The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  I felt a call deep inside to join that caravan. I am not mystical by nature; it is my habit, rather, to remain master of my feelings. And yet this time I was overwhelmed. It was my conviction—and nothing had prepared me for it—that in that very moment I had met my destiny. I had already sacrificed a great deal to reach the Levant, the place of all possibility, the promised land of my dreams, but I was only halfway there, so to speak. I could still sever the last ties which connected me to my former life—abandon the galley, leave for the unknown and surrender to its decrees. This caravan, all of a sudden, had come to show me which way to go.

  I wandered among the camels, grazing their manes with my fingertips; I was subjected to terrible temptation. I went deeper and deeper into the compact mass of animals as they stamped the dust, impatient for the departure signal. It would be given at dusk. All day long my companions looked for me, for our little troop was due to leave at the same time for Damascus, which was not very far away. When they found me, initially I refused to follow them and remained deaf to their questions. They thought some mysterious ailment had deprived me of my reason and perhaps my understanding. In the end I stayed with them, but I lay motionless for many hours, distraught, lost in thought, my face distorted in a grimace of pain.

  Finally the memory of Macé and our children prevailed, and I gathered enough strength to cast off the temptation to leave, never to return. My companions rejoiced to see I was once again myself and had finally agreed to go with them. But they had no inkling of the conflict that had taken place inside me. How could I explain to them that I had just rejected the myriad lives I could have lived, in favor of the one life to which my prospects would now be limited? Inside I was suffering, mourning for those imaginary destinies. I had left for Damascus, my desires countless, and now I would arrive there stripped of those promises. There was only one thing left to do: to take the only life given me and strive to make it rich and happy. That would already be a great deal, but it would be so little.

  I had put the leopard back into his bag for a long time.

  *

  It was my good fortune that this crisis occurred at the outskirts of Damascus. To enter such a city at a time when I felt I was beginning a new life that was deprived of all the others was a consolation and a joy. What I hadn’t felt in Beirut was even more obvious in Damascus: this city was truly the center of the world.

  And yet it had suffered serious destruction, not merely as a result of the wars against the Franks but also of Turkish incursions. The most recent of these, a few years before my visit, was that of Tamerlane: he had torched the city. Ebony beams and sandarac varnish had gone up in flames. Only the great Mosque of the Umayyads had survived the disaster. The city had not yet been completely rebuilt when I arrived there. And yet it exuded an impression of power and unequaled wealth. It was the primary destination for the caravans, and its markets were overflowing with all the wonders that human industry can produce. The mixture of races was even more astonishing than in Beirut. It was said that the Christians had been put to the sword by the Mongols until there were none left. But many Latin merchants had returned and could be seen about the streets. Franciscan monks from France, the Cordeliers, welcomed us at a monastery they kept at the disposal of pilgrims and Christians passing through. Damascus was linked to Cairo and many other towns by a service of rapid couriers mounted on camels. We received news of our companions who had stayed in Egypt and were able to send them our news.

  Above all, Damascus had a wealth of fabulous gardens. This art, taken to the most extreme refinement, seemed to me on a par with architecture as the sign of a great civilization. The noblemen in our parts, locked away in their fortresses and constantly threatened with plunder, did not have the leisure to arrange the earth in the way they arranged stone. We knew only two worlds: the town or the country. Between the two, the Arabs had invented the ordered, welcoming place of enclosed nature that is the garden. To do this, they had simply reversed all the qualities of the desert. They had replaced its vast openness with the protection of high walls; burning sun with cool shadow; silence with the murmuring of birds; drought and thirst with the purity of cool springs flowing in myriad fountains.

  In Damascus we discovered many other refinements—in particular, the steam bath. I took one almost every day and experienced an unknown pleasure. Never, until then, had I allowed myself to think that one’s body could, in and of itself, be an object of pleasure. Since childhood we had been accustomed to keeping our bodies covered and hidden. The use of water was a painful obligation in a climate like ours, because most often it was cold, and our baths were rare. Contact between the sexes always took place in the obscurity of canopied beds. Mirrors reflected only the finery covering clothed bodies. In Damascus, however, I discovered nudity—letting oneself go to the heat of air and water, to the pleasure of time devoted solely to doing oneself good. Since I had only one life, it might as well be filled with happiness and sensual delight. I realized, as I sat sweating in the bath of perfumed steam, how new this idea was to me.

  This was perhaps the most astonishing particularity of Damascus, and it rounded out my understanding of the Levant: this city was the center of the world, but it used this position to increase not only the power of those who lived there but also their pleasure. The purpose of these caravans converging on the city was trade, to be sure. Goods were imported, exported, and exchanged, and they brought profit. But the city took its share of anything of value and this was for one purpose alone: to serve its well-being. Houses were adorned with precious carpets. People dined on rare porcelain. The sweet odors of myrrh and incense drifted everywhere; food was chosen carefully, and chefs employed their art to compose their meals with expertise. Scholars and men of letters studied in freedom and in their libraries could consult books from every land.

