The Council of Egypt

by Leonardo Sciascia

  Chapter II

  As he did every morning at dawn, he threw open the window that looked out over the garden. It was just one week since he had reported his robbery, and as Abbot Vella glanced down, he saw two figures moving about under the trellis of the grape arbor. Could real robbers have come? he wondered; but the two had heard the window open and they came over and called up to him. Police.

  “What are you doing here?” the Abbot asked.

  Judge’s orders, they said. They’d spent the whole blessed night out in the open. They were blue, numb from cold.

  The Abbot went to the window that looked out over the front gate and street: two others. “Suppose I really had been robbed, I’d have been in a fine fix. The police turn up one week later. And to do what? They installed the iron doors on the Treasury of Santa Azata, after it had been robbed. That’s the law for you.” But he felt a vague uneasiness, a presentiment: he hurried to the kitchen to burn the few papers still lying about which to a trained eye might conceivably betray some hint of, or at least raise a suspicion about, his game.

  The sun was high when the judge arrived followed by a handful of police. It was Grassellini, Judge of the Royal Patrimony. The Abbot was surprised; he had been expecting a judge of the Criminal Court.

  “When a theft is a theft,” Grassellini explained, “the Criminal Court has jurisdiction; but the fact is that what was stolen from you belonged to you, I would say yes, materially, but morally it belonged to Sicily, to the Kingdom, to the Royal Patrimony. There’s been a small conflict of interest between the Criminal Court and the Tribunal of the Royal Patrimony; you know how these things are. But we won, naturally... Would you agree that we were in the right?”

  “What else?” the Abbot said. “Papers that serve to make history belong to the Kingdom; they are a heritage, like the Normans’ palace or the tomb of King Frederick.”

  “That is precisely the line I took. I am glad you see it in the same light... To my colleagues in the Criminal Court, however, it appeared to have some connection with revolution and such, but then, they make no distinction between the theft of a sausage and the theft of the Council of Egypt... That is the name of the codex they stole from you, is it not? But I make a distinction, I make a very great distinction!” Then his tone changed, and to the police he said, “Make a thorough search. Collect every piece of paper you find, every scrap, no matter how small.”

  The police scattered through the house. Abbot and Judge eyed each other for a moment, each taking the measure of the other and of his game, as if they had been seated at the table, cards in hand, about to begin a round of primero.

  “Merely a precaution,” the Judge explained. “If the thieves were to take it into their heads to pay you another visit, it would prevent them from carrying off anything else of interest to the Royal Patrimony.”

  “I do not think they left anything of the sort you would be looking for, but then, of course, a thorough search by experts like your people...”

  “I, too, am convinced they left nothing... Completely convinced,” the Judge said. His frustration was ferocious, like that of the dog unable to pursue the hare into the brambles.

  The Abbot began to speak of the theft: three masked men had broken in on his sleep so suddenly that at first he could not tell whether they belonged to a dream or to reality. He had grasped the true situation when he realized that a rifle was aimed at his mouth. But what he could not understand was, what could have moved thieves to enter his home, the humble house of a man of books?

  And, in fact, all they had carried off was papers, papers that could have held no value for them.

  “Possibly they are also ‘men of books,’” Grassellini echoed the phrase with constabulary humor.

  “You think so?” Vella started in alarm. “If it is really as you suspect, if my enemies have been capable of going to such lengths, then from now on I shall have to be mindful of my own safety, of my life even.” This he delivered so persuasively that the Judge had a moment’s perplexity, a fleeting doubt.

  “Actually, I have arranged for your house to be guarded day and night.”

  “I am greatly obliged to you. For I am not well. Ever since that accursed night, I have been in such a rage that I’ve felt as if my head would burst. But if I know that someone is standing watch, at least I can go to bed without fear.”

  “But you do have that monk to keep you company, and he’s so goodhearted, so devoted...” Grassellini insinuated.

