Q by Luther Blissett & Luther Blissett

Author:Luther Blissett & Luther Blissett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romanzo, novela, novel, fiction
Published: 1999-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 37

Münster, Easter Monday 1534

‘Don’t call me crazy!’

The fist catches me on the cheekbone and I go down.

Jan is a red and blond mask of fury.

I collapse on to a chair. ‘Now you really have shown that you’re a wretched charlatan.’

He holds his breath, takes a few steps massaging his bruised knuckles, lowers his head, sways back and forth. The outburst of rage is suddenly veiled by despair.

‘Help me, Gert, I don’t know what to do.’

He looks exhausted: a wretched, whining little tailor.

‘Help me. I’m a worm, help me, tell me what I have to do. Because I don’t know, Gert…’

He sits down on the throne that belonged to Matthys and looks at the floor.

‘You’ve done enough already.’

He nods. ‘I’m a buffoon, yes, a real buffoon. But they wanted hope, you saw them, they wanted me to tell them what I told them. They wanted me this way, and I did it, I made them happy, I restored their strength.’

I sit there in silence, lifeless, my head, the blow, the confusion of the past few hours.

He seems to recover a little. ‘Yesterday they were lost, today they could resist von Waldeck with their bare hands!’ He looks over at me. ‘I’m not Matthys. We can start over, we can fuck, you know, we can stuff our faces, we can do everything we want to do. We’re free, Gert, we’re free and in charge of the world.’

I don’t feel like talking, there’s no point, but the words come out all by themselves, for me and this crazed character with whom I’ve shared the stench of the stables: the new prophet of Münster.

‘What world, Jan? Von Waldeck is no fool, the powerful never are. Powerful man helps powerful man, prince supports prince: papists, Lutherans… it doesn’t matter, the ones at the bottom rebel and you find them all united, with their horsemen and their gleaming armour, lining up to fire. That’s the world out there. And you can be sure that that hasn’t changed just because you’ve given these people the lovely dream of Zion.’

He is whining like a puppy, his fingers clutching at his blond curls.

‘Tell me. You know how things happen. I’ll do whatever you tell me, but don’t leave me, Gert…’

I rise to my feet in astonishment: ‘You’re wrong. I don’t know either. I don’t know any more than you do.’

I reach the door amidst his childish whinging.

She’s behind the door. She’s been listening to everything.

Her hair is so bright and luminous it could be made of platinum.

Divara: a low-cut dress that shows off her perfect body to marvellous effect. In her face the innocence of a child, white child-queen, daughter of a Haarlem brewer.

A light touch raises my hand and slips a tiny blade into it.

‘Kill him,’ she barely murmurs, indifferently, as though talking about a spider on the wall, or an old dying dog that needs to be put down.

Her dress opens over her full breast, to reveal the prize. Her eyes of an intense blue that

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