[Revolutions 01] Doctor Copernicus

by John Banville

  “Herr von Lauchen, Bishop Giese tells me you are ill, or so he thought, when you fled his table so precipitately; and therefore I have come in order to ask if I might be of some assistance. The nature of your ailment is quite plain: Saturn, malign star, rules your existence, filled, as it has been, I’m sure, with gainful study, abstract thought, and deep reflection, which feed the hungry mind, but sap the will, and lead to melancholy and dejection. Nothing will avail you, sir, until, as Ficino recommends, you entrust yourself into the care of the Three Graces, and cleave to things under their rule. First, remember, even a single yellow crocus blossom, Jupiter’s golden flower, may bring relief; also, the light of Sol, of course, is good, and green fields at dawn—or anything, in fact, that’s coloured green, the shade of Venus. Do this, meinherr, shun all things saturnine, surround yourself instead with influences conducive to health and joy and spirits fine, and illness never more shall your defences breach. Ahem . . . The Bishop seated you by his side at table: an honour, sir, extended only to the very few. To rise in haste, as you did, is a slur. Perhaps at Wittenberg you have adopted Father Luther’s table manners, and hence the reason why you so disrupted the Bishop’s table. But please understand that here in Prussia we do things differently. Vale.—The dawn comes on apace, I see.”

  He waited, with head inclined, as though he fancied that his voice, of its own volition as it were, might wish to add something further; but no, he was quite done, and taking up his lamp he prepared to depart. I said:

  “I shall be leaving today.”

  He stopped short in the doorway and peered at me over his shoulder. “You are leaving us, Herr von Lauchen, already?”

  “Yes, Meister, for Wittenberg; for home.”

  “O.”

  He pondered this unexpected development, sinking into himself like a puzzled old snail into its carapace, and then, mumbling, he wandered away in an introspective trance, with those ghostly shadows prancing about him. Fool that I was, I should have packed my bags and fled there and then, while all the castle was abed, and left him to publish his book or not, burn it, wipe himself with it, whatever he wished. I even imagined my going, and wept again, with compassion for that stern sad figure which was myself, striding away into a chill sombre dawn. I had come to him in a prentice tunic, humbly: I, Rheticus, doctor of mathematics and astronomy at the great school of Wittenberg, and he had dodged me, ignored me, preached at me as if I were an errant choirboy. I should have gone! But I did not go. I crawled instead under the blankets and nursed my poor forlorn heart to sleep.

  * * *

  I can see it now, of course, how cunning they were, the two of them, Giese and the Canon, cunning old conspirators; but I could not see it then. I woke late in the morning to find Raphaël beside me, with honey and hot bread and a jug of spiced wine. The food was welcome, but the mere presence of the lithesome lad would have been sufficient, for it broke a fast far crueller than belly-hunger—I mean the fasting from the company of youth and rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, which I had been forced to observe since leaving Wittenberg and coming among these greybeards. We spent a pleasant while together, and he, the shy one, twisted his fingers and shifted from foot to foot, chattering on in a vain effort to stem his blushes. At length I gave him a coin and sent him skipping on his way, and although the old gloom returned once he was gone, it was not half so leaden as before. Too late I remembered that sober talk I had determined to have with him; the matter would have to be dealt with. An establishment of clerics, all men—and Catholics at that!—was a perilous place for a boy of his . . . his youth and beauty. (I was about to say innocence, but in honesty I must not, even though I know that thereby I banish the word from the language, for if it is denied to him then it has no meaning anymore. I speak in riddles. They shall be solved. My poor Raphaël! they destroyed us both.)

