by Amin Maalouf
“Chaplain!”
He didn’t look at all like a cleric to me. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. He did have a kind of natural solemnity. He was tall, too, and had a bushy beard, though this made him look more like an Orthodox priest than an English clergyman. Wearing a mitre and a chasuble and holding a crozier, he might have resembled a bishop addressing his congregation. As it was, he radiated neither piety, nor odour of sanctity, nor any kind of temperance. On the contrary, he struck me straight away as a heathen roisterer. There were three mugs of beer on the low table in front of him, two of them empty and one two-thirds full. He’d probably just taken a swig: there was some white froth on his moustache.
He smiled broadly and asked us to sit down. But Jonas said he had to go back to his master. I gave him a coin, and the chaplain asked him to order us a couple of pints as he went out. The landlady, very eager and respectful, soon brought them up to us, and the man of God thanked her with a slap on the behind — not a discreet tap, but a hearty, obvious one that seemed intended to shock me. I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was embarrassed — I think they’d both have been very annoyed otherwise.
Before the landlady appeared, I’d introduced myself to the chaplain and told him I’d just arrived in London. I made a painful attempt to speak English, but to spare me further suffering my host answered me in Latin — a scholarly Latin that sounded very strange in those surroundings. I imagine he was trying to paraphrase Virgil or some other classical poet when he said:
“So, you have left a land watered by Grace to come to this country harrowed by Malediction!”
“What little I’ve seen of England so far hasn’t given me that impression,” I replied. “On the contrary, I’ve noticed that the people here have a very liberal attitude and are strikingly cheerful.”
“That’s what I said — a cursed place! You have to shut yourself away and drink all day if you want to feel free. If a jealous neighbour accuses you of blasphemy, you’re publicly flogged. And if you look too healthy for your age you’re suspected of witchcraft. I’d rather be taken prisoner by the Turks.”
“That only shows you’ve never seen the inside of the Sultan’s jails!”
“Perhaps,” he admitted.
But the atmosphere relaxed after the landlady had come and gone, and despite my earlier moment of discomfiture, I felt sufficiently at ease to tell my host straight out why I’d come to see him. As soon as I mentioned The Hundredth Name, his face lit up and his lips twitched. Thinking he was going to tell me something about the book, I paused, my heart thumping. But he merely smiled more broadly and waved his wooden mug to encourage me to go on. So I went on, and told him exactly why I was interested. This was a risky thing to do. If the book really did contain the saving name, how could I ask him, a priest, to sell it to me, and for how much? A better bargainer would have spoken of the book and its contents in more moderate terms, but I felt instinctively that it would be wrong to try to outsmart him. I was seeking the book of salvation; how could I, under the eye of God, obtain it by deceit? Gould I ever outwit Providence?
So I made myself tell the chaplain quite plainly how much the text in question is worth. I told him all that the booksellers say about it, about the doubts entertained as to its authenticity, and the various speculations rife about its alleged virtues.
“And you?” he said. “What do you think about it?”
He always wore the same unvarying smile. I couldn’t make it out, and was starting to find it annoying. But I tried not to let on.
“I’ve never quite decided. One day I think it’s the most valuable thing in the world, and the next I’m ashamed of having been so gullible and superstitious.”
His smile had vanished. He raised his mug towards me like a censer, then emptied it in a single draught. This, said he, was as a tribute to my sincerity, which he had never expected.
“I thought you would tell me some typical merchant’s tale and say you were trying to find the book for a collector, or that your father had told you about it on his deathbed. I don’t know if you were being honest by nature or out of supreme cunning — I don’t know you well enough to say — but I like your attitude.”
He paused, picked up his empty mug, put it down on the table again, then burst out:
“Open the curtain behind you! The book’s there!”
I sat there for a moment, stunned, wondering if I’d understood aright. I’d got so used to traps, disappointments and unpleasant surprises that to be told quite simply that the book was there behind me took my breath away. I even wondered whether it mightn’t be due to the beer I’d swallowed so thirstily.
