Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

Basle, 28th April 1545

‘I heard you were leaving. Should we talk business?’

He laughs radiantly and brings me into the sitting room, where the fire is flickering and two armchairs are waiting for us. The inevitable wine bottle stands on the table. It’s almost as though I were expected.

He rubs his hands, leaning forward, all ears.

I can’t help smiling when this man’s around.

‘If I’m going to invest my money, you’re going to have to explain to me what you have in mind.’

He nods violently. ‘Of course, it’s sacrosanct. But in return you’ll have to tell me what it was that made your mind up.’

‘That seems fair enough.’

He skips to his travelling bag, from which he extracts the little yellow book.

‘Here it is: The Benefit of Christ Crucified, by brother Benedetto of Mantua. This is the big one at the moment. Bindoni printed it in Venice in ‘43 and managed to shift a few thousand copies. I myself helped to distribute it, my contract with Bindoni guarantees me half the profits.’

‘Get to the point.’

On tiptoes, he moves his armchair closer to mine, with the sly expression of someone who thinks he can sell furs to the Swedes. ‘Bindoni is a brave man, you know? But he hasn’t got the money or the necessary breadth of vision. Let me put it more clearly: in the Republic of Venice it isn’t hard to sell books like this one, which aren’t, you might say, orthodox: the Venetians want to remain independent of the Pope even on religious matters, and Bindoni managed to print the Benefit. But if someone with his eyes open, and with that modicum of cunning that helps you travel the world, took on the task of transporting copies around Italy, to Ferrara, Bologna, Modena, Florence… he’d reach a potentially limitless market.’

‘Hm. You’d have to increase the print run. Are you sure this man Bindoni will be willing to help us?’

‘Why wouldn’t he be? The Venetians can smell a deal a mile off, and even if he wasn’t interested we’d find another printer in no time at all, you know? Venice is the capital of printing!’

He stands there in silence, searching my face for agreement.

Out in the street, a group of students sing a vulgar song that fades away down the street.

Other miles, other lands and cities.

‘I expect I’d be the one travelling around Italy with copies of the book.’

‘We’d divide the job equally, capito? I’d concentrate on the area around Milan, and Rome. But someone’s got to go to Venice and contact the printers and set them to work on the Benefit. Listen, this book could sell tens of thousands of copies.’

I pull a face ‘I’ve been fighting Luther and the priests all my life, and now you want me to work for cardinals who are in love with Luther?

‘A well-paid job. And a useful one to anyone, like you and me, who thinks it’s better for books and ideas to go on circulating freely, without the courts of the Inquisition getting in the way. I’m not asking you to marry the authors of this book, just to help them to make our lives easier, maybe even to save our lives, capito?’

Silence again, just the fire and a cart creaking its way down the street. The Italian knows his subject, his arguments are sound. He pours the wine and hands me the glass. He sighs, and then goes on in an almost fraternal voice. ‘My friend, do you really want to spend the rest of your days in Basle? Are you really not getting bored with those people and their endless discussions? You’re a man of action, I can tell that from your hands and your face.’

I barely smile. ‘What else does my face tell you?’

In a low voice: ‘That you no longer cared much about where things were going, but you were still fascinated by an unfamiliar landscape. And that you could embark on this enterprise for that very reason. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come to see me, or am I wrong?’

Perna is a peculiar character, hard-nosed and practical, but at the same time a keen and refined judge of character. He combines doctrinal wisdom with a concrete sense of things: a mixture that I have rarely encountered in my life.�

I sip my wine, the strong taste fills my mouth. I let him go on, I’ve learned that it isn’t easy to get him to hold his tongue.

‘You’ve known the world of letters and the world of arms. You’ve fought for something you believed in, and you’ve lost your cause but not your life. You understand, I’m talking about the sense of life that people like you and I share, the inability to stop, to grow comfortable in some hole somewhere, waiting for the end; the idea that the world is nothing but one great piazza in which peoples and individuals come face to face, from the most drab to the most bizarre, from cut-throats to princes, each with his own unique story, which contains everyone’s story. You must have known death, loss. Perhaps you had a family somewhere in those Northern lands. There must have been many friends, lost along the way and never forgotten. And who knows how many scores to be settled, destined to be left open.’

The fire lights half his face, making him look like a fairy-tale creature, a gnome, wise and scheming, or perhaps a satyr, whispering secrets in your ear. His little eyes flash with the flames.

