The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny Read Free Book Online Page A

even emptiness.
     
    Before the evening meal, Dr. Cardano and I sat together at the small table in the guest room. The windows were closed and shuttered against mosquitoes. Olmina was mending in the corner; we’d barely begun our journey and already I’d torn a hem. I stared at the small fire in the grate (for though the days were hot, the nights fell chill—one could feel the presence of distant mountains). I fidgeted with the green tassel at the corner of the tablecloth.
    At last Dr. Cardano haltingly expressed his regret at my father’s disappearance and how unusual it was that his letters ceased. He admitted he possessed no fresh news for me, as he hadn’t received any letters for two years. Still he divulged something of my father’s mood when he departed Padua for Tübingen that August ten years ago.
    “He was in high spirits and eager for the journey, though he expressed remorse at leaving you behind. He wanted to protect you from the hardships of the road, my dear. Pardon me for saying this,” Dr. Cardano ventured ruefully, “but I also believe he wanted to inhabit another life, and you would have reminded him of his duties.”
    “What other life?” I sat up on the red velvet cushion of my chair.
    “The one imagined but never created, which doesn’t succumb to fear. Who knows?”
    “And what life is worth living if it shuns those who provide love and consolation?” I protested. I took a sip of the blood-orange grappa the doctor poured for me from a squat amber bottle and coughed, my throat burning from the spirits. Olmina glanced up sharply from her handiwork, frowned at me, then bent her head and resumed her stitches.
    Dr. Cardano waited as we listened to the tiny rhythmic pops of her needle in the fabric, followed by the drag of the sliding thread. Then he responded, “The life of the false ascetic—if your father was ever shadowed by a sin, it was this. For he did not wish to turn toward God. He simply wanted no more of the world.” The doctor stared at the pointed toes of his tawny leather slippers at the end of thin-as-a-plow-handle legs.
    “My father loathed religion for its deceptions and indulgences.” I spoke in a low voice, afraid of the inquisitor’s ears even in the house of my father’s friend. I was echoing the sentiments of heretic Lutherans. One never knew who was listening at the door.
    “Which is why I call his leaning a sin—perhaps he wanted to flee into nothingness, without sanctity,” he mused. “Like those wild woodsmen in Moravia who turn into animals and live on grubs, berries, roots, and any flesh they can scavenge!”
    “Dr. Cardano. That’s a legend, not a true account. Are you toying with me? My father turned into a lone beast? No, I believe something has happened to him, to confound his senses, some illness or mishap.”
    The quick rasp and snip of Olmina’s scissors punctuated the air.
    The doctor uncorked the bottle again with a dull plunk and poured himself another glass of grappa. “Might I see a few of his letters, if you would be so kind?”
    “Certainly. In fact, I’d prefer to entrust most of them to you.” I rose and withdrew a packet from my satchel.
    “There was rumor of his suffering an unknown illness, from a colleague abroad.”
    My heart sank at his mention of this. “What colleague, where?”
    “Dr. Fuchs in Tübingen wrote to tell me that your father acted most strangely while staying with him, was very withdrawn and secretive. He often spoke to himself while in his room with the door locked.”
    “Oh.” I laughed uneasily. “He often did that at home, working out his ideas aloud. Though it troubled my mother, so that she put cotton wool in her ears. ‘What decent man converses with the air?’ she’d say. It never bothered me, because that is how I knew him. Maybe I thought all fathers did that. Didn’t he speak to himself when he stayed with you?”
    “Hmm, well, since my room’s on the other side of the house, I suppose I