La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  On my way home, I sometimes saw a man in a purple tunic leaning against the portico of the San Donato church. That’s Stefano Raggi. He was wrongly accused of betraying the Doge and, to save himself from being disgraced, rammed a crucifix into his heart on the church steps, screaming that he would never leave the city.

  And the worst was Via del Campo, in the middle, by the fountain. In the light of the moon, I saw the bloodiest of scenes, like a macabre kind of son et lumière. Giulio Cesare Vacchero’s house once stood here, a nobleman and putative confidant of the Doge, who conspired against him with Count Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy and then was betrayed in turn. A supposed friend informed the Doge of the plot and Guilio Cesare Vacchero was executed, his possessions confiscated, his sons banished, his house razed to the ground, and now in the place where his house once stood, there’s a marble column with a Latin inscription that has immortalized all of this for eternity:

  JULIJ CAESARIS VACHERIJ

  PERDITISSIMI HOMINIS

  INFAMIS MEMORIA

  QUI CUM IN REMPUBLICAM CONSPIRASSET

  OBTRUNCATO CAPITE PUBLICATIS BONIS

  EXPULSIS FILIIS DIRUTAQUE DOMO

  DEBITAS POENAS LUIT

  A. S. MDCXXVIII

  I don’t need to translate that for you. Anyone can understand it. And his grandchildren were so ashamed of it they built the fountain to obscure the view of this column.

  By now I no longer know whether I can see the apparitions because as a writer I have been occupationally cursed with a great deal of empathy and the old lady of Vico dei Librai has weakened reason’s last line of defense, causing me to lose myself in my imagination, or whether I’m really seeing and hearing them and rapidly losing my mind.

  10.

  I try to imagine it. Every boy born in the known world back then dreamed of it. Every shield-bearer up to his ankles in shit, cleaning the stables, fell asleep with cheeks red with excitement that he saw reflected in the suit of armor he’d polished for his master until it shined. And he’d never forget the day the horses were saddled. The quiet, dull clap of black leather on the back of a gelding as the stirrups tinkled. The flapping of the banners. The heavy thumping footsteps of a knight weighed down with armor. The groaning and squeaking of the pulley that dropped him onto his horse’s hollow back. The historical pronouncement that echoed in the cavities of his suit of armor. The dry click of his helmet’s visor. The swelling storm. The banners do battle with the wind. You avert your gaze submissively as you pass his shield with its religious insignia. A determined sword snaps into its scabbard. The best sword ever wrought. Thousands of swords snap in response. The best swords ever seen on the surface of this heavy, black, boggy earth: clumped, fertile, black. The order is given in a guttural bark. The horse whinnies at the sharp jab of the brand new shining spurs in its dun flanks. Hundreds of horses whinny. You ride behind them with the carts of onions and potatoes. It’s the happiest day of your life. You’re on your way. The adventure is beginning. Your life is beginning. It’s beginning at last.

  Months later you’re standing at the gates, emaciated beneath the dusty, tattered pennants. You saw dozens of good men drown in the first river they had to cross. In the southern expanses it was easy to survive stealing chickens from the farmers and raping their daughters. And that’s where the rendezvous with the troops from the islands took place. They were a week later than agreed, but more numerous than the stars in the night sky. Their king had the heart of a lion. He was three hundred feet tall, sat on a golden horse, and radiated light. His cloak bearing the religious insignia flowed behind him like the ocean embracing the continents. He didn’t eat onions and potatoes but tiger marrow and dragon’s wings, served in the gilded skulls of his enemies.

  You crossed the mountains with him and his army. The mountains were higher than anything you’d ever seen in your life or could have imagined. An experienced spear-thrower wouldn’t be able to reach any further than the sturdy, indifferent ankle of one of those giants. The army’s top archer wouldn’t make it to the line where the trees had been eaten away from the top with his lightest, fastest arrow and his heaviest iron bow, which no one other than he could span. You trudged along slippery, frozen mountain passes with thousands of shining knights. Noblemen disappeared into ravines, suits of armor and horses and all. It’s a wonder you still have your cart of onions and potatoes and that you’re alive. Many froze to death at night in the camps. Many collapsed during the day of exhaustion and were left behind. Some fell prey to wolves in the night, as white as the snow that concealed them. Cutting winds wailed in anticipation of the new victims of a new night. Indifferent mountains stayed silent. The day grinned and the night sliced. Major figures from the known world fell into oblivion with sliding hooves, jingling with skillfully forged precious metals. Dying screams began to seem commonplace.

