Detto questo, se non voglio che il tuo sguardo colga un'immagine deformata...
—Le città invisibili
At the door, another Greek beggar. Fritz had been toying with the Italian's gift, but he hid it under his ledger book before he let the man in. Greeks were only half Christian, and were anyway thieves.
He withdrew a few coins and held them out to the poor bearded wretch, but the man shook his head.
“What's wrong, grandfather? You won't take six pieces of silver from a Christian?”
The man shook his head again and, to Fritz's astonishment, answered in German. “Only half Christian, but that's all right. God in his forgiveness is infinite. I'm not a beggar, so I hesitate to take a gift. I am just an old man whose luck has started running short. I wanted to know if you would entertain me for the night.”
Fritz's surprise must have shown on his face, because the old man laughed. “I'm a quick learner. That's all. I knew all the Greek secrets, before the walls came down. Now I am learning about your beautiful country. You have a lot of secrets here, too. And beer. If the former is too much to ask, have you any of the latter?”
Not a beggar, then. Not a common beggar, at least. Many high men and wise had been set out on the streets of Europe in these days, after the catastrophe at Constantinople. A polyglot Greek stood a chance of being well-placed, maybe a real asset. He let him in and, grinning, he poured to both of them generously a black beer that boiled in their mugs. The old man seemed delighted. Fritz set to work on him.
“What did you mean, about the Greek secrets? I know a lot about Italian tradecrafts, Swiss and French designs. I'm a merchant, you know, in glass and silk and fine armor, and it is in my business to know all these things. But I must admit that I am wholly ignorant of your people — their ways, and, more to the point, their methods.”
The old man laughed again. “Oh dear, I think you must have misunderstood. You don't want our tradecrafts. Do you know how the holy city fell? Are they telling the story, out here? Are they telling the truth?”
Fritz made a frown. “The Saracens had a pagan spy inside the walls. Some castrated Janissary who was worshiping their demon-god in his stable tore down the holy city's walls from within. We always know the truth, old man. We who have ears to hear. They wouldn't have beaten true Christians.”
The old man bowed his head for a moment in silence, and then spoke. “I was there, you know. I saw it happen. I do not doubt your sources; no doubt there was a stable-boy, no doubt there was a foul shrine. But I saw the moment that the walls caved in. That day, that hour, is like a black bird in my heart. I cannot sleep; for I feel now that I know how things will end.”
Fritz was fascinated. “What do you mean, old man? What did they do?”
“We Greeks, we are always old men, even in our youth. We do not quickly change our ways. We had some few cannons, in our stores, but when our archers saw them mounting up with endless artillery rows, and the air was choked with smoke and fire… there are no archers in the future, young man. The swords we've carried since the days of Caesar are no more. Great rocketing balls made rubble of the ancient city's walls. Their ways will overtake us; that's what they've been saying.”
“What they've been saying?”
The old man nodded. “I have an ear for secrets. And I learn quickly. After the walls fell… black smoke and horror filled the world. My greatest grief was to leave so many books behind — no doubt being passed now, hand to filthy hand, for Mohamedan archives, or burned in the temple of the Hagia Sophia. It is all theirs now. The world as I knew it is gone.
“I had to flee. My scanty knowledge of the Saracen tongue did me well, for I covered my face and hid myself in a caravan of soldiers. They took me for a learned Saracen, and in time I found myself in many of their counsels of philosophy, all of them blasphemous and impure. In their plunder, they have somehow stolen from us the divine metaphysic of Plotinus... perhaps you are not familiar... he was a Platonist, and thus, like Plato, Christian. His doctrine of the end times is a Christian doctrine, and it can only be, but they have deformed it, blasphemed it, shat upon it. For now they say: It is as Plotinus prophesied; the God of Mohamed has triumphed, and time, at last, is ended. That the merging of man with the transcendent is complete, for Rome at last has fallen.”
Fritz found himself at a loss for words. He was beginning to feel afraid. “Time... has ended?”
“To them, we are small exceptions. Soon to be disposed of. Perhaps it just hasn't gotten here yet, and in but a brief time we all will merge with the Mohamedan infinite, like them. So they say, or so they seem to imply. But a Christian must doubt. I simply don't believe it.”
“You don't believe that darkness, the Saracen, will overtake the world? That time itself will plunge into the pit, never to emerge, to live always among the cackling devils?”
The old man nodded firmly. “For a moment I believed, when the wall came down. I thought that there could never again be triumph for the cross. I pictured black insects covering the Earth, an endless age of darkness, cosmic time itself enfolded into the heart of hell. But I have convinced myself, since then. It cannot be… I see on your face that you are interested. I can teach you the deduction, if you like. I was a theologian in my time.”
Fritz nodded eagerly. “Tell me, tell me.”
At this the old Greek withdrew a wooden ball, which had been hidden in the folds of his robe. He moved it back and forth for a moment, an expression on his face of deep concentration. Fritz didn't dare to speak.
Finally the old man said “Here. I have found the angle. Do you see how the light of the candle falls upon the sphere?”
Fritz nodded. It was remarkable; the old man's trembling hand held the little wooden ball in just such a spot that exactly half its surface was illuminated by his flickering candle, with exactly half in shadow. In the center of the lighted side, a little cross had been carved.
