“Money and gold,” said the first.
“And a lot of it,” said the third. “Do you want to hear something?”
And without Olearius giving them a command, they struck a pose and began to play. One of them strummed the lute, another puffed his cheeks on the bagpipes, the third whirled two drumsticks, and Nele threw her hair back and began to dance, while the old woman recited a ballad to the rhythm of the music: She didn’t sing, she spoke in a monotone, and her rhythm submitted to that of the melody. It was about two lovers who could not reach each other because a sea separated them, and Fleming squatted down in the grass next to the old woman, lest he miss even a single word.
—
In the coach Kircher held his head and wondered when this horrible noise would finally stop. He had written the most important book on music, but for that very reason his ear was too refined to take pleasure in such popular blaring. All at once the coach seemed to him cramped, the bench hard, and this vulgar music bore witness to a cheerfulness that the whole world shared except him.
He sighed. The sunlight cast thin, cold flames through the gaps in the curtains. For a moment what he saw seemed to him a spawn of his headache and his sore eyes. Only then did he realize that he was not mistaken: someone was sitting opposite him.
Had the time finally come? He had always known that one day Satan himself would appear to him, but strangely the signs were missing. It didn’t smell of sulfur, the fellow had two human feet, and the cross Kircher wore around his neck had not grown warm. Even if Kircher didn’t understand how he had been able to slip in so soundlessly, it was a man sitting there. He was incredibly gaunt, and his eyes were set deep in their sockets. He wore a jerkin with a fur collar, and he was resting his feet in pointed shoes on the bench, which was a boorish impertinence.
The man leaned forward, put one hand on his shoulder in an almost tender gesture, and bolted the door with the other.
“I’d like to ask you something,” he said.
“I don’t have any money,” said Kircher. “Not here in the coach. One of the secretaries outside has it.”
“It’s wonderful that you’re here. I’ve waited for so long, I thought the opportunity would never come, but you must know: every opportunity comes, that’s the wonderful thing, every opportunity comes eventually, and I thought, when I saw you, now I’ll finally find out. They say that you can heal people, I can too, did you know that? The house of the dying in Mainz. Full of plague victims, there was coughing, groaning, wailing, and I said: I have a powder, I’ll sell it to you, it will cure you, and the poor swine cried full of hope: Give it to us, give us the powder! I have to make it first, I said, and they cried: Make the powder, make it, make your powder! And I said: It’s not so easy, I’m missing an ingredient, someone has to die for it. Now it was silent. Now they were astonished. Now no one said anything for the time being. And I exclaimed: I have to kill someone, I’m sorry, you can’t make something out of nothing! For I am an alchemist too, you know. Just like you, I know the secret powers, and the healing spirits obey me too.”
He laughed. Kircher stared at him. Then he reached for the door.
“Don’t do it,” the man said in a voice that made Kircher withdraw his hand. “So I said: Someone has to die, and I will not determine who it shall be, you have to sort it out among yourselves. And they said: How are we supposed to do that? And I said: If it were the sickest, that would be the least regrettable, so see who can still run, take your crutches, start running, and whoever is the last one in the house, I’ll disembowel. And before you could blink, the house was empty. Three corpses were still inside. No living people. You see, I said, you can walk, you aren’t dying, I cured you. Don’t you recognize me, Athanasius?”
Kircher stared at him.
“A long time ago,” said the man. “Many years, a lot of wind in one’s face, a lot of frost, one is burned by the sun, the hunger burns too, in the meantime one looks different. Except here you are, looking exactly the same with your red cheeks.”
“I know who you are,” said Kircher.
From outside the music blared. Kircher wondered whether he should cry for help, but the door was bolted. Even if they heard him, which was unlikely, they would have to break open the door, and one didn’t want to imagine what the fellow could do to him in that time.
“What the book said. He would have so liked to know. He would have given his life for it. And he did. And yet he never found out. But now I could get the answer. I always thought, perhaps I will see the young doctor again, perhaps I will find out, and here you are. Well? What did the Latin book say?”
Kircher began to pray soundlessly.
“It had no binding, but it had pictures. One was of a cricket, another of an animal that doesn’t exist, with two heads and wings, or perhaps it does exist, what do I know. One was of a man in a church, but it had no roof, there were columns above it, I remember that, above the columns were other columns. Claus showed it to me and said: Look, this is the world. I didn’t understand, I don’t think he did either. But if he couldn’t know it, I at least want to know it, and you looked at his things, and you understand Latin too, so tell me—what sort of book was that, who wrote it, what is it called?”
Kircher’s hands trembled. The boy from back then was vividly preserved in his memory, as vividly as the miller, whose final croaks on the gallows he would never forget, as vividly as the confession of the miller’s weeping wife, but in his life he had held so many books in his hands, leafed through so many pages, and seen so much in print that he could no longer keep it all apart. The man must have been referring to a book that the miller had possessed. But it was no use, his memory failed him.
“Do you remember the interrogation?” the thin man asked gently. “The older man, the Father, he kept saying: Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you if you tell the truth.”
“Well, you did so.”
“And he didn’t hurt me either, but he would have if I hadn’t run away.”
“Yes,” said Kircher, “you made the right choice.”
“I never found out what became of my mother. A few people saw her departing, but no one saw her arrive anywhere else.”
“We saved you,” said Kircher. “The devil would have seized you too, one cannot live near him and remain unscathed. When you spoke against your father, he lost his power over you. Your father confessed and repented. God is merciful.”
“I just want to know. The book. You have to tell me. And don’t lie, for I’ll be able to tell. That’s what he kept saying, your old Father: Don’t lie, for I’ll be able to tell. Meanwhile, you were constantly lying to him, and he couldn’t tell.”
The man leaned forward. His nose was now only a hand’s breadth from Kircher’s face; he seemed to be not so much looking at him as smelling him. His eyes were half closed, and Kircher thought he heard him inhaling with a sniff.
“I don’t remember,” said Kircher.
“I don’t believe that.”
“I have forgotten it.”
“But if I still don’t believe it?”
Kircher cleared his throat. “Sator,” he said softly. Then he fell silent. His eyes closed, but they twitched under the lids as if he were looking this way and that. Then he opened them again. A tear ran down his cheek. “You’re right,” he said tonelessly. “I lie a great deal. I lied to Dr. Tesimond, but that’s nothing. I have also lied to His Holiness. And His Majesty the Kaiser. I lie in my books. I lie all the time.”
The professor kept speaking, his voice cracking, but Tyll could not understand him. A strange torpor had come over him. He wiped his forehead, cold sweat ran down his face. The bench in front of him was empty, he was alone in the coach, the door was open. Yawning, he climbed out.
Outside there was thick fog. Billows rolled past, the air was saturated with white. The musicians had stopped playing, shadowy figures loomed—it was the professor’s companions, and that silhouette there must have been Nele. Somewhere a horse whinnied.