When Bess joined me a little while later she relayed further apologies from him: he hadn’t spoken to anyone else about the prediction, he’d insisted, and realised he might put me in danger by spreading such stories.
That incident being closed, I asked her for news of the fire. After a brief lull, it had started to spread again, driven by an east wind. The flames had now reached a dozen new streets; I can’t remember their names. The one piece of good news was that the fire was advancing only slowly in our own street, even though it’s called Wood Street. So there’s no plan to evacuate yet. On the contrary, some of Bess’s cousins have come and left some of their furniture here: their house is nearer the river, and they’re afraid it may soon be consumed by the flames.
But it’s only a respite. We may be safe here today, but not tomorrow, and certainly not the day after tomorrow. And if the wind should shift a little to the south we could be trapped and unable to escape. But I haven’t mentioned this to Bess. I don’t want to look like a Cassandra to her too.
Tuesday, 14 September 1666
I’ve had to withdraw to the attic. In a state of temporary reprieve, like the house itself, and the city, and the world.
Watching London burn, I ought to be able to write just as Nero fiddled, but I can only manage a few disjointed phrases.
Bess says I should just wait. I mustn’t make any noise. I needn’t be afraid.
So I’m waiting. I don’t stir, I’ve given up watching the flames, and I expect I’ll soon stop writing.
In order to write I need some sense of urgency, but also some peace of mind. Too much peace and my hand gets lazy; too much urgency and it’s paralysed.
It seems the mob is searching houses now for those who are supposed to have caused the fire. The guilty parties.
Everywhere I’ve been this year I’ve felt guilty. Even in Amsterdam! Yes, Maïmoun, my friend, my brother, can you hear me? Even in Amsterdam!
How am I going to die? By fire? At the hands of the mob?
I’m not writing any more. I’m waiting.
NOTEBOOK IV
Temptation in Genoa
Genoa, Saturday, 23 October 1666
I hesitated for a long time before I started writing again. But finally, this morning, I got myself a new bound notebook, and now, with some delectation, I’m writing the very first page. But I’m not sure I’ll go on.
I’ve already started three other notebooks, meaning to set down my plans, my wishes, my worries, my impressions of cities and men, a few touches of humour or wisdom — like so many travellers and chroniclers before me. But I haven’t their talent, and my pages can’t equal the ones I used to dust on my shelves. Still, I did my best to record everything that happened to me, even when prudence or pride might have kept me silent, even when I felt tired. Except when I was ill or shut up somewhere, I’ve written something every evening, or almost. I’ve filled hundreds of pages in three different notebooks, but not one of them is left. I’ve written just for the flames.
The first notebook, which told the beginning of my travels, was lost when I had to leave Constantinople in haste. The second was left behind when I was deported from Chios. The third probably got burned in the Great Fire of London. And yet here I am smoothing the pages of the fourth, a mortal oblivious of death, a pitiful Sisyphus forever pushing a rock to the top of a hill only for it to fall down again.
When, in my shop in Gibelet, I had to throw the occasional decrepit old tome on the fire, I could never help sparing an affectionate thought for the poor fellow who wrote it. Sometimes it was the only book he’d written in his whole life — his sole hope of leaving some trace of his passage. But his fame would turn into smoke, just as his body would turn into dust.
I’m describing the death of a stranger. But I’m really talking about myself.
Death. My own death. What can it matter, what can books matter, or fame, if the whole world is about to go up in flames, like London?
My mind’s so confused this morning! But I must write. My pen must get up and move over the paper in spite of everything. Whether this notebook survives or burns, I shall write, I shall go on writing.
First, how I got away from the inferno in London.
When the fire broke out, I had to hide to escape the fury of the mob — they wanted to cut the Papists’ throats. With no other proof of guilt than the fact that I was a foreigner and from the same country as the “Antichrist”, ordinary citizens would have seized, manhandled and tortured me, and then thrown my remains into the flames, feeling that they’d advanced the good of their souls. But I’ve already spoken of this madness in the notebook that was lost, and I haven’t the strength to go over it again. What I do want to say something more about is my fear. Fears, rather. For I had two fears, and then one more. I was afraid of the raging flames and of the raging mob, but also of what this whole sinister episode might mean, happening as it did on the very day the Muscovites had indicated as that of the apocalypse. I don’t want to speculate any more about “signs”. But how can one fail to be terrified by such a coincidence? All day long on that accursed 11th of September — the 1st of September according to the English calendar — I mulled over that wretched prophecy. I’d discussed it at length with the chaplain. I don’t say we were expecting the world to explode from one minute to the next in the vast commotion announced in the Scriptures, but we were on the alert. And it was towards midnight at the end of that very day that the fateful clamour burst out. I could watch the progress of the flames, and hear the cries of the people, from my bedroom.
I had one comfort in my woe, in the devotion of the people round me. They’d become a family to me, whereas three weeks earlier they didn’t even know I existed, any more than I knew they did: Bess, the chaplain and his young disciples.
