The Cusanus Game

  “It’s amazing what can be accomplished these days.”

  He nodded and brought his fingers together into a gable. “So you are still interested in the work?”

  “We new graduates don’t have a wide range of options. My scholarship has expired.”

  “I mean genuine interest in serving God’s Creation.”

  “If I look at our world that way … yes, Signore Falcotti.”

  He nodded. My gaze fastened on his left temple. As I had suspected, he did indeed wear an implant, which showed under the skin. It was a slender cross, about an inch and a half long. His glasses flashed in a streak of sunlight that fell through the blinds, and I could not make out his eyes. Falcotti seemed to mean it entirely in earnest: God’s Creation … Well, he believed in that. But I wondered whether I believed in it, and involuntarily shrugged.

  “To be honest, I hadn’t expected to hear anything more about this project. It has been almost two years since I applied.”

  “My apologies,” he said, pursing his lips uncomfortably. “There were some … uh … shifts in objectives as a result of the … uh … change in the office of the Holy Father.”

  I could imagine that. Under Paul VII everything that John XXIV had initiated in the environmental domain had undoubtedly been quashed. But I would not have expected that Paul VIII would have been interested in efforts of that sort. He was appreciative of art, a lover of music, but a revival of God’s Creation following St. Francis, as John had propagated—that I could not see him embracing. Perhaps he loved flowers, but the gardens of Hellbrunn were surely sufficient for that. There must have been more behind it.

  “But we also had serious technical problems.”

  “Money?”

  “Money is always a problem, but in our case the problems had more to do with physics and logistics. Let’s leave that aside, though. I wanted to finally meet you in person and ask you a few more questions,” said Falcotti.

  “Does that mean that I am among the final candidates for a job?”

  He placed both hands on the desk and said with a decisive nod, “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that right away, Signore?” I asked with a somewhat shrill voice.

  Pleasure took my breath away. I would have liked best to jump up and clasp his hand gratefully. I had stood up halfway, but he directed me with a gentle gesture to take a seat again, and typed something into his laptop.

  “The final decision has not yet been made, Signorina Ligrina,” he said. He folded his hands and went on somewhat more formally, “Was there a concrete reason for your interest in nature that moved you to study botany?”

  “Yes,” I said hesitantly. “As strange as it sounds, it was a painting in the Vatican Museums, which made a deep impression on me as a child. I remember it so clearly because I was there with my father. The week before he died.”

  * * *

  MY FATHER HAD driven with me to Rome at seven o’clock in the morning in order to beat the masses of visitors, and we were the first to be admitted. I had really been looking forward to this trip. I was always delighted when Father did something with me—he so rarely had time. But after we had roamed three dozen halls, I was—my God, I was only twelve—pretty bored of the numerous paintings and statues assailing me, the countless Madonnas, the angels, the grim-looking apostles, the martyred figures of the Holy One, and finally the varnished dark globes and old maps. Then I suddenly saw the painting. It hung not far from the exit in a small room and surpassed all the others in its colorfulness and beauty. It was called Adam and Eve in the Earthly Paradise. An artist named Peter Wenzel had painted it. His portrait hung on the rear wall of the room. An older man with milk-white hair down to his collar, a pale complexion, wearing a white ruffled shirt and a black dress coat. He scrutinizes the viewer with a cool, searching, and yet slightly anxious, aloof gaze from dark brown eyes. In his strangely misshapen right hand he holds a bouquet of paintbrushes.

  The Paradise was at first glance my favorite painting. I always wanted to get a replica of it, but during my studies that didn’t come to pass. And when I was one day in the Vatican again years later, I could no longer find it. It had been taken down and brought to safety along with most of the other paintings.

  I was fascinated by the painting. The longer I looked at it, the more details I noticed. My father was already getting impatient, tapping his thigh with the tightly rolled-up Corriere.

  “How can anyone invent something so beautiful?” I asked.

