The Cusanus Game

  “Are you familiar with the memoirs of Urban Hargitai?” he asked.

  “Goldfaden-Hargitai?”

  “André Goldfaden was his grandfather. He was a doctor and psychologist—a Hungarian Jew who practiced in Vienna. Later, when the Nazis came to power, he went into exile in London. His grandson published his notes at the beginning of this century. Pretty odd stuff.”

  “Thilawuntha believed in it,” said Grit.

  Leendert gave a wave of his hand. “Thilawuntha believed in all sorts of things.”

  “And most of the time turned out to be right.”

  “No one can deny that,” he conceded. “He was a true genius. A shame about him. Would you like something else to drink?”

  “We’re leaving now,” Grit said assertively.

  Leendert beckoned to the waiter. “Put it all on my bill,” he said. “And bring me another beer.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It was a pleasure to meet the two of you.”

  At the door I looked back. Grit and Renata had already gone out. Leendert was sitting at the table and staring with bowed head at his freshly filled glass mug; then he rose decisively, grabbed his beer, and tramped up the stairs to the library.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Grit, who had been waiting outside for me with Renata.

  “What a poor, bitter man,” I said.

  “Well, Leendert has always been a contrarian, but not so intolerant,” Grit sighed. “He used to travel as well, to the 1560s. He experienced terrible things there. At that time, the Spanish had depopulated whole villages around here. He had joined a small troop of peasants who encountered Alba’s cavalry near Haarlem. He was the only survivor of the bloodbath. Sometimes, it seems to me, the injury gets to him.”

  * * *

  IT WAS A hot day, and the air-conditioning at the institute wasn’t working. I had been summoned to the medical wing. I had hoped the appointment would be canceled, but when I called, a woman’s voice declared sharply that a bit of heat wasn’t going to make her throw out her schedule.

  I showered for the second time that morning, but no sooner had I taken a few steps than my T-shirt clung to my body.

  “I’m supposed to see Dr. Hekking,” I said with slight annoyance. “Do you know where he is? Dr. Willem Hekking.”

  A massive black man looked up from the monitor and scrutinized me silently. The whites of his eyes were shot through with yellow as if he were feverish. Beads of sweat covered his broad nose and the area above his thick upper lip.

  “I’ve been summoned to Dr. Hekking; it’s about my medical conditioning. Is he here?”

  “Then your name is Domenica Ligrina.”

  “You know about this?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then would you please…”

  The man held out his hand to me, which was as large as a shovel and surprisingly dry. “Hekking,” he said.

  “Please forgive me, Doctor,” I sputtered, “but with the Dutch name I’d—”

  “I am Dutch.”

  “Oh…”

  “As an Italian you wouldn’t know, but Dutch people come in all colors—black, yellow, brown, and a few whites as well.”

  Dr. Hekking opened his large mouth like a yawning hippopotamus, and burst into riotous laughter. “My grandparents were from Suriname, but I was born in Duivendrecht.”

  He turned back to the monitor.

  “Will it hurt?” I asked him.

  “I will tear you to pieces and leave your remains to the nanos.” His hefty belly shook cheerfully. “But you won’t feel anything, that I can assure you. Despite my physique I have a reputation as a gentle doctor. Besides, we’ll begin very carefully. Today I will merely take some of your blood so that I have a basis for mixing the cocktails with which I will pump you up and for programming the computer. I’ll be ready for you the day after tomorrow. Prepare to be stationary for about a week.”

  I didn’t even feel the prick.

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER I lay on a mobile sickbed. Needles were stuck in the crooks of my arms and attached to plastic tubes. The computer-operated apheresis apparatus next to me clicked and snapped, sucking blood out of my right vein like a high-tech vampire, infusing it with chemicals and nanotects, and then feeding the mixture into the left arm vein. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the measurements on the monitor. My entire blood volume was being sent through the labyrinth of the machine and returning into my body. Eventually the soft pumping sound must have lulled me to sleep.

  I awoke in a darkened sickroom.

