Beautifully dressed in a gold-trimmed tunic with slashed sleeves and silk lining, he wore a sword at his hip, and he was clean shaven with short curly black hair.
All this I took in almost immediately. Vitale kissed the ring of the gentleman seated by the bed, and he said in a low voice,
“Signore Antonio, I am glad to see you downstairs, though sad that you must see your son like this.”
“Tell me, Vitale,” asked the old man. “What is the matter with him? How could a simple injury falling from a horse produce a condition so miserable as this?”
“This is what I mean to discover, Signore,” said Vitale. “I give you my heart as my pledge.”
“You once cured me when every Italian physician had given me up for dead,” said Signore Antonio. “I know that you can heal my son.”
The young man on the far side of the bed became all the more agitated. “Father, though it pains me to say it, we had best listen to the other doctors. I am in terrible fear. My brother lying here is not my brother.” The tears welled in his eyes.
“Yes, this diet of caviar I accept, Lodovico,” said the patient to the young man. “But Father, I have complete trust in Vitale just as you trusted in Vitale, and if I’m not to be cured, then it’s God’s Will.”
He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. He was puzzled by me, and every word he spoke was an effort.
“A diet of caviar?” asked the father. “I don’t understand.”
“That my brother take caviar for the purity of it,” said the young man, Lodovico, “and that he take it three times a day and no other food. I went to the Pope’s physicians for their advice on this. I am only doing what they have told me to do. He has taken this diet now since the fall.”
“Why was I not told this?” asked Vitale, glancing at me, as he spoke, then at Lodovico. “Caviar and nothing else? You are not satisfied with the food I recommended?”
I saw the anger flash in Lodovico’s eyes for an instant, then fade at once. He was too distraught apparently to be insulted.
“My brother was not doing well on such food,” he said with a half smile that quickly faded. “The Holy Father himself has sent the caviar,” he went on patiently to explain to the father, expressing an almost tender trust. “His predecessor swore by it. And he lived well and was hearty and it gave him strength.”
“No insult to His Holiness,” said Vitale quickly, “and it’s kind of him to send this caviar, of course. But I’ve never heard of anything so strange.”
He glanced meaningfully at me, but I doubt anyone else saw it.
Niccolò tried to sit up on his elbows and then sat back, too weak, but still determined to speak.
“I don’t mind it, Vitale. It has some taste to it and it seems I can taste nothing else.” He sighed rather than spoke, and then he murmured, “It burns my eyes, however. But then probably any other food would do as much.”
It burns my eyes.
My mind was mulling over this uneasily. No one had the slightest notion of course that I was a man who’d concocted poisons, disguised poisons and knew how to give them, and if ever there was a food that could mask a poison it was pure black caviar, because you could slip just about anything into it in this world.
“Vitale,” the patient asked. “Who is this man who’s come with you?” He looked up at me. “Why are you here?” It was a struggle for him to get these words out of his mouth.
And finally, much to my relief, a servant woman appeared with a basin of water, and applied a cold rag to his head. She wiped some of the sweat from his cheeks. He was annoyed by it and motioned for her to stop, but the old man directed her to go on.
“I’ve brought this man to play the lute for you,” explained Vitale. “You know how music has always soothed you. He’ll play softly, nothing that agitates you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Niccolò settling back on the pillow. “That is a kind thing indeed.”
“The rumor is in the street that you hired this man to play for the demon in your house,” said Lodovico suddenly. Again he looked to be on the verge of tears. “Is that what you did? And you lie about it now, you say this as a ruse?”
Vitale was shocked.
“Lodovico, stop,” said the father. “There is no demon in that house. And never have I heard you speak to Vitale like this. This is the man who nursed me back to health when every doctor in Padua, where there are indeed more doctors than anywhere else in Italy, had given me up for dead.”
“Oh, but Father, there is an evil spirit in that house,” said Lodovico. “All the Jews know it. They have a name for it.”
