A Book of Falsehoods

by Jaan Kross

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The third part in an epic historical trilogy - The Estonian answer to Wolf Hall - by the nation's greatest modern writer

1578. A ship from Rostock arrives in Tallinn loaded with printed copies of Balthasar Russow's Chronicle - the culmination of our hero's life's work. But though it is an instant success, as it was in Rostock and numerous German cities, not everyone is happy to see it published. A group of local gentry denounce it to the town council as "a book of heinous falsehoods", and lobby for Balthasar to relieved as pastor of Holy Ghost Church.

But all is not lost. Balthasar may call on a powerful ally - if he is willing to pay the price.

In this final volume, fierce storms, along with famine, war and plague, continue to be loosed upon Livonia. Balthasar's personal life, too, is fraught with turbulence and loss, much of it stemming from his own jealousy and suspicion.

Release date: September 20, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

This final volume of Between Three Plagues tells the story of a man and a book. We have come to know the man, Balthasar Russow, in the first two volumes; and the genesis of the book, the Chronicle of Livonia, is described in the second volume, A People without a Past. “In this land where nothing is remembered,” Balthasar observes, “I should start writing down the things that have happened here, so that people will start to remember”.

This third volume begins with an account of the reception of the Chronicle. It is a great success in Tallinn, as it is in Rostock and Bremen and many other German cities. Even Balthasar’s testy father-in-law brags about it to friends. But not everyone is pleased. On Toompea, Elert Kruse and Heinrich von Tisenhusen, descendants of lords and knights, write angry letters to the Town Council, condemning the Chronicle as “a book of the most heinous falsehoods” and describing it as “spiteful, malicious, full of lies and gross errors, the work of an ignorant man”. The title of this volume comes from one of their letters.

Why does the Chronicle provoke such hostility? In addition to his criticism of the greed and immorality of the Livonian gentry, Balthasar speaks “too mildly” of “the Muscovite”, Ivan the Terrible, and he extols “his blood-brothers, the peasants”, failing to denounce their participation in “all manner of uprisings and riots and roguish deeds across the land”. Worse still, as a young man, Balthasar had actually participated in the peasant uprising at Kurgla. Ironically, all of this – especially the criticism of the gentry and the sympathetic portrayal of the rebellious peasants – helps account for the Soviet authorities’ approval of Between Three Plagues in the 1970s.

That said, it is also worth noting that, like other internal critics of the Soviet system, Jaan Kross, who spent eight years in Soviet prisons and labour camps, was an adept practitioner of what came to be known as “Aesopian writing”. As Doris Lessing once wrote, “His books were written to outwit censorship”. He knew that readers of his accounts of the dithering deliberations of the Town Council would not fail to recognise the parallels with Soviet party meetings, especially those of the Soviet Writers’ Union.

The story of Balthasar’s private life – of his loves and three marriages – is woven into the tapestry of events in the world around him and the story of his Chronicle. Balthasar’s first wife, Elsbet, is felled by the plague along with their two small daughters; Epp, the love of his youth, reenters his life when she comes to town to help care for his son, left motherless. Their romance is rekindled, but Balthasar’s ambitions and jealousy intervene, and he repeatedly creates problems for himself.

All the supporting characters except Epp are based on real historical figures, and Jaan Kross took great pains to document his renderings of each of them, just as he took pains to describe the material world they lived in down to the windowpanes made out of pigs’ bladders. The one point that most historians question is his portrayal of Balthasar’s origins as Estonian rather than German. This historical issue remains unresolved. But what must strike all readers of Between Three Plagues is the rich and nuanced psychological portrait of the fictional Balthasar that the novel offers.

Balthasar Russow is presented as self-absorbed but generous, opportunistic but principled, caught up in his own ambitions, fantasies, and inner conflicts, but a sharp-eyed observer of the world around him. He is also conscientious, unstinting in serving his flock, selflessly entering the homes of plague-ridden parishioners to comfort the sick and dying. He does much soul-searching towards the end of his life as he contemplates the nature of good and evil, the meaning of sin and purity. At the same time, he grows in the course of the novel, demonstrating a capacity for remorse and empathy and a new clarity of purpose.