‘That’s what I’m talking about, you see? The impossibility of stopping. It isn’t right. It never is. We should have made other choices, a long time ago, it’s too late now. Curiosity, that insolent, stubborn curiosity to know how the story is going to end, how life will end. It’s about that and nothing else. It’s never a question of profit alone that leads us around the world, it’s never only hope, war… or women. It’s something else. Something that neither you nor I will ever be able to describe, but which we know very well. Even now, even at a point when you seem too far removed from things, the desire to know the ending is still within you. The desire to see some more. There’s nothing left to lose when you’ve lost everything already.’

A detached smile must have remained etched on my face while he was talking. And yet it is born of the sensation of listening to the advice of an old friend.

He touches my arm: ‘Tomorrow I’m leaving for Milan, I’m going to sell Oporinus’s books down there. I’m going to have to stay down there for a while to sort out some unfinished business. After which I’m going to make for Venice. If you like my proposal, the meeting is at the bookshop of Andrea Arrivabene, at the sign of the Well, remember that name… Why are you laughing?’

‘Nothing, I was just thinking of life’s coincidences. The well, you said?’

‘That’s right.’ He looks at me, puzzled.

I drain the glass. He’s right: forty-five years old and nothing left to lose.

� ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there.’

Letter sent to Rome from Viterbo, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 13th May 1545.

To my most illustrious and reverend lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa in Rome.

My most honourable lord, I am writing to Your Lordship to inform you that the die is cast. Reginald Pole has actually decided to make the first move.

As I am sure Your Lordship will be aware, His Holiness Paul III has entrusted Pole with the task of drawing up a document illustrating the intentions of the Council, in anticipation of its opening in December.

So today I was able to listen to a conversation between the Englishman and Flaminio, in which they discussed the contents of the document in question, which bears the entirely neutral title of De Concilio.

It seems that the first argument introduced by the Englishman is the definition of the doctrine of justification. In his exposition of this problem he used mild and apparently innocuous words that were nonetheless tendentious, guaranteeing some degree of compatibility between the Protestant and Catholic doctrines. So it is now certain that from the outset the cardinal wants to keep the Council fathers busy searching for a compromise with the Lutherans.

The printing and distribution of the Benefit of Christ Crucified are now being revealed in their true light: as part of a well-planned strategy.

For two years now Pole and his friends have managed to scatter the seeds of their crypto-Lutheran ideas through this accursed little book, and to provoke debates concerning its contents, and now they hope to reap its fruits in Trent.

May the all-powerful Lord guard us against such a misfortune, enlightening my Lord’s mind and advising him of the indispensable measures required to prevent such an occurrence.

Kissing Your Lordship’s hand, I humbly implore Your continued favour

Viterbo 13th May 1545

Your Lordship’s faithful servant�

Q.

Q’s diary

Viterbo, 13th May 1545

In the fresco I’m one of the figures in the background.

At the centre stand the Pope, the Emperor, the cardinals and the princes of Europe.

On the margins the agents, discreet and invisible, peeping out from behind the crowns and tiaras, but in fact supporting the whole geometry of the painting, filling up its space and, without making themselves conspicuous, keeping those powerful heads at the centre of the composition.

With this image in mind, I resolve to keep these notes.

Throughout my life I have never written one word for myself: there isn’t a page from the past that could compromise the present; there is no trace of my passage. Not a name, not a word. Only memories that no one would believe, since they are the memories of a ghost.

But things are different now: they could be more difficult and risky today than they were in M�nster. The Italian years teach us that palaces can be just as deadly as battlefields, except that in here the noises of war are muffled, absorbed by the animated chatter of negotiations and the keen and murderous minds of these men.

In the Roman palazzi nothing is as it seems.

No one can grasp the whole picture all at once, see both the figure and the background, the final objective. No one but those who hold the threads of these conspiracies, men like my master, like the Pope, like the deans of the Holy College.

Note: understand, make notes, never ignore apparently irrelevant details that might turn out to be the keystones to an entire strategy.

The elements of the painting: a dangerous book; an imminent Council; a very powerful man; the most secret servant.

On the Benefit of Christ Crucified

The book was printed about two years ago. It has provoked diatribes (Cardinal Cervini has already banned it in his diocese), but nevertheless continues to circulate undisturbed, even enjoying wide distribution.

The ‘Viterbans’ are acting as though nothing’s going on, and in the meantime they’re preparing to bring the book’s theses to the Council of Trent (Reginald Pole: ‘Ideas have a time and a place, which, if carefully chosen, may prevent new courts from putting a stop to them.’) Pole hopes he will be quicker than Carafa over a period of time: the spread