Another day, another bug. No, really – I seem to have attracted something that is eating me alive in my hotel bed; not just mosquitoes. I hope not bedbugs, but I have a terrible feeling that they are. My face looks like I have chickenpox because I even have bites on my eyelids. Lord knows what all these nice archivisti and religiosi must think of me. But such is the lot of the intrepid musicologist, braving even the fiercest of insects to bring our musical heritage to life. So, I stay on, even though when I get home I will have to freeze for four days everything that can’t go through the washer and dryer. Pass me the DDT and the cortisone, honey – but maybe I ought to ask for a different room….
I still have to hang out in Ferrara for a few more days, as the abbess at Corpus Domini isn’t taking visitors until Saturday. It took all my courage to ring on the doorbell of the convent. Lord only knows why, what are they going to do to me? They’re nuns, for crying out loud. But I hate intercoms even when I can speak in English, so they are immeasurably more painful when I have to speak in Italian. And it was only slightly better when they let me in: I still had to peer through a little hatchway and speak to this tiny lady who I could barely see, and who told me politely and all smiles, but very firmly, that there was no way I was coming in until the abbess said I could. At least she couldn’t see me very well, either, or she’d have assumed I was going to bring plague into the convent and sent me packing without even the promise of Saturday.
Yesterday afternoon, before the full horror of my affliction was apparent to me (the bites can take hours or days to appear, so it wasn’t until the evening that I could count over fifty red lumps of varying sizes) I did my usual trawling round the city, nosing around the many museums that once were houses for my ladies, both courtly and conventual. I loved the Casa di Romei, which was bequeathed to the nuns of Corpus Domini and was incorporated into the convent in the sixteenth century. And, lo, there was a mini-exhibition of pottery and tableware that had been excavated at S Antonio in Polesine. Fantastic – the nuns were so organized that their bowls had indications on them to show where they were to be used: CA for cantina, R for refettorio, and my favourite, the little bowl used in the dispensary. I so wanted to take a photo, but couldn’t.
However, I did take a photo of this lovely lady who sells stuff made by monks and nuns at her shop, La Badessa. She said if Celestial Sirens ever came to perform in Ferrara she’d do loads of publicity. I wanted to buy everything in the shop, from liqueur to smelling salts and shampoo via the curious looking tisanes made by the Camaldolese. Eventually I bought some Benedictine unguentum salutis for my fellow nun-aholics. I probably ought to go back today and get something blessed for my bites.