The city of Tallinn has itself been described as a character in this novel. Throughout the book there are occasional passages in which an omniscient narrator maps and pictures the city and relates its history. But Tallinn comes to life largely through the mind and memory of Balthasar, whom we accompany one night as he strides down Pikk Street towards home “with the certainty of a sleepwalker – a certainty born of having stored up in himself, unconsciously, a memory of every stone in town, every contour of the cobbled streets”.

 

merike lepasaar beecher

May, 2022

CHAPTER ONE,

in which that headstrong man, who for years has thought about little else than the delight of scraping up grains of truth lying scattered on the stony soil (even as he worried about mixing the chaff with the grain and about the brevity of the sowing season), is suddenly aware of the crunch of ripened grains under his teeth and their distinctive taste on the roof of his mouth – and beneath it, a hint of their inevitable bitterness.

From the open windows of the customs house the Barbara could be seen lying at anchor between the bulwark and the pier, three hundred cubits distant. It had arrived from Rostock in the evening, and now three heavily laden cargo barges were making their way from the ship towards shore under the August rain, a gusting north-east wind sloshing water over their sides.

The gentlemen Luhr and Lanting and Staal and Holthusen were among the ten merchants whom the customs official had summoned that morning, for according to the captain’s papers, they had cargo in the hold, and despite the wet weather, they had arrived early. The prudent among them were wearing linen rain cloaks to shield their account books, true enough; those more prominent – Holthusen and Luhr, for example – were accompanied by warehouse clerks who carried their books.

Balthasar stopped on the threshold to shake the raindrops off his overcoat, and stepping into the airy customs room with its timbered walls and low, log ceiling, walked to the windows where the merchants were gathered. He heard Herr Staal say, “And who can say that the worst is over? Eh?!” And Herr Lanting sigh, “God Almighty, just think, in the last twenty years the value of the mark has dropped by a third!” And Herr Luhr observe, “The price of a measure of Rhine wine is eight per cent higher than it was last year . . .”

Balthasar inhaled the mingled scents of musk and pine-resin soap, and that increasingly expensive Rhine wine wafting from the gentlemen-merchants – it was almost comical how unmistakable the scents were in the damp air, on this rainy morning – and he thought: they’re truer than true, these stories about our wretched times. Good Lord, the bakeries in town are closed now for the second month, for want of flour. In church you can hear poor folks’ stomachs growl like the wind blowing through organ bellows; and yet these gentlemen seem to be flourishing – viewed like this at close range, well rested and in the fresh air . . .

As though the gentlemen had read his mocking thoughts, their conversation fell off abruptly, and for a moment one could hear the sound – like a plucked guitar – of the wind against the pig’s-bladder panes of the open windows. Herr Holthusen asked:

“Well, well, Herr Balthasar, what cargo is it that you have ordered for yourself – or perhaps for us?”

The man’s square face under his beret looked friendly enough, and he was in fact a reasonable person, an alderman of the Great Guild and a burgomaster to boot . . . But Balthasar recalled the famine of the spring which had claimed the lives of over a hundred of the poorest and weakest among both refugees and townspeople . . . even in his own house, for that matter, the bushel-bin was empty of flour and the household hungry. He looked at the smooth, self-satisfied faces of the merchants – they seemed on the verge of snickering as they awaited his reply to Holthusen – and he answered:

“For myself, I’ve ordered a crate of patience. And for the town fathers – three hogshead of justice.”

“Oho! Is that such a profitable commodity?”

“But of course,” said Balthasar, “it’s good business. There’s always a greater shortage of justice than of flour, and its price increases even more rapidly than that of Rhine wine.”

The gentlemen laughed jovially and returned to their talk of herring and iron and wool and brocade, excluding Balthasar from their circle – which was normal, of course. But before he had fully registered this, the carters and carriers came tramping out from under the sheltering roof at the back of the building and hurried past the windows to the wharf with wheelbarrows and handbarrows and sawhorses, for the cargo barges had arrived.

