Chapter 476

“Come on, let’s go. That’s the cathedral of the Patriarchate of Venice over there.”

“Wow…”

The moment Elias stepped out of the alley, he looked around like a tourist, his gaze darting from one thing to another. He carefully made his way across the square, where a thin layer of water had gathered, utterly captivated by the Romanesque buildings reflected on its surface. The morning light bathed the world in blue. Even the water could not escape its glow.

I, too, looked out over the city, where the Middle Ages and Renaissance blended together so naturally, and whispered, “The whole city is glowing.”

Nature helped illuminate the city, but the old buildings that had stood for centuries, weathered by time, were breathtaking in their own right. The distinctive facade in the distance was no exception. The arched entrance of the basilica was a quintessential example of Romanesque architecture, but the dome-shaped decorations between the arches, tinged yellow by the sunlight, the five enormous domes rising above the basilica, and the curved capitals of its columns all gave it a distinctly Byzantine atmosphere. The rows of small spires filling the gaps between the buildings revealed traces of Gothic architecture as well.

As a maritime gateway connecting East and West, Venice possessed a beauty that was somewhat foreign and unfamiliar, but perhaps that was why it struck me so deeply.

Narke walked toward the square of the beautiful island and answered, “Right? They brought back a lot from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. After helping turn Constantinople into a wasteland, they even came to monopolize Mediterranean trade. And with their location being so favorable, Venice prospered enormously. So it’s only natural that it still looks this magnificent.”

As far as I knew, Venice had been one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Fourth Crusade. Once a tributary state of the Byzantine Empire, Venice helped sack Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, during the Fourth Crusade, overturning its position and eventually swallowing up half the empire.

So it was only natural for Narke to bring up the Fourth Crusade while looking at Venice. If you stopped any passerby and asked them to think about the history of Venice, surely they would eventually arrive at the Crusades.

Moreover, after the Fourth Crusade, the Venetians made St. Mark’s Basilica and its square the cultural center of their city and transformed many aspects of it. For us, who had business involving ‘St. Mark,’ there was even more reason why this history could not be left out.

But when the conversation turned to a subject that could easily sound sensitive, Elias began watching Narke’s expression. That, too, was unavoidable. Narke knew exactly what Elias was doing, yet he simply smiled and surveyed the view of Venice. Then he gestured toward the place where St. Mark’s Basilica stood.

“Let’s get a closer look.”

“Okay!”

Narke smiled and began explaining in a quiet voice.

“There’s a story that the church built here in the early days, before the current basilica was constructed, was modeled after the churches of Constantinople. It was built when Byzantine influence was still strong here, so I suppose it makes sense.”

“I wonder if that’s really true. If we could time travel, we’d know for sure.”

Elias murmured his reply. Narke patiently explained everything, making sure Elias could gather as much information as possible to decipher Einsiedel’s code.

“St. Mark’s Basilica gradually took its current form after St. Mark’s relics were brought here from Alexandria in Egypt. No, actually, this entire square flourished once Venice acquired his relics. So you really can’t separate St. Mark from Venice.”

Narke spoke, I committed his words to memory, and Elias pieced them together. In a way, all three of us were doing the same thing. As I listened to Narke, I was also trying to figure out what kind of traitor$1”St. Mark” might refer to within the Papal See.

St. Mark was far more deeply connected to Venice than I had expected. We reached the center of the square, where Narke pointed toward the basilica’s facade and continued.

“Once Venice had Byzantium beneath its feet, it adorned itself with the spoils it had looted from the Byzantine Empire. It shows just how clearly Venice desired control of the Mediterranean. In the process, this place was also presented as a sacred site for early Christian relics. Doge Zeno¹ placed great importance on the claim that the Christian relics here had been moved from Jerusalem to Constantinople, and then from there to Venice. He even said that he himself had reached Venice through the grace of St. Mark. Though, if you’re talking about that sort of thing, Enrico Dandolo² was the greatest of them all. He made the most propagandistic use of the relics to claim that God’s will resided in Venice.”

