The Council of Egypt Read online

“Yes, but—”

  “He knows more than I, yet I have been able to deceive him... Does this seem to you possible?”

  It did not seem possible. The five judges – one could read it in their faces – did not believe it. And from the public in the rear of the hall came a burst of applause.

  “Let us leave Professor Tychsen alone,” Hager said. “Particularly since he will, I am sure, have occasion to revise his opinion.”

  “You believe that his opinion will then coincide with yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that you, in effect, know more than he does!”

  “Put it as you like... Meanwhile, here we have the Codex of San Martino; we can discuss it concretely.”

  “Let us discuss it,” the Abbot said.

  The Codex lay on the table, and Hager opened it. “I would ask Abbot Vella,” he said, turning to Monsignor Granata, “to point out to me the name Ibrahim ben-Aglab, which he has translated a hundred times.”

  Monsignor Granata turned the Codex toward the Abbot.

  Vella turned two or three pages and laid his finger on one spot. “Here.”

  Hager leaned down, then straightened up, red with anger. “But here I read Uqba ibn Abi Muait!”

  “And who says you should not?” the Abbot asked with an icy smile.

  “Then find me another place where the same name appears!” the Austrian exploded.

  The Abbot turned a few more pages, and pointed.

  “An Nadr ibn al Harit,” the other man read, and shouted, “But, my God, this is too much! Compare them! Compare them! Ibrahim ben-Aglab is written one way in one place and another way in another place! Compare them!”

  The five judges bent over the Codex; the letters were, in fact, different. They turned perplexed faces to the Abbot.

  “Signor Hager,” Vella said ironically, “has a truly admirable enthusiasm for things Arabic, but they call for much study, much patience... His youth alone tells us how far he still is from his goal... I envy him his youth, I do not envy him his knowledge. However, I do not doubt that with time he will be able to attain to the erudition in which for the moment he is almost entirely deficient... You see, gentlemen, this Codex is written in Siculi-Arabic.”

  “I’ve never even heard of Siculi-Arabic – except from you, of course.”

  “You see? You have never even heard of it. And I dare say that you have never heard of the many, the countless forms of Kufic characters—”

  “I have heard of them. I know them.”

  “Then why are you so astounded that the name Ibrahim ben-Aglab should appear written once in one way and again in another?” The tone was that of a grieving parent.

  “Let us proceed to the test of approximation,” Monsignor Granata said, opening the translation of the Codex of San Martino that lay before him. Turning to the Abbot, he said, “If you please, open the Arabic text to page twenty-four... There, translate that.”

  The Abbot translated with remarkable assurance: every word he pronounced corresponded exactly to the version that Monsignor Granata had before him.

  “That will do,” Monsignor said, after a while, and to Hager, “It matches, word for word.”

  Hager snickered.

  “You translate it,” Vella invited him.

  “Just like that, on the spur of the moment?”

  “I do understand,” the Abbot said, “how this or any other moment might not be convenient,” and while the hall rocked with laughter, he was tempted to make a grand gesture: to recite to all those stupid oxen, friends and foes alike, the true translation of page twenty-four: “Abd al Muttalib called him Mohammed after a vision he had. He believed that in a dream he had seen a chain of silver, which...”

  Chapter VII

  “I have a notion that that Hager is right,” Di Blasi said suddenly, interrupting his two Benedictine uncles, who were happily recapitulating the events of the evening’s confrontation. He was accompanying them back to San Martino, for it was quite late; the closest friends of the Abbot and Monsignor Airoldi had stayed on after the conference for supper at the latter’s house; and what with excellent food and fine old wines, they had doubly savoured the evening’s triumph. Because the Abbot’s victory was their victory: it was a victory for Monsignor Airoldi, who had invested his name and money in the venture: a victory for Giovanni Evangelista Di Blasi, who, on his own, had published a tract against Gregorio and in defense of Vella; and a victory for Francesco Paolo himself, who in the preface to Pragmaticae sanctiones regni Siciliae had quoted the Codex of San Martino as a source of legal precedent.

