Thrown into Nature

10. For Long Life

While we were in England, Mr. Frampton had planned to take us to a 110-year-old granny who had smoked tobacco for decades and who had not given up her pipe even to that very day, according to Mr. Frampton. What better proof of the wondrous longevity resulting from tobacco use? Of course, Dr. Monardes, and myself as well, were extremely intrigued by this. The granny was called Goody Jane, and she lived in North Witch. As the name of the hamlet in question implies, it lay quite far to the north, and we had the opportunity to go there only after our visit to Eton, which I mentioned a bit earlier in this medical work.

Mr. Frampton recounted to us veritable miracles about this Goody Jane. He claimed that although she was bent double by the years, practically like a ring-shaped bun, she was fully in her right mind, all of her mental abilities if not entirely, then to a great extent preserved, and that she smoked a pipe every morning upon rising. As she had done, like I said, for decades on end.

“She’s been smoking longer than you’ve been alive, Guimarães,” Mr. Frampton said to me on the way, and those words, like Urbi et Orbi and other such things, imprinted themselves deeply upon my memory. Perhaps forever.

Indeed, what a granny she was! We travelled all night so as to catch her in the morning as she smoked her first pipe — and so it was. Her family led us to a small one-room shack next to the house — she lived in said shack (since her family had taken over the house) — and we found there an unbelievable creature, with a recognizably human appearance, despite everything, truly bent double nearly to the ground, almost like a small ring, dressed in something difficult for me to define, but undoubtedly with a wool sweater-vest on top, sitting on a bed next to a metal stove, which pleasantly warmed the entire space, which incidentally was not larger than two by three yards and which included, besides the stove, a small low table and yet another bed on the opposite side, covered in woolen blankets. The floor, just like the entire structure itself, was made of the most ordinary dirt. In other words, if someone reckons that the good granny’s longevity was due to an especially wholesome quality of life, he is sorely mistaken.

Goody Jane received us very graciously, due surely in large part to the two pounds of first-class tobacco which Mr. Frampton brought her as a gift. She had not yet lit up her morning pipe — in fact, we had gotten her out of bed — and the three of us bore witness to this, I daresay, majestic, in light of the circumstances, ritual. Goody Jane lifted the lid off the stove, reached into the fire with her tobacco tongs, took out a coal, touched it to the pipe, inhaled audibly on it, then touched the coal to the pipe several more times and lit her pipe. She complained that in the past instead of a stove she had had a fireplace with a chimney, but after setting her skirts on fire several times, her grandchildren had brought her this stove. I watched dumbfounded as she puffed as quick as can be on her pipe — her face was wrinkled like earth cracked by drought, grayish-black like soil, with small eyes sunk deeply into their sockets and white hair pulled back from the tiny, wrinkle-riven face. She looked like a skull come to life, with skin on top and little flesh stuck on here and there.

“How long have you smoked, grandmother?” Dr. Monardes asked. It must be noted, by the way, that she could hear very well, as long as you just spoke up a bit, of course.

“I can’t remember, my child,” Goody Jane replied. “Many years. Since the time of King Henry.”

“Seventy years,” Mr. Frampton nodded approvingly. “At least.”

“What did you say?” Goody Jane asked.

“I said that it’s been seventy years,” Mr. Frampton repeated.

“Ah, it’s been more than that,” the old woman replied and puffed on her pipe. It was a battered clay pipe, blackened from the heat.

“It couldn’t be that long, but never mind,” Dr. Monardes said. “And how do you feel, grandmother?” he asked. “How is your health?”

“I’m not well, my child,” Goody Jane replied. “I don’t know if I’m in this world or the next.”

Then she began to list off, in a lilting voice, all the illnesses and aches she suffered from.

“But you’re still alive,” Dr. Monardes interrupted her at a certain point, “and from the looks of it, fully in your right mind.”

“Ah yes, I’m alive, my child, alive,” Goody Jane replied. “God bless you with a long life, too! And I do everything myself. Because otherwise, if you just lie in bed, what kind of life is that?”

“And what do you eat, Goody Jane, what do you live on?” Mr. Frampton broke in, opening a notebook across his knees, with a quill in one hand and an inkpot on the little table next to him, visibly determined to take notes.

