Balthasar's Odyssey (45 page)

After having hidden, protected, fed and reassured me, on the third day of the fire Bess came and told me we must try to make a get-away. The fire was getting inexorably nearer, which meant that the mob was getting farther away. We could attempt to make our way between the two, aiming at London Bridge; there we'd board the first boat available to take us away from the conflagration.

Bess said the chaplain approved of this course of action, though he himself preferred to stay on a while longer in the ale-house. If it escaped the flames, he could protect it from looters. His two disciples would stay on with him to keep watch, and to help him if, after all, he had to flee.

When the time came to leave, I wasn't thinking only of saving my life: I was also concerned about
The Hundredth Name.
The book had been on my mind during all those days and nights, and the clearer it became that my stay in London was approaching its end, the more I wondered if I'd be able to persuade the chaplain to let me take
The Hundredth Name
with me. I even thought of taking it against his will. Yes, of stealing it! I'd never have been capable of such a thing in other circumstances, during an ordinary year. In any case, I'm not sure I'd have gone through with such a despicable thing. Fortunately I didn't have to. I didn't even have to use the arguments I'd prepared. When I knocked at the door of his room to take my leave, the old man asked me to wait for a moment before asking me in. I found him sitting in his usual place, holding the book out towards me with both hands like a kind of offering. The gesture left both of us silent and motionless.

Then he said in Latin, with some solemnity:

“Take it. It's yours. You've deserved it. I promised it to you in return for your undertaking to translate it, and I know quite a lot now about what it says. Without you, I shan't be able to find out any more. Anyway, it's too late.”

I was moved. I thanked him, and embraced him. Then we promised each other, without much conviction, that we'd meet again, if not in this world then in the next. “That'll be very soon, as far as I'm concerned,” he said. “As far as all of us are concerned!” I answered, indicating all that was going on around us. We'd have embarked on yet another discussion about the fate of the world if Bess hadn't begged me to hurry. She wanted us to set out at once!

Just before we left the house, she turned round one last time to check up on whether I'd pass muster as an Englishman. She made me promise never to open my mouth, never to look people straight in the eye, but just to look sad and exhausted.

It was a quarter of an hour's walk as the crow flies from the ale-house to the river, but we had to take a roundabout route to avoid the fire. Bess sensibly opted for skirting the whole of the area affected. She even started off along an alley on our left that seemed to lead in the opposite direction. I didn't argue. Then came another alley, and a third, and perhaps fifteen or twenty others. I didn't count. I didn't even try to make out where we were. It was all I could do to avoid falling into holes, walking into debris, and stepping in dirt. I followed Bess's mop of red hair as a soldier on the battlefield follows a plume or a standard. I trusted her with my life as a child puts its hand in its mother's. And I had no reason to regret it.

We had only one scare. Emerging into a little square at a place called Houndsditch, near the city wall, we came on a crowd of about sixty people manhandling someone. Not wanting to show we were running away, Bess went up and asked a young woman what was going on. She was told that another fire had just broken out in the neighbourhood, and the foreigner under attack — a Frenchman — had been found lurking nearby.

I wish I could say I intervened to stop the mob from doing their worst. Or at least that I tried, but Bess prevented me. The sad truth is that I walked on as fast as I could, only too glad to escape notice and not be in the victim's shoes, as I easily might have been. I didn't even look at the crowd, lest our eyes meet. And as soon as my lady friend had, without undue haste, turned into a nearly empty alley, I followed her. Smoke was rising from a half-timbered house. Strangely enough, it was the top storey that was being licked by tongues of flame. But Bess walked on, neither turning back nor hurrying forward, and I did the same. On the whole, if I had the choice, I preferred to die in the fire rather than at the hands of the mob.

We completed the rest of our journey more or less without incident. We were almost choking on the acrid smell, the sky was veiled in smoke, and we were both stiff and short of breath, but Bess had chosen the safest route. We reached the Thames beyond the Tower of London, then turned back to the nearby landing-stage, by Irongate Stairs.

About forty other people were waiting there, some of them women in tears. They were surrounded with piles of chests, bundles large and small, and pieces of furniture; you wondered how they could have got them there. Bess and I must have been travelling lighter than any of them: all I had with me was a canvas bag Bess had lent me. We must have looked very poor, but less unfortunate than the rest. All of them had obviously either lost their houses already or expected to, like most of the city's inhabitants. But in my meagre baggage I had the book for which I'd travelled across half the world, and I was leaving the great disaster unscathed.

At the sight of all the melancholy faces surrounding us, we resigned ourselves to a long wait. But a boat arrived after a few minutes and moored nearby. It was half-full of Londoners fleeing the city; the rest of the space was taken up with piles of casks. There were a few places left for passengers, but two strapping fellows barred the way on board — tall, bearded, brawny-armed rascals with wet scarves wound round their heads.

“A guinea each — man, woman or child!” one of them shouted forbiddingly. “Paid on the nail! No money, no room!”

I signed to Bess, and she said curtly:

“All right — we'll pay.”

The man held out a hand. I took it and jumped into the boat, which was placed at an angle so that only one person could board it at once. But when I turned and stretched out a hand to help Bess jump too, she just touched my fingers and then drew back, shaking her head.

“Come on!” I urged.

She shook her head again, and waved a hand in farewell. There was a sad smile on her face, but also, I think, a trace of regret or uncertainty.

Someone pulled me back by my shirt so that others could get on to the boat. Then one of the sailors came to claim the fare. I got two guineas out of my purse, but gave him only one.

