Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕

the bankers, the ship-owners and clerks. Antwerp and Amsterdam aren’t M�hlhausen, and they aren’t even M�nster. This city is the most important port in Europe. Not a day passes without whole ships being loaded with wool, silk, salt, tapestries, spices, furs and coal. Over the past thirty years the merchants have transformed their shops into commercial agencies, their houses into palaces, their boats into tall-masted ships. Here there is no ancient and unjust order to turn upside down, no yokels to sit on thrones. There’s no need for an apocalypse, because it’s already been under way for a while.

I interrupt him with a tap on the knee: ‘That’s where I first heard your name! It was Johannes Denck, in M�hlhausen, talking to us about the way you seduce merchants from your country. You had convinced him that without money, in the city, you can’t amount to anything.’

Eloi pulls out a coin and turns it around between his hands, throws it in the air and catches it a few times.

‘You see? You can’t topple money: whichever way you turn it, one side always shows.’

He half-shuts his eyes to enjoy the ray of sunlight filtering between the branches as he tries to find an order, a starting-point for his story.

He smiles: ‘At first I was thinking of something along the lines of the Hutterite community.’

‘Those lunatics over by Nikolsburg?’

‘They’re the ones, they live completely isolated from the rest of the world, and claim to be self-sufficient.’

With studied emphasis I turn my whole torso towards him, visibly surprised. ‘They certainly wouldn’t say what you were saying about money a moment ago. What made you change your mind?’

He searches for words, it’s difficult, he realises that he has to take his time, he might even get lost in the twists and turns of too long a speech.

‘The Apocalypse isn’t an objective to be sought, it’s all around� us. Over the last twenty years I’ve heard so much talk of the Apocalypse that if it came right now we’d have terrible trouble telling it from the fate that mankind endures every day. The true Kingdom of God begins here,’ he points to his chest, ‘and here,’ he touches his forehead. ‘Being pure doesn’t mean cutting yourself off from the world, condemning it, in order blindly to obey the law of God: if you want to change the world of men you’ve got to live in it.’

I get up to draw water from the old well in the middle of the courtyard. My back hurts as I pull the rope to lift the bucket. I look at Eloi: if he hadn’t told me he was the same age as me, I’d have thought he was much younger.

‘If you’re trying to convince me that Batenburg was a madman, spare yourself the trouble, I knew that already. But perhaps his ideas weren’t very different from your own: he thought the elect were already pure, incapable of sinning, he thought he was already in the midst of the Apocalypse. That’s why he killed and slaughtered without a second thought.’

He sips the cold water: ‘Within anyone who exorcises in others the contempt he feels for himself, for his own defeats, within anyone who blames and judges lest he himself be judged and blamed, there lurks a priest who, even if he wants to conceal the fact, is still cawing away among the crows of the old faith. Anyone with enough intelligence to understand the world and too little to learn to live, cannot hope for anything but martyrdom.’ He turns to smile to me. ‘I’ve never talked in terms of the elect. I’ve only said that anyone can discover within himself the spirit of God, which is free, removed from any code, incapable of doing harm. I have said that sin is in the mind of the sinner.’

I’m starting to understand.

He goes on calmly: ‘At the age of twenty I thought that Luther had given us a gift of hope. It didn’t take me long to understand that he had immediately sold it back to the powerful. The old friar freed us from the Pope and the bishops, but he condemned us to expiate sin in solitude, in the solitude of internal anguish, putting a priest in our souls, a court in our consciences, judging every gesture, condemning the freedom of the spirit in favour of the ineradicable corruption of human nature. Luther stripped the priests of their black garb, only to put it on the hearts of all men.’

He takes a breath, playing with wood shavings on the ground. He really feels like telling me everything, almost in exchange for my story. And I feel like listening.

‘I want you to understand that you and I started off with the same disappointment. The same people who wanted to reform the faith and the Church also reformed the old power, they supplied a new mask for it. You Anabaptists had legitimate hopes: to deny Luther and continue where he had left off. But your vision of the struggle made you divide the world into black and white, Christians and anti-Christians.’ He shakes his head. ‘That kind of vision will help you win a just battle, but it isn’t enough to realise the freedom of the spirit. On the contrary, it can construct new prisons in the soul, new morals, new courts. The meaning of everything is contained in the story you have told me: Matthys, Rothmann, Bockelson, Batenburg… The only disagreement between a Pope and a prophet lies in the fact that they are fighting over the monopoly of truth, of the word of God. I think everyone ought to be able to find that word by himself. I’ve stayed outside the battle, and worked for that.’ He makes a sweeping gesture, taking in the courtyard around us. ‘Don’t imagine that it’s been easy. Several times I’ve risked being incarcerated and for many years I’ve had to lead a clandestine life.’

