The Cusanus Game

  He could not identify my weepy voice. I cleared my throat and tried to speak normally.

  “Call me a taxi, Luigi!”

  “Yes, Domenica.”

  Only the third taxi driver was willing to come to Trastevere.

  That evening I got drunk off Stavros’s ouzo and played Stavros’s CDs at full blast. The songs of Theodorakis. Why hadn’t we Italians produced such a composer in five hundred years?

  “Rome is dying!” I shouted drunkenly out the window.

  It was after midnight. No one heard me. No one answered. A bell tolled somewhere, dull and muffled, as if from the ocean floor, from a sunken ship. In the south the haze was illuminated by deep red flashes. Heat lightning? Or was it muzzle flash? Had the bombardment of Rome begun? Was the storming of the city at hand?

  V

  Witch-Burning

  Why do we remember the past but not the future?

  STEPHEN HAWKING

  Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus counted the leather containers that were attached to the packsaddles of the beasts of burden. In Brussels he had managed to acquire state-of-the-art astronomical instruments and in Leuven several scholarly manuscripts, which he had had carefully packed for the journey. He reassured himself that everything was still there.

  The morning dawned.

  “Get up!” the captain of the city guard shouted.

  Three darkly dressed figures, who had been cowering next to the landing, rose. Their clothing was dirty; their sidelocks curled from under their hats and hung down to their chests. The three men had been bound together with thin chains, the older one between the two younger ones. They wore wretched footgear; the toes of one of the men peeked out from his shoe. Two officers of the city guard drove them from behind with their pikes. The three prisoners eyed the weapons silently and impassively. They shivered in the morning cold.

  “They’ve known for more than twenty years that they are not permitted to stay in the city at night,” the captain declared to no one in particular, as if he had to excuse his official act, “but they try again and again.” When no one paid attention to him, he barked: “Move! Or do I have to make you?”

  “You don’t have the say around here!” exclaimed the ferryman. “This ferry is from Deutz. We ferrymen are not subject to the city council of Cologne, but to the archbishop. Bear that in mind. Remove the chains from those men!”

  At that moment, a rat crawled out from between the planks, an enormous animal of an unusual color—more grayish white with reddish spots than grayish brown. Sniffing, it scurried along the edge of the dock. One of the officers jabbed at it with his pike—playfully, more to scare it away than to impale it. Like lightning, the rat had jumped on the weapon, had climbed the shaft in no time, and stood a handbreadth from the officer’s face. The rat then made a noise that sounded to the cardinal, from where he was standing, almost as if it had spoken, hissing a warning. But that was nonsense, of course.

  The man recoiled in fright and threw the spear away from him. “The devil!” he cried, pale with horror, took a stumbling step back, and fell on his behind. “The devil!” The pike clattered to the ground, and the rat disappeared between the planks over the water.

  The cardinal turned with surprise to the man, who sat on the ground and gawked around, his eyes wide with terror. “The devil?” the cardinal asked with curiosity, scrutinizing the man.

  “Apologies, Your Eminence,” said the captain, signaling to the officer with a brusque hand gesture to pull himself together and get up from his undignified position. He then got to work unlocking and removing the prisoners’ chains. He threw them grumpily over his shoulder. Then he turned away and spat in the river.

  Nicolaus scrutinized the prisoners, who seemed not to have even noticed the incident with the rat. They made an apathetic impression as the officers drove them onto the ferry with their pikes. He had endorsed the expulsion of the Jews from the city, but the measure had not brought about the hoped-for solution. The conflict between the council and the archdiocese continued to smolder, and Hussite-influenced preachers constantly rekindled the acrimonious atmosphere between the denominations and religious currents. For many, Rome’s word carried no more weight. No one seemed to want to obey. The world was in a state of dissolution.

