The Brotherhood of Book Hunters

by Raphael Jerusalmy

  5

  There was nothing very Biblical about Acre. It was the kind of fortified town that could be found dotted all over France. Its crude ramparts, hastily hewn out of the rock, stood out against a clear sky filled with sparrows swooping in groups toward the refuse strewn over the quays. The harbor was small. Two ships swayed lazily in the heat, stirred by a light west wind. Sailors and soldiers strolled about, in search of the way to the taverns and the girls. Greasy barrels filled with olive oil, sacks of spices, and empty crates were heaped everywhere, abandoned to the rats. Neither François nor Colin felt the appropriate emotion. They did not prostrate themselves to kiss the sacred soil, buried as it was under all that detritus.

  François simply bent one knee, for form’s sake. He nevertheless felt a presence, or a breath, hovering above the roofs, stretching all the way to the slopes of Mount Carmel, covering the dunes that lined the coast. An invisible presence that was not necessarily God, but rather a kind of implacable radiance that made everything clearer, more established. Was it due to the dazzling light with its absence of shade? François had the impression that this harsh, arid land was challenging him. The gentleness of the banks of the Loire, the sad pallor of the northern plains, were conciliatory. They had always submitted docilely to rhyme. But how would he accommodate himself to the burning roughness of the stones, this harsh, uncompromising light? François rose to his full height, defying the brilliance of the sun, feeling the hot wind bake his cheeks. He was delighted with this challenge.

  Colin set off in front, towering over Arabs, Genoese, and Persians by at least a head. He was like a peacock crossing a farmyard. He plunged at random into an alleyway filled with turbans and helmets. François picked up his pouch and ran to catch up with him. He found him already arguing over the price of two mares with an inflexible nomad who kept shaking his head in exasperated refusal. Colin gesticulated, seeking a movement of the arm that meant “discount.” The nomad held out, stubbornly showing the sum required on his abacus. While François smiled affably and tried to turn on the charm, Colin scowled and rose to his full height, looming over the poor merchant. The price came down. Colin and François chose two saddles embroidered with richly colored patterns, woven and dyed by the women of the desert. Colin ordered the dealer to cut off the tufts of braided wool hanging from the harnesses. François nervously tried to hurry him along, advising him not to drag things out. A crowd had formed around the merchant, who was angry at these foreigners’ lack of decorum. He had been prepared to yield the animals to them for a sum much lower than the one they had just paid. That was not the point. It was their way of bargaining! Custom required that you take your time, negotiate, laugh, cry, lose your temper then resign yourself. And the crowd agreed with him, growing just as indignant.

  Colin and François leapt onto their mounts and, cutting through the angrily yelling throng, headed straight for the city gates. They paid the toll, passed the guards without any problem, and discovered an arid plain that stretched before them as far as the eye could see. François consulted the map that the Genoese novice had given him. The sun was still high. They could cover the distance before nightfall.

  Galloping across dunes and scrub, the two men reached the first hills of Galilee. Colin rode in front, staying off the beaten track and avoiding villages, often turning to inspect the surrounding ridges. The mares were slavering with exhaustion. They had to stop and find a watering place. From deep inside an olive grove, an Arab peasant watched these horsemen as they made the silence whistle and flew off in a cloud of dust. He waited for the sandy powder to settle before plunging back into his manual labor. He tried not to think about them again. What was the point? And yet a small part of him continued to ride with them, on the quiet, as if swept away by the wind.

  Colin suddenly gave the signal to stop. He placed a finger on his lips. A distant staccato murmur tickled his eardrums. A swirl of sand rose above the bushes lining the valley, and a troop of Mamluk soldiers appeared, their slender spears like the antennae of a swarm of bees. Light glittered on the coppery cones of their helmets. In spite of the distance, Colin and François noted that the detachment was following the furrow they themselves had just cut through the brambles. Without saying a word, the two men rode fast toward the hills.

  Late that afternoon, they approached the point indicated on their map.

  “It looks like Provence,” cried Colin above the thudding of hooves.

  “How right you are. Look up there!”

