The Cusanus Game

  “And did he answer you?” she asked, gesturing with a nod to the cardinal.

  “No.”

  “Many admirers of great men have fared no differently,” Renata remarked with a smile.

  “You know, I thought it was my last chance.”

  We reached the eastern bank and docked. Renata untethered the horses before the oarsmen had moored the vessel and slid the gangplank to the dock. She led the animals ashore and up the bank. The breath of people and animals formed steam clouds in the cool morning air. Behind her the cardinal’s groom disembarked from the ferry with the two riding horses and the packhorses. The cardinal brought up the rear. His eyes wandered intently over the strange cases and leather containers. Might he be carrying astronomical instruments with him? I followed him with a hesitant step. Should I pluck up my courage after all?

  The groom had stopped and readied one of the riding horses for him. Bowing respectfully, he looked down to the ground as he held the stirrup. The cardinal grasped the pommel and raised his foot to insert it in the stirrup—then lowered it again, while the groom remained in a stooped position.

  I too had stopped and looked at Nicolaus Cusanus: the broad face and forehead were familiar to me—only the wrinkles over the corners of his mouth were not yet as deeply engraved as in the bas-relief by Bregno in San Pietro in Vincoli. He actually had markedly peasantlike features, except for the narrow, crooked, aristocratic nose: the large ears; the completely attached earlobes; the prominent chin; the expressive mouth; and the large, strong, and yet slender hands.

  “Did you wish to speak with me?” he asked in a friendly tone, nodding to me encouragingly.

  His blue-gray eyes scrutinized me intently. I must have looked horrible: my nose reddened by the cold, my matted hair, my dirty bare feet. My throat felt constricted.

  “N-no, my lord,” I sputtered in a near-whisper.

  “Don’t you know whom you have in front of you?” hissed the groom, his face averted, his eyes directed submissively at the ground.

  “Let her be,” the cardinal said calmly, but with a voice that was accustomed to issuing orders.

  “Forgive me, Your Eminence,” I managed to get out. “I didn’t mean to…”

  He waited patiently, but I had become tongue-tied.

  “I had the impression you wanted to say something to me,” he encouraged me with a smile that deepened the wrinkles on his cheeks. “What’s your name?”

  “Domenica, Your Eminence.”

  Nicolaus Cusanus nodded. “The day of the Lord. May the Lord bless you and keep you, Domenica,” he said, raising his hand.

  Then he reached for the pommel, inserted his boot toe in the stirrup held by the groom, and swung himself up. Tall as he was, he cut an impressive figure on horseback.

  “We set off,” he commanded his escort, who had swung himself into the saddle as well. The cardinal knotted the chinstrap of his hat and took 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.”

  At that moment the groom turned his face to me. It was the scoundrel who had tried to rape me the previous summer and then made the false incriminating statements against me before the council. Behind the back of the cardinal he now spat in my direction and with a grin looked out at the river, where two wild geese flew upstream low over the water. The beat of their wings sounded like a rhythmic moaning.

  “You miserable bastard!” I shouted after him, but my voice was drowned out by the rattle of the chains and the crack of the whips of the towing men, who were harnessing their animals to tow the ferry to the far southern dock, from where it would cross back to Cologne.

  In the meantime, I had lost sight of Renata. She was standing with her horses next to a man on the summit of the embankment and was waving to me with both arms.

  “Look who I found, Domenica!” she exclaimed elatedly, pointing with her horsewhip at the lanky young man standing with crossed arms on the embankment—surrounded by barefoot Jewish children, who had fled up the slope from the towing men’s long whips and had taken cover near him. The sun had just risen; his red hair gleamed, and he looked at me uncertainly. It was incredible—a morning full of miracles!

  “Frans!” I cried. “Frans!”

  I started to run, slipped on the wet grass, and fell down. I then got to my feet, gathered my cloak, and continued to run. He gave me a disconcerted and flustered look. Did he not recognize me in my awful getup? Joyfully, I spread my arms and he caught me.

  “Oh, Frans,” I sighed.

  “Have we met?” he asked.

  I pushed him away from me and stared at him aghast. How young he looked!

  “You don’t recognize me?”

  “I’m sorry. You two are”—he made a vague gesture—“travelers?”

  Renata suddenly chuckled and held out her hand to him.

  “I’m Renata,” she said, taking off her hat, unfastening the wooden clasp, and shaking out her gray hair. “And she”—pointing with her thumb toward me—“is Domenica.”

