19. The Death of Dr. Monardes
Finally the doctor took to his bed, lying sick day after day, week after week — he could no longer do anything on his own. He was suffering terribly. His lungs wheezed like a blacksmith’s bellows; he was often seized with fits of a torturous, seemingly endless, dry cough, as if he would cough up his lungs; it was getting harder and harder for him to breathe; he never had enough air and his eyes bulged like a fish on dry land. His daughters took care of him during the day. At night or when they weren’t around, I stayed with him and helped him with whatever I could. That, however, changed. It is difficult to say whether his daughters’ care was more harmful or helpful. They constantly seemed on the verge of tears, and this created an oppressive mood. Besides, the doctor had been used to living alone for many years. This constant human presence seemed to weigh on him like a millstone around his neck. In my opinion, his daughters’ excessive solicitousness and their unhappy appearance wearied him and even annoyed him a bit. He refrained for some time, but finally told them, choosing his words carefully, that he would like to be left alone most of the time — it was easier for him to rest that way, he said — he preferred to see them getting on with their own lives, taking care of their own families, and so on; that he did not want to become a burden for them, and that for him it was absolutely sufficient to know that I was in the house and that he could call me at any moment. They understood what he was getting at and began coming less frequently. I went in to see him regularly, but unobtrusively and never staying for long.
At first I thought that it would perhaps be good for him to continue taking tobacco vapors, though under a stricter regimen — on an empty stomach, for example, or something like that — to see whether the tobacco couldn’t conquer the inflammation in his body. The doctor, however, categorically refused, arguing that he had already tried that treatment enough and that tobacco made him worse. After that, I came to the conclusion that he had poisoned himself with tobacco. Like every medicine taken in overly large doses, it, too, became poisonous and fatal. I suggested to the doctor that he take a laxative to cleanse his body of tobacco, as was done in every case of poisoning. The doctor, however, was sure that if we were to do such a thing, he would die that very day, and categorically refused. I didn’t know what else we could do for him besides making him cold compresses, giving him herbal tea during the day and mulled wine in the evening before going to sleep, keeping the air in the room fresh, and forcing him, despite his unwillingness, to eat regularly — the usual things associated with a healthy lifestyle, which in his case, however, no longer gave the desired results. Naturally, he was examined by the other doctors of Sevilla, even the royal physician Dr. Bernard came. Dr. Monardes resolutely refused to follow the prescriptions from the other doctors in Sevilla, since he claimed — and not without reason — that they had an interest in his death and had long since wondered how to get rid of his competition and to steal away his clientele. In one or two cases he found the prescriptions from the other doctors from Sevilla quite reasonable and tried them, but in smaller doses than they had prescribed (because he suspected them of perfidious duplicity and of attempting to trick him), but the treatments, perhaps for that reason, had no effect. He responded most favorably to Dr. Bernard’s recommendations and followed them strictly, but they did not produce results either. Dr. Bernard had the pleasant radiance of a plump man with kind manners, a calm smile and gentle eyes, with wrinkles beside his mouth, which hinted that he laughed often and easily, and he managed to inspire hope in Dr. Monardes’ daughters, but as I was seeing him off to his carriage along the garden path, he told me privately, as a colleague, that in his opinion Dr. Monardes’ case was hopeless. “Dr. da Silva,” he said, “in my opinion, Dr. Monardes’ case is hopeless. You shouldn’t cherish illusions, Dr. da Silva. Unless, of course, Nature works some wonder, which is always possible, as you very well know, Dr. da Silva.” A very pleasant man, very learned. I’m not the least bit surprised that he has risen to the rank of royal physician.
Yes, I had also recently begun suspecting what Dr. Bernard said. After all, Dr. Monardes was already an elderly man, and if he had poisoned himself with tobacco — which was and continues to be my conviction — I couldn’t see how a man of his years, his nature weakened from age, could fight off the firm grip of that omnipotent, yet dangerous medicine. We used tobacco to force Nature to mend her ways when she had gone astray, but how could we use the doctor’s already weakened nature against tobacco? We had never tried anything of the sort, we had always done the opposite, such that even if Nature were able to triumph in this clash — which I very highly doubt — we, frankly speaking, hadn’t the faintest idea of how to make that happen.
One very early morning, at dawn, when we were alone in the house, I said to the doctor: “Señor, perhaps we should renounce tobacco. Perhaps it is not a medicine. Perhaps we have made a mistake.”
“By no means,” the doctor wheezed. He had become very weak, he could hardly draw breath. I was holding his hand to give him courage. The doctor, by the way, could only speak with great pain, often with long pauses between the words, although for the sake of convenience I will not transmit this here. Also, I couldn’t always hear what he was saying and had to lean over him, while he repeated the word or not — in the latter case I have taken the liberty of transmitting the general sense of his statements, guessing at what he had in mind. “My life has not passed in vain. That was my life’s work. And you will continue it. You will continue it, Guimarães!” The doctor squeezed my hand weakly.
“Very well, señor,” I replied. “You can count on that. Really and truly.”
“I have left a letter for you,” the doctor said. “In my writing desk, the second drawer from the left. Read it when I die.”
“Don’t talk like that, señor,” I objected. “You will get better and live for many years yet.”
“Yes, yes. .” he replied. “Tobacco is a mighty medicine”—the doctor continued—“you just have to be careful with it, as with every other medicine. To know when, how, and how much. . My memory will live on with it in future.”
“Of course, señor. That’s certain,” I replied. “But don’t think about that now. The future doesn’t matter. Think about the present moment. The future doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s a tiresome habit,” the doctor wheezed.
May I be struck dead, may Maria Immaculata curse me if those weren’t his final words! Yes, those were his final words! The doctor died a bit later and almost instantaneously. He tried to take a breath abruptly, his chest wheezed, and it was all over. Quick and, at least as far as his death was concerned, painless. The doctor was a disciplined man, in everything.
I had been sitting on his bed, so I reached out and closed his eyes. I had seen dead men before, so I wouldn’t say I was too taken aback. But the way they stare — if that’s the right word — has always struck me, and it continued to evoke some alarming discomfort within me. Those open eyes, that unmoving gaze, as if cut off from everything around them, seeming to stare off somewhere in the distance, a somehow glassy, inhuman gaze, it continued to upset me. It seemed to me that when I closed the doctor’s eyes, his expression changed, that his expression softened. This was the person whom I had known, although with a much thinner and yellowed face, a much sadder face. But it was Dr. Monardes. While that other thing was something else.