  A cross rose in the sky.

  “Good Lord, yes, rhymester, the noble cross of Christ!”

  Colin immediately slowed. He rose high in the saddle and started dusting off his clothes. François did the same. In spite of the stifling heat, both assumed a dignified air and bravely set off up the steep path that seemed to lead straight to the clouds. When they reached the promontory, they saw a decaying building. At the entrance, arms folded, stood a tall man, surrounded by scrawny hens hopping, cackling, chattering, and pecking at each other. The man remained impassive. Colin and François dismounted. In spite of the arrival of twilight, they made out a monk’s cowl and tonsure, rope sandals, and a boxwood rosary. Above, the great cross seemed to sway, its lines undulating in a hazy dew. A last ray of sunlight made the wrought iron flare like old brass then, sinking to the horizon, tinged it a darker, deeper red, like blood.

  Colin crossed himself and muttered a few pious formulas. The monk, reassured by this evident veneration, uncrossed his arms, and bade them welcome in Latin. François detected a popular intonation: this was more dog Latin than book Latin. The monk’s swollen paunch revealed the limits of his asceticism. This penitent enjoys his food, François told himself, and that means he’s at peace with the world.

  “Welcome, my lords. I am Paul de Tours, the prior. Let’s take these poor animals to the trough.”

  The garden of the cloister looked like a farmyard. Bales of straw were heaped at the feet of a Virgin with crumbling fingers. Clusters of garlic hung from the arches. A strong smell of fermented milk lingered in this devout spot. Access to the chapel was obstructed by thorny bundles of firewood, crackling with dryness. François and Colin followed the fat monk, who pulled up his habit and stepped over it all with unexpected agility. Inside, quite a different scene awaited the visitors.

  A dozen monks were standing at rudimentary lecterns cluttered with notebooks, ink bottles, and sheets of parchment. All around, on low shelves, bound books gleamed in the candlelight. In the middle, a candle illumined an old cat that lay curled up in a pool of white wax, dozing.

  Like a lord stretching his arms over his lands, Brother Paul pointed proudly at the nave. “The library!”

  Several bald craniums turned sternly to the intruders, examined them for a moment, then immediately plunged back into their reading. Their rough fingers scurried over the pages like insects, made their way between the paragraphs and the illuminations, foraged in the text, touched the commentaries, grazed the mysteries.

  François peered into the gloom, looking for the altar, the confessional, the baptismal font. There was nothing here but books.

  Six bells tolled, announcing mealtime. A cramped, windowless room served as a refectory. The prior blessed the vespers bread. The dinner guests noisily swallowed big mouthfuls of a thyme-flavored gruel, straight from the bowl. Once grace had been hastily recited, they hurried back to the chapel. The need to feed themselves seemed to be considered an exasperating waste of time.

  Sacrificing himself for the sake of hospitality, Brother Paul remained for a few moments in the company of the two guests. Starved, Colin and François devoured the rest of the bread, scoured the bottom of the cauldron, knocked back glassfuls of goat’s milk.

  “We are not accustomed to receiving visitors. The cohorts of pilgrims rarely come this way. Sanctimonious fools with their cheap crosses! Better to tread the ways of the heart, to explore the solitude of the soul, than to b
eat a path to the gates of Jerusalem.”

  The fat monk stood up and walked to an oak chest to which he alone had the key. From it, he took two liters of wine. Drinking only a gulp himself, he was amused at the swiftness with which Colin and François drained the rest straight from the bottle.

  François wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Will we be allowed to look at your precious books?”

  “That depends on Brother Médard, who is rarely in a good humor. He prays constantly for God’s creatures but hates their company. Even ours. He scolds us endlessly, reproaching us for mishandling the books, and for misreading them, reading them too quickly or too slowly.”

  François wondered if this was the very place where the books he had come to find, the books that would break down the defenses of Rome, were stored.

  Paul rose abruptly to his feet. He blessed the two men and smiled. “You can sleep here. There is straw over there in the corner.”

