The Cusanus Game

  “Of devilish origin, then…”

  “The commission of professors came to that conclusion. The young woman 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 is surely confused. An unfortunate creature. The woman should not be treated this way. Such a thing is shameful.”

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

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

  “I don’t think so. It’s odd … no one who has sworn a vow of humility would speak 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 seems to be quite well acquainted with you.”

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

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

  “Yes?”

  “… 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 speaks 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 know me? Has she ever crossed paths with me? Has she spoken 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 knows 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 be acquainted with my writings? And me, a very famous man? That I am not, God knows. She must be confused.”

  “It would indeed be no surprise. She has, after all, spent months in the dungeon. The icy cold has afflicted her. She is sick and desperate. Without friends or acquaintances.”

  “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 for the commission from Rome. They will—I assume—eventually be delivered to you, as soon as the case is 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?”

  “I’m afraid not. I wanted to fetch them from the hiding place when the synod members set off and your departure too was approaching. I hastened after you to be on the ferry and present them to you. But the copies were gone.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but I suspect a novice. A fellow who plays dumb but seems to me quite cunning. He is smitten with the woman, loiters around wherever she is, and stares at her slobberingly. But the fellow has a face—if I may, Your Eminence—like a wild boar under its tail. It’s abysmally ugly, and if you ask him something, he only grunts and crawls away like a rat.”

  “Could it be that he has informed the archbishop? Then you would be in serious trouble, as you well know. Now courage has abandoned you and you are absconding at the crack of dawn.”

  “You are probably right. I cannot discount the possibility that he has denounced me. But it is also possible that he so reveres her that he makes do with anything her hands have touched, especially what she has written down. For the rags she wore on her body before she was given a fresh robe for the interrogation have disappeared as well. Perhaps he has hidden the stuff in the straw in which he sleeps, the fellow. Well, be that as it may, it seems to me time to set off. 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—without 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?”

  “What else did she write in the letters?”

  “She asked you to exert your influence in high places. I assume she means the Holy Father himself.”

  “He has, God knows, other things to do than to concern himself with the confused remarks of a woman who is suspected of witchcraft in distant Cologne. What else did she write?”

  “You should protect Accademia Romana…”

  “Accademia Romana? Never heard of it.”

  “Its founder is … What was his name? Pomponius Laetius or Laetus…”

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  “She wrote of a Regiomontanus who was supposedly summoned to Rome.”

  “A scholar? From Königsberg? He is unknown to me.”

  “Nor have I heard of a scholar by that name.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, as far as I can remember, many confused things. In particular of a place where a terrible plague breaks out, on the upper Moselle.”

  “On the Moselle? Did she mention the name of the place?”

  “Cattelon … Cattenom, or something like that.”

  “Cattenom … It i
s possible that I have heard of a place by that name before. A plague, you say?”

  “From which the earth turns black, deep into Bohemian, indeed, into Polish regions, which ravages man and beast, and poisons and spoils tree and bush so that people can no longer live in that land.”

  “So a sibyl, who, like Cassandra, of whom Aeschylus tells, sees what will come?”

  “Will you intercede on her behalf, Your Eminence? It might well turn out that the city court condemns and burns her for witchcraft. Knowing the archbishop, he will not lift a finger.”

  “I will write Dietrich a letter, from Frankfurt, where I must journey in a few days. I will speak with Tilman in St. Florin, although we are not on the best terms…”

  “Provost Tilman Joel von Linz?”

  “Yes. He has been an adviser to the archbishop for many years.”

  “I had the honor of meeting him, Your Eminence.”

  “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.”

  “You are too kind, Your Eminence. I am honored by your offer.”

  “You would then have to tell me about the Lullian art, if it has been taught to you in Paris.”

  “It will be my pleasure, Your Eminence.”

  The groom led the animals by the reins up the dock, held the stirrup, and helped the Cusan mount. The cardinal raised his hand.

  “Thank you!” he called to the scholar, who had shouldered his knapsack. “God bless you.”

  “Farewell, Your Eminence.”

  “We set off,” the cardinal commanded, taking the reins. “I want to be in Heisterbach with the Cistercians for sext and in Andernach for vespers. The day is short, and I hate journeying in the dark.”

  The groom nodded, leaped into the saddle, and fastened together the reins of the pack animals. Then they rode off, leaving behind the voices of the children ringing out in the cool morning air.

  A couple of geese flew low over the reeds along the river. The heavy, rhythmic beat of their wings sounded like the lusty moans of two lovers. The groom turned his face away and grinned.

  Book

  FOUR

  I

  The New Dam

  I like to think of space and time as analogous to the ocean, and changes in it as analogous to waves on the surface of the ocean, but those waves, of course, don’t show up when one is miles above the ocean. It looks flat. Then as one gets down closer to the surface one sees the waves breaking and the foam. I see no way to escape the conclusion that similar foam-like structure is developing in space and time.

  JOHN WHEELER

  In the changing room it smelled like damp, sun-warmed wood and urine. As I turned around, I saw a wide-open eye in the hole a voyeur had drilled through the wooden wall.

  “Hey, you little rascal! This isn’t a peepshow here!” I shouted, slapping my wet bikini top against the opening. A moment later, I heard the running feet of two boys on the boardwalk behind the changing room.

