Читать книгу The Knights of Rhodes - Bo Giertz - Страница 13

The Unfathomable

Chancellor d’Amaral sat alongside a path in the garden and warmed his frozen bones under the beautiful February sun. It had been a cold morning in the cool council hall, and the negotiations certainly hadn’t done anything to warm his heart or feet. Everything was going wrong, just as he had predicted. Naturally, they had immediately sent delegates to Rome and Marseille to inform them of the election results. Now, the new Grand Master found himself in France as an ambassador, visitor, and corrector with extraordinary powers to negotiate for more troops, more boats, and new cannons. He was also able to collect outstanding debts, outstanding leases, and regular responses from the order’s property, extra war tributes and as much he could press out of advances and loans. That fit him.

Then they chose an acting deputy, and—naturally!—it was a Frenchman, this round stomached, pink-skinned, reddish-blond bearded, smiling and wasteful Gabriel de Pomerolx. It fit them.

The larger political picture also looked dark. Naturally, things had gone like he thought they would. The rebellious Gazali had been defeated. He was thrown out during the siege of Haleb. Then he was overcome by Suleiman’s Janissaries, who fell upon him just outside of Damascus after an unbelievable day’s march. Some said that he attempted to flee disguised as a dervish, but had been betrayed by his own men. In any case his severed head was now on the way to Constantinople in a courier’s bag. And all the cannons that Old Carretto had so generously contributed were now in Turkish hands. The councilors and instructors he had sent with the cannons had escaped home by sea, mostly thanks to a strong January storm that made even the best Turkish captains seek peaceful harbors.

The Chancellor sat and looked at Ibrahim, the garden slave, who slowly and methodically stacked stones around a new terrace along the top of the garden. What was he really thinking about? Turks were the best people a person could want as rowers and assistants. They never caused a disturbance. They worked quietly and diligently.

“Ibrahim?”

“Yes, Lord?”

The Turk looked up a little bewildered.

“Come here a minute. Don’t work. What are you really thinking about?”

Something came to life in the Turk as if he had made a decision. So he said:

“About paradise, Lord.”

The Chancellor looked surprised at first, but it faded.

“And you believe that you will go there?”

“Naturally, Lord, because I have a better faith.”

“Better? Better than what?”

Again something lit up behind his dark velvet-brown eyes.

“Than yours, Lord.”

“You will have to explain what you mean by that.”

The slave hesitated.

“May one speak from his heart?”

“You may, Ibrahim.”

“God is one.”

“True, Ibrahim.”

“He is exalted, higher than the heavens, unimaginable, glorious beyond all understanding. It is impossible to conceptualize him.”

More than one would want, the Chancellor thought, but he didn’t say it.

“If we could conceptualize him, he would no longer be God.”

“That is true, Ibrahim.”

“Neither could he be God, if he were like we are.”

The Chancellor remained quiet. He should have contradicted him here, but he wanted to hear more. He looked encouragingly at the Turk, who stood there and stretched the waistband of his pants, wondering how much he could say without landing on the rower’s bench again.

“Lord, we would never venture to say that the infinitely exalted would have a son with a woman. That the glorious and divine, the blessed and unspeakable, whom we cannot find a word for—that he could be found in a wretched, sweaty human body that is susceptible to sores and colic, has to stuff itself with porridge and go to the bathroom like we do. Lord, it is blasphemy. Therefore God has given us victory. See for yourself, Lord: Egypt, Syria, Africa, Byzantium, and Bulgaria—all are liberated. God restores his glory everywhere again through us his unworthy servants. How would we have been able to do it, if God were not with us?”

That is the question the Chancellor thought, precisely the question. But he only said:

“In the end, it still comes down to how one lives.”

“Yes, Lord, and it is just for that reason that we Turks do not steal. We give our alms, pray the prayers he prescribed, and are all prepared to die for him.”

“And the wine you are not allowed to drink? There is said to be both taverns and drunkards in Constantinople.”

“Some drink it, Lord. God comes to punish them. We are ashamed of them. But are the Christians not forbidden from whoring? Or lying? And they do these things openly and without shame.”

“You can go now, Ibrahim.”

“Are you angry with me, Lord?”

“No, Ibrahim, but we have more to do than talk the time away, both you and I.”

He went to his desk. But it was tedious and slow writing to the property administrators of Barletta, Messina, and Capua with the usual nagging notes to hurry and send help to scrape up the last of the money and personnel. The Turk’s word would not leave him alone.

If Christ was God’s Son, why didn’t He give them victory?

For three-hundred fifty years, He had only given defeat to his faithful: At Hattin’s Horn, at Margat and Acre, at Nicopolis and Varna. Jerusalem, Ceasarea, Nicea, Constantinople, Smyrna, Ephesus and Corinth, all had fallen. All the holy, apostolic cities were now under the half moon, except for Rome—and it too would fall one day, if one wasn’t ready to put an end to the peace.

At one time this question plagued him, almost insufferably. He would lie on the galley’s quarterdeck in the warm humid nights, the stars blurred behind the haze and stench of the rowers, who snored and groaned in their chains and excrement while the Latin sail lifted its pointed top to the heavens. Black thorny shorelines shadowed the horizon, almost always enemy territory, islands that had already fallen or that could fall any day. He wondered: What is God doing? What are His holy mother and all His saints doing? Now he had stopped questioning. Life had taught him this hard lesson. If God cared about such things, then he always kept the best galleys, the most powerful artillery, and the hardest disciplined soldiers. In the end, that which decided the matter was money, weapons, cleverness and self-will. It was a game where the clearest brains and the hardest hand took home the victory. To bring God into the game only made it more complicated.