The Cusanus Game

by Wolfgang Jeschke

  I strolled across Piazza Navona and Campo de’ Fiori, but this time, unlike during my—later—university years, I took a deep breath to catch a molecule of the ashes of Giordano Bruno—and sucked in the sharp fragrance of the first late-summer flowers—of gladioluses, asters, phlox, and dahlias, which were offered at the stalls. It occurred to me that here too a small part of the body destroyed by fire had turned to light that illuminated the darkness between the stars.

  In “my” apartment on Via Garibaldi lived someone named Bartocelli. A bus with a tour group was arriving at the convent across the street. The pilgrims rolled their suitcases across the cobblestone street and through the archway into the convent courtyard; in the process, they held up all the traffic with their clumsy operation of their remote controls. There was a concert of honking and much shouting. To put an end to the obstruction, the tour guide promptly seized two of the wayward suitcases to carry them out of the roadway—at which point they began to shriek loudly, because their theft alarm had been triggered. Finally, the last pilgrims had disappeared into the inner courtyard, and the cars clattered bumper to bumper over the cobblestones down to the bank of the Tiber. I had forgotten how many cars had still been out on the streets back then.

  The university had sunk into the deep sleep of summer vacation. I turned the corner onto Piazza San Pietro, climbed the steps, and entered the spacious, cool nave of the church. Several times I had to wrap my head around the fact that my memories of that familiar place were memories from the future, that everything that connected me to it had not happened in the past, but was still to come. I gazed at the impressive crayfish in the net made of twenty thick red tassels on the shield under the relief by Bregno. Now that I’d met Nicolaus in person, I could better judge his resemblance to the depiction. The deep indentations over the corners of his mouth must have engraved themselves during the bitter years he had spent in Brixen. Next to the entrance I lit three candles, one for Renata, one for my shadow sister, and one for me; then I stepped out onto the sunlit square.

  It was late morning and I decided to visit the Vatican Museums, for around that time the crowds were lightest. Most of the tourists were on the way to their hotels to have lunch. But there were still far too many visitors there, and the guards channeled the stream of people upstairs and downstairs through the building and the Sistina. I knew a few shortcuts and reached the hall with the maps, globes, and atlases, at the end of which, if I remembered correctly, almost directly before the exit in a side room on the right, hung the great painting of Paradise by Peter Wenzel, which had so inspired me as a child with its colorfulness and its wealth of animal and plant forms.

  Too late I noticed my growing dizziness as I turned the corner and entered the room. There I saw a dark-haired girl of eleven or twelve, with faded blue jeans and a light blue top. She was in the company of a man of around forty, who was dressed with striking elegance. In one hand he held a panama hat, with which he was fanning himself, in the other a tightly rolled-up newspaper, with which he was impatiently tapping his leg.

  I froze. It was like déjà vu—only from a different perspective. I saw the girl in profile, enraptured by my favorite painting. But she must have noticed my entrance, for she glanced briefly in my direction. Suddenly she raised both hands to her temples and began to whimper. At that same moment I knew that I had committed an unpardonable error.

  “You…” I began, but then I couldn’t get another word out. No! No! No! I gasped for air, because a stabbing pain in my temples almost robbed me of consciousness. Then I sought support on the wall and groped with my eyes closed toward the exit.

  “Is something wrong, young woman?” the man asked me. “Do you need help?”

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

  The girl burst into tears. The man turned away from me in dismay, hurried to the little girl, took her in his arms and asked her worriedly, “Are you okay, cara? Sit down for a moment.”

  “I’m leaving,” I asserted hastily, shaking my head to dispel the piercing pain. “I’m leaving…”

  A guard came rushing over and supported me; sympathetically, he offered me his chair and was about to call for help via his walkie-talkie.

  “Please don’t,” I said. “I’m feeling better already. It must be the heat.”

  The guard led me to the exit; outside I then sat down on a bench for a few minutes and took deep breaths.

  “How’s the little girl doing?” I asked him.

  “You mean the girl who was here with her father? The two of them left, I assume,” he replied.

  Soon thereafter I left the building, for I was aware that only one thing helped during such attacks: to create spatial distance between yourself and your alter ego. The scientists warned sternly against risking such encounters. In the consciousness of the two parties interferences could occur for which there was no neurological explanation. They were superimpositions that might be conditioned by identical structures, the psychologists asserted. The neurologists, on the other hand, ruled that out, for according to them the brain was in a state of constant flux; with each sense perception, with each thought new neural structures were created and old ones modified or dismantled, they argued.

  Whatever the case might be, it had been a sudden pain that had flared up behind my temples. And now I again remembered that incident from the point of view of my younger self, on that day when I had been with my father in the Vatican Museums and had seen the painting Paradiso Terrestre. It had been that magical moment that I had destroyed through my blundering entrance. I myself had been the dark-haired middle-aged woman who had stumbled in back then, giving me a headache and making me nauseous, and then departed, murmuring, on the arm of a guard. The human organism replaces itself completely in a period of fifteen years—exchanging itself gradually, molecule by molecule, for new material from the environment, giving the “worn-out” and “used-up” material back to it—but memory remains stored.

