Island of the Mad: A Novel

by Laurie Sheck

  As he leaves, Ha-Nostri says to Pilate, “Every kind of power is a form of violence.”

  As I read, I wondered what the redness might mean to Pilate. As it pounds inside his head and seeps relentlessly from roses, and even swims in the sore on Caesar’s forehead, couldn’t it have something to do with the power Ha-Nostri mentioned? A power Pilate knows he furiously desires and fought for, but something inside him senses that even at its mildest it’s still a form of violence and injustice…

  When Pilate is once again alone, all he can think is “I am standing in my garden among roses and marble statues, yet nothing seems real but the kindness and wisdom of a prisoner I ordered beaten and condemned to death.”

  He looks out from his balcony with “dead eyes,” wondering bitterly at this defiled closeness.

  In my dream Titian loved the red cloth. But Pilate imagined hoarding white bandages, blue chiton, anything untouched by redness.

  There is much redness, too, for Margarita.

  After the Master’s disappearance, she flies above Moscow’s dreary streets until she finds herself in a strange room where she’s washed with rose oil at the hour before midnight.

  The devil’s entourage is preparing her for his annual ball, to begin within the hour.

  But unlike Pilate’s, Margarita’s red doesn’t hurt her. Her skin is lighter, freer, the air sweet with the openings of roses.

  Rose petal slippers are sewn onto her feet.

  And although he is the devil, Woland says to her in a voice mild with compassion, “You are so enchantingly kind. Perhaps there is some sadness or anguish from which you suffer as from a terrible poison?”

  She thinks of the Master’s disappearance but says nothing.

  Earlier she’d glimpsed Woland’s globe in a corner. “I don’t like listening to the news on the radio,” he said, “this is much more convenient…Do you see that piece of land washed on one side by the ocean? Look how it’s bursting into flame. A war has broken out there. If you step closer you will see it in detail.”

  When Margarita stepped closer she saw a whole country in flames—every leaf of each tree, every bird and worm in the forest, each brick of each small village; its inhabitants, their faces, their possessions. Blackening smoke. Piles of steaming rubble.

  I wondered what the one across the ocean felt as she read this. (What would she feel if I could speak to her of Titian and his love of red cloth?)

  Meanwhile my walls were growing even redder. I wanted only to go outside, but the redness wrapped me even tighter.

  If I could know almost nothing of the one across the ocean (though the fact that she used the word kindness seemed some sort of indication), was there some way I might come closer to her through Margarita?

  After all, she had mentioned her in her letters. Wasn’t it reasonable to imagine her turning the worn pages like me, feeling the fate of Margarita as she looked into a globe or sat on a park bench or studied her few photos, lonely for the Master.

  And that feeling of kindness which concerned her—how could she help but notice it in Margarita?

  So it interested me to think about Margarita’s kindness toward the dead woman, Frieda, who she meets at the devil’s ball after midnight.

  After the devil appoints her Queen of the Ball, Margarita stands for what seems like many hours (time is always illusive in Bulgakov’s book) greeting the specters of the dead, invited guests. Hundreds of poisoners, traitors, perpetrators of all sorts of terrible acts. One hobbles in a cumbersome wood boot. Another covers her neck with a green bandage. But, of all of them, it is only the young woman, Frieda, who she can’t forget.

  As the dead twirl away and dance, Frieda stays nearby and looks into her eyes, desperate with imploring anguish. What is her punishment, Margarita begins to wonder, what was her specific crime? The devil’s assistant explains that each night for the past thirty years a maid has laid a white handkerchief with a dark-blue border on the night table beside her, and each time she sees it, it drives her to despair.

  This is the handkerchief she used to smother her newborn baby. “She was a waitress in a café…her boss lured her into the storeroom…nine months later she gave birth to a baby boy, carried him into the woods, stuffed the handkerchief in his mouth, then buried him…At her trial she said she panicked, fearing she had no food, nothing, no way to provide for him.”

  When the ball is over, Woland asks Margarita what single wish she’d like granted. She can choose only one. Of course she thinks of asking for the Master’s return, that he be healed and beside her once again.

  But when she speaks she speaks instead of Frieda.

  “I want them to stop giving Frieda the handkerchief she used to smother her baby.”

  Though at first he’s dumbfounded and thoroughly disapproves of her request, Woland grants her wish. Margarita insists her concern for Frieda has nothing to do with her own kindness.

  “I am a thoughtless person…I asked you on Frieda’s behalf only because I was careless enough to give her real hope…”

  Yet even now, I find Margarita’s description of herself unconvincing. After all, it was Frieda she noticed above all others, Frieda’s eyes she couldn’t forget.

  The one across the ocean, pacing, not sleeping, did she think of this too? Did she watch the blue-bordered cloth finally vanish forever, though the crime remained, and memory, and the dampness of the forest floor—

  Day after day I breathed red ocean, red air.

  Titian had rubbed red pigment into eyelids, collarbones, garments, foreheads, lips, sometimes even into the whites of eyes. Had used, in the end, his bare fingers.

  The love of red cloth never left him.

