Kepler (14 page)

"Because I thought that you would, I hoped that you would, and that you might speak to her for me, for us. "

"Your mother? Yes yes I will speak to her, of course," lunging past her, talking as he went, and, pausing on the stairs: "Of course, speak to her, yes, tell her… tell her what?"

She peered at him in perplexity from the doorway. "Why, that I plan to marry. "

"Ah yes. That you plan to marry. Yes."

"I think you do not approve. "

"But of course I… of course…" and he clambered backwards down the stairs, clasping in his outstretched arms an enormous glossy black ball of sorrow and guilt.

Barbara was kneeling at the fireplace changing the baby's diaper, her face puckered against the clayey stink. Ludwig below her waved his skinny legs, crowing. She glanced over her shoulder at Kepler. "I thought as much," was all she said.

"You knew? But who is the fellow?"

She sighed, sitting back on her heels. "You have met him," she said wearily. "You don't remember, of course. He was in Prague, you met him."

"Ah, I remember." He did not. "Certainly I remember." How tactful Regina was, to know he would have forgotten. "But she is so young!"

"I was sixteen when I first married. What of it?" He said nothing. "I am surprised you care."

He turned away from her angrily, and opening the kitchen door was confronted by a hag in a black cap. They stared at each other and she backed off in confusion. There was another one at the kitchen table, very fat with a moustache, a mug of beer before her. His mother was busy at the iron stove. "Katharina," the first hag warbled. The fat one studied him a moment impassively and swigged her beer. The tomcat, sitting to attention on the table near her, flicked its tail and blinked. Frau Kepler did not turn from the stove. Kepler silently withdrew, and slowly, silently, closed the door.

"Heinrich-!"

"Now they're just some old dames that come to visit her, Johann." He grinned ruefully and shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches. "They are company for her."

"Tell me the truth, Heinrich. Is she…" Barbara had paused, leaning over the baby with a pin in her mouth; Kepler took his brother's arm and steered him to the window. "Is she still at that old business?"

"No, no. She does a bit of doctoring now and then, but that's all."

"My God."

"She doesn't want for custom, Johann. They still come, especially the women." He grinned again, and winked, letting one eyelid fall like a loose shutter. "Only the other day there was a fellow-"

"I don't-"

"-Blacksmith he was, big as an ox, came all the way over from Leonberg, you wouldn't have thought to look at him there was anything-"

"I do not want to know, Heinrich!" He stared through the window, gnawing a thumbnail. "My God," he muttered again.

"Ah, there's nothing in it," said Heinrich. "And she's better value than your fancy physicians, I can tell you. " Resentment was making him hoarse, Kepler noted wistfully: why had such simple loyalty been denied to
him?
"She made up a stuff for my leg that did more for it than that army doctor ever did. "

"Your leg?"

"Aye, there's a weeping wound that I got in Hungary. It's not much."

"You must let me look at it for you. "

Heinrich glanced at him sharply. "No need for that. She takes care of it."

Their mother shuffled out of the kitchen. "Now where, " she murmured, "where did I leave that down, I wonder." She pointed her thin little nose at Barbara. "Have you seen it?"

Barbara ignored her.

"What is it, mother," Kepler said.

She smiled innocently. "Why, I had it just a moment ago, and now I have lost it, my little bag of bats' wings. "

A crackling came from the kitchen, where the two hags could be seen, shrieking and hilariously shoving each other. Even the cat might have been laughing.

Regina came tentatively down the stairs. "You are not fighting over me, surely?" They looked at her blankly. Frau Kepler, grinning, scuttled back into the kitchen.

"What does she mean, bats' wings?" said Barbara.

"A joke," Kepler snapped, "a joke, for God's sake!"

"Bats' wings indeed. What next?"

"She's nobody's fool, " Heinrich put in stoutly, trying not to laugh.

Kepler flung himself on to a chair by the window and drummed his fingers on the table. "We'll put up at an inn tonight, " he muttered. "There is a place out toward Ellmend-ingen. And tomorrow we'll start for home. "

Barbara smiled her triumph, but had the good sense to say nothing. Kepler scowled at her. The three old women came out of the kitchen. There was a fringe of foam on the fat one's moustache. The thin one made to address the great man sunk in gloom by the window, but Frau Kepler gave her a push from the rear. "O! hee hee, your ma, sir, I think, wants to be rid of us!"

