Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖
- Author: Luther Blissett
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We stay there in silence, once again lost in memories, but it’s as though I can perceive the flow of his thoughts.
Finally I hear him murmuring: ‘Qo�let. The Ecclesiastes.’
I nod. ‘The man from the community, some man or other. Someone the Magister trusted, who sent him to the block. I don’t trust anyone now, Johann, least of all doctors and pen-pushers. I have nothing against your friends, but don’t ask me to sit and listen to every word they say.’
‘If you stay out, I’ll respect your decision. But I’ve got to ask you still to be my friend.’
I cast a glance towards the darkness in the next room.�
‘My family. If I was forced to leave the city in a hurry I couldn’t take them with me.’
There’s no need for any other words: we still have something that no cop or defeat can take from us.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on them.’
Johannes Denck is the only friend I have left.
Augsburg, 25_th__ August 1527_
Three knocks and a hoarse voice behind the door.
‘It’s me, Denck, open up!’
I jump down from the bed and undo the bolt.
He is red and sweating, and breathless from running.
‘The cops. They’ve got Dachser, they broke into his house while everyone was asleep.’
‘Shit!’ I quickly start getting dressed.
‘The district’s full of guards, they’re going into all the houses, they know where we live.’
‘What about your family?’
‘They’re staying with friends, it’s a safe place, you’ve got to go there as well, it’s too dangerous here, they’re looking for anyone from out of town…’
I pack my bags and fasten my dagger under my coat.
‘That won’t be much use to you.’
‘You never know. Let’s go, you lead the way.’
We go down the stairs and out into the street, he guides me through the first light of dawn down the narrow streets, where the shops are starting to open. I follow him, unable to get my bearings, we reach a wretched district, I bump into a flea-ridden dog, which I send flying with a kick, always behind Denck, heart in my mouth. We stop in front of a tiny door: two knocks and a murmured word. The door is opened. We go in, it’s dark inside, I can’t see a thing, he pushes me towards a trapdoor.�
‘Watch out for the ladder.’
We go down and find ourselves in a cellar, a light falls on anxious faces, I recognise some of the brethren I’ve seen at Langenmantel’s house. Denck’s wife and children are there too.
‘You’ll be safe here. I’ve got to tell the others, I’ll be back as soon as possible.’
He embraces his wife, who holds a wailing bundle in her arms, strokes the little girl’s head.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you made me a promise, remember?’
He pulls me towards the ladder. ‘If I don’t come back, get them away from here, the cops won’t bother them, but I don’t want them to take any risks. Promise me you’ll take care of them.’
It’s hard to abandon him to his fate like this, it’s something I never wanted to do again.
‘Fine, but be careful.’
He presses my hand firmly, with a half-smile. I draw the dagger from my belt. ‘Take this.’
‘No, better not to give them an excuse to kill me like a dog.’
He’s already climbing the ladder.
I turn around, his wife is there, not a tear, her son at her breast. I think about Ottilie, the same strength in her expression. That’s how I remembered them, the peasant women.
‘Your husband is a great man. He’ll come through.’
*
Three of them come back. One of them is Denck. I knew the old fox wouldn’t get caught. He’s managed to get hold of two more brethren.
The hours have been interminable, locked in down here, the weak light filtering through a slit.
She embraces him, choking back a sob of relief. Denck’s expression reveals the determination of someone who doesn’t waste time.
‘Wife, listen to me. They’ve got nothing against you, you and the children will be safe in this house and as soon as the waters have calmed you’ll be able to get out. It would certainly be more dangerous to try to escape now that every gate in the city is watched by guards. Dachser’s wife will put you up. I’ll find a way of writing to you.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘To Basle. It’s the last place left where you’re not in constant danger. You’ll join me with the children when the worst has past, it’ll only be a few months.’ He turns to me again. ‘My friend, don’t leave me now, keep faith with the word I’ve given you: they don’t know your name or your face.’
I nod without quite realising I’m doing it.
‘Thanks. I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life.’
I’m astonished by his haste. ‘How do you plan to leave the city?’
He points to one of his two companions. ‘Karl’s vegetable garden abuts the city walls. With a ladder, and taking advantage of the darkness, we should be able to do it. We’ll have to run all night through the fields. I’ll find a way of letting you know when I’ve arrived safe and sound in Basle.’
He kisses his daughter and little Nathan. He kisses his wife, whispering something to her: an incredible strength that still keeps her from weeping.
I walk with him towards the ladder.
One last greeting: ‘May God protect you.’
‘May he light your way in this dark night.’
His shadow climbs swiftly, encouraged by the brethren.
Antwerp, 4_th__ May 1538_
‘I never saw him again. A long time later I heard that he had died of the plague in Basle at the end of that year.’
My throat almost dries up, still, but time has diluted even sadness.
‘What about his family?’