  The cardinal nodded to his groom to lead the horses onto the ferry. Their hooves clip-clopped on the planks, and the man tethered the four animals to the railing side by side. They were uneasy and eyed anxiously the foaming dark water of the river. The ferryman shouted a command, and the ungainly, heavy vessel cast off. With their long oars the oarsmen pushed it off from the rocking, wooden dock. It started to turn. The river was already swollen, even though it was only mid-March. In the Black Forest and in the Vosges, the thaw had probably already begun.

  “Row!” the ferryman shouted at his oarsmen. “Or do you want to dock in Düsseldorf instead of in Deutz? Row!”

  The cardinal turned to his young companion, who wore a blue beret on his thick, shoulder-length hair, on which he had boldly stuck three quills as a sign of his occupation.

  “Well?” asked Nicolaus, resuming the conversation that had been broken off for a while. “What else happened?”

  “If I may, Your Eminence, since when does much happen in Cologne?” asked Geistleben, taking his knapsack off his shoulders and dropping it next to him on the floor. “A handful of little Roman monks arrived who fled from Constantinople, because the Turk is approaching the gates. They moan and ramble on about the end of the world and scrounge and beg for benefices. Oh yes, and on Candlemas a little witch was burned on the Old Market square. But you have surely heard about that.”

  “Not a word,” Nicolaus replied, shaking his head with displeasure. “Is it spreading here too, that awful folly of torturing women and putting them to death?”

  “Yes, certainly. It is getting worse everywhere. People are afraid of the spawn of the Antichrist, who gnaw at the limbs of the Church and eat their way deeper and deeper into its heart.”

  “What sort of talk is that, Geistleben? It is not the Antichrist who gnaws, it is greed that gnaws, it is vanity that gnaws, it is lust that gnaws in the flesh of our brothers and sisters.”

  “Well, indeed, that is your affair, noble lord. You undoubtedly understand more about it…”

  “Quite true.”

  “But the East will fall, Your Eminence. Half the Empire—”

  “What else was to be expected? I saw it with my own eyes, Geistleben. Catacombs full of writings, accumulated for centuries, with the knowledge of millennia from all over the world. But no one reads it; no one can even sort through it! Schemers and empty-headed scholars swarm over it like rats. Everyone gnaws at everyone else. Often at their own flesh. No wonder, then, the enemies are lurking. That’s how it is everywhere. Here in our lands too. It was often painful, what I saw on my journey to Flanders and the Netherlands. It fills me with bitterness and rancor. As for the archbishop, however—we spoke daily during the concilium, but he did not mention a word about having held a witch trial.”

  “Well, Your Eminence, he seemed to have been not at all certain at first. Once before he had been at odds with the Pope, old von Moers. After almost forty years in office—simply excommunicated.”

  “That was Pope Eugene. He held it against him that he had voted against him at the Council of Basel.”

  “But that was a deep shock for him in his old age.”

  “Pope Nicholas reinstated him. He won’t want for anything.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “When I stayed here on Christmas and New Year’s Day, I heard rumors of a woman who had been found with a strange collection of herbs. Was she the one?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “And the trial? Why the harsh sentence?”

  “As for the trial, my lord, things got away from him. There was again conflict with the city council over jurisdiction. Tempers flared. He sought advice and support from the highest authority. A commission was to come from Rome, t
o investigate the case, whether devil’s work was actually involved…”

  “Why wasn’t the woman forced to renounce all vengeance and banished from the city, as usual? Why did she have to be put to death?”

  “There were inflammatory speeches. A young priest was very active, a zealot from Swabia, Bartholomäus von Dillingen is his name—he is a preacher at St. Maria im Kapitol. People call him ‘Witch Bart.’ If I may, Your Eminence, an evil snooper. He watched her every step for weeks. After his sermons, an angry crowd always proceeded to the Old Market square and demanded that she be made short work of. She was ultimately turned over to the episcopal judge, for the archbishop insisted on the main jurisdiction, as the law would have it. A serf who encountered her in the summer on the Moselle testified that, without touching him, she used devilish powers to cast him to the ground with such force that he was black and blue all over his body and felt pains in his chest for weeks. He heard laughter that sounded like the bleating of a goat and could smell the definite stink of sulfur. A citizen with whom she lodged testified that she told her that one could fly from Cologne to Rome in an hour. And under torture she spoke heedlessly. She confessed to having flown through the air herself. It was the herbs, though, that determined the outcome.”