  This concept of pleasure as the ultimate goal of life was a revelation to me. And still I was aware that I had not taken the full measure of it, because as a Christian I was not allowed contact with those individuals who were both the supreme beneficiaries and the givers of these pleasures: women. We were closely watched in this respect, and any attempt at an intrigue with a Muslim woman would be grounds for beheading. We did, however, catch glimpses of them. We saw them in the street, we met their gaze through their veils or the latticework of their windows, we could make out their shapes, smell their perfume. Although they were reclusive, they seemed to us to be freer then our women in the West, more devoted to sensuality, promising a pleasure that our unclothed bodies in the hammam gave us the audacity to imagine. We sensed that the intensity of such pleasure could fuel violent passion. Strangers shared bloody tales of jealousy leading to murder and sometimes massacre. Far from inciting revulsion, such excess only fuelled desire. Several merchants had paid with their lives for their inability to resist temptation.

  When I found myself alone I was inhabited by the memory of my only woman; she who was the frequent object of my thoughts. I imagined her sharing these delights with me, and I promised myself I would carry home with me the instruments of pleasure. I bought perfume, carpets, and bolts of bocasin, a cloth similar to silk which the local craftsmen wove with cotton.

  A month went by in this way, and we were about to leave again when we had an astonishing encounter. We were lying on leather cushions, tasting sweet cakes of every flavor, when our guide, a Moor who had been with us since Beirut, announced the visit of two Turks. He uttered these words with a laugh, and we did not immediately understand the reason for his irony. The mystery dissolved the moment the Turks in question appeared. They were two tall men with unkempt hair, their faces covered with neglected beards. From the way in which they wore their clothing, it was only too obvious that it did not come naturally to them. The moment they opened their mouths, there could be no further doubt: they were two Franks in disguise.

  The elder, a man with thinning ginger hair, introduced himself with the sort of haughty pride I had
been familiar with since childhood, from the hours spent waiting with my father in the antechambers of nobles’ houses.

  “Bertrandon de la Broquière, first esquire to his lordship the Duke of Burgundy,” he said.

  We were mere merchants, and he invoked his right to inform us of his name and title in a lofty manner. However, his outfit was so ridiculous, and our informal attitude, which we had not altered since his arrival, colored his self-assurance with a certain awkwardness, even fear. We introduced ourselves in turn, not deferring to him in any particular way, and he and his companion sat down on the cushions reluctantly.

  We were waiting for the sorbet our errand boy had ordered for us. A discreet servant with a grave manner placed a finely carved copper tray before us. We offered some to the esquire, but he refused.

  “I will never eat such rubbish! You are taking a great risk, mark my words.”

  And he explained how the snow used to prepare the sorbet was brought by camel from the mountains of Lebanon.

  “I have heard that they send it as far as Cairo,” I exclaimed admiringly.

  Our interpreter confirmed this. Previously the snow was shipped by boat to Alexandria, but now the Sultan Barsbay had established order on his roads, and small caravans of five camels could transport the precious ice cream to the capital.

  “It is astonishing that it does not melt . . . ”

  “In every caravan, there is one man who is instructed with the technique to keep it intact during the voyage.”

  We marveled at this additional proof of the Arabs’ expertise. But Bertrandon shrugged his shoulders.

  “Nonsense! They lose three-quarters of it and the rest is contaminated. It is pure disease they are transporting, not ice cream.”

  He gave a coarse laugh. Yet he had not managed to put us off our sorbet. Mine was perfumed with orange flower water.

  While we were delighting in our treat, the esquire began to pontificate. However, he occasionally shot a dirty look at the Sarrasin who was our interpreter. With a great deal of tact, the Sarrasin claimed he had an errand, in order to leave us alone. Now the esquire no longer withheld his virulent criticism with regard to the Arabs. He exalted their treachery, their violence, their immorality. The effect of his sermon, and no doubt the aim of it, was to make us feel what wretches we were, to enjoy the company of such savages.

  “Then why,” I dared to ask, “are you wearing their clothing?”

  After all, we may have been seduced by the charms of life in Damascus, but at least we still had the courage, through our finery, to proclaim that we were Christians.

  The esquire lowered his tone and, leaning closer, confided that this travesty was necessary for him to carry out his plans. We understood at that point that he must be on a secret mission on behalf of his master, the Duke of Burgundy. This putative discretion was all the more ridiculous in that, from the moment they saw him, the Mohammedans could hardly ignore whom they were dealing with. Nevertheless, on the strength of his supposed invisibility, Bertrandon was gathering as much information as possible on the countries that hosted him. He asked many questions about the towns and villages we had gone through. He insisted, without the slightest shame, on the military details: Had we met any troops? Who was guarding this bridge or that building? How many men-at-arms were accompanying the great caravan? (I refrained from telling him that I had almost joined it.) As the interrogation progressed, we understood more clearly the nature of the mission with which he had been entrusted. Their aim, no more and no less, was to prepare a new crusade. Of all the princes in the West, the Duke of Burgundy was the one who continued to make the most concrete plans for a reconquest of the Levant. Had he not financed an expedition several years earlier that had ended in failure?