“Zeno, Enrico. Got it.”

Elias repeated the names, his eyes gleaming as he prepared to absorb everything, just as Narke had instructed him from the beginning. We scanned the square as though we were listening to a tour guide’s commentary.

“Look over there. You can see the statues of Mark and the angels standing above the arched entrance. And beneath them, there’s a relief of a winged lion.”

Elias pointed sharply at the angel statues.

“What kind of angels are those? This is important.”

“I don’t think those statues represent any particular angels. They simply symbolize angels. But look at the bell tower to the left of the basilica. See that tall building? The golden statue at the top is the Archangel Gabriel.”

I followed his gaze. The bell tower stood apart from the basilica, with thick red walls and a faded green spire. Elias craned his neck to check the very tip of the spire and muttered, “Well, that was a dead end. Gabriel, huh… Okay. Let’s go back to the facade. What are the mosaics under these arches depicting?”

“They depict the process of stealing Mark’s relics from Alexandria.”

“…Did they seriously steal everything…?”

“Haha. They say it was done to protect the saint’s relics from the Muslims. If you look over there, you’ll notice the painting right in the center is done in a slightly different style, right? That one was painted later. It depicts the Last Judgment³ from the Bible.”

A saint carrying a massive wooden cross on his shoulder held one hand aloft, while angels around him blew their trumpets. The people gazed at the saint, overcome with awe and fear.

“Damn, there’s no end to the information we need to remember here.”

“Eli. Have you found anything that connects organically yet?”

“Duuunno.”

Elias drawled out his answer, deliberately looking elsewhere. Since he had begun examining the statues and reliefs looted from Constantinople one by one, I also looked around and took in the scenery.

“It’s really amazing. It actually feels like we’re in Italy.”

“It’s extravagant. Once you go inside, you’ll see walls and ceilings covered in gold. Look up, and you’ll find paintings by artists who defined the Renaissance wherever you look. The Crusaders looted countless columns and reliefs from Constantinople. You should be able to see some of them up ahead, too.”

“Hmm. I’m sure that’s all true, but… are you sure this is okay?”

Elias was asking whether it was really all right to openly talk about what Christians before the Reformation—in other words, Catholics—had done. The Crusades had happened long ago, so their actions did not feel particularly immediate to people anymore, but there were still few clergy who would go out of their way to bring them up. After all, there were those who considered the Crusades a glorious achievement, while others, despite understanding the circumstances of the time, believed they were things that could never—and should never—have happened from the perspective of modern reason. Narke thought about it for a moment before answering calmly.

“You can’t dress up something that happened as though it didn’t. How complete can the peace and grandeur that come from a lie really be? History is Clotho⁴’s tapestry, woven from the intersections of the deeds and misdeeds of those who challenge God’s will. We can’t deny that.”

“It’s weird hearing the name of a Greek god come out of a Christian’s mouth.”

Elias was a Christian himself, and he probably knew perfectly well that he went around doing all sorts of things himself, yet he still made the remark. In an age like this, wouldn’t it be a little strange to leave out the revival of Greece and Rome? Perhaps Narke found Elias just as amusing, because he burst out laughing before continuing in a whisper.

“Among those who walk the broad road, the most frightening and tragic are Christians who believe they are walking the narrow one. Was the massacre that took place on the night of St. Bartholomew’s Day really an act of Christ’s will? Yet the Catholics who killed the Huguenots⁵ believed that it was justice, that they were moving toward the will of Christ. That is what the masses look like when they walk the broad road. On that day, Christ would have said, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers,’ but they could neither hear what Christ had said nor see what Matthew had written. They carried crosses that symbolized mankind’s sins, yet failed to recognize their own and remembered only Christ’s sacrifice. And even that, in an incredibly simple and superficial way…”

Thus, the teachings fade away. We waited without saying a word. Without even turning to look at us, he continued as though he knew exactly what we were thinking.

