John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

Only rarely did he travel beyond the environs of Frauenburg. He liked the town. It was old, sleepy, safe, it reminded him of his birthplace; it was enough. Once he journeyed to Torun and called upon the Gertner household, and to Kulm to see Barbara at the convent. Neither visit was a success. Barbara and he still could not cope with each other as adults, and Katharina. . was still Katharina. He resolved to venture forth no more, and gently refused the invitations of his colleagues to accompany them on their frequent roistering rounds of the diocese. He had at last, so it seemed to him, come to a dead halt. The waves of the world broke in storm and clamour far above the pool of stillness in which he floated.

*

But he was not left entirely unmolested. Ripples slithered down and stirred the filth at the bottom of his pool. He heard of the death of Rabe, poor Corvinus, on the very day that the copy of the Simocatta translations that he had sent to Bishop Lucas was returned, unread and unremarked, from Heilsberg. Then Max appeared one evening, sheepish and sullen; Andreas, he said, had gone back to Italy, with twelve hundred Hungarian gold florins in his belt, entrusted to him for ecclesiastical purposes by the Frauenburg Chapter.

“ What! ” The Canon stared. “What are you saying? Was he here? When was he here?”

Max shrugged. “Aye, he was here. They gave him the gold. He’s gone off. Said I could go to the devil. Your nuncle gave him monies too, to be rid of him. A bad lot, your brother, if you’ll permit me say it, master.”

The Canon sat down. “Twelve hundred gold florins!” That was bad, but worse, far worse, was that Andreas had been in Frauenburg and no one had thought to warn him. (Warn? He turned the word this way and that, scrutinising it.)

*

He was not to have peace, that much was clear. No matter how far he fled he would be followed. Mysterious emissaries were sent to him, cunningly disguised. The most innocent-seeming stranger, or even someone he thought he knew, might suddenly by a look, a word, deliver the secret message: beware. He had rid his life of everything that could have brought him comfort, but evidently that was not enough, renunciation was not enough. Was passivity, then, his crime? He set himself to work on behalf of the Chapter, accepting only the most servile and distasteful of tasks. He wrote letters, collected rents, drew up reports that no one read; he rode the length and breadth of the diocese to deal with minute matters, frenziedly, like a deckhand racing about a sinking ship vainly plugging leaks that opened again as soon as they were stanched. Now the Chapter became finally convinced that he was a lunatic. He negotiated, almost on his knees, with sneering officials from Cracow and Königsberg. And he treated the sick. Even they sometimes to his horror revealed a treacherous knowing.

It was strange: the people had such faith in him. They sent him their sickest, their hopeless cases, leprous children, wasting brides, the old. He could do nothing, yet he continued doggedly to advise and admonish, making passes in the air, frowning under the weight of a wholly spurious wisdom. The more outlandish his treatment, and more grotesque the ingredients of the potions he poured down their throats, the more satisfied they seemed. Why, some even recovered! He gained quite a reputation throughout Ermland. Yet not for a moment did he doubt that he was a fake.

There was a young girl, Alicia her name, she could not have been more than fifteen, a slender delicate child. She was brought to him one day in April. The air was drenched with sun and rain, cloudshadows skimmed the bright Baltic. She wore a green gown. The tower did not know what to do with her: such loveliness was more than those grim grey stones could cope with. Her father was an over-dressed faintly ridiculous fat man, a fodder merchant and a member of the town council. He owned a wooden house within the walls and a vineyard in the suburbs. His people, he said, hailed from Lower Saxony, a fact which he seemed to consider impressive. He let it be known that he could read, and also write; he carefully avoided meeting the Canon’s eye directly. The mother was a large sad timid woman in black, with a broad pale face all puffed and wrinkled as if perpetually anticipating tears. They were both elderly. Alicia had come, they confided, a gift from God, just when they had at last given up all hope of issue; and they looked at each other shyly, in wonder, and then at their daughter with such anguished tenderness that the Canon was forced to turn away, the celibate’s bitterness rising in him like bile.

“Why have you come to me?”

“She is not well, Father, we think,” the merchant answered. He hesitated, and looked to his wife. She wrung her pale heavy hands, and her lips trembled. She said:

“She has a. . a rash, Father, and there is a flux—”

“Please, do not call me Father, I am not a priest.” He had meant to be kind, to put them at their ease, but succeeded only in intimidating them further. He was himself uneasy. He wanted to walk out quickly now and abandon this fat fodder merchant and his sorrowful wife and ailing daughter, to escape. A handful of bright rain clattered against the window. The sea sparkled. He disliked springtime, unsettling season. With a thumb and finger under her chin he lifted the child’s face and studied it silently for a moment. A faint blush spread upwards from her slender inviolate throat. She was afraid of him also. Or was she? It seemed to him that he detected fleetingly in those exquisite velvety dark eyes a cold and calculating sardonic look, piercing and familiar. He stepped away from her, frowning.

“Come,” he said. The mother moaned faintly in distress and made as if to touch her daughter. Alicia did not look at her. “Come, child, do not be afraid.”

He led her up the narrow stairs to his observatory. (The sick were suitably cowed by the astrolabe and quadrant and all those dusty tomes.) Today however it was not the patient who was the most apprehensive, but the physician. The girl’s strange closed silence was disturbing. She seemed to be turned inward somehow, away from the world, as if she were the carrier of a secret that made her inner self wholly sufficient, as if she were the initiate of a cult.

“Where have you this rash, child?”

Still she said nothing, but stood a moment apparently debating within herself, then leaned down quickly and lifted up the hem of her skirts. He was not surprised; he was appalled, even frightened, yes, but not surprised. A carrier she was, certainly. Now he knew the cult into which she had been initiated. How strange: the sun was on the Baltic, the lindens were in bud, and water and air and earth trembled with the complicity of the awakening season’s fire, and yet this young girl was infected. Once again he was struck by the failure of things and times to connect. The world was there, Alicia was here, and between the two the chasm yawned. She was watching him out of those blank exquisite eyes without fear or shame, but with a kind of curiosity. There, between seraphic face and that dreadful flower blossoming in secret inside her young girl’s frail thighs, was yet another failure of connection.

“What man have you been with?” he asked.

She let fall the hem of her gown and with prim little swooping movements smoothed the wrinkles carefully out of the green silk.

“No man,” she said. “I have been with no man, Father.”

“Odysseus then,” the Canon murmured, and was vaguely shocked at himself for making a joke at such a time. He could think of nothing else to say. He took her hand and felt her heart-breaking frailty. “Ah child, child.” There was nothing to be said, nor done. The sense of his failure struck him like a hammerblow.