“Good morrow! I am Scharley…”
“Bbb… bbuub… bweh-bweeeh… Bweeeh…”
“As I thought. Let’s move on, Reinmar. Good morrow! I am—”
“Stop! Look where you’re treading, lunatic. On my drawings. Are you blind or what?”
Geometrical figures, graphs and columns of digits were scrawled in chalk on the rock-hard dirt floor among wisps of straw, being pored over by a grey-haired old man with a pate as shiny as an egg. Graphs, figures and digits also completely covered the wall above his pallet.
“Oh.” Scharley stepped back. “Excuse me. I understand. How could I forget? Noli turbare circulos meos.”
The old man raised his head and grinned, showing blackened teeth. “Scholars?”
“You could say that.”
“Then take your places by the pillar. The one with the omega carved upon it.”
They did so and made pallets for themselves out of straw at the foot of the pillar with the Greek letter scratched on it. They had barely completed the task when Brother Tranquillus appeared, this time in the company of several other monks in habits with a double cross. The guardians of Christ’s tomb had brought a steaming cauldron, but only allowed the patients of the tower to approach it with their bowls after a choral rendition of the Pater noster, Ave, Credo, Confiteor and Miserere. Reynevan still hadn’t grasped that this was the beginning of a ritual he would be observing for a long time. A very long time.
“The Tower of Fools,” he said, looking vacantly at the stuck-on remains of millet at the bottom of his bowl. “In Frankenstein?”
“That is correct,” confirmed Scharley, picking his teeth with a straw. “The tower is part of the Hospice of Saint George, run by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre from Nysa. Outside the town walls, by the Kłodzko Gate.”
“I know. I walked beside it. Yesterday. I think it was yesterday… How did we end up here? Why do they take us for mentally ill?”
“Somebody must have analysed our recent antics.” The penitent snorted with laughter. “No, my dear Cyprian, I was joking, we aren’t so fortunate. It isn’t just the Tower of Fools, it’s also—temporarily—an Inquisition prison because the local Dominican gaol is being rebuilt. Frankenstein has two town prisons, one in the town hall and the other by the Crooked Tower, but they’re always overcrowded. Which is why people arrested on the orders of the Holy Office are put here, in the Narrenturm.”
“That Tranquillus,” Reynevan went on, “treats us as though we’re insane.”
“Professional bias.”
“What about Samson?”
“What, what?” Scharley snorted. “They looked at his face and let him go. Ironic, eh? They let him go, taking him for an idiot, and banged us up with the nutters. To be honest, I don’t bear a grudge, I only blame myself. They wanted you, Cyprian, and no one else. The significavit only mentioned you. They locked me up because I resisted, broke a few noses, and a few kicks also found their targets. Had I kept calm, like Samson… Just between us,” he finished after a moment of silence, “I’m pinning all my hopes on him, trusting he’ll think of something and get us out. And fast. Otherwise… Otherwise, we might have problems.”
“With the Inquisition? But what will they accuse us of?”
“The problem isn’t what they accuse us of.” Scharley’s voice was extremely gloomy. “The problem is what we confess to.”
Reynevan didn’t need any explanation; he knew what it was all about. What they had overheard in the Cistercian grange meant death; death preceded by torture. No one could be allowed to find out that they knew. The pointed look the penitent directed at the Tower’s other inmates didn’t need any explanation, either. Reynevan also knew that the Inquisition customarily planted informers and agents provocateurs among its prisoners. Scharley, admittedly, had promised he would quickly unmask any spies, but recommended caution and secrecy with the other inmates, even those who appeared genuinely insane. He stressed that even they couldn’t be confided in. There was nothing to be gained by them knowing anything or having any information, he said.
“People stretched on the rack talk,” he went on. “They say a lot, reveal everything they know, mention every possible thing, for if they keep speaking they won’t be tortured.”
Reynevan grew downhearted. So visibly that Scharley finally decided to cheer him up by slapping him on the back.
“Chin up, Cyprian,” he said, consoling him. “They still haven’t come for us.”
