Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  Shaking his head at the folly of humanity, Niccolo watched this monstrous twin-apparition disappear. Even the terrible visions of Savonarola didn’t often reach such nightmarish intensity. What could it possibly portend? He snickered to himself. The French are coming?

  Niccolo stepped crisply over a pile of still-steaming horse dung that lay in his path. In an hour it would be frozen. In that respect, winter was the most merciful of seasons. “Frozen shit doesn’t smell,” was one of the maxims of Bernardo Machiavelli, a man more sorely afflicted by unpleasant odors than others of his time.

  As Niccolo approached the monastery, he began to have second thoughts. He might not be granted admission. After all, he reasoned, the friar is sure to be surrounded by a flock of nervous, protective monks. They have to be on the lookout for overzealous admirers crawling all over each other to touch the hem of his cloak. And assassins too. And then the friar didn’t know his name and wouldn’t recognize it if he were announced as Niccolo Machiavelli. Then Niccolo had a thought, and he stooped to scoop up a handful of week-old, dirty snow.

  He knocked and a timid young brother poked a tonsured head out from behind the door. His shaved, monkish head reminded Niccolo briefly of Pagolo and the ordeals he must be suffering. “Laudato sia Gesu Cristo,” the standard monastic salute. Niccolo gave the standard reply and received an inquiry as to his business.

  When he asked to see Fra Savonarola, the young monk clucked officiously, “Everyone wants to see Fra Girolamo. Everyone. We can’t just go letting anyone in. What do you want with him?” This last sentence was thrown down almost as a challenge.

  “It’s personal,” said Niccolo. “I’m an old friend. Would you ask him if he’d see me?”

  “Oh, indeed,” said the monklet, eyeing Niccolo with more than a little suspicion. Finally satisfying himself that Niccolo was neither some seeker of a miracle cure for leprosy nor a hired assassin, he relented. “And whom shall I say is calling?”

  “Here, give him this.” Niccolo thrust the dirty snowball into the gatekeeper’s fluttering hands. The nervous little monk jumped back in surprise and dropped the snowball as if it were a coal from the fires of hell. Niccolo patiently bent and retrieved it. He handed it over to the monk, gently this time: “Give him the snowball. He’ll understand.” . . . “Maybe,” he thought to himself.

  Satisfying himself that the visitor was unarmed, the monk allowed Niccolo inside to await the outcome of his suit. He left him in a colonnaded corridor that led to the refectory. Niccolo could appreciate the clean lines and the simplicity of the place. The noisy confusion that accompanies most human endeavor was effectively excluded from these cool, quiet corridors. When the doorman monk finally returned, the only thing he said was a curt, “Follow me.”

  He led Niccolo through the refectory where the monks took their plain meals and listened to the gospels as they ate. He led him through the washing room where they doused their bodies with cold, bracing water and where they meditated together each morning in a long row, perched atop the series of communal privies. He led him through a courtyard and up a set of stairs past a painting of the Annunciation, past paintings of Christ in various situations, past crucifixes and statues, past rows of doors that opened into tiny, austere cells, around a corner and past more cells. At the very end of the corridor was a wooden door like all the others. The monk indicated it with a reverential nod, and then stepped aside to let Niccolo pass.

  Niccolo wasn’t sure what to expect. He rapped once on the cold, varnished wood, and a small voice bade him enter. The friar was seated on a high-backed bench behind a writing table. A smile played over his lips as he looked from Niccolo to the lump of grey snow he had placed in front of him on the desk. Niccolo relaxed. He was in the presence of the Fra Girolamo of ten years ago, the small friar once laid low by snowballs—of all missiles, the lowliest and most humble. For the time being, at least, the mighty Savonarola, God’s personal scourge and the hellion of the pulpit, was safely contained somewhere inside this kindly, smiling presence.

  Savonarola spoke first: “I had hoped you were the one who rescued me and not the ones who launched the attack.”

  “Then you remember,” said Niccolo.

