Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

Antwerp, 30th May 1538

‘Your story, the incredible story of Gert Up-and-Down-the-Well, took my breath away. I couldn’t even sleep after we parted in the small hours. That’s why I like people who know how to tell a story, whether with words, brush or pen. You have painted M�nster with the mastery of the Brueghels, father and son. Now I’ve lived through the story myself, and you’ve done it twice.

‘Twice, Lot: once for the experience and the second time as a way of shaking it from your shoulders. As the name we’ve given you demands, look straight in front of you, look straight ahead, beyond the great ships that wait to set off each day, along the estuary that slowly widens, mile after mile, before finally opening up into the sea. The sea, Lot. Not a day passes without fresh information about new lands and people coming from across the sea. And new crimes as well. Across the sea the Apocalypse rises each morning along with the sun.

‘Don’t turn back, don’t be imprisoned by your history. Take to the sea, sever the hawsers that have kept you moored to the land, keep your mind on the prow and take to the waves. Let’s take to the waves. One world is ending, another beginning; this is the Apocalypse and we’re in the midst of it. Help me to equip the boat that will weather the storm.’

Eloi gets up and moves a few steps away from the sausage kiosk and the big grey building, then goes and sits back down on the steps.

‘What did you have in mind?’

He looks at the bare fa�ade, the massive wooden portal.

‘Kill the Beast. And make a stack of money.’

*

I walk along the quay, boards nailed to poles protruding from the stagnant water, down one of the branches of that endless labyrinth of putrid water and wood, trying to keep up with Eloi as he quickens his step.

It’s a little merchant ship, round-bellied and inelegant: a capacious hold, two very high masts, a little cabin on the quarter-deck. The figurehead is a great bird with its wings spread, which gives the ship its name: Phoenix.

‘Lodewijck Pruystinck!’

The man who greets us is leaning from the parapet of the bridge: grey beard and hair, pock-marked complexion, tiny darting eyes.

‘Polnitz, the mathematical wizard!’

Eloi grips the railing of the gangway and with one leap he’s on board. I’m behind him.

He fires his smile at him: ‘Gotz, this is Lot who came out of a well. A master of the art of getting out of wells.’

‘Come in, come inside.’

I have to lower my head to get into the cabin. A table hooked to the front wall, two chairs at the sides, a bench nailed to the floor. Apart from a lit candle on the table, the only light comes from the door through which we entered.

Eloi lets me have the chair and sits down on the bench at the side, Polnitz opposite me. He doesn’t look like a sailor.

‘Well, gentlemen.’ Turning back to Eloi: ‘I suppose our friend will be wanting some kind of explanation.’

‘Sure. But I’ve brought him here because he’s the man we were looking for.’

I pull a little face and wait.

Polnitz adjusts himself on his chair. ‘Let’s get down to it, then. You know about the Fuggers of Augsburg?’

His eyes stay on me.

‘The bankers.’

‘The bankers.’ His eyes study me carefully, he already knows what he wants to say to me. ‘Let me tell you a story.’

Eloi lights a cigar, and disappears, silent and sly, behind the swirling smoke.

‘Ten years ago the most powerful banker in Antwerp was a certain Ambrosius H�chstetter: a hard-hearted, mean old man who dominated the market for decades. Every florin spent by King Ferdinand of Hungary came out of his purse, in exchange for all the mercury in Bohemia and much else besides. In order to reach that position, old Ambrosius, many years previously, had shown great foresight. Apart from the important fact of his being friends with the Habsburgs, he had worked out that if the princes gave him rights of usufruct over mines and territories, the money would go on passing through other hands, dirtier and more nimble than his own. The hands of the merchants of Antwerp. So he started to take in their savings; the fruits of commercial deals, factories, and all the exchanges, both big and small, that take place against the backdrop of this port. He granted a substantial interest rate to anyone who deposited even small sums with him. He lent money to the rising merchants, he financed their activities, he had such power over the fortunes of anyone transporting anything to Antwerp that no one could ever have imagined him being toppled from his throne.’

Gotz von Polnitz keeps his eyes on my face, to be sure that I don’t miss a word of the story.

‘In 1528 H�chstetter was still the king of Antwerp, but he had problems. He was old, he was almost blind and many people outside the city wanted to take his place. In the same year Lazarus Tucher, a merchant originally from Nuremberg, was responsible for a considerable volume of traffic between Lyon and Antwerp. Tucher was well off and clever, but he didn’t enjoy H�chstetter’s favours: so he knew that his business wasn’t going to grow. From the spring of that year, rumours started pouring in from Lyon about the amounts of money that H�chstetter actually had at his disposal: the old man found himself being exposed on all fronts, people were calling in considerable sums, while he was lending money to merchants and bankrolling the Habsburgs, and the war for the mercury monopoly was becoming extremely expensive. The savings of the small merchants and the crafts corporations in Antwerp were hopelessly far off on boats making their way to the New World, in the court of Ferdinand and in the mines of Bohemia. It seems incredible, but very soon a crowd was demanding the return of its own deposits.’

Gotz draws breath, allowing me to imagine the scene, then he goes on:

‘Bankruptcy was inevitable. H�chstetter hadn’t enough money in his coffers to satisfy their demands. He desperately tried to get away by asking help even from his most ferocious competitors, but his fate was now sealed. In 1529 the young, aggressive Anton Fugger, nephew of the patriarch Jakob the Rich, made his triumphal entrance into the city, serving as a guarantor for the masses of creditors and at a stroke taking on all of H�chstetter’s obligations, store-houses and general activities. Accused of having deceived his savers, the old man ended his days in jail.

‘In fact young Fugger was putting the finishing touches to an operation that he had begun more than a year before, when he had brought H�chstetter into discredit through the skills of his most ambitious agent: Lazarus Tucher. Antwerp crowned a new king.’

The question emerges out of me of its own accord: ‘What happened to Tucher in the end?’

He weighs his words. ‘That doesn’t matter, he’s no longer in town. What this story teaches you is the fundamental law of credit: anyone wishing to take on the savings of a large number of people must enjoy the trust of a large number of people.’

Another pause. Eloi is listening attentively at my side, he doesn’t move a muscle.

Gots takes a small piece of paper from his jacket pocket and puts it on the table.

‘You won’t believe it, but most of the deals here are done via letters of credit. Pieces of paper like this.’

I turn the sheet around in my hands: a kind of letter, written in elegant calligraphy with two seals and a signature at the bottom.

‘Anton Fugger or whoever guarantees with his own seal the entity of his deposit in his strongboxes. When you’re holding in your hand a piece of paper like