Kepler

Kepler stared. "He wants…" and eye and an elbow setting up together a devil's dance of twitches "… he wants a written apology of me?"

"That is, yes, what he indicated." The baron swallowed, and looked away with a sickly smile. Regina at his side watched him intently, as she watched all big people, as if he might suddenly do something marvellous and inexplicable, burst into tears, or throw back his head and howl like an ape. Kepler regarded him too, thinking sadly that this man was a direct link with Copernicus: in his youth the baron had hired Valentine Otho, disciple of von Lauchen, to instruct him in mathematics. "Also, he will require a declaration of secrecy, that is, that you will swear an oath not to reveal to… to others, any astronomical data he may provide you with in the course of your work. He is especially jealous, I believe, for the Mars observations. In return he will guarantee lodgings for you and your family, and will undertake to press the Emperor either to ensure the continuation of your Styrian salary, or else to grant you an allowance himself. These are his terms, Herr Kepler; I would advise you-"

"To accept? Yes, yes, I will, of course." Why not? He was weary of standing on his dignity. The baron stared at him, and Kepler blinked: was that contempt in those watery eyes? Damn it, Hoffmann knew nothing of what it was to be poor and an outcast, he had his lands and title and his place at court. Sometimes these bland patricians sickened him.

"But what, " said Barbara, choking on it, "what of our conditions, our demands?" No one replied. How was it, Kepler wondered, with a twinge of guilt, that her most impassioned outbursts were met always by the same glassy-eyed, throat-clearing silence. The carriage lurched into a pothole with a mighty jolt, and from without they heard the driver address a string of lush obscenities to his horse. Kepler sighed. His world was patched together from the wreckage of an infinitely finer, immemorial dwelling place; the pieces were precious and lovely, enough to break his heart, but they did not fit.

The baron's house stood on Hradcany hill hard by the imperial palace, looking down over Kleinseit to the river and the Jewish quarter, and, farther out, the suburbs of the old town. There was a garden with poplars and shaded walkways and a fishpond brimming with indolent carp. On the north, the palace side, the windows gave on to pavonian lawns and a fawn wall, sudden skies pierced by a spire, and purple pennons undulating in a cowed immensity. Once, from those windows, Kepler had been vouchsafed an unforgettable glimpse of a prancing horse and a hound rampant, ermine and emerald, black beard, pale hand, a dark disconsolate eye. That was as near as he was to come to the Emperor for a long time.

In the library the baron's wife sat at an escritoire, sprinkling chalk from an ivory horn upon a piece of parchment. She rose as they entered, and, blowing lightly on the page, glanced at them with the distant relation of a smile. "Why Doctor-and Frau Kepler-you have returned to us, " a faded eagle, taller than her husband but as gaunt as he, in a satin gown of metallic blue, her attention divided equally between her visitors and the letter in her hand.

"My dear," the baron murmured, with a jaded bow.

There was a brief silence, and then that smile again. "And Dr Brahe, is he not with you?"

"Madam," Kepler burst out, "I have been cruelly used by that man. He it was urged me, pleaded with me to come here to Bohemia; I came, and he treats me as he would a mere apprentice!"

"You have had a falling out with our good Dane?" the baroness said, suddenly giving the Keplers all her attention; "that is unfortunate," and Regina, catching the rustle of that silkily ominous tone, leaned forward past her mother for a good look at this impressive large blue lady.

"I set before him," said Kepler, "I set before him a list of some few conditions which he must meet if I was to remain and work with him, for example I deman-I asked that is for separate quarters for my family and myself (that place out there, I swear it, is a madhouse), and that a certain quantity of food-"

Barbara darted forward-"And firewood!"

"And firewood, to be set aside expressly-"

"For our use, that's right."

"-For our, yes, use," blaring furiously down his nostrils. He pictured himself hitting her, felt in the roots of his teeth the sweet smack of his palm on a fat forearm. "I asked let me see I asked, yes, that he procure me a salary from the Emperor-"

"His majesty," the baron said hastily, "his majesty is… difficult."

