“What sort of dragon is it anyway?” asked Olearius.
“Probably a very old lindworm. My expertise in dracontology falls short of that of my late master Tesimond, but on a day trip to Hamburg little coiled fly clouds gave me the necessary sign. Have you ever been to Hamburg? It is astonishing, the city has not been destroyed at all.”
“Clouds?” asked Fleming. “How does the dragon cause—”
“Not causality, analogy! As above, so below. The cloud resembles a fly, hence the name fly cloud; the lindworm resembles an earthworm, hence the name lindworm. Worm and fly are insects! Do you see?”
Olearius propped his head up on his hands. He was feeling somewhat queasy. In Russia he had spent thousands of hours in coaches, but that was some time ago now, and he was no longer young. Of course, it could also have had to do with Kircher, who had, in a way that he could not have explained, become hard for him to bear.
“And when the dragon is tranquilized?” asked Fleming. “When we have found it and caught it, what then?”
“We draw its blood. As much as our leather skins can hold. I will bring it to Rome and with my assistants manufacture it into a cure for the Black Death, which will then be administered to the Pope and the Kaiser and the Catholic princes…” He hesitated. “…As well as perhaps to those Protestants who deserve it. To whom exactly will have to be negotiated. In this way, perhaps, we can end the war. It would indeed be fitting if it were I of all people who, with God’s help, put an end to this slaughter. I will duly mention the two of you in my book. Strictly speaking, I have done so already.”
“You have already mentioned us?”
“To save time I have already written the chapter in Rome. Guglielmo, do you have it here?”
The secretary bent down and rummaged, groaning, under his bench.
“As for musicians,” said Olearius, “I would propose that we look for the traveling circus on the Holstein heath. There’s a great deal of talk about it, people come from far away to see it. There will certainly be musicians there.”
His face flushed, the secretary straightened up and produced a stack of paper. He leafed through it for a moment, blew his nose in a no-longer-clean handkerchief with which he then wiped his bald head, apologized softly, and began to read aloud. His Latin had a distinctly Italian melody, and he beat time in a somewhat affected way with his quill. “Thereupon I embarked on the search in the company of German scholars of outstanding merit. The circumstances were unfavorable, the weather rough, the war had withdrawn from the region but still sent this or that squall of adversity, so that one had to be prepared for marauders as much as for bands of robbers and degenerate animals. I did not let it chagrin me, however, having commended my soul to the Almighty who had until now always protected this his humble servant, and erelong I found the dragon, which was at length soothed and defeated by skillful measures. Its warm blood served me as the basis for many an undertaking that I depict elsewhere in this work, and the most terrible pestilence, which had long kept Christendom in distress, could finally be fended off from the great, mighty, and worthy men, so that in the future it may torment only the simple people. And when one day I—”
“Thank you, Guglielmo, that’s enough. I will, of course, insert your names after the words ‘German scholars of outstanding merit.’ No need to thank me. I insist. It’s the least I can do.”
And perhaps, Olearius thought, this really was the immortality meant for him—a mention in Athanasius Kircher’s book. His own travelogue would vanish almost as quickly as the poems poor Fleming now and then had printed. Time devoured almost everything, but it would be powerless against this. About one thing there was no doubt: as long as the world existed, people would read Athanasius Kircher.
—
The next morning they found the circus. The keeper of the inn where they had spent the night had pointed them west; keep following the field path, he had said, then you can’t miss it. And since there were no hills here and all the trees were cleared, they soon saw a flagpole in the distance, on which fluttered a colorful scrap of cloth.
Soon they could make out tents and a semicircle of wooden benches, above which two posts were erected, the thin line of a rope stretching between them—the circus people must have brought along all the timber themselves. Between the tents stood covered wagons. Horses and donkeys were grazing, a few children were playing, a man was sleeping in a hammock, an old woman was washing clothes in a tub.
Kircher squinted. He wasn’t feeling well. He wondered whether it was due to the rocking of the coach or actually due to these two Germans. They were unfriendly, overserious, narrow-minded, they had thick heads, and besides, it was hard to ignore it, they smelled bad. He had not been in the Empire in a long time; he had almost forgotten what a headache it was to be among Germans.
The two of them underestimated him, that was obvious. He was used to it. Even as a child he had been underestimated, first by his parents, then by the teacher in the village school, until the priest had recommended him to the Jesuits. They had let him study, but then he had been underestimated by his fellow seminarians, who had seen in him only a zealous young man. No one had noticed how much more he could achieve—only his master Tesimond had recognized something in him and plucked him from the crowd of the slow-thinking. They had traveled across the land, he had learned a great deal from the old man, but he too had underestimated him, had believed him capable merely of an existence as a famulus, so that he had had to break away from Tesimond, step by step and with the greatest caution, for you should not antagonize someone like that. He had had to act as if the books he wrote were a harmless whim, but secretly he had sent them with letters of dedication to the important people in the Vatican. And indeed Tesimond had not gotten over the fact that his secretary had suddenly been summoned to Rome; he had fallen ill and had refused to give him a parting blessing. Kircher could still see it clearly before his eyes: the room in Vienna, his master wrapped tight in his blanket. The old wreck had mumbled something and pretended not to understand him, and so Kircher had gone unblessed to Rome, where the staff of the great library had welcomed him, only to underestimate him in turn. They had thought he would be good for mending books, cataloging books, studying books, but they had not grasped that he could write a book faster than it took another man to read it, and so he had had to prove it to them, again and again and again, until the Pope finally appointed him to the most important chair of his university and vested him with all the special authorities.
It would always be like this. The confusion of the past lay behind him; he no longer lost himself in time. And yet people didn’t recognize what power dwelled in him, what determination, or what a memory he had. Even now, when he was famous all over the world and no one could study the sciences without being acquainted with the works of Athanasius Kircher, he could not leave Rome without experiencing it: No sooner did he encounter his countrymen than he was scrutinized with the same old disparaging looks. What a mistake to have set off on this journey! One should stay in one place, should work, concentrate one’s powers and disappear behind one’s books. One had to be an incorporeal authority—a voice that the world heeded without wondering what the body looked like from which it came.
He had again given in to a weakness. Actually he had not even been so very concerned with the plague, he had above all needed a reason to search for the dragon. They are the most ancient and intelligent of creatures, Tesimond had said, and when you stand before one, you will be changed, indeed when you hear its voice, nothing will ever be the same again. Kircher had found out so much about the world, but a dragon was still lacking, without a dragon his work was not complete, and if it should really become dangerous, he could still use the last and strongest defense—that magic to which one was permitted to resort only once in one’s life: when the danger is greatest, Tesimond had impressed on him, when the dragon stands before you and all else fails, you can do it once, only once, one single time, so think carefully, only once. First you picture the strongest of the magic squares.