  But things did come to an end, even for those like you who had survived. You no longer knew whether you should be thankful or not. When you saw the sizzling plains of the south, you almost wished you had been torn apart by hot-blooded snow wolves, high up on the roof of the world, shivering with cold. Eye to eye with the heat-cracked mud before you, it seemed like mercy in comparison. And this is where the second rendezvous with the knights of the kingdom took place. Their tents were more elegant than a princess’ skirts. Their suits of armor gleamed in the latest fashion. Plumes fanned frivolously on their helmets. The stirrups of their coiffed horses had been gilded. The onions and potatoes were no longer needed. They ate half-drowned songbirds with marbled peacock’s tongue and stuffed caviar. Their golden helmets shone next to their golden plates like at home in their white castles on gentle rivers that ran through woods where unicorns grazed that could only be painted in pastel tones. And when, the next morning, the golden king had the bugle blown, it was the loveliest sound you’d ever heard. You buttoned up your trousers, let the onions be, and stumbled determinedly to your deeply desired downfall.

  11.

  As the mountain mists and the shimmering of the southern plains still clouded your eyes—or perhaps it was tiredness or the drunkenness of adventure or the blinding brilliance of hundreds of thousands of suits of armor in the sun—you imagined you could see the contours of a city on the horizon. Thousands of towers. You heard the bells chiming. Walls as high as castles and palaces as high as mountains. You’d never seen anything like it. A landscape of marble, built by human hand. Behind those smooth, shining, white, inaccessible, high walls that spanned the entire width of the land as far as the eye could see must live a privileged folk who bathe in asses’ milk before dressing in purple, it couldn’t be otherwise. Where you come from, they scrape onions and potatoes from the black earth; here the most colorful fruits grow on every tree, fat silver fish leap onto the banks to offer themselves to you, and pheasants and birds of paradise fly through the open window and spontaneously chirp into the hissing pans of golden oil. Where you come from, filthy beer is drunk from dirty tankards; here clear wine spurts from every fountain on every square. Perhaps you’re exaggerating a little. But the city did make that much of an impression when you saw it in the distance. Her name was Genoa. The other shield-bearers had already been whispering its name for months like a secret prayer. This was the capital of an independent republic, they said: the Serenissima Repubblica di Genova. They said its motto was “respublica superiorem non recognoscens.” You didn’t really understand it, which impressed you all the more.

  It was called La Superba, and even though you weren’t inside its walls yet, you understood exactly why this was. You stand in front of the Porta Soprana, the tall, elegant city gate flanked by two tall towers. The whole thing is so perfectly in proportion it looks more like the façade of a cathedral than an impregnable bulwark. It is said that the dimensions and proportions of the gate were calculated by a secret order of monks and that the magic of their mathematics protects the gate and paralyzes enemies of the city. Banners bearing the religious insignia flutter from the proud towers, the blood
-red cross, as fiery as the burning belief in the holy cause, on lily-white ground, as white as the pale innocence of pure intentions. You are part of the holy army and you’ve finally reached the holy city, which is the gate to the holy land. The powerful army of crusaders has returned home to the crusade’s most powerful city so that it can finally sally forth. In Genoa, it will board thousands of galleons with billowing sails to head east in the name of the one true belief with the flaming swords of the only true God to free Jerusalem from the dark hordes with their scimitars, kneeling before a false prophet. Good will defeat evil. God will triumph over the devil. And you, a simple shield-bearer, will be part of the holy mission to steer the history of the cosmos onto the right path.

