Balthasar's Odyssey (2 page)

“It is certainly all very strange and disturbing ...”

Or something of the kind.

“It is because of this book that I am here,” he answered, evidently reassured. “I am looking for other texts that may help me to understand it.”

Now I understood. I'd be able to help him.

I should explain that the success of our business in recent decades was largely due to the craze throughout Christendom for old Oriental books — especially those in Greek, Coptic, Hebrew and Syriac — which seemed to contain the most ancient truths of the Faith, and which the royal courts, particularly those of France and England, tried to acquire in order to back up their point of view in the quarrels between the Catholics and the supporters of the Reformation. For nearly a century my family scoured the monasteries in the East in search of such manuscripts, hundreds of which are now to be found in the Royal Library in Paris or the Bodleian in Oxford, to mention only the most important repositories.

“I haven't many books dealing specifically with the Apocalypse,” I said, “and especially not with the passage about the number of the Beast. But you might care to look at…”

And I listed ten or twelve titles in various languages, indicating their contents and sometimes the chapter headings. I like this aspect of my profession, and think I have a gift for it. But my visitor didn't seem as interested as I'd expected. Every time I mentioned a book he would show his disappointment and impatience by fidgeting with his fingers or gazing around.

Finally I understood.

“Oh, you were told of a particular volume — is that it?”

He mispronounced some Arabic name, but I had no trouble making it out. Abu-Maher al-Mazandarani. To tell the truth, I'd been expecting to hear it for some while now.

Anyone with a passion for books knows Mazandarani's. By reputation, that is, for very few people have actually held it in their hands. I'm still not sure, as a matter of fact, if it really exists, or ever has done so.

Let me explain, for it will soon look as if I'm talking in contradictions. When you study the works of certain famous and recognised authors, you will often find them mentioning the book in question, saying that one of their friends or teachers had it in his library once. But I have never come across a reputable writer who clearly confirms he's seen it. No one who says, “I own it”, “I've looked through it”, or “I've read it”. No one who actually quotes from it. So the really serious merchants, and most scholars, believe the book has never existed, and that the few copies which show up from time to time are the work of forgers and hoaxers.

The title of this legendary volume is
The Unveiling of the Hidden Name,
but it is usually known as
The Hundredth Name.
When I've explained what name that is, you will see why it has always been so much sought after.

As everyone knows, the Koran mentions ninety-nine names of God, though some prefer to call them “epithets”. The Merciful, the Avenger, the Subtle, the Apparent, the Omniscient, the Arbiter, the Heir, and so on. And that figure, confirmed by Tradition, has always provoked the obvious question in curious minds: Must there not be a hidden, hundredth name to round off the number? Quotations from the Prophet, which some doctors of the law contest though others recognise them as genuine, say there is indeed a supreme name that someone has only to utter to avert any kind of danger or obtain any favour from Heaven. It is said that Noah knew it, and so was able to save himself and his family at the time of the Flood.

It is easy to see the attraction of a book that claims to reveal such a secret nowadays, when men live in fear of another Deluge. I've had all sorts of people through my shop — a barefoot friar, an alchemist from Tabriz, a Turkish general, a cabalist from Tiberias — every one of them looking for that book. I've always thought it my duty to tell them why I thought it was only a mirage.

Usually my visitors resign themselves once they have heard my explanation. Some are disappointed, but others are relieved: if they can't have the book, they prefer that nobody can.

The Muscovite reacted neither one way nor the other. At first he looked amused, as if to convey that he didn't believe a word of my patter. When I got annoyed at this and stopped short, he suddenly grew serious and begged in a low voice:

“Sell it to me and I'll give you all the gold I possess without a murmur!”

“My poor fellow,” I felt like saying, “think yourself lucky you've come across an honest merchant! There are plenty who'd relieve you of your money in no time!”

I patiently started explaining again why, to the best of my knowledge, the book didn't exist, and how the only people who claimed otherwise were either naive and gullible authors or swindlers.

