Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖
- Author: Luther Blissett
- Performer: 0156031965
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I leave, to get away from that appalling stench.
Ferrara, 2nd October 1551
Chi� poured spirits. A joke and a quick goodbye, off to the Miquez residence.
Beatrice is standing by a big bird-cage. A minah bird is pecking at an apple in her hand.
Every time I see her I understand why I don’t much feel like running after people like Manelfi. I stand and watch her, waiting for her to notice I’m there.
‘Ludovico! Are you trying to scare me, looking such a fright?’
‘Forgive me, I didn’t have time to make myself more presentable.’
‘I have a message from Jo�o for you here.’
‘Jo�o-Jo�o.’
I turn around with a start and look at the cage, and Beatrice bursts out laughing. ‘It’s amazing how well they can imitate people’s voices.’
She hands me the sealed letter.
It seems puzzling at first glance: a sequence of words singing the praises of the rural life.
‘Try it with this.’ Beatrice hands me a thin sheet of iron riddled with little holes, the same size as the page. ‘It’s our family code. We’ve been using it for years to protect ourselves against prying eyes. Put the grid� over the page.
The spaces cut into the sheet isolate individual words, fragments of sentences, syllables, which suddenly start making sense.
A new . .dog . from the Roman countryside . German . hunter . of weeds . Studying . reading. advising . Always inside . the menagerie . never showing . his face . helping the shepherds to count their sheep . to . separate . the grain from the chaff . He helps his boss . without . donning his garb . Do not attempt . to return . to the lagoon . They are seeking . the painter . News . will come.
One of Carafa’s men is helping the Venetian Inquisitor. A German. A layman.
Looking for Titian.
Qo�let.
We’re there.
What I have to do.
Qo�let
Venice, 6th October 1551
Dead of night. The Giudecca is a long strip of houses and trees outlined against the sky. The boat glides gently up to the jetty behind Ca’ Barbaro, I beckon to the oarsman to stop and tie the hawser to the post.
I pay in a hurry, as long as it takes to count the money, and push the boat towards the open water, nearly toppling in.
My footsteps drum on the planks. The door.
I knock.
Nothing.
Louder.
The sound of a window opening above my head.
‘Who goes there?’
‘It’s Ludovico. I’ve come back.’
All of a sudden the door flies open, a suffused light falls on the barrel of a gun.
‘Duarte, it’s me!’
He rubs his sleepy eyes. ‘Bloody hell! Are you mad? What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve got to speak to Jo�o.’
I walk into the garden of the house. Noise from the stairs: ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Ludovico!’
A curse in Portuguese.
He’s wearing an embroidered lace shirt, his hair loose on his shoulders. ‘Why did you come back? I wrote to you…’
‘I know what you wrote. But there’s no time. We’ve got to talk.’
Jo�o presses an eye with his thumb and his middle finger.
‘Damn it but you’re a madman. Come in.’
He walks me over to the desk. ‘The Inquisition is investigating the council being held by your Anabaptist friends. The name Titian has been mentioned more than once. Coming here was a stupid move on your part.’
He stirs the embers in the hearth. Then he sits down, still rubbing away at his eyes to wake himself up.
He looks at me with the air of someone who’s waiting for an explanation.
‘How long have you known about the German?’
He stifles a yawn. ‘A few weeks. You never catch sight of him, he’s unapproachable.’�
‘When did he get to Venice?’
‘I don’t know. Six months ago, maybe more.’
I hiss a curse between my teeth. ‘I’d say it was around about the time that the Jews started being arrested.’
Jo�o’s expression turns serious. ‘They say he’s a special consultant to the Inquisitor, and that he spends his whole time reading the books published in Venice in search of the tiniest sign of heresy.’
‘Forget the rumours. There’s something worse than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Doesn’t it strike you as strange that Rome should send one of its men to Venice, and all of a sudden start arresting Jews?’
He leaps to his feet, suddenly wide awake, takes a few nervous steps, staring at the floor.
‘Do you think they’ve made up their minds to get us all?’
‘Obviously. And if it’s the German I think it is, he’s one of Carafa’s men. The best man he’s got.’
He runs a hand over his beard and exhales noisily.
‘If that’s how things are, we’ve got to know for certain. But for some time now it’s been becoming increasingly difficult to get hold of information. They’re turning the place into a desert all around us. And as though that wasn’t enough they’re keeping their eyes on us all the time. Even the Caratello is under surveillance. I’ve had to put spies on to their spies.’
He stops, avoiding my eye.
I press him: ‘Tell me everything.’