  “Oh, yes, quite well. How could I ever forget the first time I came to Florence—and the sort of reception she arranged for me? But that was a long time ago, and I bear her no grudge. Besides, there are citizens here like yourself, brave defenders of the weak.” He spoke in a sweet, low voice.

  Niccolo, at ease, recounted to the friar how afterward, the surly attackers had pursued him until he had to seek sanctuary in the church and remain there for some time to avoid their vengeance. Amused, the friar thanked him again for his troubles, then asked, “What is your name, my son?”

  “Niccolo Machiavelli.”

  “Perhaps I can someday return the service you did me, young Machiavelli?” And then, like a distracted man who had forgotten something and then suddenly, embarrassed, remembered it, he said, “Of course, did you come to ask some favor of me now?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Then why did you come?” He examined Niccolo as he awaited his response, fixing him with his green eyes, the same eyes that his more fanatical followers swore emitted little bursts of flame when he spoke. Niccolo looked into those eyes but felt no discomfort. They were opaque, almost blank. The huge orbs looked like two powerful lamps in which the wicks had been trimmed back and the flames turned down low, nearly extinguished—temporarily.

  “I came for no other reason, Father, than to satisfy my own curiosity,” he said abruptly. Then apologetically, “If you’re busy, I can leave. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “Not at all, not at all. Now tell me, just what is it that has aroused your curiosity?”

  “The first time we met, Father, I went to see you later that evening in the church here, to hear you preach. You’ll excuse me for saying so—I don’t know how to put it—but you were not then the preacher you’ve become today. In fact, the difference is so extraordinary that I wasn’t sure . . . I had trouble convincing myself . . .”

  Niccolo’s attempts at tact and circumspection brought a knowing smile to the friar’s face. He nodded in agreement and relieved Niccolo of the burden of further explanation. “And now that we’ve spoken, you’re satisfied that the two preachers were indeed the same person, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you still can’t believe the difference, right?”

  “There is that lingering element of disbelief, Father.”

  “When I was a child, Niccolo, I spoke as a child . . .” he trailed off and did not finish the quotation. Instead, he explained, “When I began preaching, I simply had nothing to say. I half-copied the sermons of others, I relied on my own weak inventions. But I had no message, nothing of substance to communicate. That was the preacher you saw so long ago, timid and unconvincing.

  “Then, three years ago, everything changed. I came back to Florence after an absence of many years. I was drawn here, Niccolo, compelled to come here by a will stronger than my own. In August of that year, I began to expound the Book of the Apocalypse. My message was simple and threefold: first, that the renovation of the church would come about in our time; second, that Italy would be punished by God for her iniquity; and third, that these things would happen soon. Anyone listening to me then would have noticed little change in my delivery. I still labored to get my conclusions across with logical arguments, appealing to men’s reason.

  “So for a while I proceeded in this way, for I didn’t dare reveal the truth. The truth was that these things had been revealed to me by God.” He said it as matter-of-factly as another man might say, “It’s raining.”

  As he spoke, his eyes frequently left Niccolo and came to rest on his crucifix. Firmly fixed in the center of the writing table, facing him, it was an imposing presence, half the height of a man. On it hung the naked, twisted, thorn-crowned body of Christ.

  “Concern and anger we
re growing in me. In a fever, one night, I composed a sermon—one revealing the true source of my knowledge and the urgency of my warning. I spared no detail, neither with regard to my frightening visions nor to their significance. But the next morning, reading what I had written, I felt I should suppress the sermon. As the sun was breaking and as I was praying, wearied from lack of sleep, a voice came to me: ‘Fool!’ it said. ‘Do you not see that I want you to announce these things, precisely in this way?’ That morning, I delivered a terrifying sermon. And since that time, I have not flinched. I have made myself an instrument of His will.”