  The golden king of France and the English king with the heart of a lion line up on their horses between their troops and the closed gate. The golden king recites each of his hundred honorary titles and greets the city. His horn blower gives the signal. His drummers beat their biggest kettledrums. The doors to the mighty gate swing open. The two kings give the order. The biggest army the world has ever seen enters the city.

  Hundreds of thousands of knights on horseback, followed by a seething horde of foot soldiers, lancers, archers, chaplains, servants, and shield-bearers goes through Porta Soprana along Via San Lorenzo, past the cathedral, and down toward the port. The sound of hoofbeats, tinkling metal, footsteps, drums, and trumpets echoes between the city’s high buildings. You can’t believe your eyes. The streets are made of stone. You’ve never seen anything like it. The towering marble palaces are decorated with the most blinding ornaments. They have large windows of transparent glass. There are banners with the holy insignia all over the place. You can hardly take in the cathedral for all of its beauty. It’s the biggest building you’ve ever seen. It is built of different colors of marble in white and gray stripes. The façade is an overwhelming display of sculptures, columns, mosaics, and ornaments in different colors. A people capable of building a thing like that must be the richest and wisest on earth. The last palace before the port is decorated with a towering mural, so colorful and true to life that you’re almost afraid of it. It is of Saint George. He is dressed in a suit of armor and seated on horseback, wearing a cloak, and carrying a shield with the holy insignia. He is the patron saint of the crusaders. His lance pierces the throat of a terrifying dragon, exactly like this army’s swords will pierce the black throats of Satan’s monster with its hundreds of thousands of heads, the Moors, worshippers of the false god, in Jerusalem.

  But the people make the greatest impression, the city folk who have gathered along the route to see the army with their own eyes. You might think that such a large army might instill fear, even with its good intentions. But there’s not a trace of fear to be seen in Genoa’s eyes. The people exude something impenetrable. They recognize no superior. Dressed in tasteful costumes made of the finest and most expensive fabrics, they look lofty, haughty almost. It is as though they know that the mightiest army the world has ever seen is nothing more than a temporary guest and will have to pay for its sojourn in this eternal city with many chests filled with silver. But the women make the greatest impression. You can see them hanging out of the windows of their palaces or on their marble balconies. The women you have known in your life were farm girls or shepherdesses. They had coarse hands, coarse tongues, and two udders you could squeeze for a farthing. The women of Genoa are aristocratic and as slender as princesses, as finely cut as an ivory trinket, with large knowing eyes, their gazes fiery and arrogant. They know no superior. When they speak, they sing, and when they are silent, they recite poetry.

  And then all of a sudden you see her. For the first time in your life you see the sea. A big blue reflective surface that reaches out cool and impenetrable to the horizon. You feel like you are going to faint, but luckily you manage to stay on your feet.

  12.

  But soon you grow to hate the city. There was no space to erect the tents at the port. The knights slept on satin cushions in the many palaces in the city, while their craggy, silent hosts arranged girls to waft coolness over their well earned resting beds with their rustling fans for a small surcharge. They were in less and less of a hurry to leave. You slept with the foot soldiers on the quayside using your empty knapsack as a pillow. You felt yourself being fileted and pickled by the burning sun. It was an enormous operation, embarking such a large army. Troops were regularly rowed over to the black, heaving galleons in the distance, but there were so many of you. You began to do the math. At this rate, it would take weeks, not to say months, to get everyone onboard. By now you were hungry. But the impenetrable, superior Genoese who had admired your entrance into the city turned out to be even more arrogant and shrewd than you thought. They perceived your hunger as merchandise. With thousands of starving foot soldiers on their doorstep, they raised the price of bread by three cents. Dried fish were sold by auction. By now the sanitation was inadequate. To put it mildly. There were outbreaks of illness. Good men died of coughing or blackfoot. The Genoese implemented a ban on leaving the overheated quays and placed soldiers in the shadows to stop you going into the cool alleys to steal water from the fountains. The warm, salty water at the port didn’t taste nice, not even in combination with soup made from shoe soles and horse droppings. The silent Genoese folk didn’t even smile. They took no malicious pleasure in this, that much you’d understood. They stood and watched. They silently raised their prices. Rats scratched around your improvised bunk. You began to wonder what they’d taste like. One evening you tasted one and what you vomited up in disgust was greedily scooped up by your bedmate.

