Immortal (20 page)

“Meaning is a cruel joke, and it’s on us!”

“When I come back, I’ll argue the point with you,” Geber said hoarsely.

“I think you’re not coming back this time, Master Geber,” I said softly, unable to deny the ache any longer. “You’re too far gone. I’ve seen death so often that I know his approach.”

“Coming back is certain for those of us who still have desires,” he wheezed. “Remember that when the lust for gold overtakes you.” Then he coughed up blood all over his chin and cheeks, too weak now even to turn his head, and I used his coverlet to wipe his feverish face.

“Would you like some water, signore?” I asked softly. I realized with a pang that I should have been tending him, not arguing with him; some physico I would make. Geber shook his head. “How about something to ease your pain? Wine with some of that distilled liquor from the poppy flower? You showed me where you keep it.”

“All my life has been given to me that I might learn how to die,” he whispered. “Why would I dull my mind at the crux of the journey?”

“Because death is certain, but suffering is unnecessary,” I said sadly. “I would release you from it.”

“You’ll be a good physico; you want to release conscious beings from their suffering. Remember that when…” Geber’s whisper trailed off. He smiled slightly and looked at me with luminous eyes. I wondered if I’d ever before seen his eyes without his strange eyeglasses framing them. Then I understood that he could no longer speak. I slipped my arm under his neck to support his shoulders and held his hand with my free hand, because I would want that kind of contact if I were dying. Of itself, with no prompting on my part, the tingling warmth entered into me. It ran through my chest and down my arms and out my hands into him. His eyes sparked briefly, and then dulled as a shudder went through his body. His breath came more and more shallowly, until it was the tiniest puff on the tip of his tongue, like the fanning of a butterfly’s wing. Just at the end he smiled and squeezed my hand.

It was still daylight when I went outdoors with Geber’s body wrapped in the bloodstained coverlet. I was surprised, because his little room had been so dark and closed that I assumed the sun had gone down. The Wanderer was waiting with his gray donkey.

“I thought you were gone,” I said as I draped Geber’s body over the donkey. Just last night I’d been the one in this position. But now I was walking around while Geber never would again, and for me, it was another precious friend gone.

“I thought you’d need help,” the Wanderer said, patting Geber’s back gently.

“I’m not the one who needs help,” I said, both bitter and sad. I had replaced the eyeglasses on Geber’s face, thinking to bury him as I had known him, wearing that strange visual apparatus, but the Wanderer pulled them off his face, folded them, and held them out to me.

“Don’t you think he would want you to see as he did?” the Wanderer asked slyly.

“I will always see the way I do, and not as anyone else does,” I said. I placed the apparatus awkwardly in the inner pocket of my farsetto, thinking that I would keep it with Giotto’s panel. Then I took out the bundle of papers from Geber’s nightstand; I had fastened my farsetto over it before bringing Geber down. I gave the bundle to the Wanderer. “He would want you to have this, I think. You two understood each other.”

“Summa Perfectionis Magisterii,”
the Wanderer read from the cover page. “How like my old friend. I know who to give this to.” He took the donkey’s lead rope in his big, gnarled hand, and trudged alongside me. “Death is merely moving from one home to another. If we’re wise, and my Perfect friend was, we’ll make the latter the more beautiful home.”

“Do you believe visions are real?” I asked. “Last night, this thing happened to me, a journey, and I was offered a choice, was it real?” My face was wet as I grabbed the Wanderer’s sleeve.

“The purpose of mourning is to empty the self of the self,” he replied, squeezing my hand. “Then, slowly, drop by drop, you refill yourself with your Self. It takes time.”

But time for me was different from how it was for other men, and now there was no one to ask why that was so. I would miss Geber’s sharp-tongued lessons. I would miss the sense of being in the company of someone else who was different, like me.

“Let me tell you a story, since you asked about what’s real and what’s illusion,” the Wanderer said, brightening. “There’s a man, he’s walking down a road, he sees—”

“What’s his name?” I interrupted. Despite the ache of Geber’s loss, I couldn’t quell the urge to tease the Wanderer back. Two could play at the trickster game. Geber had once told me that I had the minimal intelligence to be curious. I could use that curiosity to repay the Wanderer in kind.

“The man’s name? It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” I said stubbornly.

