The Sleepwalkers (54 page)

Nicolas
Koppernigk
was
born
in
1473,
half-way
between
the
transformation
of
the
old
world
through
Coster
of
Haarlem's
invention
of
the
printing
press
with
movable
metal
types,
and
Columbus'
discovery
of
a
new
world
beyond
the
seas.
His
life
overlapped
with
Erasmus
of
Rotterdam's
who
"laid
the
egg
of
the
Reformation",
and
with
Luther's
who
hatched
it;
with
Henry
VIII
who
broke
away
from
Rome
and
Charles
V
who
brought
the
Holy
Roman
Empire
to
its
climax;
with
the
Borgias
and
Savonarola,
with
Michelangelo
and
Leonardo,
Holbein
and
Dürer;
with
Machiavelli
and
Paracelsus,
Ariosto
and
Rabelais.

His
birthplace
was
Torun
on
the
Vistula,
formerly
an
outpost
of
the
Teutonic
Knights
against
the
Prussian
pagans,
later
a
member
of
the
Hanseatic
League
and
a
trading
centre
between
East
and
West.
At
the
time
when
Nicolas
Koppernigk
was
born,
the
town
was
already
in
decline,
steadily
losing
its
trade
to
Danzig
which
lay
closer
to
the
river's
estuary.
Yet
he
could
still
watch
the
merchants'
fleets
sailing
down
the
broad,
muddy
waters
toward
the
sea,
loaded
with
timber,
and
coal
from
the
Hungarian
mines,
with
pitch
and
tar,
and
honey
and
wax
from
Galiczia;
or
making
their
way
upstream
with
textiles
from
Flanders,
and
silk
from
France,
and
herring
and
salt
and
spices:
always
in
convoys,
to
be
safe
from
pirates
and
brigands.

It
is
unlikely,
though,
that
the
boy
Nicolas
spent
much
time
watching
life
on
the
river
wharfs,
for
he
was
born
inside
the
sheltering
walls
where,
protected
by
moat
and
drawbridge,
the
gabled,
narrow-chested
patrician
houses
stood
hemmed
in
between
church
and
monastery,
town-hall
and
school.
Only
the
lowly
folk
lived
outside
the
crenelated
walls,
among
the
wharfs
and
storehouses,
in
the
noise
and
stench
of
the
suburban
artisanate:
the
wheel
and
waggon-makers,
blacksmiths,
coppersmiths
and
gun-barrel
makers,
salt
refiners
and
saltpetre
boilers,
schnapps
distillers
and
hop
brewers.

Perhaps
Andreas,
the
elder
brother
who
was
something
of
a
scamp,
liked
to
loiter
in
the
suburbs,
hoping
to
become
one
day
a
pirate;
but
Nicolas
remained,
through
all
his
life,
fearful
of
venturing,
in
any
sense,
outside
the
walls.
He
must
have
had
an
early
awareness
of
the
fact
that
he
was
the
son
of
a
wealthy
magistrate
and
patrician
of
Torun:
of
one
of
those
prosperous
merchants
whose
ships
had,
only
a
generation
or
two
earlier,
roamed
the
seas
as
far
as
Brugge
and
the
Scandinavian
ports.
Now,
when
the
fortunes
of
their
town
were
on
the
decline,
they
were
becoming
all
the
more
self-important,
stuffy
and
ultra-patrician.
Nicolas
Koppernigk
senior
had
come
from
Cracow
to
Torun
in
the
late
fourteen-fifties,
as
a
wholesale
dealer
in
copper,
the
family
business
from
which
the
Koppernigks
derived
their
name.
Or
so
at
least
it
is
presumed,
for
everything
connected
with
the
ancestry
of
Canon
Koppernigk
is
shrouded
in
the
same
secretive
and
uncertain
twilight
through
which
he
moved
during
his
life
on
earth.
There
lived
no
historic
personality
in
that
epoch
of
whom
less
is
known
by
way
of
documents,
letters
or
anecdotes.

About
the
father
we
know
at
least
where
he
came
from,
and
that
he
owned
a
vineyard
in
the
suburbs,
and
that
he
died
in
1484,
when
Nicolas
was
ten.
About
the
mother,
née
Barbara
Watzelrode,
nothing
is
known
except
her
name;
neither
the
date
of
her
birth,
nor
of
her
marriage,
nor
of
her
death
could
be
found
on
any
record.
This
is
the
more
remarkable,
as
Frau
Barbara
came
from
a
distinguished
family:
her
brother,
Lucas
Watzelrode,
became
the
Bishop
and
ruler
of
Ermland.
There
are
detailed
records
of
the
life
of
Uncle
Lucas,
and
even
of
Aunt
Christina
Watzelrode;
only
Barbara,
the
mother,
is
blotted
out
–
eclipsed,
as
it
were,
by
the
persistent
shadow
thrown
by
the
son.

Of
his
childhood
and
adolescence
up
to
the
age
of
eighteen,
only
one
event
is
known
–
but
an
event
which
became
decisive
in
his
life.
At
the
death
of
Koppernigk
senior,
Nicolas,
his
brother
and
two
sisters,
became
the
charges
of
Uncle
Lucas,
the
future
Bishop.
Whether
at
that
time
their
mother
was
still
alive,
we
do
not
know;
at
any
rate,
she
fades
out
of
the
picture
(not
that
she
had
ever
been
much
present
in
it);
and
henceforth
Lucas
Watzelrode
plays
the
part
of
father
and
protector,
employer
and
maecenas
to
Nicolas
Koppernigk.
It
was
an
intense
and
intimate
relationship
which
lasted
to
the
end
of
the
Bishop's
life,
and
which
one
Laurentius
Corvinus,
town
scribe
and
poetaster
of
Torun,
compared
to
the
attachment
between
Aeneas
and
his
faithful
Achates.