Part 5 (2/2)

”Quiet, my son, quiet,” said the old man. He laid his hands on his son and tried to force him back against the pillow. ”And remember, my sons, the house in question is mine. Therefore the demon, or the dybbuk as the Jews call it, must certainly belong to me. I must go to the house and confront this awesome spirit who routs exorcists both Jewish and Roman. I must see this spirit with my own eyes.”

”Father, I beg you, don't do that!” said Lodovico. ”Vitale isn't telling you of the violence of this spirit. Every Jewish doctor who's come here has told us. It hurls things and breaks things. It stomps its feet.”

”Oh, nonsense,” said the father. ”I believe in illness and I believe in cures for it. But in spirits? Spirits who hurl things? This I'll have to see with my own eyes. It's enough for me that Vitale is here with Niccol.”

”Yes, Father,” said Niccol, ”and this is enough for me. Lodovico, you've always loved Vitale,” he said to his brother, ”the same as I have. The three of us, we've been friends since Montpellier. Father, don't listen to these things.”

”I'm not listening, my son,” said the father, but the father was now carefully observing his son, because the more the son protested, the sicker he looked.

Lodovico knelt down beside the bed and wept with his forehead on his arm. ”Niccol, I would do anything in my power to see you cured of this,” he said, though it was difficult to understand him through his tears. ”I love Vitale. I always have. But the other doctors, they say he's bewitched.”

”Stop, Lodovico,” said the father. ”You alarm your brother. Vitale, look at my son. Examine him again. That's why you've come.”

Vitale was watching all of this keenly, and so was I. I couldn't detect the poison by any scent in the room, but that meant nothing. I knew any number of poisons, which slipped into caviar would do the trick. One thing was clear, however. The patient still had considerable strength.

”Vitale, sit with me,” said the patient. ”Stay with me today. The worst thoughts have been coming to me. I see myself dead and buried.”

”Don't say this, my son,” said the father.

Lodovico was past all comfort.

”Brother, I don't know what life means without you,” he said tenderly. ”Don't make me contemplate it. The first thing I remember is your standing at the foot of my cradle. For me, as well as for Father, you must get well.”

”All of you, leave us, please,” said Vitale. ”Signore, you trust me here as you always have. I want to examine the patient, and you, Toby, take a place there”-he pointed to the far corner-”and play softly to still Niccol's nerves.”

”Yes, that's good,” said the father, and he rose and beckoned for the younger man to come out.

The younger man didn't want to do it.

”Look, he's scarce tasted the caviar last given to him,” said Lodovico. He pointed to a small silver plate on the bedside table. The caviar sat in a tiny gla.s.s dish inside it with a small delicate silver spoon. Lodovico filled the spoon and brought it to Niccol's lips.

”No, no more. I tell you, it burns my eyes.”

”Oh, come, you need it,” said the brother.

”No, no more, I can't bear anything now,” said Niccol. Then as if to quiet his brother, he took the spoon and swallowed the caviar and at once his eyes began to redden and tear.

Once again Vitale asked that all go out. He gestured for me to sit down in the corner, where a huge fantastically carved black chair glowered as if waiting to devour me.

”I want to remain here,” said Lodovico. ”You should ask me to remain here, Vitale. If you are accused-.”

”Nonsense,” said the father, and taking the son's hand he led him from the room.

I settled snugly into the huge chair, a veritable monster of exuberant black claws, with red cus.h.i.+ons for the back and for the seat. I removed my gloves, slipping them behind my belt, and I began to tune the lute as softly as I could. And it was a beauty. But other thoughts were playing in my mind.

The patient hadn't been poisoned until the dybbuk had appeared. Surely the poisoner was here, in this house, and I was fairly certain it was the brother, who was taking advantage of the appearance of the ghost. I doubted the poisoner was clever enough to produce a ghost. In fact, I was sure that the poisoner had not produced the ghost. But he was clever enough to begin his evil work because a ghost had appeared.

I began to play one of the very oldest melodies that I knew, a little dance based on a few basic chord variations, and I made the music as gentle as I could.

The thought struck me, as was inevitable, that I was actually playing a fine lute in the very period in which it had become wildly popular. I was in the very age in which it had attained perhaps its greatest music and strength. But there was no time for indulging myself in this, any more than there was time for making for St. Peter's Basilica to see the construction for myself.

I was thinking about the poisoner and how fortunate we were that he had chosen to take his time.

As for the mystery of the dybbuk, it had to wait on the mystery of the poisoner because clearly the poisoner, though patient, did not need very much more time to accomplish what he'd set out to do.

I was strumming slowly when Vitale gently gestured for me to be quiet.

He was holding his patient's hand, listening to his pulse, and now very gracefully he bent down and put his ear to Niccol's chest.

He placed both his hands on Niccol's head and looked into his eyes. I could see Niccol shuddering. The man couldn't control it.

”Vitale,” he whispered, thinking perhaps I couldn't hear him. ”I don't want to die.”

”I won't let you die, my friend,” said Vitale desperately. He laid back the bedclothes now and examined his patient's ankles and feet. True, there was an old discolored patch on the ankle but it was no cause for alarm. The patient could move his limbs well enough but they shuddered. That could mean any number of poisons attacking the nervous system. But which one, and how would I prove who was doing it and how?

I heard a sound in the pa.s.sage. It was the sound of a man crying. I knew by the very sound of it that it was Lodovico.

I got up. ”I'll talk to your brother, if I might,” I said softly to Niccol.

”Console him,” said Niccol. ”Let him know that none of this is his doing. The caviar has helped me. He puts such store by it. Don't let him feel that he's at fault.”

I found him stranded in the antechamber, looking lost and confused.

”May I talk with you?” I asked gently. ”While he's resting, or being examined? May I be of some comfort to you?”

I felt the strong urge to do this, when in fact, in the usual course of things, it was something I wouldn't have done at all.

However, he looked to me at that moment like one of the loneliest beings I'd ever beheld. He seemed to exist in a pure isolation as he wept, staring at the door of his brother's room.

”He is the reason my father has accepted me,” he said under his breath. ”Why do I tell you this? Because I must tell someone. I must tell someone how troubled I am.”

”Come, is there someplace where we might talk in quiet? It is so difficult when those we love are suffering.”

I followed him down the broad stairway of the palazzo and into the large courtyard, and into yet another gated courtyard which was wholly unlike the first, in that it was crowded with tropical blooms.

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

A good deal of light spilled down into the area though the palazzo must have been four stories high, and the area was naturally sheltered due to its smaller size. It was extremely warm.

I could see orange trees and lemon trees, and purple flowers and waxen white blooms. Some of these I knew and some I didn't. But if there were no poisonous plants in this room, then my mother had raised a fool.

In the center of the courtyard, where the shafts of sunlight made a sweet and beautiful light, stood a makes.h.i.+ft cross-legged writing table and two simple chairs beside it. There was a decanter of wine and two goblets.

And the dejected man, moving almost as if in a dream, took the decanter, filled a goblet and drank the contents down.

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