“Giuseppe.” The Wanderer threw up his hand. “He sees a woman—”

“What’s her name?”

“Debora.” He rolled his eyes. “He sees Debora, and she’s beautiful. He’s struck by lightning, he must have her. So he goes to her father’s house—the father’s name was Leone—and asked for Debora’s hand in marriage. The father agrees, the two are married. They are very happy. In due time, the couple have three beautiful children—”

“Whose names are?” I prompted.

The Wanderer muttered a few sentences in another language. I didn’t need to translate to know they were imprecations. Then he intoned, “Avram, Isaac, and Anna. The father-in-law, who is wealthy, dies, and his property comes to Giuseppe. Giuseppe has everything: a beautiful loving wife, beautiful children, a beautiful home, land and sheep and cattle and gold.”

“I like this story.”

“Yes, well, one day a flood comes, a vast, terrible flood that covers the land—”

“Like the flood of November 1333,” I observed. “That was terrible. The rain came down without a break for four nights and days, with fearsome lightning and continual crashing thunder. Were you in Florence then? It was an amazing sight, and a sound like I’ve never heard before or since,” I continued. “All the church bells rang continuously. A monk named Friar Pietro told me that it was an invocation for the Arno not to rise further. And in the houses, they beat kettles and cried to God,
‘Misericordia, misericordia,’
but God only laughed. The water kept rising. People in peril fled from roof to roof and from house to house on makeshift bridges. And the din people made was so loud that it almost drowned out the thunder!”

“Loud, yes, and in my story—”

“The bridges were all swept away, you know,” I said, as if confidentially. “I saw the Ponte Vecchio go, with shopkeepers still inside the little wooden shops. It was a terrible tragedy!” I gave the Wanderer an innocent, wide-eyed look and he stared back as if I were the village idiot. I knew I was irritating him. I gave him a cheeky grin.

“The flood was no better for the Giuseppe of my story,” the Wanderer said, gnashing his teeth. “The waters came and washed away his home, his crops, and his animals, all his possessions. Then a giant wave appeared on the horizon and he grabbed his children and wife, he put one child on his head, and held two together with one hand, and held his wife with the other hand. The wave crashed upon him, and the child on his head was ripped away, and when he reached for her, the other children and wife were lost into the waters. Then the wave cast him back on the shore. He’d lost everything. That’s illusion,” he finished with a flourish.

“Which part of it?” I cried, dismayed.

“Which part of it isn’t illusion?” The Wanderer chuckled, looking pleased with himself for delivering the punch line. “It’s all illusion. What he had, and what he didn’t have.”

“I don’t like this story,” I growled, disgruntled.

“You should like it, it’s the story of your life. Of everyone’s life, really.”

“Life should be different.”

“How can life be other than what it is?”

“Full of death and loss and unanswered questions,” I said sadly. We fell silent. As the light faded and the setting sun spread orange clouds through the sky and the cool autumn air turned lavender, we walked through narrow streets overshadowed by fortresslike dwellings, severe gray facades crowned by crenellated cornices, high brick towers, and red terra-cotta roofs, black iron rings for torches set into rough bosses of stone, until we came to the stone wall twenty braccia high encircling the city. This was the third circle, Geber had explained during one of our lessons, because it was the third enclosure built to protect the city. The first, an irregular square, was built by ancient Romans. Stretches of it still ran through the city. The second was built by the commune in 1172, when the
borghi,
the suburbs of the city, spilled out along the roads from the four original Roman gates and the citizens didn’t want invaders to burn the borghi. This third circle was completed two decades ago. We paused there because three horses were cantering toward us. Nicolo Silvano in his red magistrate’s sleeves sat astride the lead horse.

“You won’t get away with anything, Bastardo, no matter what you inherit,” Nicolo said, circling me. “I know what you are: a sorcerer. A Jew-loving sorcerer,” he spat at the Wanderer, who studied the flagstone. I stared at Nicolo, at his narrow ugly face with its protruding chin and thin, sharply angled nose. The other horses caught up with us.

“You are the boy called Luca Bastardo, who was employed by the commune as a becchino for the last several months?” one of the ufficiale asked. I nodded. “You’ve received an inheritance,” he said. He paused and looked at Geber. “Whose body is that on the donkey?”

“Geber,” I said.

