"Ah yes. That you plan to marry. Yes."
"I think you do not approve. "
"But of course I… of course…" and he clambered backwards down the stairs, clasping in his outstretched arms an enormous glossy black ball of sorrow and guilt.
Barbara was kneeling at the fireplace changing the baby's diaper, her face puckered against the clayey stink. Ludwig below her waved his skinny legs, crowing. She glanced over her shoulder at Kepler. "I thought as much," was all she said.
"You knew? But who is the fellow?"
She sighed, sitting back on her heels. "You have met him," she said wearily. "You don't remember, of course. He was in Prague, you met him."
"Ah, I remember." He did not. "Certainly I remember." How tactful Regina was, to know he would have forgotten. "But she is so young!"
"I was sixteen when I first married. What of it?" He said nothing. "I am surprised you care."
He turned away from her angrily, and opening the kitchen door was confronted by a hag in a black cap. They stared at each other and she backed off in confusion. There was another one at the kitchen table, very fat with a moustache, a mug of beer before her. His mother was busy at the iron stove. "Katharina," the first hag warbled. The fat one studied him a moment impassively and swigged her beer. The tomcat, sitting to attention on the table near her, flicked its tail and blinked. Frau Kepler did not turn from the stove. Kepler silently withdrew, and slowly, silently, closed the door.
"Heinrich-!"
"Now they're just some old dames that come to visit her, Johann." He grinned ruefully and shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches. "They are company for her."
"Tell me the truth, Heinrich. Is she…" Barbara had paused, leaning over the baby with a pin in her mouth; Kepler took his brother's arm and steered him to the window. "Is she still at that old business?"
"No, no. She does a bit of doctoring now and then, but that's all."
"My God."
"She doesn't want for custom, Johann. They still come, especially the women." He grinned again, and winked, letting one eyelid fall like a loose shutter. "Only the other day there was a fellow-"
"I don't-"
"-Blacksmith he was, big as an ox, came all the way over from Leonberg, you wouldn't have thought to look at him there was anything-"
"I do not want to know, Heinrich!" He stared through the window, gnawing a thumbnail. "My God," he muttered again.
"Ah, there's nothing in it," said Heinrich. "And she's better value than your fancy physicians, I can tell you. " Resentment was making him hoarse, Kepler noted wistfully: why had such simple loyalty been denied to him? "She made up a stuff for my leg that did more for it than that army doctor ever did. "
"Your leg?"
"Aye, there's a weeping wound that I got in Hungary. It's not much."
"You must let me look at it for you. "
Heinrich glanced at him sharply. "No need for that. She takes care of it."
Their mother shuffled out of the kitchen. "Now where, " she murmured, "where did I leave that down, I wonder." She pointed her thin little nose at Barbara. "Have you seen it?"
Barbara ignored her.
"What is it, mother," Kepler said.
She smiled innocently. "Why, I had it just a moment ago, and now I have lost it, my little bag of bats' wings. "
A crackling came from the kitchen, where the two hags could be seen, shrieking and hilariously shoving each other. Even the cat might have been laughing.
Regina came tentatively down the stairs. "You are not fighting over me, surely?" They looked at her blankly. Frau Kepler, grinning, scuttled back into the kitchen.
"What does she mean, bats' wings?" said Barbara.
"A joke," Kepler snapped, "a joke, for God's sake!"
"Bats' wings indeed. What next?"
"She's nobody's fool, " Heinrich put in stoutly, trying not to laugh.
Kepler flung himself on to a chair by the window and drummed his fingers on the table. "We'll put up at an inn tonight, " he muttered. "There is a place out toward Ellmend-ingen. And tomorrow we'll start for home. "
Barbara smiled her triumph, but had the good sense to say nothing. Kepler scowled at her. The three old women came out of the kitchen. There was a fringe of foam on the fat one's moustache. The thin one made to address the great man sunk in gloom by the window, but Frau Kepler gave her a push from the rear. "O! hee hee, your ma, sir, I think, wants to be rid of us!"
"Bah, " Frau Kepler said, and shoved her harder. They went out. "Well," the old woman said, turning to her son, "you've driven them away. Are you satisfied now?"
Kepler stared at her. "I said not a word to them."
"That's right."
"You would be better off if they did not come back, the likes ofthat."
"And what do you know about it?"
"I know them, I know their sort! You-"
"Ah, be quiet. What do you know, coming here with your nose in the air. We are not good enough for you, that's what it is."
Heinrich coughed. "Now mam. Johann is only talking to you for your own good."
Kepler considered the ceiling. "These are evil times, mother. You should be careful. "
"And so should you!"
He shrugged. When he was a boy he had nursed the happy notion of them all perishing cleanly and quickly some night, in an earthquake, say, leaving him free and unburdened. Barbara was watching him, Regina also.
"We had a burning here last Michaelmas, " said Heinrich, by way of changing the subject. "By God," slapping his knee, "the old dame fairly danced when the fire got going. Didn't she, mam?"
"Who was it?" said Kepler.
"Damned old fool it was," Frau Kepler put in quickly, glaring at Heinrich. "Gave a philtre to the pastor's daughter, no less. She deserved burning, that one. "
Kepler put a hand over his eyes. "There will be more burnings."
His mother turned on him. "Aye, there will! And not only here. What about that place where you are, that Bohemia, with all those papists, eh? I've heard they burn people by the bushel over there. You should be careful." She stumped off into the kitchen. Kepler followed her. "Coming here and preaching to me," she muttered. "What do you know? I was healing the sick when you were no bigger than that child out there, cacking in your pants. And look at you now, living in the Emperor's pocket and drawing up magic squares for him. I dabble with the world, you keep your snout turned to the sky and think you're safe. Bah! You make me sick, you."
"Mother…"
"Well?"
"I worry for you, mother, that's all."
She looked at him.
All outside was immanent with a kind of stealthy knowing-ness. He stood for a while by thefountain in the marketplace. The stone gargoyles had an air of suppressed glee, spouting fatly from pursed green lips as if it were an elaborate foolery they would abandon once he turned his back. Grandfather Sebaldus used to insist that one of these stone faces had been carved in his likeness. Kepler had always believed it. Familiarity rose up all round him like a snickering ghost. What did he know? Was it possible for life to go on, his own life, without his active participation, as the body's engine continues to work while the mind sleeps? As he walked now he tried to weigh himself, squinting suspiciously at his own dimensions, looking for the telltale bulge where all that secret life might be stored. The murky emotions called forth by Regina 's betrothal were only a part of it: what other extravagances had been contracted for, and at what cost? He felt somehow betrayed and yet not displeased, like an old banker ingeniously embezzled by a beloved son. A warm waft of bread assailed him as he passed by the baker's shop; the baker, all alone, was pummelling a gigantic wad of dough. From an upstairs window a servant girl flung out an exclamation of dirty water, barely missing Kepler. He glared up, and for a moment she goggled at him, then covered her mouth with her fingers and turned laughing to someone unseen behind her in the room, the son of the house, Harry Voliger, seventeen and prodigiously pimpled, creeping toward her with trembling hands… Kepler walked on, brooding over all those years of deceptively balanced books.