‘They were welcomed into the home of the brother Jacob Dachser. Hut was arrested on the fifteenth of September, I remember that. He only confessed to his friendship with M�ntzer after being tortured for a long time. He died in a stupid way, as stupidly as he had lived. He tried to escape by setting fire to the cell where they’d locked him up, so that the guards would run to open it. No one did: he died suffocated by the smoke that he himself had caused. Leupold, the most moderate of the brothers, proved to be the toughest nut: he never confessed or retracted anything. They had to release him, they banished him from the city along with his faction. I managed to join up with them. I left Augsburg in December of ‘27, and never went back.’
Eloi is a dark outline in the chair behind the big pine desk. ‘Where did you go then?’
‘In Augsburg I’d learned that someone I’d studied with lived in Strasbourg. Martin Borrhaus was his name, known as Cellarius. I hadn’t seen him for five years, and he had heard nothing from me. When I wrote to ask his help, I knew he would prove to be a true friend.’ The glass is refilled. It will help me to remember, or it will get me drunk, it doesn’t matter much.
‘So you went to Strasbourg?’
‘Yes, to Baptist paradise.’
Strasbourg, Alsace, 3 December 1527
The usher’s heels tap away ahead of me as we pass between the walls. One big room follows on from the next, the faces in portraits painted on canvas, tapestries, all kinds of ornaments crowding the pale wood and marble of precious pieces of furniture.
I’m invited to make myself comfortable on a sofa between two large windows. The curtains barely conceal the imposing shapes of the lime trees in the park. The usher walks on ahead with his little black boots, he knocks and appears on the other side of a door. A little boy’s voice is chanting strange sounds that I, too, remember having learned by heart, back in the days when I studied ancient languages.
‘My lord, the visitor you were waiting for has arrived.’
The reply is a chair squeaking across the floor and a pleasant, hurried voice interrupting the student’s words.
‘Fine, fine. Now if you will forgive me for a moment: in the meantime, would you please conjugate eurisko and gignosko for me?’
He stops just by the door, the entrance of a consummate actor: ‘A better time and place, don’t you think so?’
‘I hope so, my friend.’
Martin Borrhaus, known as Cellarius, is one of those people I never thought I would set eyes on ever again. I had received news of his employment as private teacher to the children of a nobleman, and was convinced that our paths had taken us too far apart.
He, on the other hand, maintains that he has always hoped we would meet again and, since he has been in Strasbourg, that our meeting would take place here. He says that the students who filled the auditoria of Wittenberg, more sympathetic to Karlstadt more than to Luther and Melanchthon, passed through this city in Alsace. So did Karlstadt.
He talks enthusiastically about Strasbourg, as we stroll past the building-site of the Cathedral, on the way to my lodgings. He describes it as a city where no one is persecuted for his convictions, where heresy can even be a source of interest and discussion, in shops and drawing-rooms, if it is sustained by brilliant arguments and unimpeachable moral conduct.
A cart carrying blocks of sandstone struggles across the square. The bell-tower of the Church of Our Lady is higher than anything I have ever seen before. It is on the left-hand side of the fa�ade, and within a few years its twin on the right will double the magnificence of this extraordinary building.
‘The printers,’ Cellarius explains to me, ‘have no problem publishing these most urgent writings. This privilege that they enjoy over their colleagues in the other regions they refer to as “Gutenberg’s blessing”, because it was here that the father of printing opened his first workshop.’
‘I’d really like to pay it a visit, if that’s possible.’
‘Of course, but first we’ve got more important matters to deal with. This evening, as it happens, you’re going to meet your wife.’
‘My wife?’ I ask, amused. ‘You mean I’m married, and no one’s told me?’
‘Ursula Jost, the girl who’s turning the heads of half of Strasbourg. You, Lienhard Jost, are her husband.’
‘All right, my friend, let’s just slow down for a second. I’m glad she’s a fine-looking woman, but more importantly, who’s this Lienhard Jost?’
‘You wrote to tell me you wanted to be quiet, change your name, become practically untraceable? Put your trust in Martin Borrhaus, I’m now an expert in this kind of thing. Strasbourg is full of people who want to kick over the traces. Furthermore, Lienhard Jost has never existed, and that makes things much simpler. Ursula isn’t married either, although when she arrived here she said she was.’
‘Why, if I might ask?’
‘Lots of reasons,’ Cellarius replies, with the same look that he assumed, in Wittenberg, when explaining St Augustine’s theology to me. ‘In the city, a woman travelling alone stands out as a witch might, while she prefers not to be too conspicuous. I don’t even know if Ursula’s her real name. And then all of a sudden the nobleman who’s putting her up in his house started making rather pressing propositions…’
‘…and telling him about her husband Lienhard, who would turn up sooner or later, cooled his ardour, I would guess…’
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