“Send her to me,” said Giacomo generously, with a new firmness.
The baker hummed and hawed, then slowly began to back away towards the door.
“That will be two gold pieces,” said the stranger, accepting the fee, flinging the finely minted coins on his desk, and courteously escorting his guest out. “Send her tomorrow morning!” he added as an afterthought, as if doing him a considerable favor. “After mass. I shall have more time then. I’ll speak to her. Please don’t kill her just yet.” He opened the door and waited while the old man, careworn and somewhat terrified by both the advice and his own helplessness, crossed the threshold. “Next please!” he cried to the dark staircase and pretended not to see the shadows huddled in the half-light. “Ah yes, the captain! This way, my valiant fellow!” he warbled cheerily, ushering the grim figure through the door.
And so he conducted his surgery. The varieties of sickness did not surprise him; he knew them and understood that it was the same old disease, only under various guises. What was the disease? He thought about it, and once he was alone in the room, he pronounced its name: selfishness. It was the grinning mask of selfishness that lay behind every problem, stinting what it could and demanding everything one person could demand of another, ideally without having to give anything in return, nothing real or substantial in any case. It was selfishness that bought its darling a palazzo, a coach-and-four, and jewels, and believed that by presenting her with such gifts it had parted with something secret and more precious without the exchange of which there can be no true attraction or peace in one’s heart. It was selfishness that wanted everything and believed it had given everything when it devoted time, money, passion, and tenderness to the male or female object of its affections, while withholding the final sacrifice consisting of a simple, almost incidental, readiness to leave everything and devote its life and soul to the other without expecting anything in return. For this is what lovers, those peculiar tyrants, actually wanted. They were happy enough to give money, time, rings, ornaments, even their names and hands, but in all this welter of gift giving, there was one thing they were all determined to keep back, and that something was themselves, whether that self was Lucia or Giuseppe or the gallant captain, Petruccio, now standing in the middle of the room, grasping his sword with both hands and looking as grim as he might at his own execution.
“What is the problem, dear captain?” he asked in his friendliest, most charming manner. But the captain was warily turning his head about, like a wild animal examining his cage. Then he bent to the stranger’s ear and whispered the secret. He stood there with burning eyes, gripping his sword, his warrior heart wildly beating, and whispered it. No, this was not a matter he could advise him on. He shook his head in complete understanding and tutted indignantly. “Perhaps,” he said in a low voice, “you should leave her. You are a man. A soldier.” But the captain did not answer. He was like the dead who realize that nothing will ever change again, that they are stuck in this uncomfortable position in the grave, under the earth, under the stars. He was not a man who took readily to advice, preferring to treat his injuries as lower ranks: a senior officer does not consort with lower ranks. “Leave her!” Giacomo repeated, warmly, with genuine sympathy. “Even if you can’t bear it, it’s better than your current suffering.” The captain groaned. His understanding was that there was no advice, no consolation, no remedy for his grief. That groan, that wounded, hopeless grunt of his, was a declaration. “Even this suffering is better than not seeing her; it is better to live like this than to leave her,” it said. Some people just can’t be helped.
Many more people came, usually arriving near dusk. The priest’s secretary, a spotty-faced boy who read Petrarch and could not bring himself to write a letter to the lady of his heart’s desire, received his advice at the cost of one gold piece. The stranger wrote the letter for him, solemnly escorted him out, then shut the door and laughed till his sides split, throwing the gold into the air, before passing it over to Balbi, who took his hands as they shook each other in delight. “Doctor Mirabilis!” cried Balbi, his cracked voice whinnying with laughter. “They’re even coming in from the countryside now!” Snow was falling thickly, but they kept arriving despite the drifts and showers, not only men, but women, too, with veils over their faces, promising cash in hand, tearing the jeweled brooches from their bosoms, casting their veils aside. “Work your wonders, Giacomo, talk to him, brew me a magic potion, tell me your opinion, is there any hope for me?…” they begged.
