Read Online The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Regina O'Melveny
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a light supper, goat cheese with bread grilled upon the hearth, dried black olives, and wine. I liked to eat slowly, intermittently, while I formed my thoughts. A chewy crust of bread always anchored my words, while wine brought on certain deft phrases (which didn’t always hold up to daylight).
These hours of candlelight, encircled by a studious darkness, drew me closer to my intent. The muted cries of owls and the sorrowful quavers of nightjars kept me company. Even when I wasn’t putting words to page with the quill and indigo ink I preferred, I was more at peace than in the day.
I realized this was the solitude my father tasted and loved, which I also loved. Often, at home in Venetia, we would read or write in our separate chambers, though I might visit his study from time to time to ask a question about the healing properties of something such as aurum potabile, the gold suspended in spirits that purportedly could be sipped as a cure-all. He would pause, whatever he was doing, and answer me thoughtfully yet simply, as if sharing a piece of bread. “What is meant by gold? The thing in its purity or surrounded by other minerals? The gold of dreams? And then each temperament may react differently, just as elements respond to light, some trapping it, others magnifying it.”
And I would leave his study content, even if the questions were unanswered and more questions lingered. I was comforted merely by the rise and fall of his room’s reflected light upon the canal waters, which I could perceive from my window. Then the light would be extinguished, and this too was reassuring, in the way that the rhythms of work mend the days. I was pleased to be the last one awake in the house, keeping my small vigil.
The light from his room still rose and fell for me, from the various cities of his visitations. I’d been rereading his letters, trying to surmise his route by his mind’s tenor. In one letter from an unnamed place, yet with the date February 5, 1588, he wrote:
How I treasure the dark nights when my candle is the only one lit, perhaps, in the entire city. It may be that when no one else is about, I find greater entrance to my soul. It is not a simple matter of uninterrupted time. No, it is the darkened theater just after the play, the street after the festival, the emptiness that holds the semblances. There is something hallowed about the late hours that suspend one’s life. To be apart, to be silent, to pace or lay down the heart’s agitation. To find in words the plangent bell that calls one home. And if by chance I should move to the window and see another window, far down the street, lit for a scholar or a corpse vigil or even a midnight birth, we are instantly bound by the intimacy of our solitude.
And, I now wanted to add, the intimacy of things! For here in Dr. Cardano’s study I was surrounded by the amiable calm of books, a few small boxes and majolica apothecary jars, which I resisted opening (not wishing to pry into the doctor’s cures without permission), a celestial globe, a bronze armillary sphere, a pair of scissors, a slim knife for trimming quills, and a lonely silver key that hung upon a nail without its companion lock or chest anywhere in sight.
How agreeable to have such a quiet room at one’s disposal. I was free of the interruptions that came at home from my mother, the servants, and the raucous din of ships in the Canale della Giudecca, unloading and loading, thudding, jarring, creaking, along with the loud gabble and shouts of sailors.
But sometimes in stillness, there is left still one’s inner clamor. Perhaps this was the very thing my mother feared most, for she always surrounded herself with chattering friends and never sought a moment to herself. She couldn’t bear that I spent hours alone, as if that solitude were a slight against her. Or perhaps she worried that the daughter bore signs of the father’s obsessions.
Once, as a young girl of ten, I was sitting at the
These hours of candlelight, encircled by a studious darkness, drew me closer to my intent. The muted cries of owls and the sorrowful quavers of nightjars kept me company. Even when I wasn’t putting words to page with the quill and indigo ink I preferred, I was more at peace than in the day.
I realized this was the solitude my father tasted and loved, which I also loved. Often, at home in Venetia, we would read or write in our separate chambers, though I might visit his study from time to time to ask a question about the healing properties of something such as aurum potabile, the gold suspended in spirits that purportedly could be sipped as a cure-all. He would pause, whatever he was doing, and answer me thoughtfully yet simply, as if sharing a piece of bread. “What is meant by gold? The thing in its purity or surrounded by other minerals? The gold of dreams? And then each temperament may react differently, just as elements respond to light, some trapping it, others magnifying it.”
And I would leave his study content, even if the questions were unanswered and more questions lingered. I was comforted merely by the rise and fall of his room’s reflected light upon the canal waters, which I could perceive from my window. Then the light would be extinguished, and this too was reassuring, in the way that the rhythms of work mend the days. I was pleased to be the last one awake in the house, keeping my small vigil.
The light from his room still rose and fell for me, from the various cities of his visitations. I’d been rereading his letters, trying to surmise his route by his mind’s tenor. In one letter from an unnamed place, yet with the date February 5, 1588, he wrote:
How I treasure the dark nights when my candle is the only one lit, perhaps, in the entire city. It may be that when no one else is about, I find greater entrance to my soul. It is not a simple matter of uninterrupted time. No, it is the darkened theater just after the play, the street after the festival, the emptiness that holds the semblances. There is something hallowed about the late hours that suspend one’s life. To be apart, to be silent, to pace or lay down the heart’s agitation. To find in words the plangent bell that calls one home. And if by chance I should move to the window and see another window, far down the street, lit for a scholar or a corpse vigil or even a midnight birth, we are instantly bound by the intimacy of our solitude.
And, I now wanted to add, the intimacy of things! For here in Dr. Cardano’s study I was surrounded by the amiable calm of books, a few small boxes and majolica apothecary jars, which I resisted opening (not wishing to pry into the doctor’s cures without permission), a celestial globe, a bronze armillary sphere, a pair of scissors, a slim knife for trimming quills, and a lonely silver key that hung upon a nail without its companion lock or chest anywhere in sight.
How agreeable to have such a quiet room at one’s disposal. I was free of the interruptions that came at home from my mother, the servants, and the raucous din of ships in the Canale della Giudecca, unloading and loading, thudding, jarring, creaking, along with the loud gabble and shouts of sailors.
But sometimes in stillness, there is left still one’s inner clamor. Perhaps this was the very thing my mother feared most, for she always surrounded herself with chattering friends and never sought a moment to herself. She couldn’t bear that I spent hours alone, as if that solitude were a slight against her. Or perhaps she worried that the daughter bore signs of the father’s obsessions.
Once, as a young girl of ten, I was sitting at the
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