John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

“What? What is curious? Tell me.”

“O, nothing. They are praying to Mercury, you say; but I am thinking that Mercury is the Hermes of the Greeks, who in turn is the Egyptian Thoth, whose wisdom was handed down to us, through the priests of the Nile, by Hermes Trismegistus. Therefore by a roundabout way your villagers are praying to that magus.” He looked up mildly. “Is that not curious?”

“The fisherfolk cannot work in this weather,” Girolamo said. “Three of their men have been lost on the lake.”

“Yes? But then fishermen are always being drowned. It is, so to speak, what they are for. All things, and all men, however humble, have their part to play in the great scheme.”

“That is somewhat heartless, surely?”

“Would you not say honest , rather? This sudden concern of yours comes strangely from one who lives by the labour of the common people. Look at this fish here, so impeccably prepared, so tastefully arranged: has it not occurred to you that those fishermen may have perished so that you might sit down to this splendid dinner?”

Guido, the stooped steward, paused in his quaking progress around the table and peered at him intently. Girolamo had turned pale about the lips, but he smiled and said only:

“Do I deserve this, Nicolas, really? — Guido, you may go now, thank you.” The old man departed with a dazed look, shocked and amazed it seemed at the suggestion that his master should concern himself with housekeeping . Girolamo’s hand trembled as he poured the wine. “Must you make a fool of me before the servants?”

Nicolas put down his knife and laughed. “You see? You are less anxious for the fate of fishermen than for the good opinion of your servants!”

“You twist everything I say, everything!” Suddenly the Italian’s poise had collapsed entirely, and for a moment he was a spoilt petulant boy. Nicolas, intensely gratified, smiled with his teeth. He watched the other closely, with a kind of detached curiosity, wondering if he might be about to break down and weep in fury and frustration. But Girolamo did not weep, and sighed instead and murmured: “What do you want from me, Nicolas, more than I have already given?”

“Why nothing, my dear friend, nothing at all.” But that was not true: he wanted something, he did not know precisely what, but something large, vivid, outrageous — violence perhaps, terrible insult, a hideous blood-boltered wounding that would leave them both whimpering in final irremediable humiliation. Both, yes. There must be no victor. They must destroy each other, that is, that part of each that was in the other, for only by mutual destruction would he be freed. He understood none of this, he was too crazed with rage and impatience to try to understand, nevertheless he knew it to be valid. Frantically he cast about for a further weapon to thrust into the shuddering flesh. “My theory is almost complete, you know,” he said, shouted almost, with a kind of ghastly constricted cheerfulness.

Girolamo glanced up uneasily. “Your theory?”

“Yes yes, my theory of planetary motion, my refutation of Ptolemy. Ptolemy. .” He seemed to gag on the name. “Have I not told you about it? Let me tell you about it. Ptolemy, you see—”

“Nicolas.”

“—Ptolemy, you see, misled us, or we misled ourselves, it hardly matters which, into believing that the Almagest is an explanation, a representation— vorstellung , you know the German term? — for what is real, but the truth is, the truth is that Ptolemaic astronomy is nothing so far as existence is concerned; it is only convenient for computing the nonexistent.” He paused, panting. “What?”

Girolamo shook his head. “Nothing. Tell me about your theory.”

“You do not believe it, do you? I mean you do not think that I am capable of formulating a theory which shall reveal the eternal truths of the universe; you do not believe that I am capable of greatness. Do you? ”

“Perhaps, Nicolas, it is better to be good than great?”

“You do not believe! — ”

“—I believe that if there are eternal truths, and I am not convinced of it, then they can only be known, but not expressed.” He smiled. “And I believe that you and I should not fight.”

“You! You you you— I amuse you, do I not? I am kept for the fine sport I provide: what matter if it rain, Koppernigk will cut a merry caper and keep us in good spirits.” He had leapt up from the table, and was prancing furiously about the room in what indeed looked like a grotesque comic dervish dance of pain and loathing. “O, he’s a jolly fellow, old Koppernigk, old Nuncle Nick!” Girolamo would not look at him, and at last, trembling, he sat down again and held his face in his hands.

They were silent. Greenish rainlight draped them about. The trees beyond the window throbbed and thrashed. Presently Girolamo said:

“You wrong me, Nicolas; I have never laughed at you. We are made differently. I cannot take the world so seriously as you do. It is a lack in me, perhaps. But I am not the dunderhead you like to think me. Have you ever, once, shown even the mildest interest in my concerns? I am a physician, that I take seriously. My work on contagion, the spread of diseases, this is not without value. Medicine is a science of the tangible, you see. I deal with what is here, with what ails men; if I were to discover thereby one of your eternal truths, why, I think I should not notice having done it. Are you listening? I express it badly, I know, but I am trying to teach you something. But then, I suppose you cannot believe that I am capable of teaching you anything. It is no matter. Do you want to know what I am currently embarked upon? I am writing a poem — yes, a poem — dealing with the pox! But you do not want to know, do you? Remember, Nicolas, the morning we met in the market place in Padua? I told you I was returning from a debauch; not so. I had gone there to study the methods of sanitation, or I should say the lack of such, in the meat market. Yes, laugh—” It had been hardly a laugh, rather a hollow retching noise. “—How prosaic, you will say, how comic even. That is why I lied to you that morning. You wanted me to be a rake, a rich wastrel, something utterly different from yourself: a happy fool. And I obliged you. I have been lying ever since. So you see, Nicolas, you are not the only one who fears to be thought dull, who is afraid to be ridiculous.” He paused. “Love. .” It was as if he were turning up the word gingerly with the toe of his shoe to see what outlandish things might be squirming underneath. “You drove Tadzio away.” There was no trace of accusation in his tone, only sadness, and a faint wonderment. Nicolas, still cowering behind his hands, ground his teeth until they ached. He was in pain, he thought it was pain, until late that night when the word was redefined for him, and pain took on a wholly new meaning. Girolamo’s door was ajar, and there were sounds, awful, vaguely familiar. The scene was illuminated by the faint flickering light of an untrimmed lamp, and in a mirror on the far wall all was eerily repeated in miniature. Girolamo with his long legs splayed was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head thrown back and his lips open in an O of ecstasy, a grotesque and yet mysteriously lovely stranger, his blurred gaze fixed sightlessly on the shadowy ceiling. Ah! he cried softly, Ah! and suddenly his body seemed to buckle, and reaching out with frenzied fingers he grasped by the hair the serving girl kneeling before him and plunged his shuddering cock into her mouth. Look! The girl squirmed, moaning and gagging. Girolamo twined his legs about her thighs. Thus, locked together in that monstrous embrace like some hideous exhibit in a bestiary, they began to rock slowly back and forth, and with them the whole room seemed to writhe and sway crazily in the shaking lamplight. Nicolas shut his eyes. When he opened them again it was finished. Girolamo gazed at him with a look of mingled desolation and defiance, and of utter finality. The slattern turned away and spat into the darkness. Nicolas retreated, and closed the door softly.