The Brotherhood of Book Hunters

by Raphael Jerusalmy

  An air of freedom blew over their cheeks. The horses galloped, intoxicated by the light, tearing joyfully across the gilded brambles, cutting through the clouds of midges, shaking their loads from side to side as the terrain changed. The water lapped gaily in the gourds. François inhaled the scent of the scrub and let his eyes wander over the eroded curves of the plateaus, the winding roads, the paths trodden by the apostles, the valleys where the prophets were buried, at last discovering the Holy Land. He allowed it to permeate him. At first, he looked avidly for signs, inscriptions on the pediment of some temple. There was not even a milestone. Only stony tracks that seemed to lead nowhere. And yet this land was whispering a vague message in his ear, a secret from deep in the soul. He sensed intuitively that it had been waiting for him forever.

  When night fell, Federico looked for a place to camp. Fabulous Galilee offered only the shelter of meager undergrowth. Emaciated pines, skeletal cypresses, and dwarf oaks barely concealed the horses. The moon was in its first quarter. Federico decided not to light a fire. The men sat down in the gloom, their whispers mingling with the mournful howling of jackals. François took his place on a flat rock, and grabbed a jug of Falernian wine and a smoked chicken thigh. Federico crouched in order not to soil his clothes.

  “We’ll get to Safed by tomorrow evening. A piece of oatcake?”

  The Italian’s pale smile glittered in the darkness. François passed him the jug then cleaned his hands with twigs moistened with dew.

  “You are linked to the noble house of the Medicis. I thought I saw their arms on one of the volumes kept in the monastery.”

  “That may be so.”

  “They differ from the famous emblem by the addition of kabbalistic symbols whose meaning escapes me.”

  “I don’t read Hebrew,” the merchant replied curtly.

  An owl hooted in the distance. Frightened, one of the horses gave a start. Federico stood up and went to calm it with a pat on the spine, making sure that its reins were firmly tied around a dead trunk. François followed him with his eyes, convinced that the Italian knew much more than he was prepared to admit. He had clearly been expecting to see François in the monastery, and had already planned to give him that splendid book with the butterfly. Brother Paul had nevertheless assured the two Frenchmen that the bookseller knew nothing of the mission that had brought them here. Federico’s coming had been planned long before their arrival. He was a regular in the place and often came there for supplies. In any case, there was nothing to fear from a man in the pay of the Medicis. But François felt a kind of anxiety around the Italian. The fellow was clearly playing a part. His unctuous merchant’s gestures, the way he exaggerated his distinction to make its falseness clear, his showy attire, were so many layers beneath which to bury the person that François detected in spite of everything. There emanated from him the self-confident authority of a leader of men, the rigidity of a soldier, and an intransigence that was frightening. This was no courtly hypocrite, but rather someone who held a secret. Yet he did little to conceal his game. The aim of that half-open, half-closed mask he offered to people’s gaze was not to disorientate, but to discourage any desire to remove it from him and discover his real face. It was a tactic that François knew well, one the Coquillards had used, to warn anyone who might pry too closely into their affairs that the result might be a knife in the gut. That was why François mistrusted Federico. And it was also why he respected him.

  Colin took the first watch. François came to keep him company. He did not tell him about his suspicions, fearing that the fellow might relieve him of them in his way—by smashing the Florentine’s head against a wagon wheel, or thrusting a bottle of wine down his throat, if not elsewhere. Colin seemed in a bad enough mood already. He stamped his feet and swore that Chartier would just have to wait. The Bishop hadn’t even taken the trouble to write a letter of introduction. If things went badly, he would wash his hands of them. François mocked his friend. Since when did an honest bandit wager on the assurances of a clergyman? Colin shrugged. He crushed a mosquito in his hand, cursing all the saints in heaven, then went and leaned against a rock and began sharpening a branch with his knife to use as a toothpick. François took advantage of this brief lull to reassure his companion. He had absolutely no intention of following Chartier’s orders. But it was too early to act. However much François claimed that he was concocting one of those brilliant coups only he seemed able to pull off, a really clever trick, Colin couldn’t see anything good coming of this business. François stretched his hand toward the countryside as if the undergrowth and the sand agreed with him. It wasn’t Chartier, or Fust, or anyone else who would tell him the way and guide his steps. It was this land. This country was calling to him. He felt it. And for quite another mission.

  Colin, who was used to these lyrical flights, especially when François had been drinking, stood up without saying a word, his own response being to piss noisily on the undergrowth and the sand. And on this damned country.

  11

  The afternoon was already well under way by the time the convoy began its climb toward Safed, roasting up there in the sun. The line of roofs shimmered slightly, giving the town a dreamlike appearance. The horses struggled up the last part of the ascent until their hooves struck the burning stones of the alleys. Here, there were no inns or taverns. No good Catholics either. The shadows of wretched-looking Muslims and Jews glided past the blue and green house fronts, thus painted to ward off the evil eye. There being little to pillage, the Mamluks were nowhere to be seen. Their detachments were content to patrol the outskirts and bivouac in open country, close to water sources and farms. Even the Church did not deign to favor this place with a monastery or a shrine. And yet this isolated town, devoid of the luxury that gave the cities of the East their reputation, was home to a number of important figures whose spiritual influence spread beyond the sea. Jews everywhere, hiding from the Inquisition or missing an appointment with their landlords, would hasten to their quarters in Seville or Prague to gather in a clandestine place of study. There, one of their people would be waiting for them impatiently in order to read aloud a missive, an instruction or a commentary newly arrived from Safed. Each word was drunk in like a comforting potion, each turn of phrase was applauded as if it were an exceptional acrobatic feat. It was as if the scholars of the Holy Land had come to recite them in person, their shoes still coated with sand, their eyes shining with the sun. Could such a peaceful, isolated town really conceal such wisdom?

  Women and children watched the riders pass by with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. François smiled at them, but Colin sat stiff and erect, like a marshal inspecting his troops. Two old Jews with long beards were chatting on a stone bench beneath a palm tree whose branches were laden with dates and moths. They abruptly fell silent as the convoy approached. One of them seemed ready to leap to his feet and run away. The other, wrapped tightly in his caftan, ignored the strangers, muttered some psalm or other, and dozed off, his head propped on his chest.

  At the end of the main street stood an imposing building that blazed white in the sun. Federico was the first to enter. Muleteers and carters waited outside, watering the animals. Inside the house, all was bright. The high walls were painted in bluish hues of a pastel lightness. The waiting room was lit with brass lamps from which hung brightly-colored amulets. On the floor, ceramic flagstones covered with arabesques vied with multicolored rugs. In the patio stood a sweet-smelling fig tree. The secretary led the visitors to a small room furnished with a table and four wooden chairs. He announced that the rabbi would be joining them shortly. Federico explained to François and Colin that Rabbi Gamliel Ben Sira was a highly respected figure, rather like a cardinal, and that it was a rare honor for them to be granted an audience with him. Rabbi Gamliel was a renowned scholar who corresponded with scientists in Nuremberg, professors in Turin, doctors in Amsterdam. He directed one of the most reputable academies in the Jewish world. I
n addition to that, every morning he dispensed cures and advice to the poor people of the region.

  The rabbi made his entrance through a low door. As the door stood open, François glimpsed a study with a small inlaid Damascus desk piled high with manuscripts and scrolls of parchment.

  “Shalom, welcome.”

  Their host’s easy demeanor surprised François. He had been expecting a bearded old man, a patriarch with a heavily lined face made pale by long nights of prayer, but here stood a tall, robust man in his thirties, entirely dressed in dazzling white, with tanned skin, a thick but meticulously groomed black beard, and a broad smile. It was evident that the rabbi had been expecting the two Frenchmen and that he knew the purpose of their visit. That was why his conduct took François aback. A Jew receiving a visit from emissaries of a king would have been expected to bow reverently, but this man remained straight-backed and simply held out his hand. He was almost six feet tall. François, who was shorter, and still dirty from the ride, felt somewhat intimidated. As for Colin, he was openly offended.