  “Oh, no, he left some time ago... To be more exact, I asked him to leave. He was not so goodhearted or so devoted as you think. He wronged me, betrayed me... Can you imagine that here in my house—” he blushed and stammered but yet could not contain his indignation – “he used to receive – well, I shall say no more.” He had chanced to discover the monk’s vice and was turning it now to his own advantage.

  “He used to receive what?”

  “A woman of ill repute,” the Abbot whispered.

  Why, you old fox, Grassellini thought. You’re maneuvering yourself into a safe corner. Whatever the monk has to tell once he’s caught, you will say that his story is dictated by revenge.

  The police, it was clear, were lingering over their search for pure love of their art: the art of turning a house topsy-turvy, of poking into everything.

  Adroitly the Abbot brought the conversation around to Marquis Simonetti, who had been a close colleague of Caracciolo and was now Minister in Naples: one could imagine his distress, the Abbot observed, at the news that the manuscript of the Council of Egypt had been purloined.

  “That is precisely why I am taking so much trouble,” Grassellini said. “I shouldn’t want His Excellency to question my concern, my zeal.” The tone and words veiled both hypocrisy and threat. I will sew you up in such fashion, he was actually thinking, that His Excellency will not be able to lift a finger to help you.

  It was not that Grassellini had anything personal against the Abbot or against Minister Simonetti; what was at work in him at the moment was that peculiar intuition of imminent change that some civil servants have; they smell change in the air before it happens and quickly make their little jump this way or that so as to be in line with the new order (or disorder) of affairs. He had been ingenuous enough to compromise himself over Caracciolo, even to the extent of promoting his farewell party; for that the nobles had flailed him alive afterward, or at least they had tried to hinder him in his career, and had made life generally hard for him. Back then, in the days of Caracciolo, he had been a young man. By now he had had so much experience, his nose was so sharpened, that he could smell it already: the government’s heavy pressure on the Sicilian barons was about to be relaxed whether Simonetti remained as Minister or not, because finally the tumultuous events abroad were arousing echoes of fear and reaction in the Kingdom. The time was coming when the King would need the barons; already one indication of this was the Court’s willingness to extend the term of their debts, to facilitate payments, and even to pay off the debts. Grassellini had thrown himself into the Vella affair to redeem himself in the eyes of the Sicilian nobles; he would nail a charge of simulation on the Abbot, from which a charge of fraud would follow more easily. And if he was both tenacious and devious in carrying out his duties, he was conscientious too, after his fashion; he had no doubt that Abbot Vella’s codices were frauds and his robbery also a lie. One had to proceed with tact, of course, with prudence, and he would run with the hare – Simonetti, Monsignor Airoldi, and Abbot Vella – and hunt with the hounds – the nobles.

  The police brought everything they had found and piled it at his feet. The Judge ordered all papers packaged and sealed. With much ceremony and repeated admonitions to the Abbot that he take care of himself, he took his leave.

  “I shall go to bed at once,” Vella assured him. “I really have scarcely the strength to stand.”

  And he did go to bed, but only after writing to Marquis Simonetti about the martyrdom to which Judge Grassellini was subjecting a lo
yal and devoted servant of the Crown, to wit, His Excellency Giuseppe Vella, Abbot of San Pancrazio.

  Chapter III

  Toward vespers, a messenger from Monsignor Airoldi was dispatched to the house of Abbot Vella with a blancmange and sesame cookies, two delicacies that the Abbot doted on and that Monsignor often thoughtfully sent him; the man found two policemen stationed by the outer gate, both stiff with boredom.

  “What’s happening?” The messenger was alarmed.

  “Nothing’s happening. We’re here to curry the cow,” one of them answered; they were finding it a dull business to mind the stable from which the cattle already had been stolen.

  “Where is the Abbot?”

  “In bed, lucky man.”