  During the evening, the two Benedictines had noticed that their nephew was silent and rather abstracted: but they knew that ever since the death of his wife, after less than two years of marriage, and now from worry over his mother’s health, he often lapsed into short spells of despondency, when he became touchy and even irascible. They were not prepared for his concocting any such wild suspicion as this. They were scandalized.

  “How can you think such a thing? After such complete, such brilliant proof?” Father Salvatore said.

  “My experience as a lawyer,” Francesco Paolo said. “I have seen truth twisted, I’ve seen a lie take on the semblance of truth... When I heard Hager say that he could not improvise a translation of the Codex, suddenly I understood which side the truth lay on... And then I remembered something, a tiny thing of no importance whatever, from about ten years ago – I mean that at the time it seemed unimportant, but now I see it in context.”

  “What are you talking about?” Father Giovanni demanded.

  “How is your mother?” Father Salvatore asked; he ascribed his nephew’s recollections and suspicions to some family worry.

  “As usual. She’s sick, but she won’t rest, she goes on taking care of me, the house, all our business affairs—”

  “A determined woman, your mother,” Father Salvatore said.

  “A determined woman, yes... But I would like to understand this: How can such a black suspicion about that poor Abbot Vella even occur to you, to you of all people? You have been friends for ten years and more, solid warm friends... And now, of all times, when you should be beside yourself with joy... Did you see Gregorio, the state he was in? He looked like a codfish three days out of water... At a moment like this, when we should be putting up a statue to Abbot Vella, you begin to suspect him!” Because he had risked defending Vella and hated Gregorio, Father Giovanni felt personally wounded and betrayed by his nephew’s suspicions.

  “It’s just an impression. I could be wrong,” Francesco Paolo said soothingly; he already regretted having started the discussion.

  “That I can believe. It’s your work, it makes you blind. You lawyers are so used to switching truth and falsehood, to clothing one as the other, that at a certain point you can’t distinguish between them... Like Serpotta, who dressed whores in expensive clothes and used them as models for his statues of Virtue.”

  “And splendid statues they are,” Francesco Paolo said to divert his uncle to a fresh subject.

  “Once the breath of God cleansed them,” Father Giovanni said.

  If God doesn’t soon blow a breath of air on Abbot Vella’s codices, the lawyer thought, I’m afraid they’ll come to a bad end. Not to purify them, as Uncle means about Serpotta’s work. In that sense, in the sense of art, as a work of art, an invention, a creation, quite possibly they are already pure. If the Abbot really did make them up out of nothing, then he has created one of the great works of imagination of the century. But if they’re to be accepted as authentic, he does need this breath, he needs the miracle of the water being turned to wine. Di Blasi was smiling over such ideas, and smiling a bit at himself, too. He had fallen for the Abbot’s game, had he not? But he was not making a tragedy out of it. In a text that competent authorities had declared authentic, he had found certain points of civil law and, as a student of law, he had made a passing reference to them. That was all. But Professor Tychsen, what a blow it would be for him!
And for poor Monsignor Airoldi. And for his uncles. But especially for Tychsen; he, the great Orientalist, who had in effect helped the Abbot put his scheme over. The whole thing seemed incredible, really, and yet there was no mistaking it; in Hager he had heard the unequivocal accent of passion, of truth; the agonized impotence and repugnance of the honest man confronted by the overbearing lie; he had watched Hager retreat in what had seemed confused guilt, but had actually been despairing innocence. The lie is stronger than the truth, he thought. Stronger than life, even. It is found at the very root of beginning life, and it is still sprouting forth leaves in the afterlife. The dark tossing of the trees along the San Martino road was grafted onto the more obscure leafy crests of falsehood. Roots, leaves! He was often irritated to find himself thinking in metaphors. The little child lies as naturally as he breathes, and we believe him. On the say-so of some Jesuit priests, we believe that man is a moral savage. And we believe that truth came before history, and that history is a lie. Instead, it is history that redeems men from falsehood and error and brings them to the truth, individuals and nations both... And to himself, in ironic self-congratulation: Since you have believed in Rousseau, it is only right that you should find your requital in Abbot Vella. Yet the young lawyer felt bewildered, as if some sudden obstacle, some unforeseen collision, had exploded into a curse. The fact is, Voltaire is more useful to you today... Perhaps Voltaire is always more useful... But even so not as useful as you would like. You would like their ideas – Voltaire’s, Diderot’s, Rousseau’s too – to be in the revolution, to be a part of it, instead of stopping short at the threshold.