Reynevan grew even more downhearted and Scharley gave up. He didn’t know that Reynevan wasn’t at all worried that he would reveal the intrigue he had overheard at the grange. That he was a hundredfold more terrified by the thought that he would betray Katarzyna of Biberstein.
Having rested somewhat, the two residents of the billet at the omega made further acquaintances. With mixed results. Some of the Narrenturm’s inmates didn’t want to talk, still others couldn’t, being in a state that the doctors of the Prague University termed—after the Salerno School—dementia or debilitas. Others were more forthcoming, but even they weren’t too keen on revealing their personal details, hence Reynevan gave them suitable nicknames in his mind.
Their nearest neighbour was Tomasz Alpha, for he dwelt at the foot of a pillar marked with that Greek letter and had arrived at the Tower of Fools on the day of Saint Thomas of Aquinas, the seventh of March. He didn’t reveal what he was in for or for how long, but nor did he give Reynevan the impression of being a lunatic. He called himself an inventor, but Scharley thought him a runaway monk on the basis of his speech mannerisms. Finding a hole in a monastery wall, he judged, didn’t justify the appellation of true inventiveness.
Not far from Tomasz Alpha lived the Camaldolite, beneath the letter “tau” and the inscription POENITEMINI scratched into the wall. He couldn’t conceal his clericality as his hair still hadn’t grown back over his tonsure. Nothing more was known about him, since—like a real brother from Camaldoli—he remained silent. And he bore the fasts that occurred extremely often in the Narrenturm like a true Camaldolite, without a murmur or a word of complaint.
Opposite him, two individuals who were ironically also neighbours on the outside, lived next to each other under the words LIBERA NOS DEUS NOSTER. Both denied being insane and regarded themselves as victims of deceitfully concocted intrigues. One, a town scribe, christened Bonaventure by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre on his first day, blamed his confinement on his wife, who was gladly making merry with her lover in the meanwhile. Bonaventure treated Reynevan and Scharley right at the start to a long disquisition about women, who he called base, perverse, lecherous, indecent, vile and treacherous by their very nature. The disquisition plunged Reynevan into dark recollections and even darker melancholy for a long time.
The other neighbour was nicknamed the Institor in Reynevan’s mind, since he endlessly and loudly worried about his institorium, his rich and profitable stall in the town square. His children, he claimed, had taken away his liberty by denouncing him, with the goal of seizing the stall and the profits from it. Like Bonaventure, the Institor confessed to scientific interests—both of them dabbled in astrology and alchemy. Both fell strangely silent at the sound of the word “Inquisition.”
One more citizen of Frankenstein who didn’t conceal his identity had his pallet beneath the word ARSE. This was Nicolaus Koppirnig, a mason from a nearby village and an amateur astronomer, on top of that—sadly—a taciturn, uncommunicative and unsociable character.
Not far away, by the wall and set a little apart from the scientific enclave, sat Circulos Meos—Circulos for short—the man who had shouted at Scharley. He was sitting in a pile of straw like a pelican in its nest. The impression was heightened by his bald pate and large goitre. The fact he was not dead was proved by a foul smell, the flashing of his bald pate and his ceaseless, annoying scratching with chalk on the wall or dirt floor. It was explained that he wasn’t, like Archimedes, a mechanic, that his graphs and figures served other purposes. Circul
os had been put in the nuthouse for that reason.
There was a forbidding iron cage, used as a punishment cell, next to the pallet of Isaiah, a young, apathetic fellow, christened thus for endlessly quoting from that Old Testament book. The cage was empty, and Tomasz Alpha, who had been imprisoned for the longest, had never seen anybody put into it. Brother Tranquillus, declared Alpha, was indeed a calm and very forbearing monk. Until anybody annoyed him, of course.
The person who was soon to annoy Brother Tranquillus was Normal, who continued to ignore everybody. For during morning prayers, Normal devoted himself to his favourite activity—playing with his private parts. This had not escaped the eagle eyes of the canon of the Holy Sepulchre and Normal was given a sound beating with the oaken club, which, it turned out, wasn’t just for show.