  The outer door was open. The messenger went in, thinking he would leave the gifts in the antechamber if the Abbot really was in bed. All the doors were open, and from a room nearby he heard a hoarse rattle, a series of gasps, and broken speech. The man stood for a moment undecided, package in hand; he did not want to be indiscreet and enter the Abbot’s bedroom, yet on the other hand those sounds struck him as coming not from a sleeping but from a dying man. Without putting his package down, he crossed the threshold into the bedroom. The Abbot lay in the half light of a deep alcove; his face looked like the face of a hanged man, the head thrown back against the pillows, the bulging eyes rolled upward until only the whites showed, the mouth sagging.

  The messenger went over to the bed and called, “Abbot! Abbot Vella!,” at which the rasping grew louder, the gasps more frequent. But the raving became more coherent; it had to do with the codices, the robbery, and certain people who wished him harm.

  “Poor man, just see what a state they’ve brought him to,” the messenger murmured. Then: “Abbot, I am here on behalf of His Excellency... Monsignor Airoldi, you remember Monsignor Airoldi?” as if he were speaking to a child. “He sent me with this blancmange and the sesame cookies you like...”

  Irises flowered again in the white globes of the hanged man’s eyes, which now rested briefly on the box that the messenger held out.

  “Put it down here,” the Abbot said, pointing to the night table by the bed. He fell to raving again.

  And so, before nightfall, all Palermo knew that Abbot Vella stood at death’s door. The news aroused conflicting reactions and opinions, interminable discussion, and even bets. Some said the illness, like the theft, was a fiction; some, on the other hand, believed it and were sympathetic; others attributed it to terror that the fraud, sooner or later, would be discovered, and still others to the unjust persecution he had suffered and to the robbery. That evening the police were obliged to rush to the Albergaria quarter, where a scuffle over Abbot Vella had broken out among the women, half of them taking his side and commiserating with him, the other half denouncing him; later they had to hurry over to the Kalsa, where some fishermen had taken to knives pro and con the authenticity of the Council of Egypt.

  At the Conversation Club in the Cesarò Palace, opinions reflected more unanimous sentiments: at the moment these were indignation over Grassellini’s tactics and suspicion of the Abbot. The suspicion was vague and hesitant, veiled by a respect that was paid ostensibly to the scholar, but in actuality to the even more formidable blackmailer who was securely ensconced still on the ramparts of the printed word and royal favor.

  “The police, even the police are good for nothing,” the Prince di Partanna was saying. “You report a theft and they come with a warrant to search your house! It’s crazy!”

  “He’s a ruffian, pure and simple!” the Marquis di Geraci said.

  “Yes, Grassellini’s a ruffian by nature... He behaved the same way over the pettifogger, forcing through that farewell party for him! He tried the same tactics with the Prince di Caramanico, God rest his soul... A ruffian!... But what I wonder is, who called the tune this time?... Canon Gregorio? Impossible. The Marquis Simonetti? Unlikely. I don’t think the Marquis has any interest in scuttling Vella, he’s protected him too solidly. The Archbishop? The Archbishop doesn’t care a hoot about this affair... Who, then?” Don Francesco Spuches’s vacant glance traveled around the group.

  “You, perhaps,” said the Marquis di Villabianca.

  “I?”

  “I say you, meaning me, us, all of us – the nobility, in a word. Think for a moment what would happen if Grassellini were to produce proof, concrete proof, proof that would stand up in a court, of Canon Gregorio’s suspicions and that Austrian’s – what’s the Austrian’s name?”

  “Hager.”

  “...Hager’s suspicions that the Council of Sicily and the Council of Egypt are forgeries—”

  “Impossible,” Cesarò said.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “But men like Monsignor Airoldi, like the Prince di Torremuzza – do you for a moment think that men like that have let themselves be taken in? And Tychsen, how do you account for Tychsen?”

  “Let him account for himself... And as for Monsignor Airoldi and the Prince di Torremuzza, I take off my hat to their scholarship, but do you think Canon Gregorio and this Hager are any less learned? In any event, I am suggesting a simple hypothesis: the codices of Abbot Vella are forgeries... What happens if, on the one hand, Grassellini, and on the other, Hager, produce sure proof that the codices are false?”

