James Morrow: This Is the Way the World Ends

‘Myself. Writing a large book.’ Nostradamus wove his crow quill through the air. ‘One hundred prophecies, in ill-phrased and leaden verse. Gibberish, every last line, but the mob will love them. From now until the end of the world, booksellers will make fortunes out of vapid and dishonest commentaries on these stanzas. I shall mention the River Hister, and my interpreters will claim that I was referring to Hitler.’

‘Who is Hitler?’

‘You don’t want to know. More bad news for Jews.’

‘If your book will be gibberish, why write it?’

‘Fun and profit.’

‘It would seem that—’

Fear silenced the boy. A nasty black wasp had fumbled past the drapes and looped into the study. It buzzed fatly. The boy sought refuge behind an enormous globe.

‘Easy, little Jew. It will not sting you.’

‘With all respect, Monsieur’ – raising his cap, Jacob stalked forward – ‘I have my doubts.’

He swatted the wasp to the floor and stomped it past recognition.

‘Why were you certain it would not have stung me?’ the boy asked.

‘I foresaw you smashing it first.’

Jacob replaced his cap, secured it by stuffing his curls beneath the sweatband. ‘Will this baby kill my mother?’

‘Your mother will live to see seventy. Furthermore, Truman will defeat Dewey, forecasts to the contrary.’

‘You are truly blessed, Monsieur.’

The prophet thought: a likely lad. He appreciates my talent, he does not hide his religion, he is quick with his cap. If my show can astonish a fellow so sharp, it is certain to set the rabble on their oversized ears.

‘Tell me, Master Jacob,’ said Nostradamus, opening a walnut coffer and removing a contraption of metal and glass, ‘would you like to see the future?’

‘Very much so.’

Nostradamus carried the machine to his writing desk. The boy’s lips quivered. His eyes expanded.

‘You are right to be awestruck, for the man who contrived this device is the most wonderful person of our age. Quick, who is the most wonderful person of our age?’

‘You, my lord.’

The prophet alternately grinned and scowled. ‘The most wonderful person of our age is Leonardo of Vinci, who alone knew what expression each saint wore when dining with Christ.’

‘I have heard of Leonardo of Milan.’

‘Of Milan, yes. Of Florence, of Rome, of Vinci. But he ended his days in France – Amboise, the manor of Clos-Lucé. I was at his deathbed. With his final breath he bequeathed to me this picturecannon, as he called it. Monsieur Leonardo loved cannons. He loved all weapons. Happily, this cannon fires no ball.’

Mastering his astonishment, Jacob approached the writing desk. The machine was a tin box with a chimney on top. From one side jutted a tube holding a brass ring in which sat a sparkling crystal disk.

‘I was no older than you when the great man summoned me to Amboise. That was in… 1518, during my first schooling. Leonardo had heard of my gift. At Avignon they called me the Little Astrologer. I was frightened. Here was he, the illustrious Leonardo – Premier Peintre, Architecte et Méchanicien du Roi . And here was I – a boy of fifteen, burdened with peculiar powers. As it turned out, he fell in love with me, but that is another story.

‘He showed me some drawings – our world in its final days, shattered by storms and floods. “Is this how God will contrive for His Creation to end?” he asked me. Brother Francesco translated. “No,” I replied. “I did not think so,” he confessed.

‘I told him how our world would end. “It will not be an act of God or Nature,” I explained, “but a conflagration of human design.” He painted what I described – fireballs hurled from great spears that had in turn been catapulted from the backs of iron whales. The renderings were perfect, as if plucked directly from my brain. He did them on glass.

‘Odd – but of the hundred awful scenes I recounted, only four seemed to vex Leonardo. They all involved vultures. “Are you certain that vultures will be part of this war?” he asked again and again. “Quite certain,” I always answered. “I was once visited by a vulture,” he would say. I could not imagine what he meant.

‘The old man had in mind a great public spectacle. He wanted first to exhibit his holocaust paintings in Rome. Then we were to tour the countryside, finally the whole continent – taking the capitals by storm, dazzling rabble and rich men alike, warning them of the terrible future, filling our pockets with their coins.’

The portrait under which Nostradamus stood shimmered with the grace of its subject. Within the gilded frame, a woman smiled subtly.

‘The old man never got out of France,’ Nostradamus continued wistfully. ‘But I shall. Pope Julius himself will marvel at these masterworks – this I vow.’ The prophet clapped his hands. ‘We need a white wall, boy. Take down this picture here – another gift from Leonardo. In a few centuries it will be worth an unimaginable amount of money. Little good that does me.’

Why a white wall? Jacob wondered. If this wizard means to perform some magic, would not a black wall be more suitable?

The boy removed the smiling woman. Even in the feeble candlelight, the exposed wall was as shockingly white as the winding sheet in which his father had been buried. Perhaps white was good for wizardry after all.

Nostradamus lifted a door in the side of the picture-cannon, revealing a small oil lamp, which he lit. Smoke wandered out of the chimney. ‘Believe me, Master Jacob, there is no sorcery in this machine, but only the divine reason with which God filled Leonardo to overflowing. You have heard of the camera obscura? Leonardo managed to turn one inside out. This part here – the aperture. Here – the plano-convex lens, ground from purest beryl.’ The prophet inserted the first painting. ‘This business also requires darkness.’

Jacob snuffed the candles, one by one, and night fell upon the study like a succession of blows. The boy looked at the wall. What he saw made him dizzy and afraid.

‘Dear God – it’s what Christians call the devil’s work!’ A vast vision had appeared, many times the size of the smiling woman. Where does it come from? he wondered. Instinctively he turned toward the picture-cannon. ‘But the painting you put in there was so small!’

Jacob fixed on the vision. No less stunning than its size was its substance, a swollen, smoking, demon-spawned, self-propelled spear. ‘Will it really destroy the world?’ he asked.

‘Not by itself. There will be thousands like it, in many varieties.’ Nostradamus glanced at his parchment script. ‘ This Satanic lance is a Soviet SS-60 missile ,’ he read. ‘ Land-based. Intercontinental. Multiple warheads . Do you understand?’

‘No.’

The candle in the picture-cannon flickered. Shadows trembled along the shaft of the missile.

Nostradamus projected painting number two. ‘ This iron fish is a fleet ballistic missile submarine ,’ he read. ‘ The dorsal scales will flip back, and the spears will fly to their targets using inertial guidance .’

‘How can a fish have spears inside it and not die?’ asked the boy.

Nostradamus projected painting number three. ‘ From hell’s hearth, a thermonuclear fireball —’

‘Is that Latin?’

‘I am confounding you, Jacob. It will be best, I can see, not to begin with the weapons. These pictures need a tale to accompany them, am I right?’

‘Tell me a tale,’ said the boy.

Nostradamus sorted through the paintings, chose one, projected it. A vulture. Hunched, ragged, sallow-eyed, carrion-bloated.

‘This is about a vulture, a war, and a man named George Paxton. A common man in many respects, but also perhaps a hero, entrapped in Fortuna’s wheel and sent on a series of frightening and fantastic adventures.’