John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

“Paracelsus says,” he said, “that in the scale of things man occupies the centre, that he is the measure of all things, being the point of equilibrium between that which is great and that which is small.”

Professor Brudzewski was staring at him.

“Paracelsus? Who is this? He is mad, surely. God is the measure of all things, and only God can comprehend the world. What you seem to suggest, young man, with your principal thing , smacks of blasphemy therefore.”

“Blablablasphemy?” Nicolas bleated. “Surely not. Did you yourself not say that in Ptolemy we find the solution to the mysteries of the universe?”

“That was a manner of speaking, no more.”

The door behind them opened and Andreas entered softly. Nicolas squirmed, drenched with sweat. The conspirators, without seeming to move, were yet bearing down upon him inexorably. He felt a dismayed sense of doom, like one who hears the ice shattering behind him as he careers with slow, mad inevitability out into the frozen lake.

“But magister , you said—!”

“Yes yes yes yes, quite — I know what I said.” The old man glared at the floor, and gave it a whack with his stick — take that , you! “Listen to me: you are confusing astronomy with philosophy, or rather that which is called philosophy today, by that Dutchman, and the Italians and their like. You are asking our science to perform tasks which it is incapable of performing. Astronomy does not describe the universe as it is, but only as we observe it. That theory is correct, therefore, which accounts for our observations. Ptolemy’s theory is perfectly, almost perfectly valid insofar as pure astronomy is concerned, because it saves the phenomena. This is all that is asked of it, and all that can be asked, in reason. It does not discern your principal thing, for that is not to be discerned, and the astronomer who claims otherwise will be hissed off the stage!”

“Are we to be content then,” Nicolas cried, “are we to be content with mere abstractions? Columbus has proved that Ptolemy was mistaken as to the dimensions of the Earth; shall we ignore Columbus?”

“An ignorant sailor, and a Spaniard. Pah!”

“He has proved it, sir—!” He lifted a hand to his burning brow; calm, he must keep calm. The room seemed full of turbulence and uproar, but it was only the tumult within him dinning in his ears. Those three were still advancing steadily, and Andreas was at his back doing he did not wish to imagine what. The Professor swung himself on his stick in a furious circle around the table, so stooped now that it appeared he might soon, like some fabulous serpent, clamp his teeth upon his own nether regions and begin to devour himself in his rage. Nicolas, gobbling and clucking excitedly, pursued him at a hesitant hop.

“Proof?” the old man snapped. “Proof? A ship sails a certain distance and returns, and the captain comes ashore and agitates the air briefly with words; you call this proof ? By what immutable standards is this a refutation of Ptolemy? You are a nominalist, young man, and you do not even know it.”

“I a nominalist— I ? Do you not merely say the name of Ptolemy and imagine that all contrary arguments are thus refuted? No no, magister ; I believe not in names, but in things. I believe that the physical world is amenable to physical investigation, and if astronomers will do no more than sit in their cells counting upon their fingers then they are shirking their responsibility!”

The Professor halted. He was pale, and his head trembled alarmingly on its frail stalk of neck, yet he sounded more puzzled than enraged when he said:

“Ptolemy’s theory saves the phenomena, I have said so already; what other responsibility should it have?”

Tell him. Tell him.

“Knowledge, magister , must become perception. The only acceptable theory is that one which explains the phenomena, which explains. . which. .” He stared at the Professor, who had begun to shake all over, while out of his pinched nostrils there came little puffs of an extraordinary harsh dry noise: he was laughing! Suddenly he turned, and pointed with his stick and asked:

“What do you say, young fellow? Let us hear your views.”

Andreas leaned at ease by the window with his arms folded and his face lifted up to the light. A handful of rain glistened on the glass, and a breeze in silence shook the blossoms of the cherry tree. The unutterable beauty of the world pierced Nicolas’s sinking heart. His brother pondered a moment, and then with the faintest of smiles said lightly:

“I say, magister , that we must hold fast to sanity and Aristotle.”

It meant nothing, of course, but it sounded well; O yes, it sounded well. Professor Brudzewski nodded his approval.

“Ah yes,” he murmured. “Just so.” He turned again to Nicolas. “I think you have been too much influenced by our latterday upstarts, who imagine that they can unravel the intricacies of God’s all-good creation. You spoke of Regiomontanus: I studied under that great man, and I can assure you that he would have scorned these wild notions you have put forth today. You question Ptolemy? Mark this: to him who thinks that the ancients are not to be entirely trusted, the gates of our science are certainly closed. He will lie before those gates and spin the dreams of the deranged about the motion of the eighth sphere, and he will get what he deserves for believing that he can lend support to his own hallucinations by slandering the ancients. Therefore take this young man’s sound advice, and hold fast to sanity.”

Nicolas in his dismay felt that he must be emitting a noise, a thin piercing shriek like that of chalk on slate. There was a distinct sensation of shock at the base of his spine, as if he had sat down suddenly without looking on the spot from whence a chair had been briskly removed. The three conspirators, crowding at his shoulder, regarded him with deep sadness. They were at once solicitous and sinister. The one with the warts kept his face turned away, unable to look full upon such folly. Andreas, laughing silently, said softly in his brother’s ear:

“ Bruder, du hast in der Scheisse getreppen .”

And the fat conspirator giggled. Behind the screens in the hall the secret watcher waited. It was of course — of course! — the green girl. The Professor peered at her balefully, and turning to the brothers he sighed and said:

“Gentlemen, you must forgive me my daughter. The wench is mad.”

He shook his stick at her and she retreated, harlequinned by crisscross shadows, pursued by the conspirators scurrying on tiptoe, twittering, to the stairs, where the little man in the plumed hat waited among other, vaguer enigmas. All bowed and turned, ascended slowly into the gloom, and vanished.

Professor Brudzewski impatiently bade the brothers good day — but not before he had invited Andreas to attend his lectures. Grey rain was falling on Cracow.

“What? — spend my mornings listening to that old cockerel droning on about the planets and all that? Not likely, brother; I have better things to do.”

*

Nicolas arrived in Torun at September’s end. The house in St Anne’s Lane received him silently, solicitously, like a fellow mourner. Old Anna and the other servants were gone now, and there was a new steward in charge, a surly fellow, one of the Bishop’s men. He followed Nicolas about the house with a watchful suspicious eye. The sunny autumn day outside was all light and distance, and above the roofs and spires a cloud, a ship in air, sailed gravely at the wind’s pace across a sky immensely high and blue. The leaves of the linden were turning.

“Build a fire, will you. I am cold.”