by Tom Harper
‘With this new form of writing, we can proofread and correct before we put a word on the page.’
That cracked his composure, drawing a sharp look to see if he was being made a fool of.
‘Customers like to see corrections,’ was all he said.
‘They are scabs on the page. They disfigure it.’
‘They prove that the author has taken care to examine his work.’
‘But if he has taken the ultimate care there will be no mistake to correct.’
‘Only God is perfect.’
‘Then I will be as nearly perfect as possible.’
Fust examined the page again. ‘You still have work to do. There is more to writing than spelling. However these pages were written, it was not with a steady hand.’
‘That is why I need capital. To perfect the invention. I thought that with your interests in bookselling, you might be interested.’ I put out my hand to take back the grammar book. ‘Perhaps I was wrong.’
Fust held on to the book.
‘A new form of writing that can be read before it is written and produce more copies in a month than a scribe in his lifetime,’ I repeated. ‘How much would that be worth to you?’
Fust gave a thin smile. ‘I think you are about to tell me.’
I had had enough of scrabbling for piecemeal loans that barely paid the interest on the last. Nor did I want a syndicate of investors whose squabbles devoured my time more than the work itself. I had determined to settle in Mainz. That meant a single creditor, so indebted to the project that he could not let it fail.
‘A thousand gulden.’
Fust lifted his hands and blew on them.
‘That is a fabulous sum. How will you spend it in such a way that you can repay me?’
‘Come and see.’
LXI
Near Mannheim, Germany
‘What you’re potentially looking at is the first or second book ever printed.’
They were parked in a lay-by. Emily spread the reassembled printout and the bestiary on her lap while Nick checked over his shoulder to make sure no one could see them. There was nothing in front of them except a dark stand of pines sagging under the weight of snow. Behind them, traffic thundered past on the A5 autobahn.
‘The first book ever printed where?’
‘Ever printed ever. To be precise, ever printed from movable type.’
‘Movable type’ was a phrase Nick recognised, though more as a face in the crowd than an intimate friend. The sort of thing name-checked in magazine lists of the Hundred Greatest Inventions or Men Who Changed the World. Usually closely associated with a name:
‘Gutenberg?’
‘Exactly.’ Emily’s skin was grey and tired; without lipstick and mascara, her bold lips and dark eyes seemed to fade back into her face. But when she looked at the pages in front of her, the energy was unmistakable. ‘How much do you know about him?’
‘How much is there to know?’
‘Not much. So little that until the eighteenth century he was almost forgotten. He made some powerful enemies in his lifetime; after his death they did everything they could to obscure his legacy. It was only when scholars analysed the records hundreds of years later that they worked it out.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘He pieced things together.’ She shot Nick a shy grin to see if he’d got the joke. ‘Movable type. He worked out a technique to cast individual letters on blocks of metal, then put them together into words, sentences, eventually an entire Bible – and print it out.’
Nick tried to imagine assembling a whole Bible letter by letter. ‘Must have taken a long time.’
‘Years, probably. But the only alternative was handwriting. Once he had the page set up he could print off as many copies as he wanted. Then he’d take it apart and reuse the letters to create a whole different page. Infinitely flexible, while at the same time creating a product that was completely standardised and could be replicated as often as people wanted it. It was probably the greatest step forward in the communication of information between the alphabet and the Internet.’
‘And when was this?’
‘The mid-fifteenth century.’
‘The same time as the Master of the Playing Cards.’
Emily held up the book from the library. There was nothing on the front cover except a grazing stag embossed in gold. Nick recognised it at once from the suit of deer. Emily turned the book spine on.
‘Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards,’ Nick read.
‘I came across it when I was looking into Gillian’s card, back in New York. You’re not the first one to wonder about a connection. There’s an illuminated copy of the Gutenberg Bible at Princeton whose illustrations look like copies of the playing cards. The author of this book suggested that perhaps there was a partnership between Gutenberg and the Master to produce illustrations for the Bibles. The man who perfected printing text and the man who perfected printing engravings. It’s a seductive idea.’
‘Is there any evidence for it?’
‘Only circumstantial. Most of the arguments in this book have been picked apart.’ Emily stared at the printout as if she couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Until this.’
A siren howled in the distance. Nick tried to concentrate. ‘Isn’t it pretty similar to the bestiary we found in Brussels?’
‘The bestiary is handwritten; this is printed. You can see how regular the type is, how perfectly straight the lines are. The same with the illustrations. The pictures in the bestiary have been hand-painted. It’s hard to be certain with the reconstruction, but it looks as if the one here has been printed like the cards.’
The siren was getting louder. Nick wiped the window and looked out. The only other car in the lay-by was a silver Opel parked at the far end. Its driver stood with his back to them, relieving himself into the snow under the trees.
‘So we’ve got a printed picture that we know dates from the mid-fifteenth century and some printed text. How do you make the leap to Gutenberg?’
Emily pointed to the letters. ‘Gutenberg was the first. He didn’t just invent the printing press; he had to invent, or perfect, everything. The alloys used to cast the types and the tools for making them. The processes for putting together the pages and then holding them in place. The inks.’ She suddenly trailed off.
