The Cusanus Game

  Why had the lonely wanderer come to the Gulf of Genoa to die? Had it been fascinated by the black undersea glaciers that had poured out of the burning Haven over the shoulder of the Ligurian Sea eighty years earlier? There on the sea floor stretched a dead landscape, which absorbed every ray of light falling into the depths. The hardened pitch gave the water a strange taste, which almost all living things avoided. Had my white whale penetrated into this dark, lifeless world in order to explore it? Had it, the pale creature, sought death in this darkness?

  “It stinks!” Sarah exclaimed with a shrill voice, holding her sunburned nose.

  “A white whale,” I said wistfully.

  “A physalus,” she explained, “a fin whale. The white that you see there is not the skin, but the blubber. The skin has been eaten away by birds and marine animals. Now they are feeding on the layer of fat.”

  Did she notice my disappointment?

  “Supposedly there used to be whole herds of fin whales here. Spotted and bottlenose dolphins too. The Gulf of Genoa used to be famous for its wealth of shrimp and fish. The seagrass meadows of Cinque Terre and Portofino were unique spawning grounds. All sorts of sponges and algae, even corals. Popular grazing areas for marine mammals. That’s all over,” she said with a shrug.

  “Too late for an ark,” I said.

  “Definitely too late for this creature,” Sarah replied, nodding at the bobbing cadaver. “That’s why we should save what can still be saved. When climate change occurs as quickly as it has this time, the plants have no time to migrate. They are overrun. If things go on like this, in a hundred years it will look like the Sahel here. Take my word for it, child.”

  In autumn Sarah left us to continue her research in Slovenia. She had planted a seed in me. And it had fallen on fertile ground.

  * * *

  I TOLD FALCOTTI nothing about the white whale, of course—my shame in having mistaken a half-decayed cadaver for Moby Dick was reason enough for that. It simply did not fit into the background of an aspiring biologist.

  “One last question, Signorina Ligrina. Suppose I had the power to stop and turn back time: What situation would you wish to be sent back to so that you could undo a decision or set things on a different course?”

  I looked at him with surprise. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Was it a psychological test?

  “A strange question,” I said.

  Falcotti shrugged. “Say whatever springs to your mind,” he urged.

  “All right. I would wish to be at the Napoli Centrale train station on September 16, 2039, at 4 P.M. Then I would stop my father from getting on the ill-fated train to Rome. I mean, no. I would, of course, try to warn the authorities about the planned attack…”

  I faltered. He smiled and nodded at me encouragingly.

  “… if something like time travel were ever possible. But how would something like that be possible?”

  “Yes, of course.” Falcotti nodded and made a note. “And if I had the power to transport you to any century, which would you choose?”

  The conversation was growing more and more puzzling, but I decided to play along.

  “The fifteenth century,” I said.

  “An interesting time. The century of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of Botticelli and Bosch, of Alberti and Ariosto, of Savonarola and Machiavelli…”

  “And of Nicolaus Cusanus.”

  He looked up with surprise and nodded. “An extremely interesting man. He was a confidant of the Holy Father Pius II, cardinal, and papal legate. Have you studied his work?”

  I shook my head. “He’s our neighbor here, so to speak. He’s buried around the corner.”

  “In San Pietro in Vincoli, yes. That was his church. He was from Germany.”

  “I know. From Kues, a small town on the Moselle. Not far from Cattenom. Kues is in the middle of the death zone.”

  “I never realized that. Of course,” he replied, nodding.

  “His heart is buried there, in accordance with his wishes, for he really loved his home.”

  “He died in Todi, as far as I know. In Umbria.”

  “I thought he died here in Rome.”

  “No, he died of an epidemic, like his friend, Pope Pius II, and many others who had gathered there for a crusade to wrest Constantinople from the Turks. The undertaking had to be aborted. That was 1464, if I remember correctly. He was only sixty-three years old,” said Falcotti.

  “It is said that he spent almost all his income to buy up the best vineyards in the area around Kues in order to secure his goal in life: to establish a foundation for needy old people. It still existed, incidentally, when the disaster happened. It had lasted for almost six centuries.”

  “I see you have studied him after all, Signorina Ligrina.”