"See, my lady, " Barbara warbled, "see what we are reduced to, begging for our food. And you were so kind when we first arrived here, accommodating us…"

"Yes," the baroness said thoughtfully.

"But," cried Kepler, "I ask you, sir, madam, are these unreasonable demands?"

Baron Hoffmann slowly sat down. "We met upon the matter yesterday," he said, looking at the hem of his wife's gown, "Dr Brahe, Dr Kepler and myself."

"Yes?" said the baroness, growing more aquiline by the moment. "And?"

"This!" cried Barbara, a very quack; "look at us, thrown out on the roadside!"

The baron pursed his lips. "Hardly, gnädige Frau, hardly so… so… Yet it is true, the Dane is angry. "

"Ah," the baroness murmured; "why so?"

Drops of rain fingered the sunlit window. Kepler shrugged. "I do not know. "Barbara looked at him. "… I never said, " he said, "that the Tychonic system is misconceived, as he charges! I… I merely observed of one or two weaknesses in it, caused I believe by a too hasty acceptance of doubtful premises, that a bitch in a hurry will produce blind pups. " The baroness put a hand up quickly to trap a cough, which, had he not known her to be a noble lady fully conscious of the gravity of the moment, he might have taken for a snigger. "And anyway, it is misconceived, a monstrous thing sired on Ptolemy out of Egyptian Herakleides. He puts the earth, you see, madam, at the centre of the world, but makes the five remaining planets circle upon the sun! It works, of course, so far as appearances are concerned- but then you could put any one of the planets at the centre and still save the phenomena. "

"Save the..?" She turned to the baron to enlighten her. He looked away, fingering his chin.

"The phenomena, yes, " said Kepler. "But it's all a trick our Dane is playing, aimed at pleasing the schoolmen without entirely denying Copernicus-he knows it as well as I do, and I'm damned before I will apologise for speaking the plain truth!" He surged to his feet, choking on a sudden bubble of rage. "The thing, excuse me, the thing is simple: he is jealous of me, my grasp of our science-yes, yes," rounding on Barbara violently, though she had made no protest, "yes, jealous. Andfurther-more he is growing old, he's more than fifty-" the baroness's left eyebrow snapped into a startled arc "-and is worried for his future reputation, would have me ratify his worthless theory by forcing me to make it the basis of my work. But…" But there he faltered, and turned, listening. Music came from afar, the tune made small and quaintly merry by the distance. He walked slowly to the window, as if stalking some rare prize. The rain shower had passed, and the garden brimmed with light. Clasping his hands behind him and swaying gently on heel and toe he gazed out at the poplars and the dazzled pond, the drenched clouds of flowers, that jigsaw of lawn trying to reassemble itself between the stone balusters of a balcony. How innocent, how inanely lovely, the surface of the world! The mystery of simple things assailed him. A festive swallow swooped through a tumbling flaw of lavender smoke. It would rain again. Tumty turn. He smiled, listening: was it the music of the spheres? Then he turned, and was surprised to find the others as he had left them, attending him with mild expectancy. Barbara moaned softly in dismay. She knew,  she knew that look, that empty, amiably grinning mask with the burning eyes of a busy madman staring through it. She began rapidly to explain to the baron and his pernous lady that our chief worry, our chief worry is, you see… and Kepler sighed, wishing she would not prattle thus, like a halfwit, her tiny mouth wobbling. He rubbed his hands and advanced from the window, all business now. "I shall," blithely drowning Barbara's babbling, which ran on even as it sank, a flurry of bubbles out of a surprised fish-mouth-"I shall write a letter, apologise, make my peace," beaming from face to face as if inviting applause. The music came again, nearer now, a wind band playing in the palace grounds. "He will summon me back, I think, yes; he will understand, " for what did any of that squabbling matter, after all? "A new start!-may I borrow a pen, madam?"