The odds are all against you, of course. Few ever get this chance. Yet, since nobody knows what basis the landlord has for admitting his guests, and when asked he says merely that they are those who have good stories wherewith to pay him, you too may someday be favored. So keep yourself open to everything, and perhaps, just perhaps, you will have the great luck of joining us in that tavern called the Old Phoenix.
I'm not quite sure why the innkeeper and his wife the barmaid think I deserve it. There are countless others more worthy, throughout the countless dimensional sheaves, whom I have never met. When I suggest such a person, mine host shrugs, smiles, and amiably evades the question, a tactic in which he is skilled. Doubtless I've simply not happened on some of them. After all, a guest may only stay till the following dawn. Then the house won't reappear to him for a stretch which in my case has always been at least a month. Furthermore, I suspect that besides being at a nexus of universes, the hostel exists on several different space-time levels of its own.
Well, let's not speculate about the unanswerable. I want to tell of an incident I can't get out of my mind.
That evening would have been spectacular aplenty had nothing else gone on than my conversation with Leonardo da Vinci. I recognized that tall, golden-bearded man the instant he stepped into the taproom and shook raindrops off his cloak, and ventured to introduce myself. By and large, we're a friendly, informal bunch at the Old Phoenix. We come mainly to meet people. Besides, of the few who were already present, nobody but landlord, barmaid, and I knew Italian. Oh, Leonardo could have used Latin or French with the nun who sat offside and quietly listened to us. However, their accents would have made talk a struggle.
The goodwife was busy, pumping out beer for Erik the Red, Sancho Panza, and Nicholas van Rijn, interpreting and chattering away in early Norse, a peasant dialect of Spanish, and the argot of a spacefaring future, while now and then she helped herself to a tankardful. Mine host, among whose multiple names I generally choose Taverner, was off in a dim corner with beings I couldn't see very well, except that they were shadowy and full of small starlike sparkles. His round face was more solemn than usual, he often ran a hand across his bald pate, and the sounds that came from his mouth, answering those guests, were a ripple of trills and purrs.
Thus Leonardo and I were alone, until the nun entered and shyly settled down at our table. I include medieval varieties of French in my languages; being an habitue of the Old Phoenix mightily encourages such studies. But by then we two were so excited that, while we greeted her as courteously as Taverner expects, neither of us caught her name, and I barely noticed that within its coif her face was quite lovely. I did gather that she was from a convent at Argenteuil in the twelfth century. But she was content to sit and try to follow our discourse. Renaissance Florentinian was not hopelessly alien to her mother tongue.
The talk was mainly Leonardo's. Given a couple of goblets of wine to relax him, his mind soared and ranged like an eagle in a high wind. Tonight was his second time, and the first had naturally been such a stunning experience that he was still assimilating it. But the drink at our inn, like the food, is unearthly superb. (It should be; Taverner can ransack all the worlds, all the ages of a hyper-cosmos which, perhaps, is infinitely branched in its possibility-lines.) Leonardo soon felt at ease. In answer to a question, he told me that he was living in Milan in the year 1493 and was forty-one years old. This squared with what I recollected; so quite likely he was the same Leonardo as existed in my continuum. Certainly, from what he said, he was at the height of his fame, brilliance, powers, and longings.
"But why, Messer, why may you not say more?" he asked. His voice was deep and musical.
"Maybe I could," I replied. "None has ever given me a hard and fast catalogue of commandments. I imagine they judge each case singly. But . . . would you risk being forever barred from this place?"
His big body, richly clad though in hues that my era of synthetic dyes would have found subdued, twisted around in his chair. As his glance traveled over the taproom, I caught the nun admiring his profile—the least bit wistfully? She was indeed beautiful, I admitted to myself. A shapeless dark habit of rather smelly, surely heavy and scratchy wool could not altogether hide a slim young figure; her countenance was pale, delicately sculptured, huge-eyed. I wondered why, even in her milieu, she had taken vows.
The room enclosed us in cheer, long, wide, wainscotted in carven oak, ceiling massively beamed. A handsome stone fireplace held a blaze of well-scented logs, whose leap and crackle gave more warmth than you'd expect, just as the sconced candles gave more light. That light fell on straight chairs around small tables, armchairs by themselves, benches flanking the great central board, laid out ideally for fellowship. Along the walls, it touched books, pictures, and souvenirs from afar. At one end, after glowing across the bar where my lady hostess stood between the beer pumps and the racked bottles and vessels, it lost itself beyond an open doorway; but I made out a stair going up to clean, unpretentious chambers where you can sleep if you like. (People seldom do. The company is too good, the hours too precious.) Windows are always shuttered, I suppose because they would not look out over any of the worlds on which the front door opens, but onto something quite peculiar. That thought makes the inside feel still more snug.