“Even an absolute monarch who commands an entire continent cannot wield his scepter with absolute power before the masses. If a ruler fails to provide even a certain measure of good governance while remaining unaware that his tyranny is pushing the people past their threshold, his end can only be the guillotine. Machiavelli’s The Prince, which paradoxically came to be favored by Enlightenment thinkers because of the way it emphasized the ruler’s weakness, and even Nero’s fate, both tell us the same thing. That is the driving force, the greatness, and the danger of the masses. The masses have the power to overcome unjust oppression, but they also have the power to oppress another group themselves. If so, can the guillotine punish the masses for their own wrongs?”

I looked at Elias. He was quietly staring at Narke’s back. Narke had already taken a place in Elias’s mind, while the real Narke was sitting right there before us. We stood before the cathedral’s facade, watching the white sun rise above it, yet at the same time, we must have been looking into each other’s eyes.

“Execution cannot punish the masses. Only history can reveal that what the masses believed was a sin.”

A historian’s duty is to lead a Copernican revolution⁶ at every moment. To borrow the words of a historian who shaped the 20th century—the human race only truly comes of age through a Copernican turn. The day the truth that the sun revolves around the Earth ceases to function as truth, knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun shatters the entire worldview we once believed to be true. A new world opens through the cracks left behind by its destruction.

But then, can a historian ever escape the consciousness of his own age? He may condemn as a falsehood the beliefs that his predecessors once followed as truth, but could those very judgments not later be revealed as the historian’s own bias, a hasty conclusion bound by the limitations of his time? That objection was already an obvious premise to us, so no one questioned it, and he continued.

“Judging the masses can only be done by those who possess an objective eye toward a bygone age, those who are not bound by interests tied to that era. Even if it is impossible to completely remove subjectivity from judgment, shouldn’t we at least believe that those who have stepped beyond their own age and gained whatever measure of objectivity they can may restore the rights of the dead? Only our consciousness can declare the Huguenots who died from the St. Bartholomew’s Day onward innocent of any wrongdoing. It is the same reason. Could I hide the fact that the Crusaders laid Constantinople to waste and carried off spoils from its churches, homes, and royal palaces? Could I let everyone regard the sins of our ancestors—who committed the disgrace of slaughtering their own kind in Byzantium that day and made the people who lived there weep tears of blood—as nothing more than a midsummer night’s mirage?”

Elias slowly blinked. Even though he knew that his question—whether Narke was uncomfortable talking about Catholics entering a pagan land and laying it to waste—had been unnecessary, he had worn an unreadable smile ever since hearing Narke’s answer.

As I listened to him, a subject began to rise from the depths of my consciousness. I looked up at the towering cathedral and the gray-blue sky of dawn breaking over it, then quietly asked, “Do you know about damnatio memoriae?”

“The punishment of erasing someone from the historical record, carried out by the Roman Senate.”

Narke answered without hesitation, as befitted a cardinal who had been obligated to study every record of Europe since childhood. Then, as though he knew exactly why I had brought up the topic, he continued.

“How arrogant humans are—they wanted to erase what had happened and make everyone forget it ever existed. But as you know, damnatio memoriae didn’t end with the days of the Roman Senate. If I were to keep quiet about the Crusaders’ wrongdoings simply because I’m Catholic, if all Christians were to shy away from talking about the things their ancestors did out of blind devotion to their religion, wouldn’t that be little different from carrying out a damnatio memoriae through willful blindness? Ignorance can be a sin. And creating an environment where nothing can be spoken of because you want the public to remain ignorant… wouldn’t that be an unforgivable grave sin?”

“Interesting.”

“That would mean trampling on the unresolved debts we have yet to settle. We have to remember. It is our duty to remember forever.”

He was facing the truth before St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the city that had risen to greatness through the Fourth Crusade. I knew nothing about him, and yet, after listening to his long speech, I felt as though I had managed to reach, if only slightly, into someone else’s mind. Though in reality, I might not have heard anything at all. He spoke like someone who had lived through countless things, like a ninety-year-old elder looking back on a lifetime of memories. And strangely enough, that made me feel one step closer to him. His thoughts were frighteningly similar to mine. At least in everything except his interest in theology. Even so, he still felt distant.