“Dybbuk,” said Vitale wearily, and a bit fearlessly for a man who had a ghost in his house.
“This man’s been plagued by this dybbuk since you gave him the keys,” Lodovico went on. “And it was only after this dybbuk took up residence and started breaking windows in the dead of night that Vitale’s skills as a physician have disintegrated before our very eyes.”
“Disintegrated?” Vitale was stunned. “Who says my skills are disintegrated? Lodovico, this is a lie!” He was hurt, confused.
“But the Jewish patients won’t come to you, will they?” asked Lodovico. Suddenly, he changed his tone. “Vitale, my friend, for the love of my brother, tell the truth.”
Vitale was stymied. But Niccolò only looked at him trustingly and lovingly, and the old man was thoughtful and not quick to say anything at all.
“The Jews have told us this themselves,” said Lodovico. “Three times they’ve tried to drive this dybbuk from your house. This dybbuk is in your study, in the room where you keep your medicines, this dybbuk is in every corner of your house and in every corner perhaps of your mind!”
The young man was working himself into a frenzy.
“No, you must not say those things,” said Niccolò in a loud voice. Vainly he tried again to raise himself on his elbows. “It’s not his doing that I’m ill. Do you think every man who takes a fever and dies of it does so because there’s a demon in a house in the same street? Stop saying such things.”
“Quiet, my son, quiet,” said the old man. He laid his hands on his son and tried to force him back against the pillow. “And remember, my sons, the house in question is mine. Therefore the demon, or the dybbuk as the Jews call it, must certainly belong to me. I must go to the house and confront this awesome spirit who routs exorcists both Jewish and Roman. I must see this spirit with my own eyes.”
“Father, I beg you, don’t do that!” said Lodovico. “Vitale isn’t telling you of the violence of this spirit. Every Jewish doctor who’s come here has told us. It hurls things and breaks things. It stomps its feet.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said the father. “I believe in illness and I believe in cures for it. But in spirits? Spirits who hurl things? This I’ll have to see with my own eyes. It’s enough for me that Vitale is here with Niccolò.”
“Yes, Father,” said Niccolò, “and this is enough for me. Lodovico, you’ve always loved Vitale,” he said to his brother, “the same as I have. The three of us, we’ve been friends since Montpellier. Father, don’t listen to these things.”
“I’m not listening, my son,” said the father, but the father was now carefully observing his son, because the more the son protested, the sicker he looked.
Lodovico knelt down beside the bed and wept with his forehead on his arm. “Niccolò, I would do anything in my power to see you cured of this,” he said, though it was difficult to understand him through his tears. “I love Vitale. I always have. But the other doctors, they say he’s bewitched.”
“Stop, Lodovico,” said the father. “You alarm your brother. Vitale, look at my son. Examine him again. That’s why you’ve come.”
Vitale was watching all of this keenly, and so was I. I couldn’t detect the poison by any scent in the room, but that meant nothing. I knew any number of poisons, which slipped into caviar would do the trick. One thing was clear, however. The patient still had considerable strength.
&
nbsp; “Vitale, sit with me,” said the patient. “Stay with me today. The worst thoughts have been coming to me. I see myself dead and buried.”
“Don’t say this, my son,” said the father.
Lodovico was past all comfort.
“Brother, I don’t know what life means without you,” he said tenderly. “Don’t make me contemplate it. The first thing I remember is your standing at the foot of my cradle. For me, as well as for Father, you must get well.”
“All of you, leave us, please,” said Vitale. “Signore, you trust me here as you always have. I want to examine the patient, and you, Toby, take a place there”—he pointed to the far corner—“and play softly to still Niccolò’s nerves.”
“Yes, that’s good,” said the father, and he rose and beckoned for the younger man to come out.
The younger man didn’t want to do it.