“Antonio Geber, the merchant. Two inheritances, then,” he said pleasantly, as if he were telling me that the sun was shining. “There will be taxes. Come to the Palazzo del Capitano—”

“Two?” I puzzled.

“One from this Geber, and the other from Arnolfo Ginori. You were seen taking his body for burial. Both men left you their possessions, bank accounts, everything.”

“Ginori?” I wondered.

“Someone you put a spell on, sorcerer,” Nicolo sneered. “Someone you cozened with your witchcraft, the same witchcraft that keeps you young when you should be a grown man!”

“Ginori left you a bottega, a shop for dyestuffs,” the ufficiale explained. “Before the plague, it prospered; Ginori was a cousin of an old family and had excellent customers.”

The dye shop—Rosso. “I never knew his name,” I murmured, touched that he’d thought of me this way. Was it only yesterday that I’d buried him, and today I was burying Geber? The last two days seemed like ten years. Time felt all askew, stretched in some places and wound up in a tight skein in others.

“You’re wealthy now,” the ufficiale said with a smile. “You should look for a wife.”

“A wife?” I repeated slowly, almost dazed. The philosopher’s stone had given me the choice for one, and now perhaps the means had come to me.

“That’s right,” the other ufficiale said. “There’s a flurry of betrothals taking place right now. Those who’ve survived are desperate to marry their daughters. You’re young, but you can get yourself betrothed to a girl who’s wealthy and beautiful, perhaps even one of the lesser nobles. You can make your way up in the world. There’s great opportunity now, for those who’ve survived the plague.”

“He’s not as young as he looks,” Nicolo hissed, glaring at me.

“Take care of the legal matters and the taxes,” the first ufficiale advised. He flicked a glance at the Wanderer. “You have real estate now, you don’t have to live with Hebrews.” He turned his horse around, saying “I’ve other inheritors to notify.” He and the second ufficiale set off in a sprightly trot together, matching their horses’ gaits. I heard the second one say, “Do you really think he’s some kind of sorcerer?”

Nicolo remained behind. He heard the question, too. “I can’t kill you now, Bastardo; the city fathers who remain alive are determined to protect the rest of the living. My ambition must take precedence. But eventually, I’ll get you!” He wore the same sneer I had seen on his father’s face, the sneer that had made me a prisoner. A wave of anger pulsed through me. I wished I had killed Nicolo when I’d had the opportunity and the resolve, with the blood rage upon me. Then I realized that I had seen too much death and was thoroughly sickened by it. Even for vengeance, I didn’t want to partake again of that poisoned feast. I would settle for wiping the sneer from Nicolo’s face.

I drawled, “Your father smiled that way just before I wrung his neck and killed him like the rat he was.”

Nicolo howled. “Enjoy it now, Bastardo. Soon I’ll take everything away from you!”

“You can’t harm me,” I said. I looked away nonchalantly. I wanted to belittle him, to make him feel as worthless as I’d felt at his father’s brothel. “If you try, I’ll find another bird for you to eat. This one won’t be red, though. Do you think it will taste as good?”

“I’ll make you sorry you ever saw a red bird, sorry you were ever born! People will know that you’re an abomination. Florence doesn’t like freaks. You’ll burn, Bastardo!” Nicolo kicked his horse with the sharp spurs on his boots and set out after the other two ufficiali.

“That charming fellow didn’t offer you congratulations, but I will,” the Wanderer said. “If I know my old Cathar friend, he had abundant florins. You’re a wealthy man. It’s what you’ve always wanted. So here’s a question for you, since you like them so much: what do you do when you get what you want?” Grinning, the Wanderer put the donkey’s lead rope into my hand and closed my fingers over the rope. I had a sudden flash of long ago at the Mercato Vecchio, Silvano closing my friend Massimo’s fingers over a coin. “I win!” Massimo had whispered, all those years ago. But he hadn’t, unless winning was dying by a condottiere’s greedy hand. I’d endured agony, shame, wretchedness beyond what most people could imagine, but I’d won. I’d won because now I would never have to worry about hunger or poverty again. The Wanderer stood watching me raptly, as if my thoughts were transparent to him. He took a pack off the donkey’s back and hoisted it over one thick shoulder. I suddenly knew that he was leaving. “Will I ever see you again?” I asked.