  “Not in earnest. I just watched the DVD that’s sold to tourists in San Pietro. I’ve taken a look at his philosophical writings, but I can’t find my way into the thinking of that time. It strikes me as so … labyrinthine, as if you were constantly going around in circles and getting nowhere. But from what I’ve heard about him in history of science courses I’ve always had the impression that he was far ahead of his time.”

  “Did you say, ‘in circles’?” Falcotti gestured with a nod to a low table at the other end of the room. “Are you familiar with that?”

  The surface of the table, a square roughly five feet long by five feet wide, was bordered by a low raised edge and consisted of a pale, polished wooden board with a sort of target made of dark wood inlaid in it.

  Falcotti stood up. “Come with me,” he said.

  On closer examination, I saw that the wooden board displayed concentric circles. The areas enclosed by the circles were marked with the numerals 1 to 9 from outside to inside; the circle in the center bore no number. On the edge lay wooden balls, as big as oranges. Falcotti grabbed one of them, drew back his arm, and threw it with a slight swing almost parallel to the outer circle onto the target. It described a bizarrely crooked path inward and stopped on the eight.

  “Give it a try.”

  He handed me the ball, which he had fished out of the spiral with a small wooden rake. It was not a uniformly round ball, I immediately noticed, but rather it had a hollow on one side, as if a smaller ball had been gouged out of the larger ball, shifting the center of gravity from the middle far into the concave part of the object. That explained the erratic path it described.

  “What is this?” I asked. “A refined form of bocce or boules?”

  “It’s the game of spheres, the ludo globi, which Nicolaus Cusanus invented shortly before his death. Whoever manages with his throws to come closest to the center is the winner. Any attempt to reach the center by aiming directly at it inevitably fails. But with time you can attain a certain skill for getting close to the target in a circuitous way. Try it!”

  I threw the “ball” much too forcefully onto the target. It wobbled wide of the mark and ended up on the opposite side on the one.

  “Try again!”

  This time the object rolled close to the center, but again came to rest on the one.

  “Don’t give up,” Falcotti said with a smile. “That is—among other things—the point.”

  This time the ball landed more softly, parallel to the lines of the circles, with the convex side facing the edge, and the globus did indeed roll on a strongly curved path toward the center, until it came to a standstill on the eight.

  “That’s really good,” said Falcotti. “You’re learning fast.”

  “And what am I learning?”

  “There are various interpretations of this game. Cusanus himself attributed several qualities to it. One of the most important is that it entertains the players, puts them in a cheerful mood, and teaches them to sustain defeats lightheartedly and good-humoredly. For it’s a fact that the movement of the globus is fundamentally unpredictable. Even if the starting conditions were exactly the same, every throw is different. With that Cusanus is trying to tell us that no two events are ever e
ntirely alike and so exact prognoses are never possible. The deeper level is of a symbolic nature: In the center of the field, in the tenth, innermost circle, which bears no number, is Christ. To follow him directly is fundamentally impossible; for that we people are too flawed—that is, each of us has his dent. On our life’s path we inevitably go astray, even if we aim steadfastly to reach our goal, to reach God. But if we strive toward it with patience, we can nonetheless come quite close to our goal.”

  He drew back his arm and brought the globus onto a course that proceeded wide of the mark over the two and three with an increasing curve, finally ending up on the nine.

  “I see that you’ll do it one day, Signore Falcotti.”

  Smiling, he shrugged and looked at me over the rim of his glasses.

  “No prognoses, Signorina Ligrina! Who knows, maybe you’re about to overtake me.”

  VII

  A Chicken for Cusanus

  All these various visible forms are enclosed in the world. And yet if it were possible for someone to be situated outside the world, the world would be invisible to him.

  NICOLAUS CUSANUS

  “Oh my! I beg your pardon, Your Eminence. We were not expecting you. We thought you were still staying in Cologne. Oh God, I was planning to go to the market tomorrow morning to buy some things to which you are partial, as I know from the past. Oh, Your Eminence. What am I doing standing here before you? Please…”

  “But Katrin! Are you seriously going to sink to your knees before me? Stand up and let me embrace you. And don’t call me ‘Your Eminence’! What did you always call me when I was still dean at St. Florin?”

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Nico, you called me, and you were like a mother to me. Let us stick with that, Katrin.”

