John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

*

Yes, she was a cousin to the famous Canon Koppernigk, or Doctor Copernicus, as the world called him now. Theirs was a tenuous connection, it is true, on the distaff side, but yet it was to be the saving of Anna Schillings. She had never met the man, although she had heard talk of him in the family; there had been some scandal, she vaguely remembered, or was that to do with his brother. ? Well, it was no matter, for who was she to baulk at a whiff of scandal?

Their first meeting was unpromising. Canon Sculteti took her that very night to Frauenburg (and was knave enough to make a certain suggestion on the way, which of course she spurned with the contempt it deserved); she left the children in the care of Hermina, for, as Sculteti in his coarse way put it, they did not want to frighten “old Koppernigk” to death with the prospect of a readymade family. The town was dark and menacing, bearing still the marks of war, burnt-out houses and crippled beggars and the smell of death. Canon Koppernigk lived in a kind of squat square fortress in the cathedral wall, a cold forbidding place, at the sight of which, in the slime of starlight, Frau Schillings’s heart sank. Sculteti rapped upon the stout oak door, and presently a window above opened stealthily and a head appeared.

“Evening, Koppernigk,” Sculteti shouted. “There is one here that would speak with you urgently.” He sniggered under his breath, and despite the excited beating of her heart, Frau Schillings noted again what a lewd unpleasant man this Canon was. “Kin of yours!” he added, and laughed again.

The figure above spoke not a word, but withdrew silently, and after some long time they heard the sound of slow footsteps within, and the door opened slowly, and Canon Nicolas Koppernigk lifted a lighted candle at them as if he were fending off a pair of demons.

“Here we are!” said Sculteti, with false joviality. “Frau Anna Schillings, your cousin, come to pay you a visit. Frau Schillings — Herr Canon Koppernigk!” And so saying he took himself off into the night, laughing as he went.

*

Canon Koppernigk, then in his fifty-first year, was at that time laden heavily with the responsibilities of affairs of state. On the outbreak of war between the Poles and the Teutonic Knights, the Frauenburg Chapter almost in its entirety had fled to the safety of the cities of Royal Prussia, notably Danzig and Torun; he, however, had gone into the very midst of the battlefield, so to speak, to the castle of Allenstein, where he held the post of Land Provost. Then, after the armistice of 1521, he had in April of that year returned to Frauenburg as Chancellor, charged by Bishop von Lossainen (rumours of whose death in the siege of Heilsberg had happily proved unfounded) with the task of reorganising the administration of the province of Ermland, a task that at first had seemed an impossibility, since under the terms of the armistice the Knights retained those parts of the princedom which their troops were occupying at the close of hostilities. There was also the added difficulty of the presence in the land of all manner of deserter and renegade, who spread lawlessness and disorder through the countryside. However, by the following year the Land Provost had succeeded to such a degree in restoring normalcy that his faint-hearted colleagues could consider it safe enough for them to creep out of hiding and return to their duties.

Even yet the demands of public life did not slacken, for with the death at last, in January of 1523, of Bishop von Lossainen, the Chapter was compelled to take up the reins of government of the turbulent and war-torn bishopric; once again the Chapter turned to Canon Koppernigk, and he was elected Administrator General, which post he held until October, when a new Bishop was installed. In all this time he had been working on a detailed report of the damage wrought by the war in Ermland, which he was to present as a vital document in the peace talks at Torun. Also he had drawn up an elaborate and complex treatise setting forth means whereby the debased monetary system of Prussia might be reformed, which had been requested of him by the King of Poland. Nor was he spared personal sorrow: shortly after hearing of the death at Kulm of his sister Barbara, he received news from Italy that his brother Andreas had succumbed finally to that terrible disease which for many years had afflicted him. Small wonder then, with all this, that Canon Koppernigk appeared to Frau Schillings a reserved and distracted, cold, strange, solitary soul.

On that first night, when Sculteti abandoned her as he would some ridiculous and tasteless practical joke on his doorstep, the Canon stared at her, with a mixture of horror and bafflement, as if she were an apparition out of a nightmare. He backed away from her up the dark narrow stairs, still holding the candle at arm’s length like a talisman brandished in the face of a demon. In the observatory he put his desk between himself and her. For the second time that day, Frau Schillings related her tale of woe, haltingly, with many omissions this time, holding her hands clasped upon her bodice. He watched her with a kind of horrified fascination, but she could plainly see that he was not taking in the half of what she said. He seemed to her a kindly man, for all his reserve.

“I’ll not mince words, Herr Canon,” she said. “I have begged, I have whored, and I have survived; but now I have nothing left. You are my last hope. Refuse me, and I shall perish.”

“My child,” he began, and stopped, helpless and embarrassed. “My child. .”

Moonlight shines through the arched window; the candle flickers. The books, the couch, the desk, all crouch like enchanted creatures frozen in the midst of a secret dance, and those strange ghostly instruments lift their shrouded arms into the shadows starward, mysterious, hieratic and inexplicable things. All fade; the dark descends.

* * *

N icolas Koppernigk, Canonicus: Frauenburg

Rev. Sir: I presume to write to you, remembering our many interesting conversations of some years ago, when we met at Cracow. I was then adviser to the Polish King, & you, as I recall, were secretary to your late uncle, His Grace Bishop Waczelrodt: on whose death may I be permitted now to offer you belated condolences. I admired the man greatly (although I knew him not at all), & would hear more of his life & works. His death was indeed a tragedy for Ermland, as events have proved. I dearly hope that your many public duties do not keep you from that great task which you are embarked upon. Many wonderful reports of your theories come to me, especially from Cardinal Schönberg at Rome, whom I think you know. You are fortunate indeed to have such allies, who surely will stand you in good stead against the bellowing of ignorant schoolmen & those others that you have outraged by the daring of your concepts. For myself, I have so little power at my command that I hesitate to assure you that you have my best wishes for your great & important work, which I pray God to bless, in the name of Truth. I hesitate, as I have said: yet who can know but that even the friendship of one so humble as myself may not at some future date prove useful? The Church in these perilous days, I fear, shall not for long be able to sustain that generous liberality which hitherto She was wont to extend to Her ministers (a liberality, I might add, for which I myself have been grateful on more than one occasion!). Dark times are coming, Herr Canon: we are all under threat. However, it is my conviction that, so long as we maintain strict vigilance over our lives, & do not leave ourselves open to accusations of corruption & lewdness by the Lutherans, we shall be safe, no matter how revolutionary our notions. I pray you, sir, regard me as your most devoted friend.