I cleared my throat. I breathed deeply, and puffed out my chest. Let it be recorded in medical history that I, Dottore Graziano, graduate of fifteen major universities, master of the lance and leech, I, Dottore Graziano, felt gratified.
Now, wait. Right now I see a gentleman in the audience turning his back on me, pushing his way out of the crowd, leaving in disgust. I can tell, from his distinguished outfit, that he is one of my esteemed colleagues of the healing profession. And I can almost hear the thoughts in his brilliant brain.
“Why?” he is thinking, “why should this doctor, this physician, this divine practitioner of the healing arts, why should this great man, with such impressive credentials, feel gratified because a stupid actor chooses to confide in him?”
Return to your place, Doctor, and I will explain. I assure you: it was not the confidence which warmed the chambers of my heart. They
all
confided in me, every one of them. They were always bothering me with intimate information about their aches and pains, their worries, their love affairs, their money problems. You know how it is, Doctor: they believe that listening to such things is a part of your job.
No, my Hippocratic brother, the reason for my pleasure was this.
Most of the time, The Glorious Ones pretended to have no trust in me at all. They ridiculed me. They flocked to my tent for medicines and cures; but the moment their symptoms abated, the cruel jokes began again.
“But what about that powder I gave you?” I would argue with Brighella. “Did it not work wonders for your abdominal angina?”
“I threw that powder down the cesspool,” Brighella would spit back. “God cured my stomach, as part of His promise to me. And you are nothing but the ignorant quack street-hustler you always were.”
And that was how it went on stage. My role required me to strut around in my academic cap and gown, with that monstrous wart pasted to the center of my forehead. I quoted Latin, interpreted dreams, boasted about my research, and offered pompous, philosophical advice on the Lovers’ difficulties. The others jeered, pinched my buttocks, battered my cranium with rubber bats, smashed eggs in my face. When I talked of medicine, they doubled over with laughter, grimaced as if in mortal pain, and poked me in the ribs with their fingertips.
Now, my Caducean colleague, can you see why I was so delighted when Francesco Andreini asked me to perform the delicate task of transforming Isabella’s madness? It was an admission, a statement, a positive—as we say in the profession—proof. He was banking his entire future on my medical skill, he was gambling with Isabella, with the fate of The Glorious Ones. He could never have done such a thing if he had not had complete faith in me, if he had not known the truth—that I was indeed the greatest scientific practitioner in all Western Europe.
So I acted accordingly, to bear out his trust. I ran to my textbooks, and consulted the ledger in which I had recorded all my research. Moments after Andreini left my tent, I began to dose Isabella with opiates and sedatives. I rubbed the nerves at the back of her neck, attached warming poultices to the small of her back.
By that very evening, she was docile enough to appear with Andreini before the others.
“Fellow actors!” cried Francesco, calling The Glorious Ones together after dinner. “May I present the star of our newest drama,
The Moon Woman
. Now tell me, does not her beautiful face resemble that of the moon?”
No, I thought to myself, it does not. I knew, from my astronomical studies, that the moon had scars, pits, and abscesses in her complexion. As Isabella stood there silently, her eyes downcast, not even a freckle marred her fair cheeks.
For some reason, Andreini had painted her face chalk-white, and rouged the corners of her mouth downward in an expression of tragic sadness. And he had drawn a solitary tear beneath her black-rimmed eyes. It was the physiognomy of a beautiful melancholiac, I decided, but not the face of the moon.
Still, I kept silent, and let Andreini continue.
“I have the script with me here,” he went on, “authored by the lady’s own hand. Need I point out that its very existence proves her talent, her creativity, her perfect sanity. And the drama itself is so poetic, so compelling, that I will venture to guess that none of you has ever seen anything like it before.
“The plot is an ingenious one. It concerns a madwoman, a ravishing lunatic, whom all the men love, and who is at last restored to sanity by the God of Love himself—”
“Why should people pay to watch such a thing on stage?” interrupted Flaminio Scala, in a bitter voice. “They see enough madness every day of their lives.”
