Part Two: Telling Stories Out of School
“I do talk to people,” I protest.
“Oh, I know ya go round listenin to em.”
“I answer their questions.”
“All right, then, I hear ya. Then I got a question for ya. You're supposed to be a sorcerer – what's in Genoa's future, eh? What're them consuls gonna do with all them answers ya give em?”
Why does everyone want to talk about the future today?
I take a deep breath and sigh.
“I figure.... They've got that relic in the catacombs beneath the church – not Santa Maria. The older one. From the Roman days. They're going to finish Santa Maria soon. The elite will need something to spend their money on to prove their worth for the Consuls. They've got the navy. The start of one. Enough that the Saracen pirates mostly stay away from Genovese ships. Hell. Them burning the north coast 20 years ago is why that relic is here in the first place.”
“Ya don't say.”
“I do. The elite were already moving their homes south, off the hill – sorry, the Casteletto – basically all around the church. I can't say it's their plan, but nothing tells a people that you're gonna rebuild the past, only bigger, shinier, better than renovating an old temple. If they've got their heads on straight, they'll build a lighthouse and a wall. And they'll arrange the city so that the lay sources of power surround the new Church. Create a new civic center – but if you're going to let the Diocese remain in town – even merchants know the power of storytelling – you make sure the Bishops don't outgrow their albs.”
“That's what you'd do?”
“I mean, I wouldn't live to see it finished. If not because if I were to try to make these things happen – what, I'm just going to burst in on the Consuls during one of their circle jerks to tell them how to run their city?”
“Ya could get elected. Then they'd have to listen. You're rich enough, ya could be one of them elites. I bet a guy like you could name yourself king and no one'd bat an eye. Or ya just attach yourself to one of the young elite – you're a sorcerer, it shouldn't be too hard to get him to do what ya want.”
I twist my mouth and I'm aware my face does the same. Does he know something? Or is it that obvious that my apparently simple life has come to an end here?
“Do you know how long it takes these people to build a cathedral? It'll take them centuries to finish San Lorenzo.”
“San Lorenzo?”
“Eh?”
“You said San Lorenzo.”
“Yeah. The Church. San Lorenzo.”
He laughs like I'm confused. “That church don't got a name, kid. It ain't consecrated yet.”
“Hm.” I hadn't noticed I'd said that – nor meant to. And now I'm not sure why I'm thinking about the story of Saint Lawrence. “Do you know his story?”
“San Lorenzo? Tell me.”
“It's a long story. But the short of it was that he had three days to collect all the wealth in his church because the higher-ups were going to take it. So he – because he's a saint, you know he's going to do something stupid he knows is going to get him killed. It's almost like these are the skeletons of old stories with useful morals adopted and draped in new skins.”
“Almost.”
I react to him like he'd asked a question. “Whatever. He gives it all away. When his boss gets there, he shows him the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the infirm, and he says, 'These are the riches of my church.' It's supposed to remind us of... something. I guess that Jesus loves the lesser. What I hear is that even the best of the Best of us are greedy and all-too willing to kill what frightens, threatens, or teaches us. There's another – basically the same – story. A Roman mother wears simple clothes. She says her sons are her jewels. I like that one better. Roman stories wanted to remind Romans of the things that mattered. They did. But the story isn't critical of its teller. How did the Early Church think that keeping that story, unedited, made them look like anything but the bad guy?”
“It was different Church leaders that did that thing, and they've learned its lesson?”
I shrug. “If it were a Roman official, maybe? I don't know. But Romans knew they were more venal and gluttonous than their ancestors— It happens to every civilization. Riches and fineries and school – sorry, leisure – are the goal of civilization. Or should be. Shame none of them have figured out how to make it so that more than a few of them can enjoy those things. Maybe they will dedicate it to Lawrence as a reminder that a city's wealth is its people. But what do I know? I've never known a merchant – any rich man for that matter – who didn't need reminding where priorities might better lie.”
“And how would you do that?”
I laugh. “I wouldn't dare try.”
“No? Not even to talk about it with an old tavernmaster?”
I glance at him. I guess this is how the Consuls feel – asked to give solutions to insoluble problems.