I still feel a pang as I write about it. Our farewells were too hasty, too sketchy. I ought to have talked to Bess before the boat arrived and found out what she really wanted. I behaved all the time as if it was understood that she'd come with me, even if it was only for part of the way. But I ought to have seen that she wouldn't be coming with me, that there was no reason why she should leave her tavern and her friends to come with me. Anyway, I'd never asked her to; never even thought of doing so. So why do I always have a sense of guilt whenever I mention her or London? Probably because I left her as I might have left a stranger, while in just a few days she gave me what people much closer to me will never give me in a lifetime. Because I owe her a debt that I can never repay. Because I escaped the inferno of London, and she returned to it without my making sufficient effort to stop her. Because I left her there on the quay without a word of thanks or a sign of affection. Because it seemed to me that at the last moment she was hesitating, and a firm word from me might have made her jump into the boat. And there are other reasons too. I'm sure she doesn't blame me. But it will be a long time before I stop blaming myself.

I can hear Gregorio's voice. He's just back from the harbour. I must go and sit with him and have something to eat. I'll write some more this afternoon, while he's having his siesta.

Over our meal my host talked to me about various matters concerning both our futures. He's still trying to persuade me to stay in Genoa. Sometimes I beg him to desist, and sometimes I give him some hope. The fact is I don't know my own mind. I have a feeling that it's late, time is getting short on the battlefield; and he's asking me to stop rushing about, to settle down and take my place beside him, like a son. It's a great temptation, but I have other temptations. As well as other obligations, other matters of urgency. I already blame myself for having left Bess in too cavalier a manner; how would I feel if I just abandoned Marta to her fate? Marta, who's carrying my child, and who wouldn't be a prisoner today if I'd looked after her better.

I want to spend what little time is left to me wiping out my debts and putting right my mistakes. And Gregorio wants me to forget the past, forget my home and my sister and my sister's sons and my former loves, and start a new life in Genoa.

We are now in the last few weeks of the fateful year. Is this the right moment to begin a new life?

All these questions have exhausted me. I must dismiss them from my mind and get on with my story.

I'd got to where I was on the boat, leaving London. The passengers were muttering that the rogues who were conveying us would end on the gallows. The sailors themselves were singing and laughing, delighted with their spoils. They must have made more money in the last few days than they usually made in a year, and must be praying for God to stoke up the fire indefinitely.

Not content with having extorted all those guineas for the fare, they made haste to land again as soon as we were out of the city, and then drove us off the boat like a herd of cattle. We hadn't been on board for more than about twenty minutes. They told anyone who protested that they'd saved our lives by taking us away from the fire, and we ought to thank them on our bended knees instead of complaining about how much they'd charged. I didn't protest — I was afraid my accent might give me away. And while our “benefactors” made their way back to London to collect more guineas, and most of my companions in misfortune, after a moment's hesitation, set off together for the nearest village, I decided to wait for another boat to come along. One other person did the same — a tall, fair, sturdy fellow, who didn't speak and avoided catching my eye. I hadn't paid much attention to him among the crowd, but now we were alone it was going to be difficult to ignore each other.

I don't know how long we stood there, not saying anything, exchanging covert glances, and pretending to look for something in our bags or a boat on the horizon.

Suddenly seeing the funny side of the situation, I went over to him and said with a broad smile, in the best English I could muster:

“As if the fire wasn't bad enough, we had to fall into the clutches of those vultures!”

At this he seemed inordinately pleased, and approached with open arms.

“So you're from abroad too!” he cried, as if the fact that we were both foreigners made us compatriots.

His English was less rudimentary than mine, but as soon as I told him where I was from he courteously switched to Italian, or what he thought was Italian, for to my ears it was incomprehensible. After I'd asked him three times to repeat the same sentence, he said it in Latin. That was a relief to both of us.

I soon found out quite a lot about him. He was a Bavarian, five years my senior, and since he was nineteen had lived in various foreign cities: Saragossa, Moscow for three years, Constantinople, Gothenburg, Paris, Amsterdam for three and a half years, then London for the last nine months.

“My house burned down yesterday and I lost everything,” he said. “All I have left is in this bag.”

He'd spoken lightly, as if rather amused, and I wondered at the time whether he wasn't more affected by the disaster than he was prepared to admit. But from speaking to him at length later, I'm sure he was acting quite naturally. Unlike me, he's a real traveller. For him, anything that ties him to a place — walls, furniture, family — eventually becomes unbearable. Anything that makes him move on, even if it's bankruptcy, banishment, war or fire, is welcome.

This passion seized him when he was still a child, during the German wars. He described the atrocities that had been committed in them: whole congregations slaughtered in the churches, villages decimated by famine, entire villages set alight then rased to the ground. Not to mention the hangings, the burnings at the stake, the beheadings.

His father was a printer in Ratisbon. The bishop had commissioned him to print a missal containing a diatribe against Luther, and both his press and his house had been burned down. The family emerged unscathed, but the father was an obstinate man and decided to rebuild house and workshop alike, exactly as they had been before and on the same spot. This swallowed up all his remaining fortune. And as soon as the work was complete, both buildings were burned down again. This time the printer's wife and an infant daughter died in the flames. The son, my new companion, vowed then that he'd never build a house of his own, or encumber himself with a family, or become attached to any piece of land.

He said he was called Georg Caminarius; I don't know his real name. He seems to have unlimited money at his disposal, but is neither prodigal nor parsimonious with it. He was always reticent with me about his income, and despite all my professional skill at sniffing out where money comes from I was never able to make out whether his derives from a legacy, an annuity, or some lucrative business. If it's the latter it can't be very respectable: we had endless conversations during the next few days and he didn't mention it once.

But first I must get back to the account of my flight. After waiting for more than an hour, during which we waved our arms in vain at various passing boats, one did come alongside at last. There were only two men on board, and they said they would take us anywhere we liked so long as it wasn't Holland, and we paid generously.