Kepler (24 page)

"By God," he said, "I am not so old then as I thought, eh?" "You are not old at all, my dear, dear Kepler." She kissed him, and they laughed, and then were silent for a moment, a little awkward, almost embarrassed, sharing an old complicity. What a happy day that had been, perhaps the best out of all the days of that amused and respectful, ill-matched and splendid marriage.

Wallenstein lost interest in him, even his conversation. Summonses to the palace grew rare, and then ceased altogether, and Kepler's patron became a stylised and intermittent presence glimpsed now and then in the distance, beyond a prospect of trees, or down the long slope of a hill on a sunlit evening, cantering among his aides, a stiff, rhythmically nodding figure, like a sacred effigy borne in brief procession on a feast-day. And then, as if indeed some mundane deity's memory had been jogged, workmen with a cart trundled up one day and dumped at Kepler's door a great lump of machinery. It was the printing press.

Now he could work again. There was money to be made from almanacs and navigational calendars. But he was ill that winter, his stomach was bad and he suffered much from gravel and the gout. His years were weighing heavily on him. He needed a helper. In a little book sent him from Strasburg he found on the dedication page a public letter addressed to him by the author, Jakob Bartsch, offering his humble services to the imperial astronomer. Kepler was flattered, and wrote inviting the disciple to come to Sagan. Bartsch was a mixed blessing. He was young and eager, and wearied Kepler with his impossible enthusiasms. Kepler grew fond of him, all the same, and would have had fewer misgivings at his marrying into the family if Susanna, his daughter and Bartsch's bride, had not had so much of the Müller strain in her.

The young man willingly took over the drudgery of the almanacs, and Kepler was free to return to a cherished project, his dream of a journey to the moon. The larger part of that last year in Sagan he devoted to the
Somnium.
None of his books had given him such peculiar pleasure as this one. It was as if some old strain of longing and love were at last being freed. The story of the boy Duracotus, and his mother Fiolxhilda the witch, and the strange sad stunted creatures of the moon, filled him with quiet inner laughter, at himself, at his science, at the mild foolishness of everything.

"You will stay the night, then, Doctor?"

Frau Billig was watching him, her needle poised.

"Yes," he said, "certainly; and thank you."

Hillebrand Billig lifted his troubled head from his accounts and laughed ruefully. "Maybe you will help me with these figures, for I cannot manage them!"

"Aye, gladly."

They want to know what really has brought me here, yes they do. But then, so do I.

When he finished the
Somnium
there had been another crisis, as he had known there would be. What was it, this wanton urge to destroy the work of his intellect and rush out on crazy voyages into the real world? It had seemed to him in Sagan that he was haunted, not by a ghost but something like a memory so vivid that at times it seemed about to conjure itself into a physical presence. It was as if he had mislaid some precious small thing, and forgotten about it, and yet was tormented by the loss. Suddenly now he recalled Tycho Brahe standing barefoot outside his room while a rainswept dawn broke over the Hrad-cany, that forlorn and baffled look on his face, a dying man searching too late for the life that he had missed, that his work had robbed him of. Kepler shivered. Was it that same look the Billigs saw now, on his face?

Susanna had stared at him in disbelief. He would not meet her eye. "But why, why?" she said. "What is to be gained?"

"I must go. " There were the bonds to be seen to in Linz. Wallenstein was in disgrace, had been dismissed. The Emperor was sitting with the Diet in Regensburg, ensuring the succession of his son. "He owes me moneys, there is business to be finished,
I
must go."

"My dear," Susanna said, trying if a joke would work, "if you go, I will expect to see the Last Judgment sooner than your return. " But neither one smiled, and she let fall her hand from his.

He travelled south into wild winter weather. He took no notice of the elements. He was prepared to go on to Prague if necessary, to Tübingen-to Weilderstadt! But Regensburg was far enough. I know he will meet me here, I'll recognise him by the rosy cross on his breast, and his lady with him. Are you there? If I walk to the window now shall I see you, out there in the rain and the dark, all of you, queen and dauntless knight, and death, and the devil…?

"Doctor, Doctor you must go to bed now, and rest, you are ill."

"What?"

"You are shaking…"

111? Was he? His blood sizzled, and his heart was a muffled thunder in his breast. He almost laughed: it would be just like him, convinced all his life that death was imminent and then to die in happy ignorance. But no. "I must have been asleep. " He struggled upright in his chair, coughing, and spread unquiet hands to the fire. Show them, show them all, I'll never die. For it was not death he had come here to meet, but something altogether other. Turn up a flat stone and there it is, myriad and profligate! "Such a dream I had, Billig, such a dream.
Es war doch so schön."

What was it the Jew said? Everything is told us, but nothing explained. Yes. We must take it all on trust. That's the secret. How simple! He smiled. It was not a mere book that was thus thrown away, but the foundation of a life's work. It seemed not to matter.

"Ah my friend, such dreams…"

The rain beat upon the world without. Anna Billig came and filled his cup with punch. He thanked her. Never die, never die.

The standard biographies are
Kepler,
by Max Caspar, translated and edited by C. Doris Hellman (London, 1959), and
Tycho Brake,
by J.L.E. Dreyer (Edinburgh, 1890). I must also mention, once again, my indebtedness to, and admiration for, Arthur Koestler's
The Sleepwalkers
(London, 1959). Another work which provided me also with valuable insights into early 17th-century life and thought is
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,
by Frances A. Yates (London, 1972).

For their help and encouragement, I wish to thank especially Don Sherman and Ruth Dunham, and my wife, Janet.

Johannes Kepler died in Regensburg on November the 15th, 1630.

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Document creation date: 18.09.2008

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