Glad you told Giorgio no, yet?
Francis too.
“Yeah. There's no point in thinking about that stuff. People like us... we can't change the world.”
“I got two things to say to that, sorcerer. First, if ya wanna change the world, y'ain't gonna do it by hidin away from people like ya do. Ya gotta change you, first. You be what ya want from the world, n people'll follow your lead. Second, I might not be able to have much of an impact on the world. I'm just a tavernmaster – and an old n fat one. I might've done big things when I was younger. But now, all I want is to be a good tavernmaster, a good neighbor, n a good friend. But you – Sorcerer, you can do anything you put your mind to. Nothin's impossible.”
“What did you just say?” I ask, horrified.
He sounded like the Master.
Shut up. It's just a coincidence.
There's no such thing as a coincidence.
You know I don't believe that.
“I said you can do anything you put your mind to. Anything's possible.”
“That's not what you said.”
“Yeah, it is. And I don't know why you're quibbling. If ya wanted to, ya could take one of these Consuls and make him king. Ya could make yaself king.”
My face twitches distaste. Twice now he's said that. That makes four times I'd heard it today. And three times I'd rejected it.
“Sure. If what I wanted was a direct confrontation with the Church. No, thank you. Politics are... not for me. Things are how they've been for so long... the number of lives it would cost for real change.... I couldn't do that. Not while knowing that anything I made would crumble after my death.”
“Ya can't know that.”
“I can't know anything. Not for certain. Am I dreaming right now? Is anything real in any meaningful way?”
“Yet ya think ya know that ya will die and any effort ya make in this life will be wasted.”
“There are only two certainties in life: birth and death – even growth isn't guaranteed; and the only constant is change. If I live long enough, I'll see the change I want now. For better or worse, the wheel turns, milling human souls. But who dips their fingers in the oil, I wonder? Who eats the bread?”
The back of the tavernmaster's head dips, the wrinkles at the back of his neck bunching in thought.
“The gods?”
“No one. There are no gods. It's all a cruel joke. Buddhists say our current lives are a result of the lives we've already lived. The Gnostics believed that this life is the world between worlds – that we are, in life, in Hell, and only in death are we free. They were hunted down and killed for it. Which of them is wrong?”
“Jesus, kid. There are things ya really shouldn't say aloud if ya don't want a guy worryin about ya.”
“I don't especially care what you do.”
“That's just hurtful, Robert.”
“Yeah, well. I'm not convinced that life isn't only hurt. Join the club. And I can know that any change I made that was radical enough to be called Change would all but guarantee my death.”
I realize that he's looking over his other shoulder, past me, to the Santa Maria on its hill on the natural barrier wall jutting out between Genoa's port and the greater Mediterranean.
“Ya don't feel like she's lookin down at ya, like their god is watching? That's His house, after all.”
Had I been feeling like that? I turn and look myself; then back to him. His eyes say he's joking – just fucking with me. Why, then, did I feel like he was feeling for weak spots in my armor?
“No. There is a diocese here, but Genoa has no Bishopric. There is little to no Vatican presence around here. And you Genovese prefer it that way. I think you'd like it even better if you weren't a protectorate of Rome. A part of any kingdom at all.”
“Kid, that's all nobles. Republicans.... But you don't— What about not sufferin a witch to live n all that shit the priests say?”
“Superstition. That's what they call us, pagans – superstitious.”
“Ya think of yaself as a pagan?”
“I guess?” I shrug. “It really just means non-Christian.”
“But you're not a sorcerer? A Wizard?”
“It's complicated.”
“You said that already, kid. You gotta say more'n that if you want me to understand.”
“There's too much to say; we have too little knowledge in common – we can't see things the same; we can't see the same things.”
He turns to me, walking backward and ask, “And if your assumption about me and what I know is wrong?”
I peer at him. If I'm trying to see whether he is hinting at something, I can't see it on his face. Sighing, I say:
“Wizard doesn't mean what you think it does. The -ard suffix is a negative; so, like, a drunkard is a bad drunk, right? A wizard is someone with false wisdom. A fool. A liar – to himself, mostly. Superstitious.”
“Aye. Ya said that's what they call ya.”
