Balthasar's Odyssey (44 page)

What else can I say?

My God!

Can it really have happened?

London caught fire in the middle of the night. And now I'm told it's all starting to burn, one district after the other. From my window I can see the flaming apocalypse and hear the shrieks of the terrified people. There's not a star in the sky.

My God! Can the end of the world be like this? Not a sudden void, but a gradually approaching fire, like a rising flood that may eventually swallow me up?

Is it my own end I see approaching as I look out of the window, and that I try to describe as I bend over the page?

The all-devouring fire draws closer and closer, and I sit here at this wooden table, in this wooden room, committing my last thoughts to a sheaf of pages that will ignite at the smallest spark! It's madness, madness! But isn't that just an image of my mortal condition? I dream of eternity when my grave is already dug, piously commending my soul to the One who's about to snatch it away from me. When I was born I was a few years away from death. Now it may be no more than a few hours. But what's a year anyway in comparison with eternity? what's a day? an hour? a second? Such measures have meaning only for a heart that's still beating.

Bess came to sleep with me. We were still in one another's arms when we started to hear shouting nearby. From the window, looking towards the Thames, you could see in the distance, though not all that far away, the monstrous red glow, with tongues of flame shooting up every so often and then subsiding.

Even worse than the flames and the glare was the sinister crackling noise, as if some gigantic beast were crunching up in its jaws the wood all the houses were built of, crushing, grinding, chewing the timbers and then spitting them out.

Bess rushed to her room for some clothes, for she'd come to my room with very little on. When she returned she was soon joined by the chaplain and his two disciples, who had stayed in the tavern overnight. By daybreak they were all gathered together in my room: my window was the highest in the house and had the best view of the fire. Amid all the lamentations, tears and prayers, someone would mention a street or tall building that had been spared by or caught up in the conflagration. As I wasn't familiar with the places in question, I wasn't sure when I should be worried and when relieved. And I didn't want to bother the others with my outsider's questions. So I stayed in the background, away from the window, leaving it to their more experienced observation, while I just stood apart and took in their comments, alarms and other reactions.

After a few minutes we all, one after the other, went down the rickety wooden stairs to the main room of the tavern, where we could no longer hear the noise of the fire but caught echoes of the cries of the ever-increasing and angry-sounding crowd.

If I live long enough to remember anything, I shall remember some quite trivial scenes. Magnus, who'd gone out for a moment, came back in tears because the church of his patron saint, St Magnus's near London Bridge, was on fire. We were to have this kind of news hundreds of times that wretched day, but I'll never forget the distress of that young man, so devoted to his religion, silently accusing Heaven of having betrayed him.

No customers came through the ale-house door the whole morning. Whenever Magnus or Calvin or Bess went outside to see what was happening, we just opened the door a crack to let them out, and the same to let them back in again. The chaplain didn't once get up out of the armchair he'd collapsed into. As for me, I took care not to be seen in the street: rumours had been circulating since dawn that the fire had been lit by “Papists”.

I just said the story started at dawn, but that's not quite right. I hope to be accurate until my last breath, and the order of events was in fact slightly different. The rumour that was going round first thing in the morning was that the fire had started in a bakery in the City: an oven hadn't been put out properly, or a maid had fallen asleep, so that the flames had begun by spreading along the neighbouring street. The street in question is Pudding Lane, which is close to the inn where I spent my first two nights in London.

An hour later, someone in our own street told Calvin that the French and Dutch fleets had sailed in and set fire to the town, and intended to use the resulting confusion to make an all-out attack on the capital. We could only expect the worst.

After another hour had gone by, the talk was no longer of foreign fleets, but of agents of the Pope, the “Antichrist”, who were trying “yet again” to destroy this good Christian country. I even heard of people being seized by the mob just because they were strangers. It's not a good idea to be a foreigner when London's on fire, so I prudently lay low all day. At first I took refuge in the main room of the tavern, then, when neighbours started coming in there — we could hardly shut the door in their faces — I retreated upstairs to my room, my wooden “observatory”.

It was to distract myself from my anxiety that I wrote these few paragraphs, in between long periods spent looking out of the window.

The sun has gone down and still the fire is raging. The air is all red, and the sky seems empty.

Could all the other towns be on fire too? With each one, like London, thinking it's the only Gomorrha?

Could Genoa be burning today too? And Constantinople? And Smyrna? And Tripoli? And even Gibelet?

It's getting dark, but tonight I shan't light any candles. I'll lie down in the darkness, breathe in the wintry smells of burning wood, and pray God to give me the courage to go to sleep one more time.

Monday, 13 September 1666

The apocalypse is not over. It's still going on. And so is my ordeal by fire.

London continues to burn, and I'm hiding from the flames in a nest of dry tinder.

When I woke up, however, I went downstairs and there in the main room of the tavern I found Bess, the chaplain and his disciples slumped in their chairs; they hadn't stirred all night. Bess opened her eyes only to beg me to go back to my hiding-place before anyone saw or heard me. Several foreigners had been apprehended during the night, including two natives of Genoa. She didn't know their names, but she was sure of the facts. She said she'd bring me something to eat, and in her eyes I could see a promise of love as well. But how could we make love with a city burning all round us?

As I was about to slink upstairs, the chaplain caught me by the sleeve.

“It seems your prediction is coming true,” he said with a forced smile.