  “But you have become such an exalted man. You come right after the Holy Father, says Helwicus.”

  “Well, isn’t it so?” the dean broke in. “It is said that Pope Nicholas is your friend and values your advice.”

  “Indeed, we see eye to eye in many respects.”

  “What am I doing here?” the old housekeeper lamented, spreading her arms. “Completely unprepared. I can offer a chicken, roasted in butter and rosemary, but cold. The bread is fresh.”

  “I’m not hungry. We did not set off from Andernach until after lunch today. In the morning I had to dictate an urgent letter to the chapter of St. John’s in Osnabrück. But I’m thirsty. I could certainly do with a glass of wine.”

  “Wine from home?”

  “Yes. Do you have some from my father’s vineyards?”

  “Indeed, we do. Every year your brother Johannes sends us a tun down the Moselle. It is the best wine far and wide.”

  “Then bring me a flagon of that, Katrin, so that I may at least taste a mouthful of home.”

  “You mean, you’re not going to ride up to Kues?” asked the dean.

  “I would be delighted to, but I don’t have the time, Helwicus. I’m expected in Frankfurt. And next month I shall be in Brixen once again. I would have liked to ride up to Kues to check on things and see how far the plans for the foundation have come to fruition, but I have trustworthy people under my brother’s supervision who are advancing my cause and managing it well.”

  “I heard the same.”

  “Did you also hear about the execution in Cologne on Candlemas? Of the young woman who was deemed guilty of witchcraft and was burned at the stake?”

  “Yes, I heard about that. Tilman von Linz was present at the proceedings as an adviser to Dietrich. There was again a great deal of conflict between the city council and the archbishop, as usual, this time in the matter of jurisdiction. And the people were completely beside themselves, wanted to finally see a witch burn with their own eyes.”

  “This woman wrote me letters.”

  “Did I hear you correctly? She wrote you letters?”

  “Yes, look! Now I will finally take some time to read them,” said the cardinal, tossing the tied-up scroll onto the large table. “They are copies. One of the archbishop’s scribes gave them to me. Geistleben is his name. He and I crossed to Deutz on the same ferry.”

  The cardinal took a penknife and cut the strings, filled the goblet that had been set down before him with wine, and drank from it in small, sampling sips.

  “The wine is good,” he said, nodding appreciatively; then he began to read.

  Later Katrin brought him a candle. And when it had burned down, she lit a second one for him and placed additional candles nearby.

  And Nicolaus Cusanus read and read.

  * * *

  “YOU HAVE NOT even touched the chicken, my lord. I knew that it was not to your taste.”

  “No, Katrin,” the cardinal said, lost in thought. “That is, yes.” He turned away. “East of Cattenom the land is black, deep into Bohemian and Polish regions,” he murmured, “as can be seen from orbit.”

  “I will bring you warm milk.”

  “Is Helwicus up yet?”

  “Yes. Shall I summon him?”

  “Please do.”

  “Do you know where Cattenom is, Helwicus?” he asked the dean.

  “Oh, I believe there is a hamlet by that name up at the top of the Moselle, in Lotharingia, not far from Metz. I’m not certain, but Adrien, the fisherman who brings us his catch every Thursday evening, comes from that area. I will ask him.”

  “In Lotharingia?” the cardinal repeated reflectively. “East of Cattenom the land is black…”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The cardinal stuck a fingernail under the hardened wax of the burned-down candle and detached it from the table.

  “Mysterious, all this,” he murmured.

  “What the little witch wrote to you?”

  “That was no witch who was executed there. It was a strange woman. Mad, perhaps, but knowledgeable and acutely perceptive. She foresaw a future we cannot even imagine.”

  The cardinal looked exhausted after staying awake all night. He turned to the window and rubbed his chin. Day had come, but dense mist veiled the river, so that the opposite bank could not be seen.

  “‘East of Cattenom the land is black,’ she writes, ‘deep into Bohemian and Polish regions, as can be seen from orbit.’ — What does she mean by ‘orbit’? The circle of the Earth? A circle above the Earth? It would have to be a bird that could soar as high as the sphere of the moon in order to see that far. An angel…?”

  At a loss, the cardinal shook his head. “The black blade that had pierced the heart of the continent.” The plague? A conflagration? A festering wound of the earth itself?