  As soon as I was aware of Bertrandon’s true intentions, I saw him differently. What I had found entertaining was now appalling. There we were, the six of us, comfortably reclining in this garden whose colors, shade, and cool air harmoniously converged to please our senses. We were tasting divine sorbet, one of the most ingenious human inventions, said to have given rise to so many others. Our clothing was new, stitched in the bazaar according to a model we had brought with us, and made of finely woven cloth printed with subtle designs. Our skin exuded the perfumed oil with which our daily bath anointed us. And now here before us was this greasy-haired oaf, scratching the vermin beneath his scruffy clothes and, despite the distance between us, gratifying us with the stench of his body and his breath, all the while proclaiming his aim to wield fire and sword in order to bring civilization to this place.

  Never before had I been given the opportunity to contemplate a specimen of knighthood in his natural state and removed from his familiar environment. Having once been our glory, the knights were now the instruments and symbols of our ruin. Their ancestors had thought of God; these men thought only of themselves, of the honor that was bequeathed to them and which they cherished more than anything.

  Their only desire was to fight, but they had proved themselves incapable. They had lost all their battles, for they had no care for discipline, strategy, or victory. Their death brought glory, and that was all that mattered. They cared little for their imprisoned princes, the ransoms to be paid, the forfeited lands, the ruined people. They cared little for anything except feeding their warmongering indolence, they cared not that the burghers had been bled dry, or that the peasants must fast, or that the craftsmen must work at a loss. In France, this stubbornness was held to be the sign of a noble soul.

  But in this garden, in the presence of these two vulgar individuals stripped of armor and prestige, who picked their teeth with the sharp end of their dirty fingernails, the truth was dazzling. One thought went through my mind, which in France I would have banished with horror, but which now appeared to me as indisputable proof: it was fortunate that the crusaders had not managed to conquer the Levant. And it was vital that they never should.

  In contrast, our position as merchants—which, like the nobles, I had always viewed as trivial, material, and without honor—now seemed quite different to me. We were agents of trade, not conquest. Our vocation was to bring to all the best of what others produced. We too, in our way, entertained the ambition of appropriating other civilizations, but in exchange for what they might desire from ours. Destruction, pillaging, and enslavement were foreign to us. Our aim was to capture only living prey.

  After having wormed out of us everything he could, Bertrandon began to discourse endlessly on the situation in Constantinople—the city had been reduced to nothing, from paying tribute to the Turks—on the Ottomans, whom he respected and who opposed the Arabs, whom he loathed; on the politics of the Latin cities of Venice and Genoa, whose rivalry did not prevent them from encroaching every day a bit more on Byzantine territory and Arab possessions.

  I stopped listening. This meeting, however unpleasant it might have been, had taken me back to the West. In any case, our stay was coming to an end. We had two short days before we must leave for Beirut and embark on the galley.

  Before our meeting with Bertrandon, I would have been sorry to leave. Now I was glad.

  The return was a joy. Every day that took me closer to home was a precious gift. The journey, however, was far more difficult than it had been going the other direction. There were terrible storms that severely tried our ship. Finally, just off the coast of Corsica, one last squall drove us onto the rocks. I almost drowned, carried away by the waves. As I struggled in the foaming breakers, I struck my left hand against one of those sea creatures covered in spines that are to be found in abundance on the seabed and the rocks. Several dozen tiny black spikes entered my flesh. We were assisted by the inhabitants of the island, only to encounter still greater misfortune. A so-called prince, a brigand without honor who reigns over this coastal region, seized all our possessions and threw us in prison. We were kept there for several weeks while we waited for Vidal to pay our rans
om.

  Finally we arrived in Aigues-Mortes at the beginning of winter. My hand had swollen and was becoming infected. At one point I thought I might lose it, might even lose my life. When eventually I recovered, I understood that such fears had attenuated the regret of having been robbed of everything. Before Christmas, Gautier and I set off toward home on the road along the Rhone; I was penniless. Vidal hoped to compensate for our losses through a letter of marque and reprisal. As soon as he obtained it—and he did obtain it—privateers would be allowed to attack the ships belonging to the nation that had robbed us. The booty would serve as compensation. It was an efficient procedure, and served to reduce the dangers inherent in navigation. But it was slow, and did nothing to alter the fact that for the time being we were ruined.

  The strange thing was that, far from afflicting me, this destitution filled me with unexpected pleasure. I felt as naked as a newborn baby. And, indeed, I was being born into a new life. I had finished mourning for my dreams and had replaced them with memories. I was returning with a host of ambitious projects, richer than if I had brought bolts of silk or bales of spices. My wealth was still invisible, potential. I held this precious treasure well concealed, as if I had not yet determined what I could buy with my gold. But I was filled with confidence.