  What had I seen this time? A pretty, slightly chubby girl in designer jeans, with a stylish cutoff top and white and blue sneakers. Obviously spoiled and a bit vain. And my father? Strangely, I had remembered him differently. He had always struck me as tall and handsome, elegant in appearance and always impeccably dressed. But he was actually a shorter man who made up for his lack of height with markedly upright posture and high heels on his expensive suede shoes. Even for a sales representative in select fashionable textiles and knickknacks ranging from trendy to brazen, a tad too extravagantly dressed, almost a little—well, dandyish.

  In retrospect, his death had set off a strange coping process in me. As a child you experience the loss of a loved one not as a shocking, agonizing bereavement. It’s more of a strange mixture of sensation and disbelief. I had been the only student in my school who had lost a family member in the Mondragone terror attack—and not just any relative, but my father. Secretly I had even enjoyed being the center of attention among my schoolmates, for the event had for days flooded the newspapers and television with horrible images. It had been more embarrassing for me than anything else when I came home and Mother sat apathetically in her black dress like a crow in the living room, in the kitchen, or on the terrace—with a pale, stony face, as if she wanted to put the dead man on trial because he had done this to her and escaped responsibility. Only very gradually did I grasp that a void had opened up in me that would never, never close again. It opened painfully on the weekends when Father suddenly no longer returned home with his sample cases—those cases in which he had always brought back beautiful clothing for Mother and me as a surprise, mostly display items or floor models from fashion shows. And for me always a special surprise: a VidClip or HoloClip, earrings, a bracelet or a necklace. The closets overflowed, but my mother made little use of the treasures he unrelentingly amassed. She didn’t like that sort of clothing. I wore them, and what didn’t fit me or didn’t look good on me, I gave away to my friends to buy their sympathy and secure their loyal
ty.

  That had been my father as I remembered him. In the subsequent months and years I dreamed of him often. I loved him, I idealized him—built an altar for him in the void he had left behind. I suffered from the deprivation of his closeness, his attention, and his care. I missed the hand that gently stroked my hair and caressed my cheek, the scratch of his thin mustache on my nose, the touch of his puckered lips.

  Now I had encountered him; I had seen him as he had actually been, with the eyes of a grown woman. It hadn’t—I confess—moved me deeply. Was it due to the circumstances of the meeting, the shock of the unexpected encounter with myself? Was it due to the nanotechnological armoring of my inner self, which was still operative and shielded my heart as well? The distance that separated me from him disturbed me. His leering, appraising gaze at my figure had not escaped my notice any more than the impatience with which he reprovingly took note of his daughter’s lingering in front of the painting as she imbibed the minutiae of forms and colors, and the suppressed irritation with which he slapped the tightly rolled Corriere against the side of his knee because she couldn’t get enough of the diversity of plants and animals.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY back to the hotel I bought a train ticket to Naples and made a reservation for September 15. I would go to Naples and try to find a way to stop my father from boarding the ill-fated train. I would not prevent any constitutive fact of this universe in Professor Auerbach’s sense, but a constitutive fact of my universe, as marginal as it might be. I would save him from death. My father would keep coming home on the weekend with his surprises for me in the sample cases. Nothing would change for my mother and me. Life would go on. What would become of me in that case? Where are you, my other shadow sister, who grew up sheltered with Mommy and Daddy? Did you dutifully fulfill your university entrance requirements and study botany as well—did you follow in my footsteps? Or did you pursue completely different paths, which led to completely different universes? Would I ever find out?

  II

  Forking Roads

  At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see, finally, our own puzzled faces looking back at us.

  JOHN WHEELER

  I lowered the book when the express entered the tunnel under Monte Mássico. At that exact point a bomb would go off the next evening on the train traveling in the opposite direction, the Naples–Rome express, killing more than five hundred people. My father would, if my plan succeeded, not be among the victims.

  I looked at my reflection in the window of the car. I still had no idea how I would manage to stop him from boarding the train. I would somehow have to draw his attention to me, somehow head him off, on the square in front of the train station, in the ticket hall, at the latest on the platform—speak to him, urge him, implore him …

  We had a long stop in Casoria. The reason for that, we learned later, was unrest around Napoli Centrale, as a result of which the train station had to be temporarily closed. Some passengers had chosen to get off in Casoria and take the city buses or a taxi to their destination in order to avoid being held up in the city center. It was already night when the express finally reached its last stop.

  The city was seething. The people reacted with protest rallies to Rome’s decree that those residing south of a Gaeta-Termoli line needed special permission to travel north. Many people, particularly refugees from the south and illegal immigrants, tried to cross the border before the official measures took full effect, and everywhere I sensed anger and aggression.

  I had reserved a room in the Grand Hotel Terminus on Piazza Garibaldi, a building of solid elegance but with affordable prices, in which better-off business travelers apparently often stayed. My room in the rear faced east and offered a view of Mount Vesuvius. On the left side stretched the brightly illuminated skyline of the Centro Direzionale with its modern high-rises, which had been built around the turn of the millennium.

