Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

of the Bible and its prophets makes him more far-sighted than Gresbeck and myself about Matthys’s behaviour. Heinrich, leaning against a pillar, looks like a statue. He cranes his neck, straining to catch my eye. What do we do now? Jan of Leyden flicks frantically through the Bible in search of passages that might be translated on to the stage. Someone intones the Dies Irae. A kind of spontaneous procession runs along the central nave.

I push forward to get to the door, ready for whichever scenario has been chosen.

A sickly ray of sunlight accompanies his resolute bearing.

The prophet of M�nster passes through the Ludgeritor and leaves the city behind him, escorted by a dozen men. No one else has been able to follow him: everyone has his role in the Plan.

We crowd on to the city walls.

The bishop prince’s camp is clearly visible a short distance away,� slightly blurred by the mist rising from the damp earth.

We see them advancing towards the embankment dug by the bishop’s mercenaries. There is commotion in their ranks, they take aim with their hackbuts.

Matthys gestures to his men to stop.

Matthys walks on alone.

Matthys is unarmed.

Everyone’s astonished. What’s he trying to do?

No one breathes.

Matthys raises his arms to the sky, very high, his black hair rain-sodden.

He’s out of range, but a marksman would only have to take a quick run, a few dozen yards at the most.

Everyone silent, as though the wind could carry his words to the earthworks.

Thousands of eyes concentrated on a single point. The final moment.

The Plan.

He keeps on walking. He climbs up on to the first low wall of the fortifications.

My God, he’s really going to do it.

Until Easter.

A fixed-term prophet.

People seem to hear something, perhaps the echo of a word that has been uttered more loudly than the others.

A sudden movement behind the Prophet. Someone climbing, the gleam of a sword. They drop forwards.�

A troop of horsemen emerge from the camp and hurl themselves into the road to block Matthys’s retinue. Men and horses in a single confused mass.

Everyone’s eyes are frozen with horror, like dry leaves in the ice.

Not a shout, not a breath.

Shouts of exultation from the bishop’s men.

A hand on my shoulder.

‘Come away, Gert.’

It’s Gresbeck, his face sombre. ‘What the fuck’s going on now?’

‘He really did it…’

The M�nsterites are all still on the walls, waiting for something to happen, for Matthys’ body to rise up and open the heavens with a fiery word.

‘What the fuck are we going to do, Gert?’

He shakes me. I almost discharge the tension with an idiotic smile. ‘That bastard has managed to scotch our plans…’

‘The important thing is that we’ve got rid of him. But what now?’

We watch the people flowing through the streets as we go in search of the burgomasters. Drained, lifeless ghosts and sleepwalkers without even the strength to be frightened. They’ve been deprived of their Apocalypse, the Prophet is gone. Not the merest hint of God. But this is really the Last Easter, with the tombs uncovered and the souls of the dead wandering as they wait for judgement. Someone saw him being carried into heaven by the angels, someone else saw him being dragged to hell by a demon. They are crowding the streets, the market square, no longer with any desire to pray, because they don’t know who or what is worth praying for. Clusters of people talking in low voices form all over the place. The situation needs to be taken in hand, we have to find Knipperdolling and Kibbenbrock before discouragement turns to panic.

We find the second burgomaster sitting on the steps of St Lamberti’s, head lowered.

‘Where’s Knipperdolling?’

Confused: ‘He was with me at the walls, and I haven’t seen him since then.’

‘Are you sure he’s not in the church?’

He shakes his head. ‘He hasn’t come this way.’

We hurry towards the Cathedral square. I don’t need to look at Gresbeck: we are harbouring the same dire presentiments.

Shortly before dark, macabre confirmation arrives.

The body of Jan of Haarlem in a basket catapulted beyond the walls. Butchered, in pieces.

Knipperdolling seems to have gone mad. Running through the torpor of the city, he is yelling at the top of his voice the name of Jan Bockelson, the new David.

Standing on the stage next to the Cathedral is the unmistakeable outline of the Madman of Leyden.

Scene one: the dream of King David (Knipperdolling in the role of Matthys, Bockelson as himself).

MATTHYS: Yes, yes. You’re a bastard, Jan of Leyden. A son of a bitch. The bastard and the son of a bitch who will succeed me as leader of the forces of the Lord.

BOCKELSON: No, no! I am a slimy and disgusting worm, unworthy, unworthy!

MATTHYS: Jan, my namesake and my apostle, you know how much I love you. And my love is nothing but a reflection of the greater love that the Father has for you. Worm, yes, hat’s exactly what you were. And I dragged you out of the mud of your filthy whorehouses to make you fight at my side in M�nster. Worm. Regal worm who will assume the task of taking up my sword and ushering in the Kingdom. In a week the Prophet will have to make way for the Lord. And the Lord will choose you, to be the leader of the New Zion.

