“Oh, curse you, you man from hell! Curse you! Curse you a hundred times, you have stolen from me all that I loved on earth, where I will no longer be able to live. I know he has deceived me, the vile man, he has deceived me! If that were the case, oh! I would take my vengeance. No! Quick, let’s run over to the Moorish quarter. If that man were to ask me for a sum I don’t have, what then? Oh! It’s enough to be the death of me!”
He took the money the student had left on his counter and ran out.
As he made his way through the streets, he took in nothing of his surroundings; it all passed in front of his eyes like a phantasmagoria whose riddle he could not solve; he could hear neither the footfalls of the passers-by, nor the noise of the wheels on the cobbles; he was not thinking of anything, not dreaming of or seeing anything, except for one thing: books. He thought of the Mystery of St Michael, he pictured it in his imagination, broad and slender, its parchment adorned with gold letters; he tried to guess the number of pages that it must contain. His heart was beating violently like that of a man waiting for his death sentence. At last he arrived.
The student had not deceived him!
On an old Persian carpet full of holes were scattered on the ground a dozen or so old books. Giacomo, without speaking to the man who was sleeping at one side, lying on the ground like the books, and snoring in the sunshine, fell on his knees, started to run an anxious and attentive eye over the spines of all the books; then he stood up pale and downcast; he awoke the bookseller with a cry, and asked him:
“Hey, friend, don’t you have here the Mystery of St Michael?”
“What?” said the merchant opening his eyes. “Can’t you talk about a book I do have? Look!”
And he showed him a little bundle of unbound books tied together with string. Giacomo snapped the string angrily and read their titles in a second.
“Hell!” he said, “that’s not it. You haven’t sold it, by any chance? Oh, if you possess it, give it me, give it me! A hundred pistoles… two hundred… as much as you like.”
The bookseller looked at him in astonishment:
“Ah, perhaps you mean a little book I gave yesterday, for eight maravedis, to the priest of Oviedo cathedral?”
“Can you remember the title of that book?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t it the Mystery of St Michael?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
Giacomo staggered a few steps away, and fell into the dust, like a man exhausted by an apparition preying on him.
When he came round, it was evening, and the sun, which was glowing red on the horizon, was sinking; he picked himself up and returned home feeling sick and desperate.
A week later, Giacomo had not forgotten his unhappy deception, his wound was still fresh and bleeding; he had not slept a wink for three nights, for this was the day on which was to be sold the first book that had been printed in Spain, the only copy in the kingdom.
He had wanted to possess it for a long time. So he was happy, the day they announced to him that its owner was dead. But an anxiety was gnawing at his soul: Baptisto could buy it; Baptisto, who, for some time, had been filching from him, not his regular customers – he cared little enough about that – but all the rarities and novelties that appeared; Baptisto, whose renown he hated with an artist’s hatred. This man was becoming a burden to him. It was always he who swiped the manuscripts at the public sales: he would bid higher and get his prize. Oh, how often had the poor monk, in his dreams of ambition and pride, how often had he seen coming towards him the long hand of Baptisto, passing through the crowd, as on auction days, to snatch away a treasure that he had dreamt of for so long, that he had lusted after with so much love and selfish desire!
How many times too he was tempted to bring off with a crime what neither money nor patience had been able to achieve; but he repressed this idea in his heart, trying to deaden the hatred he bore that man, and fell asleep over his books.
As soon as the next morning came, he was outside the house in which the auction was to take place; he was there before the auditor, before the public, and before the sun.
As soon as the doors opened, he rushed to the stairs, ran up into the hall, and asked for that book. They showed it to him: it was already a real joy.
Oh! Never had he seen such a beautiful book, or one that he took such delight in: it was a Latin Bible, with Greek commentaries. He gazed at it and admired it more than all the others; he clutched it between his fingers with a bitter laugh, like a man dying of starvation at the sight of gold.
Never had he felt such strong desire, either: oh, how he would have liked then, even at the cost of all that he possessed, of his books, of his manuscripts, of his six hundred pistoles, at the cost of his blood, oh, how he would have liked to have that book, to sell everything, everything so as to have that book; to have it alone, but securely in his possession; to be able to show it to the whole of Spain, with an insulting and pitying laugh for the King, for the princes, for the scholars, for Baptisto, and to say: “It’s mine! this book is mine!” – and to hold it in his hands all his life long; to finger it as he was touching it, to smell it as he could smell it now, and to possess it as he was gazing on it!
Finally the time came. Baptisto was present, his face serene, looking calm and peaceful. They came to the book. At first Giacomo offered twenty pistoles. Baptisto said nothing and did not look at the Bible. Already the monk was reaching out to lay his hands on the book, which had cost him so little pain and anguish, when Baptisto began to say: “Forty.” Giacomo saw with horror his antagonist becoming more and more heated as the price rose higher and higher.
“Fifty!” he cried with all his strength.
“Sixty!” replied Baptisto.
“A hundred!”
“Four hundred!”
“Five hundred!” added the monk, enraged.