  After I had checked in, I took another walk down Corso Umberto Primo to Piazza Nicola Amore, followed Via Duomo toward the port, and headed past Castel Nuovo to Piazza Trieste et Trento. Things had not yet reached that point, but in four or five years those two cities would be officially known as Triest and Trient, and beyond the borders in Slovenia, Friuli, and South Tyrol, signs bearing the old Italian names would be nowhere to be found.

  It was a warm evening; though it was already almost midnight, the thermometer still read eighty-two degrees. The sidewalk cafés were packed with theatergoers from the Teatro di San Carlo, who had gathered for a drink after the final curtain and were discussing the performance with loud voices and eloquent gestures. They were predominantly well-dressed young people from wealthy families. I saw the first IComs dangling as pendants from necklaces or bracelets. They were still ridiculously large. It was the time when they were gradually replacing the “Universals,” the all-purpose super cell phones. The name ICom, which accurately characterized the function as an identification and communication device, caught on only later. In the beginning they were called “partners.” You still had to operate the super cell phones yourself—the new devices operated for you. They possessed perfect voice recognition, obtained any desired information from the Nets, carried on telephone conversations independently in accordance with instructions, and made appointments; they monitored bank accounts, paid bills, and maintained constant contact with the smart chips in the immediate vicinity in order to stay apprised of supply inventories and necessary purchases or repairs.

  Only a few paces from the elegant cafés, begging peasants from the south sat on the sidewalk; Africans had spread out mats on which they offered carved wooden statuettes and leather goods. You could tell by looking at them that they were suffering hardship, and I knew that much worse was still to come.

  On the way back to the hotel I saw a holominiskirt in the display window of a boutique on Corso Umberto Primo. Father had been interested early on in the animated textiles from the Far East, because he expected to make a great profit on them. The chip was turned on and showed a pornographic sequence: a dark-skinned hand ran down the belly of a fair-skinned woman and thrust between her legs, where it made stroking, masturbating movements, until it slid back up—only, following the program on the chip, to slide down once again.

  A group of young people crowded in front of the display window, boys and girls clinging excitedly to each other and reacting with squealing, whistling, and laughter when the hand slid between the thighs. My father’s calculations had clearly been correct …

  That would be the appropriate eye-catcher, I told myself. If he saw me in one of those animated miniskirts, which he offered as a sales representative, he would definitely take notice of me and speak to me. I didn’t know whether the first models were equipped with different programs, but I assumed they were. That pornographic sequence was suitable for bedroom fun or at best for a party gag, but not for public view. But you could also turn off the program as needed, and then the flexomons printed on the skirt filled with funny patterns. I decided to buy a holominiskirt the next morning.

  It was stuffy in the room. I pulled up the blinds, opened the balcony door, and stepped out. Not a breeze stirred. The guests next door seemed to be indulging in a very private pleasure. A brightly lit room was reflected in the half-open glass door. There was a champagne bucket on a serving cart next to the bed, and on the bed itself passionate copulation was under way. A man lay on his back, and over his loins crouched a dark-haired woman, bouncing lustfully up and down and accompanying the rhythm with sharp cries.

  I retreated to my room and turned out the light. Strange, how the thought came into my head, but somehow the man, even though I had seen only his legs, reminded me of my father. Could that woman…?

  No, never! I told myself.

  Hadn’t Renata advised me to come on to my father and go with him to his room? Gradually I truly seemed to be losing my sense of reality.

/>   * * *

  THE WHISTLE OF a locomotive woke me. I heard voices out in the hallway and the closing of the door to the next room. I stood up quickly, opened my door a crack, and peered out. Two people were walking down the hallway to the elevator: a short man wearing a natural linen suit and a panama hat and next to him a dark-haired woman of my height and about my age in a light red minidress with a straw hat hanging over her arm.

  The lovers from that night were apparently checking out; they entered the elevator. Inside it the rectangular mirrors set in polished brass moldings reflected a distorted image, so that I could not make out the faces. Please don’t turn around, I pleaded. My prayer was answered. The two of them turned their backs to me as the elevator door closed. I think I would have died if I had looked into my own face.

  * * *

  THE OWNER OF the boutique was a good-looking, slim woman in her late forties. She had medium-length black hair and blue eyes, as are frequently found among Neapolitans—undoubtedly an inheritance from the Norman conquerors.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I sold the last of those skirts fifteen minutes ago. It was the only one I still had in—” Taken aback, she broke off and put on her glasses, which hung around her neck on a little silver chain; then she eyed me from top to bottom.

  “Are you pulling my leg, young woman, or am I hallucinating? Wasn’t that you who just bought the last holominiskirt from me?”

  “Certainly not, or else I wouldn’t be here. You must be mistaken,” I asserted.

  The saleswoman did not seem convinced. “Personally, I don’t much like that sex kitsch from Korea, to be honest, but the young girls are totally nuts about it. I could sell two or three dozen of them a day. Yesterday the sales rep was here. He left me two—because we’re old friends. I had ordered a hundred, but he told me that at short notice he could deliver to me at most ten. The whole world is crazy for those animated textiles. The manufacturers couldn’t produce them fast enough, he complained.”