I pointed out with some fervour that it was the Muscovites' prediction, not mine; I'd only passed on what a Venetian friend had first passed on to me. In present circumstances I don't want to be seen as a prophet of doom — harmless gossips have been burned for less! The chaplain saw why I was exercised, and apologised for speaking so thoughtlessly.

When Bess joined me a little while later she relayed further apologies from him: he hadn't spoken to anyone else about the prediction, he'd insisted, and realised he might put me in danger by spreading such stories.

That incident being closed, I asked her for news of the fire. After a brief lull, it had started to spread again, driven by an east wind. The flames had now reached a dozen new streets; I can't remember their names. The one piece of good news was that the fire was advancing only slowly in our own street, even though it's called Wood Street. So there's no plan to evacuate yet. On the contrary, some of Bess's cousins have come and left some of their furniture here: their house is nearer the river, and they're afraid it may soon be consumed by the flames.

But it's only a respite. We may be safe here today, but not tomorrow, and certainly not the day after tomorrow. And if the wind should shift a little to the south we could be trapped and unable to escape. But I haven't mentioned this to Bess. I don't want to look like a Cassandra to her too.

Tuesday, 14 September 1666

I've had to withdraw to the attic. In a state of temporary reprieve, like the house itself, and the city, and the world.

Watching London burn, I ought to be able to write just as Nero fiddled, but I can only manage a few disjointed phrases.

Bess says I should just wait. I mustn't make any noise. I needn't be afraid.

So I'm waiting. I don't stir, I've given up watching the flames, and I expect I'll soon stop writing.

In order to write I need some sense of urgency, but also some peace of mind. Too much peace and my hand gets lazy; too much urgency and it's paralysed.

It seems the mob is searching houses now for those who are supposed to have caused the fire. The guilty parties.

Everywhere I've been this year I've felt guilty. Even in Amsterdam! Yes, Maïmoun, my friend, my brother, can you hear me? Even in Amsterdam!

How am I going to die? By fire? At the hands of the mob?

I'm not writing any more. I'm waiting.

Temptation in Genoa

Genoa, Saturday, 23 October 1666

I hesitated for a long time before I started writing again. But finally, this morning, I got myself a new bound notebook, and now, with some delectation, I'm writing the very first page. But I'm not sure I'll go on.

I've already started three other notebooks, meaning to set down my plans, my wishes, my worries, my impressions of cities and men, a few touches of humour or wisdom — like so many travellers and chroniclers before me. But I haven't their talent, and my pages can't equal the ones I used to dust on my shelves. Still, I did my best to record everything that happened to me, even when prudence or pride might have kept me silent, even when I felt tired. Except when I was ill or shut up somewhere, I've written something every evening, or almost. I've filled hundreds of pages in three different notebooks, but not one of them is left. I've written just for the flames.

The first notebook, which told the beginning of my travels, was lost when I had to leave Constantinople in haste. The second was left behind when I was deported from Chios. The third probably got burned in the Great Fire of London. And yet here I am smoothing the pages of the fourth, a mortal oblivious of death, a pitiful Sisyphus forever pushing a rock to the top of a hill only for it to fall down again.

When, in my shop in Gibelet, I had to throw the occasional decrepit old tome on the fire, I could never help sparing an affectionate thought for the poor fellow who wrote it. Sometimes it was the only book he'd written in his whole life — his sole hope of leaving some trace of his passage. But his fame would turn into smoke, just as his body would turn into dust.

I'm describing the death of a stranger. But I'm really talking about myself.

Death. My own death. What can it matter, what can books matter, or fame, if the whole world is about to go up in flames, like London?

My mind's so confused this morning! But I must write. My pen must get up and move over the paper in spite of everything. Whether this notebook survives or burns, I shall write, I shall go on writing.

First, how I got away from the inferno in London.

When the fire broke out, I had to hide to escape the fury of the mob — they wanted to cut the Papists' throats. With no other proof of guilt than the fact that I was a foreigner and from the same country as the “Antichrist”, ordinary citizens would have seized, manhandled and tortured me, and then thrown my remains into the flames, feeling that they'd advanced the good of their souls. But I've already spoken of this madness in the notebook that was lost, and I haven't the strength to go over it again. What I do want to say something more about is my fear. Fears, rather. For I had two fears, and then one more. I was afraid of the raging flames and of the raging mob, but also of what this whole sinister episode might mean, happening as it did on the very day the Muscovites had indicated as that of the apocalypse. I don't want to speculate any more about “signs”. But how can one fail to be terrified by such a coincidence? All day long on that accursed 11th of September — the 1st of September according to the English calendar — I mulled over that wretched prophecy. I'd discussed it at length with the chaplain. I don't say we were expecting the world to explode from one minute to the next in the vast commotion announced in the Scriptures, but we were on the alert. And it was towards midnight at the end of that very day that the fateful clamour burst out. I could watch the progress of the flames, and hear the cries of the people, from my bedroom.

I had one comfort in my woe, in the devotion of the people round me. They'd become a family to me, whereas three weeks earlier they didn't even know I existed, any more than I knew they did: Bess, the chaplain and his young disciples.

Let no one think my gratitude to Bess was just that of a lonely man who found consolation in the naked arms of a sympathetic innkeeper! What her presence satisfied in me was not the carnal hunger of a traveller: it was my original, fundamental distress. I was born a foreigner, I have lived as a foreigner, and I shall die more of a foreigner still. I'm too proud to talk of hostility, humiliation, resentment, suffering — but I know how to recognise looks and gestures. Some women's arms are places of exile; others are a native land.