  The secretary put some tea down on the table, then returned a few moments later with a thick volume under his arm. He looked quickly through the list of orders handed to him by Federico, ticked certain titles, then consulted a big register. Even though Rabbi Gamliel owned a well-stocked library, he never let the books he had read out of his sight, but was constantly scribbling notes and references in them. His phenomenal memory allowed him to cross-check different texts studied over a period of several years. He remembered the exact place to find such and such a passage. The inventory held by his secretary did not therefore list the Rabbi’s personal copies. It comprised works that were not all kept in Safed, or even in the Holy Land. It was a kind of bookseller’s catalogue, listing hundreds of manuscripts and printed books, with their dates and places of publication as well as the various places where they could be acquired. As soon as news arrived that a synagogue had been pillaged or a house of study razed to the ground, Rabbi Gamliel’s secretary would consult his lists. If a Babylonian Talmud was burned in Cologne, it was quickly replaced with another copy from Orléans or Barcelona. If a scholar in York asked a difficult question about the dietary laws, he was referred to a commentary dealing with that same law, written in Smyrna a few years earlier. Whenever a sage was summoned to debate the Trinity with the inquisitors, he was provided with documents from several churches to help him to juggle skillfully with the often conflicting, even contradictory opinions of the various clergies.

  When you came down to it, it was the tragic dispersal of the Jews that saved them. No tyranny, however widely it extended its net, could reach them all. No epidemic could wipe them out. For that to happen, it would have to spread immediately to the four corners of the earth. But it was to their books above all that the Jews owed their survival. For it was the same Talmud that was read—in Hebrew—in Peking, Samarkand, Tripoli, or Damascus. And as long as it was read, out loud or in hiding, by a whole congregation or a solitary hermit, they would be able to sail through any storm.

  Being forbidden everywhere to raise troops, to bear arms, or even to ride horses, the Jews had been forced to create an invisible army, an army without a garrison or an arsenal, which operated under the noses of the censors. Thanks to their common language and this network of communication, they had for centuries maintained a nation without a king or a land. Louis XI had always been fascinated by the way the rabbis spread their teachings beyond borders, thus weaving the invisible links that united their people. Like them, he was trying to impose French as the official language of the kingdom and had just ordered the creation of a letter post. The young monarch reigned over a confused jumble of constantly squabbling provinces. Bretons, Burgundians, Savoyards, and Gascons did not speak the same language. How could they come to an understanding? Would Gamliel supply the books on which the King of France was counting to assert his power from Picardy to Lorraine, from the Languedoc to Normandy, and counter the hold the Roman Church had over his subjects?

  François listened to the rabbi’s explanations with redoubled interest. He was starting to glimpse the true extent of this Gamliel’s activities, the influence he exerted from here, sitting at his desk, the significance of the texts he propagated. Was he the Medicis’ mysterious accomplice? Johann Fust’s patron? And the future accomplice of Louis XI?

  François nevertheless remained puzzled. He could not see a practicing Jew in a white skullcap and caftan concerning himself with the humanities, opening clandestine print shops, publishing previously unpublished works by Lucretius and Demosthenes, gathering together treatises on algebra or astronomy, some of which contradicted the teachings of his own religion. Nor could François see any reason why a sage from the Holy Land would want to work hand in hand with gentiles from Florence, let alone a man of the Church like Chartier. Unless he was pursuing an aim quite different than that of his eminent allies, and without their knowing it. Just like François, who did not believe that any of them were well intentioned and was waiting for the moment to carry off his own victory.