"Bah, " Frau Kepler said, and shoved her harder. They went out. "Well," the old woman said, turning to her son, "you've driven them away. Are you satisfied now?"

Kepler stared at her. "I said not a word to them."

"That's right."

"You would be better off if they did not come back, the likes ofthat."

"And what do you know about it?"

"I know them, I know their sort! You-"

"Ah, be quiet. What do you know, coming here with your nose in the air. We are not good enough for you, that's what it is."

Heinrich coughed. "Now mam. Johann is only talking to you for your own good."

Kepler considered the ceiling. "These are evil times, mother. You should be careful. "

"And so should you!"

He shrugged. When he was a boy he had nursed the happy notion of them all perishing cleanly and quickly some night, in an earthquake, say, leaving him free and unburdened. Barbara was watching him, Regina also.

"We had a burning here last Michaelmas, " said Heinrich, by way of changing the subject. "By God," slapping his knee, "the old dame fairly danced when the fire got going. Didn't she, mam?"

"Who was it?" said Kepler.

"Damned old fool it was," Frau Kepler put in quickly, glaring at Heinrich. "Gave a philtre to the pastor's daughter, no less. She deserved burning, that one. "

Kepler put a hand over his eyes. "There will be more burnings."

His mother turned on him. "Aye, there will! And not only here. What about that place where you are, that Bohemia, with all those papists, eh? I've heard they burn people by the bushel over there.
You
should be careful." She stumped off into the kitchen. Kepler followed her. "Coming here and preaching to me," she muttered. "What do you know? I was healing the sick when you were no bigger than that child out there, cacking in your pants. And look at you now, living in the Emperor's pocket and drawing up magic squares for him. I dabble with the world,
you
keep your snout turned to the sky and think you're safe. Bah! You make me sick, you."

"Mother…"

"Well?"

"I worry for you, mother, that's all."

She looked at him.

All outside was immanent with a kind of stealthy knowing-ness. He stood for a while by thefountain in the marketplace. The stone gargoyles had an air of suppressed glee, spouting fatly from pursed green lips as if it were an elaborate foolery they would abandon once he turned his back. Grandfather Sebaldus used to insist that one of these stone faces had been carved in his likeness. Kepler had always believed it. Familiarity rose up all round him like a snickering ghost. What did he know? Was it possible for life to go on, his own life, without his active participation, as the body's engine continues to work while the mind sleeps? As he walked now he tried to weigh himself, squinting suspiciously at his own dimensions, looking for the telltale bulge where all that secret life might be stored. The murky emotions called forth by Regina 's betrothal were only a part of it: what other extravagances had been contracted for, and at what cost? He felt somehow betrayed and yet not displeased, like an old banker ingeniously embezzled by a beloved son. A warm waft of bread assailed him as he passed by the baker's shop; the baker, all alone, was pummelling a gigantic wad of dough. From an upstairs window a servant girl flung out an exclamation of dirty water, barely missing Kepler. He glared up, and for a moment she goggled at him, then covered her mouth with her fingers and turned laughing to someone unseen behind her in the room, the son of the house, Harry Voliger, seventeen and prodigiously pimpled, creeping toward her with trembling hands… Kepler walked on, brooding over all those years of deceptively balanced books.

He gained the common. The evening rested here, bronzed and quietly breathing, basking like an exhausted acrobat in the afterglow of marvellous exploits of light and weather. The elm tree hung intent above its own reflection in the pond, majestically listening. The children were still here. They greeted him with sullen glances, wishing not to know him: they had been having fun. Susanna slowly ambled away with her hands clasped behind her, smiling back in a kind of blissful idiocy at a file of confused and comically worried ducklings scrambling at her heels. Friedrich tottered to the water's edge carrying a mighty rock. His shoes and stockings were soaked, and he had managed to get mud on his eyebrows. The rock struck the water with a flat smack. "Look at the crown, papa, look look!-did you see it?"

"That's the king, all right," said Heinrich. He had come to fetch the children back. "Hejumps up when you throw something in, and you can see his crown with all the diamonds on it. That right, Johann? I told him that."

"I don't want to go home," the child said, working one foot lovingly into the mud and plucking it out again with a delicious sucking sound. "I want to stay here with Uncle Heinrich and my grandma. " His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "They have a

Pig-"

The surface of the pond smoothed down its ruffled silks.