"No," Leonardo sighed, "I daresay I too will grow careful. And yet. . .'tis hard to understand . . . if we are mainly here for colloquy, that Messer Albergatore may enjoy the spectacle and the tales, why does he set bounds on our speech? I assure you, for instance, I do not fear your telling me the date and manner of my death, if you know them. God will call me when He chooses."
"You utter a deep truth there," I said. "For I am not necessarily from your future. For all we can tell, I may be from the future of another Leonardo da Vinci, whose destiny is, or was, not yours. Hence 'twould be a pointless unpleasantness to discuss certain matters."
"But what of the rest?" he protested. "You bespeak flying machines, automatons, elixirs injected into the flesh which prevent illness—oh, endless wonders—Why must you merely hint?"
I said into his intensity: "Messer, you have the intellect to see the reason. If I gave you over-much knowledge or foresight, what might ensue? We lack wisdom and restraint, we mortals. Taverner has a—a license?—to entertain certain among us. But it must strictly be entertainment. Nothing decisive may happen here. We meet and part as in dreams, we at the Old Phoenix."
"What then can we do?" he demanded.
"Why, there are all the arts, there are stories real and imaginary, there are the eternal riddles of our nature and purpose and meaning, there are songs and games and jests and simply being together—But it is wrong that I act pompous toward you. I feel most honored and humble, and would like naught better than to hear whatever you wish to say."
Humanly pleased, he answered, "Well, if you'll not tell me how the flying machine works—and, indeed, I can understand that if you did, 'twould avail me little, who lack the hoarded lore and instrumentalities of four or five hundred years—pray continue as you were when I interrupted. Finish relating your adventure."
I reminisced about a flight which had been forced down above the Arctic Circle, and how some Eskimos had helped us. His inquiries concerning them were keen, and led him on to experiences of his own, and to remarks about the variety and strangeness of man—As I said, had nothing else happened, this would still have been among the memorable evenings of my life.
The door opened and dosed. We heard a footfall, caught a whiff of city streets which also served as garbage dumps and sewers, glimpsed crowded wooden houses on a cloudy day. The man who had appeared was rather short by my standards or against Leonardo, and middle-aged to gauge by features deeply lined though still sharply cut. Grizzled brown hair fell past his ears from under a flat velvet cap. He wore a monastic robe, with rosary and crucifix, but shoes and hose rather than sandals. His form was slender and straight, his gaze extraordinarily vivid.
Taverner excused himself from
his conversation and hurried across the floor to give greeting. "Ah, welcome, welcome anew," he said in Old French—langue d'oil, to be exact. "At yonder table sit two gentlemen whose companionship will surely pleasure you." He took the monk's arm. "Come, let me introduce you, my learned Master Abelard—"
The nun's voice cut through his. She surged to her feet; the chair clattered behind her. "Pier!" she cried. "0 Jesu, 0 Maria, Pier!"
And he stood where he was for an instant as if a sword in his guts had stopped him. Then: "Heloise," cracked out his throat. "But thou art dead." He crossed himself, over and over. "Hast thou, thou, thou come back to comfort me, Heloise?"
Taverner looked disconcerted. He must have forgotten her presence. The noise and dice-casting at the bar died away. The starry gray ones became still. Alone the hearthfire spoke.
"No, what art thou saying, I, I am alive, Pier," the nun stammered. "But thou, my poor hurt darling—" She stumbled toward him. I saw how he half flinched, before he gathered courage and held out his arms.
They met, and embraced, and stood like that: until our plump, motherly barmaid suddenly shouted, "Well, good for you, dears!" They didn't notice, they had nobody but each other.
The rest of us eased a trifle. Evidently this wasn't a bad event. Erik lifted his drinking horn, Sancho guffawed at such behavior of ecclesiastics, van Rijn held out his mug for a refill, the strangers in the corner rustled and twinkled, Taverner wryly shrugged.
Leonardo leaned across the table and whispered to me, "Did I hear aright? Are those in truth Heloise and Abelard?"
"They must be," I answered, and knew not what to feel. "Belike not from your history or mine, however."
He had grasped the idea of universes parallel in multi-dimensional reality, in some of which magic worked, in some of which it did not, in some of which King Arthur or Orlando Furioso had actually lived, in some of which he himself had not. Now he murmured, "Well, quickly, lest we say unwitting a harmful thing, let's compare what our chronicles tell about them."
"Peter Abelard was the greatest Scholastic of his century," ran from me, while I tried to take my eyes off the weeping pair and could not. "He was in his forties when he met Heloise, a girl in her twenties. She was the niece and ward of a powerful, high-born canon. They fell in love, had a child, couldn't marry because of his career in the Church but—Anyway, her uncle found out and was enraged. He hired a gang of bullies to waylay Abelard and castrate him. After that, Heloise entered a convent—against her uncle's wish, I believe—and never saw her lover again. But the bond that held them was unchanged—the world will always remember the letters that passed between them—and in my day they lie buried together."
Leonardo nodded. "Yes, that sounds like what I read. I seem to recall that they did marry, albeit secretly."
