And this kind of charity is still called a Christian virtue? A charity that comes from the Holy Trinity: power, pleasure and pride. Oh, the world is mine, verily it is mine!
We hadn’t gone much further when Novak turned his horse around and galloped back. I looked over my shoulder to see him with the beggar girl. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he rejoined us quickly. It didn’t take him long to catch up.
He beckoned me to one side, and we rode along at a discreet distance from the others so we could speak privately.
‘Here’s three kreutzers,’ he said, holding out the shiny coins.
I took them and asked, ‘What’s this then?’
‘Took ’em from the beggar girl. It’s what the princess gave her.’
‘Oh, good and faithful servant, I had no idea you were so good. You’ve made me very happy.’
‘I am good, no matter how much you twist things and call what’s good both evil and good, and what’s evil both evil and good to boot. And I didn’t take the money to give it to you but to save the little beggar girl. Everyone saw her getting the money. She’s just a poor little mite, and they’d take it from her and hurt her while they are at it, maybe even kill her. Now she’s safe. She’s got nothing.’
‘So why not take the money for yourself? Aha, I know why. If you take it, it’s a sin, plain old thieving. Now it’s a good deed, but the money’s still ended up in the hands of the Devil. You might have taken those three kreutzers, you know, and bought her something to eat right away, and some plain shoes that no one would think to steal.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
Count Schmettau in the meantime had somehow ridden up alongside me. No doubt he had noticed how often I was looking back, and so he launched into the how’s and why’s of rampart-building.
‘Did you know, before cannon were perfected, that the best and most important defence for any city was a high wall. And, as the invaders would have no way to topple the wall and could only hope to climb over it, its height was crucial. The greater and more important the city, the higher the walls. Then the art of mining was invented. Walls that were high and therefore thin (for no city is that rich), could be brought down easily. Oh, did you know that Belgrade was the first city to be mined? Imagine, the very first mines exploded right here, under those very walls. And, best of all, the defenders mined the Turkish trenches that were coming dangerously close to the fortress. That was in 1439, the work of Vran, who had learned his trade in Italy. In those days everyone looked to the Italians when it came to the art of war. Things certainly have changed, haven’t they? Wars are fought with cannonfire now, and walls are thick and squat because no one scales them any more – they simply blast their way through them. We Germans are the leaders today.’
‘Really? And here I thought it was Marshal Vauban who was the expert on attacking and defending cities.’
Schmettau’s face flushed. ‘Someone has stolen my copy of Vauban,’ he muttered. ‘What sort of person would steal a book?’
‘Writers,’ I suggested.
He said nothing more, but spurred his horse on.
I did the same to catch up with him.
‘I beg your pardon, Herr Graf, for being so direct, but what disguise were you wearing last night?’
Schmettau reacted with a start, almost flinching. He pulled on the reins and stopped. I stopped my horse beside him.
‘I wasn’t dressed as Ludwig, if that’s what you mean. Ludwig was my only friend, and it made me sick to see that outrageous get-up last night. I’ll find the man who did it, and a good sight quicker than he thinks, too. I only had one Devil costume, the one I let you have.’
I wasn’t sure what Schmettau was talking about. But he’d reminded me of a very simple fact that I’d foolishly overlooked: Schmettau knew who had been wearing what, as he had been in charge of handing out all the costumes and probably taking them back. I suddenly realized how important Schmettau was to me. This enthusiast of fortifications was the only man who knew all the disguises worn in Belgrade. True, he had no idea who could have dressed up as his one and only friend. Odd how the most wide-ranging knowledge is often useless in matters closest to the heart.
‘Were there any costumes left over?’ I asked. It was the most pointed question I could think of.
‘Of course. There were lots of things that no one wanted but only one Devil.’
‘Yet there were two at the ball!’ At last I realized that Schmettau was talking about the nastiest thing to have happened to me yet in Belgrade. ‘And the other devil?’ I ventured. ‘The other devil was Ludwig?’
‘No! Ludwig Wittgenau was the finest man alive. That revolting story our enemies cooked up was just idiotic enough for everyone to believe. Especially after …’
‘Especially after?’ I echoed encouragingly.
‘After his death, when Ludwig … You understand? People said the forces of darkness were at work. They said that Ludwig was the Devil himself, that it was the beginning of the Last Judgement.’
‘The Last Judgement.’
Suddenly he turned in the saddle and fixed a sharp eye upon me.
‘You’ve spent too much time disguised as the Devil not to know what the Last Judgement is.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, you understand much more than you let on.’ Then he spurred his horse forward.
3
Schmettau was getting away, and I wasn’t even trying to stop him. As it always does, the mention of the Last Judgement had knocked the wind out of me. Up came Novak.
‘I’ve been thinking, master. I was thinking about it earlier, too, but I didn’t tell you.’
Was it not prophesied that in the last days the best will lack all conviction while the worst will be full of passionate intensity? Had those days arrived? Of course not, I told myself consolingly; that’s the way things have always been.
‘Well done. No need to share your thoughts in future either.’
He disregarded this entirely.