Anyhow, I stood up and ceremoniously drew aside the dark and dusty curtain my host had indicated. The book was there. The Hundredth Name. I’d have expected to find it in some sort of casket with a candle on either side, or open on a lectern. But no, it was just lying on a shelf with a few other books, together with some pens, a couple of ink-wells, a stack of blank paper, a packet of pins, and a jumble of other odds and ends. I picked it up very gingerly and opened it at the title page, doing all I could to make sure it was the book which old Idriss had given me last year and which I’d thought lost for ever in the depths of the sea.
Was I surprised? Of course I was surprised. And understandably shaken. It was like a miracle! On my very first day in London, when I’ve scarcely got used to being on dry land, the book I’ve been trying to track down for a year has fallen into my hands! My host waited for me to recover, to drift slowly back to my chair clasping the book to my beating heart. Then he said — it wasn’t a question:
“That’s the one you were looking for ...”
I said it was. To tell the truth, the room was so dark I could scarcely see. But I’d glimpsed the title, and before that I’d recognised the title on the cover. I hadn’t any doubt whatsoever.
“I suppose you can read Arabic perfectly.”
Yes, I said again.
“In that case I’d like to propose a bargain.”
I looked up, still clutching my new-found treasure. The chaplain looked extremely thoughtful: his head seemed more imposing than ever, and more massive, even without his greying beard and hair.
“Yes, a bargain,” he repeated, as if to gain a little more time for reflection. “You want to own this book, and I just want to understand what’s in it. Read it to me from end to end, and then you can have it.”
Again, without a shadow of hesitation, I agreed.
How right I was to come to London! My lucky star was waiting for me here! My persistence has paid off! The obstinacy I inherited from my ancestors has served its purpose! I’m proud to be of their blood, and to have lived up to it!
London, Tuesday 24 August 1666
I know it’s not going to be easy.
It’ll take me a good number of sessions to get through those 200-odd pages, translating them from Arabic into Latin, not to mention explaining what they mean when the author never intended them to be explicit. But the chaplain’s unexpected suggestion immediately struck me as an opportunity, if not a sign. He’s offering me an opportunity not only to get Mazandarani’s book back, but also to study it as I never would have done for myself. To have to read every sentence and translate every word so as to make it intelligible to a demanding listener is no doubt the best way of finding out once and for all if the book really does contain some great secret truth.
The more I think about it, the more excited I feel, but I’m puzzled too. I’ve had to follow this book from Gibelet to Constantinople, and from Genoa to London, and then to that tavern and the lair of that peculiar chaplain, in order to start on this necessary labour at last. It’s almost as if everything that’s happened to me this last year has been merely a prelude, a series of tests that God wanted me to go through so that I might be worthy of discovering His hidden name.
I said “this last year”, and indeed it’s exactly a year ago to the day that my long journey began: it was on Monday, 24 August 1665 that I left Gib
elet. The entry I wrote in my journal on that occasion isn’t to hand — I do hope Barinelli found that notebook and kept it and can send it back to me one day!
But I’m straying from the point. I was saying that if I could re-read the pages I wrote at the beginning of my journey, I wouldn’t find much resemblance between my original plan and the route I eventually followed. I didn’t expect to go any further than Constantinople — certainly not to England. Nor did I expect to find myself all alone like this, without any of the people with whom I set out, and not knowing what has become of them all. In the course of the year everything has changed around me, and inside me too. Sometimes I think the only thing that hasn’t changed is my desire to go back home to Gibelet. But no — if I consider the question at more length, I’m not so sure. Since my visit to Genoa, I sometimes feel that’s the place I ought to go back to. That’s where I’m from — my family, if not I myself. Despite the fact that Bartolomeo, my distant forbear, came down in the world when he tried to go back there and make a fresh start, I believe it’s only in Genoa that an Embriaco can really feel at home. In Gibelet I shall always be a foreigner. And yet my sister lives in the Levant, and it’s there that my parents are buried. My house is there, and so is the shop that makes me reasonably well off. I nearly added that the woman I’ve learned to love lives there too. My mind must be playing me tricks. Marta isn’t in Gibelet any more. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to go back there. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.