The days passed, marked by the boring rhythm of meals and prayer. The nights passed. The latter were a torment, owing both to the biting cold and the inmates’ intolerable choral snoring. The days were more bearable. At least one could talk.
“Owing to anger and envy.” Circulos moved his goitre and blinked his suppurating eyes. “I’m in here owing to human anger and the envy of my good-for-nothing friends. They hated me because I achieved what they failed to achieve.”
“Namely?” asked Scharley with interest.
“Why would I explain it to you laymen?” said Circulos, wiping chalky fingers on his smock. “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“Try us.”
“Well, if you will…” Circulos cleared his throat, picked his nose and rubbed one heel against the other. “I achieved no mean thing. I determined the precise date of the end of the world.”
“Would it be the year one thousand four hundred and twenty?” Scharley asked after a short, polite silence. “In the month of February, on the Monday after Saint Scholastica’s Day? Not especially original, if I may say so.”
“You insult me.” Circulos stuck out the rest of his belly. “I’m not just some rabid millenarian or semi-literate mystic who parrots the chiliastic rubbish of fanatics. I researched the matter sine ira et studio, on the basis of academic sources and mathematic computations. Do you know the Book of Revelation?”
“Sketchily, but yes.”
“You recall that the lamb opened the seven seals, and John saw seven angels?”
“Absolutely.”
“And the number of the sealed was one hundred and forty-four thousand, and there were twenty-four elders, and two witnesses who were given the power of prophecy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days? When you add everything together and multiply the sum by eight—the number of letters in the word ‘Apollyon’—you get… Oh, there’s no point explaining it you, you wouldn’t understand anyway. Suffice to say that the end of the world will occur in July. On the sixth of July, to be precise, in octava Apostolorum Petri et Pauli. On Friday. At noon.”
“Of what year?”
“The present, sacred one: 1425.”
“Yeees.” Scharley rubbed his chin. “There is one snag, however…”
“Namely?”
“It’s September.”
“That’s no proof,” said Circulos. He shrugged, then looked away and ostentatiously buried himself in the straw.
“I knew it was no use talking to dunces,” he snapped. “Good day.”
Nicolaus Koppirnig, the mason from Frankenstein, wasn’t talkative, but his coldness and brusqueness didn’t discourage Scharley, who was fond of conversation.
“So you are an astronomer, then,” the penitent tried again. “And you were put in the clink. Which confirms that watching the sky too closely doesn’t pay for a good Catholic. But I’ll put two and two together and get a different answer, sir. The conjunction of astronomy and gaol can only mean one thing: you questioned Ptolemy’s theory. Am I right?”
“Right about what?” snapped Koppirnig. “About conjunctions? You are. The rest, likewise. So I conclude you’re the type that’s always right. I’ve encountered people like you.”
“Certainly not like me.” The penitent smiled. “But never mind. Do you think that Ptolemy was right? What is at the centre of the universe—the Earth or the Sun?”
Koppirnig said nothing for a long time.
“Whatever wants to be, can be,” he finally said, bitterly. “How should I know? What sort of astronomer am I, what do I know? I withdraw everything, I confess to everything. I’ll do whatever they tell me to do.”
“Aha.” Scharley beamed. “So I was right! Astronomy clashed with theology? And you took fright?”
“What do you mean?” said Reynevan in astonishment. “Astronomy is a science. What does theology have to do with it? Two and two is always four—”
“I thought so, too,” Koppirnig interrupted gloomily. “But the reality is different.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reinmar, Reinmar.” Scharley smiled in pity. “You’re as naive as a child. Adding two and two doesn’t contradict the Bible, which can’t be said about the rotation of heavenly bodies. You can’t prove that the Earth orbits a motionless Sun when it’s written in the Bible that Joshua ordered the Sun to stand still. The Sun. Not the Earth. Therefore—”
“Therefore,” the mason interrupted even more gloomily, “one must arm oneself with the instinct of self-preservation. Regarding the heavens, the astrolabe and telescope may err, but the Bible is infallible. The heavens—”
“He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth,” Isaiah interrupted in mid-sentence, snatched from his lethargy by the sound of the word “Bible,” “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”
“Well, well.” Koppirnig nodded. “He’s a nutcase, but he knows.”