Tiny translucent flies were weaving an invisible net among the reflected branches of the elm, and skimmers dashed out from the shallows on legs so delicate they did not more than dent the surface of the water. Myriad and profligate life! Kepler sat on the grass. It had been a long day, busy with small discoveries. What was he to do about Regina? And what of his mother, dabbling still in dangerous arts? What was he to do. He remembered, as if the memory might mean something, Felix the Italian dancing with his drunken whores in a back lane on Kleinseit. The great noisome burden of things nudged him, life itself tipping his elbow. He smiled, gazing up into the branches. Was it possible, was this, was
this
happiness?

Loretoplatz

Hradcany Hill

Prague

Ash Wednesday 1605

David Fabricius: in Friesland

Honoured friend! you may abandon your search for a new theory of Mars: it is established. Yes, my book is done, or nearly. I have spent so much pains on it that I could have died ten times. But with God's help I have held out, and I have come so far that I can be satisfied and rest assured that the
new astronomy
truly is born. If I do not positively rejoice, it is not due to any doubts as to the truth of my discoveries, but rather to a vision that has all at once opened before me of the profound effects of what I have wrought. My friend, our ideas of the world amp; its workings shall never be the same again. This is a withering thought, and the cause in me of a sombre amp; reflective mood, in keeping with the general on this day. I enclose my wife's recipe for Easter cake as promised.

You, a colleague in arms, will know how things stand with me. Six years I have been in the heat amp; clamour of battle, my head down, hacking at the particular; only now may I stand back to take the wider view. That I have won, I do not doubt, as I say. My concern is, what manner of victory I have achieved, and what price I amp; our science, and perhaps all men, will have to pay for it. Copernicus delayed for thirty years before publishing his majestic work, I believe because he feared the effect upon men's minds of his having removed this Earth from the centre of the world, making it merely a planet among planets; yet what I have done is, I think, more radical still, for I have transformed the very shape of things-I mean of course I have demonstrated that the conception of celestial form amp; motion, which we have held since Pythagoras, is profoundly mistaken. The announcement of this news too will be delayed, not through any Copernican bashfulness of mine, but thanks to my master the Emperor's stinginess, which leaves me unable to afford a decent printer.

My aim in the
Astronomia nova
is, to show that the heavenly machine is not a divine, living being, but a kind of clockwork (and he who believes that a clock has a soul, attributes to the work the maker's glory), insofar as nearly all the manifold motions are caused by a simple magnetic amp; material force, just as all the motions of the clock are caused by a simple weight. Yet, and most importantly, it is not the form or appearance of this celestial clockwork which concerns me primarily, but
the reality of it.
No longer satisfied, as I believe astronomy has been for milleniums, with the mathematical representation of planetary movement, I have sought to explain these movements
ßom their physical causes.
No one before me has ever attempted such a thing; no one has ever before framed his thoughts in this way.

Why, sir, you have a son! This is a great surprise to me. I put aside this letter briefly, having some pressing matters to attend to-my wife is ill again-and in the meantime from Wittenberg one Johannes Fabricius has written to me regarding certain solar phenomena, and recommending himself to me through my friendship for you, his father! I confess I am amazed, and not a little disturbed, for I have always spoken in my letters to you as to a younger man, and indeed, I wonder if I have not now and then fallen into the tone of a master addressing a pupil! You must forgive me. We should sometime have met. I think I am short of sight not only in the physical sense. Always I am being met with these shocks, when the thing before my nose turns out suddenly to be other than I believed it to be. Just so it was with the orbit of Mars. I shall write again and recount in brief the history of my struggle with that planet, it may amuse you.

Vale
Johannes Kepler

Wenzel House Prague November 1607

Hans Geo. Herwart von Hohenburg: at München

Entshuldigen Sie,
my dear good sir, for my long delay in plying to your latest, most welcome letter. Matters at court devour my time amp; energies, as always. His Majesty becomes daily more capricious. At times he will forget my name, and look at me with that frown, which all who know him know so well, as if he does not recognise me at all; then suddenly will come an urgent summons, and I must scamper up to the palace with my star charts amp; astrological tables. For he puts much innocent faith in this starry scrying, which, as you know well, I consider a dingy business. He demands written reports upon various matters, such as for instance the nativity of the Emperor Augustus and of Mohammed, and the fate which is to be expected for the Turkish Empire, and, of course, that which so exercises everyone at court these days, the Hungarian question: his brother Matthias grows ever more brazen in his pursuit of power. Also there is the tiresome matter of the so-called Fiery Trigon and the shifting of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter amp; Saturn, which is supposed to have marked the birth of Christ, and of Charlemagne, and, now that another 800 years have passed, everyone asks what great event impends. I ventured that
this great event
had already occurred, in the coming of Kepler to Prague: but I do not think His Majesty appreciated the witticism.

