The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  The room where the alloys were made was the heart of our activity. Ravand watched over it in person, equipped with mortars and assay balances. He needed only one man to help him: a thin old German, covered with scurf. His many years breathing the noxious fumes of mercury, antimony, and lead had poisoned him, and indeed he died a few months later.

  Ravand taught me everything, with patience and enthusiasm. In the beginning, the adventure went to my head. The red flames of the forge, the hot gold bubbling in marble crucibles, the shine of pure silver and its capacity to resist alteration from other metals by imposing its color and brilliance, even when it was in great minority—all of this caused a new heart to beat in the anemic body of our town. From here departed the streams of coins that would go on to circulate throughout the realm and beyond. It was as if I were the keeper of a magic power.

  And yet it took me only a few weeks to discover the truth. It was not as shiny as the new coins that jangled as they fell into our coffers. The breadth of our activity concealed the meanness of our methods. For at the heart of the manufacturing secrets that Ravand revealed to me was another secret, even more closely guarded: we were deceiving the king. When he ordered us to cast twenty-four coins to the mark, we made thirty. We delivered the twenty-four coins as ordered and kept the rest for ourselves. It was easy and very profitable.

  Oddly enough, I had never dealt in crime until then. My father had always made it a point of honor not to cheat his customers, although they suspected him of it all the same. Everyone, in fact, would have found it perfectly normal for him to get rich in this way. His satisfaction came from never selling his work for more than its just value. His profit was purely moral, and his only reward was the pride of knowing he was an honest man. As for Léodepart, he was too wealthy to run the risk of resorting to villainous methods. In short, I assumed that dishonest means were expedients to which only the destitute or chronically impoverished would resort. And now Ravand was showing me another world: one could be involved in matters of great importance, minting the money of the realm, and yet still indulge in the base practices of scoundrels of the lowest sort.

  And when I did express my surprise, he explained that it was common practice. Thanks to Ravand, I discovered there was a war being fought among the minters working in neighboring regions. In Rouen or Paris, on behalf of the Englishman who claimed to reign (as in Dijon, where the Duke of Burgundy on his vast lands depended on no one), coins were minted that were intentionally of a very low standard. When these coins came our way, to the lands that were faithful to King Charles, they were exchanged against our own, which had a much higher content of fine metal. With these superior coins the merchants returned to their own lands, richer at our expense. By minting coins of too high a standard, we were impoverishing the kingdom and allowing precious metal to pass into the hands of the very princes who were at war with our king. Ravand managed to persuade me that by resorting to fraud to enrich ourselves at the king’s expense, we were actually doing him a favor, albeit he had entrusted us with this employ. And I believed him, until that spring afternoon when a detachment of ten of the king’s men-at-arms came to arrest us in our workshop and throw us in prison.

  Ravand greeted this judgment with great serenity. I would subsequently learn, too late, that he had been at risk of arrest on numerous occasions. It was in order to avoid a heavy sentence that he had fled from Rouen and ended up in our town.

  For me, this imprisonment was a harsh ordeal. Hardest of all was the shame, of course. We hid it from my children, but their playmates answered their questions soon enough. I was in despair at the thought that the entire town now took me for a thief. Much later I would learn that, on the contrary, this ordeal had merely added to my prestige. In the eyes of the majority, it was as if I had undergone an initiatory rite: I had looked straight at the black sun of power, close up; I had felt its heat and stolen its secrets. With my in-laws the damage was much greater: from the start my father-in-law had viewed my alliance with a stranger as foolhardy. With my imprisonment foolhardiness had become sin. I was convinced that on leaving this place—if I ever left this place—it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find an honorable position in the town that had witnessed my dishonor and my fall. I could not conceive of any future other than flight.

  As for the discomfort of detention, I bore that more easily than the torment of moral scruples. I was taken to a cell in the Duke’s palace. It was, naturally, dark and damp. But I had had my fill from birth of darkness and dampness, and so the prison seemed no more than a simple extension of my gray, rainy destiny. I did not suffer from the destitution; on the contrary, I came to realize that comfort, a wealth of fine fare and clothing, the ministrations of numerous servants, and everything I had thought was important was, in fact, a needless burden. Prison, for me, was an experience of freedom.

  I was treated well, or not too badly. I was alone in my cell, and I had a table and chair at my disposition. I was allowed to write to Macé and even make arrangements for my business. Above all, I had a great deal of time to meditate, and I drew up a lucid evaluation of these early years of adulthood.

  I was already over thirty. There were not many moments that stood out from the ten years that had just passed, other than moments of happiness, such as the birth of our children, or certain hours spent in the countryside with Macé. On several occasions we had gone alone on horseback to the ring of villages that surrounded the town and which were known as La Septaine. It was rather unwise of us, because nowhere was safe in the kingdom. Gangs were known to go as far as the edge of town. But we enjoyed the risk, which, when all was said and done, was moderate. My father-in-law had bequeathed us a country house in the middle of a birch forest where we left a few guards. We went there to sleep and to share our love.

  The rest of those years did not leave any outstanding memories. This was cruel proof that my desires and deeds were hardly ambitious. I had undertaken, indeed hoped for, only minor affairs, on the scale of our small town. Capital by default of a king without a crown, the town acted as if it were important, and in that way I resembled it. Even my association with Ravand, in which I had placed such great hopes, was nothing but an illusion. Reality was far less colorful: we were petty crooks. We were obtaining personal profit through betrayal. We had been entrusted with a mission and we chose not to fulfill it as we should have. This meant we were despoiling not only our king, but the entire populace. I was acquainted with the work of a monk, Nicolas Oresme. He had shown that bad coinage enfeebles trade and ruins kingdoms. Thus, not only had we tried to serve ourselves by pilfering from the common wealth, we had also broken the wheels of the carriage we had been asked to drive. We were miserable wretches.

  Fortunately for me, Ravand was locked up in another cell and we were not in contact. This allowed me to think on my own and draw my conclusions before he was able to influence me. For when we were released, I found him smiling, full of optimism, and ready to start all over. According to him, the situation was far more complicated than I realized, and far better. He had obtained our release by paying the king’s men. To hear him talk, our only mistake had been to forget a few highly placed personalities when distributing our bribes. He tried again to convince me that adulterating the coinage was a profitable business for everyone. We were the first to benefit, but all those whom we paid to close their eyes, beginning with the princes, were eating at the same table. I would later have cause to remember this lesson.

  For the time being I remained convinced, however, that I had committed a grave crime, and that my sin was one of both mediocrity and a lack of honor. With hindsight I can affirm that this conclusion was my salvation. It gave me the will to conceive a radical solution. Without it I would not have come so easily to my decision. Instead, I remained faithful to the oath I had taken in the silence of my jail cell: as soon as I got out, I would leave.

  The necessity of departure was not solely the result of the shame I fel
t. It had been there long before—perhaps it had always been there. For as long as I could remember, I had always wanted to leave this land where I had been cast by birth, where only grayness, fear, and injustice reigned. The mad king might be dead, but his curse continued to afflict the country. While in prison I learned that a new manifestation of his folly had recently appeared. My jailers told me that a young girl of eighteen, a simple shepherdess in a village in the borderlands of the East with neither fame nor education, had commended herself to God to save the realm. And the sovereign, driven to defeat and on the verge of losing Orléans, had placed this woman called Joan of Arc at the head of his armies. The father’s madness had certainly spread to the son, so much so that he was calling upon succubi, entrusting them with the fate of the realm . . .

  To flee this madness! To cast off the chains that bound me to the fate of a country ravaged by lunacy. Chivalry had left behind the ancestral framework which had once ensured it of a wisdom shared equally with laborers and priests. Now brute force knew neither limits nor reason.

  I had enough information to find my way out. The Levant that I had long envisioned: I knew of ways to get there. Perhaps this was the only advantage of the early years in my trade, that I had heard innumerable travelers’ tales. In that peaceful time I may not have been able to imagine anything other than putting down roots where I was, but a part of me continued the quest for the unknown. The leopard I had seen so long ago had not been reincarnated either in Léodepart or in Ravand’s melted gold. It continued to show me the road to Arabia. Nothing could stop me from taking that road.

  *

  After the ordeal of my incarceration, Macé was subjected to the ordeal of my departure. I had thought about it for a long time. I felt it was absolutely necessary to leave, and, determined to tolerate no obstacles, I would crush them all. The most difficult one, however, was the silence my wife and children set before me. Not for a moment did Macé show any sorrow to see me abandoning her for a journey from which I might not return, nor did she oppose me. It was one of her greatest qualities that she devoted herself not only to love, but also to the man who was its object. Macé loved me when I was happy. When I was free. She loved me alive, vibrant with plans and desires. I had been telling her about the Levant for a long time. I spoke to her about it in the evening, in the springtime, during the walks we took in the country, by the shore of the pond. I spoke to her about it in the depths of dark, muddy winter, in the cold air as we listened to the sinister bourdon of the cathedral. I spoke to her about it as a dream carried all through childhood, but which I had grown accustomed to seeing as something that would stay forever in the confines of my imagination. It is quite possible that I communicated my passion to her. She was, as I have said, a silent woman, attentive to others, with the reserve and detachment and faraway gaze that showed how absorbed she was, in herself, by all sorts of thoughts and images that she did not share.

  When on leaving the prison I informed her that I would be leaving the next month for the Levant, she stroked my face, looked deeply into my eyes, and gave me a smile which at no time seemed pained. I even wondered for a moment whether she would suggest coming with me. But our children held her back, and she was not the kind of person who would want to put her dreams to the test of the world at any cost. To be sure, she envied me, and she was too wise not to know that my absence would be painful to her. But deep within I remain convinced that she was happy for me.

  We prepared my journey in secret. We could not alarm the children, nor provoke a commotion in the family. To safeguard their future, Macé urged me to take care not to arouse any additional anxiety among our business relations.

