The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (37 page)

Rumor had it that the syphilis had been contracted from a courtesan sent to the doge years ago as a gift from the chief magistrate of Genoa. Teresa said, “I remember her. A buxom slut.” She pulled her eyelid to indicate that the diseased woman must
have been sent either as a dark practical joke or for some political vendetta.

Talk of vendettas reminded me of Giuseppe, who appeared strangely disinterested in the virulent gossip. He was preoccupied with hating me, and since my promotion, his hostility had grown to single-minded obsession. The more proficient I became as a vegetable cook, the more he despised me. I felt his malevolent gaze on me while I chopped onions, while I salted eggplant, while I consulted with Dante over the stewed cabbage. When I hung a pot to boil, Giuseppe was there, poking the fire and muttering. He gave me the evil eye at every opportunity and sometimes walked out of his way to brush by me, scowling and tapping the side of his nose. He was like a pot on the edge of boiling over.

Meanwhile, the doge stopped appearing in public. He’d always been a lusty diner, but now his meals were meager and bland, only clear broth or thin porridge taken in his rooms. I often saw him, hunched and hollow eyed, already looking like a ghost as he haunted the cavernous halls of the palace, an ermine-trimmed robe thrown over his night clothes, sagging on his diminished frame and trailing behind him like elegance forgotten.

One day, a Chinese doctor arrived at the palace and the chef ordered me to prepare an assortment of vegetables, finely chopped and quickly sautéed over a high flame in a bowl-shaped pot. The ingredients and preparation of that dish were foreign to me: sesame oil, limp black mushrooms, squares of firm white curd, pale greens, and crisp transparent sprouts tossed in at the last minute. The chef ladled the mixture over steamed fish and fine rice noodles in a light broth. The doctor supplied his own seasoning, a fermented black liquid, and ate with two ivory sticks instead of cutlery. He scandalized the maids by picking up his bowl to drink the broth.

Every day, the inscrutable doctor treated the doge behind locked doors. The little ocher man, who wore a long coat of brocaded silk and a black braid sprouting out of an otherwise shaved head,
inspired a good deal of talk among the maids. They described gentle chanting in a high-pitched, tonal language and obeisance offered to a smirking idol. What it all meant inspired endless speculation. A constant stream of rumors galloped through the servants’ quarters by night and kept everyone expectant and titillated by day.

No one knew what the Chinese doctor was up to, but everyone wanted to find out. All the servants knew that the palace was honeycombed with secret passageways that led down to the dungeons as well as to spy posts behind the walls of certain rooms. The entries to those tunnels and the spy holes themselves were well concealed, and many, no doubt, long forgotten. I only knew about the one behind the Ugly Duchess, but other servants knew more.

Curious about the treatments administered by the Chinese doctor, Teresa came to the kitchen one day, fluttery and agitated. She stood near the service door and waved with her apron until she caught my eye; then she signaled with an urgent thumb at the door to the back courtyard. When I met her outside, Teresa said, “I can’t stand it another minute. I have to know what that heathen is doing.”

“But, Teresa—”

“There’s a door.”

“A door?”

“In the Hall of Knights. You know the wall niche for that great, frightening suit of armor? Looks like a giant wore it, eh?” She shivered dramatically.

“What about the door, Teresa?”

She smoothed back her crinkled gray hair as her worn face turned smug with secret knowledge. “The door behind the giant armor leads to a spy post behind the doge’s bed. It’s a small hole hidden in the shadows of a mural of fruits and flowers. You know that trick they do with paintings? Like the Ugly Duchess?”

“
Sì
, Teresa.”

“The doge never noticed the hole—it’s very good—and now he’s too far gone.”

“You mean you’re going to—”

“Ooooh, not me! I couldn’t squeeze through.” She patted her full hips. “You, Luciano, you’re small and quick. Next time the heathen goes into his room, I’ll stand watch, and you just slip in and take a peek.” Her smile was full of expectation.

Just slip in and take a peek? Irresistible.

The next day, as soon as the Chinese doctor entered the doge’s bedroom, a chain of maids passed the message along to Teresa. Minutes later, in the Hall of Knights, Teresa patted my cheek, saying, “Go with God.”

