Page 138 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 2.

One was young

Young Santi del Meglio held the spoon to his shivering father’s pale lips: “Come now,
Father. Open your mouth for me. Time for your nightly medicine.” But old Jacopo del Meglio
had lost his interest in recovering. Let me go, Santi, thought Jacopo, though he hadn’t the
strength to speak out loud anymore.

“Father, please. For me,” said Santi softly. “It’s actually pretty tasty. You remember.
Two or three drops in a cup of honey and warmed wine.”

But his father was having none of it today.

Santi knew his father was dying, and of the same symptoms as had consumed his mother
Isabella and his young wife, Guilia del Meglio. Santi was no fool. His father, his mother, his
wife; what was common to all of their deaths? Who had killed them? Well, he had, of course.

Santi had tried, one by one, to save them. His mother had shown the Symptoms first. A
rattling cough; a chewy spittle, a general withering and diminishing of the entire body, and a
sickly yellow pulling back of the lips, making her look as though she were grinning. Awful.
Santi had consulted the doctor, a certain Dr. Tigulus who had prescribed the syrup of honey,
wine and Astragalus. To Santi, this had seemed unaggressive at the very least, and extortionary
at the most, seeing that Dr. Tigulus had apparently the only supply of Astragalus for miles
around. Fifty denari a bottle! Collusion with the apothecary! His mother, at least, had not
suffered long with her grim grinning illness.

Santi’s wife, Guilia, on the other hand, lingered with the Symptoms for months. All
through the winter and spring she grinned her yellow teeth at Santi, but just as Astragalus was
beginning to shoot young tubers in the early June hillsides of central Italy, that is to say, just
when Santi could have picked the Astragalus himself and made his own syrup, Giulia had died.
They had not been married for even two years, and now she was gone.

Santi blamed himself for his family’s disease, certain they must have caught the
Contagion from him somewhere, somehow. What was it? Not dysentery nor influenza; they had
been ruled out. But what? Where had he contracted it? And how? He’d lain only with his wife
Giulia. He washed the vermin off his body regularly: at least once a week, he consoled himself,
occasionally even with soap. There was that one suspicious-looking leg of mutton he’d bought
at the meat stall several months ago, a grey-looking slab of meat which had had a dubious smell
to it. But his mother had said, “Let’s cook it anyway! And rejoice in all the money you saved
buying this mutton instead of something more fresh. You did save money buying this grey meat,
didn’t you, Santi, my son?” As a matter of fact, he had saved money, yes. And the four of them
had eaten the meat, and all four had felt it run right through them and out the back in foul steamy
messes. But! they had all been fine by the next morning, if a little grey themselves, and by the
following day felt in perfect health, all the four of them. So it couldn’t have been the mutton.

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