  “Invent?” replied my father, raising his eyebrows with astonishment. “That’s not invented, Domenica. Such animals and plants exist. Or they used to, anyway.”

  “Where?”

  “What do I know,” he said, shrugging. “You have to ask Grandfather. He knows more about these things than I do and has a lot of books about them.”

  * * *

  “CAN YOU STILL remember details of the painting?” asked Falcotti.

  “Oh, that was over ten years ago!”

  “Just give it a try.”

  “All right. I would say it is over six feet tall and maybe ten feet wide. It depicts an idyllic river landscape. I remember a large shady tree in the foreground on the left.”

  “Can you see this tree in your mind’s eye?”

  “Hm … yes, actually,” I said hesitantly.

  I saw every detail in my mind’s eye. Summoning visual impressions from my memory came easily to me.

  “It’s a grape tree; large blue grapes are growing on it. They’re ripe.”

  “A grape tree? I thought that grapes grow on vines.”

  “Yes, but only because the plant is cut back each year. If it were permitted to develop naturally, then the Vitis vinifera would grow into a tree like the one in the painting: sixty feet tall and with a trunk at least five feet thick.”

  “I didn’t know that. What else do you remember?”

  “Under the Vitis vinifera stands a camel. Two cows are lying to its right. Behind them is a tiger; in front of them, a lion and a lioness stride by, but the cows are not the least bit unsettled. In the center, the view opens onto a winding river, on the banks of which palms and willows grow. A deer and a zebra can be seen. In the foreground on the right stands another large tree—an apple tree, as is fitting in Paradise. If I remember correctly … hm, I would say, a Malus sylvestris or domestica. Eve has just picked an apple and is handing it to Adam, who is sitting on the ground. A boa constrictor hangs from a branch; on another a chimpanzee is gesticulating excitedly. There are colorful birds everywhere, parrots, macaws. They are perched on the branches or flying through the air. Toward the front on the right stands a white horse, seen from behind, and … yes, a rooster. I remember a rooster. And a huge elephant in the background on the right, raising its trunk … But tell me, is this important, Signore Falcotti?”

  He looked up, for he had been absorbed in his monitor. Had he called up the image to test my powers of recollection? The cross in his temple seemed to be pulsating.

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “Is it important for my work that I remember a painting I saw more than ten years ago?”

  He stroked his beard thoughtfully.

  “A good visual memory is extremely important for the planned work,” he explained hesitantly. “It can sometimes save your life.”

  The argument could not be dismissed.

  “In the wild?” I asked.

  “In the wild, yes. But it is really a gift from God to possess a good visual memory, or even an eidetic memory. I envy anyone who has been endowed with that. Where the brain stores these vast quantities of data is a mystery. How do you do that?”

  I could not help laughing. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  I TOLD HIM nothing about the strange experience that we, Father and I, had had when we were standing before the painting. Perhaps that was why the image had stuck in my mind so clearly. I was still contemplating the details when a woman entered the room behind us. She let ou
t a stifled cry, prompting me to turn around. She had covered her mouth with her hand and was staring with astonishment at the painting, then at me, and then at Father. She was pretty, wore her dark hair medium-length and had a faint resemblance to my mother, but was younger. She seemed distressed for some reason. Her dark eyes were wide with terror. Her intense gaze frightened me so much that my stomach tightened.

  “You…” she said, raising her hand with a jerky movement to her forehead. I suddenly had a throbbing headache, and a piercing voice screamed in my skull: No! No! No!

  “Is something wrong, young woman?” my father asked her. “Do you need help?”

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she whispered. “Please forgive me.”

  She was white as a sheet as she backed away unsteadily, groping for something to hold on to.

  No! No! No! The word rang out repeatedly in my head, which felt like it was about to burst. I raised my fists to my temples and began to sob. Father looked at me in confusion, took me in his arms, and held me tight.

  “Are you okay, cara?” he asked me worriedly, leading me to a bench. “Sit down for a moment.”