  “You’ll stay here a few nights so that we have you under observation,” a woman’s voice said softly.

  I nodded and drifted off again.

  The days that followed largely escaped my memory. Afterward I didn’t know whether I had gotten anything to eat or had been fed intravenously. The humming and clicking of the apheresis apparatus accompanied me. At times I saw the face of Dr. Hekking over me like a dark heavenly body, then an unknown light-skinned face again. In my arm veins I felt the slight pressure of the needles, which were left in place between the treatments.

  Confused dreams haunted me, but only one remained in my memory, because it terrified me. I dreamed again of that old desert world, of the oasis on the shore of the dried-out sea with its precipice that got lost in dark depths. I stood on the ridge of a high dune under a gigantic hazy sun and looked down to the oasis. I thought I saw a movement, but it might have been an illusion.

  Suddenly a shadow fell over me. I looked up—and directly into a gigantic eye hovering in the sky, half filling it and staring down coldly at me. My heart stood still. I tumbled backward into the sand, and at that moment I thought I heard a shout and laughter. I awoke and listened anxiously into the darkness. No shout, no laughter. Only the soft hum of the monitoring instruments and the dull reflection of their illuminated displays on the ceiling and walls.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. Had I looked into the eye of God? It had stared at me so pitilessly and indifferently. I shivered.

  * * *

  A CRASH OF thunder woke me. When I opened my eyes, I saw Renata sitting at my bedside.

  “What happened to your hair?” I asked her in confusion.

  She laughed. “Nothing. A storm. It’s raining. I got wet. How are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. I had bad dreams. I looked into the eye of God.”

  She nodded. “And I saw Amsterdam, six hundred years ago.”

  “And?”

  “It was actually exactly as I’d imagined it. A filthy little dump with terribly pious residents.” Renata gave me a radiant look.

  “You’re looking forward to going to the Middle Ages, I see.”

  “Yes,” she said, stroking my hot forehead. Suddenly she recoiled and stared at me wide-eyed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, now frightened myself. “What did you just see?”

  She had turned pale.

  “Your face…” she whispered. “It looked as if it were burnt … My conditioning—it’s somehow gotten stronger. I don’t know.”

  “Forgive me, Renata. I didn’t think of that. I won’t ask any more questions. You came to say good-bye, right?”

  She nodded.

  “When do you depart?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I felt for her hand. “I’m sure we’ll find each other,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  “Then—see you soon, Renata!”

  * * *

  SUNLIGHT SPARKLED ON the water.

  “I’m Nurse Sietske,” said the woman, pulling open the other half of the curtain at the terrace door. “May I bring you breakfast?”

  “Yes, please,” I said in a daze.

  Through the open door I looked out at the shimmering IJ and made out the familiar contours of Java and behind it the bizarre skyline of Zeeburg. After a while I looked at the crooks of my arms. The bandages had a
pparently been removed earlier; the puncture points of the needles were barely visible.

  Nurse Sietske was my age—full-bosomed, with a round, good-natured face and a soft rosy complexion that promised tenderness and warmth.

  Gradually my head cleared. I felt energetic and full of anticipation. It seemed to me as if my senses had sharpened, as if I had gained a greater distance from my body. I had the strange feeling that I could operate it by remote control in a subtle fashion—as if I were standing behind myself and directing myself with telepresence equipment, which enabled me to speed up and slow down my physical movements. That phenomenon was completely inexplicable to me.

  “That’s one of the effects of the nanotects you now have on board looking out for you,” Dr. Hekking explained during his final examination. “In a sense, an additional subsystem has been inserted in your consciousness that intensifies or dulls external stimuli—depending what sort of attention you want to give the relevant details. We call it the distance mode. It’s a sort of anosognosia. The nanotects are concentrated in depots. You can mobilize them by an act of will. I’ll show you what exercises you can use to do that. The nanos then colonize the ventromedial cortex and the somatosensory cortical fields in the right hemisphere. Some of the neurotransmitters are thereby blocked. At the same time, the release of adrenaline and cortisol by the adrenal glands is reduced. The main effect is as follows: Pain tolerance is heightened, without influencing the remaining sense perceptions. That’s associated with a certain flattening of affect. The nanos buffer you against the external world. In other words: You will from now on be able to approach with considerably more calm many things that might previously have caused your heart to race.”

