Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖
- Author: Luther Blissett
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‘Vogel! Holy God, I heard he’d been executed a few months ago.’
‘I only just escaped the same fate.’
He whistles anxiously through his teeth: ‘How did they track you down?’
‘They intercepted one of Hut’s companions while he was heading south in search of some fugitive or other. I imagine they tortured him and forced him to name everyone. Vogel must have been one of them, and he had to make his get-away. And I went with him. Fucking sleuths. They followed us for two whole days, until we decided we’d better split up. I made it, he didn’t. And here I am.’
He looks at me, astonished. ‘You must have a guardian angel, my friend.’
‘Mhm. These days you’d be better off with a decent sword.’
The air is cool, the sounds of the city reach us faintly. We sit down on the chopping block. The intimacy of survivors melts our thoughts, and our words sound calm, almost far away, like the noises of the street. We’re alive, and that miracle is enough for us now, that’s what we want to say to each other, without adding anything else.
The alcohol roughens his voice. ‘Hut should be coming in a few days too. He’s got it into his head that the Apocalypse is just around the corner, and he’s going around the place like a saint baptising people. It’s a wonder they haven’t arrested him yet. He wanders around the countryside and stops to talk to the peasants, to ask them how they interpret the passages from the Bible that he reads to them.’
I laugh heartily.
‘Apparently he’s a great success.’
‘Hut! A failed bookseller turned prophet!’
For a moment we roar with laughter, thinking about the timid Hans we knew so well.
‘I heard that St�rch and Metzler are trying to assemble an army by bringing together the survivors of the war. They’re round the bend. They haven’t a hope. But people have been coming here since last year. From Switzerland and nearby towns. There’s a good climate here, and at least we can meet freely. These people are clever, you’ve got meet them, they’ve come from the universities. This synod we’re organising will be a fresh start. Everything will begin all over again from here, more and more of them want to profess their own faith freely. But we’ll have to be cautious.’
Maybe you’re expecting enthusiasm, but this time I’m going to have to disappoint you, brother. I remain silent and let him continue.
‘There’s Jacob Gross, from Zurich, we elected him minister of religion, and Sigmund Salminger and Jacob Dachser as his assistants: they’re from Augsburg, they know the people here very well. Then there are also the followers of Zwingli, Leupold and Langenmantel. We’ve set up a fund for the poor with them…’
He’s talking about far-off events, telling the saga of a vanished people. Maybe he senses that, he stops, a sigh.
‘Not everything is lost.’
I barely nod. ‘At least we’re alive.’
‘You know what I mean. We’ve summoned all the brothers here.’
The same twisted smile. ‘Do you really want to start all over again, Johann?’
‘I don’t want any new priests telling me what I must believe and what I must read, whether they’re papists or Lutherans. There are enough of us to infiltrate the universities and undermine the friends of Luther and the princes, because it’s in the universities, in the towns, that minds are trained and ideas are spread.’
I stare into his eyes. Does he really believe this?
‘And you think they’ll let you do this, that they’ll stand around and watch while you get organised? I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them charging and massacring unarmed people, little boys…’
‘I know, but things are different in Augsburg, we have greater freedom in the towns and cities, I’m convinced that if M�ntzer were here now he’d agree with me.’
The name rebounds in my guts and makes me start. ‘But he isn’t. And whether you like it or not, that’s quite important.’
‘Brother, great as he was, he wasn’t everything.’
‘But the thousands who followed him were. Years ago I left Wittenberg because I was fed up with theological disputes and doctors explaining what I was reading to me, while outside Germany was in flames. After all that’s happened, I still think that way. Your theologians won’t be the ones to stop the repression.’
We walk in silence along the edge of the courtyard. Perhaps deep down even he himself doesn’t believe in his own trust. He stops and passes me the bottle.
‘At least let’s try.’
Augsburg, 20_th__ August 1527_
The house of the patrician Hans Langenmantel is big, the drawing room accommodates us all. About forty people, many of them already baptised by Hut, who arrived in the city just yesterday. When he embraced me, repeating the Magister’s words: ‘The time has come’, I didn’t know whether to laugh in his face or leave. In the end I simply kept my mouth shut, our bookseller hasn’t noticed that time has gone marching on, as wicked as before. And how could he have done? He took to his heels at the first shot from a cannon.
Denck shows up and introduces me to the brethren, giving me the name of Thomas Puel. We stand aside from the vague chattering of the others, waiting for Hut.
There’s going to be a big fight.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Hut was in Nicolsburg and he met up with Hubmaier, a brother from those parts who doesn’t want to have anything to do with Hut’s madness. It seems that our Hans has suggested not paying taxes any more, and refusing to serve in the militias. In the end the authorities locked him up in the castle and he managed to escape through a window with the help of a friend. I expect he’s furious, and now he can act the martyr as well. He’ll want to put forward the same suggestions here, too.’