And while he was hopping up and down with impatience and anger, Baptisto was affecting an ironic and malicious calm. Already the shrill, broken voice of the auctioneer had repeated three times: “five hundred”, already Giacomo was feeling his happiness secured once more, when a breath from a man’s lips made him faint away. For the bookseller of the Plaça Reial, thrusting his way through the crowd, started to say: “Six hundred!” The auctioneer’s voice repeated: “six hundred”, four times, and no further voice replied. But at one of the ends of the table could be seen a man, with a pale brow and trembling hands, a man laughing bitterly with the laughter of the damned in Dante. He lowered his head, and his hand was thrust into his bosom; when he took it out, it was hot and wet, for there was flesh and blood at the tip of the fingernails.
The book was passed from hand to hand towards Baptisto. This book passed in front of Giacomo, he smelt its odour, he saw it moving for a swift instant before his eyes, then stop at a man who took it and opened it with a laugh. Then the monk lowered his head to hide his face, for he was weeping…
As he walked back through the streets, his gait was slow and laboured; he had a strange, stupid expression; his demeanour was grotesque and ridiculous; he looked like a drunken man, for he was tottering: his eyes were half closed, his eyelids red and burning, sweat was coursing down his forehead, and he was stammering between his teeth like a man who has had too much to drink, and who has enjoyed more than his share of the festive feast.
His thoughts were no longer his own; they wandered like his body, without aim or intention; they were tottering, irresolute, heavy and bizarre; his head was as hot as flames; his brow was burning like a blaze.
Yes, he was drunk from what he had experienced; he was weary of his days; he was sated with life.
That day was a Sunday: the ordinary folk were walking through the streets chatting and singing. The poor monk heard the conversations and the songs; he picked up a few scraps of phrases, a few words, a few cries; but it seemed to him that it was always the same sound and the same voice: it was a vague, indistinct hubbub, a bizarre and noisy gust of wind, which buzzed in his bra
in and oppressed him.
“Look,” said a man to his neighbour, “have you heard the story of that poor priest of Oviedo who was found strangled in his bed?”
Here, there was a group of women enjoying the cool of the evening, standing at their doors. This is what Giacomo heard as he walked past:
“I say, Martha, do you know there was in Salamanca a rich young man, Don Bernardo, you know? The one who, when he came here, a few days ago, had such a pretty, finely caparisoned black mule, and who made her paw the cobbles; well! Poor young man, they told me this morning, at church, that he was dead!”
“Dead?” said a girl.
“Yes, child,” answered the woman. “He died here, at St Peter’s hostel. At first, he felt a pain in his head; then he had a fever and, four days after, he was buried.”
Giacomo heard others chattering too. All these memories made him tremble, and a smile of ferocity came and lingered on his lips.
The monk returned home, exhausted and ill; he lay on the ground under the bench of his counter and slept; his breast was oppressed, a raucous hollow sound came from his throat; he awoke with a fever; a horrible nightmare had drained his strength. It was night then, and eleven o’clock had just chimed from the neighbouring church. Giacomo heard shouts: “Fire! Fire!” He opened his windows, went out into the streets, and there indeed he could see flames rising over the rooftops. He returned home, and he was about to take his lamp to go into his shop, when he heard, outside his windows, men running past saying: “It’s on the Plaça Reial, the fire is at Baptisto’s.”
The monk shuddered, laughter exploded from the depths of his heart, and he made his way with the crowd to the bookseller’s house. The house was on fire, the flames were rising high and terrible, and, driven by the winds, they were leaping up towards the fine blue Spanish sky that hung over the agitation and tumult of Barcelona, like a veil covering tears.
A half-naked man could be seen; he was grief-stricken, tearing out his hair, rolling on the ground blaspheming God and howling with rage and despair. It was Baptisto. The monk contemplated his despair and his cries with calm and contentment, with the ferocious laughter of the child laughing at the torture of the butterfly whose wings he has ripped off.
In an elevated apartment, flames could be seen burning a few bundles of paper. Giacomo took a ladder, leant it against the blackened and tottering wall. The ladder shook beneath his steps; he ran up it, reached that window. Damnation! It was just a few old books from the shop, without value or merit. What could he do? He had gone in. He had either to go on through that fiery atmosphere, or come back down the ladder whose wood was starting to get hot. No! He went on.
He crossed several rooms; the floor was trembling beneath his feet, the doors fell in when he approached them, the joists collapsed around his head. He ran through the middle of the fire, panting and furious. He had to have that book! He had to have it or die! He didn’t know which way to run, but he kept going; finally, he arrived in front of a partition that was intact, he kicked it in, and saw a dark, narrow apartment. He felt his way around, felt a few books under his fingers; he touched one, seized it and ran from the room with it. It was the one! The Mystery of St Michael! He retraced his steps, like a man in a dazed delirium. He jumped across the holes, he flew between the flames, but he could not find the ladder he had put up against the wall; he reached a window and climbed down out of it, clinging with hands and knees to the curves. His clothes were starting to catch fire and, when he arrived in the street, he rolled in the gutter to extinguish the flames burning him.
A few months passed by, and no one heard any more of the bookseller Giacomo, except as one of those strange and singular men the multitude laughs at in the streets, unable to understand their passions and eccentricities.