  “Sometimes I like it when my heart races,” I replied.

  Dr. Hekking ran his massive paw gently over my cheek. My whole head would have fit in his cupped hand.

  “You don’t need to give that up, my dear. On the contrary. But when you don’t want it, it will not come into play. That has its advantages. Not only where you’re going.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re protected from infections, and if you should suffer injuries, you’ll recover faster. On top of that, for the duration of your operation, you will be unable to conceive, so you won’t menstruate.”

  “So you’ve completely disarmed me biologically.”

  “As a bioweapon, yes. But apart from that…” He let out his riotous laughter. “Ms. Ligrina will be staying with us another two days,” he said to the nurse. “I still have to perform a few examinations.”

  “Have there been any complications?” I asked, when he had left.

  “Don’t worry,” said Sietske, stroking my temples with her soft hand. “Everything is absolutely fine.”

  But my sharpened perceptiveness told me that she was somehow unsettled.

  * * *

  WHEN I MET Ernesto at the institute, I asked him whether everything had gone according to plan with Renata’s transition. He shrugged. “I wasn’t there myself, but I heard that she caught a powerful soliton, a real energy monster. It might have carried her somewhat farther than to the year 1450.”

  “What does ‘somewhat farther’ mean?”

  “Maybe 1448 or 1445. It’s not possible to say exactly. But someone is on site—at the target point in time, I mean. He’ll send her back if she should be too wide of the mark. So don’t worry,” Ernesto reassured me.

  Renata didn’t reappear. At least not in the weeks that followed. So I dared to heave a sigh.

  III

  The Papers of Dr. Goldfaden

  A radiolarian, in a drop suspended,

  Said wouldn’t it be truly splendid

  If other worlds existed

  In which radiolarians subsisted.

  For that he earned only taunts and jeers,

  As has many a dreamer through the years.

  Ridicule and laughter were especially inspired

  By the thought of the volume of water required

  To pour out a universe so immense.

  Ergo, said detractors, it’s common sense

  That there’s only this world, no others around,

  For where should so much water be found?

  À LA CHRISTIAN MAYER

  Christian, who knew Urban Hargitai from his university days with Professor Pfleiderer in Innsbruck, had invited him to Dornbirn for his birthday. “Urban,” he had said, “don’t tell me you have no time. In August there’s not much going on in the software industry, is there?” Not much had been going on all year, and there was so much sarcasm in the question that it hurt. Christian knew, of course, that he hadn’t had much success yet and, sensitive as he was, he quickly added: “I haven’t sold my new novel yet either, but we’ll ce-celebrate anyway. A few interesting people will be there, among them many colleagues. You’re going to co-come, right?”

  Swayed by Christian’s expression of solidarity in failure, Urban Hargitai had accepted the invitation to travel to Vorarlberg on the weekend of August 12–13. It had indeed been a lousy year, just like the previous ones. After completing his studies in mathematics—and on the side in astronomy—he had managed to get a job at Erste Bank, where he toiled as a programming slave, but the night work, which was necessary in order to get the crashed programs running by the next morning, had worn him out. Then, like at least ten thousand other computer specialists in Vienna, he had come up with the idea of going freelance. URBAN HARGITAI: SOFTWARE CONSULTING—blue on silver. The business card was impressive, but apparently only to him. The market was saturated with inexpensive special programs for any conceivable need. Things were moving only sluggishly, and the frustration gnawed at him … If his mother hadn’t repeatedly sent him some money … But they would celebrate anyway …

  Friday was hot and muggy. Hargitai hadn’t felt well the day before. Probably a cold, he thought, one of those nasty summer viruses that gum up your brain until you’re no longer capable of thinking clearly. But somehow he had the need to leave Vienna as quickly as possible. The city was stifling, loud, and full of sweaty tourists pushing their way noisily through the streets of the center and overcrowding the cafés and taverns.