  As I lay in my red room, the air seemed both flower and flame—a tenderness but also what harms that tenderness. It was a silence that held me, mute and burning, in its arms.

  The mirrory disks of gondolas on water. In the church of San Geremia, Saint Lucy’s mummified face covered by a silver mask.

  For the first time in weeks I had ventured outside again. My shin muscles taut, my footsteps, tenuous, unsteady.

  I looked up what boat to take to San Servolo: Public Boat Line 20 with departures from San Zaccaria (at Riva degli Sciavoni, in front of the Londra Palace Hotel) at ten-minute intervals throughout the day, and had decided on the 8:15 am; arrival time 8:25. Maybe at the Conference Center I would stumble upon something more about the doctor. I didn’t really know what else to do. Or maybe by chance he’d even be there and I could meet him. It was unclear what this had to do with my search for the lost notebook, but at least it seemed a place to begin.

  I wasn’t used to being out on the streets. Not red walls but pale sky all around me. Gray clouds of pollution rolling in from Maghera. Yellow, roughened stone.

  I looked down into calm water. The boat’s seats were mostly empty, the ride to the island short, uneventful.

  By then I had found a copy of the book by Florensky I first noticed on the desk of the one across the ocean. Though it was hard to understand, it seemed to do with his idea that our linear thinking is wrong and that all time and space exist at once. I didn’t know what to make of this, or what it implied about the distances inside me and between myself and others.

  But soon I was raising my eyes from the water. The Conference Center stood a few yards beyond the dock—a stately, restored complex of cream-colored buildings. (Later, wandering inside, I counted 11 meeting rooms, an auditorium, a small theater.) One wing housed nearly 200 bedrooms; a white terrace overlooked the lagoon. There were several outdoor areas for gatherings—the “English Court,” the “Cloister,” “Baden Powell Square”—I wondered where those names had come from.

  For a few minutes I walked down empty halls, past rooms filled with rows of red plastic chairs, white screens for presentations, podiums, long wooden desks.

  The booklet I held announced “the transformation of the island, once a place of isolation, into a space for dialogue between culture and experience…” />
  (And yet couldn’t isolation provide “culture” and “experience” as well? I chastened myself not to wonder at such things—to just stay focused on my task. Though I still wondered, why assume isolation needs to be “transformed”?)

  Air conditioning. Internet. ATM machine. Bar. Laundry. Even a small general store.

  Press office. Floral decoration. Shuttle boat service. Publicity. Poster designing. Simultaneous translation.

  I passed a line of shut doors with bronze name plaques beside them:

  Chiara Ballarin, Events Supervisor

  Massimo Busetto, Reception Supervisor

  Carlo Castiglioni, Facilities Supervisor

  Manuela Cracco, Congress Department

  What could that last one even mean? But I didn’t dare knock. If someone answered, would I ask for the doctor, explain that I knew he sometimes stayed there, but how could I explain?

  Outside again, I could see across the water to San Marco. The whole city slowly sinking. My legs ached, bones twig-like, too narrow. My plan seemed suddenly ludicrous, sheer folly. But just as I was going to step back onto the boat, I suddenly turned and walked toward the building, went inside and randomly opened the door, #9, of the first conference room I came to. I sat down in a red chair—waited for a long time doing nothing, stared at the red drapes, the window.

  What would she think of what I was doing?

  I walked over to the desk beneath the screen for presentations, and pulled open its long, narrow drawer, already slightly ajar.

  Right away I could see that it was full of papers. Leftovers, I assumed, from some past conference. Why hadn’t the custodians thrown them away?

  I picked one up, touched its crinkled surface:

  INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF NEUROLOGICAL SCIENCES IN VENICE

  PRESIDENT: GIULIANO AVANZINI DIRECTOR: FRANCESCO PALADIN

  Then:

  ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL COURSE JULY 28–AUGUST 8

  There were lists of sponsors, explanations of application requirements, and the course’s main objectives. Then finally at the bottom of the page the list of faculty, but I didn’t find the doctor’s name.

  I reached into the drawer again and took out the official listing of conference topics:

  Auras and Clinical Features in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A New Approach on the Basis of Voxel-based Morphometry

  Unilateral Thalamic Lesions on Lateralized Spike Wave Discharges

  Mozart K.448 and Epileptic Form Discharges: Effect of Ratio of Lower to Higher Harmonics

  What was I to make of that? Then I noticed, in the right-hand margin: the results suggest listening to mozart k448 for two pianos may reduce epileptiform discharges. it is possible to reduce # of discharges by optimizing fundamental tones & minimizing higher frequency harmonics

  There seemed something beautiful in this, though I didn’t really understand. Quickly I read on:

  A Novel Perspective in Treatment: Is it Possible to Repair an Injured or Malfunctioning Human Brain?

  A Preliminary Investigation Into Chromosome 17q.

  Delusions, Illusions, and Hallucinations: 1. Elementary Phenomena 2. Complex Phenomena

  The list went on and on, probably over several pages. What was I to do with what I found? No matter how much I thought, I didn’t see how anything I came across could help her.