Perhaps that’s enough for this evening.
25 August
I’m beginning again in order to go into the question of dates. I was meaning to do so yesterday evening, but the thought of Marta made me forget. Here in London there’s a muddle about dates that I never suspected. For us, as I’ve noted at the head of the page, it’s the 25th of August, but for the people who live here it’s only the 15th! Out of hatred for the Pope, whom everyone here is supposed to regard as the “Antichrist”, the English, like the Muscovites, refuse to follow the Gregorian calendar, which we adopted more than eighty years ago.
There are several comments I could make about this, but I’m expected at the ale-house. That’s where our readings are to take place, and that’s where I shall be staying from now on. I objected to this arrangement at first, wishing to keep my distance: they’re very hospitable folk, but I don’t know them well enough to want to be with them all day and all night. But yesterday evening after dinner, when I left to go back to my inn, I had a feeling I was being watched. It was more than a feeling; I was sure of it. Was it thieves? Government agents? In either case, I had no desire to repeat the experience every evening.
I know it’s unwise to have so much to do with a man like the chaplain, who was once an influential character and whom the authorities still regard with suspicion. If all I was concerned with was my own safety, I’d have kept my distance. But my first concern is not prudence — if it were, I wouldn’t have come to London looking for The Hundredth Name, and there are a lot of other things I wouldn’t have done. No, my object now is to get the book back, and leave as soon as possible with it under my arm. And it’s by living near this man and keeping my contract with him that I can achieve my object fastest.
After settling me in a top-floor room just over the chaplain’s and away from the din that usually prevailed in the main part of the ale-house, Bess, the landlady, came upstairs three times to make sure I had everything I needed.
These people are easy to get on with — hospitable, kind, fond of laughter and good food. Living here will probably be very pleasant. But I shan’t stay too long.
26 August
This morning I was due to start reading The Hundredth Name aloud. But I soon had to stop, for a strange and highly disturbing reason.
There were four of us there in the chaplain’s room: he’d invited a couple of young men, apparently followers of his, to act as scribes. One of them, whose name was Magnus, was to write down the Latin translation of the text, and the other, Calvin, was to record the comments.
I said I “was due” to start the readings, because things didn’t turn out out as we’d expected. I’d begun by reading and translating the overall title, The Unveiling of the Hidden Name of the Master of Creatures, then Mazandarani’s full name — Abu-Maher Abbas son of So-and-so, son of So-and-so, son of So-and-so … But I had scarcely turned the first page when the room went dark, as if the sun had been covered by a cloud of soot and its rays could no longer reach us. Could no longer reach me, I should say, for none of the other people in the room seemed to have noticed anything.
At the same moment, the door opened and Bess brought us in some beer. This gave me a brief respite, but soon all eyes were on me again, and the chaplain, puzzled by my silence, asked me what was the matter, why didn’t I go on reading? I told him I had a splitting headache and couldn’t see properly, and he said I’d better go and rest so that we could go on with the reading tomorrow.
I closed the book, and immediately felt I was back in the light again. A great sense of well-being swept over me, but I was careful to conceal it lest the others think my brief illness had been assumed.
Now, as I write this account, it’s almost as if I only imagined that passing darkness. But I know without a shadow of doubt that I wasn’t dreaming. Something happened to me, but I don’t know what to think or say about it. That’s why I didn’t tell the chaplain the truth when he asked me why I’d stopped reading. Whatever it was, it brought back the memory of something that had happened more than a year before and hadn’t seemed at all mysterious at the time. I’d come back from old Idriss’s house with the book he’d given me, and as I leafed through it in my shop I couldn’t manage to read it, although the light there was quite adequate. The same thing had happened the previous day, in Idriss’s shack, though I’d taken even less notice then. Of course, his place was very poorly lit, but not so badly as to make the pages of the book itself illegible: I’d had no trouble reading the title page, where the characters were not much larger.
