John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

“The shortness of life, the dullness of the senses, the torpor of indifference and useless occupations, allow us to know but little; and in time, oblivion, that defrauder of knowledge and memory’s enemy, cheats us of even the little that we knew. I am an old man, and you make me weary. What is it you require of me? The book is nothing, less than nothing. First they shall laugh, and later weep. But you require the book. It is nothing, less than nothing. I am an old man. Take it. .”

*

That was the last I was to see of him, in this world or, I trust, in any other. I left the tower that very night, carrying with me my books and my belongings and my bitter victory. I did not remark the abruptness of this going, nor did he. It seemed the correct way. The inn to which I fled was a pigsty, but at least the air was cleaner there than in that crypt I had left, and the pigs, for all their piggishness, were alive, and snuffling happily in the good old muck. Yet, though I abandoned the tower without a thought, I found it not so easy to do the same with Frauenburg; that was August, and not until September was in did I at last depart. I spent those few final weeks kicking my heels about the town, drinking alone, too much, and whoring joylessly. Once I returned to the tower, determined to see him again, yet at a loss to know what more there was to be said; and perhaps it was as well that the Schillings planted herself in the doorway and said that the old man would not see me, that he was ill, and anyway had given her strict instructions not to let me in if I should dare to call. Even then I did not go, but waited another week, although I should have been in Wittenberg long before. What was it that held me back? Maybe I realised, however obscurely, that in leaving Prussia I would be leaving behind what I can only call a version of myself; for Frauenburg killed the best in me, my youth and my enthusiasm, my happiness, my faith, yes, faith. From that time on I believed in nothing, neither God nor Man. You ask why? You laugh, you say: poor fool, to be so affected by a sick old man’s bitterness and despair; O, you say, you ask, all of you, why, and how, and wherefore, you are all so wise, but you know nothing — nothing! Listen.

* * *

I wished to go straightway to Petreius, but if I were to keep my post at Wittenberg, I needs must return there without further delay, for the authorities at the university were beginning to mutter threateningly over my unconscionably long absence. And indeed they seemed very glad to have me back, for I had hardly arrived before I was elected Dean of the faculty of mathematics! I might have been excused for thinking that it was my own brilliance that had won this honour, but I was no fool, and I knew very well that it was not me, but my connection with the Great Man of Frauenburg that they were honouring, in their cautious way. It was no matter, anyway, for I was confident that before long the goddess Fama would turn her tender gaze on me. However, the promotion imposed new tasks on me, new responsibilities, and it would be spring, I now saw, before I could find the freedom to go to Nuremberg and Petreius; might not the goddess tire before then of waiting for me? With this thought in mind, I decided to have printed immediately, there in Wittenberg, a short extract from the manuscript, which would not reveal the scope of the entire work but only hint at it. (You see how I had learned from the master?) Thus originated De late-ribus et angulis triangulorum. It caused no little stir in the university, and even in the town itself, and helped me to squeeze out of the burghers and the clerics, and even out of Melanchton himself, several valuable letters of recommendation, which I carried with me to Nuremberg.

*

I arrived there at the beginning of May, and at once set about the printing of De revolutionibus orbium mundi in its entirety. Petreius’s craftsmen made swift progress. I lodged in the town in the house of a certain Lutheran merchant, Johann Müller, to whom I had been recommended by Melanchton. He was a bearable fellow, this Müller: pompous, of course, like all his kind, but not unlearned — he even displayed some interest in the work on which I was engaged. Also, his beds were soft, and his wife exceeding handsome, though somewhat fat. All in all, then, I was well content at Nuremberg, and I might even say I was happy there, had not there been lodged in my black heart the ineradicable pain that was the memory of Prussia. From there not a word came, of discouragement or otherwise, until Petreius broached the subject of finance, and I told him it was not my affair, that he should send to Frauenburg. This he did, and after some weeks a reply came, not from Koppernigk, but from Bishop Giese, who said that he had just that day arrived there from Löbau, having been summoned by Anna Schillings to attend the Canon, who was, so Giese said, sick unto death. This news moved me not at all: living or dead, Koppernigk was no longer a part of my plans. True, I spent an anxious week while Petreius underwent an attack of nerves, brought on by the realisation that he would have to finance the publication of the book himself, now that the author was dying, but in the end he went ahead, a decision he was not to regret, since he fixed the price per copy, of the thousand copies that he printed, at 28 ducats 6 pfennigs, the greedy old bastard.

