The Brotherhood of Book Hunters (20 page)

The Brotherhood was worried about the recent expansion in maritime activity among the Christians. Their growing fleets, rapid and well-equipped, were a much more alarming threat than armies arriving by land. Unlike cavalrymen, often exhausted after long journeys and sated with the pillage carried out on the way, sea captains could get straight to the shores of Palestine with rested troops, provisions, and holds filled with ammunition. Not to mention the fact that arriving by sea gave them the advantage of surprise and a mobility far superior to any land assault. In the past, only a few ships lingered on the high seas, reaching Acre or Jaffa in a pitiful state, forced to repair the damage and get fresh supplies before being in any condition to mount an attack. Now, dashing squadrons cut through the waves, confronting currents and eddies without difficulty. What the Brotherhood dreaded more than anything was the ardor of the Spanish, who, for a pious vow or even at the mere whim of an admiral, would set sail wherever they wanted. Forced to take the initiative, Jerusalem had decided to send all these vessels somewhere else.

T
he landscape was becoming barer, the vegetation more stunted, the villages scarcer and more wretched, the fields stonier. The brick houses disappeared, then those of dried clay, then those of mud mixed with straw. All that could be seen were a few canvas tents scattered here and there on the sides of the hills. Even though the heat was becoming more intense, the dry air caressed the lungs, invigorating them, purifying them. Progress was slow now, but less painful than before.

Eviatar and Aisha advanced with firm steps, as confidently as if they were walking along the main street of a town. But François dragged behind, stumbled, veered off course, like a boat adrift. He felt a strange sensation of emptiness that seemed to grow from day to day as he continued on his long walk southward. The threads of his past were fraying, scrap by scrap, clinging to the thorny shrubs lining the road. His regrets, his hopes were flying away, borne on the wind, burned by the sun, as if a mysterious thief were robbing him of them one by one. François sometimes turned helplessly and peered at the scrub in search of the brigand who was taking possession of his soul. The birds whirling in the sky, the ibexes running down the sunstruck slopes toward the shade, the scorpions stumbling through the brambles had become the silent accomplices of this elusive bandit who had still not shown himself. François could feel his hot breath taunting him, sometimes from a distance, sometimes from close by, depending on the wind. It penetrated his nostrils with a smell of burning. As he approached a promontory, the presence of this stealer of souls suddenly became more luminous. François sensed it in the increasingly hot and oppressive air. And now the culprit appeared all at once, on the other side of the plateau.

Eviatar and Aisha watched François, letting him discover the tide of solitude and silence overwhelming him. Seized with dizziness, he stooped and looked for the support of a rock, a bush, within the immensity. Then, little by little, he rose to his full height and confronted it. He opened his eyes wide to see his adversary's face, but nothing moved. No thief emerged to rob him.

Intoxicated by space, drunk on light, he opened his arms wide and began turning on the spot, grasping at the air with his hands as if trying to embrace the infinite. Dancing almost, he took a little step toward Eviatar and whispered to him in confidence that the place was a little lacking in taverns. And then, as if ashamed of his remark, he suddenly took off his tricorn, and bowed low to the majestic stretch of land. Eviatar looked overjoyed. He had been dreading François's hesitations. But the commander of the Brotherhood had been counting on this moment. He had said so to Gamliel, insisting on a tortuous route in order to prepare Villon, to initiate him. The recipe was infallible. First of all, a long walk to relieve the Frenchman of the futile considerations with which he was encumbered, to free him from the ghosts that haunted him. Next, a more relaxed progress that allayed his suspicions, making him more inclined to take to the open road. And then, suddenly, the abrupt collision with the desert and his new destiny.

Conscious of the trick that was being played on him, François had gladly lent himself to it. This land was finally reaching out its arms to him. Soon he would accomplish what he had come here for. Not Chartier's mission, nor the book hunters' operation, but his own exploit. This land expected nothing less of his visit, he knew. He felt at home here, in spite of all its mysteries. This was the homeland of prophets and psalmists, peasants and fallen angels, the worst despair and the craziest dreams. It had opened its doors to him, given him one of its loveliest daughters, and led him to this desert because he too was a peasant and a psalmist and, in his way, a good apostle. He could not disappoint them. Bishops and kings, emirs and rabbis, it hardly mattered. He would be able to pull the wool over their eyes. What counted now was a feat of arms that would again make him master of his own fate. A sensational poem, some incredible robbery, a fist-rate swindle? Thanks to which testament would François de Montcorbier, known as Villon, become a legend? His own, published clandestinely, or Christ's, rescued from the hands of the zealots who were keeping it hostage here?