‘Kathleen told me.’

He nods. ‘I’ve been put on trial too, a number of times. Contempt for municipal laws and swindling a textile merchant. I got away with it: I used the fact that many people travelling around Europe have used my name, including old Denck, may his soul rest in peace. I’ve always been turning up in places other than the ones where the authorities had spotted me. In that respect you and I are very similar…’

I think about how many people I have been until that point, but I can’t remember the exact number.�

‘I’ve been many people, and so have you.� Yes, the difference is minimal.’

We are sitting side by side on the steps. Almost instinctively I pick up a bit of wood and start carving it with my penknife. The intense odour of moss growing everywhere in the garden is intoxicating, I like it, it reminds me of the forests of Germany.

I realise that he wants to go on, tell me something else, something I’ve been waiting to hear for a long time.

‘It all looks clearer from Antwerp. Even a little roofer like myself can work out a lot of things that wouldn’t be noticed elsewhere. I’ve learned to read and write, I’ve learned to speak by frequenting the merchants of this city, luring them to the free and happy life. But above all I’ve learned how the world works, and men, and religions. You see, merchants from all countries come here, all kinds of merchandise come and go: Polish copper bound for England and Portugal; Swedish furs for the imperial court; gold from the New World wrought by local artisans; English wool, minerals from the mines of Bohemia. This traffic employs an incalculable number of people: traders, ship-owners, sailors, craftsmen, porters… and of course soldiers, guaranteeing the safety of life, conquering new lands, putting down revolts. The lives of whole countries and populations revolves around commerce. Charles V’s Empire couldn’t keep going without the commerce of the Low Countries. The Low Countries are the lung of the Empire: Charles raises most of his taxes in these lands, and most of them come from these traders and craftsmen.’

‘Is that why they’re in fiscal revolt against the Emperor?’

‘Exactly: they’re tired of financing his wars and the unproductive affluence of his court.’

He takes out the coin again and throws it in the air, catching it as it falls: ‘Paying workmen, transporting products, equipping a ship, putting together an army to defend their cargoes from pirates… To do all that you need one thing: money.’

I don’t know why, but when he says that word I have a kind of shiver, the one you get from a truth that may be predictable but is chilling nonetheless.

‘Everything depends on money: merchants and the Emperor, princes and the the Pope, luxury, war and commerce.’

He stops, as though he has had a sudden idea.

‘If you’ve finished carving puppets, I’d like to show you something.’

I look at him, puzzled. He gets up and nods to me to follow him: ‘Come on, a quick walk will do us good.’

*

‘This is the port that circulates the greatest quantity of goods in the whole of Europe.’

We have come to a halt in front of a big three-masted merchant ship: the coming and going of the loaders on the walkway is impressive, carrying sacks over their shoulders with an almost superhuman effort. The jetty is crowded with men engaged in negotiations, sailors and recruiters. In the distance I can make out a patrol of Spaniards, and give a start.�

‘No, really, don’t worry. No one’s going to recognise you in all this chaos. They aren’t looking for trouble. Live and let live is more their style. You were unlucky, you got caught up in some reprisals. Come on.’

Eloi brings me in front of a little walled office with a discoloured sign: I can’t read it, I haven’t learned much of the written language of these parts.

‘This is an foreign exchange office. The merchants can change their English or Swedish coins, or coins from the German principalities, into florins or any other currency, according to which country they’ve done their business in. The currency changes, but the money is always the same: it doesn’t matter whose face is stamped on it.’

We stop again in front of a big, three-storey building, this time I manage to decipher the sign: HOUSE OF MERCHANTS AND SHIP-OWNERS.

‘Here the merchants decide what business they’re going to do: what the best deals are going to be.’

We push our way through to get out of the crowd. The languages and dialects of half of Europe surround us like a single incomprehensible chant, an inverted Babel, in which everyone seems to understand everyone else.

‘You see those carts? They come from Li�ge. They’re transporting woollen fabrics made by the weavers of the Condroz: they’ll be loaded on to those boats, which will in turn reimport, back to England, the wool that the merchants of Antwerp have acquired from the English sheep-farmers.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’

Eloi laughs heartily: ‘No. It’s profit. Perhaps one day the English will realise that it’s more convenient for them to develop textile factories in their own country, but for the time being that’s how it works.’

We continue on our way, leaving the canal and heading towards the centre of the city, along narrow alleys that the rays of the sun don’t reach.

‘The whole mechanism is driven by money. If it wasn’t for money, no one would lift a finger in Antwerp, or perhaps anywhere in Europe. Money is the real symbol of the Beast.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

We stop close to a kiosk selling cabbages and smoked sausage, its penetrating smell envelops us.

‘How do you think Charles V managed to get himself elected Emperor in ‘19?