Spain was preoccupied with graver and more serious matters, an evil genius seemed to be weighing down on her. Every day, new murders and new crimes, and it all seemed to come from an invisible, hidden hand; there was a dagger hanging over every roof and every family; there were people suddenly disappearing, without leaving any trace of the blood that their wounds had shed; a man would set out on a journey and not return.
No one knew what was the cause of this horrible scourge; for misfortune must be traced to someone else, but good fortune to oneself.
Indeed, there are days that are so ill-fated in life, periods so disastrous for men that, not knowing whose head to call down their curses on, people cry out to heaven. It was in periods that brought unhappiness to the populace that there was a strong belief in fate.
An alert and zealous police had tried, it is true, to discover the author of all these misdeeds. Hired spies had gained entry to every house, had listened to every word, heard every cry, observed every glance, and had learnt nothing. The prosecutor had opened every letter, broken all seals, searched every corner, and had found nothing.
One morning, however, Barcelona had taken off its mourning dress to go and pile into the halls of Justice, where sentence of death was about to be passed on the one who was alleged to be the author of all these horrible murders. The populace hid its tears in convulsive laughter; for when you suffer and weep, it is a consolation, admittedly a selfish one, but in the last analysis quite real, to see other sufferings and other tears.
Poor Giacomo, so calm and so peaceable, was accused of having burnt down Baptisto’s house and stealing his Bible. He was also accused of a thousand other crimes. So there he was, sitting in the murderers’ and brigands’ dock; he, the honest bibliophile, he, poor Giacomo, he who only ever thought of his books, was thus implicated in the mysteries of murder and the scaffold.
The room thronged with people. Finally, the prosecutor rose and read out his report; it was long and diffuse; it was barely possible to make out the main story from the parentheses and reflections. The prosecutor said that he had found, in Giacomo’s house, the Bible belonging to Baptisto, since this Bible was the only one in Spain. Now it was probable that it was Giacomo who had set fire to Baptisto’s house, to get his hands on this rare and precious book. He stopped speaking and sat down, out of breath.
As for the monk, he was calm and peaceful, and did not deign to glance at the multitude hurling insults at him.
His lawyer rose, he spoke at length and with eloquence. Finally, when he thought he had shaken his audience, he lifted his robe and drew from it a book; he opened it and showed it to the public: it was another copy of that same Bible.
Giacomo cried aloud, and fell back onto his seat in the dock, tearing out his hair. It was a critical moment, everyone was awaiting a word from the defendant, but not a single sound emerged from his mouth. Finally, he sat down, looking at his judges and his lawyer like a man just awakening. He was asked whether he was guilty of having set fire to Baptisto’s house.
“No, alas!” he replied.
“No?”
“But aren’t you going to sentence me? Oh, sentence me, I beg you! Life is a burden to me, my lawyer has lied to you, don’t believe him. Oh! Sentence me, I killed Don Bernardo, I killed the priest, I stole the book, the unique book, for there are not two copies in the whole of Spain. My lords, kill me, I am a wretch.”
His lawyer came up to him, and said, showing him that Bible:
“I can save you, look!”
“Oh! To think I believed it was the only one in Spain!” Giacomo took the book and gazed at it: “Oh! Tell me, tell me that you have deceived me. My curse on you!”
And he fell down in a faint.
The judges came back and pronounced his death sentence. Giacomo heard it without flinching, and he appeared even calmer and quieter. He was told there was still hope if he would ask for a reprieve from the Pope, it would perhaps be granted to him. He refused, and merely asked for his library to be given to the man who had the most books in Spain.
Then, when the populace had filed out, he asked his lawyer to be kind enough to lend him his book. The lawyer handed it to him.
Giacomo took it lovingly, shed
a few tears on the dog-eaten pages, angrily tore it up, and then hurled the pieces into his defender’s face, saying to him:
“You lied, friend lawyer! I did tell you that it was the only one in Spain!”
November
Fragments in a Nondescript Style
“…to indulge in foolery and fantastication.”
Montaigne*
I LOVE THE AUTUMN – that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you.
I have just returned from my habitual walk across the empty meadows, along the cold ditches in whose waters the willows gaze on their reflections; the wind whistled through their bare branches, sometimes falling silent only to resume all of a sudden; then the little leaves still clinging to the bushes trembled anew, the grass shivered as its stalks bent down to the earth, and everything seemed to grow paler and icier; on the horizon the sun’s disc melded into the overall whiteness of the sky, shedding around it a wan hint of fading vitality. I was cold and almost afraid.
I took shelter behind a grassy knoll; the wind had dropped. I don’t know why, but as I sat on the ground, thinking of nothing and watching the smoke rise from the thatched roofs in the distance, my whole life rose up before me like a phantom, and the bitter fragrance of bygone days came back to me, with an odour of dried grass and dead trees; the years of my paltry life passed before me, as if swept along by winter’s pitiful blast; some dread force drove them willy-nilly through my mind, with more fury than the gusts of wind chasing the leaves down the peaceful country paths; some strange irony brushed against them and turned them over for me to gaze at, and then they all flew off together and faded away into the overcast sky.
Memoirs of a Madman and November Page 9