“Look, he’s scarce tasted the caviar last given to him,” said Lodovico. He pointed to a small silver plate on the bedside table. The caviar sat in a tiny glass dish inside it with a small delicate silver spoon. Lodovico filled the spoon and brought it to Niccolò’s lips.
“No, no more. I tell you, it burns my eyes.”
“Oh, come, you need it,” said the brother.
“No, no more, I can’t bear anything now,” said Niccolò. Then as if to quiet his brother, he took the spoon and swallowed the caviar and at once his eyes began to redden and tear.
Once again Vitale asked that all go out. He gestured for me to sit down in the corner, where a huge fantastically carved black chair glowered as if waiting to devour me.
“I want to remain here,” said Lodovico. “You should ask me to remain here, Vitale. If you are accused—.”
“Nonsense,” said the father, and taking the son’s hand he led him from the room.
I settled snugly into the huge chair, a veritable monster of exuberant black claws, with red cushions for the back and for the seat. I removed my gloves, slipping them behind my belt, and I began to tune the lute as softly as I could. And it was a beauty. But other thoughts were playing in my mind.
The patient hadn’t been poisoned until the dybbuk had appeared. Surely the poisoner was here, in this house, and I was fairly certain it was the brother, who was taking advantage of the appearance of the ghost. I doubted the poisoner was clever enough to produce a ghost. In fact, I was sure that the poisoner had not produced the ghost. But he was clever enough to begin his evil work because a ghost had appeared.
I began to play one of the very oldest melodies that I knew, a little dance based on a few basic chord variations, and I made the music as gentle as I could.
The thought struck me, as was inevitable, that I was actually playing a fine lute in the very period in which it had become wildly popular. I was in the very age in which it had attained perhaps its greatest music and strength. But there was no time for indulging myself in this, any more than there was time for making for St. Peter’s Basilica to see the construction for myself.
I was thinking about the poisoner and how fortunate we were that he had chosen to take his time.
As for the mystery of the dybbuk, it had to wait on the mystery of the poisoner because clearly the poisoner, though patient, did not need very much more time to accomplish what he’d set out to do.
I was strumming slowly when Vitale gently gestured for me to be quiet.
He was holding his patient’s hand, listening to his pulse, and now very gracefully he bent down and put his ear to Niccolò’s chest.
He placed both his hands on Niccolò’s head and looked into his eyes. I could see Niccolò shuddering. The man couldn’t control it.
“Vitale,” he whispered, thinking perhaps I couldn’t hear him. “I don’t want to die.”
“I won’t let you die, my friend,” said Vitale desperately. He laid back the bedclothes now and examined his patient’s ankles and feet. True, there was an old discolored patch on the ankle but it was no cause for alarm. The patient could move his limbs well enough but they shuddered. That could mean any number of poisons attacking the nervous system. But which one, and how would I prove who was doing it and how?
I heard a sound in the passage. It was the sound of a man crying. I knew by the very sound of it that it was Lodovico.
I got up. “I’ll talk to your brother, if I might,” I said softly to Niccolò.
“Console him,” said Niccolò. “Let him know that none of this is his doing. The caviar has helped me. He puts such store by it. Don’t let him feel that he’s at fault.”
I found him stranded in the antechamber, looking lost and confused.
“May I talk with you?” I asked gently. “While he’s resting, or being examined? May I be of some comfort to you?”
I felt the strong urge to do this, when in fact, in the usual course of things, it was something I wouldn’t have done at all.
However, he looked to me at that moment like one of the loneliest beings I’d ever beheld. He seemed to exist in a pure isolation as he wept, staring at the door of his brother’s room.
“He is the reason my father has accepted me,” he said under his breath. “Why do I tell you this? Because I must tell someone. I must tell someone how troubled I am.”
“Come, is there someplace where we might talk in quiet? It is so difficult when those we love are suffering.”
I followed him down the broad stairway of the palazzo and into the large courtyard, and into yet another gated courtyard which was wholly unlike the first, in that it was crowded with tropical blooms.