Strange faces, serious expressions. I persuade Johann to sit down with me somewhat apart from the rest.�
‘Dachser and the others have got their feet on the ground, I’ll have to try and limit the damage that Hut can do. If we immediately get into conflict with the authorities we won’t have time to round up reinforcements. But go and explain that to him…’
Evoked by Denck’s words, he appears in the middle of the room, in the pose of a prophet. Instead of being moved to laughter, I just feel sorry for him.
*
She gets dressed without a word. The light filters through the window and lets the evening in.
Lying on one side, I look at the bell-towers against the sky, the flocks of swallows. A blackbird jumps on to the windowsill and studies me suspiciously. I feel the weight of my body, my muscles, inert as though suspended in the void.
‘You still want me?’
I can’t summon the will to move my head, to shift my gaze, to speak. The blackbird whistles and flies off.
My hand reaches the bag under the bed. I lay out the coins on the blanket.
‘We could do it again with these.’
My voice murmurs something: ‘I’m rich. And tired.’
The absolute silence tells me she’s gone. I still don’t move. I think about those lunatics arguing about what the Day of Judgement will be like. I think I left in too much of a hurry, offending everyone. I think that Denck must certainly have understood. And that I immediately liked the look of the street as I was walking aimlessly through the city. That she followed the right stranger and was young and miserable, like Dana, that she offered warmth and a smile that might almost have seemed sincere. I decided not to think.
My friends are dead, and I’ve discovered that the words of the survivors mean nothing to me. God no longer has anything to do with it; he abandoned us one spring day, vanishing from the world with all His promises and leaving us with life as a pledge. The freedom to spend it between those white thighs.
The blackbird lands back on the windowsill, singing out to the towers. Sleep creeps beneath my eyelids.
*
I can’t give you a face, you’re like a shadow, a ghost slipping along the edge of events and waiting for darkness. You’re the beggar who asks for alms in the alley and the fat merchant staying in the next room. You’re that young whore and the cop who’s been trailing me all around the town. Everyone and no one, your race came into the world with Adam: misfortune and an adverse God. The army in wait for us behind those hills.
Qo�let, the Ecclesiastes. The prophet of doom. Three letters full of golden words for the Magister, important information and advice. In Frankenhausen we didn’t find the army of muddled soldiers you had promised us, but a strong and warlike force. You wrote that we would defeat them.
You wanted us to go down into that plain. You wanted us all to be butchered.
Denck has a lovely family, they’re tranquil enough, but they can’t be doing all that well: their clothes are worn and darned in places, the house is bare. His wife, Clara, has cooked for me, and the older daughter looked after her brother while her mother served dinner.
‘You shouldn’t have left like that.’
There’s no resentment, he pours the schnaps into the glasses and passes me one.
‘Maybe. But I haven’t the stomach for certain discussions any more.’
She shakes her head as she tries to bring the fire back to life by stirring the embers with the poker. ‘Just because Hut isn’t all that clear-headed it doesn’t mean that…’
‘Hut isn’t the problem.’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘I can’t necessarily force you to believe in this synod. I’m just asking you to put a bit more trust in people.’
‘I’ve become suspicious over the past few years, Johann.’
I utter the name in a low voice, a habit by now. ‘Magister Thomas didn’t lead us to Frankenhausen to have us massacred: the information he had was incorrect.’ I look Denck in the eyes, to make him feel the weight of my words. ‘Someone, someone the Magister trusted, sent him a letter full of false information.’
‘Thomas M�ntzer betrayed? It can’t be so…’
I put my hand under my shirt and pull out the yellowed pages.
‘Read this, if you don’t believe me.’
His blue eyes dart rapidly over the lines, while an expression between incredulity and disgust appears on his face. ‘The All-powerful …’
‘It’s dated the first of May 1525. It was written two weeks before the massacre. Philip of Hesse was already isolating the South and route-marching his forces to Frankenhausen.’ I let the words sink in. ‘I’ve got two more letters here, written in the same hand, going back to two years before. Full of fine words, no one could suspect that they weren’t sincere. It was someone who had been courting the Magister for some time to win his trust.’
I pass him the other letters. The grimace on his lips leaves no doubt about what is burning within. He quickly runs through the words that have, through some miracle, escaped destruction, until his face is made of stone, his eyes tiny. ‘You’ve kept these letters all this time.’
We look each other in the eye, the reflections of the fire dance a witches’ sabbath on our bodies: ‘I was with him, Johann, I was at his side until the end. It was the
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