The Council of Egypt

by Leonardo Sciascia

  “Your good times at the Vicaría have not even begun!” he roared. “You’ll see, you’ll see!... I am asking you about the little games you played in the house of that saint who gave you hospitality, and who never even suspected! You playing the cock with women of ill repute while he was away from home, poor man, thinking all was well.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Abbot Vella told me himself, and you know it’s true. If you deny it, I’ll fetch the woman you used to bring to the house and I will have her tell you to your face whether what the Abbot told me is true or not.”

  The monk had not expected any such black treachery from his patron, and he felt his whole world come tumbling down about his ears. “But that’s an old story,” he stammered.

  “Old?” the Judge said more mildly.

  “Two, maybe three years ago...”

  “What happened, exactly, two or three years ago?”

  “The Abbot came home when I wasn’t expecting him, and he found me with Caterina, the girl from Ragusa... But I swear we were only talking—”

  “Talking about what? Theology?”

  “About things – oh, I don’t remember now. But the Abbot, good Christian that he is, turned into the Devil himself—”

  “Because he was not in the habit of indulging in that kind of conversation?”

  “I can’t say about that, in all conscience. Maybe, away from home... What do you expect? The flesh is weak.”

  “And then?”

  “He was beside himself, he wanted to send me back to Malta... Then he thought twice: he said he would forgive me, but he made me swear that never again—”

  “Why did he think twice?”

  “He liked me, I believe.”

  “It certainly wasn’t that he needed you. You were eating him out of house and home—”

  “That’s not so,” the monk interrupted. “I worked like a dog.”

  “What kind of work were you doing?”

  “The work there was to do.”

  “What work was there to do?”

  “Copying... The copying had to be done right.”

  “Copying what?”

  “Arab things.”

  “The codex – the Council of Egypt – did you write that?”

  “I copied it. The Abbot used to give me a couple of pages a day and I would copy them... It took, I must tell you, all the skill, all the patience I had—”

  “Those pages he used to give you, the Abbot wrote them, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are in a very unpleasant situation, you know. I am talking to you now like a brother: it will be much better for you if you tell me all you know without my having to ask.”

  “Maybe he did write them.”

  “Did he or did he not write them?”

  “He wrote them.”

  “Good,” the Judge said. “Good, good, good.” He radiated satisfaction, he looked like quite another man. To the monk he said, in a most friendly way, “But you have produced a masterpiece, you know. The codex of the Council of Egypt is perfection, pure perfection.”

  “Well,” the monk demurred, “some credit is due Don Gioacchino Giuffrida, too.”

  “And who is he?”

  “The artist. The inscription on the first page, he did that.”

  “What inscription?”

  “Where it says ‘Gift of Mohammed ben-Osman’ – But Your Excellency hasn’t seen the codex?”

  “Why no, my friend, no. I have been waiting for you, I have been waiting for you to tell me where I could find it, so I could have one little look, just one little look at it.”

  The monk was now thoroughly confused, but one shaft of light pierced his muddled brain and in it he saw the crucifix on which he had taken the oath writhing and bleeding.

  “The Abbot keeps it at home,” he said, “in a strongbox under his bed.”

  The tone of voice was so sincere that Grassellini believed him. Nevertheless, he kept on insisting, threatening. “It’s not there any longer. The Abbot says maybe you stole it from him.”

  “Me? What do I want with the codex?”

  “That’s what the Abbot says... You have nothing to tell me about the disappearance of the codex? Mind you, the Vicaría—”

  “The Vicaría is awful, but I cannot damn my soul for all eternity. Hell is worse than the Vicaría.”

  The Judge never knew that he made a serious mistake to interrupt the interrogation at this point: the monk was on the verge of telling him that he did not want to damn his soul – not, as Grassellini supposed, by telling a lie but by betraying an oath: and a short, a very short stay in the torture chamber might have persuaded him also to disclose the gist of his oath.