I squeezed behind the armor and checked for evidence of a door in the stone block wall. When my fingers detected a slight draft from an unmortared groove, I put my weight against it and pushed with my shoulder. The door gave way with a grating of stone against stone, and a musty rush of cool air skimmed my face. I slipped through the opening and immediately felt relieved at the sight of a heavy iron pull on the inside of the door. Confident that I could get back out, I pulled the door shut.

Blindness!

I was enveloped in darkness so complete I couldn’t see the hand I waved frantically in front of my face. I reached out and touched cold, rough-hewn walls less than an arm’s distance away on both sides.

Trapped! In the dark!

Sweat erupted on my forehead and under my arms; my heart pounded in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I made a frenzied grab for the door’s iron pull and heaved it half-open. I hung in the narrow shaft of light and gulped air. When my heart slowed, I took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from my face. My under-arms felt soggy, and my hands trembled. I thought, Marrone,
all the Chinese doctors in the world couldn’t make me close that door behind me again
. I stared at Teresa’s broad back and imagined myself slinking back to her, shamefaced and mincing, admitting I couldn’t walk
through the tunnel. I vacillated, unable to step out or step back in.
Stupido
.

I thought about asking for a candle, but surely drafts blew through this tunnel like any other, and a flame might sputter out, leaving me stranded. I looked over my shoulder, hoping to see a torch hung on the wall, waiting to be lit. There was no torch, but to my happy surprise, the half-open door provided enough light to make out the walls and floor and even shadows. That light was more reliable than a candle, and the partially open door was a reminder of easy escape. As I peered down the dimly lit tunnel, I felt like a child who had lit a lamp in a dark room and found no monsters lurking. I remembered taking that deep breath in the root cellar, and I decided I could do it again. I took one step, then another, and it was all right. Soon I was walking at a normal pace.

Almost imperceptibly, the light began to diminish, and my breathing quickened. I stopped, closed my eyes, and reminded myself that I could turn around and walk out whenever I wished. There was no danger, only the fear of danger. Here and now I was fine. I steadied my breathing, then opened my eyes and discovered that the total blackness of closed eyes had made the tunnel seem lighter by comparison. I walked on, and when the light dimmed further, I closed my eyes again to help my vision adjust. But the next time I opened them, the shadows were gone: At that point, the dark looked the same whether my eyes were open or closed. I stretched out my arms, and the walls seemed closer than before. There wasn’t enough air. An unreasonable terror rose in my chest. Aloud, I said, “Breathe.” But it was no good. A scream stuck in my throat, and I choked. I whirled around to run for the door.

In my panic, I fell, and my head glanced off the rough wall. When I pulled myself up, I felt blood trickling down my face. I was disoriented. Which way was forward, and which was back? I ran, terrified, unthinking, stumbling and falling, getting up to run again, falling again, panting and weeping. Even though the ground
rose like a ramp under my feet, I wasn’t coherent enough to turn and go the other way. I smelled myself, the musk of animal panic.

I saw a light, and I blinked to squeeze the tears out of my eyes. Yes, a pinpoint of light! I ran for it, and it grew larger. It was a spy hole the size of a grape, the backside of another magnificent
trompe l’oeil
. When I reached it, I leaned my damp forehead just above it, allowing the scant light to fall on my face. I don’t know how long I stood there, panting and trembling, but at some point I heard the doge mumbling. When I put my eye to the hole, the bedroom opened before me, and I saw the draped and gilded ducal bed only steps from where I stood. My breathing slowed as I took in the shocking scene.

The Chinese doctor was bending over the doge, who lay in bed on his back, naked as a plucked chicken. The doctor manipulated one of many long thin needles sticking out of the doge’s legs and chest and private parts. The sight was morbid and bizarre, and my ignorance made it fascinating. I winced as the doctor slid a needle into the doge’s groin, but the doge didn’t recoil from what looked like a painful procedure. He lay on the bed, murmuring incoherently like a man locked in a dream of defeat. The doctor took another needle from a bedside tray and aimed at the doge’s testicles.