  *

  I rose and went in search of the Canon, and was directed to the arboretum, a name which conjured up a pleasant image of fruit trees in flower, dappled green shade, and little leafy paths where astronomers might stroll, discussing the universe. What I found was a crooked field fastened to a hill behind the castle, with a few stunted bushes and a cabbage patch—and, need I say, no sign of the Canon. As I stamped away, sick of being sent on false chases, a figure rose up among the cabbages and hailed me. Today Bishop Giese was rigged out again in his peasant costume. The sight of those breeches and that jerkin irritated me greatly. Do these damn Catholics, I wondered, never do else but dress up and pose? His hands were crusted with clay, and when he drew near I caught a strong whiff of horse manure. He was in a hearty mood. I suppose it went with the outfit. He said:

  “Grüss Gott, Herr von Lauchen! The Doctor informs me that you are ill. Not gravely so, I trust? Our Prussian climate is uncongenial, although here, on Castle Hill, we are spared the debilitating vapours of the plain—which are yet not so bad as those that rise from the Frisches Haff at Frauenburg, eh, meinherr? Ho ho. Let me look at you, my son. Well, the nature of your ailment is plain: Saturn, malign star . . .” And he proceeded to parrot verbatim the Canon’s little sermon in praise of the Graces. I listened in silence, with a curled lip. I was at once amused and appalled: amused that this clown should steal the master’s words and pretend they were his own, appalled at the notion, which suddenly struck me, that the Canon may not after all have been mocking me, but may have been actually serious about that fool Ficino’s cabalistic nonsense! O, I know well the baleful influence which Saturn wields over my life; I know that the Graces are good; but I also know that a hectacre of crocuses would not have eased my heart-sickness one whit. Crocuses! However, as I was to discover, the Canon neither believed nor disbelieved Ficino’s theories, no more than he believed nor disbelieved the contents of any of the score or so set speeches with which he had long ago armed himself, and from which he could choose a ready response to any situation. All that mattered to him was the saying, not what was said; words were the empty rituals with which he held the world at bay. Copernicus did not believe in truth. I think I have said that before.

  Giese put his soiled hand on my arm and led me along a path below the castle wall. When he had finished his dissertation on the state of my health, he paused and glanced at me with a peculiar, thoughtful look, like that of an undertaker speculatively eyeing a sick man. The last remaining patches of the morning’s mist clung about us like old rags, and the slowly ascending sun shed a damp weak light upon the battlements above. The world seemed old and tired. I wanted to find the Canon, to wrest from him his secrets, to thrust fame upon his unwilling head. I wanted action. I was young. The Bishop said:

  “You come, I believe, from Wittenberg?”

  “Yes. I am a Lutheran.”

  My directness startled him. He smiled wanly, and nodded his large head up and down very rapidly, as though to shake off that dreaded word I had uttered; he withdrew his hand carefully from my arm.

  “Quite so, my dear sir, quite so,” he said, “you are a Lutheran, as you admi- as you say. Now, I have no desire to dispute with you the issues of this tragic schism which has rent our Church, believe me. I might remind you that Father Luther was not the first to recognise the necessity for reform—but, be that as it may, we shall not argue. A man must live with his own conscience, in that much at least I would agree with you. So. You are a Lutheran. You admit it. There it rests. However, I cannot pretend that your presence in Prussia is not an embarrassment. It is—O not to me, you understand; the world pays scant heed to events here in humble Löbau. No, Herr von Lauchen, I refer to one who is dear to us both: I mean of course our domine praeceptor, Doctor Nicolas. It is to him that your presence is an embarrassment, and, perhaps, a danger even. But now I see I have offended you. Let me explain. You have not been long in Prussia, therefore you cannot be expected to appreciate the situation prevailing here. Tell me, are you not puzzled by the Doctor’s unwillingness to give his knowledge to the world, to publish his masterpiece? It would surprise you, would it not, if I were to tell you
that it is not doubt as to the validity of his conclusions that makes him hesitate, nothing like that, no—but fear. So it is, Herr von Lauchen: fear.”

  He paused again, again we paced the path in silence. I have called Giese a fool, but that was only a term of abuse: he was no fool. We left the castle walls behind, and descended a little way the wooded slope. The trees were tall. Three rabbits fled at our approach. I stumbled on a fallen bough. The pines were silvery, each single needle adorned with a delicate filigree of beaded mist. How strange, the clarity with which I remember that moment! Thus, even as the falcon plummets, the sparrow snatches a last look at her world. Bishop Giese, laying his talons on my arm again, began to chant, I think that is the word, in Latin:

  “Painful is the task I must perform, and tell to one—from Wittenberg!—of the storm of envy which surrounds our learned friend. Meinherr, I pray you, to my tale attend with caution and forbearance, and don’t feel that in these few bare facts you see revealed a plot hatched in the corridors of Rome. This evil is the doing of one alone: do you know the man Dantiscus, Ermland’s Bishop (Johannes Flachsbinder his name, a Danzig sop)? Copernicus he hates, and from jealousy these many years he has right zealously persecuted him. Why so? you ask, but to answer you, that is a task, I fear, beyond me. Why ever do the worst detest the best, and mediocrities thirst to see great minds brought low? It is the world. Besides, this son of Zelos, dim-witted churl though he be, thinks Prussia has but room for one great mind—that’s his! The fellow’s moon mad, certes. Now, to achieve his aims, and ruin our magister, he defames his name, puts it about he shares his bed with his focaria, whom he has led into foul sin to satisfy his lust. My friend, you stare, as though you cannot trust your ears. This is but one of many lies this Danziger has told! And in the eyes of all the world the Doctor’s reputation is destroyed, and mocking condemnation, he believes, would greet his book. Some years ago, at Elbing, ignorant peasants jeered a waxwork figure of Copernicus that was displayed in a carnival farce. Thus Dantiscus wins, and our friend keeps silent, fearing to trust his brilliant theories to the leering mob. And so, meinherr, the work of twoscore years lies fallow and unseen. Therefore, I beg you, do not leave us yet. We must try to make him reconsider—but hush! here is the Doctor now. Mind, do not say what secrets I have told you!—Ah Nicolas, good day.”

  We had left the wood and entered the courtyard by a little low postern gate. Had Giese not pointed him out, I would not have noticed the Canon skulking under an archway, watching us intently with a peculiar fixed grin on his grey face. Out of new knowledge, I looked upon him in a new light. Yes, now I could see in him (so I thought!) a man enfettered, whose every action was constrained by the paramount need for secrecy and caution, and I felt on his behalf a burning sense of outrage. I would have flung myself to my knees before him, had there not been still vivid in my mind the memory of a previous genuflection. Instead, I contented myself with a terrible glare, that was meant to signify my willingness to take on an army of Dantiscuses at his command. (And yet, behind it all, I was confused, and even suspicious: what was it exactly that they required of me?) I had forgotten my declared intention of leaving that day; in fact, I had said it merely to elicit some genuine response from that nightcapped oracle in my chamber, and certainly I had not imagined that this thoughtless threat would provoke the panic which apparently it had. I determined to proceed with care—but of course, like the young fool that I was, I had no sooner decided on caution than I abandoned it, and waded headlong into the mire. I said:

  “Meister, we must return to Frauenburg at once! I intend to make a copy of your great work, and take it to a printer that I know at Nuremberg, who is discreet, and a specialist in such books. You must trust me, and delay no longer!”

  In my excitement I expected some preposterously dramatic reaction from the Canon to this naked challenge to his secretiveness, but he merely shrugged and said:

  “There is no need to go to Frauenburg; the book is here.”

  I said:

  “But but but but but—!”

  And Giese said:

  “Why Nicolas—!”

  And the Canon, glancing at us both with a mixture of contempt and distaste, answered:

  “I assumed that Herr von Lauchen did not journey all the way from Wittenberg merely for amusement. You came here to learn of my theory of the revolutions of the spheres, did you not? Then so you shall. I have the manuscript with me. Come this way.”

  We went all three into the castle, and the Canon straightway fetched the manuscript from his room. The events of the morning had moved so swiftly that my poor brain, already bemused by illness, could not cope with them, and I was in state of shock—yet not so shocked that I did not note how the old man vainly tried to appear unconcerned when he surrendered to me his life’s work, that I did not feel his trembling fingers clutch at the manuscript in a momentary spasm of misgiving as it passed between us. When the deed was done he stepped back a pace, and that awful uncontrollable grin took hold of his face again, and Bishop Giese, hovering near us, gave a kind of whistle of relief, and I, fearing that the Canon might change his mind and try to snatch the thing away from me, rose immediately and made off with it to the window.

  DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM MUNDI

  —for mathematicians only—

  *

  How to express my emotions, the strange jumble of feelings kindled within me, as I gazed upon the living myth which I held in my hands, the key to the secrets of the universe? This book for years had filled my dreams and obsessed my waking hours so completely that now I could hardly comprehend the reality, and the words in the crabbed script seemed not to speak, but to sing rather, so that the rolling grandeur of the title boomed like a flourish of celestial trumpets, to the accompaniment of the wordly fiddling of the motto with its cautious admonition, and I smiled, foolishly, helplessly, at the inexplicable miracle of this music of Heaven and Earth. But then I turned the pages, and chanced upon the diagram of a universe in the centre of which stands Sol in the splendour of eternal immobility, and the music was swept away, and my besotted smile with it, and a new and wholly unexpected sensation took hold of me. It was sorrow! sorrow that old Earth should be thus deposed, and cast out into the darkness of the firmament, there to prance and spin at the behest of a tyrannical, mute god of fire. I grieved, friends, for our diminishment! O, it was not that I did not already know that Copernicus’s theory postulated a heliocentric world—everyone knew that—and anyway I had been permitted to read Melanchton’s well-thumbed copy of the Commentariolus. Besides, as everyone also knows, Copernicus was not the first to set the Sun at the centre. Yes, I had for a long time known what this Prussian was about, but it was not until that morning at Löbau Castle that I at last realised, in a kind of fascinated horror, the full consequences of this work of cosmography. Beloved Earth! he banished you forever into darkness. And yet, what does it matter? The sky shall be forever blue, and the earth shall forever blossom in spring, and this planet shall forever be the centre of all we know. I believe it.

  *

  I read the entire manuscript there and then; that is not of course to say that I read every word: rather, I opened it up, as a surgeon opens a limb, and plunged the keen blade of my intellect into its vital centres, thus laying bare the quivering arteries leading to the heart. And there, in the knotted cords of that heart, I made a strange discovery . . . but more of that presently. When at last I lifted my eyes from those pages, I found myself alone. The light was fading in the windows. It was evening. The day had departed, with Giese and Copernicus, unnoticed. My brain ached, but I forced it to think, to seek out a small persistent something which had been lodging in my thoughts since morning, biding its time. It was the memory of how, when in the courtyard I challenged him to surrender the manuscript to me, Copernicus had for an instant, just for an instant only, cast off the timorous churchman’s mask to reveal behind it an icy scorn, a cold, cruel arrogance. I did not know why I had remembered it, why it seemed so sign
ificant; I was not even sure that I had not imagined it; but it troubled me. What is it they want me to do? Go carefully, Rheticus, I told myself, hardly knowing what I meant . . .

  I found Copernicus and Giese in the great hall of the castle, seated in silence in tall carved chairs on either side of the enormous hearth, on which, despite the mildness of the evening, stacked logs were blazing fiercely. The windows, set high up in the walls, let in but little of the evening’s radiance, and in the gloom the robes of the two still figures seemed to flow and merge into the elaborate flutings of the thrones on which they sat, so that to my bruised perception they appeared limbless, a pair of severed heads, ghastly in the fire’s crimson glow. Copernicus had put himself as close to the blaze as he could manage without risking combustion, but still he looked cold. As I entered the arc of flickering firelight, I found that he was watching me. I was weary, and incapable of subtlety, and once again I ignored my own injunction to go carefully. I held up the manuscript and said:

  “I have read it, and find it is all I had expected it would be, more than I had hoped; will you allow me to take it to Nuremberg, to Petreius the printer?”

  He did not answer immediately. The silence stretched out around us until it seemed to creak. At length he said:

  “That is a question which we cannot discuss, yet.”

  At that, as though he had been given a signal, the Bishop stirred himself and put an end to the discussion (discussion!). Had I eaten? Why then, I must! He would have Raphaël bring me supper in my room, for I should retire, it was late, I was ill and in need of rest. And, like a sleepy child, I allowed myself to be led away, too tired to protest, clutching the manuscript, baba’s favourite toy, to my breast. I looked back at Copernicus, and the severed head smiled and nodded, as if to say: sleep, little one, sleep now. My room looked somehow different, but I could not say in what way, until next morning when I noticed the desk, amply stocked with writing implements and paper, which they installed without my knowing. O the cunning!