Perhaps he had noticed what I was thinking, because Narke whispered once more.

“If you want to follow Christ’s will, then in some ways, you have no choice but to go against the will of the Church. Unlike secular historians, the Church remains, even outside this era, the father and mother of the Catholics who carried out the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day. So isn’t it inevitable that they would be reluctant to fully acknowledge the crowd’s responsibility, as well as their own?”

In the world I had lived in, the Papal See would acknowledge the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day and in the months that followed at the end of the 20th century, then begin healing its eight-hundred-year rift with the Eastern Orthodox Church over the Fourth Crusade in the early 21st century. But it wasn’t time for that yet.

That was why Narke spoke this way.

And yet, even as he said all this, I didn’t feel as though he was particularly angry with the Church. It was as though he were talking about something that had happened long ago, recalling a subject he had turned over in his mind hundreds, thousands of times. It felt as though he were simply saying, That is something that happened.

Silence followed.

“You guys are fun to be around.”

Elias suddenly said it as he placed a hand against the entrance of the basilica, where Mass had yet to begin. I looked at him.

I agreed with him. Having people around me who actually understood what I was saying was a rare kind of luck.

When the plausibility of the real world—the belief that things that deviate from the average cannot happen all at once—limits the boundless possibilities of an individual, my very existence is denied along with them. The belief that because I had been acting since childhood, it was impossible for me to have retained any knowledge beyond acting. The belief that, even if I had tried to pursue a different path just to survive, doing so was impossible by ordinary standards. The belief that no one person could possess more than two or three traits that society considered desirable. And the fact that every one of those traits they admired was, to me, closer to an illness I had never had a choice but to live with. All of these things cut me off from the world.

Telling people that the world did not consist solely of averages sounded empty to them. Even when my very existence proved that people like me could exist, there was nothing I could make them understand if they could not accept it. It wasn’t their fault. Their world was simply different from mine. So I couldn’t blame anyone for it. And that meant there was no way to say any of it aloud. Everything just piled up, layer upon layer, at the bottom of my heart.

Only now did I realize that, without even knowing it, I had always felt that way—even when I was surrounded by people.

I realized it every time. Whenever I talked with my friends.

Talking with them gave me faith that someone like me could exist, too. To me, being able to have a conversation that flowed without a hitch was a sign that it was okay for me to exist just as I was. That vague sense of suffocation, something I had never even known was painful, would turn into a brief moment of happiness.

I smiled and gave him a short answer.

“I feel the same. Being with you guys… in a way, I’m lucky.”

“In a way?! What way?”

Elias glared at me and grabbed me by the shoulder. Startled, I darted my eyes around before pushing his face away when it came right up beside mine. It was true that meeting Elias had made me happy, but if I said I was lucky in every possible way, it somehow felt like I would be betraying Luka, wherever he might have gone.

“Is that so?”

Narke took his time before answering. By the time we had circled the cathedral a few times, letting our earlier conversation slowly fade from our minds, he spoke in a faint voice, almost as if whispering a secret he could barely bring himself to tell even himself.

“So do I.”

Elias turned his head, scanning the surrounding buildings, then opened the travel guide and started taking in the information. I pulled a notebook from my clutch and briefly jotted down the things Narke said. He seemed to think Elias wouldn’t be able to remember it all after Narke had dumped so much information on him earlier.

After wandering around for a while, Elias returned to the middle of the square and pointed at the tall red flagpoles in front of the cathedral.

“What are these?”

“They symbolize Venice’s prosperity. Pretty color, don’t you think~?”

“Yeah. Is there a reason there are three of them?”

He was remarkably sharp… Elias was trying to figure out the meaning behind numbers like this, too. He might look like a delinquent, but he always gave whatever he was asked to do his best. Yes, even when his goal was something like deliberately coming in dead last in the entire school as an act of rebellion, he always gave it his all…

Narke stroked his chin and answered patiently.