  All this Savonarola recounted with the utmost serenity, never raising or inflecting his voice. Niccolo was dazed. He had never been in the presence of a spokesman for God before. He shivered involuntarily, both at the power of what he had just heard and at the cold that pervaded this bare monastic cell. Wholly absorbed in the friar’s tale, he had not noticed the chill before. But now he was becoming painfully aware of it, certain that it was colder in here than outside. There was a fireplace, but no fire. When Savonarola talked, the words left his thick lips in little clouds of steam. The snowball Niccolo had brought with him as a calling card was still there on the writing table. It had not even begun to melt.

  Changing the subject effortlessly, the friar asked Niccolo several questions about himself and his family. “And in what sort of business are you engaged now, my son?”

  “I have no business at present, Father,” said Niccolo haltingly. “I . . . study. I’m a student.”

  “And what is it you study? Medicine? The Law?”

  “I study history.”

  “As a student of history, are you interested in the political situation here in Florence?”

  “Oh, keenly, Father! Dreadfully! Passionately!” he said with all the exuberance of youth.

  “And have you chosen sides in the current . . . disputes?”

  On more familiar ground now, Niccolo did not hesitate to speak up: “Doesn’t the Book of Revelations admonish us in no uncertain terms to be either hot or cold, for the lukewarm He will spew out of His mouth?”

  Savonarola seemed impressed with the young man’s response, and indicated the paper laid out on his writing table. “This may be of interest to you, then. Come here, have a look at the title.”

  When Niccolo saw what Savonarola was working on, he could scarcely contain his excitement. He read, “Del reggimento del governo della cittá di Firenze.” It was a treatise on the way in which the city of Florence was to be governed! The monk did have a plan.

  “I’ve only just begun,” he said, “but the argument is already clearly laid out in my mind.”

  “Stretto or largo?” said Niccolo eagerly, going straight to the heart of the matter. He was referring to the difference of opinion on the question of representation in the city government: Governo stretto, or narrow, was advocated by the aristocrats, who favored a small ruling elite—themselves, of course—with a firm grip on the reins of power. A governo largo, or broad, would allow representation to be distributed more evenly throughout the body politic.

  “Not only, largo,” said Savonarola, aware of the young man’s enthusiasm, “larghissimo! As broad as possible! Impossibly broad, even!”

  And in the same measured tones he had used to relate his experiences with the sparks of divine inspiration, he lucidly explained his plan for broad-based representative government to replace the current tyranny in Florence. He envisioned a grand council, like that of Venice, but much larger, embracing all the people, even the most humble. Briefly, he sketched in the details—who would be represented, in what proportions, how the elections would be held, how often, and so on. Whether this too had been revealed to him directly by God, Niccolo did not dare ask.

  When he was finished, Niccolo had a question. “If the council is to be modeled on the one in Venice, then you’ve left something important out, haven’t you? The doge. Who will sit at the head of your grand council? Who will occupy the supreme seat?”

  “God will,” said Savonarola.

  Upon leaving the friar’s cell, Niccolo was in a state of profound perplexity. While he had managed to satisfy his curiosity about Savonarola on a number of counts, his interview with the enigmatic preacher had led to hopeless new dilemmas and contradictions. On the one hand, the friar had clear and exciting ideas, concrete ideas for real reform, a plan for a revolutionary kind of government. On the other, he proposed what amounted to a vacancy at the very top, where a strong leader had always been needed.

  And when Niccolo had questioned him as to the specifics of the transfer of power, just how to get Piero de’ Medici out and the new government of the people in, Savonarola had reverted to his visionary jargon of divine intervention and the coming scourge from across the Alps.

  To Niccolo’s consternation, Savonarola’s political thinking and his visions were inseparable; they formed a seamless whole. Everything fit together. He seemed to move effortlessly between heaven and earth. His speech was marked not by hope or confidence, but by absolute certainty. It was maddening.

  Niccolo would have preferred to find the friar a demagogue or a hypocrite, and indeed he had half expected that, too. He had long entertained the notion that the friar’s piety and preaching were the mere props behind an outright grab for power. That would have been easier to deal with. That would have been a man whose interests were clear, a man you could understand and negotiate with, a man whose moves you could anticipate. But Savonarola was not such a man.