  The prior refused the crown offered by François as alms and left the refectory. A square of clear sky could briefly be glimpsed, then the door closed again on the stale smells and the stifling semidarkness. The banquet given in honor of the envoys of Louis XI had been frugal to say the least, their reception devoid of ceremony. Fust’s suppliers were a sorry sight. It seemed strange that the German should get his stocks from these ragged monks, especially as the works with which they supplied him undermined the integrity of the Church. And yet Brother Paul appeared to be a good Christian.

  Exhausted, Colin pushed his straw mattress against the wall and fell asleep, cursing his sad lot. François, though, was not offended at the frugality of this welcome. He had been dreading the idea of having to strut like a peacock at some dinner attended by diplomats or merchants. It little mattered if he went in through the main door or the back one, this was the threshold of a secret kingdom. He was sure of it.

  Tantalized, he took a last swig of communion wine, toasting his own shadow on the wall, then blew out the candle. He placed his tricorn on the floor and lay down in his turn. He did not close his eyes. His hands crossed behind his head, he smiled up at the thousands of stars he imagined on the other side of the roof.

  6

  A pale sun freed itself from the morning mist. Fleeting shadows of monks bustled about the courtyard. The door of the chapel was ajar. Inside, the spent candles gave off a chilly smell. François could not resist the desire to go and stroke the bound books and parchments. He entered the nave, seized a volume at random, opened it without reading it, and turned the pages with the tips of his fingers, as if passing his hand beneath a waterfall. A flood of black letters poured from page to page. No punctuation slowed or stopped this rushed, apparently meaningless calligraphy. François quivered with pleasure. Was it not thus that the word became poetry?

  “Get your filthy paws off that book, heathen!”

  In the doorway, a dwarf was hopping and gesticulating frantically. His huge head swayed at the end of a puny, twisted body, like a loose rattle. His complexion was pale, the skin crumpled like badly-wrung linen.

  “Brother Médard?”

  “I’m nobody’s brother!” he retorted, waving a stick as if about to strike the intruder. François looked at him for a moment with a nonchalant gaze then ran toward the dark nooks and crannies of the nave. Bursting with laughter, he made his way between the shelves that creaked beneath the weight of the clasped, studded and strapped volumes carelessly heaped on them.

  The dwarf came after him, beating the air. At the far end, a colossal door with steel hinges blocked François’s escape. It had only one lock, a massive one cast in one piece. Big nails hid the joints. To what was it guarding access? Unable to move, François leaned back against the imposing door, waiting resolutely for Médard, holding back his boyish giggles. In front of him, a thread of iridescent light pierced the stained glass window, lighting up a pedestal on which lay some books whose bindings were coated with beeswax, their edges gilded in fine gold. In this thin beam, he glimpsed, right at the top of the pile, the gold coat of arms of the Medici. It seemed to shine with its own light, like a talisman. The size of the book was impressive. It looked like an atlas. The other book, the one he had seen in Fust’s printing works, although thicker, had only been a quarto. But the emblem was similar in size and encircled by kabbalistic signs, as if struck from the same seal.

  Médard emerged at last and came and placed himself in front of François. He stood up on tiptoe, threateningly. A huge bronze key hung from his rope belt. Seeing its intricate surround, François, still with his back to the door, merely said, “You’re protecting your secret well, little monk.”

  The dwarf held his club at arm’s length, ready to strike. Brother Paul appeared. He advanced with measured steps and in a honeyed voice ordered François to leave the building. Outside, the brightness made him blink. François lowered his eyes to the ground. A shadow stood out on the fine gravel. François looked closely at it. It was that of a man crouching, perfectly motionless, as if lying in wait. François lifted his head. Blinded by the sun, he shielded his eyes with his hand. Perched on the roof of the barn, knees bent, an archer had him in his sights. François immediately rolled onto the ground to avoid the arrow. He took his knife from his boot, and rose to his full height to throw it. But the other man had not budged. And had not fired. His bow was still taut, aimed directly at François. If the knife hit him, he would release his grip and the arrow would go straight to its target. François hesitated, looking his adversary up and down. He was on the short side, although not a dwarf like Médard. He was too firm in his bearing. Impossible to see his face. A coat of mail hung from his pointed helmet, protecting his face. His chest was held in a tight leather doublet. He carried a sword at his side, curved and unsheathed, hanging from a knight’s belt. François curled his lips in a clownish grin and did a little dance step to throw his rival. He might as well have been tickling a marble statue. How to trick him?