  It wasn’t much better onboard the ship. At least on the Genoan quay you’d had fresh air, however relative that concept was in close proximity to hundreds of thousands of sweating, dying foot soldiers from the biggest army the world had ever seen. The smell of sulfur left by Lucifer himself permeated the galleon’s hold. Lucifer, the prince of utter darkness, who tried to suffocate the soldiers of the army of angels with their own breath. Thin shit streamed along the joists. The planks creaked.

  13.

  The disembarkation in Palestine was coupled with a great display of power. Above deck, the flags were raised and the trumpets blown, while below deck, you lay in your own vomit and shit, green with misery, among the stinking bodies of your comrades-in-arms. Your lord and master was the first to jump ship in his shining suit of armor, just like all the other lords and masters in their shining suits. It wasn’t until their empty words had died away in the wind that you could stagger, more dead than alive, up the beach. And while, at a full gallop with a drumroll and a fanfare of trumpets, an immediate advance was made on the holy city of Jerusalem, which had fallen into Muslim hands, the biggest enemies of your God and of civilization, you needed a moment to recover from the journey. There were palm trees and shade. There was a sea breeze. You managed to get away from the others. You needed a little rest before fighting the soldiers of evil and spitting in the face of Satan himself, sword raised. Just a moment. Five minutes of rest. You fell into a deep sleep.

  When you woke up, it was quiet. There was no sound of hoofbeats, drums, or trumpets. You cautiously opened your eyes. You looked into the eyes of a black woman. “Black” wasn’t the right word. She was as smooth and dark and shiny as an olive. Her skin gleamed with sweat, power, and truth, and her coal-black eyes could turn entire legions to ashes. She was holding a glittering knife to your throat. She said something in her tongue, which you accurately interpreted as a threat. You felt yourself grow moist with fear. And fearfully, because you were in such a panic you might have done anything, you rose slowly to your feet. She kept her knife to your throat but didn’t cut. You moved upwards to her lips and kissed her and you were sure you were going to die. But she didn’t cut.

  “Why?”

  She replied in that scraping dry language you didn’t understand. She spat in your face, kissed you passionately, hit you, and put you on a mule. “Hee!” she screamed. �
��Hee!”

  Months later you were sitting next to her father in the blue tent. He held the holy scepter tight as he begged the new god and the new prophet to keep you both safe. There were tears in his eyes during the final prayer. She touched your hand for a moment. After the sword dance, you talked in their language about everything she’d taught you. You spoke of water and fire, harmony in mathematical proportions, the philosophy of submission to the truth, and your love of your new wife. The applause bubbled over like water in a desert.

  And that night, still enjoying the afterglow of the honey and the lukewarm, salty sea of her unconditional surrender, you heard hoofbeats outside the camp. You pushed aside the books by Arabic philosophers, grabbed your sword, and went outside. But there were many of them. They wore the cursed sign of the flaming red cross of revenge on the off-white ground of hypocrisy. There was nothing you could do with your scimitar. You got yourself and her father to safety. There wasn’t a trace of her. The encampment was massacred and burned. The books by the wise men were burned as repellant heresy. The women were raped, time and time again, until someone was merciful enough to ram a sword in their bleeding cunts instead of taking them again. You saw her die that way.

  From that night on, your only desire was to stop living. Her father nodded. And so your second desire became to take revenge.

  “But the warriors of the blood-red cross are always too great in number.”

  You nodded. “But they have one weakness.”

  “What is it?”

  “Their city. The city of Saint George and the dragon. I shall wreak revenge for your daughter on that city.”

  “What’s the name of the city, my son? Genoa? I’ve heard that it’s the most beautiful city ever built.”

  “Genoa,” you said, “is the place I hate most on earth. I promise you, Father, I shall return. Allow me to rob myself of my own life and to haunt it as the spirit of vengeance for the victims of the cross.”