‘The inks…?’
The siren had swelled to an ear-splitting whoop. An ambulance sped past behind them, blasting its horn to clear the traffic. Nick exhaled a deep breath that promptly crystallised on the windscreen. Emily didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘That must be what alerted Gillian.’ She pulled out the playing card and scrutinised it. ‘Here.’
She pointed to a cluster of dark spots in the lower corner of the card.
‘Gutenberg’s ink is famous for its lustre. It doesn’t fade; it’s as dark and deep now as the day he pulled it off the press.’
‘How come?’
‘No one knows. Even among early printed books it’s unique. People have tried everything to unravel his recipe – even analysing it with spectrometers.’
‘PIXE,’ said Nick. ‘Vandevelde.’
‘Gillian must have noticed the ink and guessed what it was. Vandevelde would have confirmed it.’
‘Before they got to him. But how did you figure it out?’
‘The font. Gutenberg invented that too. It wasn’t a question of selecting Times New Roman or Arial; he had to design every letter and then cut it into blocks of metal for casting. In early printed books, each typeface is as unique as handwriting.’
She ran a finger over the reassembled letters. ‘This is the grandfather of them all. The type he used for his masterpiece, the Gutenberg Bible. So far as we’ve ever known, that was the only major book he printed.’ She caressed the printout like an infant. ‘This is like finding an autographed copy of a lost Shakespeare play with illustrations by Rembrandt.’
‘We haven’t found it yet,’ Nick reminded her. ‘A
ll we’ve got is a printout of a reconstruction of one page that a guy tore up in Strasbourg. I don’t think that was original either, unless Gutenberg printed it off on office paper.’
‘You pointed a gun at him and the only thing he cared about was destroying that piece of paper. It’s a true copy of something. Somewhere.’
LXII
Mainz
For such a large building, the Hof zum Gutenberg was surprisingly unassuming: the narrow street offered no position where you could take in its full size. At ground level it blended unnoticed into its neighbour, while the greater part slipped around a corner into an alley. You would have had to crane your head far back to see the peaked gable overhead: most people were too occupied dodging livestock, dung and the pelts hanging from hooks outside the furrier’s shop opposite to look much higher than their own feet. It was a perfect home for what went on within.
‘I hear you have taken a new name since you returned,’ Fust said.
‘Gutenberg.’ I had jettisoned my father’s name and assumed that of my first and last home. It announced me as a man of property, which proved useful in some of my dealings; but more than that it anchored me. I belonged here.
As we stepped over the threshold I looked up, as I always did, at the crest carved into the keystone of the arch. It showed a hunched pilgrim in a high conical cap, bent almost double under the weight of the load he carried hidden beneath his cloak. What was that burden, I wondered? He leaned on a stick, while the other hand held out a begging bowl for alms. I did not know how it had become our family emblem – even my father could not say. But I felt, as always, a kinship – a weary pilgrim still begging alms to finish his journey.
I had been busy since my return. The front rooms which my father had used to display his cloths and wares had been boarded up. Now they were crowded with furniture, pushed against walls or piled high as if readied for a move. Dust had already begun to settle.
I led Fust into another room, then down a short corridor past the pantry. We paused outside an iron-bound door that led into the rear wing.
‘What you see and what you hear – you swear by Mary and the saints you will not reveal it to anyone?’
Fust nodded. I opened the door.
In the middle of the room, three men sat at a table that had been moved there for the purpose. They were sipping wine, though none looked as if he was enjoying it. They knew what was at stake.
I introduced them.
‘Konrad Saspach of Strassburg, chest maker and carpenter. He makes our presses, which you will see presently.’
Saspach was one of the few men who had grown in my estimation since I’d known him. His beard was now white and bushy as a prophet’s, his hands so wizened it seemed impossible they could turn a lathe or make a saw cut so straight. He had always been on the periphery of our enterprise, but when I asked him to come from Strassburg he had agreed willingly.
‘Götz von Schlettstadt, the goldsmith who engraves the dies and forms we use.’ Not long after I met him the Armagnaken had sacked his town and looted his shop. A goldsmith with no gold cannot maintain a business. Soon afterwards he had come to Strassburg and offered to work for me. I accepted gladly, for he was the most meticulous goldsmith I ever knew. All metals were like clay in his hands.
‘Father Heinrich Günther.’ A younger man with a grave face and staring eyes. Günther had been vicar of St Christoph’s church around the corner until – in a dispute between the archbishop and the Pope – he had committed the sin of siding with his superior’s superior. The archbishop had stripped him of his benefice and left him penniless.
I looked at them all, watching Fust or studying their cups as their moods dictated. These orphans and outcasts were my guild, a brotherhood of craftsmen. If only Kaspar could have been among them my happiness would have been complete.
‘And what do you all have in common? It sounds like the beginning of a joke: a carpenter, a goldsmith, a priest and…’ He looked at me. ‘Whatever you are, Hans Gutenberg?’
A copyist? An imprinter of paper? A beggar? A fool?
‘A pilgrim.’ I could see the answer displeased him. I hurried on. ‘First, we will demonstrate the power of this art.’
