Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖
- Author: Luther Blissett
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The girl applauds enthusiastically, pushing her breasts between her arms. ‘Bravo, Jan!’ Looking at me: ‘Isn’t he fantastic?’
King David gives a deep bow. Strange noises come from the corridor: thuds, screams, muffled shouts. At first our Jan seems not to notice, intent as he is on his personal hygiene. Then something that makes him jump into action, perhaps a cry of ‘help’ that is either higher than the others or simply more convincing. He grabs a razor and dashes out.
His voice echoes through the house. Matthys and I look at each other, uncertain whether or not to intervene. A moment passes and Jan of Leyden reappears in the doorway. He is breathing deeply, he straightens the crotch of his trousers and plunges the razor into an enamel bowl. The water turns red.
‘What do you think?’ he says without turning around. ‘Have you ever heard of a pleasant pander, well-mannered and respectful of his fellow man? Pimps are cruel, brutal people. I, on the other hand, want to be the first holy pimp in history. Yes, friends, I’m a pimp who dreams of sitting at God’s right hand. And yet every now and again the dream is interrupted and the pimp wakes up…’
‘It isn’t a matter of sleeping and waking.’ The other Jan has the voice of Enoch, not the voice of an actor. ‘Pimps, prostitutes, thieves and murderers: those are the saints of the last days!’
Jan of Leyden puts a hand to his lips and then to his balls. ‘Agh! Don’t talk to me about the end of the world. My friend. I’ve known plenty of prophets in here, and they’re all jinxes, every one’
‘No wonder they are,’ I reply immediately, ‘Sitting and waiting for the Apocalypse brings you bad luck. Revelation only comes from below. From us.’
He turns around with a laugh. It’s hard to tell if it’s ironic or enlightened.
‘I understand.’ The corners of his mouth go on rising, revealing his hard gums. ‘It’s a matter of doing neither more nor less than making the Apocalypse!’�
The emphasis with which he pronounces the word making really strikes me. With my old passion for Greek and etymology I try to find a new name for the final undertaking. Apocalypse, like apotheosis, contains the prefix referring to something that comes from above. Hypocalypse would be much more suitable: you only need to change a couple of letters.
I look at Jan Bockelson with his hand resting between his thighs, a half-naked woman stretched out on the sofa, a bloody razor lying in the water: and my arguments don’t quite cross the threshold into my brain. The words of the Haarlem baker would be much more convincing.
Jan Matthys smoothes his pointed black beard. He seems to like the holy pimp, even if the pimp hasn’t yet quite grasped the situation. In any case, the Amsterdam Baptists who suggested that we meet him didn’t mention his lucidity or his faith, but only his visceral hatred of papists and Lutherans, his fascination with the theatre and his rather rough manners.
Matthys presses his lips between his fingers and decides to get to the point. ‘listen to me, brother Jan, here’s our idea: twelve apostles will travel the length and breadth of this country. They will baptise adults, invite people to prepare the way for the Lord, and preach in his name. Above all they will sniff the air of each town and city to assess how best to bring the elect together.’ He turns to me with a nod. ‘We’re looking for people who are capable of doing all that.’
The other Jan gestures to his attractive companion to leave the room. His eyes become attentive as he lowers himself on to the sofa, arranging himself in his trousers.
‘Why all in one city, friend Jan? Wouldn’t it be more useful to involve the biggest territory possible? The strength of an idea can also be measured by its capacity to involve the most distant people.’
Matthys has already replied to this objection several times. He narrows his eyes and speaks slowly:
‘Listen, only when we govern a city and abolish the use of money, private ownership of goods and differences in wealth, only then will the light of our faith be powerful enough to enlighten one and all. That will be the example! If, on the other hand, from this moment onwards, our sole concern is to spread our ideas as widely as possible, we will end up weakening the disruptive effect we expect from them, and they will die between our fingers like rootless flowers.’
Jan of Leyden claps his hands together, shaking his head. ‘My blessings be upon you, my friends! For a long time now, this street actor has been waiting for some lunacy like this so that he can finally bring his favourite characters to life: David, Solomon, Samson. And by God, this Apocalypse of yours is what I’ve always dreamed of. I accept the part, if that’s what you’re looking for: as of today, you’ve got one more apostle!’
Antwerp, 20_th__ May 1538_
‘A whore-master? The king of M�nster a pimp?’ For a moment Eloi loses the acquiescence that I’ve become accustomed to. For the first time he seems unable to believe me.
I reassure him. ‘If the legend has painted him as a terrible, bloody king, that does indeed correspond to the truth, but neither before nor after our entrance to M�nster was he any different to what he had always been: an actor, a charlatan, a pimp. And of course a prophet. That makes the epilogue to our vicissitude even more grotesque, because the actor forgot that he was reciting, and confused his performance with real life. The farce turned tragic.’
