The Gargoyle (18 page)

She paused and seemed to be waiting for me to say something, anything—but how does one respond to proclamations such as these? Because she wanted a prompt and I wanted her to continue talking, I said it sounded like an extremely creative process.

“No, it’s the opposite. I’m a vessel that water is poured into and splashes out of. It’s a circle, a flowing circle between God and the gargoyles and me, because that is what God is—a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. And the entire time I’m carving, the gargoyle’s voice becomes louder and louder. I work as fast as I can because I want the voice to stop, but it keeps urging me on, demanding that I help it achieve its freedom. The voice goes silent only when I’m finished, and then I’m so exhausted that it’s my turn to sleep. So that’s why I disappear for five or six days at a time. It takes that long to free a gargoyle and then recover myself. I have no say in when a gargoyle will be ready, and I cannot refuse. So forgive my disappearances, because I have no choice.”

Okay, fine. At least now I knew what she was doing with the multiple hearts she thought were in her chest. They were going into the statues she carved.

I had been certain that Marianne Engel was schizophrenic, but given her description of her work habits I now had to consider that she might be manic-depressive instead. Evidence was mounting in that direction: when I first met her, she was fatigued and darkly attired; now she was bright in both dress and personality. Schizophrenics tend to eschew talking, sometimes remaining completely silent for hours on end, but Marianne Engel was just the opposite. And there was the nature of her work. Many manic-depressives achieve fame in the arts because the condition itself provides the fervor necessary to create something monumental. Which, of course, was exactly what Marianne Engel did: create monuments. If her account of her carving habits was not a description of a manic at work, I can’t imagine what is.

But there was also so much evidence for schizophrenia. She described the voices that came out of the stone, giving her instructions. She saw herself as a channel of the Divine, and her work as a circle of communication between God, the gargoyles, and herself. This is not to mention her Engelthal “past” and her belief that
Inferno
was appropriate reading material for the burn ward. In short, there was very little in her life that was not touched in some way by Christianity, and, as previously noted, schizophrenics are often preoccupied with religion.

Statistics could argue for either condition. Schizophrenia tends to affect men more often than women, but more than eighty percent of schizophrenics smoke heavily, and Marianne Engel was constantly popping out of the burn ward for a nicotine hit. And while speaking to me, she always had that unnerving stare, which kept her eyes locked upon mine: this only started to make sense after I read in one of Gregor’s books that schizophrenics rarely blink.

Refusal to take one’s medication is common to both conditions, but for different reasons. A manic-depressive is likely to refuse her meds because in her high she becomes convinced that a low is no longer possible, or she is so addicted to the high that the low becomes simply the price that must be paid. Schizophrenics, on the other hand, tend to refuse medication because they believe they’re being poisoned—a claim that Marianne Engel had made on more than one occasion.

Many doctors are now convinced that the two conditions co-exist far more often than commonly diagnosed, so maybe both diagnoses applied.

In the hours I spent leafing through mental health texts in an effort to understand her better, I came to understand myself better as well—and I was not altogether pleased with what I learned.

I was constantly measuring her pain against my own, telling myself that she couldn’t possibly understand my physical anguish while I
did
understand the nature of mental pain. And while many mental illnesses are treatable with the correct medication, there was no pill that would allow me to pass for normal. A medicated wack job could blend into the crowd but I would always stand out like a burnt thumb from the fist of humanity: this made me feel like the winner in a competition that didn’t really exist.

Marianne Engel arrived the next day in a simple white dress with open-toed sandals, and she might have passed for a woman from a seaside village on the Mediterranean. She appeared with two food hampers, one blue and one white, and I could tell they were heavy from the way she lugged them into the room. Bent over as she was, the arrowhead on her necklace bobbed in and out of the V-neck of her dress like a lure on a fishing line. “I’m finally going to live up to my promise to feed you.”

I’ll take a moment to explain why Dr. Edwards would allow a visitor to bring food into the burn ward. In addition to the psychological benefits of a picnic (as it were), there was also a physical one. With my healing came a condition known as hypermetabolism: a body that normally requires two thousand calories a day can consume seven thousand after a severe burn. Despite the nasogastric tube that constantly delivered nourishment directly into my stomach, I was still not getting enough and I was allowed, even encouraged, to eat extra food.

Marianne Engel had previously brought me snacks, but it was obvious that this meal was far more substantial. She opened the hampers—one for hot items and the other, packed with ice, for cool—and started to lay out the food. There was a freshly baked round of focaccia, still smelling of wood smoke, and bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. She danced a swirl of black across the surface of the yellow, and then dipped a chunk of the focaccia into the leoparded liquid. She said the familiar prayer before she lifted the bread to my mouth:
“Jube, Domine benedicere.”

She’d also brought cheeses: Camembert, Gouda, blue, Iranian goat. She asked my favorite and when I picked the goat, she smiled broadly. Next, some steaming wraps that looked like crepes but had a most bawdy smell. Gorgonzola pancakes were not for everyone, she explained, but she hoped I liked them. I did. There were cantaloupe balls wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto, the fruity orange peeking through the meaty pink.