  And turning to me, she went on, “My dear, what we have here is apparently a very early version of Frans. You haven’t met him yet.”

  “Indeed,” he said, frowning and a bit unsettled, “this is my first journey so deep into the past.”

  I eyed him with growing horror. “And Venice?” I asked, almost desperately.

  “Venice?”

  “All that still lies in the distant future for him,” explained Renata, and the fragments of amber in her eyes flashed. “How nice for him. We will meet him there in our youthful innocence.”

  “So you haven’t come looking for us?” I asked Frans.

  My words condensed in the cool morning air. The wind carried them away. Uncomprehendingly, he shook his head. “No, I’ve been assigned to determine the exact state of the construction work,” he replied, gesturing with a nod to the unfinished cathedral building on the opposite bank. “I’m an architect.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked me.

  “Oh, it’s not important,” I replied with a sigh.

  “In the time he comes from they don’t even know our names yet at the CIA,” Renata explained. “Still, the young man can make himself useful. We need accommodations where we can make ourselves somewhat presentable, and then a passage downriver.”

  When we had told Frans the circumstances of my liberation, he thought it advisable for us to abscond to Düsseldorf in order to be safe from the officers of the Cologne city council and the archbishop’s henchmen. We rode for a day down the Rhine and sought lodgings. Renata sold her horses, and I helped her sort and repack her botanical collection. The results of her fieldwork exceeded all expectations. Frans roamed around the harbor and finally found a boatman who was heading to Utrecht. It was a barge full of timber from the Eifel. On his northwest journey he docked for a few days in Duisburg to load ironware.

  Due to the thaw, the current was quite strong. It took us less than a week to reach Utrecht and from there a day on horseback to Amsterdam. We were almost home.

  “Today is the beginning of a new era,” said Frans, as we rode through the reeds.

  “For us?” asked Renata.

  “For the world,” he replied with a smile. “Today is the day Leonardo da Vinci is born.”

  * * *

  “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 witch they plan to bring to trial in Cologne?”

  “Yes, but only vaguely. There are many rumors going around in Cologne. I think it will turn out the same way as in the year ’46 with that sorceress. The city council had her banished. A lenient sentence for the woman.”

  “I hope that they proceed the same way in this case.”

  “I hope so too. Only there was once again conflict between the city council and the archbishop. A little witch like that could easily get caught between the millstones if one side is keen to make an example.”

  The housekeeper brought a roast chicken and a flagon of wine.

  The cardinal filled the glass and drank from it in small, sampling sips. “It’s good,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “That reminds me: There is a gift of wine on its way from Brussels. Dietrich von Xanten will arrive here next week. Take it for yourself, Helwicus, for your hospitality.”

  “That is too kind, Your Eminence.”

  “I need the wine neither in Frankfurt nor in Brixen. And traveling isn’t good for it. Wherever I go, I receive gifts of wine as if I were St. Florin himself,” he said with a laugh. “As if God had not sufficiently blessed me with my own vines.”

  The dean joined discreetly in his laughter.

  “And it is the best,” Katrin declared emphatically, and withdrew.

  “May I withdraw as well?” asked the dean. “I still have preparations to make in the church for tomorrow. Will you give the sermon again, as always when you’re staying in Koblenz?”

  “It’s always a pleasure and an honor for me to serve God in St. Florin. Beati, qui audiunt verbum Dei et custodiunt illud is the subject I’ve chosen.”

  “It is a great pleasure and honor for all of us as well, Your Eminence.” The dean bowed and turned to leave.

  “Helwicus,” said the cardinal. “Have you heard of a place named Cattenom?”

  The dean stopped and turned around. “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 Cusan sighed. “Nor do I. Forgive me. Sometimes strange thoughts come into one’s mind. God be with us.”

  Where had that name come from? Where had those dark words come from? he wondered. Was it an inspiration? A sign from God? He saw before his eyes the face of the young woman he had encountered the previous day on the ferry. The look in her eyes had been so frightened—and so knowing.

  It was pointless to lose himself in such speculations. He prayed; then he broke the bread and the joints of the chicken, separated the light meat from the breast and the darker meat from the wings and legs. Slowly he ate, and with relish; only once did he stop.

  “Todi,” he murmured, and was seized by a shiver. “What made me think of Todi?”