“A crust of bread, a little soup, a bit of fruit,” the granny replied. “Whatever the children cook. Just enough for one such as myself, my child. But they keep bringing me food, they do. They take good care of me. I’m very satisfied, God bless them!”

“So, a crust of bread, some soup,” Mr. Frampton repeated, writing in his notebook.

“And a bit of meat now and then, my child,” the old woman said and giggled, or at least I would use that word for lack of another, more suitable one. “But at my age a person’s got to be careful with meat so as not to go running straight to the privy, or, worse yet, filling your pants. My stomach doesn’t digest anymore, not like it used to. The curse of old age, my child.”

“And what kind of tobacco do you smoke, grandmother?” Dr. Monardes asked.

“Well, whatever I can get my hands on, my child,” Goody Jane replied. “Any kind of tobacco. It’s the one joy left in my life.”

“And how many pipes do you smoke, and when?” Mr. Frampton asked, slightly bent over his notebook.

“I smoke one in the morning, then another, then another, and sometimes one more.”

“But at what times of the day?” Mr. Frampton asked.

“Well, how should I know? During the day,” the granny replied. “As the case may be. When I eat something, I smoke afterwards.”

“And what time do you eat?” Mr. Frampton pressed on.

“During the day, sonny. At noon,” the old woman replied. “When they bring me something, and if I feel like eating. But I don’t really feel like eating much anymore.”

“Goody Jane,” Dr. Monardes said somehow solemnly, yet also affectionately, as he got up, bent down (because of the low ceiling), went over to her, and grabbed her hand with a warm gesture, “you are living proof of the awesome power of tobacco to grant longevity!”

“Am I?” Goody Jane replied, lifting her face to him.

“Most certainly!” Dr. Monardes nodded. “Tobacco, due to its extensive healing properties, has lengthened your life by decades. It keeps you alive.”

“So if I stop smoking, will I die?” the old woman asked, but this question was posed in such a way that the doctor hesitated as to how to answer. To me it seemed there was a certain hopefulness in her voice.

“It is highly possible,” Dr. Monardes agreed. “But you go on living. There will always be time to die.”

“I hope so, I hope so,” the granny replied.

The doctor patted her gently on the shoulder, straightened up (as much as was possible), turned towards us, and said: “Let us be going, señores. Let’s leave this good woman in peace.”

“Thank you and Godspeed,” the old woman said.

“I almost forgot,” Mr. Frampton said, as he reached into his inside pocket, pulled out his pipe box, an impressive work of ivory, took one pipe, and placed it on the table next to the bag of tobacco. “We’ve brought you a new pipe, Goody Jane.”

In fact, this was his own pipe. A beautiful, expensive pipe made of briar.

“Thank you and Godspeed,” Goody Jane began repeating.

I hung back a bit, and as I was going out, I turned towards the old woman and said, “Grandmother, my name is Guimarães and I am from Spain. Actually, I am from Portugal, but I went to Spain and from there I came to England.”

The old woman looked at me in silence.

“Grandmother, I just wanted to tell you that you are the most remarkable señora I have ever seen,” I finished. “I have seen many human females, they clearly can be found everywhere on earth”—I waved my hand—“but. .” No, words were not coming to me easily this day.

“Thank you and Godspeed,” the good granny replied and I left, with a certain sense of relief.

With that, our visit ended. A memorable visit, indeed. “She has been smoking longer than you’ve been alive, Guimarães.” I asked myself whether I would really like to attain such longevity with the help of tobacco. And if I don’t, does that mean I should give up smoking? That would be unpleasant. But you can’t have it both ways. Similar thoughts, or rather semblances of thoughts, occupied my mind as the carriage carried us through the snowy, bare, somehow disconsolate fields. Dr. Monardes and Mr. Frampton, incidentally, were very enthusiastic about the visit, but I couldn’t say the same for myself. Life is a strange thing, isn’t it, Pelletier? You want it and you don’t. It lures you and repulses you. Like a bitter medicine or like a sweet drink that makes your head hurt afterwards. But how can you stop? You can’t ever stop. Nor do you want to. So you keep drifting along through the fields, through the snow, like some Pelletier, like some Medusa, your mind flutters here and there, like a dropped kerchief, and where you are off to, by the way, where exactly you’re going, goodness only knows. Urbi et Orbi, amigo.