In this atmosphere, the New Star of three years past caused a mighty commotion, which still persists. There is talk, as you would expect, of universal conflagration and the Judgment Day. The least that will be settled for, it seems, is the coming of a great new king:
nova Stella, novus rex
(this last a view which no doubt Matthias encourages!). Of course, I must produce much wordage on this matter also. It is a painful amp; annoying work. The mind accustomed to mathematical demonstrations, on contemplating the faultiness of the foundations of astrology, resists for a long, long time, like a stubborn beast of burden, until, compelled by blows amp; invective, it puts its foot into the puddle.

My position is delicate. Rudolph is fast in the hands of wizards amp; all manner of mountebank. I consider astrology a political more than a prophetical tool, and that one should take care, not only that it be banished from the senate, but from the heads of those who would advise the Emperor in his best interests. Yet what am I to do, if he insists? He is virtually a hermit now in the palace, and spends his days alone among his toys and his pretty monsters, hiding from the humankind which he fears and distrusts, unwilling to make the simplest of decisions. In the mornings, while the groom puts his Spanish amp; Italian steeds through their paces in the courtyard, he sits gloomily watching from the window of his chamber, like an impotent infidel ogling the harem, and then speaks of this as his exercise! Yet, despite all, he is I confess far from ineffective. He seems to operate by a certain Archimedian motion, which is so gentle it barely strikes the eye, but which in the course of time produces movement in the entire mass. The court functions somehow. Perhaps it is just the nervous energy, common to all organisms, which keeps things going, as a chicken will continue to caper after its head has been cut off. (This is treasonous talk.)

My salary, need I say, is badly in arrears. I estimate that I am owed by now some 2,000 florins. I have scant hope of ever seeing the debt paid. The royal coffers are almost exhausted by the Emperor's mania for collecting, as well as by the war with the Turks and his efforts to protect his territories against his turbulent relatives. It pains me to be dependent upon the revenues from my wife's modest fortune. My hungry stomach looks up like a little dog to the master who once fed it. Yet, as ever, I am not despondent, but put my trust in God amp; my science. The weather here is atrocious.

Your servant, sir, Joh: Kepler

Aedes Cramerianis

Prague

April 1608

Dr Michael Mästlin: at Tübingen

Greetings. That swine Tengnagel. I can hardly hold this pen, I am so angry. You will not credit the depths of that man's perfidy. Of course, he is no worse than the rest of the accursed Tychonic gang-only louder. A braying ass the fellow is, vain, pompous amp; irredeemably stupid. I will
kill
him, God forgive me. The only bright spot in all the horrid darkness of this business is that he still has not been paid, nor is he ever likely to be, the 20,000 florins (or 30 pieces of silver!) for which he sold Tycho Brahe's priceless instruments to the Emperor while the Dane was not yet cold in his grave. (He receives 1,000 florins annually as interest on the debt. This is twice the amount of my salary as Imperial Mathematician.) I confess that, when Tycho died, I quickly took advantage of the lack of circumspection on the part of the heirs, by taking his observations under my care, or, you may say (and certainly
they
do), purloining them. Who will blame me? The instruments, once the wonder of the world, are scattered across half of Europe, rusted and falling to pieces. The Emperor has forgotten them, and Tengnagel is content with his annual 5 per cent. Should I have let the same fate befall the mass of wonderfully precise amp; invaluable observations which Tycho devoted his lifetime to gathering?

The cause of this quarrel lies in the suspicious nature amp; bad manners of the Brahe family, but, on the other hand, also in my own passionate amp; mocking character. It must be admitted, that Tengnagel all along has had good reason for suspecting me: I was in possession of the observations, and I did refuse to hand them over to the heirs. But there is no reason for him to hound me as he does. You know that he became a Catholic, in order that the Emperor might grant him a position at court? This shows the man's character for what it is. (His lady Elizabeth goads him on-but no, I shall not speak of her.) Now he is Appellate Counsellor, and hence is able to impose his condirions on me with imperial force. He forbade me to print anything based upon his father-in-law's observations before I had completed the Rudolphine Tables; then he offered me freedom to print, provided I put his name with my own on the title pages of my works, so that he might have half the honours with none of the labour. I agreed, if he would grant me one quarter of that 1,000 florins he has from the Emperor. This was a shrewd move on my part, for Tengnagel, of course, true to his nature, considered the sum of 250 per annum too high a price to pay for immortal fame. Next, he got it into his thick head that he would himself take on the mighty task of completing the Tables. You will laugh with me, magister, for of course this is a nonsense, since the Junker has neither the ability for the task, nor the tenacity of purpose it will require. I have noticed it before, that there are many who believe they could do as well as I, nay, better, had they the time amp; the interest to attend the trifling problems of astronomy. I smile to hear them blowing off, all piss amp; wind. Let them try!

Luckily Tengnagel was vain enough to promise the Emperor that he would complete the work in four years: during which time he has sat upon the material like the dog in the manger, unable to put the treasure to use, and preventing others from doing so. His four years are now gone, and he has done nothing. Therefore I am pressing ahead with my
Astrono-mia noua,
the printing of which has at last begun at Vogelin's in Heidelberg. Good enough. But now the dolt insists that the book shall carry a preface written amp; signed by him! I dare not think what twaddle he will produce. He claims he fears I have used Tycho's observations only in order to disprove the Dane's theory of the world, but I know all he cares for is the clinking of coins. Ach, a base amp; poisonous fool.

K

Gutenbergplatz Heidelberg Midsummer Eve 1609

Helisaeus Röslin, physician-in-ordinary to Hanau-Lichtenberg: at Buchsweiler in Alsace

Av

.
I have your interesting amp; instructive
Diseurs von heutiger Zeit Beschaffenheir,
which provokes in me, along with much speculation, many pleasant amp; wistful memories of those fraternal debates which engaged us in our student days together at Tübingen. I intend presently to reply with a public
Antwort
on those of my points on the Nova of 1604 which you challenge with such passion amp; skill, but first I wish to say a few words to you in private, not only in honour of our long friendship, but also in order to clarify certain matters which I may not air in print. For my position here in Prague grows more precarious daily. The royal personage no longer trusts anyone, and is particularly watchful concerning that science which you so energetically defend, and by which he puts much store. I would prefer to say
pseudo-science.
Please destroy this letter immediately you have read it.

I would grant in you, my dear Röslin, the presence of an
instinctus divinus,
a special illumination in the interpretation of celestial phenomena, which, however, has nothing to do with astrological rules. After all, it is true that God sometimes allows even pure simpletons to announce strange amp; wonderful things. No one should deny that clever amp; even holy things may come out of foolery amp; godlessness, as out of unclean amp; slimy substances comes the pretty snail or the oyster, or the silk-spinner out of caterpillar dirt. Even from the stinking dung heap the industrious hen may scrape a little golden grain. The majority of astrological rules I consider to be dung; as to what may be the grains worth retrieving from the heap, that is a more difficult matter.

The essence of my position is simply stated: that the heavens do something in people one sees clearly enough, but what specifically they do, remains a mystery. I believe that the
aspects,
that is the configurations which the planets form with one another, are of special significance in the lives of men. However, I hold that to speak of good amp; bad aspects is nonsensical. In the heavens it is not a question of good or bad: here only the categories harmonic, rhythmic, lovely, strong, weak amp; unarranged, are valid. The stars do not compel, they do not do away with free will, they do not decide the particular fate of an individual; but they impress on the soul a particular character. The person in the first igniting of his life receives a character amp; pattern of all the constellations in the heavens, or of the form of the rays flowing on to the earth, which he retains to the grave. This character creates noticeable traces in the form of the flesh, as well as in manners amp; gestures, inclinations amp; sympathies. Thus one becomes lively, good, gay; another sleepy, indolent, obscurantist; qualities which are comparable to the lovely amp; exact, or the extensive amp; unsightly configurations, and to the colours amp; movements, of the planets.