I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.
A good deal of light spilled down into the area though the palazzo must have been four stories high, and the area was naturally sheltered due to its smaller size. It was extremely warm.
I could see orange trees and lemon trees, and purple flowers and waxen white blooms. Some of these I knew and some I didn’t. But if there were no poisonous plants in this room, then my mother had raised a fool.
In the center of the courtyard, where the shafts of sunlight made a sweet and beautiful light, stood a makeshift cross-legged writing table and two simple chairs beside it. There was a decanter of wine and two goblets.
And the dejected man, moving almost as if in a dream, took the decanter, filled a goblet and drank the contents down.
Only then did he think to offer me a drink, and I declined.
He seemed exhausted and emptied from his weeping. That he was genuinely miserable was beyond doubt. Indeed he was grieving, and I wondered if he was grieving because in his mind and heart his brother was already dead.
“Sit down there, please,” he said to me, and then he collapsed at his writing table, allowing a whole sheaf of papers to fall to the floor.
Behind him, from a large pot, grew a rangy and waxen-leafed tree, and one that was not at all unfamiliar to me. Again the hair rose on the back of my neck and my arms. I knew the purple flowers that covered this tree. And I knew the tiny black seeds that were left when the flowers dropped, as some of them had already done into the moist earth of the pot.
I picked up the mess of papers and put them back on the desk. I set my lute beside the chair.
The man appeared dazed as he watched this, and then he leant on his elbows and he wept very genuine tears.
“I have no great gift for poetry, and yet I am a poet for want of being anything else,” he said to me. “I’ve traveled the world, and have had the joy of it—no, maybe all the joy of it was writing to Niccolò and meeting him if and when he’d come to me. And now I have to think of the vast wide world, the world I traveled, without him. And when I think of this, there is no world.”
I stared past him at the earth in the pot. It was covered with black seeds. Any one of these would have been deadly to a child. Several, carefully chopped, would be deadly to a man. A small portion given regularly in caviar, of all perfect things, would have sickened the man slowly and pushed him closer with every dose towards death.
The
taste of the seeds was ghastly, as is the case with many a poison. But if anything would hide it, it would be caviar.
“I don’t know why I tell you these things,” said Lodovico, “except that you look kind, you look like a man who peers inside another man’s soul.” He sighed. “You grasp how a man might love his brother unbearably. How a man might think himself a coward when faced with his brother’s weakness and death.”
“I want to understand,” I said. “How many sons does your father have?”
“We are his only sons, and don’t you know how much he will despise me if Niccolò is gone? Oh, he loves me now, but how he will despise me if I am the survivor. It was only on account of Niccolò that he brought me from my mother’s house. We don’t have to talk of my mother. I never talk of her. You can well understand. My father need have acknowledged no claim against him. But Niccolò loved me, loved me from the first moment we played as children, and one day, I, and all I possessed, were bundled up and taken from the brothel in which we lived, and brought here, to this very house. My mother took a fistful of gems and gold for me. She cried. I will say that much for her. She wept. ‘But this is for you,’ she said. ‘You, my little prince, are now to be taken to the castle of your dreams.’ ”
“Surely she meant it. And the old man. He seems to love you so, as much as your brother.”
“Oh, yes, and there were times when he loved me more. Niccolò and Vitale, what rascals they can be when they get together. I tell you, there’s not much difference between a Jew and a Gentile when it comes to wenching and drinking, at least not all of the time.”
“You are the good boy, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I’ve tried to be. With my father, I went on our travels. He couldn’t pry loose Niccolò from the university. Oh, I could tell you stories of the wilds of America, the wilds of Portuguese ports and savages such as you can only imagine.”
“But you came back to Padua.”
“Oh, he would have me educated. And in time that meant the university for me as well as my brother, but I could never catch up with them in their studies, Vitale, Niccolò, any of them. They helped me. They always took me under their wing.”