“Right. Superstitious – that's the Church's official stance vis-a-vis people like me. No, not people like me. I'm not— Wizards, sorcerers, witches....”
“What about not sufferin a witch to live, or whatever they teach in that book?”
“Because they don't actually care. Not officially. The official stance is that pagans, Jews, heretics, Muslims, you get the idea – we're all just superstitious quacks. To be pitied and ignored. Ridiculed, even. That they know the Truth, and we know nothing. Sorcerers are believed to work magick. Magick is the ability to use one's mind, one's will to affect or change reality.”
“Like turning that staff to a snake.”
“Aaron and Moses and the duel with the Pharoah's sorcerers. Right. The Christian god— They believe – they teach – that they are more powerful than we are. That we have no power. We are lost and they are found.”
“Then ya truly are a wizard.”
“If it turns out that my wisdom is, in fact, at odds with theirs. It's not them I have to be concerned with anyway.”
“No?”
“No. Genoa has a diocese, but no Bishopric. Effectively, the Vatican has no power here. And the Consuls like it that way. I don't need to tell you their little annual election thing is a farce – but it's a farce that works. Or is working. So if someone were going to have a problem with me, it wouldn't be them.”
“Well, yeah. You're their little pet.”
“...What?”
“Everyone in town knows ya handle all their dirty work.”
He gives me a half-grin and a wink like he's being discrete and my secret is safe with him.
Except I have no secret.
That's not true and you know it.
He doesn't know it.
“What kind of dirty work am I handling?”
“Oh, ya know. All that spy... stuff. Findin stolen letters, dealin deals in the shadows, disposin of noble concubines that get too close to the truth. That sorta shit. Wives love that shit.”
She's dead.
He killed her and you didn't stop him.
“I don't do that.”
“No? Then why do the Consuls let ya get away with bein so rich?” He gasps. “Have ya bewitched em? If they act against ya, ya'll curse – or worse – em?”
I laugh. “They might think that.”
“Everybody in town thinks the changes they're makin to town are your doin.”
“Do they?”
“They do. I don't hear many people complainin. Even the poor got long memories. Ya don't need to read the stars to know this place used to be somethin. It's too perfect. Too easy to defend. They remember the Roman centuries, bein one o the busiest ports in the world. They remember riches, power – work. They want those things. Have wanted em for centuries. All they needed was leaders to reach out n get em for em.”
“Well, they remember wrongly.”
“Eh?”
“They remember wrongly. Genoa was never more than a modest and half-rich backwater. Dreams of grandeur.”
He turns back toward our destination.
“Well... these people, they don't seem to much believe that. In fact— They say you're magick. A sorcerer. They say that you see the future, know things you shouldn't. I heard story after story. A sailor in his cups is one thing – a woman in the street who just needs someone to believe her—“
“Everyone just needs someone to believe them.”
“Is that what you do, Philalitheia?”
The tingling pulled tighter around me, binding me, until my skin felt too tight. Uncomfortable. My neck crawled, not with the onset of cramps, but with the little feet of a million ants – the formicatious feeling of being watched.
How did he know that word? I'd never said it aloud— That was how I privately thought of myself: Not a philosopher – a friend of Sophia, Wisdom – but a friend of the Truth.
There used to be a whole... thing surrounding the secret meanings of the words alitheia and the Greek word for Seeker.
But he doesn't know that. Does he? He couldn't. He's—
Just a tavernmaster?
A Genovese tavernmaster who speaks enough Greek to guess at your madeup word?
Maybe I said it to him and don't remember.
You do smoke a lot of weed.
Shut up.
“Yeah, I... I guess. I'd never really thought about it.”
“And? Ya thinking about it now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do. The Church.... Confession is important for people. The Buddhists figured it out some 2000 years ago or more - that people just want to share their perspective with other people. The Church asks their priests to be this person, but they get it all wrong.”
“Oh?” I heard the delight in his voice. Let him enjoy his tasty gossip. He could get me killed for it. Sure. But he hadn't complained about me yet. And criticizing the way the Roman Catholic Church performed Confession was among the least of my heresies. Let him tattle.
All I need is a reason to get the Hell out of here. And right now....
Before I answer him, I san the plaza again. Alone. Plenty of time and distance in which to try to explain – to convince myself that what I really want is a reason to run away from here, too.
“Yeah. They punish people. They judge you. They teach you to feel guilt. Guilt is guessing that other people will disapprove of you. Guilt is other people making your choices, putting their thoughts in your head, controlling what and how you feel. Guilt is, clearly, highly effective crowd control. Religion is crowd control. What it is not is either healthy, or the optimal platform for any government to build its foundation on.”
“Then what do you do?”
“What do I do?”
“Suuuure. You done said that Aristotle guy said a man isn't his profession but his habits.”
Had I? To him?
I might have thought about it, but—
Maybe someone else told him.
“What is your habit, wizard?”
“I...” I was having a hard time concentrating. I did not want to be talking about this. Not with him. Not with anyone. And yet... I felt compelled to. It felt warm – nice. Natural. “I just let them talk. When I first came to town, I didn't really have anything to do. You know. I slept on your floor. So I just walked around. I ate at and shopped among the different shops and stalls and carts. And people talked to me. So after I bought my office—“
“I still don't understand that ruin on the Castiletto – it makes ya so conspicuous.”
“Yeah. The magick man in the hills. There's no caves – this isn't a town, it's a city.”
“Ya think that's pretty clever, don't ya?”
“It worked. People came. I listened, and it helped some of them.”
“Seems like it helps all of em. Ain't nobody got an ugly word to say about ya.”
I was sure that was untrue, but I didn't argue.
“Think about a dog – or a child. When you tell it to come to you, then reward its obedience by striking at it, you are teaching it to be conflicted in coming to you. You are teaching it not to trust you.”
“Do you think I've struck at you?”
“What? No. The Church— Ancient peoples knew that life and its questions are too complex for one god to embody the answers to them all. Christianity... Religion is not one size fits all. People have needs, spiritually, psychically, which are not being met. All I do is provide them a space to explore talking about them safely. They come to their conclusions independently.”
“Surely you're doing something.”
“If I am, I don't know what it is.”
That, at least, he seemed to believe. “There's a reason for everythin.”
“Right. And we aren't always better off for knowing it.”
“You don't teach em what you know?”
I scoff. “Teach them what? If they wanted wisdom, they would seek it and find it for themselves. It's no secret that the Islamic world is—“ I rolled my neck on my shoulders. “Christianity will burn the world down before it allows wisdom to escape the tabernacle again.”
“And you are in the world.”
“Indeed. That I am.”
“So ya don't tell people the reasons they feel the way they do?”
“I'm... not about solving people's problems for them. If I give them the answers, how am I any better than the Church? Any better than any king sitting on his throne claiming that through my knowledge, my power, the sun will continue to rise in the East and set in the West, that the seasons will continue to progress, that crops will continue to grow—“
“I met bookish types like you before. Priests, nobles' sons n the like.”
“One and the same.”
“But different and ya knows it. They all say stuff like knowledge is power.”
“Knowledge is terror. ...A curse.”
“Curse me, then, wizard. Show me your terrible power!”
Suddenly my mind was filled with Ecclesiastes and from my mouth flowed:
“'I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, 'Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.' Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.'”
“I knew the Teacher,” the tavernmaster mutters. “You ain't no Teacher.”
“...Excuse me?”
“What?”
“What did you just say?”
“I didn't say nothin. Ya all right today, kid? Actin like you're hearin stuff.”
My head feels dizzy. I'm confused, and yet... not.
Maybe you did just hear it.
Maybe not.
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“What ya just said!” he laughs at me. “What's it from?”
“It's... from a book that Solomon – purportedly the wisest king to ever life – wrote – about wisdom, about life.”
“Ah. So... what you're sayin is that you don't think people wanna learn for themselves? They want ya to figure everything out for em – or for someone to – and ya think they gotta put in the time, the work, for emselves.”
“I think that people are no different from animals. Most people want a sunny pasture, a warm barn, and plenty of hot oats. People want to be safe. They want to be alive. They want their friends and families to be happy and healthy. Learning is... terror.”
As I say this, I almost laugh. I remember sitting in the back of – how many? – countless – wagons, the Master's voice droning on. There was nothing terrifying about that, but— My face fell, serious again.
He laughs. “Learnin ain't terror. Look at the face of a child when ta teach em somethin new.”
“Yes, well – children don't know any better – yet. And you clearly haven't read your Plato. Plato taught that we don't learn anything new. We remember it from our previous Life.”
“Previous life? Like the transmigration of the soul?”
Strange to hear that phrase in the mouth of a nominally simple tavernmaster.
“No. The True Life, union with the One – the Light. Hmph. What does it even mean to be a man?”
“Dunno, kid. Spent a lot of time among em, never thought of m'self as one.”
I side-eye him.
Did he think I meant a Man, as in a human?
But that... makes even less sense.
The tavernmaster continues talking, almost as though he hadn't realized what he'd said.
“But if you mean how can you know you're an adult – kid, our lives are long. We all go through different stages, I guess – like toads— Metamorphoses.”
He shoots me a look and a toothy smirk. I look away. For the shortest moment, a single frame in the movie-reel of my mind, I see Antoninus Liberalus's work, and among my favorite books as a child: Metamorphoses.
“Hey, kid. It just takes time. Two years.... Two years ain't nothin. These people – they can't know who ya is in that time. They can't think ya know what it is to be one of them—“
“Be one of them. I've done everything I can. I made work for myself. I got married to a pretty enough, smart enough Genovese girl—“
“Pretty enough? What does that mean?”
“It means I had to buy a wife. No one is less trustworthy than a single, 20-something, foreign male. It's fine for us to be around for a while – how many locals girls can we really get pregnant in a few weeks? But any longer than that—? So I took a wife. No different than your father did for you. If I'd picked someone too ugly, they'd see through me—“
“That you hired her to manage your business.”
“That makes it sound like I own her. Which – I do. I know.” I grunt a kind of sigh.
“Say what you gotta say, kid.”
“When you're a part of a society, it means more than being in the same geographic place; it's more than the unspoken agreement that you're a part of a greater whole working toward a common good. It's a responsibility – a list of them. At the top of that list, for a man, when he's ready to strike out on his own, is taking and providing for a woman. So, yeah. She manages my estates. If she weren't smart, people would talk that I only use her for one thing.”
“Not if she's ugly, too.”
“Then she's just a housekeeper. And that – that would be cruel, to knowingly put her in that position. People are going to talk about her. 'Married to a foreigner and a wizard? He doesn't even work!'”
“That isn't why they're talkin bout what ya do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. They're talkin. It just ain't about ya lady. They care about when your... profession comes up. Nah. First of all, the ones who care to talk about her to me figure ya done bewitched her, even though they know her parents just fine – enough to know they'd kill ya if they thought ya's up to no good.”
I nod.
“Humans have to be taught how to think.”
I don't know why I said that.
“How to think?” The tavernmaster doesn't seem to, either.
“Yeah. If they don’t learn as a child, they are… reluctant to learn as adults. In the North, they have a tradition of their kings keeping a Fool as an advisor. They call it the Wisdom of the Fool or some such.”
“They keep pet wizards.”
I shrug. “So I’m waiting. None of my interests… I don’t know. I don’t want riches. I desire neither fame nor notoriety. I feel no compulsion to share my art, nor any - what do you call it? Inspiration? need? to see a project finished. I can’t count for you how many experiments I’ve amused myself with over the last two years that are just sitting around, never likely to see the light of day.”
“Then why Genoa, son? Why not the North? They look like you up there. You wouldn’t stand out so much. Probably think like you, too. And… you know… they’re not Christian.”
“Why not return, like the Prodigal Son, to my Father’s house, you mean?”
“Yeah. Why, if you are so unhappy here?”
“I’m not unhappy. I like it here. I have a good life. I’m just - human lives are long. We forget that, sometimes, because we have all become so accustomed to the idea that not all or even many of us will make it to adulthood, let alone old age - and that food is scarce - there are only so many resources to go around. We take for granted that, because the people who were in place to keep the sun turning in the sky yesterday were qualified, the people in place today will do a good job. And that if they don't, we have the power – no, the responsibility to replace them. It wasn’t so long ago that festivals like today—”
“Calendimaggio.”