  “Here we are, San Martino,” said Father Salvatore.

  Di Blasi stepped down from the carriage also. He kissed his uncles’ hands and wished them good night.

  “Don’t let your ideas get too wild,” Father Giovanni urged him: he was alluding to Abbot Vella.

  The young man stood for a moment looking out over the mysterious, formless countryside; in the flickering light cast by the torch the groom was holding high beside him, it looked more formless and mysterious still.

  He climbed back into the carriage, and all the way to Palermo and through the night into dawn, his thoughts were wilder by far than any Father Giovanni feared he might have. But they were not exactly concerned with Abbot Vella and his Arabic codices.

  Chapter VIII

  The report from the commission that had presided over the test, including a meticulous transcript of the evening’s proceedings and a statement of the judges’ conclusions, which overflowed with enthusiasm for the ability and probity of Abbot Vella, had been sent off to Naples at about the same time as Hager’s critique, to contradict, to annihilate the latter. Yet the Abbot felt weary and depleted; he was the actor who has played the leading role throughout the long run of a successful comedy, the same character, the same mask, evening after evening. It was not that he was confused or hallucinated or awash in a double identity, because such a state of mind had not yet been invented; even had it been fashionable, the Abbot would have thought the paradoxe sur le comédien more appropriate to his personality and situation, but then that, too, was unknown at the time.

  Furthermore, it would be a gross error to attribute his weariness to any stirring of conscience or remorse. On this score, the Abbot was as cold and immaculate as a snow field on the Madonie Mountains. Those ten fat tomes of fraudulencies sat as lightly and joyously on his conscience as a bright, fluttering feather; in a word, he felt spotless. But if he was to savor his euphoria to the full, he needed something; he needed a chorus of his victims, so to speak. He had so indulged his contempt for others that had he not acted as he was now about to do, there would have been nothing left for him but to despise himself as well; his reasons for so doing were far removed from eternal verities or the then absolute moral certainties. But better not complicate matters: let us simply say that Abbot Vella was sick to death of everything.

  And so, come the aequinoctium vernum of 1795, as the astronomer Piazzi turned away from his telescope in the observatory of the Royal Palace, with the rivers of stars that had poured into his eyes now flowing into the sea of sleep, Abbot Vella was throwing his windows open to the mild morning air. He felt rested, serene, redeemed. He was forty-four years old; he had an iron constitution, a quick mind; and just as the spring was now returning in glory, he felt that he too had come to a freer season in life and to fresh vigor.

  He decided to take a bath, a phenomenon no less rare than those Piazzi spied on in the equinoctial heavens. He heated water in great copper pots and poured it into a small gray marble tub; he undressed and immersed himself, bent over in three, like one of those American mummies that a Jesuit priest in Malta had once shown him. A bath was death in miniature: his body melted, his whole being dissolved into suds of sensation. He was deliciously aware that he was committing a sin. On such occasions, he always remembered the warning of an early Church Father: with his amazing memory, it was as if he had the printed page before him; he repeated the words now, translating them from the stern Latin in which they had been written: “If you cannot indeed avoid immersing yourselves naked in water,” the Church Father had said, “do not touch your body while you are wet.” The Abbot was mindful of the prohibition, and his hands dangled over the edge of the tub like broad Indian-fig paddles. But a bath was a delight, nonetheless. As the Arabs very well knew, he reflected. For a moment, a woman’s glance flashed from behind the dry and thorny bramble bush of the Latin, languidly curious about his naked body. The Abbot closed his eyes. He drifted into a light sleep. And her hands, or someone’s hands, stirred the water that embraced his body. How lucky that the Church Father had foreseen no such thing as this.