  The Cusan looked out over the meadows around the mouth of the Moselle. They stretched almost down to Andernach, a vast wetland from which myriad mosquitoes swarmed up in the summer. A nuisance for man and beast, as he recalled. What a carefree time that had been, when he had still performed his duty as a dean here at St. Florin!

  Mist rose like smoke from extinguished fires. An army camp of ghosts, which had moved on through time. The cardinal hunched his shoulders as if a chill had seized him.

  “Todi,” he murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?” the dean asked in confusion.

  “She writes: ‘Beware of Todi.’ What is supposed to await me there? What did she mean by that?”

  He turned away from the window and looked with tired eyes at Helwicus. “It should not have been doctors and judges questioning her, but scholars. It ought to have been determined where she came from and with whom she had studied. She must have come from a part of the world of which we know nothing, but whose wise men certainly seem to have knowledge of us. The case of this woman should have been decided in Rome. Now it is too late.”

  He tossed the copies onto the table and rubbed his eyes. In his youth, impressed by the words of famous authorities and frightened by accounts of the evil influences of the superstitio, he too had demanded the extermination of witches and wizards. With unease he remembered his sermon Ibant magi, which he had delivere
d on Epiphany of the year 1431. Now, twenty years later, he thought differently about those things. He had conquered his fear of the devil, countered it with the clarity of his thinking, which had sprung from his faith. The darkness no longer scared him.

  “I will try to sleep for a few hours,” he sighed, and blew out the candle.

  VIII

  Light-Clipper

  Imagination is a straightforward form of virtual reality. What may not be so obvious is that our “direct” experience of the world through our senses is virtual reality too. For our external experience is never direct; nor do we even experience the signals in our nerves directly—we would not know what to make of the streams of electrical crackles that they carry. What we experience directly is a virtual-reality rendering, conveniently generated for us by our unconscious minds from sensory data plus complex inborn and acquired theories (i.e., programs) about how to interpet them … Every last scrap of our external experience is of virtual reality. And every last scrap of our knowledge—including our knowledge of the non-physical worlds of logic, mathematics and philosophy, and of imagination, fiction, art and fantasy—is encoded in the form of programs for the rendering of those worlds on our brain’s own virtual-reality generator.

  DAVID DEUTSCH

  “He’s a strange guy, that Falcotti,” Birgit said indignantly, when we met a few days later at a party at Marcello’s and started talking about the job interviews. “He wanted to play the Grand Inquisitor, don’t you think? He’s a snoop! He wanted to know more about my private relationships than about my professional qualifications. I told him it was none of his business. He just grinned stupidly and took notes. What’s that all about?”

  Bernd looked uneasy, as he always did when his sister got worked up. And she was practically seething as she continued to tell us about her conversation with Falcotti.

  “‘Okay,’ I said to him, ‘I’m really interested in the job, but first I would like to know what it involves. You’re constantly beating around the bush, and I’m supposed to tell you all sorts of things about my private life. I’m not telling you anything until you tell me what you actually want from us, what the deal is with this Rinascita, how much it pays per month, and where we are being sent. Because if what it boils down to is that I’m going to be wearing a protective suit and collecting mutated mold fungi between Mainz and Frankfurt until I’m hopelessly poisoned by radiation, then we can forget it,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been there already, and that was enough for me, that I can assure you.’ — ‘Where did you get an idea like that?’ he asked me, wide-eyed. — ‘Because that’s the sort of thing volunteers are always being sought for. I’ve seen people who were sent in there for only a few days. Afterward they looked like hell had spat them out. I’ll never forget that.’ — ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he replied, ‘but our work does not consist of…’ — ‘I’m listening,’ I said to him. ‘We would never send you into a radioactively contaminated area,’ he declared, looking at me in that angelically pious way I absolutely can’t stand. ‘But if you have reservations…’ — ‘Yes, I have reservations,’ I replied. ‘What’s with all this secrecy? I’d like a straight answer from you.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I cannot provide you with more information at this stage in the interview process.’ — ‘Then I’m sorry too,’ I said to him, and with that our conversation was over. I suppose that meant I was off the list. So much for Rinascita della Creazione. Screw it!”