  “You think so?” the Judge asked jokingly; he knew the Vicaría well, and he was more optimistic than the monk about the relative merits of Hell. He sat in thoughtful silence for a moment. “I know enough,” he said to himself. “I’ve squeezed everything I can squeeze out of this fellow, but I still have not got hold of the corpus delicti, and that I must find.”

  “I want to say—” the monk began timidly.

  “What?”

  “About that woman... I want to say that I didn’t do anything bad... We used to talk, we just talked. I—” and he burst into tears.

  “Perhaps in your country you call what you used to do with Caterina from Ragusa talking. Do you know what it’s called in my country? It’s called—!” and he said it, crudely and with a laugh, whereupon the monk wept more copiously still. “But that is your affair. I’m a judge, not a father confessor.”

  Chapter V

  With every passing day, the illness of Abbot Vella grew more serious. On the third day, he began to spit blood; on the eighth, he asked for the last rites, and all agreed that they should be administered to him. During the evenings, his bed was encircled by a crown of illustrious friends and fanatical admirers. During the day, his niece took care of him – in a manner of speaking, as the Abbot was up and about the house in a dressing gown, poised to slip into bed at the first alarm; never had he been more bursting with energy or more jovial, and he was, if anything, more gluttonous than usual. He had a few pangs of anxiety, of apprehension, true; but he had no doubt that the Marquis Simonetti would presently loose a thunderbolt on Grassellini’s head. Assuredly the Crown could not afford the luxury of losing the Council of Egypt.

  Monsignor Airoldi’s concern for him had led to a visit from Meli, who was reputed to be a good doctor; Meli had listened to his chest, tapped him all over, and kneaded his belly, his back over the kidneys, and below his ribs – like iron, he reflected – until the Abbot had pretended to faint to make him stop. While they were hurrying to revive him, Meli announced to those present that little or nothing could be done, Abbot Vella already belonged more to the world beyond than to this one; he was in greater need of God’s mercy than of the services of a doctor.

  “But what ails him?” Monsignor Airoldi had asked, for so far none of the doctors had been able to name the illness from which the Abbot was visibly suffering. “A stomach cancer, in my opinion... And the heart, too... Very weak... Can’t hold out...”

  You are a beast, a heartless beast, the Abbot was thinking, as with staring eyes he asked, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?,” exactly like someone who is regaining his senses and does not realize what is going on. You are a beast. Or you’re doing this on purpose because you’ve caught on and want to turn my game against me – which was not impossible, given Meli’s fondness for practical jokes and the bitterness he had shown toward Vella more than once for having managed to snatch the rich abbacy of San Pancrazio from under his nose. Then a doubt wormed its way into the Abbot’s mind: he really might have a cancer somewhere inside him without realizing it, everyone knows how those things go, and a doctor is a doctor, after all. A shadow, a mere shadow of apprehension that served rather than marred his purpose of the moment.

  The viaticum was brought to him with great solemnity. The priest
who heard his confession and gave him extreme unction told Monsignor Airoldi, “We are witnessing the death of a saint,” and said as much to others, with the result that Canon Gregorio and his partisans found their shoulders pinned to the wall: how fight a dying man; what’s more, a dying saint? One syllable of doubt about the illness or, even worse, about the saintliness, and most people would have branded them as beasts, the most repulsive kind of wild beasts – jackals and hyenas.

  The situation was of the Abbot’s own choosing, but there was one drawback about being moribund: he did not know what Grassellini was up to or what point his investigations had reached. Monsignor Airoldi and his other friends carefully avoided the subject: How can one speak of unpleasant things to a man who is bound to life by a mere shining thread of consciousness? At times, the Abbot essayed a “Have they found the Council of Egypt yet?” or “The Lord has seen fit to nail me to this bed; otherwise, by this time I would have given Hager all the satisfaction he wants... Modesty apart, I would have made him eat his words.” Whereupon everyone hastened to tell him that he must not trouble about such things, he must think only about recovering his health.