‘I’ve been thinking about why you’d come to Belgrade. When you didn’t want to tell me the reason, I knew right away it must be something very important. And for you, as far as I can tell, the most important thing is fear. It’s your prime mover and therefore your greatest effect.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Right. And that ironic tone of yours is also fear and nothing but. The only difference is, when you’re not so afraid it comes out as irony. When you’re more afraid, it comes out as wickedness. When you’re not so afraid, you do your evil with twisted words. When you’re full of fear, you do it with deeds.’
‘A wise man have I for a servant, indeed.’
‘If you had a wise man for your servant, you’d be God. All you’ve got is a man who lives alone with all his hopes dashed and his wits still about him.’
‘What would God need with a servant?’
‘So then, I figured you’d come to see about the vampires. But I still couldn’t see why it had to be vampires. Then last night, over beer at the inn, I figured that part out, too.’
‘Once again the spirits have wrought their blessed work upon you, eh?’
‘You can use Heaven’s words for your own devices, and it won’t put me off one bit. I know you’re here on account of the Last Judgement.’
Twice in such a short time, the two most awful words in the world. It was more than I could bear.
‘You halfwit lackey! What do you know about the Last Judgement?’
‘I know that the dead are rising, and the Apostle John in his Revelation tells us this will be one of the signs of the Second Coming and the Last Judgement. That’s what got you all worried and brought you here to check whether the dead were truly coming back and turning into vampires. And you know that when Our Lord comes again, He shall judge us for all our sins. You first.’
‘For all our sins! There, you see! For our sins not for our good deeds.’
‘For he shall judge the world in righteou
sness and minister true judgement unto the people,’ he recited, nodding.
‘Are you expecting some sort of trial, something in accordance with law? Like in England, where the judges enter the courtroom and take a solemn oath on a great big book? And bang their gavels? With a defender on the left, and a prosecutor on the right? No! That’s not what happens. There’ll be no one there but Fishmouth. Breaking open the seals like his angels. The seals of judgements passed long ages ago. The ink of them almost gone, blotted out in tears of pain and suffering. But what does he care? Every word, every move, the least little act – he’ll read them all out. And he won’t ask you why you did it, or whether it was hard, or whether you could have done differently. He won’t let a single thing slip, that one. Don’t you believe it. There won’t be any court room, or anyone to defend you, or any acquittals either. For he’s made the whole world his courtroom, and no one to speak up for any one else. He himself shall be accuser and judge. There will be no law and no justice.’
‘But the law is the Devil’s, and justice is God’s. That’s how it should be, by justice and not by law.’
‘The law is mine indeed, and you may say that justice is his. Only, tell me, where are his judgements from one day to the next, when people need them, and where is this justice of his here on earth? Where is he to be found when men sit in judgement over others? Where is his saving help?’
‘The law is here in this world, and justice will come in the next.’
‘And I say unto you, when justice cometh, all shall be judged and found wanting.’ Having said this I fell silent. How could my servant, the awful man, not see that the Last Judgement meant the end of the world as we know it, and that I was bound to take the whole thing rather badly. I wanted to regain my composure. And I had nothing else to say about the matter.
Fishmouth. Fishmouth. Yes, how long ago it all was.
It was evening, not quite as hot as it can be in Jerusalem. I’d made my way up some narrow paths to the top of the Mount of Olives, knowing I’d find him there. Although I felt it was already too late, not just that night but too late for all nights.
‘Have you come here to forgive? Have you come to raise the dead? To heal the sick? To play at being Saviour? Who asked you, you toothless wretch? Who asked you, and who needs you?’
‘Sit,’ he said through his few remaining teeth. ‘Sit down, and we’ll have some wine.’
And I sat on a stone for pressing olives. Where he got the wine from I don’t know or can’t remember. But it was sweet, like all Samarian wines.
‘Love is the temple I have come to build.’
‘Aha, that means, “I shall build it in a day.” Fools fall in love in one day … Why, you’re nothing but a seducer, no better than the ones who ruin decent women, making promises and then not keeping them.’
‘Drink your wine and be quiet,’ he said.
It did occur to me that he might be trying to get me drunk. I thought I saw someone moving about in the olive grove below.
Fishmouth looked into his cup and spoke. ‘I have come for those who will drink from the cup they are given. For those who would not have that cup pass from them, even though they might.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. On your feet and come with me, head high, and deny your father.’ I grasped his hand. It was cold, lifeless.
Again I saw something flitting among the olive trees below.
‘If we leave now, everything will go on for ever. There won’t be any end of the world, or any Last Judgement, or any Hell …’
‘But there will be death,’ he said, turning a stern eye upon me.
I had a lump in my throat. I drained my cup of wine. None of his ridiculous disciples were around. On my way up I had passed Peter where he lay snoring. It might have been John eavesdropping; that was his style.
‘I’ve got a short sword under my cloak. They’ll be here soon. We can still get away.’
He looked at me for some time without speaking.
Down among the trees something moved again. It had to be John.