The scene was one of hectic activity: the cargo gates of the customs house wide open; carters and carriers running back and forth with hogs­heads, barrels, boxes, bags, and packages; merchants and account keepers shouting; the wind gusting; customs officer Stamm clutching a fistful of cargo receipts; two inspectors, one carrying a box of sealing wax, and at their heels Captain Rank of the Barbara, a man with an iron-grey beard and a voice like a rusty horn, holding his own receipts. Only after the hurly-burly had subsided did Balthasar finally get his three barrels, which were loaded immediately onto Herring-Siimon’s barrow. They set off together – Herring-Siimon hunched against the rain – over cobblestones, through mud puddles and between the horse wagons of the gentlemen-merchants, in the direction of the Great Coast Gate. It was then that Balthasar suddenly recalled, with some astonishment and almost defiantly, that it was quite a snappy retort he had delivered to Holthusen – and to all of them! Even so, he had received his barrels thanks only to Herr Holthusen, who, on behalf of Balthasar, had commanded the customs official to release them. Balthasar had had to give his word that he would deliver them immediately to the warehouse, to Herr Dellinkhusen.

He asked Herring-Siimon to take the barrels to the warehouse around the corner of the Town Hall and went into the building to fetch Dellinkhusen. He was unsure whether what had been demanded of him should be attributed to the superior wisdom of the Council – and so could not be questioned, no matter how perplexing – or whether it should be viewed as offensive and foolish, given that gentlemen-merchants were permitted to import all the iron and wine and bolts of woollen fabric they pleased, without registering anything whatsoever at the Town Hall.

Town Syndic Dellinkhusen – now nearly fifty, a stout man with a broad, pale face – at times appeared rather lethargic, but was inexplicably also quite quick-witted. Because of that, and even more because of his bushy reddish whiskers, Balthasar took to thinking of him as “Hairy Pumpkin”. (Perhaps also because Seneca was said to have written a satire on the pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius, and maybe because Balthasar had heard that Dellinkhusen’s bleary-eyed wife was actually named Messalina, not Magdalena . . .) Balthasar had to tell his story to Hairy Pumpkin twice, after which Pumpkin suddenly came to life.

“What are you saying? . . . A chronicle? . . . You’ve finished it? Printed in Rostock? And we have it now in our warehouse? The Chronicle of Livonia?! In three barrels – a hundred and fifty copies in each?!”

He pursed his lips and whistled soundlessly. “Well now, Herr Balthasar, you know, you really are a man of surprises . . .” Herr Dellinkhusen threw a rain cloak over his doublet and went out with Balthasar. Herring-Siimon showed them where, among the big vats of Rostock ale, he had been asked to roll the small barrels. Herr Dellinkhusen beckoned the overseer of the warehouse, who pried one open with a crowbar. The syndic pulled a volume out of the straw, a book bound in beautiful pale-grey leather. Balthasar reached into the straw as well. (It seemed to him that in return for the four hundred and fifty copies that the printing house in Rostock kept for itself, they could have found something softer than this scratchy straw . . . But perhaps straw was in fact the most suitable swaddling for this straw-child of his mind?) And then he was holding his book.

Yes . . . the volume was somewhat smaller than he had expected. But still, it was a book of respectable size. And now, finally, it was – quite undeniably – a reality. He opened it and took in the title page. He raised it to his face and inhaled. The large red letters gave off a sweet scent, but when he riffled the pages of the book near his nose, he caught a whiff of the acrid odour of printer’s ink. Opening the book at random he read:

 

The reasons why the Russians are so strong when defending their fortifications are the following: First, they are an industrious people and ready when necessary to undertake all manner of dangerous and difficult tasks day or night, praying to God that He grant them a blessed death in the service of their Grand Duke. Second, they are from childhood accustomed to fasting, having had to get by with little food and few comforts. As long as they have water, flour, salt, and vodka they can endure a long time, which the Germans cannot. Third, if the Russians surrender a fortification, no matter how small, they can no longer return to their homeland, for there they would be treated with scorn and killed; yet they do not wish or dare to stay abroad either. So they will fight to the last man and let themselves be killed rather than be banished to a foreign land. But as for the Germans, it is all the same to them where they live, so long as they get enough to gobble and guzzle . . . 

 

For an instant Balthasar felt he could not breathe. Good Lord, this was unheard of – in black and white – praise for an age-old enemy, and such scorn for Germans.

“Exceedingly interesting,” he heard Dellinkhusen say next to him as he turned the pages. “And you are planning to sell this in Tallinn?”