“Exactly,” said Scharley.
“Exactly what?” Koppirnig lost his temper. “Are you so learned? I shall withdraw everything. I’ll confirm anything they want, as long as they release me. That the Earth is flat and Jerusalem is its geometrical centre. That the Sun describes a circle around the Pope, who is the centre of the universe. I’ll confess everything. Besides, perhaps they’re right? Their bloody institution has existed for almost fifteen hundred years. For that reason alone, they can’t be mistaken.”
“Since when,” Scharley squinted, “have dates cured stupidity?”
“Oh, to Hell with you!” cried the mason angrily. “Get tortured and burned at the stake yourself! I retract everything! I say: it does NOT move. Eppur NON si muove!”
After a moment’s silence, he added bitterly, “What do I know, anyway? What kind of astronomer am I? I’m a simple fellow.”
“Don’t believe him, Master Scharley,” said Bonaventure, who had just awoken from a nap. “He’s saying that now because he fears the stake. Everybody in Frankenstein knows what kind of astronomer he is, because he’s on his roof with his astrolabe every night, counting the stars. And he’s not the only one in the family—all the Koppirnigs are stargazers. Even the youngest, little Nicolaus, who folk tease by saying his first word was ‘mama,’ his second ‘yum-yum’ and his third ‘heliocentrism.’”
The earlier dusk fell, the colder it became and the more the inmates were attracted by conversations and disputes. They talked and talked and talked, sometimes to each other, and sometimes to themselves.
“They’ll squander my institorium, reduce it to nothing. They’ll ruin me. The youth of today!”
“And every woman, every single one, is a harlot. By deed or by choice.”
“The Apocalypse will come, naught will remain. Absolutely nothing. Why would I explain it you laymen?”
“I tell you, they’ll finish us off sooner. The Inquisitor will come. They’ll torture us then burn us. And it serves us sinners right, for we’ve offended against God.”
“Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the Law of the Lord of Hosts—”
&
nbsp; “Hear that? He’s a nutcase, but he knows.”
“Exactly.”
“The problem is,” said Koppirnig, lost in thought, “we’ve done too much thinking.”
“Quite, quite,” confirmed Tomasz Alpha. “Hence we shall not avoid punishment.”
“… And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be punished.”
“Hear that? He’s a nutcase, but he knows.”
In the distance, by the wall, those suffering from dementia and debilitas gibbered and blabbered. And alongside, on his pallet, Normal was jerking off, grunting and groaning.
The weather grew even colder in October. And then, on the sixteenth—a calendar that Scharley had drawn on the wall in chalk stolen from Circulos allowed them to keep track—a familiar face appeared in the Narrenturm.
Their acquaintance was dragged into the Tower not by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, but by soldiers in mail shirts and short quilted jerkins. He resisted, was hit a few times on the back of the neck and thrown down the stairs. He tumbled and ended up spreadeagled on the dirt floor. The inmates watched him lying there, and saw Frater Tranquillus approach him with his club.
“Today,” he said, first customarily greeting him in the name of Saint Dymphna, the patron and intercessor of the mentally ill, “is Saint Gall’s Day. But there’ve been so many Galls here, we won’t have another one… Today is also the day of Saint Mommolem, so you will be called ‘Mommolem,’ brother. Clear?”
The man lying on the floor raised himself up on his elbows and stared at the canon of the Holy Sepulchre. For a moment, it looked as though he would comment in apt, succinct words. Tranquillus probably also expected that, because he raised his truncheon and took a step back to get a better swing. But the man only gnashed his teeth and muttered under his breath.
The Tower of Fools Page 49