“Right—were celebrated with human sacrifices. We fall into this trap. Because Plato dreamed and Aristotle reasoned and Cicero journaled and Augustine saw the City of God that - not only that our leaders also do these things and to a high level— But... indeed, the Elite believe that they do — When they do and should not.
“I am not unhappy. Happiness, like sadness, is fleeting. How we feel is just a moment. Seeking happiness is digging a pit with no bottom, just like chasing riches is a voyage with no land in sight. Things, ideas, ideals, these are intangible, ungraspable. You can’t hold on to happiness. You will feel sadness. Wanting to be something other than you are is like grasping for sand in a breeze: If you’re not careful, it’ll all slip away.”
I look down at my open hand, held up, pantomiming what I’d just said, and sigh at its emptiness. “Things are and only are what they are. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“And what are you?”
“I… am bored.”
“Bored?”
“Bored.”
“How old are you, Sorcerer?”
“25.”
“You’re only 25, Robert.”
“Yes. And I’ve heard and seen it all. Everything the world has to offer. And it’s all always the same old story. They’ve all been told because it’s all been done before. And no one is listening. Why should they? To them, they’re right where they want to be, doing what they want to be doing. And unless I tell them that what they’ve been doing is what they should be and should have been doing…. It all goes in one ear and out the other. They know better than anyone else ever could. They have to, if they’ve made it this far.”
“But you know better.”
“It doesn’t matter what I know. They won’t listen. I’m too young. We can’t conceive of things as being different from us— Actually, we can. What I mean is we can’t tolerate it. We don’t consider those things different from us. Any knowledge I have which is new or specialized is a threat. And for good reason: We have to believe that the way that we were taught and the way that we learned is the best way - indeed, the only way. Self doubt and regret are a one-way spiral to the darkest parts of the mind.”
“Do you have regrets? Doubt?”
“Everyone regrets something. Everyone doubts. Society is built on the reminder that there is nothing to doubt - someone is doing all the important thinking for us. But, yes. I doubt. I doubt our leaders. Look at them. And, yes - I doubt most myself. If they will not trust me either to lead or enough to heed my counsel, perhaps it is me. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck…. If everywhere I go it smells like shit, it’s probably me. Maybe I am at fault. So I read and I think and I listen to them talk and talk and talk (and talk) and they’re all children in their own ways.”
You're the king of the Lost Boys.
“Have you spent much time around children?”
I nod. “I have spent countless hours helping mothers corral their little ones. I enjoy talking to children. They have much to teach us about what it is to be an adult.”
“And what is that?””
“I’m not sure yet. What I am sure of is that the human mind is an eye that can look inward. The further into that darkness we strain, looking for a light, the more difficult it can be to live in the many false and convalescent lights of the world without. Managing that balance - in fact, looking within at all - is something which has to be learned. I feel like I keep saying this. Like any skill, there are myriad traditions which teach and cultivate it. But those who do this, who think, are locked away.”
“Do you disagree?”
“I don’t know. It’s more complicated than that. There was a time in my life where I would have told you that a monk’s cell in a monastery, or a cloister in some secret temple, was tantamount to locking me in my own personal Hell. Now… now I look at my life and wonder whether the just-because routine, the regular meals and bed, community with like-minded people, the isolation from women…. It might be nice.”
“Nice?”
“Nice - to have no freedom. No choices to make. All my decisions arranged for me in a series of yes-es that get easier as I make them until they become automatic and I forget who I am apart from the routine.”
“A different routine, you mean.”
“Than the one I’m living? Yeah. Waiting to be old enough to be taken seriously or for my moment to prove I’m worth something for what I am is getting old.”
“You said it yourself. Your story is yours. When you’re retelling it in your old age, do you really want… this to be what you tell? Waiting? Bored? Disenfranchised and disenchanted?”
Twice, today, someone has suggested that I tell my story. I feel them, again, the formicatious feet of secret watchers at my back.
Who would care to hear me say these things?
You know who would care.
The Scholeio. The Master.
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