  The Cusan stepped to the window and 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. It was 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 cold fires. An army camp of ghosts, which had moved on through time.

  “Lord,” he prayed. “Blessed are they who hear your word and keep it. You alone know the course of the world. Protect us from affliction and sorrow. Have mercy on us, Lord, and on all your creatures…”

  Book

  FIVE

  I

  Crossroads

  Furthermore, I say that this infinity and immensity is an animal, although it has no determinate form nor perception of external things; for it has all soul in itself and embraces all the animate and is all this.

  GIORDANO BRUNO

  “Now I realize, of course, why Frans already knew me when we met back in Venice. I mistook it for a come-on. And yet there’s one thing I can’t explain: When I first saw him, I had the strange feeling that I had known him for a long time. It’s still inexplicable to me. I thought at first that it had been a sort of déjà vu, but … well … And at the time he knew exactly what was in store for me, everything I would have to go through. He didn’t say a word to me about it! Frans was very close to me. I still love him. And he knew exactly what awaited me in Cologne…”

  Grit, who had up to that point listened silently, took her pipe out of her mouth and shook her head.

  “No, he didn’t know that,” she said firmly.

  Light and shadow alternated. Sleet showers lashed the Old Sea, which rolled white-headed toward the shore against a dark sky. The New Dam was obscured by clouds—invisible.

  “Everything that can be is—somewhere,” she went on. “No traveler will ever tell another anything about their future. He can’t. How is he to know which future he has seen?”

  We were silent. Sleet pattered against the windowpanes. Finally Grit laid her pipe in the ashtray and turned on the floor lamp.

  “Posse esse and actu esse. They are one,” I said.

  “Quantum mechanics?”

  “No—Cusanus.”

  “Really! Incredible,” Grit remarked, shaking her head in disbelief. “You met him, Renata told me. Did you speak with him?”

  “She was tongue-tied,” Renata explained with a smile.

  Tooth embryos grown from stem cells had been implanted in place of her missing incisors. She had gotten a haircut and had her hair dyed—dark blond with highlights. She now no longer looked like an old woman, but like a lively, pretty woman in her mid-forties.

  “Maybe it’s better that you didn’t speak with him,” said Grit. “How easy it is to unleash a universe in situations like that.”

  “That might have happened anyway. She wrote letters to the cardinal and mentioned future events,” Renata remarked.

  “He never received them,” I replied. “I’m absolutely certain of that. He would definitely have reacted in some form.”

  “Maybe not the Cusanus you met,” Grit interjected. “And you liked it there, Renata?”

  “If I were offered an attractive task, whether in botany or another field, I would be delighted to travel to that time again. I think I d
id a good job, as the people from the Hortus assure me. I brought back hundreds of plants that had gone extinct, among them a few dozen we had had no idea existed. That will enormously enrich the All Species Foundation, they told me. Some of them are interesting evolutionary missing links. They want to name them after me—renata. I will only agree to that if they name the most beautiful among them domenica. You can’t help it that the learned doctores in Cologne confiscated and ruined your collection.”

  “That’s nice of you, but it’s my own fault. I was too reckless—too naive. And I didn’t exercise the necessary care.”

  “You’re both back. That’s the most important thing,” said Grit, lifting the carafe from the warmer and filling up our glasses with mulled wine. “And in time for Christmas.”

  Renata had returned on November 26, exactly a week after my departure. The ascending soliton had dropped me off on December 18. At that point, the institute was practically abandoned; most of the physicists and technicians had already gone on Christmas vacation. Only Dr. Coen was still on duty. He had definitely expected a return before the holidays and kept his eye on the simulation. As a precaution, he had equipped it with numerous motion sensors, which would notify him if someone appeared in the scene.

  “I assume Frans returned to the time from which he had come,” I said.

  “Yes, to the year 2045, I presume,” Grit confirmed. “If I remember correctly, he went to Venice the following year, when the Japanese began the restoration project. They were seeking travelers with architectural knowledge and had recruited him.”

  “My God, at that time I had just been cramming for my university entrance exams,” I said.

  “What will you do now, Domenica?” Grit asked me.

  “No idea. I doubt they’ll have any more use for me after that failure.”

  “You never know.”

  “Please, Grit! I almost ended up burning at the stake for my stupidity. I bungled everything.”

  Grit shook her head. “No, your transition worked—despite everything.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That your journey had a point, or else it never would have taken place; the transition would not have opened.”