  Renata was already dressed and sat at a table under a sun umbrella of the adjacent cafeteria. I strolled over to her. From the Old Sea a pleasantly cool wind blew in; the heat that had shimmered all day over the pale, broad, sandy beach was becoming more bearable. My skin burned from the saltwater and the impact of billions upon billions of photons that had rained down on us unfiltered through the huge ozone hole on that summer day.

  Renata had already headed out to Zandvoort the day before and had spent the night at Grit’s. Grit had already completed half a dozen missions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; she was to advise and help us as soon-to-be travelers.

  “Too bad Grit couldn’t come with us,” I said.

  “She has visitors this evening and still had some things to buy and prepare.”

  Two boys, perhaps twelve or thirteen, had stopped at some distance, were sucking on their popsicles and staring over at us. I raised a finger threateningly, but that only elicited a grin from them. One of them stuck his thumb between forefinger and middle finger and shook his hips.

  “Look at that little bastard!”

  Renata looked around bemusedly, then smiled faintly. She seemed exhausted, and I hoped that the sea air did her good.

  “So Frans isn’t coming,” she remarked.

  “He extended his contract in Venice. They need him badly, he told me. Actually I had expected it. Just after his return from his last trip I already sensed that he had grown distant from me. And I had been so worried about him and was so happy when he finally returned.”

  Renata nodded. “I warned you, Domenica. With time travelers you shouldn’t get into committed relationships or expect them to last. Travelers live in their own universe; they move on erratic courses. When they get close to you, it’s as if on a parabola. There’s a point where they are very close to you, but then they’re carried away again,” she said, resting her hands on mine. “The same thing will probably happen to us. On top of that, there are those mysterious temporal effects. When they go through the transition today and return after a few days, they’ve often spent weeks, months, sometimes years in the past. Sometimes they’ve gone through terrible things and seen even more terrible things, and they might, despite all their resolutions, have gotten into relationships wherever they were staying. When they then return, they are immersed in a world that has become strange to them, in which everything they have just known or loved has changed or even disappeared. They lead a literally fractured life. Their biography is full of rifts and abysses. How can you expect continuity from that?”

  “I never really realized that,” I replied.

  “You probably didn’t want to. But it has to be that way. Some have broken down from it and lost contact with reality. You need to have a thick skin, as Frans does, to keep up a life like that for years.”

  I nodded. “I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I don’t have the best luck with the men I’m attracted to.”

  Renata laughed. “With your looks? — Come on, take the handkerchief and wipe away your tears, for God’s sake!”

  “My mother wants to remarry, by the way. A real Moro,” I said, eager to change the subject.

  “How nice for her. When?”

  “At Christmastime.”

  “By then, both of us will probably have been back a long time. Then we’ll take a vacation in Italy.”

  “Bernd and Birgit are planning to begin studying psychology, by the way. They were awarded some grant for orphans.”

  “That won’t hurt them. And if we suffer a breakdown”—she tapped her forehead—“we can fall back on them.”

  “It would be better not to.”

  “Do you still keep in touch with them?”

  “I quickly made a last round of calls before I had to send Luigi into temporary retirement,” I said.

  “So you too now enjoy the privilege of NEA status. Unreachable by Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

  “Hm.”

  “I’ve come to appreciate not being reachable by anyone—like my ancestors, when they were cut off from the outside world in winter in the mountains. In the beginning, I found it harder than I had expected. You get used to effortless data acquisition. We’ll miss that, of course.”

  “Do you think our mission will be hard?” I asked Renata.

  “Yes, I think so. We’ll be transferred to a world stranger than Mars
. But we’ll make it. We’ve got what it takes and have certainly been tested long enough.”

  “Last week I went to a fortune-teller,” I confessed. “On Sint Annenstraat.”

  “I had no idea you set any store by things like that,” said Renata.

  “I don’t. It was a spur-of-the-moment impulse.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She looked at my hands, did some hocus-pocus with a crystal ball, and said, ‘I see you standing before a mirror, but…’ Suddenly she paused in horror. ‘What is it?’ I asked, and she whispered, ‘There’s no reflection in the mirror. It’s empty!’ Then she stared at me and screamed: ‘Leave! Leave right now!’ And then she practically threw me out. She even refused to accept any money.”

  Renata shook her head. For a long time we sat there silently. Far out on the horizon rose a vague contour: the crown of the New Dam, which had been erected northwest of Terschelling past Texel to Westgat and which would one day extend from Cherbourg to the Skagerrak. The “Atlantic Wall,” some quipped, while others called it the “sarcophagus of the European nuclear industry,” but the mockery was lost on most people in the face of the onrushing floods in spring and autumn. The water in the oceans rose unrelentingly, and all Holland was now below sea level. The Dutch had lived for centuries with that threat—often they had compared themselves with the chosen people of Israel, who, putting their trust in God, had crossed the Red Sea. One thing was clear to everyone: If the Northern Association, the so-called Rump EU, would not undertake massive efforts and invest more than two hundred billion euros annually in the New Dam project, which would by the turn of the century extend from Normandy to Jutland, the North Sea would soon be sloshing into the Cologne Bay.