At Ingrid’s request, Rena translates: ‘I have been judged and vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the centre of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the centre of the same…I hereby abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith. I curse and detest the said errors and heresies.’
As she reads, Simon moves on a bit. Suddenly he comes to a halt in front of a glass display case and shouts with laughter, causing dozens of touristic heads to turn.
‘What is it?’ asks Ingrid in a worried voice.
‘Look — oh, no, just look at this!’
Obedient as usual, the two women approach the display case. Ingrid gets there first, and Rena sees her features contract in disgust.
‘A finger?’ she says.
‘And not just any finger,’ Simon chuckles.
He goes on chuckling until they get the joke. There, decked out in a lace ribbon and preserved these four centuries under a bell jar, stand the remains of the great man’s middle finger. The nail has blackened and the bones are starting to crumble, but the relic proudly declares to the Catholic powers-that-be: Eppur si muove!
Oh, Galileo Galilei! If only you and my father could have met, you would have become the best of pals! You’d have spent long hours together, discussing the law of floating bodies. ‘Ice: lighter or heavier than water?’ ‘Heavier,’ said scientists of old. ‘Why does it float, then?’ ‘Because of its shape. Large pieces of ice with flat bottoms float, just like boats. Read Aristotle.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ said brave Galileo. ‘Even if you shove a piece of ice to the bottom and hold it there, it will rise to the surface the minute you let go of it. Lighter than water, then, appearances notwithstanding.’
Yes, Galileo and Greenblatt — thick as thieves, for sure! Alike, as well, in their scorn for all those who prize jaspers and diamonds over fruit and flowers. ‘Some men really deserve,’ said Galileo, ‘to encounter a Medusa’s head which would transmute them into statues of jasper or of diamond, and thus make them more perfect than they are.’
Dreadful obstacles were placed in the Italian astronomer’s path. Real persecution, real impediments. Harassment, condemnation, destruction of career. At seventy-five — five years older than you are now — he was placed under house arrest, and would remain a prisoner of the Inquisition until his death. All this afflicted him at first, yet he recovered and went back to work. Kept at it. So they wouldn’t let him speculate about the cosmos anymore? All right, then he’d cast a bell for Siena’s cathedral…take up his old treatise on movement… write a few more Mathematical Demonstrations and Discourses…In other words, despite all the obstacles, he went on discovering things all his life…because he wanted to. Because he could, and would, and had to. Because it gave him joy.
Oh! Had my father only met him! But no…So he spent long years bravely struggling with his colleagues’ pragmatism and his employers’ indifference, to say nothing of his own doubts. In Montreal circa 1965, where were the Galileos who could have joined him in exploring the farthest reaches of sky and soul?
No one persecuted him. But he used up his time, squandered his energy, and watched his dreams go floating off into the distance. Boats of ice…
Why did Simon Greenblatt never deserve any joy? Why did he let his vocation get bogged down in absurd marital quarrels?
You, of course, Subra teases, would never dream of quarrelling with your husbands.
Two subjects and only two spark quarrels between Aziz and me: mothers and God.
Aren’t you ashamed of squabbling over such trifles? smiles her Friend.
I am, but there’s nothing for it. On the subject of mothers — when I dare tell him I feel asphyxiated by Aicha’s hospitality, her endless meals of couscous and sweet pastries, her pathological demand for gratitude, he gets all worked up and yells, ‘Basically you think mothers should be unavailable, don’t you? The way your mother was with you? Or the way you are with your own kids? Come right down to it, you have no idea what motherhood is all about!’ At that point I start beating him up. I enjoy a good tussle now and then — it reminds me of wrestling-matches with Rowan when we were kids, or football games with his friends in Westmount. I adored pile-ups — a dozen male bodies thudding on top of mine as I clutched the precious ball to my stomach — sure, I got hurt, even badly sometimes, but I never cried. Aziz is stronger than I am, and when he gets tired of fending off my punches he grabs me by the wrists and starts twisting my arms; almost invariably we wind up making peace in bed…
On the subject of God, Aziz simply refuses to believe I don’t believe in him, though I’ve explained countless times that in my father’s brain there was a place for God but it was empty, whereas in my own brain the place doesn’t exist so neither does the emptiness. Those quarrels don’t lead to punching or shouting; the air between us simply roils with silence, suspicion and dark misery. Here again, though, the bad feeling usually dissipates when we start tearing off our clothes, panting, soldering our bodies together in the kitchen doorway, in the shower, on the living-room rug, on or under the dining-room table…
Our worst quarrels occur when the two themes converge, for instance when Aziz comes home from a visit to his mother in the projects and I can tell Aicha has been getting on his case again about his girlfriend’s age and atheism: ‘So you’ll never give me a grandson? You’ll never have a Muslim son, Aziz? You’ll never be a real man?’ Those nights, as during the first weeks of our love, my sweetheart’s cock stays soft and small…
Still standing next to Simon, Rena stares at Galileo’s middle finger.
‘Did the Catholic Church ever apologise for its error?’ she asks. ‘Once they were forced to acknowledge that the Earth revolved around the Sun, I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Simon replies. ‘John Paul II finally admitted Galileo was right, three and a half centuries after the great scientist’s death.’
‘Did he add that, by the same token, Urban VIII was wrong?’
‘Oh, I doubt he went that far. Don’t forget, the pope’s infallibility didn’t become dogma until the nineteenth century.’
‘I see. And it’s not retroactive?’
‘No. So Urban VIII had the right to make a mistake.’
‘Well, the museum could at least mention the fact that Galileo’s story didn’t end with his retraction.’
Simon checks to make sure Ingrid is out of earshot. ‘Yeah, you see?’ he says. ‘Only his finger protests.’
And Rena laughs. Even if he’s belabouring the point a bit, she laughs. Even if she suspects that, deep down, he’s comparing Galileo’s persecution to Timothy Leary’s, she laughs.
As they sit waiting for lunch in a nearby pizzeria, Rena leafs through the book Simon purchased at the museum gift shop.
Galileo’s Daughter. Well, well.
It would seem Virginia and her father shared a deep spiritual communion…just like you and me, hey, Dad? Except that I betrayed you. Virginia entered the convent at age fourteen and took her vows two years later under the name of Suor Maria Celeste; she fervently loved her daddy all her life long — supporting him, doing all she could to protect him from the Inquisition, writing him hundreds of letters, sewing clothes for him, turning his fruit into jams and jellies, running the convent apothecary, concocting remedies, and…dying at age thirty-four, long before he did. Sorry about that, Dad.
Feltro