Let no one think my gratitude to Bess was just that of a lonely man who found consolation in the naked arms of a sympathetic innkeeper! What her presence satisfied in me was not the carnal hunger of a traveller: it was my original, fundamental distress. I was born a foreigner, I have lived as a foreigner, and I shall die more of a foreigner still. I’m too proud to talk of hostility, humiliation, resentment, suffering — but I know how to recognise looks and gestures. Some women’s arms are places of exile; others are a native land.
After having hidden, protected, fed and reassured me, on the third day of the fire Bess came and told me we must try to make a get-away. The fire was getting inexorably nearer, which meant that the mob was getting farther away. We could attempt to make our way between the two, aiming at London Bridge; there we’d board the first boat available to take us away from the conflagration.
Bess said the chaplain approved of this course of action, though he himself preferred to stay on a while longer in the ale-house. If it escaped the flames, he could protect it from looters. His two disciples would stay on with him to keep watch, and to help him if, after all, he had to flee.
When the time came to leave, I wasn’t thinking only of saving my life: I was also concerned about The Hundredth Name. The book had been on my mind during all those days and nights, and the clearer it became that my stay in London was approaching its end, the more I wondered if I’d be able to persuade the chaplain to let me take The Hundredth Name with me. I even thought of taking it against his will. Yes, of stealing it! I’d never have been capable of such a thing in other circumstances, during an ordinary year. In any case, I’m not sure I’d have gone through with such a despicable thing. Fortunately I didn’t have to. I didn’t even have to use the arguments I’d prepared. When I knocked at the door of his room to take my leave, the old man asked me to wait for a moment before asking me in. I found him sitting in his usual place, holding the book out towards me with both hands like a kind of offering. The gesture left both of us silent and motionless.
Then he said in Latin, with some solemnity:
“Take it. It’s yours. You’ve deserved it. I promised it to you in return for your undertaking to translate it, and I know quite a
lot now about what it says. Without you, I shan’t be able to find out any more. Anyway, it’s too late.”
I was moved. I thanked him, and embraced him. Then we promised each other, without much conviction, that we’d meet again, if not in this world then in the next. “That’ll be very soon, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “As far as all of us are concerned!” I answered, indicating all that was going on around us. We’d have embarked on yet another discussion about the fate of the world if Bess hadn’t begged me to hurry. She wanted us to set out at once!
Just before we left the house, she turned round one last time to check up on whether I’d pass muster as an Englishman. She made me promise never to open my mouth, never to look people straight in the eye, but just to look sad and exhausted.
It was a quarter of an hour’s walk as the crow flies from the ale-house to the river, but we had to take a roundabout route to avoid the fire. Bess sensibly opted for skirting the whole of the area affected. She even started off along an alley on our left that seemed to lead in the opposite direction. I didn’t argue. Then came another alley, and a third, and perhaps fifteen or twenty others. I didn’t count. I didn’t even try to make out where we were. It was all I could do to avoid falling into holes, walking into debris, and stepping in dirt. I followed Bess’s mop of red hair as a soldier on the battlefield follows a plume or a standard. I trusted her with my life as a child puts its hand in its mother’s. And I had no reason to regret it.
We had only one scare. Emerging into a little square at a place called Houndsditch, near the city wall, we came on a crowd of about sixty people manhandling someone. Not wanting to show we were running away, Bess went up and asked a young woman what was going on. She was told that another fire had just broken out in the neighbourhood, and the foreigner under attack — a Frenchman — had been found lurking nearby.
I wish I could say I intervened to stop the mob from doing their worst. Or at least that I tried, but Bess prevented me. The sad truth is that I walked on as fast as I could, only too glad to escape notice and not be in the victim’s shoes, as I easily might have been. I didn’t even look at the crowd, lest our eyes meet. And as soon as my lady friend had, without undue haste, turned into a nearly empty alley, I followed her. Smoke was rising from a half-timbered house. Strangely enough, it was the top storey that was being licked by tongues of flame. But Bess walked on, neither turning back nor hurrying forward, and I did the same. On the whole, if I had the choice, I preferred to die in the fire rather than at the hands of the mob.
We completed the rest of our journey more or less without incident. We were almost choking on the acrid smell, the sky was veiled in smoke, and we were both stiff and short of breath, but Bess had chosen the safest route. We reached the Thames beyond the Tower of London, then turned back to the nearby landing-stage, by Irongate Stairs.
About forty other people were waiting there, some of them women in tears. They were surrounded with piles of chests, bundles large and small, and pieces of furniture; you wondered how they could have got them there. Bess and I must have been travelling lighter than any of them: all I had with me was a canvas bag Bess had lent me. We must have looked very poor, but less unfortunate than the rest. All of them had obviously either lost their houses already or expected to, like most of the city’s inhabitants. But in my meagre baggage I had the book for which I’d travelled across half the world, and I was leaving the great disaster unscathed.
