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

Pine forest of Classe, near Ravenna, 9th October 1550

No moon. I can barely make out the darker outlines of the trees and the murmur of the waves on the beach.

Malcant�n, on the other hand, studies the darkness as though he can tell exactly what things are and how far away they are. Hard to tell his age, a grim sailor’s face, with a permanently worried expression. Hands like spades and a scar stretching from his ear to his shoulder. Someone must have tried unsuccessfully to chop his head off. Someone must have regretted that. Malcant�n, the bad zone, the NorthWest, where the sudden storms come from, hail that ruins the harvest, hurricanes that capsize the ships. Anyone interested in finding out his real name can go and read it in the square in Ravenna, where it is nailed up in full view, along with the price on his head.

The others have prices on theirs, too. Melga and Guacin’, the Rasi brothers, wanted for more than a year for the murder of a customs officer.

Tambocc, not more than twenty, with an angelic face, black curls and limitless strength. An accomplished fraudster, a trade that he inherited from his father along with a hatred of priests and the authorities. He is squatting by a tree-trunk, staring into the night behind us. Noises emerge from the pine forest, rustling sounds and the beating of wings, which he recognises one by one.�

This strip of land and sea is a geographical intersection, contended over by. Venice, Ferrara and the Pope, and at the same time a no-man’s-land, a labyrinth of customs, duties, taxes that all the lords attempt to impose upon all kinds of goods in transit, all kinds of agricultural products. With the result that the poor are even more oppressed here than they are elsewhere, and traffic and trade are brought almost to a standstill.

That’s where the smugglers come in.

They know every inch of the flat coastline from the Po Delta to beyond Rimini. Makeshift landing-places, disused jetties, abandoned canals from Roman times, providing access to the hinterland, a vast, marshy bog that extends for many iles beneath an unchanging roof of maritime pines. A maze of water and mosquitoes where only those outlaws can find their bearings, scattered with unlikely landmarks, traps, cleverly disguised stores.

It’s in the interest of the Dalmatian merchants, and the Venetians as well, to negotiate with the smugglers of Romagna there’s none of that endless waiting around in the ports, no tolls or taxes, no rake-offs for the local highwaymen.�

Much of the traffic comes along this coast, along a line of invisible points in the open sea, where the merchant ships meet up with the smugglers, disguised as fishermen. It isn’t easy work, nothing on the sea is certain: they can end up waiting for hours, days, depending on the weather. When they finally meet up, goods are transferred, bills are paid. Or else the merchants are guided towards secret landing-places by agile little launches, and the cargo is unloaded on to the beach, the price is agreed and the deal is completed.

Ambushes happen frequently. The smugglers risk their lives, and face very serious punishment if caught.

But it’s only thanks to this invisible commercial network that the people here don’t die of starvation. To choose the life of a smuggler you have to have come from the most terrible poverty, you have to have the instinctive and well-motivated hatred that everyone here feels for all figures of authority; they are almost always men with wanted for some crime or other, forced to hide in the dense pine forest to escape the police.

There are no women, no old people or peasants in any of the villages around here who wouldn’t protect them, if only by remaining stubbornly silent. Because a proportion of the goods in circulation is regularly distributed among the people. That’s the only duty paid.

Before the bishop unleashes his tax collectors to call in their tithes, a share of the harvest is hidden by the smugglers in various places in the forest, to reduce the burden, and to guarantee the survival of the communities during the winter.

That was what was happening a month ago when the troop of the tax collectors turned up, as they do earlier eachar.

Malcant�n, Guac�n’ and M�lga were the men who carried the grain to the hidden stores in the marshes.

All it takes to win the lasting esteem of these people is a catapult and a good aim. All it takes is a bit of fire in your blood.

Moonless night. We’re waiting to see the sign of the torches. I wrap myself up in my coat, damp and chilled to the bone, while Malcant�n keeps his eyes fixed on the sea.

M�lga, the Swindler, is ready with the boat, oars in the rowlocks.

His brother holds the lantern, ready to light it in reply.

Tambocc keeps listening out for noises in the pine forest.

For them, this night means the start of a new trade, one that they’re both surprised and curious about.

They’d never have believed it. They laughed. They asked lots of questions. Forbidden? Why on earth? Nobody understands them anyway.

No. They’d never have dreamt that there was money in smuggling books.

Q’s diary

Rome, 1st November 1550

There’s one last job to be done. Carafa reserved it for me. As delicate and as important as the others. Perhaps even more. So important that it can’t be accomplished by anyone but the most trusted, the most meritorious of his soldiers. He knows he has put me to the test several times, that he’s always demanded the very best of me. After this final mission I will be able to enjoy a well-earned rest, as long, of course, as I want one.

I accepted enthusiastically. This time the old man wasn’t able to read my mind.�

Fucking over the Jews, those hateful parasites, unrepentant Christ-killers, who have often converted to the true faith for the sake of convenience, with the sole aim of going on getting money out of their sordid deals, he said. A disease that infects the whole body of Christianity from within. A disease that must now be eradicated. And we must begin where its roots are deepest.

Venice.

He said my reports had once again suggested to him to understand that I was the man best suited to this particular task. Indeed the very importance of the matter became clear to him when he read how much wealth those wicked families of usurers had been able to accumulate. For some time he had been studying the ideal solution to the problem, and now the time is ripe, everything is in place, the agreements have been drawn up.

The enforcement of the Index of prohibited books in the territory of La Serenissima is seen as a clear signal that the Venetian authorities have finally understood the need for a compromise, choking back the vanity and arrogance that have always been their distinguishing features. And the reason is clear: the patrician families of Venice are up to their necks in debt, their fortunes depend entirely on the purses of the Jewish bankers, the Marrani. A debt so great that it could be extinguished only with the extinction of the creditors. The exchange is one of mutual satisfaction: for Carafa it is a demonstration of the strength of the Holy Office in the city most hostile to Roman interference, a prelude to the iron fist that the power of the