  He was given a nasty turn by Baron Fisichella in this connection. One day when he asked, “Have they found the Council of Egypt yet?” the Baron, to comfort him, said yes they had found it. Cretin. The Abbot nearly choked, and the Baron got a fearful dressing down from Monsignor. “Don’t you see that this poor man is dying from grief at having lost the codex?... One should use some forethought, some care in giving him such news, even if it were true. And you rush in like a clumsy—”

  “But the news I gave him was good news,” the Baron said, in self-defense.

  “Even good news can kill a man who is lying between life and death.”

  Anything but good news, the Abbot was thinking, and he began to breathe freely again. Worse news than that I hope I never hear... But they won’t find it, as God lives they won’t find it. Grassellini can turn himself inside out looking for it, and Gregorio and that Austrian with his fresh sausage of a face can turn themselves inside out too... All of them, inside out... In the meantime, Marquis Simonetti...

  Marquis Simonetti had done what he had to do: he had sent a dispatch in which he instructed the Criminal Court to take the investigation of the theft under its jurisdiction and ordered Grassellini to relax his efforts; he had sent a letter to the Abbot in which, to extricate him from the machinations and persecutions of the barons, he invited him to Naples. But letter and dispatch arrived in early February, by which time the Abbot had wearied of playing the dying man; news of Grassellini’s disgrace spread throughout Palermo together with word of Vella’s sudden recovery, which the Abbot attributed to a nocturnal sweat that cleared away all feverish humors – a sweat so unexpected and abundant, so prodigious, that he could not but render thanks to St. John the Hospitaler, whose devotee he was and who had undoubtedly intervened to save him.

  Two days later, the Abbot ventured out of the house. He had himself driven in a carriage through the city. It was one of those iridescent Palermo mornings, the clouds a shelving deep blue and russet. He rejoiced in the sun, the air, the warm Norman stone, the red Arabic cupolas, the aroma of seaweed and lemon in the market; he felt restored to life, as if he really had triumphed in a strenuous struggle with death; his senses were sharper, freer, more subtle; the world was more delicate, all matter more pure.

  The goal of his long, meandering drive was the Royal Palace, where Monsignor Airoldi had arranged a meeting with the Lord President of the Kingdom, functioning for the moment as Viceroy, Monsignor López y Royo.

  The Viceroy received him cordially and spoke affably with him. He was not a man to be disturbed by the suspicion, which flourished even in Palermo, that the Abbot was a forger; on the contrary, the suspicion inclined him to be sympathetic. He was a man of sordid avarice and obscene vices, sinister and soiled even in things that at that time were readily overlooked, and particularly in what the Marquis di Villabianca termed “venereal peccancies.” Whether the Arabic codices were faked or authentic he considered no affair of his: let the nobles and Simonetti, Monsignor Airoldi and Canon Gregorio, dispose of that question; his concerns of the moment were the interdependent ones of keeping an eye on the Jacobins and holding out to become viceroy in fact.

  Conversation touched on the Abbot’s illness and his miraculous cure, and then turned to those very Jacobins.

  “The Prince di Caramanico, estimable man, let them multiply like rabbits so that now I have quickly to man the ramparts. I must be constantly on guard, ferret out danger wherever it raises its head... A task that leaves little time for sleep, I assure you... He loved the French” – this was said with the same horror that other people injected into the charge that he, Monsignor López, was stealing from the construction funds for the Duomo – “and let’s not even speak of Caracciolo, who positively adored them. Mine has been a heavy inheritance, a sorry, a most sorry inheritance... The Kingdom is thick with Jacobin weeds, and it’s fallen to me to uproot them.” He held out his hand and clenched his fist, as if he were pulling a nettle up by the roots.

  The Abbot was startled: in less than a month, the situation had begun to reverse itself; he could not imagine what reason, what developments could have placed such a brutal, contemptible man in a post that he had seen occupied for more than ten years by intelligent, free-spirited, subtle, and tolerant men.

