The Fall Read online

  34

  The Scuola Grande di San Marco has two floors.

  Apart from the porter’s lodge to the right, the atrium, on the ground floor, is now deserted.

  Anna and I passed through it on our way to the maternity ward.

  35

  The Sala dell’Albergo on the first floor had paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Paris Bordon and Jacopo Palma il Vecchio.

  They were stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte.

  The chapter house, next to the Sala dell’Albergo, was adorned with four paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto.

  They too were stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte.

  36

  Nowadays, the first floor of the Scuola Grande di San Marco is occupied by the library of Venice Hospital.

  The library contains many rare examples of medical literature from the sixteenth century.

  The only one of those books that matters to me is Tommaso Rangone’s How Man Can Live for More than 120 Years.

  37

  Tommaso Rangone was the presiding figure at the Scuola Grande di San Marco — its guardian grande.

  In 1550, he published the medical manual How Man Can Live for More than 120 Years.

  According to him, in order to reach that age one had to give up a series of foods that were harmful to one’s health: lettuce, endive, cabbage, arugula, artichokes, carrots, grapes, figs, melons, eels, milk and cheese. Garlic was injurious to the kidneys and to the ears. Marjoram encouraged fleas. Sturgeon killed babies in the womb.

  Tito’s sturgeon was the Scuola Grande di San Marco.

  38

  Before being appointed guardian grande of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, Tommaso Rangone was personal astrologer to the commander of the papal guard in Modena.

  In 1522, he predicted that in two years’ time, in 1524, another Great Flood would occur, because the planets would be lined up under the sign of Pisces, as in the days of Noah. His prediction proved false. Satirical sonnets lampooning him were posted on the city walls. Pietro Aretino called him an “idiot.”

  Tommaso Rangone changed his identity — he was baptized Tommaso Giannotti — and moved to Venice, where he passed himself off as a doctor, promising to help his patients to live until they were one hundred and twenty.

  39

  Four and a half centuries before the mistakes made during Tito’s birth, therefore, Tommaso Rangone had already linked the name of the Scuola Grande di San Marco with the very worst of medical frauds.

  40

  How Man Can Live for More than 120 Years was dedicated to Pope Julius III. In his dedication, Tommaso Rangone predicted that the Pope would live a long life. This prediction, as Giacomo Leopardi noted ironically, proved false. Julius III died five years later, at the age of sixty-seven.

  41

  Giacomo Leopardi alluded to Tommaso Rangone in one of his Operette morali (Small Moral Works), entitled “Dialogue Between a Natural Philosopher and a Metaphysician.”

  PHYSICIAN: Eureka! Eureka!

  METAPHYSICIAN: What’s happened? What is this discovery you’ve made?

  PHYSICIAN: The art of living for a long time …

  I will live for all eternity; I will enjoy immortal glory.

  42

  By promising to help his patients live until they were one hundred and twenty, Tommaso Rangone amassed a great fortune. He used that great fortune to try to gain eternal life and immortal glory, just like the character in Giacomo Leopardi’s dialogue.

  Tommaso Rangone discovered — “Eureka! Eureka!” — that the best way of gaining eternal life and immortal glory was to have artists reproduce his image in eternal, immortal works.

  He paid for Jacopo Sansovino to adorn the door of the church of San Giuliano or San Zulian with his statue. He paid for Alessandro Vittoria to sculpt his bust for the church of San Geminiano. He paid for Jacopo Tintoretto to feature him in the four paintings commissioned to decorate the chapter house of the Scuola Grande di San Marco.

  43

  In the first painting, The Miracle of St. Mark Freeing the Slave, from 1548, Tintoretto portrayed Tommaso Rangone as a mere witness to the miraculous event, and showed him standing modestly on the left-hand side of the canvas.

  In the other paintings, however, commissioned fourteen years later, for eighty ducats each, Jacopo Tintoretto broke all the rules of the age and portrayed Tommaso Rangone as an actual participant in the miracles of St. Mark.

  In St. Mark Saving a Saracen from Shipwreck, Tommaso Rangone — like a hero from Xbox — goes back in time and is seen on board a boat, vigorously rowing, as he helps the Evangelist save the shipwreck victim from the stormy sea.

  In The Rediscovery of the Body of St. Mark, Tommaso Rangone goes back in time and is shown kneeling in the cathedral, looking directly up at the saint’s soul.

  In The Stealing of St. Mark’s Body, Tommaso Rangone goes back in time to Alexandria, and takes charge of the theft of the martyr’s body during a celestial storm.

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  (Picture Credit 1.4)

  45

  In the previous image: The Stealing of St. Mark’s Body.

  The painting is by Jacopo Tintoretto. It dates from 1562.

  The arrow indicates the portrait of Tommaso Rangone.

  46

  In the paintings made by Jacopo Tintoretto for the Scuola Grande di San Marco, Tommaso Rangone was depicted as an aide to the miracle-working saint. This conferred on him the aura of an equally miracle-working doctor.

  With his unique talent — and at a cost of eighty ducats per painting — Jacopo Tintoretto eternalized and immortalized medical charlatanism, personified by Tommaso Rangone and made matter in Tito’s birth, which took place in the same building four hundred and fifty years later.

  An example of Pride of Art?

  47

  In The Stealing of St. Mark’s Body, a bearded man stands in the shadows to the right of the picture, next to the camel, watching the scene intently.

  It is Jacopo Tintoretto himself.

  He depicted himself as a spectator of the theft of the Evangelist’s body in exactly the same way in which Alfred Hitchcock appears in Vertigo, walking past a shipyard.

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  Vertigo.

  When Tito walks, his muscles contract. When his muscles contract, he gets frightened. When he gets frightened, his muscles contract even more.

  In Brazil, the title of Vertigo was translated as Um Corpo que Cai, “A Body Falling.” Tito is a body falling.

  Each step taken by Tito is the same as a step taken by James Stewart up the bell tower of San Juan Bautista. All right, there’s no Alfred Hitchcock. There’s no Kim Novak either. There’s no Bernard Herrmann soundtrack. But everything else — as I said — is the same. The wide eyes. The open mouth. The dry tongue. The stiff legs. The sweat running down his back. The zoom in. The zoom out.

  In the final scenes of Vertigo, James Stewart finally overcomes his fear of heights and climbs the bell tower of San Juan Bautista.

  He says: “I made it.”

  Tito, step by step, is making it too.

  49

  At the end of Vertigo, Kim Novak falls from the bell tower of San Juan Bautista. She falls and dies. James Stewart survives. Tito is James Stewart. He falls and survives.

  To hell with Kim Novak.

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  (Picture Credit 1.5)

  51

  In the previous image, Tito as James Stewart in Vertigo: wobbly, wild-eyed, surrounded by kaleidoscopic spirals, and with a green face.

  52

  Tito was green when he was born.

  I saw him for the first time in one of the cloisters of Venice Hospital. I had just been talking to the pediatrician who had overseen his birth. He said that Tito had been deprived of oxygen for too long. He also said that Tito would die.

  On my way back to the maternity ward, after talking to the pediatrician, I walked past a newborn baby in an incubator. The newborn baby in the incubator had been left in the cloister, parked in a corner. No one wa
s looking after him. Where’s the doctor? Where’s the nurse? Where’s the father?

  I glanced at him. I looked again. He wasn’t moving, his body was limp and he had a tube up his nose. I read the name written on the label stuck to the lid of the incubator: “Mingardi.”

  Mingardi was me. I was Mingardi. The newborn baby in the incubator was my son. Mingardi was Mainardi. Venice Hospital even got his name wrong.

  I looked at Tito one more time. His face was like mine — except that his was green.

  53

  Up until that moment, I had always thought that if my son were to fall into a vegetative state, I would prefer him to die.

  After that first contact with Tito in the corridor of the cloister of Venice Hospital, everything changed. All I wanted was for him to survive, because I would always love him and help him in whatever way I could.

  Caught between life and death, I clung to life.

  54

  Lying in the incubator, parked in a cloister in Venice Hospital, Tito, with his green face, was waiting for a boat to take him to the nearest neonatal intensive-care unit, in Padua Hospital.

  55

  In Padua Hospital, in 1739, George Macaulay graduated as an obstetrician. Some time later, he moved to London and, in 1756, in Brownlow Street Hospital, he became a pioneer in a surgical procedure known as an amniotomy.

  A disastrous amniotomy two and a half centuries later sent Tito straight to the intensive-care unit in Padua Hospital.

  What came out of Padua Hospital returned to Padua Hospital.

  That’s what Tito’s story is like: circular.

  56

  The obstetric procedure introduced by George Macaulay consisted of artificially rupturing the amniotic sac in the uterus of the woman giving birth, in order to accelerate labor.

  After debating the ethical consequences of the procedure with his colleagues, George Macaulay performed his first amniotomy — on the wife of a haberdasher — using a silver wire.

  57

  On 30 September 2000, Anna and I crossed the atrium of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, turned to the right, walked through a cloister, went up some stairs and reached the maternity ward of Venice Hospital.

  An obstetrician — Dottoressa F — then performed an amniotomy, accelerating Tito’s birth.

  Apparently without the slightest concern for the ethical consequences of the procedure, she ruptured the amniotic sac in Anna’s uterus using an instrument known as an amnihook.

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  In the previous image: an amnihook.

  I blame Tito’s cerebral palsy on Pietro Lombardo, John Ruskin, Napoleon Bonaparte and on an amnihook.

  60

  Why did Dottoressa F accelerate Tito’s birth?

  It was never explained to me.

  61

  The mistakes made by Dottoressa F during Tito’s birth were fully documented in the case we brought against Venice Hospital.

  An amniotomy is recommended only when the mother is already in active labor and the cervix dilated to at least four centimeters. At the moment when Dottoressa F performed the amniotomy, my wife’s cervix was — to use the term in the medical handbook — “impervious.”

  An amniotomy is recommended only when the fetus’s head is in the correct position in the birth canal. At the moment when Dottoressa F performed the amniotomy, Tito’s head was certainly not in the correct position, but “very high up (–3cm) and mobile.”

