John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

“ Maestro , I am no astronomer, nor a mathematician either.”

“Yes.” The Professor smiled again. “You are a dabbler, as you say.” He seemed to think that he had made a joke. Nicolas grinned greyly. They came out on the steps above the sunny piazza. The bells of San Pietro began to ring, a great bronze booming high in the air, and flocks of pigeons blossomed into the blue above the golden domes. Novara mused dreamily on the crowds below in the square, and then abruptly turned and with what passed in him for animation said:

“Come to my house, will you? Come today. There are some people I think you might be interested to meet. Shall we say at noon? Until noon, then. Vale. ” And he went off quickly down the steps.

Well what—?

*

“Well, what happened?” Andreas asked.

“Where?”

“At Novara’s!”

“O, that.” They sat in the dining-hall of the German natio , where they lodged; it was evening, and beyond the grimy windows the Palazzo Communale brooded in late sunlight. The hall was crowded with crop-headed Germans at feed. Nicolas’s head pained him. “I do not know what Novara wants with me, I am not his kind at all. There were some others there, Luca Guarico, Jacob Ziegler, Calcagnini the poet—”

Andreas whistled softly. “Well well, I am impressed. The cream of Italy’s intellectuals, eh?” He smirked. “—And you, brother.”

“And I, as you say. Andreas, have you been putting about those few things I told you of my ideas on astronomy?”

“Tell me what happened at Novara’s.”

“—Because I wish you would not; I would rather you would not do that.”

“Tell me.”

*

He was shown into a courtyard with orange bushes in earthenware pots; a fountain plashed, playing a faint cool music. The guests were gathered on the terrace, lolling elegantly on couches and dainty cane chairs, sipping white wine from long-stemmed goblets of Murano crystal and lazily conversing. Nicolas was reminded of those cages of pampered quail that were to be seen hanging from the porticoes of the better houses of the city. Diffident, ill at ease, acutely aware of his raw-boned Prussian gracelessness, he stood mute and nervously smiling as the Professor introduced him. Novara was very much the patrician here, with his fine town house behind him. He affected a scissors-shaped lorgnon with which he made much play. This article, together with the brilliant light, the pools of violet shadow on the terrace, the sparkling glass, the watermusic and the perfume of the orange bushes, contrived to create an air of theatre. Elbing. Elbing? Nicolas wondered vaguely why he should suddenly have thought of that far northern town.

How did he like Italy? The climate, ah yes. And what subjects was he studying here? Indeed? There was a silence, and someone coughed behind gloved fingers. Their duty done, they turned back to the conversation that evidently his arrival had interrupted. Celio Calcagnini, a willowy person no longer in the first flower of youth, said languidly:

“The question, then, is what can be achieved? Bologna is not Firenze, and I think we all agree that our Don John Bentivoglio is not, and never could be, a Magnifico.” All softly laughed and shook their heads; the jibe against the Duke of Bologna seemed to be a familiar one. “And yet, my friends,” the poet continued, “we must work with the material to hand, however poor it is. The wise man knows that compromise is sometimes the only course — this is an excellent vintage, Domenico, by the way. I envy your cellar.”

Novara, leaning at ease against a white pillar, lifted his glass and bowed sardonically. A sleek black hound, which Nicolas with a start noticed now for the first time, lay at the Professor’s feet, sphinxlike, panting, with a fanged ferocious grin. Jacob Ziegler, astronomer of some repute and author of a recent much-admired work on Pliny, was a dark and brooding lean young blade with a pale long face and flashing eyes and a pencil-line moustache. He was exquisitely if a trifle foppishly attired in rubious silk and calfskin; a wide-brimmed velvet hat lay beside him like a great soft black exotic bird. The cane chair on which he sat crackled angrily as he leaned forward and cried:

“Compromise! Caution! I tell you we must act! Times do not change of themselves, but are changed by the actions of men. Bologna is not Firenze, just so; but what is Firenze? A town of fat shopkeepers besotted by soft living.” He glanced darkly at Calcagnini, who raised his eyebrows mildly and toyed with the stem of his wineglass. “They gobble up art and science as they would sugared marchpane, and congratulate themselves on their culture and liberality. Culture? Pah! And their artists and their scientists are no better. A gang of panders, theirs is the task of supplying the pretty baubles to mask the running sores of the poxed courtesan that is their city. Why, I should a thousand times rather we were the outcasts that we are than be as they, pampered adorners of decadence!”

“Decadence,” Novara softly echoed, gingerly tasting the word. Calcagnini looked up.

“A pretty speech, Jacob,” he said, smiling, “but I think I resent your imputations. Compromise likes me no better than it does you, yet I know that there is a time for everything, for caution and for action. If we move now we can only make our state worse than it already is. And come to that, what, pray, would you have us do? The Bentivoglio rule in this city is unshakeable. There is peace here, while all Italy is in turmoil — O I know, I know you would not call it peace, but besottedness. Yet call it what you will, our citizens, like their fellows in Firenze, are well fed and therefore well content to leave things just as they are. That is the equation; it is as simple as that. You may harangue them all you wish, berate them for their decadence, but they will only laugh at you — that is, so long as you are no more than a crazy astronomer with your head in the clouds. Come down to earth and meddle in their affairs, then it will be another matter. Fra Girolamo, the formidable Savonarola, was cherished for a time by Firenze. The city writhed in holy ecstasy under his lash, until he began to frighten them, and then — why, then they burnt him. You see? No no, Jacob, there will be no autos da fe in Bologna.”

Ziegler pouted, and a pretty flush spread upward from his cheeks to his pale forehead. “Are you comparing us to that mad monk, that creature , who castigated Plato as a source of immorality? He deserved burning, I say!”

Calcagnini smiled again tolerantly.

“No, my dear Jacob,” he murmured, “of course I make no such comparison. I am merely trying to demonstrate to you that precipitate and rash action on our part can lead us straight to ruin.”

“—And further,” Ziegler continued hotly, “why do you assume that the power of the Bentivoglios can be challenged only from within Bologna’s walls?”

The hound shut its jaws with a wet snap and rose and loped leanly away. There was an awkward silence. Ziegler glared about him haughtily, flushed and defiant. “Well?” he asked, of no one in particular. Novara frowned at him with pursed lips, and very slightly shook his head in wordless mild reproof. A scrawny individual, rejoicing in the name of Nono, laughed squeakily.

“L-let us hear the results of L–Luca’s 1-1-labours!” he ventured brightly. The others paid no heed to him, being engrossed in disapproving silently of whatever indiscretion it was that the unrepentant Ziegler had committed, and Nono turned unhappily to Nicolas and said, very loudly and deliberately, as if addressing a stone-deaf idiot: “H-he has made a horosc-sc-scope of Cesare, you see. Il Valentino , as he is called, ha ha.” Nicolas nodded, smiling hugely, miming extravagant gratitude and encouragement. “Bo-Bo-Borgia, that is,” Nono finished lamely, and frowned, searching it seemed for that last elusive word, the stammerer’s obsession, that surely would make all come marvellously clear.