  “How so?”

  “Over the whole summer she had gathered a collection of seeds—kernels from grain and fruit, blossoms from all sorts of flowers and plants. For medicinal purposes, she claimed. These seeds were sorted neatly into little canvas pouches and labeled and inscribed with Latin words. But these words were incomprehensible. A sort of secret system of classification, Your Eminence, which … well, so it seemed to me, was strangely coherent, but of which no one had ever heard, as the professors of medicine brought in from the university confirmed. This system pointed to heretical, arcane knowledge and could not possibly be of godly origin…”

  “Of devilish origin, then…”

  “The commission of professors came to that conclusion. The young woman could not be saved. One thing followed another. Everything happened very quickly. And the citizens were content when the sentence was issued and carried out immediately. And the archbishop washed his hands in innocence as Pontius Pilate had done formerly.”

  “So they truly did make short work of her.”

  “Well, she actually brought it on herself. She lied through her teeth. Went so far as to claim that the Holy Father himself sent her to collect little seeds and flowers.”

  “The Holy Father?”

  “Yes, in order to save Creation, she asserted.”

  The cardinal shook his head. “She was surely confused. An unfortunate creature. The woman should not have been treated that way. Such a thing is shameful.”

  “Verily, I look at it the same way. Especially as she had more education than could be ascribed to the devil, or—if I may—to the archbishop, for that matter.”

  “How so? Was she a nun? From what order?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s odd … no one who had sworn a vow of humility would have spoken like that. And her Latin, oh my…”

  “A noblewoman then?”

  “Not a chance!”

  “A simple woman? You are making me curious.”

  “You will be even more surprised, Your Eminence, when I tell you that she wrote you letters. It emerges from them that she seemed to be quite well acquainted with you.”

  “What do you mean, she was acquainted with me? Was she from here? From Koblenz? From the Moselle?”

  “No, certainly not. No one really knows where she was from. Some claim that she came from Amsterdam, others that she was from Sweden, was the assistant of a court physician there. Her appearance, her speech pointed more to a Roman, perhaps Florence, Siena … who knows? But definitely not from the countryside. By no means. She was educated. Knew things even I had never heard of. At times, I thought she had…”

  “Yes?”

  “… come from another world.”

  “You mean, from distant lands?”

  “Very distant lands, Your Eminence. Of which we still know nothing.”

  “A sibyl perhaps, from the Orient?”

  The scholar shook his head hesitantly. “Those prophetesses speak obscurely. She spoke more with the light of certainty. It seemed to me—how should I put it—as if the darkness were in our heads more than in her words, if you understand what I mean, Your Eminence.”

  The cardinal lowered his gaze thoughtfully. “From where might she have known me? Did she ever cross paths with me? Did she speak with me? In Rome perhaps? But I don’t remember ever having met a woman of that sort…”

  “It does not seem so. I don’t think she knew you by sight. It is more—how should I put it—as if she were acquainted with your writings and with you as a very famous man.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles, Geistleben. How could she have been acquainted with my writings? And me, a very famous man? That I am not, God knows. She must indeed have been confused.”

  “It would not have been a surprise. She had, after all, spent months in the dungeon. The icy cold had afflicted her. She was sick and desperate. Without friends or acquaintances. In the end, death must have seemed to her like a salvation.”

  “What barbarity, to burn a woman alive! I would not have thought old von Moers capable of it. Sat meek as a lamb by my side during the synod. As if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Lo and behold, old Dietrich! Perhaps that is why he did not even mention a word about … Did she confide in you personally?”

  “No. I caught only fleeting glimpses of her now and then, when she was brought to an interrogation. I read the transcripts.”

  “You were permitted to see them?”

