Balthasar's Odyssey (36 page)

As for Girolamo, my Venetian friend, he keeps singing the praises of Moscow and the Tsar Alexis, whom he seems to admire very much. He says he's very concerned about the good of his subjects and anxious to attract merchants, artisans and educated men to Muscovy. But not everyone there is so well-disposed towards foreigners. While the Tsar himself seems delighted with what's happening in his capital, which hitherto was only a huge dreary village, and though he poses for painters, keeps up with the latest novelties, and wants to have his own company of actors, there are thousands of cantankerous priests who see all these newfangled notions as the mark of the Antichrist. They regard what goes on in the Foreign Quarter as debauchery, corruption, impiety and blasphemy, harbingers of the imminent reign of the Beast.

Girolamo told me of a significant incident in this connection. Last summer a troupe of Neapolitans went and performed in Moscow at the invitation of one of the Tsar's cousins. Their number included actors, musicians, jugglers, ventriloquists and so on. At one point a man called Percivale Grasso presented a very striking show in which a marionette with the head of a wolf, which had been lying on the ground, stood up and began talking and singing, then strutted about and started dancing — and all the time it was impossible to detect that the puppet was being manipulated by a man standing on a ladder behind a curtain. The whole audience was captivated. Then suddenly a priest got up and shouted that what they were all staring at was the Devil himself. He quoted the Apocalypse: “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak.” Then he took a stone out of his pocket and threw it at the stage, and some of the people with him did the same. Then they all started cursing the Neapolitans and foreigners in general, and everyone involved in any way with what they considered profanities and the works of Satan. They declared that the end of the world and the Day of Judgement were at hand. The audience began to trickle away. Even the Tsar's cousin dared not oppose such fanatics. And the troupe of entertainers had to leave Moscow at dawn the next day.

While my friend was telling me all this, I remembered the visitor who'd come to see me in Gibelet a few years before with a book prophesying that the world would end in 1666. This year. His name was Evdokim. I told Girolamo about him. The name means nothing to him, but he's familiar with
The Book of the One True Orthodox Faith,
and every day has to listen to someone referring to the prediction. He himself refuses to take it seriously, I was relieved to hear, and puts it down to sheer stupidity, ignorance and superstition. But in Muscovy, he says, most people really believe in it. Some even claim to know the exact date: according to some calculation or other, the world won't last beyond St Simeon's Day, September 1, which they regard as the beginning of the New Year.

15 May 66

I think I gained the confidence of the “prince” from Isfahan today; or more probably awakened his interest.

We met, as before, when we were both taking a stroll, and as we went on together a little way I told him about all the towns I'd been to in the last few months. He nodded politely at each fresh name, but when I mentioned Smyrna his expression changed. To encourage me to continue, he said, “Izmir, Izmir”, the Turkish name for the place.

I'd spent forty days there, I said, and on two occasions had seen with my own eyes the Jew who claims to be the Messiah. The Persian then seized my arm, called me his honoured friend, and said he'd heard many contradictory stories about “Sabbataï Levi”.

“I heard the Jews call him Sabbataï Zevi or Tsevi,” I said.

He thanked me for the correction, and asked me to tell him exactly what I'd seen, so that he could distinguish the true from the false in what was being said about this character.

I told him some things, and promised him more in due course.

16 May

Yesterday I revised what I'd said about gaining the “prince's” confidence, and said, rightly then, that it was rather that I'd aroused his curiosity. Now I really can speak of trust, for today, instead of just listening to me, he talked about himself.

He didn't tell me any secrets — why should he? But for someone who's a foreigner and evidently likes to keep himself to himself, the little he did communicate is a token of esteem and a mark of confidence.

He said he wasn't really travelling on business in the usual sense, but to see the world and find out at first hand about the strange things that are happening in it. Though he didn't say so, I'm sure he's someone of importance, perhaps a brother or cousin of the Grand Sophy.

I've thought of introducing him to Girolamo, but my Venetian friend is rather garrulous and might scare him. Then, instead of opening out gradually like some shy rose, the Persian might just close up again.

So I mean to see them separately, unless they should happen to meet one another without me.

17 May

Today the prince invited me to his “palace”. The word is not excessive, relatively speaking. The sailors sleep in a barn, I sleep in a shed, Girolamo and his entourage have a house, and Ali Esfahani, who has a whole suite of rooms which he's decorated with rugs and cushions in the Persian style, lives in the equivalent of a palace. His staff includes a butler, a translator, a cook and his scullion, a valet, and four general manservants in addition to the two guards, whom he calls “my wild animals”.

The translator is a French ecclesiastic from Toulouse who calls himself “Father Angel”. I was surprised when I first saw him with Ali, especially as they spoke to one another in Persian. I haven't been able to find out anything more: the translator disappeared when his master said he and I could make ourselves understood to one another in Arabic.

In the course of the evening my host told me a very strange thing: it's said that every night since the beginning of this year several stars have vanished from the sky. You have only to look up at the part of the sky where the stars are most densely concentrated to see that some of them suddenly go out, never to reappear. Ali seems to believe that as the year goes by the night sky will gradually empty, until at last it's completely dark.

To check whether this is true I prepared to spend most of the night sitting on deck with my head flung back, watching the sky. I tried to focus on fixed points, but my eyes kept blurring. After an hour I felt so cold I gave up and went to bed without having proved anything.

18 May

I told my Venetian friend the tale about the stars, and he burst out laughing before I'd even finished. Luckily I hadn't said where I'd heard it. And luckily I haven't introduced the two men to one another.

