Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗
- Author: Luther Blissett
- Performer: 0156031965
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‘But it was only later on that I would learn really to fear that woman. In those first months of ‘32 we had other things to think about. Above all the fact that the clandestine preaching of Matthys, our curious recruitment, had been on a collision course with the Stillstand proclaimed by Hofmann. During those days word had reached us that the German Elijah would soon be coming to Holland to visit our community, and Matthys knew he would have to assert himself against the master, if we wanted the brothers to awaken and join up with us. It was a fight to the death: Hofmann, for his part, had the authority of his past as a preacher. But Jan of Haarlem had the fire.
Amsterdam, 7 July 1532
‘No! No! No! And four times no!’ The voice rises high above the hubbub in the room. ‘It isn’t time to resume the baptisms! To do so right now would be to challenge the Court of Holland and send ourselves to the scaffold! Is that what you want? Who will announce the Coming of the Lord when you’ve ended up like poor Trijpmaker and all his companions?’
Our good old Swabian Elijah hadn’t expected to be challenged like that, he had hoped to be welcomed like a father. And instead… Here he is, red in the face and ready to contradict himself with exasperation.�
Enoch doesn’t lose his composure, his acute-angled beard pointed towards his adversary, one prophet against the other: nothing about that in the book of Revelation. He looks into his eyes with the beginnings of a smile.
‘I know it can’t be martyrdom that’s frightening brother Melchior, I know it because no one more than he has endured the pains of exile and the difficulties of testifying.’ A studied, masterful pause. ‘What he fears is that in a few hours, without giving us time to escape or send a letter, the authorities in the Hague will track us down and descend upon us, capturing the lot of us.’ By now he has everyone’s attention. ‘But how many of us are there? Have we ever asked that question? And what are we willing to risk for the Final Day? I tell you, brothers, that with the help of the Lord we can be swifter than the swords of the wicked, maybe that’s our message, the sign of Judgment.’
Hofmann, furious, fights down the bitterness that is welling up in him.
Matthys insists: ‘It’s true: they can follow us, infiltrate us with their spies, discover our names, our safe houses. But why should we stop just because of that? It is written in the Bible that Christ will know his saints. Peter, in his letter, incites the faithful to hasten the coming of the day of the Lord.’ He quotes from memory the passages we have discussed a number of times: ‘“We look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” And John asserts that “he that knoweth God heareth us: he that is not of God heareth not us”. But how are the just to hear us if we won’t talk to them? How will we be able to distinguish the spirit of truth from that of error, if we do not go into the open field to fight? How can we do that if we do not have the courage to baptise them, to preach, to reach them with the message of hope, challenging the edicts and the laws of men? We must be more cunning than they are! Or perhaps we believe that it is only by writing theological treatises and fine words that we will be able to accomplish our task!’ Voices are raised, the words inflexible: hammer-blows on the anvil. ‘How much, bothers, how much have the holy apostles put us on our guard against the Antichrists, false prophets and the seducers who will swarm upon earth at the final hour, to distract the elect from their task? Our task. The Bible says: “And of some have compassion, making a difference. And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” The fire in the hearths that are being got ready for us all around the Low Countries, brothers, to seal our mouths and impede the preparation of the battlefield for the Coming of Christ and the New Jerusalem! And are we to bend our heads and await the axe?’
His voice dances, an explosive music, a rumble that starts a long way off, bounces into the stomach and suddenly erupts. The brothers are divided, the charisma of Elijah against the fire of Enoch, souls are coming aflame.
Hofmann rises to his feet, shaking his head. ‘The day of the Lord is nigh. All signs bear witness to that, prime among them the power of the iniquity that is persecuting us so cruelly in Germany and here in Holland. That’s why our task is to wait and to bear witness. Wait for Christ, yes, brothers, wait for that power which alone will bend the nations and abolish evil for all eternity. Brother Jan — ‘ he turns to Matthys alone ‘ — the wait will be a brief one. The darkness is already withdrawing and the true light is already resplendent. John tells us: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world!” And so does Paul. We must guard against the sin of pride in this critical moment, we must be humble and wait, brother, wait and suffer, keeping firm the peace within us.’ A glance at our faces. ‘It will be soon. That much is certain.’
Matthys: eyes narrowed to slits, his breathing seems to have stopped. ‘But the hour has come! It is now! Now Christ is calling us to move! Not tomorrow, not next year, now! We have talked so much about the return of the Lord that we don’t notice it’s already here, it’s happening, brothers, and if we don’t get marching the Kingdom will vanish once more without our noticing, being too much immersed in our theological treatises!’ He runs to the window, when he swings it open over the suburbs of Amsterdam, a shiver runs down my spine. ‘What are we waiting for? Why have we not abandoned Babylon, this merchants’ brothel, to march out there! Let us call an assembly of the people of the elect, and fight the armed battle of the Word of the Lord!’