  What I did next is simple to relate, though none of it felt simple at the time—the physical manifestation of an act being, I’ve come to think, so little of the act itself.

  I made sure the door was tightly shut, then scooped up the entire mess of papers and shoved them into a plastic bag I took from the wastebasket beside the red curtains. Then slowly, quietly, holding them as if they were my own, I walked out into the hallway and past the row of nameplates, wondering would someone see me, then headed farther down the hallway until I exited the building, reached the dock, and took the public boat across the water.

  In my room I would unpack them.

  But as soon as I stepped off the boat at San Zaccaria the thought of returning to my room and its red walls unnerved me.

  Cafes, grocery stores, tourist shops—my foot was swollen but I kept walking. After a while, I came to the old fish market at Campo Margherita where a centuries’ old stone tablet detailed the daily terms for sales of fish. Had Titian often passed this, I wondered, as I looked idly at the list of fish:

  Red Mullet, Grey Mullet, Sardine, Anchovy

  Cent 7

  Sea Bass, Gilthead, Umbrine, Sea Bream

  Cent 12

  Eel

  Cent 25

  Oyster

  Cent 5

  Mussel

  Cent 3

  Then ever so faintly but distinctly, a voice emerged from somewhere near me: Who could condemn me more than I condemn myself?

  I looked around in each direction but saw no one. I can’t stand here any longer, I said to myself, it’s time to get back to the room even if I don’t want to. I clutched the bag of papers tightly. After weeks of not walking, I had tired myself badly.

  That night I was wandering inside one of Pontius Pilate’s migraines. Even as I dreamed this I noted the absurdity of the act, told myself one can’t walk within a neurological event. Yet that’s what I was doing. A festering redness throbbed inside soft walls I took to be the tissues of his brain. Then I saw sudden streaks of blackish light—were his nerves misfiring, or had I come upon a lesion? At the crest of a reddish cliff Pilate’s dog raised its pained eyes to the full moon. I realized it was blind. A brief, terrible howl broke from its mouth. The air was flooding with the scent of roses. Even the moonlight grew sick with it, even the few stars.

  The red of Pilate’s migraine still burned in me as I poured my morning coffee, my legs aching from the day before. For a moment I touched the thin stack of letters from the one across the ocean, but knew I should turn to the bag of stolen papers and walked over to the table where I’d left them.

  Then I heard that female voice again, the same as from the fish market the day before:

  I am on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. I want to go to Lazzaretto Vecchio where the plague victims are suffering and dying, but so far this has not been possible. How can I convince the white boats to take me?—I must keep trying until one of them finally agrees. Do you know what cries sound like through damp earth? How dead cries shudder and scrape through damp earth? My hands still stained with it. My handkerchief still stained though I have washed it many times. I want to tend to the sick on Lazzaretto Vecchio, the ones who will never get well—I’ll dip a cloth into cold water, wipe their burning foreheads. If in their delirium one of them mistakes me for a loved one and murmurs words I’m not meant to hear, I promise not to betray them. When will the white boat come across the water? How long must I stand on this shore looking out in all directions? The wind is still tonight. The water empty.

  I realized it was Frieda.

  It was impossible that she could be beside me, and yet she was beside me.

  Ovid had written: “All the things which I denied could happen are now happening.”

  I thought again of Florensky, his strange theories. How he believed time and space merge each into the other, that geometry as we know it is misleading, and that past, present, and future aren’t separate.

  Then once again the voice was speaking:

  Maybe you sense the weight of my footsteps like the restless pacing of the one across the ocean. You want to help her, you want some relief from your own mind, but what if there is no end to harshness? Look at Lazzaretto Vecchio—so many horrible deaths, the ill thrown half-alive into dirt pits. Do you know what that plague island is used for now? It’s a sanctuary for abandoned dogs. But a new sports complex is being planned, so what will happen to them when their refuge is taken away? Already the few trees are being cleared, the remnants of old walls hauled off. Profit. Concealment. It’s all par for the course. Contests and cheering will replace the silence of charred bones. Why expect anything different? I know you would
rather think about Margarita flying in the air in her red freedom, wind streaming through her hair. It’s true she arranged for the nurse not to bring me the white handkerchief anymore, but how much does it really matter in the end? I still see it in my mind. I should leave you to your bag of papers. I must stay vigilant on this shore, must watch for the white boat that’s coming.

  Maybe I had been reading too much Florensky.

  His essays were titled “Fictions in Geometry,” “Reverse Perspective,” “Beyond Vision.”

  Of course I found his writing mostly baffling. But I’d been trying to understand his points about the limits and misuses of perspective; how he believed we are wrong to view the “absence of perspectival unity” as a “failure or sickness” (he often underlined his words) or any flaw of seeing. Rather, our common notion of perspective is only one of many truths.

  “First and foremost, space turns out to be extremely diverse.” (Again, his love of underlining.)

  “How very different the actual, lived system of our space-sensations is from the geometrical…the world is life, not frozen stasis…”

  “We should have doubts that our world exists in Euclidean space which is just one particular, though privileged, instance of many heterogeneous, diverse spaces, all possessing the most unexpected characteristics.”

  And finally: