Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The Jew took back the folio and read what Maimonides had replied to this reaction: “‘Such reasoning stems from narrow parochialism. A man looks at his own fate, or at what happens to his friend, or at the disasters facing the whole human race, and he thinks: This is decisive in the vastness of things. Or a man finds that in his life unhappiness predominates, and he judges the universe from that experience.’” The Jew’s voice rose to heights of power as he thundered: “‘But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God’s universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.’”

Impulsively Volkmar wrested the manuscript from the Jew and read the words with his own eyes. “What do you call yourself?”

“Rabbi,” the Jew replied.

“And you are a follower of this Maimonides?”

“No. He was merely a Jew who once lived in Acre, no better than you or I, but more intelligent perhaps. I am a follower of God, Who is one, Who sees us as we stand here, Who has the future of this town in His hands.”

“I have been growing more hopeful, recently,” Volkmar lied. “The crops are good. Trade’s good. I’ve begun to think the truce will hold.”

“This city?” the rabbi laughed. “With eleven armies and seven foreign policies? I don’t worry about truce with the Mamelukes. I worry about truce with ourselves.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Then why do you stay?” Volkmar pressed, and as he spoke, the great iron bell of SS. Peter and Andrew began tolling.

“Because this town, such as it is, is Eretz Israel.” The ponderous iron bell was joined by one of bronze pealing at a merrier tempo from the Coptic church.

“What do those words mean?” Volkmar asked.

“Maimonides explained it. ‘Eretz Israel, the land of the Jews, accepts no foreign nation or language. It reserves itself for its own sons.’ So your castle, even when the Mamelukes besiege it, can never be …”

“Don’t!” the count cried, putting his hands over his ears to keep out words which he himself had uttered: the castle was not his home nor had the Crusaders made Palestine theirs by any sensible occupation; but as he stood thus with his ears covered, the bells of Acre began pealing from all directions and he realized that news of moment had arrived. He could hear clamor in the street and regardless of its significance he wanted to be with his own people; and he left the house of Judaism, so battered on the outside, so clean and perceptive inside.

He ran toward the Venetian quarter, where many were gathered while the bells rose to a paean of jubilation, and soon he saw knights running from the various quarters, shouting, “The Crusaders have arrived!” And he joined the cheering, for there, rounding the Tower of Flies which protected the anchorage, came the fleet from Europe. At the critical moment, as had so often happened in Acre’s history, substantial reinforcements were at hand.

As the bells danced in their steeples with noisy glee the first ship tied up to the Venetian dock, and Volkmar noticed an ominous fact: the captain and crew showed none of the elation customary at the end of this dangerous voyage. Mechanically they tied the ropes and sighed as at the conclusion of a dirty business, and soon the knights of Acre were to understand why.

At Rome, Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan Pope in history, had hoped to make a name for himself by preaching a fiery Crusade that would finally wrest Jerusalem from the infidel, but he was unlucky in his timing, because none of the kings he had hoped to attract had any intention of leaving home. England, which in the past had provided many stalwart knights, offered no response whatever, for the English ruler was preoccupied with Scottish matters. In France, the birthplace of Crusaders, business was good and after the death of St. Louis the French had lost all stomach for Jerusalem. Aragon was engaged in open war with the papacy, while relations between Genoa and Venice had again degenerated into warfare. From all the countries of Europe, Pope Nicholas had been able to find only one nest of volunteers, and these came not from knightly families but from a cluster of backward villages in northern Italy, so this culminating Crusade consisted not of warriors but of sixteen hundred illiterate peasants who knew nothing of Jerusalem and less of Acre.

When the gangplanks were lowered and the triumphant army straggled ashore, the citizens of Acre gasped. Slack-jawed men, bowed from toü in field and shop, the Italian peasants straggled onto the Holy Land. Without leadership, without any arms but knives and clubs, the riffraff landed, listened to the bells, stretched their still wobbly legs and asked, “Where’s the infidel?”

Through one of God’s inscrutable stage directions, some of the mob fanning out through the city happened onto the church of SS. Peter and Andrew, where they entered to give thanks for their deliverance from the sea. As they knelt they saw in the chapel opposite the prostrate figure of the Damascus merchant, Muzaffar, praying at the little Muslim mosque. One of the Italians dashed back to the door of the church, screaming, “The infidels are upon us!” on which the others unsheathed their daggers and lunged at Muzaffar, slashing him severely across the right shoulder. The startled Arab ran crying from the church, pursued by the Crusaders, whereupon others, seeing the Muslim with his sword arm covered with blood, concluded that the Arab had killed a Christian and leaped at him with their daggers and swords, and would have killed him had not Volkmar jumped forward to save the old man.

The local knights, apprehensive over what might develop if the peasants got out of hand, moved among the rioters and tried to calm them, but the crusading spirit was alive and they burst out of control, storming through the town, for on the day they had sailed from Europe they had been promised certain heaven if they killed an infidel, and they could see that the infidel was among them. “Hold them off!” the leader of the Templars shouted, and his knights formed barriers while bells lent music to the confusion, but the mob swung unexpectedly to the north, where two Syrian priests happened to be leaving the church of St. Mark of Antioch and their unfamiliar robes convinced the mob that here were infidels, and the two were slaughtered.

The massacre, that hot August day, was paralyzing. Armenian Christians whose families had lived in Acre for two centuries were slain. Mameluke ambassadors from Cairo, Mameluke emissaries in town to arrange trade treaties with the Venetians, were beheaded amid scenes of fire and cheering. Arab merchants on whom the prosperity of the city depended were stabbed to death, and churches which could not be easily identified as either Christian or Muslim were sacked. The delicate balance on which Acre existed, attained after so many decades of patient adjustment, was shattered in an afternoon.

At the height of the riot Count Volkmar thought of the improvised Jewish settlement in the fonduk of Genoa, and for reasons which he could not fully have explained he gathered some Templars and hurried there, only to find that the new Crusaders were storming through the place and screaming, “Kill the Jews! They killed Jesus!” Volkmar rushed to the mean hovel in which the rabbi lived, but he arrived too late. The rabbi was dead. The manuscripts were burned.

The Italians, riotous with victory and still unaware of what they had accomplished, were finally herded into the Pisan quarter, where they sang Crusader hymns while the iron bell of SS. Peter and Andrew concluded its dirge. When they sought the king, so that he could praise them for their fidelity, some of the older knights began arresting the leaders of the mob, hoping that by delivering them to the Mamelukes disaster could be forestalled, but the Italians resisted arrest, crying, “We were sent to kill Muslims and we’ve killed them. Take us not to jail but to Jerusalem.”