  “And the books, the books are like weeds too,” Monsignor López continued. “You have no idea how many there are here already, and how many keep arriving – by the crate, by the cartful! But however many come, that is how many are burned by the executioner.” He was flushed with satisfaction, as if the reflection of the flames played over his face and glittered in his eyes.

  “Good books are few, very few, these days,” Monsignor Airoldi sighed.

  “Few? There are positively none... All rubbish that aims to turn the world upside down, to corrupt all morality. There’s not a scribbler alive today who doesn’t want to have his say about the organization of the state, the administration of justice, the rights of the King, and the rights of the people... That’s why I admire men like you. You spend your time looking for things in the past and get along in blessed peace with the present. You aren’t itching to turn the world upside down. I admire you, I truly do admire you for it.”

  Chapter VI

  Grassellini had no sooner tapered off his investigation than a dispatch arrived from Acton countermanding the dispatch of Simonetti. The government in Naples must have been in a turmoil, as bad as any butcher shop, den of thieves, whorehouse. The Abbot suffered a slight relapse, for the dispatch labeled his alleged theft a lie and strongly hinted to Monsignor Airoldi that he, as conscience and judge for the monarchy, should be watching, investigating, and unmasking Vella. This was as much as to tell poor Monsignor Airoldi to prepare the rope by which he himself would be hung – hung by a base trick, derision, and disgrace.

  Two days later, a third dispatch, this one from the Office of the Secretary of Justice and Clemency, restored things as Simonetti had first arranged them. The Abbot’s condition took a sharp turn for the better, so much so that he decided to confront Hager at a meeting to debate publicly the question of the authenticity of the codices. Hager had already studied the Codex of San Martino – that is, the Council of Sicily – and he was just about to send off his verdict in black and white to Naples; it was a judgment to raise the hair on one’s head. But he felt obliged to accept the Abbot’s challenge, thus, he thought, seizing the lesser evil. Not to accept would hand Vella the victory that by accepting he might be able instead to snatch from him, even if the meeting would offer a margin of advantage to the Abbot, who would surely be as adroit in discussing the codex as he had been in forging it.

  Named to preside over the debate were Monsignor Granata, Bishop of Lipari; Canons De Cosmi and Fleres: a priest by the name of Lipari; and Cavaliere Speciale; all five as innocent as lambs in the matter of Arabic.r />
  Hager opened the discussion, saying that he had examined the Codex of San Martino from the first to last page, and with a clear conscience could state that it had been entirely – and recently – mutilated and corrupted. Nonetheless, he could state under oath that he had managed to decipher these words, “The man sent by God and whom God favored”; he had identified names of Mohammed’s family scattered pretty much everywhere, and found references to places and things that unquestionably belonged to the history and legend of Mohammed, from which he had justifiably deduced that the codex was a biography of Mohammed and had nothing whatever to do with Sicilian history.

  The Abbot was watching him with icy disdain, and when Hager stopped speaking, he grimaced in disgust.

  “Signor Hager is an educated man, he comes from a nation of educated men. I,” he closed his eyes in humility and resignation, “I am only a poor translator, quite unenlightened in matters of culture. From childhood, I have been drawn to the Arabic language. I spoke it and studied it in Malta; I can say that I know it better than I know our vulgar tongue. That is all... But I wish to ask Signor Hager,” and he raised his voice for effect, “what opinion he holds of Professor Olaf Gerhardt Tychsen: whether he considers him an impostor, an impostor like myself” – he looked about him, smiling with melancholy scorn – “or rather a man who possesses a full and absolute knowledge of the Arabic language and of Arabic history.”

  “Professor Tychsen is a great Orientalist, but—”

  “He is not an impostor?”

  “He is not an impostor, but—”

  “Do you mean to say, then, that you know more than he?”

  “Not that at all, but—”

  “Do you mean that he has been deceived by me?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “So that I, then, know more than he?”

  “No.”

  “He more than I?”