‘We found out it was a Turk, a threepenny con man who hangs round the Arsenal. He started throwing all kinds of shit at us. He says he’s been receiving money from a rich Jew to pass on information about the Venetian fleet to the Turks.’
A twinge in my wrist makes me grit my teeth.
‘We’ve got to try something, Jo�o. Before it’s too late.’
He starts shivering. He picks up a heavy dressing gown and puts it on. The golden arabesques gleam in the firelight as he sinks back into his leather armchair.
His fatigue has fled, and his voice has resumed its normal tone. ‘Tell me what you have in mind.’
Q’s diary
Venice, 20th October1551
Three days ago Pietro Manelfi spontaneously gave himself up to the Inquisitor in Bologna.
Venice, 2nd November 1551
The little boy knows what he’s got to do. The little boy is ten years old. When the bells ring he’s to deliver the message to the palazzo, with the agreed counter-signature pressed on to the back of the folded sheet, the mould of a snake wrapped around the blade of a sword. The message reads:
The German is in Venice. Place and time established.
The little boy knows he must insist that His Excellency receive him immediately, or else he’ll be whipped, he sobs, the master who sent him there told him it was urgent, that there would otherwise be trouble ‘for me and for you’.
The little boy, blond curls to his shoulders, teeth white as the driven snow, is no one’s fool, he insists, he sobs, he delivers what he had to deliver and he’s off.
The place is the church of San Giovanni, behind the Turkish Fondaco.
The faceless man is on time. As agreed, he is sitting in the confessional, waiting.
The bald little man on the other side of the grille begins his story.
He tells of his life as a sinner, how infrequently he attended mass, how many years it has been since his last confession. But he likes churches, he says, they convey a sense of peace, and particularly this one, so small, so far from the hubbub of the city, filled him with the desire to unburden his conscience.
The faceless man curses to himself. This pedantic midget with the Tuscan accent wasn’t at all what he was expecting.
He remains silent, waiting for the man to finish.
The voice croaks on about how he can’t resist the temptation to gamble. About how it weighs upon him that he has won this money, and the need to turn it into good works.
Something is pushed into the gap under the grille, it gleams in the light filtering through the cloth, balances on the rim and with the final shove topples into his lap.
The faceless man is confused.
The voice descends into a series of words of thanks, he really needed to shake off that burden, luckily there are always holy men who are willing to listen, and then gradually fades away. The final words are a reminder that soon or later we all end up before the Supreme one.
The confessional is empty.
The faceless man gives a start. He goes out into the nave: not a soul.
He opens the palm that holds the coin. The inscriptions are printed on both sides, he has to bring it up to his eye to decipher them. They speak his language.
ONE GOD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM.
ONE RIGHTEOUS KING RULING OVER ALL.
THE WORD MADE FLESH.�
M�NSTER 1534.
The faceless man dashes out of the church.
The light dazzles him. He stops. There isn’t a trace of the little man.
The Kingdom of Zion. M�nster. Venice.
In between, an ocean of time filled with a mystery.
The German. With a dead man’s name.
The ghost who brought that coin here.
It’s all happening too quickly, too suddenly, where the sky is reflected on the cobblestones.
The little square is becoming animated, there’s a strange agitation in the air. Some stout young men, their faces contorted like those of men possessed, come running from both sides: the jackets of the Nicolotti versus those of the Castellani. First insults and curses, a few stones, sticks raised, then a tangle of crazed bodies fills the scene.
The faceless man, astonished, back to the wall, tries to get to the very narrow alley that runs alongside San Giovanni.
A huge creature appears beside him, driving him in that direction. The faceless man steps back, impressed by the incredible vision of a woman about six feet six inches tall, wearing a hat as wide as the alley, from which there spills a tall arrangement of hair like the snakes of the Medusa , white face, blue-ringed, carmine-tinted nipples on display pointing straight into his face, on impossibly high heels, she totters towards him as though on stilts and smiles.
The faceless man is no longer quite sure he can believe his eyes. He turns around and tries to quicken his steps as he runs down the alley, which gets narrower by the second.
At the end of it, the little boy is waiting for him. He waves broadly: come, sir, come this way.
The little boy is ten years old and he knows what he has to do.
The faceless man has no option but to turn towards that cascade of golden curls. By the time he sees the gaping door in the darkness on his right, it is too late to try and turn back. Right beneath his bollocks he spots the gleam of a knife, which the little boy is clutching firmly in his hand.
The faceless man isn’t sure what to do.
The Sephardi’s brother takes delivery of him, the cold blade now at his throat. This man has pleasant features, and something like a smile on his face. The door is closed behind him. The faceless man goes down the narrow stairs towards the faint light of a torch. He notices the acrid smell of mildew, the damp that
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