Admiral Slovo conceded that there might, after all, be grounds for mild confidence. The score of dark-eyed ghetto-youths selected as crew had been ill-treated enough by life to be a match for any passing pirates. A few of the toughest might once even have found a place on his own ships.
‘I’ll tell you one thing for certain,’ Megillah suddenly blurted out, ‘I shall have to answer for the death of Machiavelli.’
‘I will stand in the queue before you,’ said Slovo, ‘and beside the recounting of my misdeeds, yours shall appear as nothing.’
‘We will stand together.’
Admiral Slovo felt an unwelcome corpse-twitch of emotion.
‘And that day,’ the Rabbi went on, ‘there will be no more differences between us, nor ever again. We shall meet once more, this time never to part.’
Megillah and the Admiral embraced briefly by way of Earthly farewell. There were tears in the Rabbi’s eyes and, if Admiral Slovo had not had all feeling excised in youth, his own eyes would have watered.
The Hebrew party set off for their sailing within the hour and Slovo wandered away to cast a professional glance over a visiting Venetian Galeass and its revolutionary firepower. As he walked along, he was accosted by a flower girl.
‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I have unhappy memories of flowers and gardens.’
The little girl nodded, looking wiser than her years and wickeder than her occupation. ‘You shall not meet again,’ she said slyly. ‘Your destinations are not the same.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Slovo, covertly retrieving his stiletto.
‘The one and only sin,’ she went on, ‘that is never forgiven, that is a certain passport to Hell, is that called anomie or despair.’
Slovo swiftly backed away. Three paces behind however, his retreat was blocked by the harbour wall. Like most of the sailors of the age, he had chosen not to learn to swim.
From her basket of blooms the girl drew out a translucent parchment package. Within it some dark powder shifted and swirled.
‘This is all the Dybbuk could brew at such notice,’ she gloated, ‘but it is the finest, blackest despair, and more than enough for an old-man’s lifetime. Here, he presents it to you with his compliments!’
The flower girl had vanished into nothing before the missile burst in his face, coating him with its dusty contents.
When he had cleared his eyes, the Admiral looked out on a world freshly drained of all colour and meaning, realizing that justice was just a word and that some farewells really are for ever.
The Year?
‘ENVOI: The Devil’s gift-box contains only unsweet sorrow. A comfortable life, another wife and additions to the tribe of Slovo. A bath seems increasingly attractive however.’
In 1525, King Francis I of France was still weeping bitter tears about losing his freedom and a good section of his army at the battle of Pavia. On Capri, Admiral Slovo and the Vehmist were still arguing the toss.
‘The Dybbuk didn’t last long after what you did to him,’ the Vehmist was saying. ‘He fell to someone marginally more ruthless than he, and since then there’s been coup and counter-coup. First the “Gradualists” and then the “Impatients” and so on. What else can you expect from conviction-individualists? I’m told that at one point there was even a “Peace” faction!’
Admiral Slovo appeared uninterested by the news of his cosmic handiwork and a change of tack seemed called for to hold his attention.
‘So, Admiral,’ said the visitor, maintaining the conversational flow admirably on his own, ‘what’s it like living in despair?’
‘A daily Stoic exercise,’ replied Slovo crisply. ‘And also something of an ordeal – hence my decision to have a bath. I find myself unable to continue.’
‘So remarriage, breeding, the adoption of waifs, none of them could distract you?’ the Vehmist enquired, though plainly not out of any great concern.
‘For the briefest of moments only – sexual congress early on in the union, before novelty faded – and at the birth of children; only then. But my curse overpowers their charm.’ Slovo hesitated and added, ‘I do trust my family, blood and otherwise, will be left in peace?’
‘No,’ said the Welshman. ‘We won’t recruit your offspring or adoptees. There’s no hint of them in The Book and times are changing. We’re looking for different types nowadays.’
‘I’m reassured. They have had little enough from me without inheriting your attentions.’
The Vehmist looked reproachfully at the Admiral. ‘But they’ll live in our world,’ he said. ‘And now can’t you find it in your heart to forgive us for your parents?’
‘And entire family,’ added Slovo.
‘… and entire family,’ the Vehmist conceded.
‘No,’ said Admiral Slovo.
The Welshman shrugged and looked away.
‘Cold, cold heart,’ he said, but left it at that. In producing a piece of theatre it was not essential for the actors to love the management. It was only an exhausted husk the Vehme were losing anyway. He helped himself to another glass of wine, before unwisely voicing some additional thoughts.
‘We gave you a more interesting life than they would have done,’ he said. ‘But for us, you and your Stoicism would have been a mere shaking of a tiny fist against the greater dark. Like it or not, we gifted you with something to believe in. Your family offered only the half-hearted hand-me-downs of tradition.’
Admiral Slovo regarded him for a short while. ‘And what,’ he finally snapped, ‘gives you the wild confidence to think you ever knew what I believed?’
‘I must confess,’ said the Vehmist, in jocular tone, ‘that was the subject of some speculation. We didn’t think it really mattered but—’
‘I was never a theologian,’ interrupted Slovo, shocked at his desire to make secret things clear, ‘I have no patience with demands to float clear of the material world. These are not reasonable requests to make in a harsh universe. Men do what they must and then, and only then, what they can. I claim no difference from that.’
‘But, on occasion,’ said the Welshman, expanding the theme in mockery, ‘when circumstances permitted and the coast was clear, you raised your eyes to the stars.’ He waved dramatically towards the cloudless sky.
Admiral Slovo nodded.
‘I had my own faith, my own ideas before ever you explained your system to me, or Michelangelo listed the captive gods.’
‘I still think our ignorance is excusable,’ said the Vehmist. ‘There was precious little evidence to go on. Whatever you may or may not have believed does not seem to have informed your actions.’
The Admiral permitted himself the indulgence of explanation. ‘It’s simply put,’ he began. ‘I believed life was a vale of tears and hard on failure – you saw to that. I hoped that what the Church taught was true, but I feared that nothing was true and everything was permissible.’
‘Nothing of what you say detracts from the achievement of your years on earth.’
‘From where I sit,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘I see only a lifetime of petty concessions and compromises.’