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Tito was my Richard III. Tito was my bunch-backed toad.
He seized my throne. He conquered my kingdom. After his birth, I became a ghost haunting him.
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(Picture Credit 1.6)
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In the previous image: Vincent Price in Tower of London.
The film was made by Roger Corman in 1962.
Vincent Price played Richard III: deformed, lame, spastic, with a green face.
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In the case we brought against Venice Hospital, we gave a minute-by-minute account of Tito’s birth, based on the data from the heart monitor.
12:35 Normal.
12:40 The needle on the heart monitor suddenly shook. I called the nurse, thinking that this was the first sign of labor. In fact — as I said — this was the first sign of the asphyxia that caused Tito’s cerebral palsy. The nurse tried to phone Dottoressa F, but couldn’t locate her. She decided to go and look for her. A few minutes later, they returned together.
12:46 Dottoressa F turned off the heart monitor.
12:55 Dottoressa F turned on another heart monitor.
The nurse explained that the previous week one of the machines had failed. During Tito’s birth, the first thing to fail was Dottoressa F. As the monitor had correctly shown, Tito was dying.
13:05 Anna was finally taken into the labor ward.
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Tito was born forty-five minutes after that first fall in his heart rate. According to medico-legal experts, an emergency caesarean like his should have happened less than twenty minutes later.
Another mistake on the part of the hospital.
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In 1487, in Germany, Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar, published his Malleus maleficarum.
Chapter XIII of Part II deals specifically with “witch-midwives who commit most Horrid Crimes when they Kill Children.” Heinrich Kramer, in Malleus maleficarum, recommended that these witch-midwives should be imprisoned and tortured by the religious authorities.
In the last five hundred years, torture has largely fallen into disuse. Despite all the mistakes made during Tito’s birth, all I could demand of Venice Hospital was financial compensation.
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In 1495, eight years after publishing Malleus maleficarum, Heinrich Kramer moved to Venice, where he recommended torture as a punishment for witch-midwives who murdered newborn babies.
He stayed at the former Dominican monastery, in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, behind the Scuola Grande di San Marco, which had just been designed by Pietro Lombardo.
In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte expelled all the monks. The former Dominican monastery was combined with the Scuola Grande di San Marco and converted into a military hospital, which subsequently became a public hospital.
Five centuries later, the same place that had sheltered Heinrich Kramer in 1495 went on to employ Dottoressa F.
That’s what Tito’s story is like: circular.
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The cloister in which I saw Tito for the first time, in an incubator, with his face green, belonged to the former Dominican monastery.
On that night, Anna and I slept in one of its rooms.
Tito remained alone in the neonatal intensive-care unit in Padua Hospital, suffering convulsions.
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The following day, before going to Padua Hospital, I popped into the patisserie Rosa Salva, in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, opposite the Scuola Grande di San Marco.
One of the reasons I had insisted that Tito be born in Venice Hospital, apart from Pietro Lombardo’s architecture, was the proximity of the patisserie Rosa Salva.
To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved most harmful to Tito’s health — the one that nearly killed him in the womb — was the bigné allo spumone di zabaione.
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In the previous image: a bigné allo spumone di zabaione.
I blame Tito’s cerebral palsy on Pietro Lombardo, John Ruskin, Napoleon Bonaparte, an amnihook, and, lastly, on the bigné allo spumone di zabaione made by the patisserie Rosa Salva.
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I arrived early at the intensive-care unit in Padua Hospital.
Tito was in an incubator. He lay utterly still. A tube hung from an artery in his foot. Another tube, attached to a ventilator, made one nostril grotesquely large. His body was covered with electrodes connected to a series of machines. Occasionally, one of those machines gave an alarm signal, and the doctors in the unit would rush over to check what was happening. Whenever they did, I was gripped by the fear that Tito might be dying. That fear filled me with both despair and relief, because I could only be sure that Tito was still alive when I feared that he was dying.
In order to die, Tito had to be alive.
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I spent the day in the intensive-care unit.
I stroked Tito’s face. Still dead. I stroked Tito’s chest. Still dead. I stroked Tito’s leg. Still dead. I stroked Tito’s back. But when I stroked his back, the unexpected happened. He suddenly writhed and arched his spine.
Tito had returned to life.
I cried for half an hour. After crying for half an hour, I cried for another hour. After crying for an hour, I cried for another two hours.
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The following day, I again visited the intensive-care unit at Padua Hospital.
I immediately stroked Tito’s back. He arched his spine even more than he had on the previous day.
I cried for two hours.
When I stopped crying, I remembered the scene in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein when the monster, lying in his tomb, receives an electric shock, violently arches his back and comes to life.
Tito came to life just like Frankenstein’s monster.
I cried for another two hours.
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That night, returning alone on the train to Venice, I realized that each episode of my life corresponded to an Abbott and Costello sketch.
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Gianni and Pinotto.
That’s what the Italians call Abbott and Costello.
They translated Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as Gianni e Pinotto e il cervello di Frankenstein.
During the week I spent at the intensive-care unit in Padua Hospital, my sole interest was that: il cervello di Tito.
Or: Tito’s brain.
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In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Count Dracula, played by Bela Lugosi, wants to transplant Lou Costello’s brain into Frankenstein’s monster, played by Glenn Strange.
It worked with Tito.
After his experience in Dottoressa F’s laboratory in Venice Hospital, he went on to combine the lack of motor control of Frankenstein’s monster with Lou Costello’s buffoonish nature.