  “Well … as a scribe in the chancery of the archbishop I could not help taking notice of them. I worked for him for almost a year. I write quickly and largely flawlessly, you should know. But now boredom drives me onward.”

  “The letters to me…?”

  “Are in the records. They will—I assume—eventually be delivered to you, because the case has been concluded. But so that you would not have to wait too long, I took the liberty of copying for you one or two letters that came into my view, Your Eminence.”

  “So you copied documents that are under lock and key and—I presume—classified…?”

  “Well, apparently not so classified. Far more than that, they are incomprehensible, mysterious—but extremely remarkable.”

  “You are carrying the copies with you?”

  “Yes, indeed. I fetched them from the hiding place as the synod members set off and your departure too was approaching. I hastened after you to be on the ferry with which you are crossing.”

  “And intend to sell the copies to me now, I assume, after you have sufficiently piqued my curiosity.”

  “Stop it, Your Eminence! You have a reputation as an experienced merchant, especially when it comes to rare items.”

  “Copies of obscure letters from an alleged little witch, who, in a state of confusion, claimed to know me. Indeed, Geistleben, a rare item. I have to grant you that.”

  “I foresaw it: There would be no chance of haggling with you, Your Eminence. I will give them to you as a gift. You are known throughout the land as a generous man. Your magnanimity is proverbial.”

  “Now, now! Do not mock. I know what people say about me.”

  “Nothing could be further from my mind! You will certainly repay a poor little scribe and traveling scholar, noble lord.”

  “How about it, Geistleben? I saw you working diligently during the synod. I can always use a scribe who is quick with the quill and has a sharp mind. Good at copying writings of all sorts and tongues.”

  “Many thanks, Your Eminence, for your confidence and your magnanimous offer, but I am drawn away. I would like to finally move on. First Strasbourg, then Paris, to study there the Lullian art of which I have heard.”

  “You mean that Majorcan’s art of creating knowledge by means of a little mechanism—click, clack—w
ithout exerting the mind and calculating—from one to two to three—the wisdom of God’s Creation?”

  “If I may, Your Eminence, it might, I think, be the true future of all philosophizing: counting, measuring, weighing, calculating. Not the errors, superior attitudes, and disputes over authorities of the past and present. Computing! The little witch writes it at one point: You will one day be credited with having advanced this very thing.”

  “Me? That is as bold as it is incredible, Geistleben. True, I have—it was a long time ago, I think it was in the year ’26, when I was still Giordano Orsini’s secretary—examined the work of Raymundus Lullus. While rummaging around here in Cologne, I found it among many other writings. The cardinal pointed out to me that there was an extensive, almost entirely unexplored library here. He had a nose for such things.”

  “I too discovered it here. It intrigued me.”

  “I made excerpts back then, but I never found time to devote myself seriously to that Ars Magna, as its creator so vainly called it. Only I have reservations about ceding the practice of philosophy to the mechanics and clockmakers. Although … Well, indeed, at the Camaldolese monastery Val di Castro, after a dispute with Toscanelli, I wrote down a few thoughts on weighing, which … I will delve deeper into it, when time permits … But no, how would that woman…”

  “Does anyone know what the future will bring, Your Eminence? Besides God, perhaps the devil … and a little witch now and then?”

  “Moor the vessel!” the ferryman shouted to the oarsmen.

  On the riverside two young men had hastened over and caught the lines that were thrown to them. Horses were harnessed, a dozen or more, to tow the heavy vessel upstream to the upper dock, for the leeway was surely three thousand feet. The breath of the animals steamed in the cool morning air. Up on the bank Jewish children stood in the wet grass. Wrapped in rags—barefoot. They followed the horses at a proper distance, for the towing men swung their whips widely. A pale sun rose between cloud banks and turned animals and people into gold-enveloped silhouettes.

  “I hope to be in Rome again by summer, Geistleben,” said the cardinal. “If your wanderlust should lead you there, you would be a welcome guest.”