Diogo Mainardi - The Fall - A Father's Memoir in 424 Steps

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After seeing him every day, the boys at Mount Temple School eventually got used to Christopher Nolan.

It was the same with Tito.

The newsagent in Campo San Vio saw him every day. The old greengrocer saw him every day. The barber saw him every day. My wife’s friend saw him every day. The man with the two dogs saw him every day.

The inhabitants of our overflowed Arkansas town got used to Tito.

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My plan to conquer the world with Tito three hundred and fifty-nine steps at a time soon collapsed.

Now my one goal was to limit myself to a small area that went from the Ponte dell’Accademia to Campo della Salute and was bounded by the Grand Canal and by the Fondamenta delle Zattere.

Tito had memorized all the uneven paving stones in our “town.” His knowledge of those uneven paving stones kept him from falling. Instead of forging new paths, I wanted him to forge only old paths. Instead of entering unknown territory, I wanted him to enter only known territory.

My world now ended wherever Tito’s steps ended.

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As Gertrude Stein said of Ezra Pound: “[He] still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village,” and the same was true of me.

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In the previous image: Tito on the Fondamenta delle Zattere.

During the autumn and winter, he could walk to school on his own, using the Venice Marathon ramps, which the city council kept on the bridges especially for him.

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At Mount Temple School, Christopher Nolan studied with members of U2.

They dedicated a song to him, entitled “Miracle Drug.”

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The song is a homage to the medicine that eased Christopher Nolan’s spasticity, helping him to type with his head.

The name of the medicine: Lioresal.

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In “Miracle Drug,” U2 quote from the Gospel according to Matthew: “I was a stranger and you took me in.”

The quote comes from the passage about the Final Judgement in which Jesus Christ, like Josef Mengele, sends off to the right those who deserve to be saved and to the left those who deserve to burn in everlasting fire.

According to U2, the scientists and doctors who developed Lioresal deserved to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

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Tito never took Lioresal. He never took any medicine. No one was capable of developing a medicine that would prove useful to him. Christopher Nolan’s miracle drug was developed ninety years ago. People with cerebral palsy are still being treated with drugs developed ninety years ago.

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(Picture Credit 1.22)

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In the previous image: Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde .

Lou Costello is transformed into a laboratory mouse.

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Two years after Tito was born, scientists at the Medical College of Georgia placed stem cells in laboratory mice with induced cerebral-palsy symptoms and succeeded in achieving a partial improvement in their motor skills.

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The results of the first experiments with laboratory mice led to stem cells being seen as a miracle cure.

In China, Russia, Costa Rica, in the Dominican Republic, in Turkey and in Cyprus, all kinds of medical centers sprang up, promising a cure for cerebral palsy with stem cells drawn from the skin, the spinal cord, from blood, from fat, from animal tissue, from placenta and from aborted fetuses.

According to a study carried out in 2008, the average cost of such treatments was $21,500.

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Eleven years after Tito was born, an article published in the Scientist warned of the risks of “stem cell tourism.”

According to the authors of the article, people with cerebral palsy who travelled to those medical centers in search of a miracle cure were exposing themselves to “unproven, and potentially harmful therapies.”

The article described the doctors who offer stem-cell cures as “clinical charlatans” and “fraudulent.”

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Christopher Nolan’s miracle drug was also fraudulent.

He died shortly before his forty-fourth birthday, with a sliver of salmon stuck in his throat.

To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved most harmful to Christopher Nolan’s health was salmon.

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(Picture Credit 1.23)

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In the previous image: Tommaso Rangone above the doorway of the church of San Giuliano.

The sculpture is by Jacopo Sansovino. It dates from 1554.

Tommaso Rangone is holding a sprig of guaiacum, the main ingredient in his miracle cure for syphilis.

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In his memoir, Christopher Nolan frequently compares himself to James Joyce.

One wrote about cerebral palsy, the other about general paralysis caused by the syphilis bacterium.

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James Joyce’s Dublin, like Tommaso Rangone’s Venice, was peopled by syphilitic sailors, syphilitic soldiers and syphilitic prostitutes.

In Ulysses , James Joyce used the morbid paralysis caused by the syphilis bacterium as a symbol of the intellectual and moral paralysis of his time. The episode in Bella Cohen’s brothel — which he himself described as being written in “the rhythm of locomotor ataxia” — is the rhythm that best represents that paralyzed world.

Tito was my Bella Cohen’s brothel.

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The theme of Ulysses is paralysis. The theme of Finnegans Wake is the fall.

There is the fall of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker — in Phoenix Park. There is the fall of Humpty Dumpty — the egg. There is the fall of Shaun — into the river. There is Shaun’s other fall — also into the river. There is the fall of Finn MacCool — while skating. There is the fall of Eve — in the Garden of Eden. There is the fall of Issy and the fall of Troy.

No one falls better than James Joyce. Apart from Lou Costello.

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There is another fall in Finnegans Wake: a drunken Tim Finnegan falls down the stairs and dies.

Then he comes back to life, like Tito.

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In Finnegans Wake , James Joyce based himself on Giambattista Vico’s theory, according to which, “History follows set phases, and the law that governs it is repeated eternally.” For Giambattista Vico, humanity moves from the Age of Gods to the Age of Heroes, from the Age of Heroes to the Age of Men, from the Age of Men to the Age of Gods, and so on, endlessly repeating the same cycle of birth, progress, decline and resurrection.

That’s what Giambattista Vico’s storia ideale eterna is like: circular.

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Now Tito and I are in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

I want to show him Venice Hospital. I want to return — in circular fashion — to the place of his birth. I want to relive his first fall.

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Tito walks alone to Venice Hospital. I walk beside him, ready to catch him if he falls.

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I count Tito’s steps as if I were reciting Dante:

Uno … Due … Tre … Quattro … Cinque … Sei …