One day there arrived a woman, no longer young, a solid, respectable figure, her dark fiery eyes ablaze with passion and hurt. “I came in the snow,” she told him, her voice raw with feeling, as she stood by the fire, opened her fur stole, shook her head, and waited for the sparkling snowdrops caught on her veil and scarf to melt. “One horse died. We almost froze as the evening closed in. But here I am because they say that you give advice, understand magic, and know people’s hearts and souls. So get on with it.” She spoke indignantly, as though smarting from an insult. He offered the lady a chair and paid close attention to her. He had known women in every state and condition of life, and having found reason enough to be wary of them, kept his eyes open for changes of mood. She ignored his offer. She was past forty, tall, red-faced, and healthily plump, the kind of woman happy enough to stand in the kitchen and watch the pork roast, who washes her face in rainwater and whose linen cupboard smells pleasant without the use of scents, the kind of woman who would happily administer even an enema to the man she loved. He regarded her with respect. There was enough passion smoldering under the furs and in those flashing eyes to set a forest on fire. She was used to giving orders and probably kept her household on a tight rein. Servants, guests, relatives, and admirers would all listen devotedly to whatever she had to say and would be sent scattering by her fury. Even her tenderness would smolder with a sharp aroma, like the brushwood fire in a forest when herdsmen forget to put it out after preparing game. She was a woman strong in anger through whom the tide of feelings ran most powerfully, and she stood now in commanding fashion, ready to deal the world several sharp blows, after which, with a single passionate movement of her firm arms, she would sweep some chosen loved one to her breasts in a deathly embrace. The snow, the cold fields of Lombardy, and the smell of the River Adige all emanated from her presence. “Here I am,” said the woman, puffing slightly, her even voice barely under control. “I have come to you. I have come, though the laundry has piled up at home, though they are smoking salami, and though they say that in November, in the hills round here, a traveler is likely to be eaten by wolves. I am a Tuscan,” she said quietly but firmly.
The stranger bowed. “And I am Venetian, madam,” he said, and, for the first time, gazed more deeply into his guest’s eyes.
“I know,” the woman replied and took a gulp. “That’s why I am here. Listen, Giacomo. You have escaped from prison and know the secrets of love, so they say. Look at me. Am I the sort of woman who should humbly beseech a man to love her? Who is it who looks after the house? Who works in the fields in July at harvest time? Who shops for new furniture in Florence when we have to present an imposing face to the world? Who takes care of the horses and their equipment? Who mends the socks and underwear of her fastidious master? Who makes sure that there are flowers on the table at noon and that musicians with flageolets are playing in the next room when it is somebody’s birthday? Who keeps all the drawers in order? Who washes in cold water every morning and every night? Who has linen brought over from Rumburg so that the bed in which the man of the house embraces her should smell as fresh as the fields of Tuscany in April? Who keeps an eye on the kitchen so that every requirement of his delicate stomach and demanding palate should be satisfied? Who tests the flesh of the young cockerel before it is slaughtered so it should be as plump and tender as he likes it? Who checks the smell of the calf’s leg brought over from the butcher in town? Who goes down to the cellar, down those dangerous steep stairs, to sulphur the wine casks they have rolled in barrels from the vineyard? Who makes sure that the glass of water they have left on the small table by his bed at night should contain a spoonful of sugar because after his carousings and lecheries, his weak heart needs a drop of sugar before he can sleep? Who stops him eating too much ginger and pepper? Who turns a blind eye to his lustful moods when ropes and chains can’t keep him at home? Who keeps her peace when she can smell the rotten perfume of other women on his coat and linen?… Who puts up with it all? Who works and says nothing? Look at me, Giacomo. They say you are wise in the ways of women, a brilliant doctor of love. Look at me. I have borne two children and lost three, no matter that I groveled on my knees before the image of the Virgin, begging her to keep them alive. Look at me. I know time has had its way with me, that there are those who are younger, who smile more obligingly, and are better at wiggling their hips; nevertheless, here I am. Am I the kind of woman whose kisses are to be rejected? Just look at me!” she cried in a hoarse, powerful voice, and opened her fur coat. She was wearing a dress of lilac-colored silk, her dark brown hair covered by a headscarf of Venetian lace, a golden clasp holding together the shawl across her mature, pleasantly full bosom, her build tall and muscular without a trace of excess fat, firm of flesh and sound of blood, a solid forty-year-old woman with white arms, her head thrown proudly back. She stood before him and he bowed to her with a natural male courtesy, in genuine admiration. “There’s no need to bow,” she said, lowering her voice, a little embarrassed. “I haven’t left the estate in a snowstorm and traveled all the way to Bolzano just so that I should be bowed to by a stranger. It’s not consolation I am seeking. I know what I know. I am a woman. I can sense when a man is looking at me. I can recognize genuine desire in an impudent, unrespectful stare but can also feel the circumspect passion in a mere glance. I know I have a few years left in which to make the man who loves me completely happy.”