As I spoke, his face grew flushed; like that of a doomed man whose doctor is airily explaining that the medicine the patient hoped would cure him has never been invented. I could see in his eyes not disappointment or resignation, not even incredulity any more, but hatred, the daughter of fear. I cut short my explanations with the cautious conclusion:

“What the truth of the matter is, God only knows!”

But he had stopped listening. He stepped forward, grabbed at my clothes with his mighty hands and crushed my chin against his giant chest. I thought he was going to strangle me, or smash my skull against the wall. Luckily his servant hurried over, touched him on the arm and whispered something in his ear. Soothing words, I suppose, for his master let go of me at once and thrust me disdainfully away. Then he left the shop, muttering imprecations in his own language.

I never saw him again. And I'd probably have forgotten all about him, even his name, if his visit hadn't marked the beginning of a strange procession of callers. It took me some time to realise it, but I'm certain now: after Evdokim, the people who came to the shop were different from before, and behaved in quite another way. Hadn't the pilgrim from Moscow had a look of terror in his eye, a look of the sort of terror some might describe as “holy”? I could see it now in everyone. And with it the same attitude of urgency and impatience, the same mixture of persistence and apprehension.

These are not mere impressions. It's the merchant speaking now, with his hand on his ledger. After the Russian's visit, not a day went by without someone coming and talking to me about the Apocalypse, the Antichrist, the Beast and the number of the Beast.

Why not admit it outright? It's the Apocalypse that has brought in most of what I've earned in the last few years. Yes, it's the Beast that clothes me and the Beast that feeds me. As soon as its mere shadow crops up in a book, buyers come running from all over the place, purses at the ready. It all sells for a fortune, learned treatises and far-fetched squibs alike. At one time I even had on my shelves a tome called
An accurate description of the Beast and many other monsters of the Apocalypse —
in Latin, with forty drawings into the bargain.

But while this morbid enthusiasm makes me well off, it also makes me uneasy. I'm not the kind of man to go along with the follies of the moment. I keep my head when others are losing theirs. On the other hand, I'm not one of those arrogant fools who form their opinions as oysters form their pearls, and then shut them away where nothing can touch them. I have my own ideas and beliefs, but I can hear the rest of the world breathing. I can't ignore the fear that's spreading everywhere. Even if I thought the world was going mad, I couldn't ignore its folly. I may smile and shrug my shoulders and execrate foolishness and frivolity, but I can't help being disturbed.

In the struggle that goes on inside me between reason and unreason, the latter has won some points. Reason protests, mocks, insists, resists, and I'm still clear-sighted enough to observe the confrontation more or less impartially. But it's precisely this vestige of lucidity that forces me to admit that unreason is gaining ground in me. One day, if things go on like this, I'll no longer be able to write as I'm writing now. I might even turn back through these pages and erase what I've just set down. What I call unreason now will have become what I believe in then. If that Balthasar should ever come into being, which God forbid!, I hereby hate and despise him, and muster all the intelligence and honour I have left to curse him.

I know this all sounds rather wild. That's because the rumours that are dinning around the world have seeped into here. The sort of thing Evdokim said then I hear in my own house now.

It's my own fault.

Eighteen months ago, as business was still flourishing, I decided to ask my sister Pleasance's two sons to come and give me a hand. My idea was that they should get to know the antiquities trade so that eventually they could take over from me. I had high hopes of Jaber, especially. He was the elder of the two. A diligent, meticulous, studious youth, already almost a scholar before he was a man. The opposite of his younger brother Habib, who neglected his books to roam around the back-streets. I didn't expect much of him. But at least I hoped he might settle down a bit if I gave him some unaccustomed responsibilities.

A waste of time. As he has grown up, Habib has become an incorrigible womaniser. He does nothing but sit at the window of the shop, ogling, smiling and paying compliments, and disappearing at all hours for mysterious appointments the object of which I can easily guess. How many young women who live nearby find, when they go to fetch water, that the quickest way to the fountain passes by our window! Habib means “beloved” — names are rarely neutral.

