“It is good to leave the hall to take some fresh air,” the woman with the strawberry birthmark tells me, lifting me by my shoulders and gently pressing the small of my back when I am upright. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at the glowing light of the doorway at the other end of the vast, dark hall. I cannot imagine how I would walk that far.
“Come,” she says. “That’s it. You have been in bed for a long time,” she says. “You must get your legs under you again.”
I do not imagine that I will be strong enough to bring myself to standing. But if I do not get to the doorway, if I fail to get up at all, then I do not live. That’s what the women in white tell us, and I can only believe that what they say is true. All around us is the evidence.
How long have I been asleep? I feel as though I have awoken from a long, dark dream. Beside me in the bed, the two women lie ashen and still. The old woman’s thick white hair splays out across the mattress, her fragile-looking freckled shoulders protruding over the top of the sheet. Next to her, her daughter lies frozen and staring at the wooden beams above us, a bony arm hanging over the edge of the mattress, covered in black bruises and boils.
The woman in white presses me up to standing. I feel myself totter unsteadily, my ankles weak. My head spins and I feel the sting under my arms again. What if I don’t want to live? What is there to live for? My knees soften and buckle under me.
I feel for the edge of the bed with my hand, but the petite woman is insistent and stronger than she looks. She presses me forward, and I find my footing. I take one more look at the two grey women in my bed. They are no longer moaning, no longer whispering. Have they passed to the World to Come? I begin to shuffle through the dimness toward the light in the arched doorway.
“Your lesions are beginning to show signs of healing,” the woman speaks softly in my ear as we take a few more steps. “The medico says that you may live,” she says, “but only if you do as we say.”
I shuffle down the aisle between the rows of beds. Each one is full, two, three, or four wretched souls to a bed. In the delirium of the past days, I have not grasped the great numbers of beds and sick people around me. I am one of so many. I am insignificant.
What kind of God do we have to bring such suffering upon us? What have we done to unleash this horror on Our Most Excellent Republic? Who would know if I perished here? And who would care?
Two large men bearing a stack of folded linens pass us in the aisle. Monatti. Corpse bearers.
Once a day, they pluck the dead from their beds, wrapping the bodies in linen. Each man grasps one end of the sheets, and they carry them out of the infirmary hall in a long, limp package. The nun acknowledges the men with a nod, then presses me more insistently toward the door. I turn my head, and I watch the monatti stop at the foot of my bed. They begin to unfurl the sheets. One of the men reaches for the dangling arm of the younger woman and tucks it in by her side.
Sooner than I imagine, we are passing through the door. I squint against the brightness, my eyes aching with the light. The nun leads me to a wooden chair tottering on a brick floor.
“There,” she says, lowering me onto the chair. “I will return for you.”
Once my eyes adjust to the daylight, I see a broad, covered portico overlooking a large, open field with a wellhead in the center. I had not realized that the hall lay on the upper floor, and from this vantage point I can see the great iron gates in the wall of the lazzaretto, and the docks beyond. I press my forearms on the parapet before me, and rest my chin on my hands.
Fresh air, the nun has said, but there is none here. The Lazzaretto Vecchio—even the outside of it—smells only of smoke and death. The high walls marking the edges of the island have been blackened with fire and the ground is covered in fine, grey ash. Small flakes of ash rise into the smoky air.
I hear loud rattling below me, and I lean over the parapet to see a wooden cart stacked high with bodies wrapped in white linens. I recognize the two men who I have passed in the hall. They strain against the weight of the cart, rolling its great metal wheels across the cobbles. Finally, the monatti and their grisly cargo move out of view. In my mind, I imagine them dumping the bodies in the great trenches along the waterside.
Suddenly, images of my father and my cousin appear in my head, and I realize that my mind sees with greater clarity than it has had since I fell ill days, perhaps weeks, ago. The reality that my father and Paolo must have occupied this same place twists in my gut. I press my eyes against my hands and wish for the cloud of delirium to overtake me again. Where did that woman with the strawberry birthmark go? All I want to do is return to my bed so that I can close my eyes and drift away for good. Surely it is simple.
The next noise I hear is the loud clang of a brass bell at the pesthouse gates and the call of the ferryman. The boats are coming to dock. From my bed, I have heard the shuffling of feet, the crying, the calls of the workers as they unload the sick onto this God-forsaken strip of land in the sea. Do any of these poor souls return to their homes from this hellish exile?
I lean over the parapet and, as if in direct answer to my question, I see some several dozen men and women filing into the courtyard below. It looks as though Hell has emptied its bowels onto the cobblestones. The skeletal figures, white and gaunt, spill into the square, pressing their way toward the gates and the docks beyond. They are a picture of the apocalypse—ragged, ashen beings, little more than walking death. But they push ahead with the force of a mob on the verge of bursting into chaos.
They are leaving this place, I realize, making their way to the next level of hell, the Purgatory that must be the Lazzaretto Nuovo. The Lazzaretto Nuovo occupies another island they call Vigna Murata on the other side of the lagoon. I wonder if the island where those who have shown signs of healing go can really be much better than this place, can be worth the pushing crowds. Whatever the truth, the pressing crowd of wretched patients makes a desperate push toward the next stop on their journey home.
And then, I see him.
From my vantage point, only the top of his head is visible in the swirling, ragged crowd. I recognize the tight curl of his hair, the broad forehead, the even features, the spread of his shoulders. He files into the bustle of ferry passengers, then reaches up to run his hand over the top of his head. I see his broad fingers and forearm then, his honey-colored skin sagging but still gnarled from a lifetime of beating gold into thin sheets. Now, there is nothing but absolute certainty in my pounding heart.
Cristiano.
My battiloro.