  “I’m leaving,” the woman asserted, shaking her head vigorously, as if she were trying to drive away bad thoughts. “I’m leaving…”

  But she did not seem to be capable of that. Weakness threatened to overwhelm her; she struggled to stay on her feet, staggering against the wall. A guard rushed over from the next room and supported her, offered her a chair, and was about to call for medical help via his walkie-talkie, but she declined.

  I doubled up with pain. My bowels felt like they were filled with cold stones. I shook my head, didn’t know what to do. Through the open door I saw the guard leading the woman to a bench in the next room, on which she sat down.

  “Calm down, my child,” my father said again and again, stroking my hair. “It’s the heat, right? The poor air quality here. All the people. Come on, let’s go to the cafeteria. It’s right across from the exit. Come on, Domenica.”

  We left. Only slowly did the pressure in my chest abate. The voice in my head faded away gradually, and the cramp in my belly subsided. Father was so lovingly worried about me. I sensed his warm affection—I loved him.

  A week later he was dead.

  * * *

  I PLACED MY hands in my lap. Falcotti looked at me motionlessly. Both of us were silent. Finally he nodded and cleared his throat.

  “Were there other reasons for your interest in nature at such an early age?”

  “Yes, but that’s a long story.”

  “Tell it to me, Signorina Ligrina. We have all the time in the world, as you so nicely phrased it. And I enjoy listening to you.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like a psychologist.”

  “Oh, I am a psychologist,” he explained with a smile, raising his eyebrows as if my unawareness had surprised him. “I work as a recruiting office, so to speak. It’s among my duties to find the right people for our missions and get to know them. My employers are quite strict. They set high standards.”

  I grinned at him, and he smiled back.

  “Tell me,” he urged me.

  “Well, all right. As a child I got to spend summer break every year with my mother’s parents in Genoa. They had a small café for excursionists overlooking the city. Occasionally they rented a room to extended-stay guests. One of those guests—it might have been the following year, in the summer of 2040—was an American woman. She was conducting some sort of botanical field research…”

  * * *

  SARAH! SHE IMPRESSED me beyond measure, aroused my childlike enthusiasm. She showed me that the plants directly in front of our noses, in our immediate vicinity, all around us, form a fascinating world, in which most people stumble around blindly. She made clear to me—though at the time I often did not yet understand what she meant—that all this surrounding us—plants, animals of all sorts—is vital for us human beings, because we cannot even exist without it.

  That had already been demonstrated to us in the Mezzogiorno several years earlier. Nonetheless, no one quite grasped it—no one wanted to grasp it. They blamed the government, which was too weak, lacked the necessary military toughness, and let the UN order it around. On television we saw olive trees and grapevines in flames, houses and vehicles too, sometimes people. The Moros were to blame, was the general opinion. Then came repeated shootings, hunts for foreigners, and massacres of refugees from the south and from the Balkans. But why would the immigrants lay waste to the land that was their only chance of survival? It was the withdrawing troops who, in accordance with the scorched-earth policy, were setting fire to the houses to eliminate hiding places and create an open field of fire. The forests were as dry as tinder; the crops in the fields were pitifully low and withered. A spark sufficed to turn whole tracts of land into blazing infernos. And when the wind blew from the southeast, dense clouds of smoke darkened the sky over the Gulf of Genoa; the sun shone like a sickly, reddened eye. And then ash fell like a soundless gray rain, onto the terrace, onto the tablecloths, onto our skin. The ashes of trees, the ashes of houses, and—yes, sometimes probably even the ashes of people.

  The people in the south believed that they were losing their land to the Moros, while they were actually losing it to the sun. Africa itself was approaching—as unstoppably as its continental plate, which had been pushing against southern Europe for millions of years, slowly, with a speed akin to that of fingernails growing, but unrelentingly.