Jaber stays well inside the shop. His skin grows paler all the time, so rarely does it see the sun. He reads, copies, makes notes, arranges, consults, compares. If his face ever lights up, it's not because the shoemaker's daughter has just come round the corner and is sauntering this way. It's because young Jaber has just read something on page 237 of the
Commentary of Commentaries
that confirms what he thought was meant by a passage he found yesterday evening in
The Final Exegesis.
I'm quite satisfied to skim through the most difficult and abstruse volumes out of duty, and even then I often stop for a yawn. Not he. He seems to revel in them, as if in the most delicious sweetmeats.

So much the better, I thought at first. I wasn't sorry to see him so industrious. I quoted him to his brother as an example, and even started entrusting some of my own tasks to him. I didn't hesitate to let him deal with the most pernickety customers. He'd spend hours chatting to them, and though he wasn't primarily interested in business he usually ended up selling them masses of books.

I'd have been perfectly satisfied with him if he too hadn't begun — and with all the ardour of youth — to irritate me with talk of the imminent end of the world and of the omens heralding its coming. Was it the influence of the books he read? Or of some of my customers? At first I thought I could settle the matter by clapping him on the shoulder and telling him to pay no attention to such nonsense. He seemed a very biddable lad, and I believed he'd obey me in that as in other things. Little did I know him, and little did I know the age we live in, and its passions and obsessions.

According to my nephew, we have an appointment with the end of the world that dates from its beginning. Those alive today will have the dubious privilege of witnessing that macabre culmination of History. As far as I can see, this doesn't make him feel sad or depressed. On the contrary, I think I detect a sort of pride — tinged with fear, no doubt, but also with a certain amount of exultation. Every day he finds some new confirmation of his predictions in Latin, Greek or Arabic sources. Everything is converging, he says, towards a certain date. The date cited in the Russian book of the Faith — if only I hadn't told him about it! — 1666. Next year. “The Year of the Beast”, as he likes to call it. He backs up his belief with a whole array of arguments, quotations, computations, learned calculations, and an endless litany of “signs”.

I always think that if you look for signs you find them, and I write this down once again lest, in the maelstrom of madness that is seizing the world, I should one day forget it. Manifest signs, speaking signs, troubling signs — people always manage to “prove” what they want to believe; they'd be just as well off if they tried to prove the opposite.

That's what I think. But I'm rattled just the same by the approach of the famous “year”.

I still remember a scene that took place two or three months ago. My nephews and I had had to work late to finish the inventory before the summer, and we were all exhausted. I'd collapsed on to a chair, with my arms circling my open ledger and a nearby oil-lamp beginning to dim. Then suddenly Jaber came and leaned over the other side of the table, so that his head touched mine and his hands pressed down painfully on my elbows. His whole face glowed red, he threw a huge shadow on the walls and furniture, and he whispered in a lugubrious voice:

“The world is like this lamp. It has burned its ration of oil. Only a drop is left. See how the flame flickers! The world will soon go out.”

What with being so tired, and with all that gossip about the coming Apocalypse, I suddenly felt quite crushed by these ominous words. As if I hadn't even the strength to sit up straight. As if I must just sprawl there and wait for the flame to die away before my eyes and the darkness to swallow me up.

Then the voice of Habib rose up behind me, laughing, cheeky, sunny, salutary.

“When are you going to stop tormenting poor Uncle — eh, Boumeh?”

“Boumeh”, meaning owl or bird of ill-omen — that's what the younger brother has called the elder since they were children. And as I stood up that evening, suddenly crippled with aches and pains, I swore I'd call him that too from then on.

But though I do so, and curse and swear, and mutter to myself, I can't help listening to what Boumeh says, and his words nest in my mind. So that I too start to see signs where before I saw only coincidences. Tragic or instructive or amusing coincidences — but where once I'd have just exclaimed in surprise, now I start, I'm worried, I tremble. And I even think about changing the peaceful course of my existence.