“That I am,” said Balthasar, not adding what he was thinking at the moment: this plan could bring him before a criminal court.

“And what price do you intend to set for each volume?” Herr Dellinkhusen asked.

“Well,” Balthasar drawled, “it does have a very attractive leather binding . . . so I was thinking, half a thaler.”

The syndic tucked the book under his arm, stuck his hand into the chest pocket of his doublet, pulled out a leather purse, and pressed a silver half-thaler into Balthasar’s hand:

“I’ll take a copy with me, we’ll look it over and the Council will make a decision. That is, whether to permit it or not. You do understand, of course – since the discord that erupted forty years ago over Koell’s catechism, we have to take special care with a chronicle, and especially in these times. Consequently . . .”

Balthasar did not at first grasp the meaning of the syndic’s outstretched hand, until he said: “Yes indeed! Give it here!” And he took the book from Balthasar. “We’ll just seal this up with all the others. Until we get the Council’s decision, you understand.”

Syndic Dellinkhusen put Balthasar’s copy back into the barrel. The overseer wedged the board he had prised off the top more or less back into place. He brought a piece of wax for the syndic, who broke it in two, pressing the little blobs onto the opposite edges of the lid, leaving the imprint of his signet ring – the three lions of Tallinn – in each blob. Three suspicious mongrels, three Cerberuses, thought Balthasar.

“So . . . we’ll be contacting you soon. But it’ll take a few weeks, in any event.”

He waved to Balthasar with a kind of practised condescension and strode off imperiously.

Balthasar looked down at the muddy floor of the warehouse.

So that was it – that was the extent to which he was master of his own work in this town. Well, he should have foreseen it. He should not have harboured the childish fantasy of walking home with his book and reading it that evening in his study. He had already been imagining how he would wince at his own errors – damnably many errors! – and yet marvel at the concrete reality of his work . . . And how he would set it on the night table for Elsbet . . . How he would walk the next morning to Elbling’s bookshop in Seppade Street to bargain over the sales arrangements . . . He should have foreseen that the Council . . . But isn’t it better this way? He would not have to – he could not – suffer the three dozen shocks of finding his errors in print . . . And when the councilmen have read his work and he has their permit in hand – the deuce knows whether they’ll grant it, especially if they should start rooting around in it – but when he finally has their permit, he’ll be able to invoke the support of the Council in the face of the grousing that’s bound to follow! He eyed the slimy floor, thinking, almost with a sneer, as he reviewed his thoughts in the grey air of the warehouse: Well, so that’s how I’ll resign myself to their swinish stunt . . .

He turned around abruptly and stalked out of the warehouse. Had anyone asked him later whether the rain had stopped by then or was still pouring down, he could not have answered. He went diagonally across Market Square and turned at random towards Karja Gate,1 so overcome with indignation, he did not even shudder, as he usually did, at the dull murmur that reached his ears. In the covered passageway he saw a heap of burlap and a hand stretch out towards him, its fingers reduced to stumps . . . It would not do to walk by a begging leper without giving alms. But to stop and rummage in his pocket for a shilling would have required him to surmount his unseemly, self-centred indignation. He felt the half-thaler, damp with sweat, still in his hand . . . he would not have known what to do with it anyway. Tossing the heavy silver coin into the leper’s lap, he murmured: “May God grant you forgiveness for your sins . . . ,” and to purify himself with humility he added, “and me, for mine . . .” Then, thinking of Dellinkhusen and the councilmen, and unable to allay the smug satisfaction he felt, he concluded: “. . . and them especially, for theirs . . .”

There was nothing more for him to do but go home and wait. He would try to be cheerful and kind to his household, pretend he had no special worry, and take care to serve his congregation. He would base the coming Sunday’s sermon upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:26: “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord . . .” And in the evening he would read Marcus Aurelius’ expression of gratitude to Maximus for his example of constant self-control and dedication to a goal, and his kindheartedness, especially at a time of illness . . . For was not this kind of waiting like an illness, as it were, planted in the body of a man forced by other men to wait?