  As a precaution, Hargitai bought a flask of rum and a pack of tissues at the kiosk in the train station hall. Thus armed, he boarded the IC-566 Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra, which would arrive in Bregenz at 7:30 P.M. Christian had promised to pick him up. In the second car he found an empty compartment. Contrary to his expectations, the train on that Friday afternoon was only sparsely occupied; most of the Viennese were on vacation.

  In St. Pölten he already regretted having taken the trip. He broke out in a sweat all over his body, and his headache intensified. When the buffet cart passed through, he ordered a tea, mixed in a substantial amount of rum, and drank the whole cup with slow sips. Then he poured what remained in the flask into the cup and drank the rum straight.

  In Wels an older German married couple clattered into the compartment with three suitcases. The man held the reservation under his nose and informed him that they had a claim to the window seats. The two of them eyed him with disgust as he sipped his drink and blew his nose into tissues. Was he supposed to apologize to them for having a cold? Dark thoughts loomed in his brain: Perhaps he would manage to infect the Germans. He blew his nose copiously. In Salzburg they got off.

  Around that time Hargitai felt increasingly drunk. But at least the headache had subsided, he said to himself, putting his feet up on the seat across from him and closing his eyes. He must have fallen asleep shortly thereafter, for when he looked out the window he saw that the train had already reached Innsbruck.

  The sky in the west toward the Arlberg was black; the mountains seemed to Hargitai to be flooded with sulfurous light. He took his backpack and stepped out onto the platform. He was met by a hot, gusty wind, which raised dust and scraps of paper. In the north rumbled thunder.

  From that point on, his thoughts became confused.

  Hargitai got
back on the train, closed the compartment door and the curtain, and lay across the seats in order to sleep through the last stretch of the journey as well. In Bregenz I’ll be sober again, he told himself.

  A loud crash of thunder woke him. Rain lashed the window. He sat up and looked out. Lightning flashes bathed the steep wooded slopes in chalk-white light. The train was moving downhill and braking before the bends in the tracks. It was not completely dark outside; the lights were on in the car. He peered out through the rain-streaked window—and suddenly for a fraction of a second lived through a nightmare: The front locomotive was heading in a curve toward a ravine that a bridge should have spanned. But the bridge was gone. The railroad tracks jutted, bent downward, into emptiness, and ended in midair.

  That same moment he heard a shrill screech. He was hurled out of his seat. His knees struck the seat on the opposite side, and his face smashed into the headrest over it. The front part of the car reared and doubled up like a caterpillar. The roof buckled and rippled with a creaking groan; the windows burst, and a hail of glass shards sprayed over his head and back. The lights went out. Passengers screamed. From outside dim light seeped in. Water rushed loudly nearby.

  For a moment the car remained in its slanted position; then, with scraping and squealing, the end he was in sank lower. Directly before his eyes the upholstery suddenly opened, and through the fabric pierced the end of a dark iron beam. He tried desperately to throw his head back—and realized with horror that the compartment had folded up in such a way that he was clamped between the facing seats. Ice-cold water foamed through the crumpled window opening onto his face and the iron beam, which had stopped just before his eyes but protruded threateningly toward him. Suddenly the car collapsed further in on itself and the metal began to move again. That was the last thing he was aware of.

  * * *

  THE COLDNESS WOKE him. Hargitai was soaked and freezing. All around was darkness. Somewhere nearby a woman was whimpering. He felt something mushy in his lap and between his fingers. Mud? Torn leaves? His whole body hurt, because it was wedged in that contorted position. His legs were numb from the knees down. When he tried to move his shoulders, he felt a fierce pain in his forehead, which the icy water had numbed. He cried out and tried to touch his face with his hands—to no avail; they were stuck. He lost consciousness again.