hell. A young man turns bitter in prison. A personality is forged. You change when you live in rancid darkness, forced to inhale the stench of your own body mixed with the stink of the years. When your only companions are monstrous rats and insects. When all you hear is silence.
Every hour was the enemy. Every minute pushed against my sanity. I believe I spent most of my jailed hours hallucinating. Now, I do not remember enough about them to recount how I passed them all. I know I slept because my nightmares clung to my mind through my waking hours.
When I was lucid, I tried to live in my memory. Starting from my earliest days, I worked at recounting everything in an attempt to keep my mind active. For the very first time I remembered moments that I did not know I had access to. I saw my mother—even though up to my days in jail I had never been able to recall her face. How much she looked like one of the women in the frescoes in the chapel at Santa Maria. A pale, thin woman so clearly heaven bound. How long had she been sick? Of that I’m not sure, but in my cell I was able to pull up the distant memory of her speaking to me as she walked me to the monastery on the day she left me there. It was a moment that had never surfaced before but floated to me out of the empty darkness of the prison. And in the dark I wept for her. My young mother whose name I do not know to this day.
I could recall the scene of her standing before the monks and telling them that she had been married to a dead soldier whose name was René Bianco. And that was the reason the monks took me. My father was the cousin of one of the monks. I was related to a Dominican brother. Yes, there in the dungeon I worked out all the fragments of memory. My father’s cousin was the one who took me in. He was the calligrapher who worked in the library. I had always known that I first was taught by Brother Silvius, but I’d never before remembered the connection. I was with Silvius for my first few years, but he was frustrated by my inability to master the finer points of penmanship. As good as I was, he said, I would never be good enough. So when I was seven, Serapino, who had watched me work in the garden, took me. He sensed that I had an affinity for being an herbalist.
Some days, though, were filled with insanity. I couldn’t remember where I was. A prison? An infirmary? Beneath the river? In a cave in the mountains? A lion who stalked my cell spoke in a language I could not understand. A mule appeared and offered escape, except when I tried to pull myself onto him, I found I could not move my legs or my arms. A large bird of prey often circled me, staring with beady eyes, waiting, I was sure, for me to be still long enough for him to take a bite out of my flesh.
The worst of it was that I could find no escape. In my saner moments, I often took out the packet of poison pills from Serapino’s laboratory and sewn into my shirt along with the vellum pages. I would examine it. Contemplate what to do. Swallow them now before I heard my sentence? Or wait? Was there any chance of reprieve? Or would the next stage of my journey be even worse than this one?
I was not a seer. Like many of the monks in the convent I was suspicious of men who looked into mirrors or bowls of water and claimed to foresee the future. Indeed they were heretics who went against God. But then so was Serapino, who believed that he could bring back the dead. I had no premonition about my future. No hint of what was to befall me.
I wanted to take the bitter almond pills and end this hell. All reality was steeped in fantasy, and fantasy was nothing but one horror after another.
What kept me from killing myself was a smell.
I had the pills in my hand, ready to end the torture of the hours that did not pass and the fear that did not abate. I had seen Serapino die not two weeks before, and the peace that he found at the very end beckoned. I did not believe I would ever have the chance to work
Every hour was the enemy. Every minute pushed against my sanity. I believe I spent most of my jailed hours hallucinating. Now, I do not remember enough about them to recount how I passed them all. I know I slept because my nightmares clung to my mind through my waking hours.
When I was lucid, I tried to live in my memory. Starting from my earliest days, I worked at recounting everything in an attempt to keep my mind active. For the very first time I remembered moments that I did not know I had access to. I saw my mother—even though up to my days in jail I had never been able to recall her face. How much she looked like one of the women in the frescoes in the chapel at Santa Maria. A pale, thin woman so clearly heaven bound. How long had she been sick? Of that I’m not sure, but in my cell I was able to pull up the distant memory of her speaking to me as she walked me to the monastery on the day she left me there. It was a moment that had never surfaced before but floated to me out of the empty darkness of the prison. And in the dark I wept for her. My young mother whose name I do not know to this day.
I could recall the scene of her standing before the monks and telling them that she had been married to a dead soldier whose name was René Bianco. And that was the reason the monks took me. My father was the cousin of one of the monks. I was related to a Dominican brother. Yes, there in the dungeon I worked out all the fragments of memory. My father’s cousin was the one who took me in. He was the calligrapher who worked in the library. I had always known that I first was taught by Brother Silvius, but I’d never before remembered the connection. I was with Silvius for my first few years, but he was frustrated by my inability to master the finer points of penmanship. As good as I was, he said, I would never be good enough. So when I was seven, Serapino, who had watched me work in the garden, took me. He sensed that I had an affinity for being an herbalist.
Some days, though, were filled with insanity. I couldn’t remember where I was. A prison? An infirmary? Beneath the river? In a cave in the mountains? A lion who stalked my cell spoke in a language I could not understand. A mule appeared and offered escape, except when I tried to pull myself onto him, I found I could not move my legs or my arms. A large bird of prey often circled me, staring with beady eyes, waiting, I was sure, for me to be still long enough for him to take a bite out of my flesh.
The worst of it was that I could find no escape. In my saner moments, I often took out the packet of poison pills from Serapino’s laboratory and sewn into my shirt along with the vellum pages. I would examine it. Contemplate what to do. Swallow them now before I heard my sentence? Or wait? Was there any chance of reprieve? Or would the next stage of my journey be even worse than this one?
I was not a seer. Like many of the monks in the convent I was suspicious of men who looked into mirrors or bowls of water and claimed to foresee the future. Indeed they were heretics who went against God. But then so was Serapino, who believed that he could bring back the dead. I had no premonition about my future. No hint of what was to befall me.
I wanted to take the bitter almond pills and end this hell. All reality was steeped in fantasy, and fantasy was nothing but one horror after another.
What kept me from killing myself was a smell.
I had the pills in my hand, ready to end the torture of the hours that did not pass and the fear that did not abate. I had seen Serapino die not two weeks before, and the peace that he found at the very end beckoned. I did not believe I would ever have the chance to work
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