A few weeks, Dellinkhusen had said. But the autumn, little better than the miserable summer, was drawing to a close. It was almost the end of September. On the evening before last, the first big autumn storm had struck, and for half the night weathervanes creaked in its grip and roof tiles flew down onto paving stones. Balthasar had slept restlessly and then plodded through the next day – even as the storm abated – beset by growing unease and impatience, stemming from both anticipation and worry. The evening before the storm, the Vineta, the ship of his old schoolmate, Buschmann, had arrived from Rostock with a letter from the printer Ferber.

Ferber informed him – as he had done when he shipped the three barrels – that he had kept a third of the volumes for himself, as agreed, and dispatched two-thirds to towns in northern Germany, mainly to the harbour towns of Danzig and Bremen. But he also added news that he could not have imparted in the earlier letter: the hundred and fifty copies that he had retained in Rostock had sold out in five weeks. Requests had come in for additional copies from printers and booksellers in other towns to which he had sent the Chronicle . . . Word for word, this is what Ferber said:

 

There have been more sales of the Chronicle of Livonia in the last two months in Danzig and Lübeck and even in Bremen than of Bodin’s On the Republic last year, and more than the famous Fischart’s Philosophical Treatise on Marital Discipline, which has just been published.2 Consequently, and taking your agreement for granted, I have decided to print another thousand copies of the Chronicle of Livonia this October. If this letter should reach you in time sufficient for you to send me a few additional tales to append to your Chronicle, they would be most welcome. For it would benefit sales if we could justifiably announce on the title page that this is a new and expanded edition . . .  

 

To Balthasar all this was sweeter than honey, as they say – even though there was no time any longer for him to send Ferber additional material. But this was not what worried him – what worried him was something else . . . If the Council did in fact decide to deny him the right to sell the Chronicle in Tallinn, it would be lamentable, but it would still only be a matter between him and the Town Council. And he would, of course, have to undertake the battle to overturn the prohibition. First of all, he would have to win over the Council of Clergy. And the Council of Clergy would, in corpore3, have to assure the Town Council that Balthasar Russow’s Chronicle was a thoroughly serious work, in accord with the purest spirit of the Augsburg Confession. After which he would have to start bargaining, arguing, explaining – one councilman at a time – that although there might indeed be any number of errors in his work, none warranted the councilmen denying permission for its sale in Tallinn – none at all . . . Or at least not in sufficient number to justify a denial. And what might the errors be, in the opinion of the councilmen, that could justify their decision? Lord, at times it seemed to him that there were endless possibilities: his several mistakes in the chronology of events, his overly free handling of sources, his unacceptably casual assertions of causality, such as “this happened because of this, and that because of that” – how could he know how events were linked?! . . . But be that as it may. Given time, and with God’s help, he might be able to prise permission out of the councilmen. For, in his own opinion, he had not crossed the line of justifiable assertion. The entire dispute and argument would be between him and the honourable councilmen. And yet, if the honourable councilmen were to learn at the same time that he, civis Revaliensis,4 had allowed a book they considered suspect – and the distribution of which they had forbidden – to be sold in several thousand copies in ten towns of northern Germany without breathing a word of it to them – what an unimaginable ruckus that would raise . . .

What the deuce! He could go immediately, that very day, to any one of the fourteen councilmen who were protecting the honour and welfare of the citizens of Tallinn. He knew every one of them well enough to do that, starting with Burgomaster Holthusen himself, all the way to old Beelholt, for example, who must quite clearly recall Balthasar’s one-time acquaintance with Duke Johan, the present King of Sweden. Beelholt had become much more congenial lately, ever since June, when his son Aadam was captured by the Muscovites after a skirmish at Põltsamaa. There were, of course, a few councilmen who might have been the first to come to his aid, but to whom Balthasar could not turn. Heinrich Boissmann the Elder, for example, who had been with his maker for a year now. He had fallen ill during the first siege of Tallinn and had asked leave to step down from the Council – more because of his lamentable health, to be sure, than on account of the lamentable defection of his son, Heinrich the Younger, to Magnus. And just a few weeks after the unnatural, shocking death of this son, the old man himself had died. In fact, at about the same time that the people in Tallinn learned, with horror, what had occurred in Võnnu in September of ’77.