  Brother Paul’s booming voice put an end to this unusual encounter. The archer immediately lowered his weapon, but François remained on his guard, knife in hand.

  The prior apologized. It was the commotion from the chapel that had alarmed the sentry. And Brother Médard’s yells.

  “A sentry?”

  Brother Paul tried to reassure François. “And a monk. In his way. In his spare time, he helps our scribes to transcribe the teaching of a great sage he calls the Buddha. His forefathers fought beside our Crusaders. Even today, many of his countrymen can be found in Syria, Lebanon, and Persia. They are highly prized for their skill with horses.”

  François let his gaze wander around the perimeter walls. They were pierced with arrow slits. There was no doubt about it. This place, bucolic in appearance, was a disguised fort. And defended by Mongol mercenaries to boot!

  Barely awake, Colin kicked his straw mattress away and cursed Villon, Guillaume Chartier, Louis XI, and God the Father. The bites of mosquitoes, the deafening song of the cicadas, and the ringing of bells had deprived him of a good night’s sleep. He couldn’t wait to leave this flea-ridden monastery, this cloister where the vapors of the summer heat fermented as if at the bottom of a vat of grapes. He felt trapped. Why should he rot here? What riled Colin most was his own stupidity. He had let himself be taken in by the magic of the words “Holy Land,” “Galilee,” “Jerusalem,” by the mystery this land kept hidden beneath its stones, by the wind that blew differently here than elsewhere. Oh, yes, that wind was so hot, it roasted your ass! Colin hated the heat, the harsh, almost blinding light, the smell of burning sand that had been oppressing him since his arrival. Not to mention the food, which was too spicy, pickled in olive oil or dried in the sun.

  Brother Paul burst into the refectory, followed by François, and took Colin’s arm. He understood his irritation, his desire to bolt for it as soon as possible.

  “A little patience, Master Colin. We are awaiting the arrival of a visitor wh
o is very eager to make your acquaintance.”

  7

  The Mamluk soldiers inspected the convoy. Three wagons pulled by mules. The first two overflowed with trinkets, glass jewelry, and wooden statuettes of saints. In the third, less heavily laden, were provisions, carters’ tools, a few books and a religious painting. The young Florentine merchant who was leading the expedition wore impeccable, richly embroidered clothes. A plume of long colored feathers hung on the side of his hexagonal hat. A leather strap knotted around his neck kept this extravagant headgear aloft. Beneath it sheltered a haughty, impassive face, typical of a Latin gentlemen. From his hand, with its slender, well-tended fingers, covered with huge rings, he negligently dropped a small purse then, without waiting, saluted the soldiers and signaled to the muleteers to continue on their way. In spite of his courtier’s attire, he nimbly remounted his horse with its glossy coat and bridle overloaded with pom-poms and bells. Astounded, the Mamluks followed the convoy with their eyes for a long time. They could still make out the flaming hues of the plume striping the austere ocher of the fields before disappearing into the groves lining the valley. It was only then that, out of sight beyond a bend in the road, the young merchant briefly dabbed the rivulets of sweat flooding his face and neck.

  He felt a keen sense of relief when at last he sighted the welcoming hump of the hill, the blunt tip of the old bell tower, the great rusty cross rising into the sky. It had taken enormous stamina and determination to get here. The war between the Venetians and the Turks had made the crossing more perilous than usual. On the Aegean Sea, the frail brigantine had somehow forced its way through fighting ships, Greek and Ottoman corsairs, Saracen pirates. Every time a sail was spotted in the distance, the captain would abruptly change course, and even threaten to turn back. But returning to Florence would have been just as hazardous, and the wind was unfavorable.