Kepler (2 page)

"But!…" The astronomer was scrabbling for his hat under the table.

"You will meet some other of my assistants then, and we can discuss a redistribution of tasks, now that we are one more. I had thought of setting you the lunar orbit. However, we must first consult my man Christian Longberg, who, as you will of course understand, has a say in these matters." They made a slow exit from the room. Tycho did not so much walk as sail, a stately ship. Kepler, pale, twisted the hat-brim in his trembling fingers. This was all mad. Friend and colleague indeed! He was being treated as if he were a raw apprentice. In the corridor Tycho Brahe bade him an absentminded farewell and cruised away. Frau Barbara was waiting for him in their rooms. She had an air always of seeming cruelly neglected, by his presence no less than by his absence. Sorrowing and expectant, she asked: "Well?"

Kepler selected a look of smiling abstraction and tested it gingerly. "Hmm?"

"Well," his wife insisted, "what happened?"

"O, we had breakfast. See, I brought you something," and produced from its hiding place in the crown of his hat, with a conjuror's flourish, an orange. "And I had coffee!"

Regina, who had been leaning out at the open window, turned now and advanced upon her stepfather with a faint smile. Under her candid gaze he felt always a little shy.

"There is a dead deer in the courtyard, " she said. "If you lean out far you can see it, on a cart. It's very big. "

"That is an elk, " said Kepler gently. "It's called an elk. It got drunk, you know, and fell downstairs when…"

Their baggage had come up, and Barbara had been unpacking, and now with the glowing fruit cupped in her hands she sat down suddenly amidst the strewn wreckage of their belongings and began to weep. Kepler and the child stared at her.

"You settled nothing!" she wailed. "You didn't even
try."

Familiar indeed: disorder had been the condition of his life from the beginning. If he managed, briefly, a little inward calm, then the world without was sure to turn on him. That was how it had been in Graz, at the end. And yet that final year, before he was forced to flee to Tycho Brahe in Bohemia, had begun so well. The Archduke had tired for the moment of hounding the Lutherans, Barbara was pregnant again, and, with the Stiftsschule closed, there was ample time for his private studies. He had even softened toward the house on Stempfergasse, which at first had filled him with a deep dislike the origins of which he did not care to investigate. It was the last year of the century, and there was the relieved sense that some old foul thing was finally, having wrought much mischief, dying.

In the spring, his heart full of hope, he had set himself again to the great task of formulating the laws of world harmony. His workroom was at the back of the house, a cubbyhole off the dank flagged passage leading to the kitchen. It had been a lumber room in Barbara's late husband's time. Kepler had spent a day clearing out the junk, papers and old boxes and broken furniture, which he had dumped unceremoniously through the window into the overgrown flowerbed outside. There it still lay, a mouldering heap of compost which put forth every spring clusters of wild gentian, in memory perhaps of the former master of the house, poor Marx Müller the pilfering paymaster, whose lugubrious ghost still loitered in his lost domain.

There were other, grander rooms he might have chosen, for it was a large house, but Kepler preferred this one. It was out of the way. Barbara still had social pretensions then, and most afternoons the place was loud with the horse-faced wives of councillors and burghers, but the only sounds that disturbed the silence of his bolted lair were the querulous clucking of hens outside and the maidservant's song in the kitchen. The calm greenish light from the garden soothed his ailing eyes. Sometimes Regina came and sat with him. His work went well.

He was at last attracting some attention. Galileus the Italian had acknowledged his gift of a copy of the
Mysterium cosmographicum.
True, his letter had been disappointingly brief, and no more than civil. Tycho Brahe, however, had written to him warmly and at length about the book. Also, his correspondence with the Bavarian Chancellor Herwart von Hohenburg continued, despite the religious turmoil. All this allowed him to believe that he was becoming a person of consequence, for how many men of twenty-eight could claim such luminaries among their colleagues (he thought that not too strong a word)?

These crumbs might impress him, but others were harder to convince. He remembered the quarrel with his father-in-law, Jobst Müller. It marked in his memory, he was not sure why, the beginning of that critical period which was to end, nine months later, with his expulsion from Graz.

The spring had been bad that year, with rain and gales all through April. At the beginning of May there came an ugly calm. For days the sky was a dome of queer pale cloud, at night there was fog. Nothing stirred. It was as if the very air had congealed. The streets stank. Kepler feared this vampire weather, which affected the delicate balance of his constitution, making his brain ache and his veins to swell alarmingly. In Hungary, it was said, bloody stains were everywhere appearing on doors and walls and even in the fields. Here in Graz, an old woman, discovered one morning pissing behind the Jesuit church not far from the Stempfergasse, was stoned for a witch. Barbara, who was seven months gone, grew fretful. The time was ripe for an outbreak of plague. And it was, to Kepler, a kind of pestilence, when Jobst Müller came up from Gössendorf to stay three days.

He was a cheerless man, proud of his mill and his moneys and his Mühleck estate. Like Barbara, he too had social aspirations, he claimed noble birth and signed himself
zu Gössendorf.
Also like Barbara, though not so spectacularly as she, he was a user-up of spouses-his second wife was ailing. He accumulated wealth with a passion lacking elsewhere in his life. His daughter he looked on as a material possession, so it seemed, filched from him by the upstart Kepler.

But the visit at least served to cheer Barbara somewhat. She was glad to have an ally. Not that she ever, in Kepler's presence, complained openly about him. Silent suffering was her tactic. Kepler spent most of the three days of the visitation locked in his room. Regina kept him company. She too bore little love for Grandfather Müller. She was nine then, though small for her age, pale, with ash-blonde hair, that seemed always streaked with damp, pulled flat upon her narrow head. She was not pretty, she was too pinched and pale, but she had character. There was in her an air of completeness, of being, for herself, a precise sufficiency; Barbara was a little afraid of her. She sat in his workroom on a high stool, a toy forgotten in her lap, gazing at things-charts, chairs, the ragged garden, even at Kepler sometimes, when he coughed, or shuffled his feet, or let fall one of his involuntary little moans. Theirs was a strange sharing, but of what, he was not sure. He was the third father she had known in her short life, and she was waiting, he supposed, to see if he would prove more lasting than the previous two. Was that what they shared, then, a something held in store, for the future?

During these days she had more cause than usual to attend him. He was greatly agitated. He could not work, knowing that his wife and her father, that pair, were somewhere in the house, guzzling his breakfast wine and shaking their heads over his shortcomings. So he sat clenched at his jumbled desk, moaning and muttering, and scribbling wild calculations that were not so much mathematics as a kind of code expressing, in their violent irrationality, his otherwise mute fury and frustration.

It could not go on like that.

"We must have a talk, Johannes." Jobst Müller let spread like a kind of sickly custard over his face one of his rare smiles. It was seldom he addressed his son-in-law by name. Kepler tried to edge away from him.

"I-I am very busy. "

That was the wrong thing to say. How could he be busy, with the school shut down? His astronomy was, to them, mere play, a mark of his base irresponsibility. Jobst Müller's smile grew sad. He was today without the wide-brimmed conical hat which he sported most times indoors and out, and he looked as if a part of his head were missing. He had lank grey hair and a bluish chin. He was something of a dandy, despite his years, and went in for velvet waistcoats and lace collars and blue knee-ribbons. Kepler would not look at him. They were on the gallery, above the entrance hall. Pale light of morning came in at the barred window behind them.

"But you might spare me an hour, perhaps?"

They went down the stairs, Jobst Müller's buckled shoes producing on the polished boards a dull descending scale of disapproval. The astronomer thought of his schooldays: now you are for it, Kepler. Barbara awaited them in the dining room. Johannes grimly noted the bright look in her eye. She knew the old boy had tackled him, they were in it together. She had been experimenting with her hair the night before (it had fallen out in great swatches after the birth of their first child), and now as they entered she whipped off the protective net, and a frizz of curls sprang up from her forehead. Johannes fancied he could hear them crackling.

"Good morning, my dear," he said, and showed her his teeth.

She touched her curls nervously. "Papa wants to speak to you."

Johannes took his place opposite her at the table. "I know." These chairs, old Italian pieces, part of Barbara's dowry, were too tall for him, he had to stretch to touch his toes to the floor. Still, he liked them, and the other pieces, the room itself; he was fond of carved wood and old brick and black ceiling beams, all suchlike sound things, which, even if they were not strictly his own, helped to hold his world together.

"Johannes has agreed to grant me an hour of his valuable time, " Jobst Müller said, filling himself a mug of small ale. Barbara bit her lip.

"Um," said Kepler. He knew what the subject would be. Ulrike the servant girl came paddling in with their breakfast on a vast tray. The guest from Mühleck partook of a boiled egg. Johannes was not hungry. His innards were in uproar this morning. It was a delicate engine, his gut, and the weather and Jobst Müller were affecting it. "Damned bread is stale," he muttered. Ulrike, in the doorway, threw him a look.

"Tell me, " said his father-in-law, "is there sign of the Stiftsschule, ah, reopening?"

Johannes shrugged.

"The Archduke," he said vaguely; "you know."

Barbara thrust a smoking platter at him. "Take some brat-wurst, Johann," she said. "Ulrike has made your favourite cream sauce." He stared at her, and she hastily withdrew the plate. Her belly was so big now she had to lean forward from the shoulders to reach the table. For a moment he was touched by her sad ungainly state. He had thought her beautiful when she was carrying their first. He said morosely:

"I doubt it will be opened while he still rules." He brightened. "They say he has the pox, mind; if that puts paid to him there will be hope. "

"Johannes!"

Regina came in, effecting a small but palpable adjustment in the atmosphere. She shut the big oak door behind her with elaborate care, as if she were assembling part of the wall. The world was built on too large a scale for her. Johannes could sympathise.

"Hope of what?" Jobst Müller mildly enquired, scooping a last bit of white from his egg. He was all smoothness this morning, biding his time. The ale left a faint moustache of dried foam on his lip. He was to die within two years.

"Eh?" Kepler growled, determined to be difficult. Jobst Müller sighed.

"You said there would be hope if the Archduke were to… pass on. Hope of what, may we ask?"

"Hope of tolerance, and a little freedom in which folk may practise their faith as conscience bids them." Ha! that was good. Jobst Müller had gone over to the papists in the last outbreak of Ferdinand's religious fervour, while Johannes had held fast and suffered temporary exile. The old boy's smoothness developed a ripple, it ran along his clenchedjaw and tightened the bloodless lips. He said:

"Conscience, yes, conscience is fine for some, for those who imagine themselves so high and mighty they need not bother with common matters, and leave it to others to feed and house them and their families. "

Johannes put down his cup with a tiny crash. It was franked with the Müller crest. Regina was watching him.

"I am still paid my salary. " His face, which had been waxen with suppressed rage, reddened. Barbara made a pleading gesture, but he ignored her. "I am held in some regard in this town, you know. The councillors-aye and the Archduke himself-acknowledge my worth, even if others do not."

Jobst Müller shrugged. He had gathered himself into a crouch, a rat ready to fight. For all his dandified ways he gave off a faint tang of unwashed flesh.

"Fine manner they have of showing their appreciation, then, " he said, "driving you out like a common criminal, eh?"

Johannes tore with his teeth at a crust of bread. "I ward addowed do-" he swallowed mightily "-I was allowed to return within the month. I was the only one of our people thus singled out."

Jobst Müller permitted himself another faint smile. "Perhaps," he said, with silky emphasis, "the others did not have the Jesuits to plead for them? Perhaps their
consciences
would not allow them to seek the help of that Romish guild?"

Kepler's brow coloured again. He said nothing, but sat, throbbing, and glared at the old man. There was a lull. Barbara sniffed. "Eat your sausage, Regina," she said softly, sorrowfully, as if the child's fastidious manner of eating were the secret cause of all this present distress. Regina pushed her plate away, carefully.

"Tell me,"Jobst Müller said, still crouched, still smiling, "what
is
this salary that the councillors continue to pay you for not working?" As if he did not very well know.

"I do not see-"

"They have reduced it, papa, " Barbara broke in eagerly. "It was two hundred florins, and now they have taken away twenty-five!" It was her way, when talking against the tide of her husband's rage, to close her eyes under fluttering lids so as not to see his twitches, that ferocious glare. Jobst Müller nodded, saying: