frightened and in pain, the animal was arching its back, kicking and howling, struggling to free itself.