3

What is a head, really, said the medicus, but a passage for food and drink. He laughed. The merchant moaned. The medicus had traveled far. He’d been to Egypt where he’d seen a Pharao rise from his grave and bring the black death to the people himself: the plague had come out of a brown jug in the shape of a thousand flies with tiny skulls painted on their wings by demons. He’d been to the Levante and returned, his saddle bags heavy with gold, his reward for opening the caliph’s head and extracting a plum-sized stone. It had been most successful as a theosophic intervention – he wasn’t so sure otherwise: the caliph had soon begun to talk in tongues and had died with a prophecy on his lips. – This merchant here, he saw it right away, was actually as crazy as anybody he’d ever seen. He stank because he’d shat himself and wouldn’t let anyone clean him up. The medicus made a quick cut, pulled the skin of the skull apart, and made a small incision. With the other hand, he produced a small gray rock, which he showed to the bystanders: the cure of folly. Is he healed, said the patient’s wife grabbing for the stone of madness. The medicus didn’t respond right away: he was busy bandaging the wound. He didn’t think the merchant would suffer long. He said he’d seen such a stone before: it looked like the petrified tooth of Saint Anthony of the Desert and it might prove a powerful ally against shingles. The medicus was a happy man that day and he stayed to comfort the young widow. He whispered her into a sweet sleep with his tales of the lands beyond the rainbow sea.