My plans. How cunning they were, how cold and clever, and, in the end, how easily they were brought thundering down in rubble about my ears. The first signals of impending disaster came when I had been but two months in Nuremberg. Petreius had already set up thirty-four sheets, or about two-thirds of the book, and had begun to invite into the printing house some of the leading citizens of the town, so that they might view the progress of the work, and, being impressed, advertise it abroad. Now, it seemed to me only to be expected that these men of influence should above all wish to meet me, the sponsor of this bold new theory, but, though I spent the most part of my days in the caseroom, where the sheets were proofed for their viewing, I found to my surprise, and vague alarm, that they avoided me like the plague, and some of them even fled when I made to approach them. I spoke to Petreius of it, and he shrugged, and pretended not to understand me, and would not look me in the eye. I tried to dismiss the matter, telling myself that businessmen were always in awe of scholars, fearing their learning et cetera, but it would not do: I knew that something was afoot. Then, one evening, the good Herr Müller, twisting his hands and grimacing, and looking for all the world like a reluctant hangman, came to me and said that if it suited me, and if it was not a great inconvenience, and if I would not take his words amiss, and so on and so forth — and, well, the matter was: would I kindly leave his house? He made some lame excuse for this extraordinary demand, about needing the extra room for an impending visit by some relatives, but I was in a rage by then, and was not listening, and I told him that if it suited him, and if it was not a great inconvenience, he might fuck himself, and, pausing only to inform him that I was grateful for the use of his jade of a wife, whom I had been merrily ploughing during the past weeks, I packed my bags and left, and found myself that night once again lodging at an inn. And there, shortly afterwards, Osiander visited me.

*

Andreas Osiander, theologian and scholar, a leading Lutheran, friend of Melanchton, had for some time (despite his religious affiliations!) been in correspondence with Canon Nicolas — had been, indeed, one of those like myself who had urged him to publish. He was also, I might add, a cold, cautious, humourless grey creature, and it was, no doubt, the cast of his personality which recommended him to the Canon. O yes, they were two of a kind. At first, like a fool, I imagined that he had come to pay his respects to a great astronomer ( me , that is), and congratulate me on winning consent to publish De revolutionihus , but Osiander soon dispelled these frivolous notions. I was ill when he arrived. A fever of the brain, brought on no doubt by the manner of my parting from Müller, had laid me low with a burning head and aching limbs, so that when he was shown into my humble room I fancied at first that he was an hallucination. The shutters were drawn against the harsh spring light. He planted himself at the foot of my bed, his head in the shadows and bands of light through the slats of the shutters striping his puffed-up chest, so that he looked for all the world like a giant wasp. I was frightened of him even before he spoke. He had that unmistakable smell of authority about him. He looked with distaste at my surroundings, and with even deeper distaste at me, and said in his pinched voice (a drone!) that when he had been told that I was lodging here he had hardly credited it, but now, it seemed, he must believe it. Did I not realise that I was, in a manner of speaking, an ambassador of Wittenberg in this city? And did I think it fitting that the name of the very centre of Protestant learning should be associated with this. . this place ? I began to explain how I had been thrown out on the street by a man to whom I had been recommended by Melanchton himself, but he was not interested in that, and cut me short by enquiring if I had anything to say in my defence. Defence? My hands began to shake, from fever or fear, I could not tell which. I tried to rise from the bed, but in vain. There was something of the inquisitor about Osiander. He said: