10
The Remembered Meteor
Thursday morning Nicolaus tapped my shoulder as I was carrying a sack of flour into Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen from her cellar. “I think we’ll talk today,” he said.
Then later when I, in black and white and beneath my tricorne, left my house for a lecture with Master Desiderius, Nicolaus was beside me in the street. I knew better than to wait for Nicolaus to start a conversation. “I tried to talk with Daniel about Master Jacob,” I said. “And he doesn’t want to hear a word.”
“He’s done with that.”
“I’m not.”
There was never any menace to Nicolaus. He was only quiet and intent. I could wait silently, too. “Why?” he asked, finally.
“It’s worth some looking.” Usually I walked a brisk pace to lectures, or anywhere, or I just ran. But I was in my tricorne and talking with a man in his. We walked deliberately. I waited again.
“What did you see of Knipper in my mother’s kitchen?” Nicolaus asked.
“I saw him there,” I said. “I’ll never deny that. He only asked me to fetch Willi from the inn, to carry that black trunk.”
“It might have been made known to the Inquisitor.”
“I thought you wouldn’t want him to know,” I said. “Did you want the Inquiry to come into your own house?”
“The Inquiry would have found its own Inquisitor there and he could decide himself what to make of it. That might have been why he was made Inquisitor. I think it more likely that you didn’t want the Inquiry to find you in my own house.”
“I wasn’t asked anyway.”
“Answers needn’t have questions.”
“Questions needn’t have answers, either,” I said, but only as it seemed a properly ambiguous remark to make.
“Does the Reciprocal Squares have an answer?”
“Not that I know. But it must, I think. Have you tried to solve it, Nicolaus?”
“I have.” And he smiled. “Everyone in the family has for years.”
“But the challenge only came from Paris this month!”
“The problem is older than Monsieur de Molieres’ challenge. It’s older than the Monsieur himself.”
“Has Daniel also played at it?”
“Dearly.”
I knew enough about my Master’s family and their Mathematics to make a guess. “Nicolaus,” I said. “Would it be that Daniel wrote to the Paris Academy and pressed them to make the challenge?”
“Why would you think that?” So of course I was right.
“Because Daniel couldn’t solve it, and was afraid his father might. Now all Europe will try. Daniel would rather anyone else solved the problem than his father.”
“You know the lion by his paw.”
“But Daniel wouldn’t have solved it anyway,” I said. “It’s not the kind of Mathematics he’s genius at. It’s too . . . invisible.”
“Nor I,” Nicolaus said. “It’s too invisible for me, as well.”
We’d reached the house of Desiderius. “Master Desiderius came from Strasbourg.”
“Many of us have come through Strasbourg. The trunk has now, also.”
“What do you know about the black trunk?” I asked.
“Everything.”
“It was Master Jacob’s. It had been in Huldrych’s laboratory and then in your father’s house. And Jacob’s papers were in it.”
“And then Knipper was. This is what I want of you, Leonhard. Come with me tonight to ask Willi what he found in the kitchen.”
So now, I was Nicolaus’ clerk. “I was wanting to. Nicolaus, should I tell Gottlieb that Knipper was in the kitchen? Should I tell the Council, or Magistrate Faulkner?”
“Whether only a few know that, or everyone does, it will still mean the same thing.” And he tipped his hat. I did the same.
After his Greek lecture, I asked Master Desiderius about the Faustbook. “If a bargain is made with mere men instead of Mephistopheles, what is at stake? Can a man wager his soul?”
“I hope he can’t,” Desiderius said.
“In truth, all a man has is his soul.”
“So there isn’t any wager, then,” I said.
“I hope there isn’t. In your Mathematics, are there problems without a solution?”
“There are some. And there are some that might, but the solution hasn’t been found yet. Last Saturday Master Johann gave me a problem just like that. Either there is no solution, or it will be very elegant.”
“An elegant solution.” He was wistful. “Yes, that’s what’s needed.” He smiled. “Leonhard, I have a bargain for you.”
“You’ll give me fame and knowledge?” I asked and we laughed.
“No, you’ll do something very small for me, and get nothing out of it in return.”
“I’d want nothing anyway. What may I do?”
“You’ll know soon.”
On that Thursday it had been one week from Huldrych’s death, and there had been no other deaths. The Council ordered that the black flags be taken down, and commerce be resumed. Commerce hadn’t been embargoed, as it would have been in earlier years, but it had slowed. In just the course of the day it quickly revived. The piers were busy with boats coming and going, the gates were thick with carts, and the Market and Barefoot Squares were bustling to make up what had been missed.
In the Market Square I saw all the people of Basel. Wives with their baskets, kitchen girls on errands from their mistresses, booths of leather, cloth, ironmongery, and pottery and the craftsmen who’d made them, fish and fishermen, bread and bakers, farmers and all that their fields made, butchers and meat, and passing through the Square was a pastor one moment and a lawyer the next, a scholar of the University herding a flock of flapping black and white students, then a troop of the Watch.
All the Death Dance was there, but Death himself. Or, he was invisible.
Thursday evening came, and among all the men affected by Knipper’s death, finally one of them had reason for real joy. Beside Willi in the box was planted a booted and weathered man of goodly girth and mirthful visage, though Willi’s smile was wider by far. This was Knipper’s replacement, a man from Bern who’d been recruited by the innkeeper of the Roaring Lion. And Gustavus seemed to be expecting him and went in with him to the stables once he’d unloaded the passengers and luggage.
“That one’s a coach driver for any road,” Willi said as the horses disappeared into the tunnel. “See that smile? Oh, and do you think he’s just fat and pleased? There was a highwayman blocking the road on the pass over Solothurn, and his partner on a horse right out from the trees behind us, and fat old Rupert shot them both dead, one pistol shot each. And he never slowed down, and he never stopped smiling.”
“And he left them?”
“He never slowed down. He just told sheriff in Solothurn they were there.” Willi shook his head. “Knipper would at least have been put in bad humor by it. This new driver, Rupert, never stopped smiling.”
There was evening and morning in each day of Genesis, and Master Desiderius read the Hebrew this way: a twilight of turning and twisting, to a dark night of dark things, then a breakthrough dawn to the age of day. The earth turned from the sun as I walked Basel’s streets, and though Basel was not too tightly a part of the earth it rested on, it turned from the sun, as well. I passed a Night Watch on his way to his post and he greeted me. Basel had watchers in the night, some visible. Charon the cat was watching, also. I didn’t see Nicolaus.
Daniel was in the Common Room, and I stayed away from him and his dice and cards. He was too boisterous, and still off balance. His voice rose and swayed like a pass through the Alps, and he sounded in danger of falling off its edge. And he laughed, and no one else was yet. But his rough humor served us when he chided Willi too hard for his failings as a coach driver and drove Willi to leave the Common for his own room.
And as I stepped back into the hall outside the Common Room a shadow came beside me. Nicolaus had been watching for me.
I took Nicolaus to the hall, and up the stairs toward the living, moist smell of horses. Below us we heard neighs and shuffles, and Knipper’s niche was in an invisible corner. The door was poorly fit and glow of a candle leaked through and around it. I held up my own candle and knocked. “Be away, and if it’s food leave it.”
“It’s not food,” I said. “It’s just Leonhard.”
“Then just be away.”
“No, Willi, I won’t bother you.” I pushed on the door, which had no latch, and Willi was hunched sitting on the straw pallet. The room might have been any size, a closet or a cathedral, beyond the meager part that the candle lit. Likely Knipper had never seen it except at night. “And it’s Master Nicolaus, too.” As little light as Willi’s candle gave, nearly as much seemed reflected from his face. Or maybe it was his own glowing anger that we saw in his eyes and cheeks and chin.
“I’m weary,” he said.
“Weary of talk,” I answered. “I know you are. But you won’t drive the coach anymore, will you? That Rupert has it now.”
“No, I won’t drive it. I won’t ever drive it. I’ll throw myself into the River rather than drive.”
“Will Rupert have this room?”
“He’ll have to find it first, and get me out of it when he does.”
“He won’t find it if he hasn’t already,” I said. “Can I ask your help, Willi? I want to know who killed Knipper.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t.”
“I know that. Nobody knows but one man, the man who killed him, and I want to know who it was. That’s the one who’ll be thrown into the River. So I just want to ask you a few questions and they’re not hard.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know if Knipper was there in Master Johann’s house in the kitchen when you fetched the trunk.”
“Oh, you! You sent me after that trunk! That’s what started it!”
“I did,” I said. “Knipper sent me for you. He said it’d been brought from the coach by mistake.”
“I didn’t take it there. It was never on the coach.”
“Was Knipper there in the kitchen with the trunk?”
“I already said he wasn’t! I had to lift that myself.”
“Was it heavy?” Nicolaus asked. It was always startling when he spoke and Willi shrank back from the question. “About the weight of a man. Was Knipper in it, do you think?”
“Aye, yes, he was.” All the light in Willi’s face faded. It was as if the candle had been blown out, though it burned unchanged. “He rolled around in it, and I could feel it. I thought it was poor packed, and whatever it held would be bad broken by Strasbourg.”
“How did you know it was going all the way to Strasbourg?”
“The label on it said so.”
“How much can you read?” Nicolaus asked. It was a surprise that he could any.
“I know that word, Strasbourg.”
“What else did the label say?”
“That’s all I knew. It wasn’t till Freiburg that the innkeeper read it to me. The trunk was for Magistrate Caiaphas in Strasbourg.”
“For him?” I asked. “Then it was being sent to him! When was the label put on it?”
“I never saw it put on. When I got to the kitchen where I picked it up, the label was on.”
“How long did it take you to get to Master Johann’s house from the Inn?”
“I was pounding horseshoes that were bent; Gustavus had told me to do it. I wasn’t going to go help Knipper before I finished what my own Master had told me to do. I won’t cross Gustavus.”
“Then ten minutes or more.” I asked Nicolaus, “How long was the family together? Who would have left or gone to the kitchen?”
“We were together long enough.”
I didn’t ask more. Willi wasn’t understanding what I was asking Nicolaus, but he might start if I asked anything else. So I asked Willi, “Do you think anyone could have opened the trunk that night after you’d put it on the coach?”
“They’d have had to tie it up again just as I had, and I tied it fast.”
“Did you take the trunk to Caiaphas?” Nicolaus asked.
“No, that was for Dundrach to do. That evil—that evil, evil bat came to me. From Hades he came.”
“What did Caiaphas want?”
“He wanted to know how I came by the trunk, and what had happened to Knipper. He threatened me with torture if I didn’t answer him.”
“He didn’t tell you that Knipper was in the trunk?”
“Never! He never did.”
“Did they say you’d been arrested for bringing a corpse into the city?” I asked.
“They said that, and I called them evil liars for it. They didn’t say it was Knipper.”
“Did Caiaphas ever ask you anything else?”
“Only about the trunk. I told them I’d just been told to put it on the carriage, and I never knew who tagged it. And I told him where I’d got it, from the Master’s kitchen, and I told him it was you who came for me to get it.” And he pointed at me.
“You told him by name?” Nicolaus asked.
“I said, The student, young Master Leonhard, who’s servant to Master Johann’s house. And he screamed at that, that you’d be a Master or a servant, but you couldn’t be both.”
“I am both,” I said. “You were right. And Magistrate Caiaphas remembered my name. Willi, tell me about Strasbourg.”
“That city’s all evil. All the people, down to the dirt in the streets.”
“They’d have good people there, too,” I said.
“They’ve like been cast out. The city’s evil.”
“I don’t remember it that way,” Nicolaus said. “We stopped there for some time, a month, when we were coming to Basel.” Nicolaus would have been ten years old then. And his impression, even from twenty years ago, might have been more accurate than Willi’s. But Willi’s impression was as black and evil as a place could be. It made me think of the courtyard outside Caiaphas’s window at the inn. “And Gottlieb went on to Basel before we did.” He nodded to Willi. “Then that’s enough. You’ve been a help.”
“I’ll want to know who killed the old man,” Willi said. “I’ll throw him in the river myself, for the trouble he’s caused me.”
Nicolaus and I stood outside in the dark Square, at first saying nothing. But he had something to say and I waited.
“A hand brought that pan down on his head,” he said, finally. “A hand in my father’s house.”
“And a hand put Knipper in the trunk,” I said. “And took out Master Jacob’s papers that had been in it.”
“There could have been space for Knipper and the papers both. They could have gone to Strasbourg together. Or the papers might have been taken out years ago. You’d want those papers, wouldn’t you, Leonhard?”
“I would. And they were in the trunk.”
“You know they were?”
“I do, though I didn’t see them. Had you ever seen them?”
“No. Gottlieb had.”
“Nicolaus,” I said, “who killed Knipper? Who came into the kitchen?”
“You came into the kitchen,” Nicolaus said.
“I did no harm to Knipper.” And at that we parted.
Sometimes I doubted my own memory.
Once I saw a meteor. I had been walking back to Basel from an evening with my parents in Riehen. The sky was clear, with no moon and many stars, and it was very quiet. It was in the winter. I’d been thinking of how, if some action occurred, it would be by sight that we knew where; but it was more often by hearing that we would know that it had occurred at all. I considered the Cartesian implication that only by sensing did we know what was true. But something noteworthy could have been happening just behind me, and if it made no sound, I might never have known of it.
This had startled my imagination and I’d turned abruptly and looked back. At that instant, that very, elegant, instant, a meteor had cut the sky. It wasn’t just a thin line of white, what we often called “shooting stars.” It was a true sphere and engulfed in flame, and I saw it fragment, and all its splinters keep their line through the night. It was so quick that I couldn’t even spin my head fast enough to follow it, and by the time I did, it was gone. And it was silent; if I hadn’t turned, I would never have known that it was there above me. And it was very noteworthy.
But it was gone. I didn’t know what meteors were, and where that one ended, or if it endured at all. The only truth I had of it was my memory. And as I’d returned to my trudge to Basel that night, I’d begun to doubt. I had only turned in reflex, at my own imagination, so that it might have been only more imagination that saw the meteor. And always later, I still wondered. What was real, what was visible, what was true about a memory? If Monsieur Descartes only believed to be true what he sensed himself, was my meteor true once I no longer saw it? Was memory a sense?
So, after my talk with Nicolaus, I walked the short path home, saw no meteors, and I tried to remember, in truth, what I had seen and done that evening in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen. I had entered; I had talked with Knipper; I had seen the trunk; I had left. Did I do anything else? Did I really do what I thought I had?
And had there been a label on the trunk? Yes. It was in my memory that there had been, pasted on a side, too plain to be noticed. And it had not been still there when the trunk had returned to Basel.
Even early as I was to fetch water Friday morning, there was life and motion in the Barefoot Square. The sun was up, though newly, and most houses were awake and awork, as this was Basel. I greeted Old Gustavus at the door to his Inn, watching the Square as a general his battlefield. And as I put my buckets under the water stream I heard a bell toll. It was sharp and very clean, to split the air as lightning splits the sky. I was impelled to look for the source. I’d never heard that bell before. Then it rang again. But it wasn’t a ring, it was so pure and pointed. It was a cry, a sigh, an exultation, and a song. Something very great and mysterious was speaking.
I found it. The bell was the stone gate in the Wall, and the hammer was a chisel. It was Lithicus, high on his scaffold.
The Wall was rooted deep into the city, in time, and in understanding of what the city even was. It was the city, this inner Wall. So the bell was Basel and that was why its ringing pierced so deep to anyone who heard it.
“What is it you’re doing there, anyway?” I asked.
Lithicus put down his hammer and decided to answer. “The Wall’s old and gate’s old, and the stone they’re made of is old, too.”
“As old as all stone,” I said.
“But there’s stones loose in the arch, and that’s new.”
“It was just the shield on the capstone that was broken.”
“The cracks go deeper. Deep into the gate. You can’t see from down there, but the whole arch is breaking.”
And perhaps the cracks in Basel were deeper, too. “What do you do for that?”
“Mortar them back in.”
“It’s taking you weeks to do.”
“Well, it’s not done quick, it isn’t.”
“I guess you’re doing it well, then, instead.”
He liked that. “Take any stone from an arch and the whole of it fails. And I need to take them all out.”
“How do you?”
“Match a brace to each stone, pull it out and put the brace in, then fix the stonework behind it, put new mortar in, and push the stone back in. And I’m carving in it. They want the lettering on the stones.”
“What’s the lettering to say?”
“What’s it to say? I don’t know. I only know the letters for each stone. I haven’t read them all out.”
“Tell me the letters.”
“E, G, O,” he said. “N, U, M, Q, U, A, M—”
“C, A, D, O,” I finished for him.
“You already knew!”
“No, I guessed. Ego numquam cado. It means, I never fall.”
“It won’t. Not when I’m done with it. And tell your Master Johann I’ll have his stone done, too.”
“I will.”
“Come tomorrow to my yard. I’ll have his drawing.”
“I will come. Lithicus? Did you know Master Huldrych?”
“I knew him.”
“Did you know him well?”
“I only knew him quick, and now dead.”
“You’re carving his epitaph. Did you ever even speak with him?”
“Why is it,” he asked, angry again, “that you keep asking about that spiral? I’ll not speak more of it!”
“I wasn’t either. What did Huldrych have to do with the spiral?”
“I’ll not speak of it, I said. I’ll not speak of infernal spirals, I’ll not speak of spirals on stone, I’ll not speak of spirals on paper, I’ll not speak of lot stones.” And his hammer landed on his chisel and all Basel shook.
I watched him for a few moments. It was impressive to see a master at his craft, but even more to hear Basel ring. But then he sent me off. “I’ll have the drawing tomorrow night. Come for it then. Now leave me alone.”
I did leave him, but not alone. The Square was filling as it would in the morning, Rupert the new driver was climbing onto the coach, and Gustavus still watched. I turned back to watch. I saw Lithicus raise his hammer and with all his might bring it to his chisel. The air split, the Square shook, the inn trembled, and the church sang.
My studies with my father long ago were not allowed to remain abstract. My Botany he taught in the garden, my Latin in the Bible, my History in the ruins, and my Theology in life. For Geometry, as I studied triangles and rectangles and the theories of congruence, my father put me to practical work learning carpentry. If an angle was not defined properly as a right angle, the cabinet door would not close; and just as there were many different quadrilaterals which could have sides of the same length, there were many shapes other than square that a box would form if it wasn’t properly braced.
I’d had more practice under Mistress Dorothea, who was not interested in geometric theorems but was very interested in the sturdiness and level of cupboards and tables. So that Friday morning I was forcing a table to be parallel to the floor beneath. Both lengths and angles needed correcting. “It’s this leg,” I said. “It was cut crooked, and pulling it straight has made it too long. But I don’t want to push it back crooked again.”
“Do what’s proper,” she said. Proper meant that it must not be done easily, or quickly, or unconventionally. Instead, proper meant that it must be done carefully, and laboriously, and frugally. To add complication, Daniel was watching me, and he found my task amusing.
“Cut it until it’s long enough, hey?”
“Subtraction by a positive always results in a lesser value,” I said.
“But can you prove it Mathematically?”
“I can prove it with a table leg, but I won’t.”
“Is that Cartesian?” he laughed. “A proof by senses?”
“It’s proof either way,” I said. “But Daniel, if you accuse me of Cartesian thoughts, tell me this: Was Master Johann really accused of being a Cartesian?”
He laughed louder. “You want to see? Here, come on, I’ll show you.” He jumped to his feet. “Come on!”
I went with him to the stairs, and up, three flights, to a hall I hadn’t seen since I’d been there with him before years ago, and to a door, and through to his bedroom.
There were memories for me there. As a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old it had been a refuge when he took me there to escape. There were no chores, no frowns, no confusion in that room, just Daniel’s attention and friendship. It still held that feeling, as a pie rack holds its smells. The room was the proper size for a Basel gentleman’s younger son, with more space than it needed for a bed and desk and dresser, but only just. He’d always had a good shelf of books, though not as mine, and I saw that now they were less on strict Mathematics and more on the new topics of Physics, mostly Hydraulics and gases. There weren’t many books on those subjects, and he had more than I knew had been written.
His desk was fairly clear, but that was because he was actually very orderly. There was another shelf of fileboxes, and I knew what those were filled with. He had a vast correspondence all over Europe, as he was as quick with his pen as he was with his tongue.
“Are they useful?” I asked, meaning his books. He had to see where I was looking to know how to answer.
“Those? No. Vacuums, all of them. Pure emptiness.”
“You’ll write one, then?”
“It’s started, Leonhard, be sure of it! I don’t use all my time riding the countryside.”
I would have asked him all about it, but I knew he’d be impenetrable until he wanted to tell me, and then he’d be uncontainable. “But what did you want to show me?”
He had a filebox already open and was riffling papers. “I’ll find it,” he said, and then, “Ah, yes! So Leonhard, you’ve heard the legend, how Brutus was accused of heresy in Holland.”
“Of being a Cartesian?”
“The very. What would he do now, if someone made that accusation?”
“No one would accuse.”
“Because he isn’t a heretic?”
“Well . . . he isn’t, but I also don’t think anyone would even dare.”
“Yes, that’s it. They’d end up accused of heresy themselves, or thievery, or murder. And if a student tried? Do you think he’d even get an answer?”
“No. He’d be out of the University instead.”
“But in Holland he wasn’t the emperor he is in Basel. Here. It was a student who accused him in Groningen. And old Brutus did answer him. See this.”
It was a printed pamphlet of just a single sheet folded to make four pages, titled on the first as a Dire Warning to the Rector of the University of Groningen by the student Petrus Venhuysen. I read the first page.
“The Latin is so poor, I can hardly understand it. It says Master Johann opposes the Calvinist faith?” I turned it over. “He follows the teachings of Descartes, and so he deprives all believers of their comfort in Christ?”
“The Brute’s the last to give anyone comfort and the first to deprive them of it. But he doesn’t bother with anyone’s Theology. So what do you think he did about the charge?”
“Would he answer it?”
“Sure he would! And in twelve long pages, too! Look at this!”
He gave me another pamphlet, thicker and more expensively printed. My eyes caught a few lines:
. . . all my life I have professed my Reformed Christian belief, which I still do . . . he would have me pass for an unorthodox believer, a very heretic; indeed very wickedly he seeks to make me an abomination to the world, and to expose me to the vengeance of both the powers that be and the common people . . .
“It’s a terrible charge,” I said.
“Keep reading!”
. . . I would not have minded so much if Venhuysen had not been one of the worst students, an utter ignoramus, not known, respected, or believed by any man of learning, and he is certainly not in a position to blacken an honest man’s name, let alone a professor known throughout the learned world . . .
“Oh! Poor Venhuysen!” I said.
“And see?” Daniel laughed. “Known throughout the learned world! He says it himself.”
“He is,” I said. “And he was then, too.” Then I had to laugh, too. “But it seems low of a great professor to call a student an ignoramus.”
“I’ll take that back before you read more. I can’t take the risk of you ever admitting I showed it to you, even by inadvertence.”
I handed it to him. “I won’t.”
“This little epistle has a fame of its own, and I’m not the only one with a copy. And you can see how he’s aged. The spirit’s the same, and more, but he’s doesn’t waste words or swat flies in public where he’s seen doing it. He saves his vitriol for worthy opponents.”
I had to shake my head. “I know that what you say has truth in it, Daniel. But I still think he’s better than that.”
“Do you know the student Gluck, from Zurich?”
“I saw him in your father’s lecture.”
“He won’t last the month. Not even the week.”
“What did he do?”
“He was disrespectful to a Chair.”
“How was he? Gottlieb said the same of him.”
“That’s all that’s been said.” Daniel leaned close to me, though the room was empty besides us, and smirked. “But I’ll tell you. He called on the Dean and demanded his tuition be returned. He said he was dissatisfied with his Master’s lecture.”
“That would be poor to say of any Master,” I said, “and poorer to say to the Dean. But which Master?”
“The very wrong Master to slight in any way. The Master, in fact, who lives in this house.”
“I feared so. But I’ve heard nothing of it but from you and Gottlieb.”
“You’ll hear nothing else but cautionary whispers. The Brute won’t let his own name be dragged into it. But I still have it in my head to take that pamphlet to Lieber the printer and have him make me a hundred copies. Everyone knows the Brute’s a tyrant, but then they’d see how petty he is, too.”
“You won’t. And Lieber wouldn’t print it anyway.”
“You’re right, Leonhard, he wouldn’t. He’d be run out of town. Or worse. Far worse.”
I strayed past the Boot and Thorn midafternoon. A half dozen students were at a table and I joined them. Gluck was among them, very glum.
“We’re toasting Gluck, on his departure!” I was told.
“What’s he departing for?” I asked.
“Master Cassini’s told him that his studies aren’t satisfactory, and he’ll not have him any more in his lectures.”
“And Master Paleologus has said the same.”
“And his room at Frau Minn’s is needed for another boarder, so he’s to be out of it.”
He himself turned to me from the end of the table. “It’s good riddance, too,” he said. He took off his student’s brimmed hat. “And I just bought it. Who would buy it from me?”
A student at the table, who was also new to Basel and who’d been friendly with me, said, “Sell it to Leonhard. He needs one.”
But another student, who was my elder, answered, “No. He’s a gentleman now. He won’t wear a low student’s hat.” I was in brown, the only one at the table so.
“But look at him!” They took to jesting with me, which I didn’t mind. “In brown? He’s no gentleman!” “But you’ve seen his tricorne!” “Is he below us or above us?” “Is he buoyant or sinking?”
“I lost my hat,” I said. “And I’d dear like it back.”
“Then I’ll sell you this,” Gluck said, and named a price.
“Too expensive?” the elder student said to me. “Ask Gustavus. He has old robes and hats and rags.”
“Plague-ridden rags, you mean!” he was answered.
“He’d have burned anything from a plague house.” Besides the clothes of plague victims, innkeepers would gather clothing from any sickbed, usually to burn, though sometimes to sell to travelers.
So then, the talk turned to Huldrych and plague. I said to Gluck, “No, I’d like my old hat. My father gave it to me.”
“Afraid he’ll roast you for losing it? My father’ll chop me to pieces when he hears I’ve been sent down.”
“You should keep your hat,” I said. “You may find yourself at another University.”
“I will,” he said, the hat in his hand. “And no Master Johann at it.”
Friday evening I took early to my room. My grandmother would have questioned me about my day but I had my door closed before she had all the kitchen cleaned.
The thoughts in my brain were like a billow of starlings, too many to count and too whirling to hold. I did what I only could, then. I took paper, and pen, and ink, and lit my candle. I knew when I did that I would just blink and hours would go by.
I thought of squares, and circles. I put my quill on the pages and took it around a circle. The ink drained from the feather to the paper. But instead of putting it back to the well, I kept it travelling the path it had made. Around it went, and again, and again around. There was no end to its infinity.
I felt something in my coat pocket and I pulled it out, and it was Desiderius’s Faustbook. This Faust was a man who sold his soul for knowledge. And renown? The man in Basel who held the greatest renown was Master Johann; and there was renown for any man who won a Chair in Basel.
The circle continued to return to its beginning, though it had no beginning.
Why had Desiderius pressed this book onto me?
Knipper had been in Master Johann’s kitchen.
From the edge of the paper, the quill would only seem to go up and down. And from the top of the paper, the quill would only seem to go back and forth. But as I looked down, from above and outside the page, I could see the whole circle.
Huldrych had choked on the dust. And the trunk had been in his house. And Jacob, who had owned the trunk, had died . . . of the plague also?
The circle was an infinity contained on a single sheet of paper.
Daniel had stood at one side, seeking everything about his Uncle Jacob. Then he’d been on the other side, claiming he didn’t care at all.
Master Johann was the center, never moving, but with everything orbiting him. Caiaphas was a meteor from some far end of the cosmos appearing in flame.
What was a Chair worth? What would anyone give for it? Or do for it?
And then I understood. I knew. I was Saul with my face toward Damascus. I didn’t deduce it myself, but instead I was told. It was given to me. I just knew. I took my paper and ink and began writing. It was so elegant.