30/12/99

The end is near

   This is goodbye.
    I have to assume this is my last column. It has nothing to do with the rumored labor strife at this journal, or the state of my health, or my commitment to remain in this country.
    It's because of what some guy named Abraham said.
    This Abraham was the son of Provencal 'Marranos.' Better known as Nostradamus, he was a legendary soothsayer from half a millennium ago who practically wrote world history before it happened.
    Nostradamus soothsaid that the world is going to end in, oh, about a day or so. That doesn't leave you much time to read the rest of this, because you'll want to prepare.
    There are, however, signs of hope. We can still buy on credit, and I haven't yet heard of oddsmakers offering bets on tomorrow night's scheduled Armageddon (how would winners collect?), so it seems no one is paying heed to Nostradamus's visions. And we have this prediction from Dr. Bernard Fisher: Nostradamus will be wrong.
    I choose to believe Fisher. Born in Gateshead, England, and now living in Netanya, Fisher calls himself a 'historian manque.' He has become well known for his lectures on a wide array of historical figures and events, from the dawn of time to (we're still not sure) the end of time; from the Vilna Gaon to Sarah Bernhardt, Philo Judaeus (the first Jewish philosopher) to General 'Two-Gun' Cohen.
    According to Fisher, Nostradamus (1503-1566) 'came in touch with the kabbalists in Italy, who gave him the idea of the esoteric, of the unknown, of trying to understand the future. When he went back to Provence, he began to write down his prognostications.'
    Fortunately but unhappily, Nostradamus hit the jackpot when he foresaw the gruesome demise of reigning King Henri II. He described in detail his death, which would come four years later: 'The young lion will overcome the older one in a field of combat in a single fight: He will pierce his eyes in their golden cage. Two wounds in one; then he dies a cruel death.' And that's what happened. Henri challenged young Captain Montgomery to a joust. Both used the lion as their insignia; the officer's lance splintered, and pierced the king's golden helmet, goring his eye and throat. He died in agony 10 days later.
    Rather than say 'I told you so,' Nostradamus started worrying. After further predictions about the royals came true, he fled to the countryside, where he pursued his hunches in earnest.
    Nostradamus wrote his predictions in cryptic quatrains, fearing Inquisition-type retribution if anyone really understood him. Says Fisher, 'He avoided prosecution by writing in obscure Provencal French, Latin, Greek and Italian.' His most famous work, known as Les Centuries, comprised 300 rhymed quatrains.
    He has continued to perplex scholars trying to decipher his works: 'Many of the quatrains are so obscure as to defy interpretation.' Nostradamus is credited with predicting a slew of catastrophes and historic events: the Great Fire of London in 1666, Napoleon's rise and fall, the executions of Charles I and Louis XVI, the abdication of Edward VIII. He described air travel, American-Soviet rapprochement ('two allies brought together through disarmament treaties'), the 1991 Iran-Iraq war, tanks, submarines and warplanes.
    Communism fell, the European Common Market arose, the Soviet Union broke up and Leningrad was renamed St. Petersburg - just as he promised.
    He used imagery, symbols and word play, which gave leeway to interpretation, but he sometimes provided specific names and dates. At the end of a (19-year) lunar cycle, he wrote, 'Pasteur will be celebrated as a godlike figure'; Louis Pasteur's revolution of medical science occurred in 1889 - right on time.
    He didn't merely describe the Spanish Civil War, he named both protagonists, Primo de Rivera and General Franco: 'From Castile, Franco will bring out the assembly, The ambassadors will not agree and cause a schism. The people of Rivera will be in the crowd, And the great man will be denied entry to the gulf' (when Franco was temporarily exiled, he was forbidden from entering Spain from across the Mediterranean).
    He envisioned 'London burnt by fire in three times 20 plus six' (1666).
    Nostradamus gave ballpark dates of 1860, 1870, 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960 and 1980 when 'attack on life' would befall American leaders; forsooth, the dates correspond amazingly closely to the deaths and assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy, and the shooting of Reagan.
    Chillingly, he warned of World War II, going so far as to (nearly) naming the warmonger: 'There shall arise a leader of Greater Germany named Hister, who would cause great bloodshed, serve no law, and would unleash his ravenous beasts over the whole of Europe until the triumph of his opponents.' In fact, Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, drew Hitler's attention to this prediction - but changed the words to a more optimistic foresight. Later, in 1940, the Luftwaffe inundated France with 'Nostradamus leaflet bombs,' prompting the British to retaliate with their own Nostradamus drops.
     Nostradamus failed too - but in some cases, he wasn't far off. He foresaw a Russian-American war in 1993; universal famine in 1996 caused by a depletion of the ozone layer (!) and leading to environmental catastrophe; the recapture of Gibraltar in 1997 and the outbreak of World War III; a major refugee problem in Europe in the '90s; in 1998, Prince Charles ascending the throne and New York destroyed by fire ('the Great New City... at 45 degrees,' where New York is on the map); and the creation of a Palestinian state before the end of the 1990s (there's still time). Eerily, Arafat was going to proclaim independence in May 1999.
    The refugee problem could have been Yugoslavia. And New York, well, there was that Twin Towers fire not long before.
    Which brings us to our very imminent end.
    Nostradamus actually specified 3797 as the