The Book of Madness and Cures

CHAPTER 21





A Border Between Continents

The evening before we departed for the port town of Algezer, I pulled out one of my father’s letters, marked Taradante, from the bottom of the packet of letters. I’d read it only once before, unlike others that were frequent companions to my night thoughts. Now it struck me why, for I’d forgotten or refused to see most of what it said.



Dear Gabriella,

I grow weary. Watching the full moon rise over the braided sand of the wadi, I feel that I’m on her white surface. Some say that she is utterly smooth. Others argue that she is composed of seas. Aristotle thought she marked the beginning of the imperishable ether stars and the end of the mutable spheres—earth, air, water, and fire. I am only too mutable here in the desert, my watery brain drawn to her pull like those shellfish that multiply exuberantly in her light. But I am also at a border. This life is my changing element, the sand beyond, my imperishable mind. I am too small for myself. All my life I’ve wrestled with increase, decrease, the gravity of rage and sorrow, the almost weightlessness of forgetting. Cures, panaceas, palliatives. Now I believe the moon is sand, the disk-shaped top of an hourglass draining into the ether away from us. Every month she seeps away and then is turned by some steady, intimate hand. Her own, perhaps. She turns herself. You must turn yourself, Daughter. We can never see it, but we can feel it. My body confines me. I want to live forever. Still I am large enough to rest my head upon her gritty bosom. Be let go. I am nothing more than a mote. But the moon is the wife I have never kissed! She waits for me, she abandons me. She lies in all things moist, the sea and its tributaries, the heart and its vessels, the brain and its damp thoughts, the kidney and its flow, the uterus and its watery longings, the past and its surgent concussions. I wander, I drift, Gabriella, forgive me. I grow weary and must take my rest in the desert. Dreams too partake of the moon. They linger at the gate. If I can sleep, I will tell you my dream. I’ll no longer be thirsty. If only I could trick dry Death once more. There is so little water here and so few cisterns to decoy the moon, though the sea still laps at the edge of the continent. Return, return, you say to me, and I wonder, return where? Shall I retrace my journey to find home?

1589

Your father



We traveled several days from Santa Engracia toward and then through the Andaluzian mountains, to the southwest of Hispania, and arrived at the ancient port town of Algezer. The air was rich with the stink of fish and sea snails.

“Is there an inn nearby?” I asked, after we’d greeted the leathery old man who sat cross-legged, mending a net.

“Keep going west till you get to the fallen wall. You’ll find it just beyond the rubble.” He waved a deeply creased hand with stubby fingers, holding needle and thick thread, toward the far verge of land and then resumed his deft knotted stitches.

But just as we began to follow the track west, he called out, “If you’ve any interest in selling a mule or two, I’d like to know.”

I turned round in the saddle. “Come to the inn tomorrow and we’ll discuss it.”

“And I’ve the good fortune to address…?”

“Dr. Mondini.”

“Ah. Tomorrow, then.” He grinned after us, or rather, I should say, after the mules, which he appeared to be sizing up for a good price.



We settled into plain, whitewashed rooms at the modest inn. From our window on the edge of Andaluzia, we looked across the dusty sea at the Rock of Gibraltar, looming like a watchful white lion. We could also make out the faintest line of the purple Rif Mountains.

I turned to Olmina, to take up a conversation that we’d begun in fits and starts all the way back in Santa Engracia and that even now I half wanted to delay. But at last I asked quietly, “Can you imagine Venetia empty of Lorenzo?”

“It will never be empty of him. That was our home,” said Olmina. She paused. “Gabriellina—I can’t convince you, then, to come with me?”

And I returned a question: “Won’t you come with me to Barbaria?”

“My stubborn Dottoressa.” She laughed hoarsely, and her body shuddered next to mine at the thick sill. “You must follow this through to the end, but how will you recognize the end?”

“I’ll know, somehow, I’ll know,” I answered. “I’ll make the arrangements, then,” I said, leaving her to watch the enormous sea.



Señor Romanesco, our innkeeper, assured me that he would book passage for us. Luckily we had to wait only a couple of days for our ships. Olmina would board the merchant ship Hyperion to Venetia early in the morning. I would leave soon after her on the Charon to Tanger.

“But why are you traveling alone, señora?” he asked. His mouth, surrounded by a trim black beard, hardened in disapproval. He called me señora, assuming that I was a widow, I suppose.

“I intend to search for my father. One of his letters mentioned a town there, Taradante. Could you tell me if there are any other reputable travelers staying here who seek passage to Tanger? I’m in need of trustworthy companions.”

He leaned forward, placing both hands upon the dizzying geometric mosaics of the counter between us, warning, “You’ll invite thieves and swindlers into your company if you remain a lady dressed as you are. The desert will swallow you!”

I lowered my voice and said, “I will go as a man.”

“Ah. But how will you bear the desert of Barbaria?”

“You know the desert, then? You are Moorish?”

“Ah, the señora is curious,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “But let me say that you’ve come to a border between continents, and as at any border, you’ll find that no one here is quite what they seem. The Morisco is a devoted Spaniard. The Jew is now a converso. Even the doctor may be the afflicted, if you take my meaning. But an honest innkeeper is an honest innkeeper.” He clasped his hands and said, “You’ll grow accustomed to the heat and the winds of Barbaria. Learn where the deep wells are, señora. Even the most humble dar has its garden, even the most humble soul.”