  We discussed together what sort of dispositions I must take for the journey. She was in favor of the presence of an armed guard at my side. Still, according to the travelers’ tales I had heard, if I took the road from Le Puy-en-Velay then went along the wide Rhone valley as far as Narbonne, I would have nothing to fear. It is true that there were gangs of écorcheurs who sometimes went that way. But an escort might merely attract their attention and arouse their greed, without being sure for all that of protecting me from assault. A modest tradesman going to visit a relative would make a less interesting victim. Therefore I set off with only a valet for company. I left on horseback, a robust but rustic mount, something of a workhorse, which would not attract the attention of thieves, either. Gautier, my servant, rode behind on a mule.

  We left one morning at dawn, the week after Easter. The festivities of the resurrection were filling people’s hearts with hope. Although my own heart had never been very open to faith, I shared the general cheer as a favorable sign. The time of the resurrection is also that of springtime. The longer days, the purity of colors, the rising sap might have been so many reasons to hold me back. Yet they had the opposite effect, hastening my departure. The children found out at last that I was leaving, but they were too young to appreciate the length of time they would be deprived of my presence. Macé and I had made our long farewells during that last night. I promised her I would be careful; I promised her my love, and she responded with similar vows.

  Gautier and I stopped at noon to share some bread by the side of the straight road, as it headed due south. We had not yet turned to look behind us. When we cast our gaze in the direction of the town, we discovered that it had already disappeared behind the rolling fields covered with wheat in the blade. Only the cathedral towers were still visible. Through the entire journey, this was the only time I succumbed to tears.

  The rest of the way through the mountains of the Auvergne was tranquil and lovely. These regions had not suffered as greatly as the north of the country, where there was fighting with the English. Only the occasional armed gang had passed through, causing damage here and there. We met no one, but at the farms where we stopped we sometimes heard terrible stories. The gangs were often led by lords who had placed their swords in the service of princes. The men joined those who paid best, and changed their allegiance according to the conditions offered. These knights without honor had their entrenched camps where they stayed with their mercenaries and stashed the plunder of their campaigns. Some of these lairs were veritable fortresses, where warlords held court and indulged in every excess without fear of incurring the slightest punishment. In my opinion, this was additional proof that the world had gone mad. At the same time, I would have liked—though I did not wish it for all that—to be able to see with my own eyes what these depraved warlords were like. It seemed to me that in the lives of these brigand knights there was a will to be free of discipline and destiny that was not completely unlike my own ambition. But we reached the Rhone without meeting a single one.

  Our town is at the confluence of streams, and I had never seen a great river. As we rode along this one, on the Regordane Way, I could not take my eyes from the powerful waters. It was as if they were already giving me an idea of what the sea must be like. Spring had come early and it was warm. The riverbanks were bright with blossoming fruit trees. Soon we saw species that were unknown in my region, or found it hard to grow there: cypress trees, planted in meadows like little green steeples; oleander, and olive trees, of a green paler than that of the trees at home; bamboo, growing to considerable height . . . Everything was different from my homeland, the Berry. The forests were not dark; insects, in the meadows, were noisier than birds; the moors were not overgrown with fern and heather but with dry clumps of fragrant herbs. The people we met spoke an Occitan dialect, which was very different from our language, and we could hardly understand them. Like elsewhere, war had spread mistrust and fear of misfortune. And yet the inhabitants’ smiling good nature had been preserved.

  The farther we rode, Gautier and I, the more alike we became. The heat had made us take off our warm clothes, and we were like two brothers in our shirtsleeves. But for the difference in our mounts, nothing would have distinguished servant from master. We were mostly silent along the way, because Gautier was
not particularly talkative. Lulled by the horse’s gait, I turned my thoughts over and over in my mind, at random. When I considered the first thirty-two years of my life, I was astonished to see how little they resembled the man who was discovering himself with each step of this journey. Stripped of everything in this scorching landscape, I felt within me an appetite for freedom, which made it all the more astonishing how little freedom I had enjoyed up until then.

  I had only ever known the people from my own town, except for Ravand and a few rare merchants. I knew their background, their family, their position, and I could guess their thoughts. Before my departure I would have said that such references were necessary for human exchange. And yet now, as an anonymous voyager, with no external marks of fortune or position, fearlessly and with great curiosity I went up to the people whom chance placed on my path, knowing nothing about them. These exchanges between stranger and stranger turned out to be infinitely richer than the usual commerce between people who already know everything about each other.

  I had always slept in the shelter of thick walls and closed doors; I had been born in a carapace of a town, one which seemed necessary to survival. Now, in the warm regions we were passing through, despite the cool nights we adopted the habit of sleeping outside. I discovered the sky. Back at home, stars were hidden by clouds most of the time. I used to gaze at them for a moment after supper on a summer’s night before going back into the enclosure of a house. On my journey, I surrendered to the night. Once our campfire had died, leaving nothing but embers, and the earth was completely dark, the stars called to us, blindingly bright against a black sky free of clouds. I felt as if I had broken out of my shell. I might have been the last of those stars, the most insignificant and ephemeral of all thoughts, but, like them, I was drifting in a vast space without boundaries or walls. When we rode into Montpellier, I had become another man: myself.