Eviatar was pleased with the ease with which the Frenchman had passed this test. He would have liked to shake his hand. But François was already advancing with a resolute step, the first to begin the descent, impatient to enter the unknown kingdom. The sandy track down which he was running so joyfully was leading him toward a country with imprecise borders, virgin dunes, far off the beaten track.

This mysterious, bewitching world had been challenging man for thousands of years. But there was another, just as vast and wild, that man had not yet confronted. A world whose doors, as planned by the supreme head of the Brotherhood, were beginning to open just as François was crossing the threshold of this one.

A
large bag over his shoulder, Federico was on his way to the well-to-do quarter near the harbor. Many ship-owners and captains lived there in spite of the incessant noise and pestilential odors rising from the port. Federico held his nose as he approached the fisheries. With a leap here, and a detour there, he avoided the stretched nets, the heaps of dying fish, the garbage, and the seaweed, endlessly fearing to dirty the gentleman's attire he had donned for the occasion.

Genoa was the fiefdom of Francesco Sforza, granted to him by Louis XI in order to form an alliance that was as much financial as military with the duchy of Milan. Sforza was determined to extend his maritime trade well beyond the Mediterranean. Promising to supply him with the accounts and maps he needed, the Brotherhood had managed to persuade Duke Francesco to arrange a secret meeting during which Federico would hand over the maritime charts no other fleet possessed. Federico knew his visit was much awaited. The Genoese were excellent navigators but, unlike their colleagues in Oporto and Lisbon, poor cartographers. The pilots of Portuguese vessels had at their disposal meticulously prepared maps that allowed them to find their way easily in the most distant oceans. In order to compete with them, it would not be enough to steal their charts. Nor was there any point in following in their wake since, in order to take possession of a territory and install trading posts there, you had to be the first to land on it. This elementary right of precedence gave rise to a frantic race. And it was on that race that the Brotherhood was counting to launch Christian flotillas against other shores than those of Palestine. But no brave commander or bold shipbuilder would undertake to sail unknown seas without first having consulted a reliable authority. Before anything else could happen, an experienced navigator, recognized and respected by all, had to be convinced. And it so happened that there was one right here, in Genoa.

 

Federico knocked at the door of a large building. He was welcomed by the mistress of the house, Susanna Fontanarossa, a good friend of the Sforza ladies. In the main room, the whole family was waiting in front of bowls filled with olives, grapes, and small biscuits: Domenico, the father; Giacomo, the eldest of the sons, a strapping, dark-complexioned lad aged about eighteen; and, to one side, sitting quietly, the daughters, who duly gave the dashing visitor coquettish smiles, and their younger brother, Cristoforo, a timid, reserved-looking adolescent. The usual civilities were quickly dispatched, and the mother retired, taking her daughters with her. Federico immediately opened his bag and laid out, one by one, marine charts that would have been the envy of many captains.

In Safed, Villon had surprised Gamliel entrusting a papyrus scroll to the Florentine merchant, a kind of map of the world. It was this that Federico was now handing to Domenico. This ancient drawing of the world, inspired by Ptolemy's geography, came from the library of Alexandria. But by itself, it was far from providing proof. The Brotherhood had other maps in its possession, much more recent ones, which it had acquired from the Turks during the conquest of Constantinople. These Byzantine records, compiled according to the testimonies of Phoenician, Moorish, and Indian sailors, confirmed the existence of vast unexplored lands. The chronicles of Marco Polo also referred to them. But it was the travel writings of Benjamin of Tudela, less well-known to Christian navigators, that had given the book hunters the idea of launching a treasure hunt. A practicing Jew, Tudela had not set off with the aim of exploring and conquering, but of finding the garden of Eden. In the East, he had visited fairy-tale lands, some of them wild, others a lot more advanced than his native Navarre. But he had never found paradise.