I never promised anything out of the ordinary. Those are the kind of promises one makes to simpletons and the mad. All I offered was to save his life, there on the Mount of Olives. All I wanted was to persuade him to flee the millstone. I never promised loaves of bread for stones, or flights through the air, or power and might. Never. They made all that up afterwards to make me seem greater and more terrifying. I had to be made into something unspeakably dangerous so he could be unspeakably good.
He didn’t move from the millstone.
‘I can’t go on like this,’ I nearly cried. ‘I can’t be afraid any more. I can’t think about Hell any more. Just call it all off now, and there won’t be any Hell. Let people do their living and dying. What more do they need?’
‘Hell is there where thou art, and where thou art there, too, is Hell. I cannot help you. I have come to vanquish death, and by death alone can I conquer. By my own death.’
He fell silent. For a long time he sat on that stone and did not speak.
4
‘Do you know when I’ll come back? I want you to know this. I’ll come back when men and women no longer spare a thought for Hell and when they’re sure at last I’m dead, that they’ve killed me. Yes, they’ll even proclaim it from the rooftops. I shall come when they have forgotten me.’
Just then came the soldiers of the Roman legion of Jerusalem, a centurion at their head.
‘I am Otto Maximus,’ said the fair-haired centurion. ‘I have orders from the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, to arrest Jesus of Nazareth.’
Fishmouth approached the centurion and stretched out his hands.
How the years have flown by since then. So swiftly. And I wager that in all that time, no one has thought more about Hell than I.
That’s right. Hell. Much later I heard what that Englishman said – the one who ended up on the wrong end of a knife in a pub over some lad. It was something similar to what Fishmouth said about me and Hell. I even heard one or two bits of our conversation being echoed here and there in other places. You’d think an entire crowd of people had been hiding nearby and listening that night.
But my servant truly was wise. He knew which way the wind was blowing. I’d brought him along because I’m no fool myself. Even the best-laid plans, the highest plans that Fishmouth and his father and the other one could come up with, still had to be carried out through ordinary mortals and their simple, predictable deeds.
‘What about Wittgenstein? Why is he important? Find out.’
‘Wittgenstein?’
‘Yes, Ludwig Wittgenstein was the only friend of Count Schmettau. Then something nasty happened to him, apparently twice. Talk to Schmettau’s servants.’
‘Now?’
‘Right now.’
He obeyed at once and fell back among the servants.
THREE
An Account of the Events, Containing Objections Against the Narrator (Silence Is Not Golden)
1
Then we passed through another gate and came out of the town into Unter Ratzenstadt. Novak was still chatting up the other servants, and no one was bothering me. I looked over Schmeddlesome’s bald head at the Sava. It was murky from the previous night’s storm. With every passing day the river had a different aspect. Didn’t that Greek, the one they call ‘the Obscure’, say you can’t step twice into the same river? There you have it, the ultima Thule of human knowledge. And the real point is that the same man cannot step twice into the same river or any other river for that matter. People are just as changeable as rivers.
Suddenly, between me and Schmidlin there appeared a figure on horseback. Dressed alla Turca. What was a Turk doing in Belgrade? I wondered. At first I couldn’t see his face. It was hidden by a great red turban. His caftan was of the finest velvet, embroidered all in pearls and mother-of-pearl, draping over most of the horse’s hindquarters. His stocking was as blue as turquoise, and his slipper curled out to a black pearl at the tip. Then
he turned to face me, and I recognized him at once. It was the Grand Vizier Yusuf Ibrahim. A massive ornament of mother-of-pearl adorned his turban with a blinding gleam, although there was no sun to reflect from it.
I remembered the vizier’s seal. It was divided in two: the first section was larger and inscribed with the words Yusuf Ibrahim, Faithful Servant of God. In the smaller section were the words In Silence Is Safety. What a cunning snare I once laid for this worthy Bosnian who’d made such a name for himself in Istanbul!
With silken words I had praised him to the sultan’s agents, and the words smoothly twisted themselves into a cord around the vizier’s neck. But then I was called away on other business, from the Levant to the Orient, and I set sail from the Golden Horn and left the matter behind. Later I heard that he had managed to escape the snare, and in gratitude to Allah (as if I were , or Shaitan) he had a bridge built over the River Žepa in his home country. Well, I could hardly let such a thing go unpunished. I sat down and penned him a letter, imitating the handwriting of one of his fellow-countrymen. In the letter I recommended an inscription to be carved into the bridge:
When Good Rule and Noble Skill
Did clasp hands together,
There rose this magnificent bridge,
Gladness of men’s hearts and good deed of Yusuf
In this world and the world to come.
Sometime later I was passing by the town of Žepa and stopped to rest on the stone railing of the bridge. The evening around me was cold, but the bridge was warm, still holding the heat of the sun within. But nowhere on the bridge was there any inscription. Again I said to myself that such a thing must not go unpunished …
But what could this Bosnian want from me now? Revenge? And what on earth was a grand vizier doing riding along with the Austrians? It suddenly occurred to me that he might be a phantom. Like one of the phantoms I had already encountered in Unter Ratzenstadt. He must not be visible to the others.
Fear and His Servant Page 11