  When he emerged from his bath, he felt the need of coffee, a drink rarely taken and always prepared and savored with gusto. He was leisurely about dressing and setting to rights all the confusion occasioned by the unusual event of a bath, and then he went out. He stopped by his niece’s house and collected the Council of Egypt from the top floor, where it had been hidden, together with other papers. He called a sedan chair to take him to the home of Monsignor Airoldi.

  Monsignor was still abed. Half asleep as he was, he recognized the codex. “Don’t tell me a thing,” he said. “First let’s have coffee, and then you tell me the story, blow by blow... I’d given up all hope. This is a miracle.”

  The Abbot drank his second coffee of the day.

  “Now tell me,” Monsignor said, settling back against the pillows the servant had arranged behind his back.

  The Abbot laid the Council of Egypt on the bed. Eagerly Monsignor drew it up on his knees and opened it.

  “I should like Your Excellency to examine it closely,” the Abbot said.

  “What’s happened?” Monsignor was alarmed. “Have they damaged it?,” and he began to leaf feverishly through the codex.

  “Not at all.”

  “What then?”

  “Your Excellency must be good enough to examine it closely... With the kind of attention, I mean, that Your Excellency has so far not deigned to give it.”

  “But...” Monsignor looked up at him, uncomprehending, waiting for an explanation.

  “It will be enough if Your Excellency will hold any page – here, this one – up against the light... The weave of the paper... The watermark, that is...”

  Monsignor did so: and since his eyesight was weak and, at the moment, rather blurred, he read, “a-o-n-e-g.”

  “Your Excellency,” the Abbot said quietly, indulgently even, “Your Excellency has read it backward. The watermark reads ‘g-e-n-o-a.’”

  The Bishop’s jaw dropped; like a dying man, he exhaled a whispered “Genoa.”

  “This paper,” the Abbot said, “was made in Genoa, I assume about 1780. I bought it here in Palermo a few years later.”

  “Lord Jesus,” the Bishop said: he fell back on his pillows, wild-eyed and open-mouthed.

  Abbot Vella stood looking at him impassively, a cold smile on hi
s lips.

  “You have ruined me,” Monsignor said finally. “I should have you arrested.”

  “I am at Your Excellency’s disposition.”

  “At my disposition?” Monsignor’s expression was that of a nursing infant who has had the bile of a hedgehog forced down its throat: every line in his face was contracted around that one center of bitterness, which was his mouth and the words it uttered: “You have murdered and buried me, you have carved my epitaph of shame on stone... At my disposition!”

  “Your Excellency’s indignation is sacred for me, and I am ready—”

  “This is a comfort, a comfort indeed,” Monsignor said ironically, and at last he exploded: “Get out! Get out before I have you whipped out like a dog!”

  Chapter IX

  “It’s true,” Di Blasi said, “every society produces the particular kind of imposture that suits it best, so to speak. Our society is a fraud, a judicial, literary, human fraud – yes, I would say human too, for it is fraudulent in its very essence. So our society has produced, quite simply and naturally, a reverse fraud—”

  “You are squeezing philosophy out of a common crime,” Don Saverio Zarbo said.

  “Oh no, this is no common crime. This is one of those facts which help define a society, a historical moment. If culture in Sicily were not, more or less consciously, a fraud, if it were not a tool in the hands of the barons, and therefore an imposture, an endless imposture and falsification of reality – well, I tell you this, Abbot Vella’s adventure would have been impossible. I’ll say more: Abbot Vella has not committed a crime; reversing the terms, he has produced a parody of a crime, of the crime that we in Sicily have been committing for centuries.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’ll try to make myself clear – and be clearer in my own thoughts, too. You remember the Prince di Trabia’s speech on the agricultural crisis? The crisis, the Prince said, is caused by the peasants’ ignorance—”