By putting together the information given by Tudela with that contained in Ptolemy's maps and the maps conserved in Byzantium, the Brotherhood had traced the chart of an El Dorado that all travelers and geographers agreed was situated on the borders of Asia, beyond the Indies and China. And then it had simply reversed the picture, transporting this wonderland to the west. It justified this conjuring trick by reference to
Critias
,
Timaeus
,
 
and other dialogues of Plato, all of which mentioned a fabulous land, situated this time in the west and called Atlantis.

 

Domenico and Giacomo examined the precious documents, their deep sailors' eyes fixed on the lines and arrows crisscrossing the faded blue of the sea. The father seemed surprised by the size of the continents, almost annoyed to see them encroach on the ocean in that way. His son Giacomo found that there were far too many brown patches, as if a painter with a deranged mind had thrown them there at random. Tiny, spidery islands rubbed shoulders with huge bear paws, of which two were as large as continents. Less worried about geography, the younger son amused himself endowing these unknown or imaginary places with whimsical nicknames. Instead of being repelled, like his elders, by this disrespectful confusion that disturbed the order of the world, Cristoforo mutely applauded the jokes of this somewhat mad cartographer. By thus remolding the planet as he wished, he had made it more beautiful, more mysterious, an invitation to adventure and dream. The young man followed with his eyes these lines that led to infinity. He imagined a ship blindly following their twists and turns until it finally dropped anchor at the other end of the world, among the stars. A real ship was not made to lead from one port to another, like a wagon arriving at a way station. It had quite another destination, always the same one, which bore the sweet name “elsewhere.”

Domenico Colombo politely promised Federico that he would study the maps. In fact, the Genoese did not trust these maps any more than he trusted the gossip of a ship's boy. Mariners were known to be inveterate tellers of tales. They described mountains higher than clouds, claimed to have seen monsters gobble up a whole ship with one snap of their jaws, stated that they had visited golden beaches where naked young women offered themselves fearlessly to strangers, covering them with giant flowers and amorous caresses. No serious ship-owner believed in the nonsense put about by drunken sailors.

Federico had not expected to be taken at his word. This meeting had been only a first step. The rumor of a route leading to a land of cockaigne would, however, slowly insinuate itself into the corridors of the Spanish Admiralty, onto the landing stages of Flemish ports, and into Venetian trading posts, Portuguese colonial headquarters, and French harbormasters' offices. Whether or not they believed in such stories, the princes of Christendom would soon see them as a good excuse to raise new funds and enlarge their fleets. Anxious for their bankers to take the bait, they would take it upon themselves to make the story plausible.

Pleased with what he had achieved, Federico thanked the Colombos and took his leave. Once the stranger had left, Domenico burst out laughing. Even if these lands existed, it was out of the question to risk a ship to reach them. There was not a single port of call within sight. Giacomo agreed. He was the heir. His father's reputation with Italian shipbuilders ensured him a certain future. But Cristoforo was thinking like a younger son. When it came to birthright, he was last in line. His sisters would need good dowries to marry. The sons-in-law would join the business as associates, reducing Cristoforo's meager share even further. Dependent relatives would require expenses that his big brother would be certain to cover by drawing on the common chest. Like all younger sons of good families, Cristoforo would then have to make a difficult choice between a career in the army and entering the Church. He did not feel that he had the soul either of a soldier or of a priest. The sea was his one escape route. To the east, it belonged to his brother and all well-to-do elder brothers. All that remained to Cristoforo was the west, which nobody seemed to want.

 

Federico was at last able to leave this rough world of sailors and fishermen and return to the sweetness of Florence and his shop close to the Ponte Vecchio, and meditate over the grave of his dead master, Cosimo de' Medici. He was not displeased with the seed he had sown. Jerusalem had given him a whole sack full of them. This one, however, would germinate differently than the others. The Brotherhood was encouraging the Gentiles to rediscover the wisdom of the ancients, to study the discoveries of the astronomers and doctors, in the hope of guiding them toward a new world. But this seed would widen their horizons in quite another way, by offering them a New World.