  62

  The amniotomy performed by Dottoressa F was described by experts as “highly inappropriate.”

  The biggest danger associated with an inappropriate amniotomy is what is called umbilical cord prolapse. That was what happened with Tito. When Dottoressa F ruptured the amniotic sac in Anna’s womb, Tito’s umbilical cord collapsed, thus cutting off his oxygen supply.

  This in turn caused damage to the brain. That brain damage affected his motor apparatus, creating spasticity.

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  In the previous image: the line of the heart monitor indicates the exact moment when asphyxia caused a dramatic fall in Tito’s heart rate.

  That was the first of his falls. The original fall.

  65

  William John Little was the first to study cerebral palsy.

  In 1853, after analysing twenty-four spastic children, he published his lecture series in monograph form under the title On the Nature & Treatment of the Deformities of the Human Frame, arguing for the first time that “the spasmodic tetanus-like rigidity and distortion of the limbs of new-born infants [could be] traced to asphyxia neonatorum, and mechanical injury to the foetus immediately before or during parturition.”

  66

  Some years later, in 1861, at the Obstetrical Society of London, William John Little — basing himself on his analysis of another sixty spastic children — said again that cerebral palsy was the result of birth asphyxia.

  To illustrate his thesis, he mentioned the protagonist of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

  According to William John Little, Richard III suffered from cerebral palsy.

  67

  Shakespeare described Richard III as “deformed.” He also called him “unfinished,” “scarce half made up,” “cheated of feature,” “that bottled spider,” “diffused infection of a man,” “that foul bunch-backed toad,” “bloody dog.”

  Richard III had “legs of an unequal size.” His arm was like “a withered shrub.” Nature had made “an envious mountain” of his back. He was “disproportioned in every part.”

  Shakespeare blamed these deformities on a premature birth.

  He tells how Richard III was “sent before [his] time into this breathing world.” He also says that “love forswore [him]” in his mother’s womb.

  At the Obstetrical Society, William John Little, quoting from Shakespeare, said that Richard III’s premature birth was secondary to birth asphyxia. And that the asphyxia had caused cerebral palsy.

  68

  Like Richard III and Tito, William John Little was deformed.

  He had contracted polio as a child and this had left him with a club foot. A man with a club foot was the first man to study children with club feet.

  69

  For Shakespeare, Richard III’s deformed body mirrored his deformed character. His cerebral palsy mirrored his evil nature.

  In the first acts of Richard III, he murders nine people, including his closest relatives and his wife.

  In the final act, the ghosts of those nine murdered people return to haunt him in a dream.

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  Tito was my Richard III. Tito was my bunch-backed toad.

  He seized my throne. He conquered my kingdom. After his birth, I became a ghost haunting him.

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  (Picture Credit 1.6)

  72

  In the previous image: Vincent Price in Tower of London.

  The film was made by Roger Corman in 1962.

  Vincent Price played Richard III: deformed, lame, spastic, with a green face.

  73

  In the case we brought against Venice Hospital, we gave a minute-by-minute account of Tito’s birth, based on the data from the heart monitor.

  12:35 Normal.

  12:40 The needle on the heart monitor suddenly shook. I called the nurse, thinking that this was the first sign of labor. In fact — as I said — this was the first sign of the asphyxia that caused Tito’s cerebral palsy. The nurse tried to phone Dottoressa F, but couldn’t locate her. She decided to go and look for her. A few minutes later, they returned together.

  12:46 Dottoressa F turned off the heart monitor.

  12:55 Dottoressa F turned on another heart monitor.

  The nurse explained that the previous week one of the machines had failed. During Tito’s birth, the first thing to fail was Dottoressa F. As the monitor had correctly shown, Tito was dying.

  13:05 Anna was finally taken into the labor ward.

  74

  Tito was born forty-five minut
es after that first fall in his heart rate. According to medico-legal experts, an emergency caesarean like his should have happened less than twenty minutes later.

  Another mistake on the part of the hospital.

  75

  In 1487, in Germany, Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar, published his Malleus maleficarum.

  Chapter XIII of Part II deals specifically with “witch-midwives who commit most Horrid Crimes when they Kill Children.” Heinrich Kramer, in Malleus maleficarum, recommended that these witch-midwives should be imprisoned and tortured by the religious authorities.

  In the last five hundred years, torture has largely fallen into disuse. Despite all the mistakes made during Tito’s birth, all I could demand of Venice Hospital was financial compensation.

  76

  In 1495, eight years after publishing Malleus maleficarum, Heinrich Kramer moved to Venice, where he recommended torture as a punishment for witch-midwives who murdered newborn babies.

  He stayed at the former Dominican monastery, in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, behind the Scuola Grande di San Marco, which had just been designed by Pietro Lombardo.

  In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte expelled all the monks. The former Dominican monastery was combined with the Scuola Grande di San Marco and converted into a military hospital, which subsequently became a public hospital.

  Five centuries later, the same place that had sheltered Heinrich Kramer in 1495 went on to employ Dottoressa F.