“They’re said to represent the three kingdoms Venice conquered: Crete, Cyprus, and the Peloponnese. Some people also say the flagpoles emphasize Venice’s naval power.”

“Oh, nice. But I don’t think that’ll be useful.”

“Hahaha…”

“Then what’s this? The lion and the person.”

Elias pointed toward the enormous columns standing on the left and right sides of the square. They were quite a distance from the bell tower.

“The winged lion column on the left is the Column of San Marco, and the human figure on the right is the Column of San Todaro. Quite literally, the one on the left represents Saint Mark, the patron saint of Venice, while the one on the right represents Theodore of Amasea… who was originally considered the patron saint of this place, before Saint Mark became Venice’s patron saint.”

“Theodore of Amasea?”

“He was a Greek born in Amasea. He believed in Christ, was subjected to brutal torture, and was martyred. Saint Theodore was originally Venice’s patron saint, so the chapel here was dedicated to him until the 9th century. But that changed when Mark’s relics arrived. They say his remains were moved to Brindisi in the 12th century.”

“Kind of unfair. Anything else you know?”

“He’s often depicted as a saint who slays evil, represented by a dragon, though I’m not sure if the thing he’s standing on now is supposed to be one. Hmm… There’s also a stained-glass window depicting Theodore’s life in Chartres Cathedral in France, but he’s not particularly well known outside Italy.”

When Narke said the thing he’s standing on, he was referring to the crocodile-like creature beneath his feet.

Elias nodded and pursed his lips. Narke checked the time, then pointed toward the cathedral.

“Seen everything outside? Saint Mark’s remains are kept in there. Let’s go inside, attend Mass, and have a look around. There might be clues in there too. In the paintings or sculptures, maybe.”

“Sounds good!”

Narke conjured a mantilla with an illusion and draped it over his head. His blue eyes, which looked almost purple, flashed beneath the shadow of the veil. Elias grinned and held out his hand.

“Need an escort?”

“What do you need an escort for just to enter a church…?”

Despite my scolding, Elias lightly took the hand Narke offered—or rather, the hand of the complete stranger he was disguised as—and kissed it. Narke must have been putting his acting skills to good use, because he didn’t look flustered in the slightest. He simply walked into the cathedral with the effortless elegance of a complete stranger. He seemed so convincingly unfamiliar that I wondered if I should even be speaking to him formally.

Narke dipped his fingers into the holy water, made the sign of the cross, and took his seat with a cross held in both hands. Elias, a Protestant, discreetly watched Narke and awkwardly copied what he did before sitting beside him. We followed along with the entrance hymn while trying not to look too out of place, silently hoping the priest would appear as soon as possible. At least, I was.

After sitting there for a while, a deacon and a priest finally appeared before the altar, carrying the Bible. The priest bowed deeply before the altar, then bowed once more after stepping before it, and proceeded to his place. When the entrance hymn ended, the priest made the sign of the cross.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”

Elias suddenly stopped halfway through making the sign of the cross. Narke and I looked at him at the same time. A familiar light flickered in Elias’s eyes. He stared into empty space with a look as though an idea had just struck him, then whispered, “I figured it out. I know who Judas is.”

Translator Note

1. Reniero Zeno (also spelled Ranieri Zeno) was the 45th Doge of Venice. ↩︎
2. Enrico Dandolo was the 42nd Doge of Venice. ↩︎
3. The Last Judgment is the final event where Jesus Christ returns in glory, raises the dead, and judges all humanity. ↩︎
4. Clotho is the youngest of the Three Fates (the Moirai) in ancient Greek mythology. She spins the thread of human life, deciding when a person is born and controlling the start of their destiny. ↩︎
5. The Huguenots were French Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who followed the Reformed tradition of John Calvin. ↩︎
6. Copernican Revolution is a phrase with different meanings in different contexts. In astronomy, the phrase refers to the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism. For Christianity and Western culture, it may instead refer to the dismantling of the human-centric medieval cosmology and its cultural consequences. ↩︎