Though he goes on making fun of rumours about the end of the world, Girolamo has told me some things I find disturbing. When I'm with him I feel the same as I used to with Maïmoun. On the one hand I wish I could share his serenity and his scorn for all superstition, and this makes me seem to agree with what he says. But at the same time I can't prevent these same superstitions, even the most extravagant of them, from lodging in my mind. “What if these people were right?” “What if their prophecies came true?” “Supposing the world really was less than four months away from extinction?” Questions like these flit about in my head in spite of me. I know they're foolish, but I can't manage to get rid of them. This depresses me and makes me doubly ashamed: in the first place for sharing the apprehensions of the ignorant, and in the second for being so deceitful with my friend — nodding my head at what he says, and all the time disagreeing with it in my heart.

I felt like this again yesterday, when Girolamo was telling me about some Muscovites known as Capitons, who want to die, he says, “because they believe Christ will soon come into the world again to set up His kingdom, and they want to come back in His train rather than be among the multitude of sinners who will endure His wrath. The Capitons live in small groups scattered throughout Muscovy, out of reach of the authorities. In their view the whole world is now ruled by the Antichrist and inhabited by the damned — even Muscovy, and even its church, whose prayers and rituals they reject. Their leader exhorts them to let themselves die of hunger and thus avoid being guilty of suicide. But some of them are in such a hurry they do not shrink from breaking God's law in the most atrocious manner. Not a week goes by without terrible reports coming in from one region or another of the vast country. Groups of people gather in churches or even mere barns, block up the windows and deliberately set the building on fire, so that whole families burn themselves alive amid prayers and the shrieks of children.”

Ever since Girolamo told me of these things, their images have haunted me. I think of them day and night, and keep wondering if it's possible that all these people are dying for nothing. Can anyone really be so mistaken, and sacrifice his life so cruelly just through an error of judgement? I can't help feeling some respect for them, though my Venetian friend says I am wrong. He compares them with ignorant beasts, and thinks their behaviour is stupid, criminal and impious. At most he feels some pity for them, but below his pity lies scorn. And when I say I find his attitude cruel, he answers that he could never be as cruel to these people as they are to themselves and their wives and children.

19 May

It may be difficult to check whether the stars are really disappearing, but my Persian friend's story shows without a shadow of doubt that he is concerned as I am with all that's said about this cursed year.

No, he's much
more
concerned than I am. My thoughts are divided between my love, my business, and my trivial dreams and worries, and every day I have to do violence to my natural apathy if I'm not to abandon my pursuit of
The Hundredth Name.
I think of the Apocalypse now and again, I half believe in things, but my father brought me up in such a way that the sceptic in me saves me from any great religious outbursts — or perhaps I should say precludes any kind of constancy, whether in the exercise of reason or in the quest for chimeras.

But to return to my “prince” and friend, he listed for me today the various predictions he's heard of concerning this year. There are many of them, and they come from every corner of the globe. Some I'm familiar with already, others not or only partly. He's collected many more examples than I have, but I know some things he doesn't.

Above all, of course, there are the predictions of the Muscovites and the Jews. Then those of the sectaries of Aleppo and the English fanatics. And the quite recent prophecies of a Portuguese Jesuit. In Ali's view the most disturbing prognostications are those of the four greatest Persian astrologers, who usually disagree and compete for the favours of their ruler, but who apparently declare unanimously that this year men will call God by His Hebrew name, as Noah did, and that things will happen that have never been seen since Noah's own day.

“Another Flood?” I asked.

“Yes, but a deluge of fire this time!”

The way he said this reminded me of my nephew Boumeh — that triumphal tone to announce the most awful calamities! As if the Creator, by letting them know what was in store, was implicitly promising them immunity.

20 May

During the night I thought again about the predictions of the Persian astrologers. Not so much the threat of another flood — you find that in all prophecies about the end of the world — but rather the allusion to the name of God, and in particular His Hebrew name. I suppose that's the sacred Tetragrammaton that must not be uttered — if I've read the Bible correctly — by anyone except the high priest once a year, in the Holy of Holies, on the Day of Atonement. So what would happen if, at the behest of Sabbataï, thousands of people all over the world were to speak the ineffable name aloud? Wouldn't Heaven be angry enough to annihilate the world and everyone in it?

I discussed all this at length today with Esfahani, who takes quite a different view. He says that if men do utter the unspeakable name they won't be intending to defy the will of the Almighty, but on the contrary to hasten its fulfilment in the form of the end of the world and deliverance. He doesn't seem at all put out by the fact that the so-called Messiah of Smyrna advocates this general transgression.

I asked if he thought that the Tetragrammaton revealed to Moses might be the same as the hundredth name of Allah sought by some commentators on the Koran. He was so pleased by this question that he threw an arm round my shoulders and walked me along with him for a few paces. This kind of familiarity, coming from him, rather embarrassed me.

“What a pleasure it is,” he said warmly, “to find one has a scholar as a fellow-passenger!”

I said nothing to disillusion him, though it seems to me that a real scholar, instead of having to ask such a question, would be able to provide the answer.

“Come with me!” he went on, leading the way to a little room he calls “the cubby-hole where I keep my secrets”. I suppose that before he came on board the place didn't have a name — it was just a small space used for storing bits of damaged cargo. Now, however, the shelves are curtained, the floor is fitted with a little carpet, and the air is heavy with incense. We sat down facing one another on a couple of plump cushions. An oil-lamp hung from the ceiling. A servant brought in coffee and sweetmeats and left them on a chest to my right. On the other side was a big irregular window opening on to the blue horizon. I had a pleasant impression of being back in the bedroom I used to sleep in as a child, in Gibelet.

“Has God got a hidden hundredth name in addition to the ninety-nine we already know of?” asked Ali. “If so, what is it? Is it a Hebrew name? Or a Syriac or an Arabic one? How would we recognise it if we read it in a book or heard it? Who has known it in the past? And what powers does it confer on those who have found it out?”