I handed him a piece of paper. Four pinholes had been pricked in the corners, and a pencil line ruled apparently at random in the middle.
‘Write your name here.’
With the reluctance of a man who thinks he is being made a fool of, he took a pen from the table and signed his name on the line.
‘The paper is damp,’ he commented.
‘It takes the ink better.’
Saspach took the signed paper and disappeared through a door into the next room. From behind the door came a long creak of protest, like a ship straining on its hawser. Then a thud, a rasp and a clang. Fust’s eyes narrowed, while the others affected not to notice anything.
Saspach returned and laid the sheet triumphantly in front of Fust.
‘Liebe Gott,’ he murmured.
His name was still there, just as he had written it. But where before it had been a solitary bloom on a barren page, now it sat in the midst of a garden, hundreds of words that had blossomed around it in an instant and drawn it into their web. His name was now part of a sentence:
Wherefore we decree that JOHANN FUST is truly forgiven of these sins and that the stain of them is removed.
‘No pens. No desks. No mind to wander or hand to slip. A perfect copy every time. And, as you see, completed in an instant.’
Fust looked like a man who had fallen down a hole and found a cave of gold. He pointed to the grammar book I had shown him in the vineyard. ‘And this came out of that room also?’
‘Every page.’
‘It is indistinguishable from the real thing.’
‘Perhaps it is the real thing – as gold is to lead or the sun is to the moon.’
But Fust’s merchant mind could not be dazzled for long. Already I could see the calculation in his eyes, measuring and counting. ‘Why do you need a thousand gulden from me? Everything here seems complete.’
‘This is just the beginning. This proves it is possible. To take advantage of the art I need more presses and equipment, more men to work them, more paper and vellum.’
‘To print indulgences and grammar books?’
I shook my head and leaned over the table. I had sworn beforehand that I would not touch the wine lest it cloud my thoughts. Now I found I had already drained my cup. It rushed in my veins.
‘A new venture. Bolder than anything we have attempted. For all our achievements, we are still apprentices in this new art. Now we will make our master-piece.’
LXIII
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Nick took a random exit off the autobahn and drove until he found a motel. Emily slept in the seat next to him. He felt empty, his body a hollow tank trembling from the last drops of adrenalin and caffeine sloshing around inside. He had to force his eyes to stay open. He shivered with relief when they pulled into the car park at the back of the motel, and almost wept when he saw the plain room with its solid brown bed.
Emily threw back the bedspread and sat on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes and socks. She looked at him for a moment, a strange look that Nick didn’t understand.
With a self-conscious shrug she stood, pulled her sweater over her head and wriggled out of her jeans. All she was wearing underneath was a thin white camisole and her underwear. She stood there on the carpet in the middle of the room, blushing slightly, like a virgin on her wedding night not certain what to do. Nick tried not to stare.
‘I just want you to hold me.’
Nick nodded. He was too tired to feel awkward. He stripped down to his boxer shorts and clambered into the bed after Emily. He lay down beside her, cupping his knees inside hers, pressing his chest against her shoulder blades. She shivered; he pulled back, but she reached round and pulled his arm firmly around her waist.
‘It’s nice. It’s just it’
s been a long time.’ She sighed. ‘Not that. Just… warmth.’
‘I think I know what you mean.’
She nestled back into him. Nick laid his palm flat against her stomach, terrified of touching her where he should not, and at the same time longing to. He remembered lying like this with Gillian, the same confusion, so close and so aware of the distance. Always the distance.
He fell asleep.
LXIV
Mainz
When Fust had gone I wandered through the house. The day was fading; soon it would be too dark to work. For the moment, the labours that were the life and breath of the house continued. When I stepped outside into the yard I could smell the heavy perfume of boiling oil, sharpened by the tang of coal smoke. My father’s kitchen had become our type foundry, and the adjacent scouring house the room where we cooked up our inks. Inside the foundry I could see sparks where the fresh types were ground smooth on a wheel.
I climbed the stairs by an outbuilding and crossed a walkway back to the main house. Here, an outside gallery ran around the internal courtyard. I peered through the barred windows as I walked past. In the room where the die maker had once cut coin moulds for my father, Götz now chiselled letters out of copper squares. In the next room, Father Günther sat at a writing desk and pored over a small Bible. He had a sheet of paper beside him and a pen in his hand, which never stopped moving as he read. For anyone used to watching copyists it was an unnatural motion: the pen danced up and down the page, line to line, apparently at random; it never stayed still enough to form even one letter, but left a trail of dots and dashes like bird prints in snow. If he resembled anything it was not a scribe but a merchant clerk taking inventory of his stock. In fact, he was taking inventory of every letter in every word of the Book of Genesis.
He saw me pass and called through the open door, ‘Did you get what you wanted?’
‘He will give us eight hundred gulden now, and more later.’ It was less than I had asked for, more than I’d expected. ‘The equipment will be its own collateral. In return for exclusive rights to sell what we produce, he has also agreed he will not collect the interest. And he has ordered fifty copies of the Donatus grammar book for delivery in three months’ time.’ I laughed. ‘You should have seen the look on his face. He could not believe such a thing was possible.’