The others, who were dissatisfied with Andreini’s plan without quite knowing why, immediately jumped at Flaminio’s objection, and made it their own. “Exactly!” they cried. “Why should people pay money to hear about something they already know?”
“It is true that they are familiar with madness,” argued Francesco calmly. “But we are showing it to them in a beautiful form, which they would love to see madness take. And that is the kind of drama they like best of all.”
“But there is no room for improvisation in it,” cried the Captain. “It will have no spirit, no life.”
“The life is in the lines,” answered Francesco. “And, once we have memorized them, we will have the freedom to give the play the spirit it deserves.
“All I am asking,” he continued, after a brief pause, “is that we rehearse it for two weeks, learn our lines, and offer a few performances. And then, if the audience does not seem to like it, we can always return to the old improvisations.”
The discussion went on for many hours, moving through labyrinths of logic, avenues of argument, dimensions of debate. At last, The Glorious Ones reluctantly agreed. And, the next morning, we began to rehearse
The Moon Woman
.
The plot was simple, the dialogue easy to learn.
Isabella is the beautiful, melancholy daughter of Pantalone the Miser. He keeps her locked in her room, like some wondrous, mad treasure, allowing no one to visit her but Columbina the maid. But one night, as Isabella is staring moodily out her window at the moon, the men of the town catch sight of her, and fall madly in love.
Columbina explains to them that her mistress is in love with the moon. She is always sad, always disappointed, because her passion is hopeless. The moon will not respond, will not come close, will never be possessed.
“Earthly men have no chance with her,” says Columbina. “And a bunch of homely fools like yourselves will have less luck than any.”
But the suitors cannot be discouraged.
“There are two moons in the sky tonight!” cries Andreini, the Lover, and falls to the floor in a dead faint. Immediately, the Captain begins to bluster her praises in the most grandiloquent language. Knocking loudly on Pantalone’s door, I shout out my most complicated theories, prescriptions, and formulas; I promise to cure the Jew’s unfortunate daughter. Even Brighella is so deeply moved that he cannot stop cursing and shrieking the vilest insults up at the open window.
Still, Isabella stares at the sky, and will not notice us.
Then, in the final scene, Armanda Ragusa appears, dressed as Cupid, in a striped silk loincloth, a beaded halter, and a feathered cap. Suspended from the scaffolding by wires, the God of Love shoots one of his golden arrows straight at the madwoman’s heart. And suddenly, Isabella begins to laugh. She takes a ring from her finger, and throws it down at the ground, at Francesco’s feet.
“An old story,” Armanda sneered bitterly, the first time we ran through the lines. “The Princess in the Tower. Every schoolgirl knows it.”
And she was quite correct. We had all heard the legend before. I knew it as well as the names of the nerves and bones.
But we had never seen it played by Isabella. She learned her part perfectly, my patient. Sitting in the pasteboard window, she bore the same heartrending expression on her face which it bore most of the time. And, in the end, when Armanda appeared, dressed in that outrageous attire, Isabella laughed so naturally that it seemed that she was always seeing that ridiculous sight for the first time.
Andreini was directing her; she did as he said. But they could never have succeeded without my competence, my true art. All through those weeks of rehearsal, I kept her supplied with opiates. Her outbursts ceased completely, and I carefully recorded my observations in the ledger. She took her medicine willingly, almost gratefully. And, when she was not on stage or asleep beneath her husband’s blankets, she passed her time in my tent, sitting on a corner of the mattress, staring at the ground.
Often, I would talk with her, though the fact of the matter was that I did most of the talking, and she rarely answered. One afternoon, however, I decided that it would indeed be a rare plum for the annals of medical science if I could persuade Isabella to tell me the truth about the origins of her illness. And so, broaching the subject as delicately as possible, I at last posed the question which interested me so deeply.
“Isabella,” I said, placing one hand gently on her forehead, “tell me, what is the cause of your terrible illness? Did it start in the convent? Did the evil spirits possess you during one of those long nights in the cold stone coffins? Or was it later—did this madness seize you only after your marriage to Andreini?”
“I was married to God before I was married to Andreini,” she said, in that strange, cryptic way of hers.