I couldn’t watch anymore. I crouched under the spy hole, first trying to understand what I’d seen, then once again becoming aware of the dark tunnel and dreading the long walk back. I remembered what the chef had told me in the root cellar: Fear of the dark was fear of the unknown, an unreasonable fear of misadventure that might somehow materialize out of thin air. Baseless. It wasn’t the tunnel that was frightening me, it was my own imagination, my own creative powers conjuring demons and disasters lying in wait.

I had already walked through the tunnel. I knew nothing lurked there, and I knew that the walls would not move in to crush me. It was merely my own fear rattling imaginary chains. I looked around at the quiet dark and murmured, “It’s just an empty tunnel.” Conquering panic was simply a matter of keeping that thought foremost,
digging deep into myself and finding the ability to keep myself present and resist flights of fancy. I had only to stop my mind from running ahead of my feet. “It’s just an empty tunnel,” I told myself. I needed to keep myself grounded in the moment instead of allowing my mind to leap ahead into a terrifying future alive with ogres and calamities.

I wished the chef were there to ask me what I’d learned. I could tell him I’d learned to be here, not there.

I took a deep breath and said, “It’s just an empty tunnel.” The sound of my own voice reassured me. I stood slowly, then took a deep breath and began walking. “It’s just an empty tunnel.”

I said it over and over again. My voice grew stronger and the repetition provided a rhythm for my feet to follow. The tunnel ceased to exist; there was only the sound of my voice and my feet moving along, step by step. My breath quickened only when I allowed my thoughts to wander away from my catchphrase. I don’t know whether the tunnel was long or short, curved or straight. I walked in a trance, chanting the soothing words, staying present in the dark but harmless moment.

After some unknown length of time, wan light began to define the walls. I felt cheered to think I was nearing the exit. I’d done it! But when I actually saw the slice of light coming from the half-open door ahead, my concentration cracked. I stopped reciting my mantra and ran for the light so mindlessly that I smacked into the door’s edge and bloodied my nose. With sweat-slippery hands, I heaved it fully open. Light and air flooded over me, and I collapsed in a heap against the legs of the giant’s armor.

Teresa gave a little scream and ran over to pull me out of the wall niche. She staunched my bloody nose with her apron, dabbed at my tear-stained face, and clucked at the bruise on my head. When I had recovered enough to speak, I sputtered a disconnected account of what I’d seen. “Needles,” I said. “Long, thin needles in the doge’s body. All over. Even in his private parts.”

Teresa’s eyes widened as she listened. When I mentioned the doge’s private parts, she forgot my injuries and flew up like a bird startled from a nest. “Ooooh,” she said. She pressed her hands to her cheeks and squealed, “Needles down
there
? Ooooh.” She ran from the hall and disappeared through the tall double doors, mad to share her wonderfully indecent new gossip.

No doubt Teresa embellished—she always did—and in the time-honored way of all gossip, the stories grew more salacious with every telling. Within days, all of Venice was recounting the barbaric acts being committed on the doge’s person: needles in his private parts, yes, but also in his eyes and under his nails and pushed deep into his anus. Everyone agreed that this submission to such desperate methods must mean that the end was very near.

It didn’t help that the doge, lying in his bed, incontinent and furious, sensed the futility of his situation and allowed his howls of frustration to echo through the palace. With what little pluck he had left, the doge made one last, death-rattle stab at salvation. He ordered his soldiers to search every literate corner of Venice and the Veneto and bring him all the old books they found—every last one. The soldiers gleefully embraced the opportunity to wreak havoc on the scholarly elite, because who did they think they were anyway? The doge lay in his grand bed, already buried beneath the dusty tomes piling up around him.

The general citizenry considered the doge’s quest to be no more than the death throes of an addled old man, and the thick-necked soldiers confiscating books merely a passing inconvenience, but they wished it would pass more quickly. One day, while shopping for the chef, I saw a rowdy bunch of the doge’s soldiers upset a root merchant’s stall, just because they could. The merchant held his praying hands up to heaven and rocked them over his scattered onions and carrots.
“Dio,”
he prayed aloud, “deliver our doge from his suffering. Soon, eh?”

When the greengrocer came over to help him restack his vegetables, they spoke not about the vandals, but about whom the Council of Ten might elect as the next doge. The root merchant said, “The candidates are ancient and corrupt, as usual.”