Grand Duke Ivan had encircled the town of Võnnu, and with it King Magnus (whom he himself had proclaimed King of Livonia), and had then ordered Magnus to appear before him at his camp. When Magnus appeared, he was thrown into a ramshackle shed to await his fate on a pile of rotting straw. At the same time, Võnnu had opened its gates to the Grand Duke, but its castle decided to resist, and the Grand Duke ordered an assault upon it.

On the fourth or fifth day, the defenders of the castle had decided to blow themselves up along with a large number of women and children, rather than surrender. And it was Heinrich Boissmann the Younger, who had gathered them all into the powder magazine and with them prayed to God for forgiveness and lit the gunpowder under their feet. The tower, with three hundred people in it, had been blown skyward. Enraged by their defiance, the Grand Duke had then ordered that all the dead remain unburied – as fodder for dogs and carrion birds . . . Ergo, Balthasar could not go to old Boissmann anymore . . . But he could go to Hairy Pumpkin and ask how things stood with his Chronicle and request that something be done to hasten the process. Or he might walk to the Town Hall and see Herr Topff. Heavens, over the years he had flown up those stairs countless times to see the scribe of the lower court. Or he could ask Märten to bring the new summoner to him – Gregor Kuuse the Younger, a polite and intelligent young man, born in Kalamaja, a member of Holy Ghost Church, son of the master-tailor who had died the year before. It was said the son had wanted to go to Sweden to study at the university there. He had been regularly doffing his hat to Balthasar at a distance of twenty paces and had come to confession to unburden himself the previous week. He had confessed that Herr Reinhold Tisenhusen had invited him to his place on Toompea on two Fridays and had let him know – in such a refined manner that nothing direct was ever uttered, though everything was transparently clear – that if he, Gregor, were to inform him, Tisenhusen, about the Council’s doings during the coming two years, he would have, at the end, the funds he needed for studies at the university. Gregor had asked Balthasar how he should answer. Balthasar had paced up and down his sacristy for some time, eyeing through the window the honeycomb pattern of the church’s roof tiles and the rain clouds above them. It struck him then that he could say, My dear young man, there are some things that you might hear at the Town Hall that the nobles of the knighthood could – or perhaps even should – be informed about, but there are other things they ought not hear. Thus, there can be no broadly certain answer to your question. Consequently, you would do best to tell Herr Tisenhusen you will try. And if he agrees, come to me each time and tell me what you are planning to inform him of. I will tell you what you may say, in keeping with God’s will and the interests of the town, and what you must not say . . .

But beyond this possible answer, Balthasar had also wondered: Perhaps I will want to continue working on my Chronicle, if it is really selling as well as I have heard, and in that case this youth would be . . . But at that moment he had stopped to look at the profile of this comely master-tailor’s son sitting there, on the edge of the bench in his sacristy, and recalled the burial of old Gregor Kuuse the previous year: the narrow grey coffin and small, wrinkled face in which one could still recognise a face that, forty years earlier, must have resembled that of this young man sitting here by the grey, rainy daylight of the window . . . He had recalled even more clearly Gregor’s hands crossed on his thin chest . . . In fact, only his grey nails and yellowish fingers . . . And, to be precise, the many, many bluish needle-pricks on the fingers of his aged right hand . . . And then Balthasar had stopped in front of young Gregor and, placing his hand on his shoulder, had said: “My dear young fellow. This town is our own mother. The nobility is aggressively striving to become our step­father. It would be an inadequate stepfather. Don’t sell your own mother to this deficient would-be stepfather. Don’t give Tisenhusen any answer whatsoever. If he doesn’t leave you in peace, tell him you’ve sworn an oath to the town. And with regard to the money for your studies—” Here Balthasar, to his own surprise, had begun to move his lips in a manner both unusual yet familiar to him . . . and had said: “Hmm . . . well . . . aah – come to me in about two years’ time. Let’s discuss it then, God willing . . .” Only later did he recall that the odd way he had moved his mouth as he spoke mirrored old Kimmelpenning chewing on his frog’s leg, and his words, in particular, echoed that exchange long ago about his own studies . . .

In any event, Balthasar could have asked young Gregor, right then, if he had ever heard the councilmen refer to the Chronicle. And yet, each time he realised he might actually learn what he wanted to know, something stopped him – whether pride or stubbornness or awkwardness, or perhaps something one would hardly think of ascribing to Balthasar that might be bes