“This is the Earth. It is a sacred orb, and of course it is fixed in place, but we have day and night because the orbit of the sun throws light upon some regions, and not upon others, at differing times. I will turn the ball, and let the candle sit, but you must imagine it reversed; there's no difference, really, because to sit and revolve is really just to have all else revolve around you, seen another way. So look, as I turn it — and again, imagine it's the sun that's turning — how the light falls first upon one half, and then upon the other. After twelve long hours of day, the cross is bathed in darkness, and the light falls on the opposite side — on the Turks, and China, and the sea. For a time the light is theirs. Is this because the Holy Father disfavors us? Of course not. It is the very structure of the cosmos, the divine mechanism, that the sun must turn around the Earth and give us day, then night, then day again. So it is with the light of Fortune, and the darkness of Fate. It is all a part of the divine plan.”
Fritz stroked his chin. “One day is not just like the next. Some days, a wall comes down. And it never rises again.”
The old man sighed. “That's right. The light never comes back just the way you want it to. And the spinning sun, you must remember, is a fire. Hot and devastating and divine. But still. We must be grateful.”
The old man handed him the ball, and just at that moment his demeanor seemed to change, as if Fritz, by accepting the gift, had sealed with him some unspoken bargain. The man spoke in a changed voice. “I know many secrets. Among them, secrets of trade. We should work together. I have noticed for example, that you have plenty of beer, but no wine,” he said.
“What difference does it make?” Fritz asked.
“What difference? Well, since coming to this land I have learned a thing or two which will be very useful to anyone who deals in the trade of wine-presses. You must involve me. I know many things of this kind, but I lack the, ahem, the capital...”
Fritz nodded. This was what he had been hoping for. “Come back on Monday, and we can discuss these matters. You are clearly a shrewd fellow. I'm sure we can work something out.”
The man was extremely pleased, and after some basically meaningless chatter about the flow of silks and silver pieces, it was in a rush of high spirits that at last they said good night. The old man seemed to be suddenly elated. “Et ecce sunt novissimi qui erunt primi, et sunt primi qui erunt novissimi!” he exclaimed, before he stepped out the door and, as quickly as he had come, disappeared into the silent night. Fritz didn't have the chance to ask him the meaning of those words, or where he had heard them.
Moreover, after the Greek had gone, Fritz found himself distracted and disturbed, as he contemplated over and over again the parable of the ball. Something was bothering him, something he couldn’t quite put into words. In a vain attempt to put it to rest, he contrived to rest the ball on a candlestick, in the center of his writing-desk, and then paced around it with the candle in his hand. After adjusting his distance several times, he found that what the old man said was true — it was just as when he did it in reverse: the dark gave way to light on one side, then to dark again. But the dark, of course, was hidden from him. He could only guess that it was there.
Trying to find the source of his distress, he at last retrieved the Italian's gift, which he had hidden under the ledger book. It was a very fine mirror, in a gilt frame, which Francesco had brought with him from Geneva on his last southward journey. It was not like any mirror Fritz had ever seen before — its surface wasn't polished metal, but some kind of specially treated glass, which was not translucent but instead reflected perfectly, as if it were a pure clear window which looked out onto a second world, one exactly — or almost exactly — the same as our own. He rested this mirror carefully on its side, and then, taking up the candle, he walked in a circle around the stationary ball again. Now he could see, as he passed the ball, by looking in his mirror, the cross on the opposite side. He could see it as before he could not — in shadow. A shiver ran up his spine, and then an even greater shiver, as for a moment he accidentally glimpsed another image in the glass. For he had stepped away, and for just a moment the sideways mirror into which he was staring showed an image of the window, which lay just beyond the ball — a warped glass pane which looked out into that abyss, the unlit street. The trees outside were shaking, slightly, and projected on their slender branches, he could see in the reflecting glass, was another reflection, for even the untreated window-glass had a microcosm of that polished nature that reflects what looks at it. So a ghost of the ball was hovering in front of the black branches, and a ghostly image of the little mirror, which in turn reflected branch and ball and image. He found himself staring into an unstable infinity, one bounded on all sides by smoky darkness. The overlapping images clashed, and piled one on top of the other, a process which culminated, if it did at all, in a complex, shattered image that was utterly alien. It wasn’t a dialogue, but an inhuman cacophony. His head swam. He sat down. It wasn't true, what the old man said. About the day and the night. The sun and the Earth, that much was true. But the rest... he thought about that overlapping madness, that dizzying parallax which all dissolved at last into the darkness, into the thief-infested night.
Some day it would end. Plotinus was a wiser man than either of them. Time must end. The smoke and spark and barking roar of cannonfire would heat the world like a fever, and so would the next turn, and the next. The plague consumes the patient. Fire rips apart the home. All things must fail at last. And nothing ever, ever ends, until the final descent, into the darkness — the light — of the absolute. Black hordes of Saracens could hold the world one moment, a fiery, shattered world of hate and cannonfire, and then in another moment a yet more overheated ball could fall into the lap of Christendom. Where, at last, would it all end?
With these thoughts bedeviling his mind, Fritz sank into a dreamless sleep. In the town surrounding him and the countryside which surrounded the town, Jena and Wittenberg and Linz and Mainz and the banks of the swiftly rushing Elbe all together heaved helplessly onward, into the future night.