Suddenly, as I looked at her face in the darkened tent, it did indeed seem to be shining with a cold, melancholy light. It was as if the moon had come indoors, in the middle of the afternoon. And it was then that I knew our play of the Moon Woman would be a tremendous success.
Naturally, my thesis proved correct. That first night we performed the drama, I peered into the crowd, and saw that our audience was transfixed. They stared at Isabella as if she had bewitched them, drawn them into her power. Brighella, the Captain, and I received a few grudging giggles; but, by and large, an awed hush hung over the plaza. And at last, when Isabella charmed them with her radiant smile, I saw men, women, and children mopping their eyes with their filthy sleeves.
They continued weeping even during the curtain calls. When Isabella came forward to take her bow, even the most brutish of the inveterate ignoramuses could not help noticing that the sad, distracted expression was still on her face.
They began to murmur with curiosity; as we passed among the crowd, holding out our caps, the people surrounded us, besieging us with questions.
“Is it true?” they demanded. “Is that woman the finest actress in the world, or is she really just as unhappy as she pretends?”
“She is indeed a fine actress,” we answered noncommittally. “Put a few more pennies in our caps, and we will discuss it further.”
That night, our hats were heavier with gold than ever before.
Soon, the audiences were demanding six, seven shows a night. We were invited into the homes of noblemen, rich scions of society. We gave command performances at elegant entertainments. Within a few months, we found ourselves being wooed by the titled aristocracy, as they vied among themselves, and frantically outbid each other for the honor of our presence at their courts.
The success made us vertiginous. In three weeks, Columbina grew fatter than a horse. For the first time in our lives, Brighella, the Captain, and I were forced to exercise in order to ameliorate the deleterious effects of excess food and drink. The nobles plied us with money, tasty delicacies, and fine wine. And always, after the performances, they would declare their undying admiration for Isabella, and express their great desire to have her sit at their very own table.
Usually, they addressed their requests to Flaminio, who was still—nominally, at least—the leader of The Glorious Ones.
But Flaminio, who seemed to regard Isabella with some strange mixture of fear and bewilderment, would invariably shrug his shoulders. “I am sorry,” he would say. “But you must consult her physician, Dottore Graziano.”
You can imagine the pleasure it gave me when the entire room fell silent to hear me venture my learned opinion.
“I too am sorry,” I would tell them. “But I am afraid that even the slightest confusion or distraction is contraindicated in our star performer’s delicate case.”
The nobles took my warning so seriously that they began to walk on tiptoe, as if Isabella were asleep, and they were afraid of waking her.
But they talked about her to their friends. And that is how our second invitation to France came about.
One night, as we were playing for the Borromeo family in their island palace, a man stepped out of the audience. He was a forty-year-old white male. His physiognomy was of the bilious type. He was thin, like a little monkey of the
Rhesus indica
family, and he exhibited a slight asthmatic wheeze as he spoke.
“Mesdames and Messieurs,” he addressed us. “Let me introduce myself. I am Count Marcel de Lavigne, of Paris. And I have come to invite you to our beautiful city, on behalf of our beloved king.”
Francesco Andreini rushed forward; but, before he could speak, the Captain stepped between them.
“We are flattered by your invitation,” he said. “But, quite frankly, the hardships involved in our last journey to your lovely country have made me reluctant to embark on another such venture.”
“Hardships?” inquired the Frenchman.
“Hardships!” cried Brighella. “They’d have to drag us back to that stinking country in chains!”
“Be quiet!” Flaminio hissed at him. “Men have been hanged for less, or have you forgotten the sad tale of my three friends?” Then he turned back to the count with a sweet smile.
“Hardships,” he repeated. “First, we were kidnapped by those barbarous Huguenots. And then, if that were not enough indignity, our visit was rudely and ignobly terminated by your great monarch himself.”
“How long ago was your visit?” asked the count incredulously.
“About five years,” replied Flaminio.
“Ah, well then,” shrugged the Frenchman, “that explains it. Those were terrible days for my poor country. And it was only an unlucky accident of fate, my dear sir, which brought you to us at such an unfortunate time. Certainly, the forces of chance must have been working against you.