  While his secretary prepared the orders, Rabbi Gamliel conversed calmly with Federico. The Italian spoke of the Earth, which was no longer at the center of the universe, and of Florence, which was now where everything important was happening. The rabbi listened to all this with a somewhat condescending politeness. Once the packages were ready, Gamliel asked the two Frenchmen to excuse him. He would only be a moment. He stood up and motioned to Federico to follow him into the adjoining room.

  Through the half-open door, François saw the rabbi hand a wide scroll to the merchant, who quickly looked through it. The edges were uneven and fraying everywhere into long yellow strands of a texture like straw or rushes. The body of the scroll was crisscrossed with stripes and plantlike veins. It was neither paper nor parchment. Sitting too far away to clearly make out every detail, François saw only a confused network of ocher patches on a blue background crossed with lines and arrows. The colors had so faded with time that he could barely make out the design, but the whole seemed to be like a sea chart. It could not however be a map of the world. There were far too many patches to be taken for islands or continents. Perhaps it was an ancient chart of a fabulous world.

  Noticing a sudden change in intonation in the voices of the two men, François pricked up his ears. Until now, the conversation between Gamliel and Federico had been held in Spanish, the only Latin language the rabbi knew. Although he couldn’t quite hear what was being said, François was certain that the dialogue was now continuing in a different language, a kind of guttural dialect that, in spite of its Semitic accents, sounded like neither Hebrew nor Arabic.

  Federico came out, holding the mysterious scroll under his arm, and immediately took his leave. He apologized politely, announcing that he had to set off again early in the morning for Nazareth where he hoped to acquire a rare Syriac manuscript. The brevity of this farewell took François by surprise. The Italian had not even inquired about the two pilgrims’ intentions.

  12

  Once Federico had left, the rabbi invited François and Colin to join him in his study. They sat for a while in awkward silence, while he stared insistently at the two men, as if trying to read a message in the lines of their faces. His knitted brows and fixed gaze seemed to be trying to penetrate their very souls, to probe the darkest recesses. He seemed unaware of the embarrassment caused by this prolonged examination. Even though the two strangers corresponded faithfully to the description that Fust had given of them in his letters, Gamliel was somewhat disconcerted by the wretched appearance of the King of France’s emissaries. That vagabond with his crumpled hat and his falsely stupid smile really didn’t look as he had expected. And the caustic, ever wary gaze of the brute who was with him was frankly discourteous. Were these the heralds so eagerly awaited by Jerusalem? Was their criminal appearance a disguise? Fust had suggested as much when he talked of Villon’s surprising erudition and his passion fo
r books. As for Colin, who thought himself so clever, Fust noted with amusement how he had let this brigand spy on him for months, letting him see only what would lead the Bishop of Paris to deal with him rather than with anyone else. Fust was convinced that there was much to be gained from a secret alliance with Louis XI: an opinion not shared by Brother Paul, who considered it too much of a risk to associate with a scheming bishop and an unscrupulous king. Jeopardizing thirty years of preparations struck him as inadvisable. They already had the Italians on their side, and that ought to be enough. What Brother Paul did not know was that it was his own sponsors, the Medicis, who advocated joining forces with the French monarch, their longtime ally in other matters. The offensive was going well, but an agreement with Paris could give it a magnitude they had not hoped for, inflicting far more damage on the enemy. It was now up to Rabbi Gamliel to decide. His colleagues in Jerusalem trusted in his good judgment.

  Emerging from his reflections, he smiled with perfectly rabbinical bonhomie, mixed with a hint of mischief. Not won over, Colin scowled, but François appreciated this mark of cordiality. He was far from suspecting that, depending on the outcome of this interview, Jerusalem would either open wide its gates to him or shut them in his face forever.

  “Instilling new ideas takes time. Often longer than one man’s reign lasts.”

  “Any reign is likely to be short-lived if it is maintained only with the sword,” retorted François. “Religion shows every day how to rule by the force of the written word alone.”