She continued to excavate the hampers. Bastardly plump green olives, fat with red pimiento stuffing, lounged contentedly in a yellow bowl. A plateful of tomatoes soaked in black vinegar with snowy nuggets of bocconcini. Sheaves of pita and cups brimming with hummus and tzatziki. Oysters, crabs, and scallops drowning a wonderful death in a marinara ocean; little wedges of lemon balanced on the plate’s edge like life preservers waiting to be thrown in. Pork sausages with peppercorn rims. Dolmathes, trying hard to be swarthy and macho in their little green suits, scented with sweet red wine. Thick rings of calamari. Souvlaki shared skewers with sweet buttered onions and braised peppers. There was a shoulder of lamb so well cooked it fell apart if you only looked at it while thinking about a fork, surrounded by a happy little family of roast potatoes.

I sat trapped under the culinary avalanche, unable to move for fear of tipping a plate over. “There’s no way we can eat all this.”

“Finishing isn’t the point.” She pulled a bottle out of the chilled hamper. “Besides, I’m sure the nurses will be happy to help with the leftovers. You won’t tell them I was drinking alcohol, will you? I like retsina because you can taste the earth in it.”

The nurses soon hovered around the door like a flock of hungry seagulls. I felt a strange manly pride, the one we get when being seen on a date with a beautiful woman. The nurses giggled and made a few comments before dispersing to their rounds. Marianne Engel lifted morsel after morsel to my lips. “Try this…. You’re going to love it…. Have more.”

We made a determined effort, but it was predestined that we’d never be able to finish the meal. When we gave up, she brought out a slim metal thermos and poured Greek coffee into two demitasses. It was so chuggingly thick that it took a good thirty seconds to pour out. Then she brought out the dessert: baklava so honey-dense that it oozed like a charitable beehive. Tricolor gelato, green white red. And of course bougatsa, her dog’s namesake—light brown pastry with custard between layers of phyllo.

“Would you like to hear a story?” Marianne Engel asked. “It’s got true love, brotherly devotion, and arrows that find the mark.”

“Is it about you again?”

“No, it’s about my good friend Francesco Corsellini.”

I
f there was one thing that Graziana knew for certain, it was that her beloved Francesco was a good man. He was a blacksmith in their hometown of Firenze and he toiled at his craft, always trying to forge a better horseshoe or a stronger sword. Sometimes he lost track of the hours and stopped only when Graziana appeared in the door of his shop to suggest that he pay a little less attention to his fire and more attention to his wife. She joked that he must have done something very bad in his past life to be preparing so diligently for Hell. He would laugh, promising to come right away, and Graziana would laugh, too. She knew that Hell was the last place her husband would end up.

Francesco would never be known as “the finest sword maker in all of Italy” or “the great metal worker of Firenze,” but this didn’t matter to him. He wanted to be a good tradesman, a dependable blacksmith with honest prices, but his real desire was to be a great husband. He crafted beautiful gifts for Graziana in his metal shop—candleholders, cutlery, and the most wondrous jewelry. He always claimed that his greatest achievements as a metal worker were the wedding rings that he had forged for himself and Graziana. In one room of their home, there was a collection of metal toys for the baby they were attempting to conceive. He dreamed of the day that he would be the loving father to her children.

He was no great beauty, this Francesco Corsellini, but then again neither was his wife. He was a little too hairy for some women, and his steely arms extended from a body built on too much pasta and beer. Graziana would call him L’Orsacchiotto—The Bear—and poke his stomach, and Francesco would respond, “I have earned this. It is relaxed muscle!”

Graziana had thick hair and dark eyes but the rest of her was undistinguished. Still, when Francesco told her she was the most beautiful woman in all of Italy, he believed it. They had been childhood sweethearts and there was rarely a day that he did not thank God for having her as his wife.

They were happy. She was kind. He was devoted. Need more be said?

Unfortunately, yes.

The year was 1347 and a new disease had just arrived from China, the most horrible disease that anyone had ever seen. It swept outward from the ports, into the cities and the Italian countryside, killing people as a forest fire destroys trees. In towns, church bells rang incessantly because it was believed the sound would drive out the illness. Many people thought that the smell of the dead carried the disease, so they walked about with scented handkerchiefs over their faces. Incense burned everywhere, mingling with the stench of death….

And one day, Graziana felt a fever in the afternoon. She retired to her bedroom for a nap. When she woke up that evening, she discovered a boil the size of an egg in her groin, and swelling under her armpits. She knew that the Black Death was upon her.

In the kitchen, Francesco was preparing food. She yelled at him to leave, immediately, because she had the illness.
“Gavoccioli!”
she yelled. Buboes. She demanded that he save himself, because everyone knew that there was no cure, no hope. She implored, “Leave! Leave now!”

There was a stillness in the kitchen. Graziana lay in her bed, listening to the silence that covered the distance between her and her husband. Then she heard him begin to clank the pots and pans to cover the sound of his crying. This continued for some minutes; then Francesco’s footsteps came down the hall towards her. She yelled and cursed and insisted that he stay away, but he appeared in the doorway with a tray of pasta and some wine.

“You will feel better if you eat, even just a little,” Francesco said. He entered the room, put the tray down, and sat beside her. And then he moved to kiss her.