Eloi is uneasy, and he lets out a loud laugh to subdue his astonishment.
‘The Anabaptist epic and the legends of our enemies turned us into monsters of cunning and perversion. In actual fact they were the horsemen of the Apocalypse: a baker-prophet, a pimp-poet and a nameless reject, forever fleeing. The fourth was a man possessed, Pieter de Houtzager, who had tried to become a monk but had been turned down for the violence of his language: he went crashing into people in the street, the visions he evoked were full of blood and destruction, the Lord’s only justice.
‘Then the Boekbinder family supplied another member to the Matthys gang, young Bartholomeus, who was officially my cousin and who joined us in the autumn of ‘33 along with the two Kuyper brothers: Wilhelm and Dietrich.
‘We also convinced such a calm and pious man as Obbe Philips, and in Amsterdam Houtzager baptised another follower, Jacob van Campen. And in that way the disciples of the great Matthys reached the considerable number of eight. Reynier van der Hulst and the three Brundt brothers, boys who still stank of milk, but with hands as big as shovels, joined us from Delft in the last days of November ‘33. Almost without noticing, our numbers had had grown to twelve.
‘The sign was more than clear enough to our prophet. You could clearly see in his face that he was planning something. At the end of the day, the world around us really seemed to be on the point of exploding, our words always had the desired effect. We were only a band of misfits, actors, madmen, people who had abandoned work, home, family to devote themselves to preaching in the name of Christ. Choices that had been made for a great variety of reasons, from a sense of righteousness to impatience with the life to which they had been condemned, but all of them leading to the same conclusion: an act of will involving as many people as possible, demonstrating to mankind that the world could not go on like this for ever, and very soon it would be turned upside down by God in person. Or by someone on his behalf, which is to say, us. That was why we were the ones who could really blow things sky-high.’
‘Did you obey Matthys’ orders?’
‘We followed his intuitions. We were in perfect harmony with one another, and furthermore our prophet was anything but stupid: he was a good judge of character. He took my opinions very seriously and often consulted me, while he preferred to use Jan of Leyden as a kind of battering-ram: Jan’s theatrical attitude was very useful to him. And his physical attractiveness didn’t do him much harm, either. He was very young, but he already looked very mature, athletic, blond, with a dazzling smile that broke girls’ hearts. Matthys had taken to sending him all over the place, all around the imperial territories, checking the lie of the land, while Houtzager remained active in the Amsterdam suburbs.
Towards the end of ‘33 Matthys divided us up into pairs, just like the apostles, and gave us the task of announcing to the world, in his name, that the Day of Judgement was at hand, that the Lord would soon be slaughtering the wicked, and that only a few would be saved. We would be his standard-bearers, the messengers of the one true prophet. He had harsh words, although not ungrateful ones, for old Hofmann, imprisoned in Strasbourg. He had predicted Judgment Day for ‘33: the year was drawing to a close and nothing had happened. Hofmann’s authority was officially dismissed.
‘He didn’t talk about weapons. I couldn’t say if he ever talked about them. He said nothing about involving the apostles in the Lord’s battle, and I don’t know if he was pondering that solution even then. As far as I could see we were all unarmed. All except me. I had shortened the old sword I had found in the Boekbinders’ stable, turning it into a short dagger, a more agile and familiar weapon that I could keep hidden under my coat, and which allowed me to travel with my mind at ease.
‘I paired up with Jan of Leyden at Matthys’ wish: my determination and his appeal to the public: a perfect combination. I didn’t mind, in fact, Bockelson was someone I’d never have got bored with, unpredictable and just crazy enough. I was sure we’d achieve great things.
‘It was then that, for the first time, I heard of M�nster, the city in which the Baptists were making their voices heard most loudly. Jan of Leyden had passed through a few weeks previously, and had brought back an excellent impression. The local preacher, Bernhard Rothmann, was a close friend of some Baptist missionaries who were followers of Hofmann’s, and he enjoyed great success among the townspeople, standing up to both the papists and the Lutherans. M�nster was included on the itinerary that we were planning to follow.’
‘Were you and Bockelson the first to arrive?’
‘No, as a matter of fact we weren’t. Bartholomeus Boekbinder and Wilhelm Kuyper had got there a week before. They’d left again, but not before they’d rebaptised more than a thousand people. The enthusiasm in the city was at fever-pitch, and we got an impressive taste of it when we turned up.’
Carafa’s eye
(1532-1534)
Letter sent to Rome from the city of Strasbourg, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 20th June 1532
To my most honourable lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa, in Rome.
My most munificent Lord, the news of the signature of the alliance between Francis I and the Schmalkaldic League — for which we have hoped so devoutly — fills me with hope. The Protestant princes and the Catholic king of France are uniting their forces to limit the power of the Emperor. There is no doubt that war will soon resume, especially if the
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