by Amin Maalouf
29 December
While I was away, the letter I was expecting, the one from Pleasance, arrived in Genoa. It’s dated Sunday, 12 September, but Gregorio didn’t receive it until last week, and didn’t give it to me until this morning. He claimed he’d forgotten about it. I don’t believe him. I know perfectly well why he didn’t give it to me before. He wanted to be sure no news from Gibelet would hold up my decision. But he was being too careful: there’s nothing in the letter that could affect my relationship with his daughter or with him. But how was he to know?
My sister says both her sons came home safe and sound. But she has no news of Hatem, and his family is very worried. “I try to reassure them, but I don’t really know what to say,” she writes. She begs me to let her know if I have any news.
I reproach myself for not asking Marta about it when I saw her. I meant to, but I was so shaken by the way things turned out I didn’t think of it. I regret it now, but what good does that do me? And what good does it do poor Hatem?
I’m particularly affected by this piece of news because I didn’t expect it. I didn’t have much confidence in my nephews. One was motivated by his desires and the other by his crazy ideas, and they both struck me as weak and vulnerable. I had been afraid they might refuse to go back to Gibelet, or get lost on the way. But I was used to emerging unscathed from difficult situations with the aid of my clerk, and I’d hoped he’d manage to get to Smyrna to take charge of Habib and Boumeh before they left.
My sister also tells me that a parcel arrived from Constantinople, delivered by a pilgrim on his way to the Holy Land. It contains the things I had to leave behind at Barinelli’s. Pleasance mentions some of them, but she doesn’t say anything about my first notebook. Perhaps they didn’t find it But it may be that my sister didn’t mention it because she doesn’t know how important it is to me.
She doesn’t say anything about Marta either. It’s true that in my letter to Pleasance I merely said she’d joined us for part of the journey. I expect her sons have put her in the picture about our idyll, but she chose to say nothing about it. That doesn’t surprise me.
30 December
I went to thank Brother Egidio for bringing Pleasance’s letter. He spoke as if it were understood that I was going to marry Giacominetta, praising her piety and that of her mother and sisters. When it came to Gregorio, he lauded only his good-nature and generosity. I didn’t argue. The die is cast, the Rubicon crossed, and there’s no point now in fussing about the details. I didn’t really choose to get mixed up in all this, but does one ever really have any choice? It’s better to go along with the ways of Providence than spend your whole life consumed with regret and resentment. Surrendering to fate is nothing to be ashamed of; it was an unequal contest, so honour is satisfied. In any case, you always lose the last battle.
In the course of our conversation, which lasted for over two hours, Brother Egidio told me that, according to travellers recently arrived from London, the fire was eventually put out. It’s said to have destroyed most of the city, but not many people were killed.
“If He had wished it, the Almighty could have wiped out that country of infidels. But he just gave them a warning, so that they might renounce their errors and return to the merciful fold of Mother Church.”
In Brother Egidio’s opinion, it was the secret devotion of King Charles and Queen Catherine that persuaded the Lord to be lenient this time. But one day the perfidy of the English themselves will exhaust God’s infinite patience.
A crowd of different thoughts crossed my mind as he spoke. While I was hiding up in the roof of the ale-house, it was rumoured that it was because of the King that God had punished London — because of his secret devotion to the “Antichrist” in Rome, and because of his marital infidelities.
Was God too hard on the English? Or not hard enough?
We ascribe to Him such sentiments as vexation, anger, impatience and satisfaction, but what do we know of His real feelings?
If I were He and presided over the whole universe for ever and ever, master of today and tomorrow, master of birth, life and death, I don’t think I’d ever feel either impatient or satisfied. What is impatience to Him who disposes of eternity? What is satisfaction to Him who possesses everything?
I can’t imagine Him being angry or outraged or shocked, or vowing to punish those who turn away from the Pope or stray from the marriage bed.