BOCKELSON (_holds back his tears; either he can’t see anyone, or perhaps he sees everything very clearly. Much more clearly than me and Gresbeck)_: Step forward, Berndt.

Intermezzo: (Knipperdolling, dressed as himself, comes forward clumsily, clutching� the great sword of Justice).

KNIPPERDOLLING: It’s true. A week ago Jan of Leyden told me had had a visit from Matthys in his sleep, and that in that dream he entrusted him with the task of taking the Plan to its conclusion.

Scene two: the Plan is carried out (Bockelson in the roles of God and David, Knipperdolling as himself).

GOD: Men and women of M�nster, look at this little man. Look at David. Men and women of the New Jerusalem: the Kingdom is yours! By God, I have won. All that was promised has come to pass. You are in charge of the Kingdom. Run on to the walls to laugh in the face of your enemies, fart out your joy upon their bestial grunts! There is nothing they can do, Matthys has shown as much. He wanted you to know that the godless shit-eaters may be able reduce him to tiny bits the size of pickings from your nose, but they will not even tarnish the Plan! And my plan is to win! To win! A slingshot for David!

Knipperdolling hurries to pass a slingshot to Bockelson, of the kind that the peasants use to keep the crows away from their harvest).

DAVID: Citizens of the New Jerusalem, I am the man who is coming in the name of the Father: the new David, the bastard stepbrother of Christ, the chosen one! Admire the Father, who chose a whore-master, a brothel-keeper, to appoint as His apostle, His captain. And through the mouth of the archangel Matthys he announced his pregnancy. Yes, the pregnancy of the Plan accomplished. Jan Matthys is not dead! Matthys the Great fertilised me with the Word of the Lord and lives in me, he lives in all of you, because we are destined to go on to the end, we are the strength of the Lord, we are the best, the chosen, the saints, the ones who inherited the earth and can use it as we will. There are no limits now on what we can do: the world is over, it is at our feet! (He draws breath, with his blue eyes he scans the crowd, by now so great that it fills the square). Brothers and sisters: Eden is ours!

KNIPPERDOLLING (at his side):� Long live Zion!

The response is a leg-breaking kick, a frenzy, a pistol-shot, a blow to the chin, a bucketful of icy water that leaves me utterly dazed. It’s a shout of celebration by thousands of people at the tops of their voices, to banish our despair, our discouragement, our knowledge of having followed a madman now lying in bits in a basket. Better to maintain our beliefs right to the end, better to go on dreaming than become aware of the collective madness. I read it in their eyes, in their distraught faces: better a charlatan pimp , yes, yes, the son of Matthys, he’s what we want, give us back our Apocalypse, laugh at our faith. Laugh at our God.

I stumble in silence, I see Bockelson hoisted aloft by a forest of hands and borne in triumph around the square. He is laughing and blowing kisses to everyone, sensual, provocative, maybe he’s got one for the comrade who has hauled him out of troubles more than once and accompanied him all the way here. Or perhaps the Holy Pimp no longer thinks about that. Never again will he leave this role, the best performance of his life. Jan, you’ve finally managed to put on the world like a glove with your theatrical repertoire. Or else, on the other hand, it could be that your characters have found their proper stage in the hearts of these men and the events of the world. Now you are Moses, John, Elijah, and whoever you want to be. You are those people for ever, you have no intention of going back. It is written in your smile and in the fact that you would have no reason for doing so.

Grand finale: The crowd flows through the city, carrying the new prophet of M�nster to the Aegiditor so that the bishop’s men may see that the morale of the people of Zion is high, and that they have a new leader. But a cry of horror freezes the triumphal procession in its tracks. The women who have opened the gate point to one of the two great pillars.

An arrow has fixed something to the wood, like a small bloody bag. A macabre joke by the bishop’s men: they must have taken advantage of the absence of the sentries to approach the walls and then make off again.

The crowd opens up and Jan of Leyden walks resolutely forward, pulls out the arrow, and, without batting an eyelid, picks up the scrotum of Jan Matthys, clenches it in his fists and nods to his own angels. He raises his voice and the balls of the Prophet, in full view, so that everyone can see.

BOCKELSON: Yes. Although I left a legitimate wife in Leyden to follow the Great Matthys, he told me I should have been husband to his wife. I must marry the Prophet’s widow and use my bollocks in his place. (He stuffs the bloody lump into his pocket and announces): Bring Divara! My wife to be!

Applause.

End.