“And what is a dar?” I asked.

“The dar in Barbaria is the dwelling place, the house with its rooms around a courtyard, as we have even here.” He waved at the small patio within, with its octagonal blue and green tiled fountain, which cast a cool, unsteady light on the pale walls.

“Truly, I thank you for your help,” I said, turning from him to the submerged shadows of the courtyard, filled with sudden disquiet as I considered the lonely journey ahead.

That evening, Señor Romanesco knocked at our door and announced, “The fisherman has come to look at your animals. I’ll accompany you to the stable.”

I nodded. Olmina also joined us.

I’d decided to keep Fedele and Fiametta, so only the other two were for sale. These would purchase our ship’s passage, so I could still keep a good reserve of ducats.

When I named my price, the man balked. “I can only buy one of them, then.”

“Then it is done,” I concluded.

“Now, just a moment. Let me have a look at them.” He walked around each mule, felt each leg, and tapped the hoofs while they regarded him with mild suspicion, the whites of their eyes widening.

We haggled back and forth. I quietly drove a firm bargain, while Olmina stood nearby, hands on hips, fastening a good hard look at him that would’ve unnerved me in an instant. We were tougher than the old man had anticipated, and Señor Romanesco stood to one side watching the transaction silently without expression.

I stroked the mules’ gray faces, their soft sail-shaped ears, which twitched one way, then another, independently of each other. How far they had borne our supplies with resolute labor! I was sad to let them go, but at least they wouldn’t have to travel aboard a ship again.

In the end, the fisherman purchased both, paying us with silver from a wrinkled, oil-stained leather purse. As he left, I overheard him talking to the departing mules about his catch for the day as he patted their backs, well pleased.

Before we returned to our room, Señor Romanesco called me aside in the dusk-lit courtyard and said, “I see that you know how to handle a customer, señora. You’re tougher than you appear.” He beamed at me, black eyes flashing. “I wish I could recommend suitable traveling companions for you, but there is no one. However, my brother who lives in Tanger and sells spices in the souk is a shrewd man, a good man who would understand your request.”

“How will I find him?”

“Ask for him by name and trade in the morning and you’ll find him. Never go out late in the day. And take a manservant with you. They’re for hire and plentiful at the port landing. Choose an older man—they understand that true profit rests on constancy.”

“Thank you for your kindness—though I’ve always heard, never trust anyone in a port, and never trust an innkeeper, for that matter.”

He grinned. “Remember that nothing is what you expect at the edge of the continents.” He handed me a slim sheet of paper folded over and sealed with yellow wax, addressed in Arabic. “Here is a letter of introduction.”



The night before departure, I asked Olmina a special favor. “Will you cut my hair again?”

“Of course, signorina.” She drew the knife and comb from her satchel. “There will be no one else to trust, will there?”

“No one.” I clasped her hand where it rested on my shoulder. Then she gathered my hair tightly, close to the nape of my neck, lifted it, and slashed quickly. She finished with small sewing shears, clipping here and there, stepping around me to check her handiwork.

The day arrived. Olmina’s ship would set sail just before dawn. The small white houses of Algezer were still stained blue with night behind us when we left the inn. Olmina seemed a shadow in the ashen black garments of a widow, while I wore a brown doublet and breeches, Lorenzo’s clothes, recently refitted to my form by an adept tailor. Olmina had insisted I keep them.

We walked in silence down to the seafront, where one other passenger, a middle-aged man attired in the rich velvet garments of a merchant, stood at the end of a narrow dock. Here we awaited the arrival of the small boat that would take them to the ship.

As we stood together, I murmured softly, “So at last you are going home, dear Nana,” and I put my arms around her.

Olmina cupped my sun-darkened face in her hands the way a loving mother would hold the face of a cherished daughter. Her callused hands scratched me and I loved them. The faint blue veins I would commit to memory.

We held each other. We were bound by the same presence and absence, as if the world were pillared by two women at the gateway between sea and ocean, Europe and Africa, home and la parte incognita. I gave Olmina two leather purses of gold pesetas.

“Only one, Dottoressa, that is fair. You’ll need the other.” She returned one of the purses to the pocket of my jerkin. She grabbed my shoulder and said in a fierce, low voice, “Won’t you come home with me, then?”

I shook my head, staring down at the dock planks.

She picked up her satchel and shuffled toward the small boat and two rowers that had just fastened the lines. The violet sea slapped the pilings. “Good-bye, Olmina, buona fortuna!” I cried. But she didn’t look back. She walked away in her labored manner and descended the gangplank, steadied by the kindly merchant.

“It must be very difficult to part with your son there,” I heard him say.

I turned away and felt the land jolt beneath my feet, as if I’d been falling for a very long time and just now struck the earth. Something broke in me, yet I still walked back to our room at the inn, where I bent to the window and wept. I watched the listless ship slowly gather wind, snapping her sails, then round Gibraltar eastward toward the serene city that shimmered in my mind like a place that no longer existed.