  Savonarola was not the only preacher in town. Florence was a city in which trade had always flourished and the idea of competition, derived from commerce, had embedded itself deep in the Florentine character. So it comes as no surprise that even the friar had his competitors.

  Other preachers there had always been, and they had always arrayed themselves against the whole gamut of sinful behavior from loan sharking to what they charged was a peculiarly “Florentine vice”—sodomy. But Savonarola had changed the narrative. From whatever pulpit or street corner it came, the message now was generally the same: the coming scourge and repentance and warnings of imminent disaster were the order of the day, and those who were content to serve up milder fare in their sermons soon lost their audiences. The field quickly narrowed.

  Seeking to take advantage of the mounting popular hysteria and to redirect, if possible, the resultant outbreaks of religious zeal, Piero de’ Medici decided to fight fire with fire. He enlisted two proven rabble-rousers in his cause—Domenico da Ponzo and Bernardino da Feltre. The latter, Bernardino, specialized in one particular brand of invective: inciting the populace against the Jews. Although he succeeded at first in drawing large-enough crowds, he could not hold them. Frequently, he came to the pulpit drunk, and there was no urgency in his message. Like the poor, the Jews were always there, useful for stirring up a little resentment, convenient for averting a small-scale financial crisis, but not a real threat, not the sort of problem that demanded the divine physic with which Savonarola was threatening to purge the Italian peninsula.

  Out of curiosity, Niccolo had gone to see Fra Bernardino preach. Over the years, he had paid close attention to the conduct of Medici policy toward the Jews and was especially interested in anyone who might be involved in the execution of that policy. He was, in fact, on the trail of crimes committed over a decade ago. It was a cold trail now, but those crimes still burned in his memory, along with the image of their architect and perpetrator—the mysterious man who hissed like a serpent instead of talking and who went about his business so brutally, the business of administering lessssons in politicsssss.

  Fra Bernardino took the pulpit and obliged his audience to endure a long, rhetorical pause while he glared at them. He was a gaunt, hateful-looking man with small eyes. Eyes glued to the pulpit. Niccolo waited for the only detail that could give the murderer away—the sound of his voice.

  The first word of Fra Bernardino’s sermon was salvation. He pronounced it “Ssssssssalvation!” T
he thrill of discovery ran through Niccolo.

  “Ssssssalvation, O Sssssinners!” he intoned. Niccolo was beside himself. “Vengeance,” he thought. “Somehow, someway, the sword of the Lord, swift if not soon!”

  But a dawning realization brought an end to Niccolo’s triumph.

  Not only did Fra Bernardino hiss the s’s; he slurred the r’s and l’s, stumbled on the p’s and b’s, and swallowed all the vowels. The man was blind drunk.

  Disappointed, but with a quiet resolve, Niccolo left the church. He would continue his quest, he supposed, not actively, but not idly; not obsessively, but steadily—steadily, and perhaps someday . . . he would strike a blow for justice, a small gesture for a girl he would never see again.

  Drained, he turned his steps toward a familiar place, a place where energy and courage could be purchased by the pint—or the quart if need be. Business at the tavern lately had been off. Following the lead of Beatrice, many of the other prostitutes had forsaken their vocations and turned to more pious pursuits. It was uncanny. Savonarola’s calls for moral regeneration were actually being heeded.

  Since his initial discussion with Savonarola, Niccolo had become an intimate of the friar’s, if anybody could lay claim to intimacy with the strange, indecipherable monk. The friendship that sprung up between them was an odd one, but it gave Niccolo something in which he delighted beyond measure—the opportunity to talk politics. There were only two things worth talking about for a young man his age, and he and Savonarola had little to say to one another on the subject of women. In fact, in many things, in most things, they remained far apart. Savonarola was certainly aware of the distance separating them, but it was at the friar’s knee that Niccolo had his second lesson in politics.