Not only that: fearing that the infant, when he grew, might show too much of a resemblance to a neighbour or some other person above suspicion, Cloridia, even before the confinement, and immediately afterwards, would with tireless loquacity instruct the new father and the wary relatives, explaining that a woman's imagination could render her newborn child similar to a thing seen or imagined during coitus. She was always delighted, upon her return after a confinement, to tell me how, when and before what audience she had prepared her favourite story. In all those years, she had repeated it to me perhaps a thousand times, at every confinement spicing it with new or invented details, each time attributing to herself new ideas and discoveries. She loved that I admired her and took pride in her deeds, and the way in which I laughed when she wanted me to laugh and pretended to be surprised when she expected that. My desire was to see her gay and satisfied, and I played along for her.
Nevertheless, that afternoon, I simply could not do it. I had so much, indeed, too much, to tell her and I desperately needed her advice.
"I told the factor: 'Do you perhaps not know the story told by Heliodorus which shows how the imagination can produce creatures similar to the thing imagined? It is known the world over! Listen here,' I told him: 'Heliodorus tells, in the book of his Aethiop histories, how a beautiful white-skinned girl was born of a black mother and father, namely Idaspe, King of Aethiopia, and his Queen Persina. And this was a consequence only of the thought, or rather, the imagination of the mother, with whom the King conjoined in a chamber in which were depicted many actions of white men and women, and in particular the amours of Andromeda and Perseus; the Queen took such delight in the sight of Andromeda in the act of venery…"'
Obviously, I knew the rest of the tale inside out, and while, docilely but distractedly, I accepted Cloridia's sweet pressures on my body, I repeated mentally after her: the Queen took such delight in the sight of Andromeda in the act of venery that she became pregnant with a maiden similar to her; this explanation was given by the Gymnosophists who were the most learned men in that land. And Aristotle confirms…
I could console myself, I thought as I impatiently awaited the end of the tale: if the great Hippocrates, and Pliny and Avicenna too, had had the impudence to perjure themselves before a judge, coolly inventing such tali stories in order to save the lives of a mother and her child, my spouse was in good company.
"Alciatus, and before him Quintilian," continued Cloridia while she disarranged my clothing and gave ampler freedom to her appetites, "freed another woman from the same accusation who had given birth to a black daughter, her husband being white, because there was in her chamber the painted figure of an Aethiopian."
"And then? Did you tell him the tale of Jacob's sheep?" I asked her in order to please her, as I was beginning to fear the outcome of her manoeuvres.
"Obviously," she replied, without allowing herself to be distracted from her intentions.
"And your theory that even mere food could influence the appearance of the newborn child?" I asked, caressing the palms of her hands with my lips, so as to keep her under control and to distract her from the inspection which she was obstinately intent upon carrying out.
"Mmm, no," she replied with a hint of embarrassment. "Do you remember, when I attended the confinement of the wife of that Swiss coffee-house owner? Well, when I tried to assuage the suspicions of the husband, explaining to him that in animals one finds more resemblance than in men, because they eat always the same food, while men eat different foods, he replied with an ugly expression that in his part of the world Alpine men and women ate nothing but chestnuts and watered-down goat's milk, despite which they were born with the same differences as ourselves."
"And what did you say to that?"
"I still managed, using the story of feminine imagination. I swore that it was universally known to be true, indeed most certain, that a strong imagination and the fixed thought of a woman could mark the body of her child with the semblance and image of the thing desired. Do we not see every day infants who are born marked with pig's skin, or wine, or grapes, or other similar stains? A strong imagination can then mark in a woman's womb a body already fully formed, so much as to imprint the most varied forms on its skin, for these represent the woman's thoughts. So in the end I told him: 'You who exploit your poor wife night and day serving coffee at table now have your just deserts: the poor thing, by dint of spending so much time looking at coffee, has produced for you a son of the same colour!'"
Alack and alas. As we can read in the works of Cesare Baronio, the great Tertullian, a man of great fame, let himself be persuaded by a vile woman of no account that the souls of the just were coloured. Then just imagine my sharp-witted and erudite Cloridia allowing herself to be caught out by some cuckold coffee-house proprietor and, what's worse, with the thick skull of a Switzer. With this mute consideration, I accepted with resignation the account of my lady's prowess, while she in the meanwhile had resumed her effusions.
"Is a man's imagination worth nothing?" I asked, feigning astonishment and surprise in order to free myself a little of her over-active embrace.
"Here, there arises a considerable doubt. According to Aristotle, yes. According to Empedocles and Hippocrates, whose view I praise, a man's imagination will succumb to a woman's, which is most vehement," said she, while she acted most vehemently. "Save in a single case. That of the wise father with a foolish son. Why should a foolish son sometimes be born of a wise father? It is not possible that the mother should desire this. And yet, yes, that is the case. Most studious husbands are of ever-melancholy humour, and melancholy is sister in the flesh to madness: both especially hated by women when it comes to lovemaking. It may then be that during the carnal act their imagination may run to desiring a happy fool rather than a melancholy sage. Quite apart from the fact that distracted husbands do not pay sufficient attention to that task…"
I winced for shame. Cloridia was right. I had not responded to her ardour and had remained melancholy and absent. Not even when she had put all her womanly arts into play, from the most subtle to the most manifest, had she succeeded in calling my anxious member to his sweet and sacrosanct conjugal duties. And to think that only a little earlier I had so longed for her! The Devil take those damned thoughts of the Abbot, the bookbinder and the thieves and all those things which had so horribly cast me down into that pit of anguish.
"Would you then prefer a silly but happy consort, dear wife?" I asked her.
"Well, a happy and foolish man is always a good thing for the quality of the offspring, for he greatly pleases the woman in their encounter and will make her desire wisdom to be united to so much gaiety, so that, through the power of the imagination, she will succeed in generating a son who is both joyful and wise in spirit."
I smiled, embarrassed. She sat up and laced her bodice.
"Come, what's so perturbing you?"
Thus, I was at last able to tell her: of Atto's arrival, the theft of my memoir, the task of serving as the Abbot's biographer during this time and, at last, of my suspicions and lacerating doubts, without forgetting Atto's wounding, the strange death of the bookbinder, as well as the double raid on our home and against Buvat. But above all I told her of the mysterious Maria, who had then turned out to be Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna, with whom Atto was secretly in correspondence, and of the disquieting visit to the Vessel. Lastly, the news of how the incursion had turned our nest upside down caused her a shudder.