All very inexplicable and alarming.
Gould there be a curse on the text itself?
Or was the strange happening due to my own terror at being about to see the supreme name there, written down, before my very eyes?
I wonder whether the same thing hasn’t happened to everyone who has tried to approach The Hundredth Name. Perhaps the text is protected by some magic spell, some amulet or talisman?
If that’s so, I’ll never get anywhere. Unless the curse or spell is lifted somehow.
But doesn’t its very existence prove that the book is unique, and contains the most precious, unspeakable, formidable and forbidden of truths?
27 August 1666
Yesterday evening, as I was still writing my travel journal by daylight — it gets dark very late here — I was surprised to see Bess enter my room. She had knocked, but the door was ajar, so she came straight in. Without undue haste, I put my notebook away under the bed, meaning to get it out again when she’d gone. But she stayed for a long while, and afterwards I’d forgotten what I meant to write.
She said she was worried about my headache, and said she’d get rid of it for me. She talked about “undoing the knot” in my shoulders or the nape of my neck, and the phrase awakened my curiosity. She made me sit on a low chair, then stood behind me and patiently kneaded me, flesh and bones alike, with her fingers and the palms of her hands. As I didn’t have the pain I’d laid claim to, just a vague unidentifiable discomfort, I couldn’t judge whether her treatment was effective or not. But I was touched by the trouble she’d gone to, and, so as not to hurt her feelings, said I suddenly felt a lot better. She then offered her services during the readings. I hastily declined, and as soon as she’d left the room, burst out laughing. I could just see myself solemnly reading and translating for the benefit of the chaplain and his two disciples while the buxom landlady massaged my neck and back and shoulders. Some of those present might feel rather disturbed, I imagine.
Be that as it may, I’m going to have to find some solution, or my readings will soon come to a halt. Today there was a short bright interval, during which I was able to read a few lines from Mazandarani’s introduction, then the darkness returned. I moved a bit closer to the window and thought the text looked more legible there, but that didn’t last long, and soon I could see nothing. I and my eyes alike were shrouded in shadow. The chaplain and the two young men looked annoyed and disappointed, but didn’t utter any reproaches and agreed to put the reading off till tomorrow.
I’m sure now that some powerful will protects this text from eager eyes. Mine included. I’m not a holy person, I’m no more deserving than the next man, and if I were sitting in the seat of the Most High, I certainly wouldn’t reveal my most precious secret to someone like me! Me, Baldassare Embriaco, dealer in curios, honest enough but not pious or saintly, without any sufferings or sacrifices or poverty to put forward — why the devil should God choose me as the repository of His supreme name? Why should He befriend me as He did Noah, Abraham, Moses and Job? I’d have to be very proud and very blind to think for a moment that God might see me as someone exceptional. Some of His creatures are remarkable for their beauty, intelligence, piety, devotion or character — He could be proud of having created them. But about having created me, He can be neither very glad nor very sorry. He must look down on me from His heavenly throne with disdain, or at best with indifference.
And yet here I am in London having crossed half the world in pursuit of this book, and having, contrary to all expectations, found it again! Is it too crazy to think that, despite all I’ve just said, the Most High is watching me, and guiding me along paths I would never have trod without Him? Every day I hold The Hundredth Name in my hands; I’ve already made a beginning on some pages; I’m advancing step by step through the labyrinth. All that holds me back is this strange blindness, but perhaps that’s only one more obstacle, one more test that I’ll get past in the end. Because of my own perseverance or obstinacy, or through the unfathomable will of the Master of Greatness.