  “A cheap botch, that’s what. People from here to the savages in the Americas will laugh themselves to death,” Meli said.

  “You only see the ludicrous aspect of my hypothesis, but it is of a very definite, very practical interest for us. Suppose that Abbot Vella’s codices are clearly proved to be forgeries. What would that mean for us?”

  “Oh, I know, yes. The Royal Treasury would have to stop reclaiming all your lands for the Crown, as it has been doing on the strength of the Council of Egypt.”

  “That son of a— Excuse me, I mean to say that Abbot Vella has certainly aimed to ruin us,” Spuches said in a sudden change of heart about the Abbot.

  “What hasn’t he handed over to the Crown through the Council of Egypt? Coastal holdings, farms, rivers, tuna concessions – things we’ve owned for centuries, things no king or viceroy has even challenged our right to,” the Marquis di Geraci said.

  “You see what a service Grassellini would be doing us?” the Marquis di Villabianca concluded.

  “Who asked him to do anything?” the Prince di Partanna demanded; not even the rosy prospect that the codices might be proved false could dim his dislike for Grassellini. “Anyhow, you are only talking about a hypothesis. One thing is certain, however, and that is that Grassellini is committing an arrogant violation of a man’s rights, and when I see a man’s rights being violated, I see red.”

  “And the Council of Egypt does not violate people’s rights, by any chance?” Ventimiglia asked.

  “These are considerations to be put forward if and when the codices are proved false. But at the moment, what have we? A poor dying man,” the Duke di Villafiorita said.

  “A fine man,” Ventimiglia said.

  “A scholar,” Spuches said.

  A fresh wave of compassion for the Abbot surged up, and as if they were speaking of a man already dead, they launched into a melancholy recital of his many qualities. But a small crack had opened, and through it a different feeling was beginning to seep.

  Chapter IV

  After the strenuous night of the moving, Abbot Vella had made the monk swear on a scarred and battered crucifix that never would he breathe a word about it, and then he had given the man keys to a small country house he owned in Mezzomonreale: a most beautiful spot and a comfortable little house which very few, perhaps only the people who had sold it to him, knew to be the Abbot’s property.

  Had the Criminal Court dealt with the robbery case, it would have had great difficulty in laying hands on the monk; the informers of the Court of the Royal Patrimony, however, what with all the buying and selling, transferring and inheriting of properties that went on, had very sharp ears: one of them
hinted to Grassellini that, who knows, the monk might be hiding out in the villa at Mezzomonreale that Abbot Vella had bought recently.

  Grassellini dispatched every policeman he had available; it looked like a foray to capture one of the outlaw bands that roamed the area, which the police now and again undertook to track down entirely by way of gesture and without any success whatever. They surrounded the house and caught the monk – literally – on the wing: it was nighttime and he had thought he could escape by jumping out a low window.

  Grassellini sent him in chains to the dungeon of the Vicaría. He had the man haled before him after two days of anguish and the vilest prison fare: by then the monk was ready to vomit all he knew of Vella’s affairs except for what he had sworn on the crucifix to keep to himself; he truly feared that the very crucifix the Abbot had held before him would damn him in what, in holy terror, he called “the life everlasting.”

  The Judge grinned with baleful satisfaction to see the man standing before him wild-eyed and sprouting tufts of beard from his chin: the Vicaría had softened him up just enough. Grassellini attacked, using the information that the Abbot had astutely passed on about the monk’s wantonness, but he spoke as if lechery were the only reason the monk now found himself afoul of the law.

  “You had yourself a good time, eh?” Grassellini said; it was at once a question and a statement.

  “Where? In the Vicaría?” The monk spoke in all innocence; he could not detect a shadow of a good time in his recent past, but Grassellini took it as insolent irony and turned red.