At the sight of all the melancholy faces surrounding us, we resigned ourselves to a long wait. But a boat arrived after a few minutes and moored nearby. It was half-full of Londoners fleeing the city; the rest of the space was taken up with piles of casks. There were a few places left for passengers, but two strapping fellows barred the way on board — tall, bearded, brawny-armed rascals with wet scarves wound round their heads.
“A guinea each — man, woman or child!” one of them shouted forbiddingly. “Paid on the nail! No money, no room!”
I signed to Bess, and she said curtly:
“All right — we’ll pay.”
The man held out a hand. I took it and jumped into the boat, which was placed at an angle so that only one person could board it at once. But when I turned and stretched out a hand to help Bess jump too, she just touched my fingers and then drew back, shaking her head.
“Come on!” I urged.
She shook her head again, and waved a hand in farewell. There was a sad smile on her face, but also, I think, a trace of regret or uncertainty.
Someone pulled me back by my shirt so that others could get on to the boat. Then one of the sailors came to claim the fare. I got two guineas out of my purse, but gave him only one.
I still feel a pang as I write about it. Our farewells were too hasty, too sketchy. I ought to have talked to Bess before the boat arrived and found out what she really wanted. I behaved all the time as if it was understood that she’d come with me, even if it was only for part of the way. But I ought to have seen that she wouldn’t be coming with me, that there was no reason why she should leave her tavern and her friends to come with me. Anyway, I’d never asked her to; never even thought of doing so. So why do I always have a sense of guilt whenever I mention her or London? Probably because I left her as I might have left a stranger, while in just a few days she gave me what people much closer to me will never give me in a lifetime. Because I owe her a debt that I can never repay. Because I escaped the inferno of London, and she returned to it without my making sufficient effort to stop her. Because I left her there on the quay without a word of thanks or a sign of affection. Because it seemed to me that at the last moment she was hesitating, and a firm word from me might have made her jump into the boat. And there are other reasons too. I’m sure she doesn’t blame me. But it will be a long time before I stop blaming myself.
I can hear Gregorio’s voice. He’s just back from the harbour. I must go and sit with him and have something to eat. I’ll write some more this afternoon, while he’s having his siesta.
Over our meal my host talked to me about various matters concerning both our futures. He’s still trying to persuade me to stay in Genoa. Sometimes I beg him to desist, and sometimes I give him some hope. The fact is I don’t know my own mind. I have a feeling that it’s late, time is getting short on the battlefield; and he’s asking me to stop rushing about, to settle down and take my place beside him, like a son. It’s a great temptation, but I have other temptations. As well as other obligations, other matters of urgency. I already blame myself for having left Bess in too cavalier a manner; how would I feel if I just abandoned Marta to her fate? Marta, who’s carrying my child, and who wouldn’t be a prisoner today if I’d looked after her better.
I want to spend what little time is left to me wiping out my debts and putting right my mistakes. And Gregorio wants me to forget the past, forget my home and my sister and my sister’s sons and my former loves, and start a new life in Genoa.
We are now in the last few weeks of the fateful year. Is this the right moment to begin a new life?
All these questions have exhausted me. I must dismiss them from my mind and get on with my story.
I’d got to where I was on the boat, leaving London. The passengers were muttering that the rogues who were conveying us would end on the gallows. The sailors themselves were singing and laughing, delighted with their spoils. They must have made more money in the last few days than they usually made in a year, and must be praying for God to stoke up the fire indefinitely.
Not content with having extorted all those guineas for the fare, they made haste to land again as soon as we were out of the city, and then drove us off the boat like a herd of cattle. We hadn’t been on board for more than about twenty minutes. They told anyone who protested that they’d saved our lives by taking us away from the fire, and we ought to thank them on our bended knees instead of complaining about how much they’d charged. I didn’t protest — I was afraid my accent might give me away. And while our “benefactors”
made their way back to London to collect more guineas, and most of my companions in misfortune, after a moment’s hesitation, set off together for the nearest village, I decided to wait for another boat to come along. One other person did the same — a tall, fair, sturdy fellow, who didn’t speak and avoided catching my eye. I hadn’t paid much attention to him among the crowd, but now we were alone it was going to be difficult to ignore each other.
I don’t know how long we stood there, not saying anything, exchanging covert glances, and pretending to look for something in our bags or a boat on the horizon.
Suddenly seeing the funny side of the situation, I went over to him and said with a broad smile, in the best English I could muster:
“As if the fire wasn’t bad enough, we had to fall into the clutches of those vultures!”
At this he seemed inordinately pleased, and approached with open arms.
“So you’re from abroad too!” he cried, as if the fact that we were both foreigners made us compatriots.
His English was less rudimentary than mine, but as soon as I told him where I was from he courteously switched to Italian, or what he thought was Italian, for to my ears it was incomprehensible. After I’d asked him three times to repeat the same sentence, he said it in Latin. That was a relief to both of us.
I soon found out quite a lot about him. He was a Bavarian, five years my senior, and since he was nineteen had lived in various foreign cities: Saragossa, Moscow for three years, Constantinople, Gothenburg, Paris, Amsterdam for three and a half years, then London for the last nine months.