If I were God, I’d have saved London for Bess’s sake. After seeing her rush about and worry and risk her life to save a Genoese, a passing stranger, I’d have stroked her tousled red hair with a little breeze, sponged the sweat from her face, removed the debris that barred her way, scattered the raging mob, and put out the flames encircling her house. I’d have let her go up to her room and lie down, and fall asleep with an untroubled brow.
And is it possible that I, Baldassare, miserable sinner that I am, could be kinder than He? That my merchant’s heart could be more generous than His, and more inclined to mercy?
When I look over what I’ve just written, carried away by my pen, I can’t help feeling rather scared. But I shouldn’t be. A God who deserves my prostrating myself before Him can’t be petty or easily offended. He must be above all that, He must be greater. He is greater, as the Muslims say.
So, whether tomorrow is the last day before the end of the world, or just the last day of the present year, I mean to stick to my Embriaco uppishness and not take anything back.
31 December 1666
This morning, all over the world, lots of people must be thinking today will be the last day of the last year.
But here in the streets of Genoa, I haven’t noticed any trepidation, or any special religious fervour.
But Genoa has never prayed for anything but its own prosperity and the safe return of its ships, and never had more religion than is reasonable. God bless it!
Gregorio had decided to give a party this afternoon to thank Heaven for restoring his wife to health. She got up yesterday, and really does seem to be well again. But I have a feeling my host is already celebrating something else. A sort of disguised betrothal. Disguised like the writing in this journal.
Dame Orietina may be quite well again, but whenever she sees me she seems to get a pain in her face.
I still don’t know if she looks at me like that because she doesn’t want me as a son-in-law, or because she thinks I ought to have solicited her daughter’s hand humbly, instead of just accepting it with my nose in the air as something due to the name I bear.
Gregorio had engaged a viol player and singer from Cremona to entertain the guests at the party. He played the most delightful tunes by various composers, including, if my memory serves, Monteverdi, Luigi Rossi, Jacopo Peri, and someone called Mazzochi or Marazzoli, whose nephew is supposed to have married one of Gregorio’s nieces.
I didn’t want to spoil my host’s pleasure by telling him that the music, even the gayest pieces, made me feel sad. That was because the only other time I’d heard anyone playing the viol was soon after my first marriage, when my family and I went to Cyprus to visit Elvira’s parents. I was already very unhappy, and listening to music that was at all affecting only made me feel worse.
But today, when the man from Cremona began to play and the large room was filled with his music, I immediately found myself drifting into a gentle daydream where there was no room for Elvira or Orietina. The only women I thought of were those I’ve loved, those who held me in their arms when I was a child — my mother, and the black-robed women in Gibelet — and those I have held in my arms as a man.
Among the latter, none arouses such tenderness in me as Bess. Of course, I do think of Marta a little, but now she causes me as much sadness as Elvira — the wound is taking a long time to heal. Whereas my brief and surreptitious stay in Bess’s garden will always remain a foretaste of paradise for me.
How glad I am that London wasn’t destroyed!
For me, happiness will alway have the taste of spiced beer and
the smell of violets — and even the creak of the wooden stairs that led to my kingdom up at the top of the ale-house.
Is it right that I should be thinking of Bess like this in the house of my future father-in-law, who is also my benefactor? But dreams have nothing to do with houses or proprieties, promises or gratitude.
Later in the evening, when the man from Cremona, who had had supper with us, had just left with his viol, there was an unexpected storm. It couldn’t have been far off midnight. Lightning, long rumblings, gusting rain — and all the time the sky, though cloudy, looked calm. Then came the sound of a thunderbolt, with a deafening crack like a splitting boulder. Gregorio’s youngest daughter, who was drowsing in his arms, woke up and started to cry. Her father comforted her, saying lightning always seems much nearer than it is, and that this bolt must have struck up near the Castello, or in the docks.
But he’d scarcely finished reassuring the child when there was another thunderbolt, this time even nearer. Now the crash was simultaneous with the lightning, and several of us cried out.
