John Banville - Kepler

"Ah, there's nothing in it," said Heinrich. "And she's better value than your fancy physicians, I can tell you. " Resentment was making him hoarse, Kepler noted wistfully: why had such simple loyalty been denied to him? "She made up a stuff for my leg that did more for it than that army doctor ever did. "

"Your leg?"

"Aye, there's a weeping wound that I got in Hungary. It's not much."

"You must let me look at it for you. "

Heinrich glanced at him sharply. "No need for that. She takes care of it."

Their mother shuffled out of the kitchen. "Now where, " she murmured, "where did I leave that down, I wonder." She pointed her thin little nose at Barbara. "Have you seen it?"

Barbara ignored her.

"What is it, mother," Kepler said.

She smiled innocently. "Why, I had it just a moment ago, and now I have lost it, my little bag of bats' wings. "

A crackling came from the kitchen, where the two hags could be seen, shrieking and hilariously shoving each other. Even the cat might have been laughing.

Regina came tentatively down the stairs. "You are not fighting over me, surely?" They looked at her blankly. Frau Kepler, grinning, scuttled back into the kitchen.

"What does she mean, bats' wings?" said Barbara.

"A joke," Kepler snapped, "a joke, for God's sake!"

"Bats' wings indeed. What next?"

"She's nobody's fool, " Heinrich put in stoutly, trying not to laugh.

Kepler flung himself on to a chair by the window and drummed his fingers on the table. "We'll put up at an inn tonight, " he muttered. "There is a place out toward Ellmend-ingen. And tomorrow we'll start for home. "

Barbara smiled her triumph, but had the good sense to say nothing. Kepler scowled at her. The three old women came out of the kitchen. There was a fringe of foam on the fat one's moustache. The thin one made to address the great man sunk in gloom by the window, but Frau Kepler gave her a push from the rear. "O! hee hee, your ma, sir, I think, wants to be rid of us!"

"Bah, " Frau Kepler said, and shoved her harder. They went out. "Well," the old woman said, turning to her son, "you've driven them away. Are you satisfied now?"

Kepler stared at her. "I said not a word to them."

"That's right."

"You would be better off if they did not come back, the likes ofthat."

"And what do you know about it?"

"I know them, I know their sort! You-"

"Ah, be quiet. What do you know, coming here with your nose in the air. We are not good enough for you, that's what it is."

Heinrich coughed. "Now mam. Johann is only talking to you for your own good."

Kepler considered the ceiling. "These are evil times, mother. You should be careful. "

"And so should you!"

He shrugged. When he was a boy he had nursed the happy notion of them all perishing cleanly and quickly some night, in an earthquake, say, leaving him free and unburdened. Barbara was watching him, Regina also.

"We had a burning here last Michaelmas, " said Heinrich, by way of changing the subject. "By God," slapping his knee, "the old dame fairly danced when the fire got going. Didn't she, mam?"

"Who was it?" said Kepler.

"Damned old fool it was," Frau Kepler put in quickly, glaring at Heinrich. "Gave a philtre to the pastor's daughter, no less. She deserved burning, that one. "

Kepler put a hand over his eyes. "There will be more burnings."

His mother turned on him. "Aye, there will! And not only here. What about that place where you are, that Bohemia, with all those papists, eh? I've heard they burn people by the bushel over there. You should be careful." She stumped off into the kitchen. Kepler followed her. "Coming here and preaching to me," she muttered. "What do you know? I was healing the sick when you were no bigger than that child out there, cacking in your pants. And look at you now, living in the Emperor's pocket and drawing up magic squares for him. I dabble with the world, you keep your snout turned to the sky and think you're safe. Bah! You make me sick, you."

"Mother…"

"Well?"

"I worry for you, mother, that's all."

She looked at him.

All outside was immanent with a kind of stealthy knowing-ness. He stood for a while by thefountain in the marketplace. The stone gargoyles had an air of suppressed glee, spouting fatly from pursed green lips as if it were an elaborate foolery they would abandon once he turned his back. Grandfather Sebaldus used to insist that one of these stone faces had been carved in his likeness. Kepler had always believed it. Familiarity rose up all round him like a snickering ghost. What did he know? Was it possible for life to go on, his own life, without his active participation, as the body's engine continues to work while the mind sleeps? As he walked now he tried to weigh himself, squinting suspiciously at his own dimensions, looking for the telltale bulge where all that secret life might be stored. The murky emotions called forth by Regina 's betrothal were only a part of it: what other extravagances had been contracted for, and at what cost? He felt somehow betrayed and yet not displeased, like an old banker ingeniously embezzled by a beloved son. A warm waft of bread assailed him as he passed by the baker's shop; the baker, all alone, was pummelling a gigantic wad of dough. From an upstairs window a servant girl flung out an exclamation of dirty water, barely missing Kepler. He glared up, and for a moment she goggled at him, then covered her mouth with her fingers and turned laughing to someone unseen behind her in the room, the son of the house, Harry Voliger, seventeen and prodigiously pimpled, creeping toward her with trembling hands… Kepler walked on, brooding over all those years of deceptively balanced books.

He gained the common. The evening rested here, bronzed and quietly breathing, basking like an exhausted acrobat in the afterglow of marvellous exploits of light and weather. The elm tree hung intent above its own reflection in the pond, majestically listening. The children were still here. They greeted him with sullen glances, wishing not to know him: they had been having fun. Susanna slowly ambled away with her hands clasped behind her, smiling back in a kind of blissful idiocy at a file of confused and comically worried ducklings scrambling at her heels. Friedrich tottered to the water's edge carrying a mighty rock. His shoes and stockings were soaked, and he had managed to get mud on his eyebrows. The rock struck the water with a flat smack. "Look at the crown, papa, look look!-did you see it?"

"That's the king, all right," said Heinrich. He had come to fetch the children back. "Hejumps up when you throw something in, and you can see his crown with all the diamonds on it. That right, Johann? I told him that."

"I don't want to go home," the child said, working one foot lovingly into the mud and plucking it out again with a delicious sucking sound. "I want to stay here with Uncle Heinrich and my grandma. " His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "They have a

Pig-"

The surface of the pond smoothed down its ruffled silks.

Tiny translucent flies were weaving an invisible net among the reflected branches of the elm, and skimmers dashed out from the shallows on legs so delicate they did not more than dent the surface of the water. Myriad and profligate life! Kepler sat on the grass. It had been a long day, busy with small discoveries. What was he to do about Regina? And what of his mother, dabbling still in dangerous arts? What was he to do. He remembered, as if the memory might mean something, Felix the Italian dancing with his drunken whores in a back lane on Kleinseit. The great noisome burden of things nudged him, life itself tipping his elbow. He smiled, gazing up into the branches. Was it possible, was this, was this happiness?