Hofmann hobbles forward, troubled. ‘These ideas will lead to civil war! And that is not what we were called to do!’
Matthys’ glazed eyes are fixed, murderous, his reply is ready, the hiss of a serpent: ‘That’s entirely your decision.’
The two factions explode, by now they’re quite clear and divided, insults fly, and some well-aimed spits. I try to calm our side down, unaware that Hofmann’s compassionate eye is upon me, upon the one he really didn’t expect to find on the opposite side. Maybe he’s looking for help, he asks me to bring Matthys to his senses, in the name of our Strasbourg sodality.
‘Brother, will you at least talk to these madmen? They don’t know what they’re saying.’
I have only a few words to dismiss him with. ‘Let madness and despair speak: that’s what we have to offer.’
That puts his fire out completely. He stands there, thrust into a deep, dark chasm. He knows the fire of Enoch will engulf the plain.
Leyden, 20 September 1533
‘Here we are, the street you’re looking for is the first on the right. You can’t go wrong from here.’
The little boy who has accompanied us stops, waiting for a coin or two, and points to a little street at the end of the block. He seems almost paralysed. A whisper, eyes downcast. ‘My mum works there, she doesn’t want to see me around here.’
He opens his hand to accept the small change. Jan Matthys doesn’t lose his composure. ‘You will have your reward in heaven,’ he solemnly intones.
‘But meanwhile,’ I add, getting a florin out of my purse, ‘a little earthly advance can’t do you any harm.’
The blond-haired boy darts away, giving us the beam of a toothless smile, while Jan Matthys tries to look at me with disappointment, although he’s unable to hold back a laugh. ‘We’ve got to get them used to the urgency of the Kingdom at a young age, don’t you think?’
It could be the mother of our little guide who welcomes us in the alley. Blond-haired, like him, clear eyes lined with black, she rests her tits on the cracked sill of a window on the second floor. Almost before we turn to see her, we hear the sharp smack of ten kisses carried on the wind. As in the gallery of portraits of some noble family, the generous busts of the prostitutes of Leyden line up to right and left, leaning at various different heights on the wattle walls of the houses.
Although distracted by a welcome of this kind, it doesn’t take long for us to find the green door we’re looking for. It’s the last building on the street, on the corner with a little bridge without a balustrade that arches over one of the many canals leading to the Rhine.
Matthys, tall and thin, is radiant. On the stairs leading to the first floor, he claps his hand on my shoulder and nods his head: ‘Among whores and pimps, Gert!’
‘And among the drunks in a pub,’ I add with a smile, alluding to the recruitment of Gert from the Well.
This time we are welcomed by a girl, fully clothed, but not exactly like a lady going to market.
‘You’re looking for Jan Bockelson, Jan of Leyden, aren’t you? Just right now� I can’t…’
‘Show them in!’ A shout from the end of the corridor breaks in. ‘Can’t you see that they’re prophets? Come on, come in!’
The voice is low and corporeal, one of those voices that start from the abdomen and boom into the throat. It certainly doesn’t sit very well with the scene that confronts us once the door from which it issued is flung open.
Our man is lying stretched out on a short little sofa, clutching a blanket with one hand and his balls in the other. He is naked from the waist up, with his chest smeared with oil on his chest. A woman, also half naked, is holding a razor and shaving him.
‘You must excuse me, my dear friends,’ he says, in that voice of his that always sounds like mockery. ‘I didn’t want to keep you waiting too long. You always meet some shady types in our anteroom.’
We introduce ourselves. Matthys looks at him for a moment, then looks around the room. ‘Is this your work?’
‘My work is anything that doesn’t make you sweat,’ is the immediate answer, like the joke of an actor on the stage. ‘I deny Adam’s sin as firmly as anyone can, and in consequence I do not accept the curses derived from it. I used to be a tailor, but I soon gave it up. Now I impersonate the great protagonists of the Bible in the street.’
‘Ah, so you’re an actor!’
‘Actor isn’t quite the right word, my friend: I don’t recite, I impersonate.’
He takes a sponge from a bowl and covers himself with soap. He leaps to his feet, tugging away resolutely between his legs. His face is a mask of painful resignation, his eyes directed straight at mine.
‘“I go the way of all the earth. Be thou strong therefore,
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