  Sarah was the type of American whose enthusiasm for her scientific work knew no bounds. She lived for her job; everything else was without meaning. She worked on one of those “Gaia” or “Noah’s Ark” projects, of which there were dozens at the time, with the mission of quickly collecting as much of the worldwide diversity of genetic material as could still be saved for the future in the face of accelerating species extinction.

  Sarah—she seemed to always have on the same black, much-too-large T-shirt with white sweat stains down to the waist and armholes so wide that you could see her breasts: tiny forms that nonetheless hung limply from her ribs. She always had a sunburned red nose, from which the skin peeled, because she was outdoors from morning to night. And her frizzy hair—she just had hair, no hairstyle, as is common among female American students—she tied back thoughtlessly into a bushy ponytail. But she was no longer a student; she had made a name for herself with a paper on new arid Mediterranean ecologies. Sometimes scholars from some environmental institute in Rome or Bologna would show up at our door, men in dark suits and ties, who appeared somewhat confused when she introduced herself to them.

  When I saw her for the first time, she was sitting in her faded, ripped jeans and dirt-encrusted running shoes, stirring her cappuccino and laughing cheerfully behind her small round wire-rimmed glasses. “Domenica! What a beautiful name,” she said with her piercing, high voice. “But child, believe me, no one in the States would consider naming their daughter ‘Sunday.’”

  The smell of her T-shirt mingled with that of the fresh coffee. She usually sat on the terrace early in the morning. The foldable satellite dish sat on the cement wall; the unrolled solar cell film glittered in the sun, and the laser eye stared southward into the geostationary orbit. She scratched around in her hair with the data stylus of her electronic notebook and dictated in whiny English her report to the Artificial Intelligence of her institute in San Diego, of which I did not understand a word.

  When she was not off on one of her excursions, Sarah usually stayed with us. She had asked Grandfather’s permission to use his library when the Internet failed her, but most of what she found in the reference books she declared point-blank to be “bullshit.”

  During the two months in which Sarah was with us, a strange relationship developed between her and me. I watched her store her finds and samples—mostly plant parts, seeds, leaves, or flowers—in plastic bags she tore from a compact roll, write the place of discovery, date, and species with h
er stylus in her notebook, which then spat out tiny self-adhesive labels, and weld the bags with a thermocouple on the edge of her device. With what primitive methods I later had to perform the same work!

  Sometimes Sarah brought me with her on her excursions. When she took on a new area, she would remove her glasses and clean them, wipe the sweat from her brow with her forearm, and stand there silently for ten or fifteen minutes intently scrutinizing the surroundings. She seemed to circle and mark this and that in her mind.

  “You first have to figure out the presumed geologic substrate you have in front of you, child,” she explained to me. “You can do that by means of indicators: trees, bushes, things like that. Then the conditions of the terrain: Where is there flowing water and where is it headed? Where is it retained? Then you know where what you’re looking for is at home. Searching costs far too much time and usually leads to nothing. You have to approach it and say: If it grows here, then only here and nowhere else. Only in that way can you acquire a feel for the local ecosystem.”

  And she showed me examples: friendship among plants, coexistence and interdependence, aversion and intolerance.

  On one of those excursions, as Sarah was working on the slope of a small hidden cove, I discovered the dead white whale. Through the branches of the dying trees I suddenly saw it drifting close to the shore. I climbed down to the narrow pebble beach and stared at the cadaver with fascination. The whale was perhaps thirty or forty feet long and must have been dead for a long time already, for the smell of putrefaction filled the air. The whole cove was enveloped by a sweet miasma. But that didn’t bother me. I thought of Captain Ahab and his raging against the notorious albino, the veteran of the seas with half a dozen twisted harpoons in its neck, as I had seen it in the old film with Gregory Peck. But the cadaver looked more peaceful. The animal was one of the few marine mammals that had survived the murderous whaling in the previous century and the death of plankton in the southern seas and the Arctic in this one. And now it had perished miserably here.