Before we’d got over our fright, a strange thing happened. We’d been sitting round the hearth, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, a tongue of flame shot out of the fireplace and started advancing across the floor. We were all sat silent, trembling, terrified, and Orietina, who was sitting close to me but up till then hadn’t looked at or spoken to me, suddenly clutched my arm so tightly that I could feel her nails sinking in.
In a whisper so loud that everyone could hear it, she hissed:
“It’s the Day of Judgement! They weren’t lying to me! It’s the Day of Judgement! May the Lord have pity on us!”
Then she fell on her knees and took a rosary out of her pocket, signing to us to do the same. Her three daughters and the maids who were there started muttering prayers. As for me, I couldn’t take my eyes off the tongue of flame, which by now having reached a sheepskin that happened to be lying there, took hold and set it alight. I was shaking in every limb, I admit, and in the confusion of the moment it struck me that I ought to rush up and get The Hundredth Name from my room.
In a few strides I was on the stairs, but then I heard Gregorio shouting:
“Baldassare, where are you going? Come and help me!”
He’d stood up, grabbed a large jug of water, and started to pour its contents over the burning sheepskin. The fire died down a bit, but didn’t quite go out, so he began to stamp on it, leaping about in a sort of dance that in other circumstances would have made us all laugh till we cried.
I ran back and joined in, and we both went on jumping on the tongue of flame every time it revived, as if we were trying to crush a column of scorpions.
Meanwhile some of the others got over their terror, and first a young maidservant, then the gardener, then Giacominetta ran and fetched various receptacles filled with water, which they proceeded to pour over anything that was still burning or glowing or smoking.
The upheaval lasted only a few minutes, but it was around midnight, so it seems to me the “Year of the Beast” must have ended with that farce.
Soon Dame Orietina, now the only one left kneeling, rose to her feet and declared it was time we all went to bed.
As I went up, I collected a candlestick which I put down on the table in my room so that I could write the above lines.
Superstition dies hard. I shall stay up until the sun rises, to write down the new date.
It’s now the 1st of January of the year one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven.
The so-called “Year of the Beast” has ended, yet the sun is rising over my own city of Genoa, which gave me birth a thousand years ago, then forty years ago, and now again today.
Ever since dawn I have been overflowing with happiness. I feel like looking at the sun and talking to it like Francis of Assisi. We ought to rejoice every time it begins to give us light again, but now men are ashamed to talk to it.
So, neither it nor the other heavenly bodies have gone out. I couldn’t see them last night because the sky was cloudy. Tomorrow, or the next night, I shall be able to see them, and I shan’t need to count them. They are there, the heavens haven’t been extinguished, the cities haven’t been destroyed — Genoa, London, Moscow and Naples are all still there. We still have to go on living on earth day after day, with all our mortal woes. With plague and fever, with war and shipwreck, with our loves and our wounds. No divine cataclysm, no august flood will come to drown our fears and treacheries.
It may be that Heaven only reflects our own promises. Nothing either better or worse. It may be that Heaven lives only in terms of our own promises.
The Hundredth Name lies there beside me, and still it sometimes troubles me. I wanted it, I found it, I got it back again, but though I opened it it has remained closed to me. Perhaps I wasn’t really worthy of it. Perhaps I was too afraid of finding out what it conceals. But maybe it hadn’t anything to hide.
I shan’t open it again. Tomorrow I shall leave it discreetly on a shelf in some bookshop, so that one day, years hence, other hands may take it up and other eyes look avidly into it, eyes which may by then be able to read it.
In pursuit of this book I have crossed the world over land and sea, but if I were to sum up my peregrinations as the year 1666 is left behind, I’d say I’ve only gone a roundabout way from Gibelet to Genoa.
It’s midday by the bells of the nearby church, and I shall now put down my pen for the last time, shut my notebook, put my writing things away, and open myself and the window wide to the sunshine and sounds of Genoa.