"Perhaps my memory is at fault."
"Or mine. It was long ago. For us. God in Heaven, though, they two yonder—!"
Maybe they consciously recalled this was the single place they could meet; or maybe they, like most people in their age, had scant notion of privacy; or maybe they didn't give a damn. I heard what they blurted forth through their tears.
They were from separate time-lines. She might belong to Leonardo's or mine, if ours were the same; her story was familiar to us both. But he, he was still a whole man. For him, three years before, she had died in childbirth.
Meanwhile Taverner led them to an offside couch; and the barmaid fetched refreshments, which they didn't see; and host and hostess breathed to them what no one else could hear. Not that anybody wanted to. As if half ashamed, they at the bar returned to their boozing, Leonardo and I to our talk; they in the corner waited silent.
My companion soon lost his embarrassment. Tender-heartedness is not notably a Renaissance trait. Since we knew equally little about the branchings of existence, we were free to wonder aloud about them. He got onto constructing such a world-of-if (suppose Antony had triumphed at Actium, because the library at Alexandria had not caught fire when Julius Caesar laid siege, and in it were Heron's plans for a submersible warcraft . . well, conceivably, somewhere among the dimensions it did happen) that I too, chiming in here and there, well-nigh lost awareness of the nun and her Schoolman.
Again the door interrupted us—half an hour later, an hour, I'm not sure. This time I spied a lawn, trees, ivy-covered red brick buildings, before it shut. The man who had arrived was old but stood tall, and much robustness remained to him. He wore an open-necked shirt, fuzzy sweater, faded slacks, battered sneakers. A glory of white hair framed the kind of plain, gentle, but thoughtful and characterful Jewish face that Rembrandt liked to portray.
He saw Heloise and Abelard together, and smiled uncertainly. "Guten Abend," he ventured; and in English: "Good evening. Maybe I had better not—"
"Ah, do stay!" exclaimed Taverner, hurrying toward him, while the eyes popped in van Rijn's piratical visage and my pulse ran wild.
Taverner took the newcomer by the elbow and steered him toward us. "By all means, do," he urged. "True, we've had a scene, but harmless, yes, I'd say benign. And here's a gentleman I know you've been wanting to meet." He reached our table and made a grand flourish. "Messer Leonardo da Vinci . . . Herr Doktor Albert Einstein. .. ." I suppose he included me.
Of course, the Italian had not heard of the Jew, but he sensed what was afoot and bowed deeply. Einstein, more diffident, nevertheless responded with similar grace and sat down amidst polite noises all around. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked. We didn't, so he kindled a pipe while the barmaid brought new drinks. Neither of my tablemates did more than sip, however, and I wasn't about to spoil this for myself by getting drunk the way they were doing over at the bar.
Besides, I must be interpreter. Einstein's Italian was limited, and of a date centuries later than Leonardo's, who had neither German nor English. I interpreted. Do you see why I will never risk my standing at the Old Phoenix?
They needed a while to warm up. Einstein was eager to learn what this or that cryptic notation of Leonardo's referred to. But Leonardo must have Einstein's biography related to him.
When he realized what that signified, his blue eyes became blowtorches, and I had trouble following every word that torrented from him. We thus got some pauses. Furthermore, occasionally even those chain lightning minds must halt and search before going on. Hence, unavoidably, I noticed Heloise and Abelard anew.
They sat kissing, whispering, trembling. This was the sole night they could have, she alive, he his entire self —the odds against their ever chancing to meet here were unmeasurably huge—and what was allowed them, by the law of their hostel and the law of their holy orders? Tick, said a grandfather clock by the wall, tick, tick; here too, a night is twelve hours long.
Taverner scuttled around in the unobtrusive way he can don when he wants to. They started trading songs at the bar. The taproom is big enough that that doesn't annoy anyone who hasn't a very good ear; and Einstein and Leonardo, who did, were too engaged with each other.
What does the smile mean upon Mona Lisa and your several Madonnas?
Will you give to me again that melody of Bach's?
How did you fare under Sforza, how under Borgia, how under King Francis?
How did you fare in Switzerland, how against Hitler, how with Roosevelt?
What physical considerations led you to think men might build wings?
What evidence proves that the earth goes around the sun, that light has a finite speed, that the stars are also suns?
What makes you doubt the finiteness of the universe?
Well, sir, why have you not analyzed your concept of space-time as follows?
Taverner and the barmaid spoke low behind their hands. Finally she went to Heloise and Abelard. "Go on upstairs," she said through tears of her own. "You've only this while, and it's wearing away."
He looked up like a blind man. "We took vows," came from his lips.
Heloise closed them with hers. "Thou didst break thine before," she told him, "an
d we praised the goodness of God."
"Go, go," said the barmaid. Almost by herself, she raised them to their feet. I saw them leave, I heard them on the stairs.
And then Leonardo: "Doctor Alberto, you waste your efforts." He grimaced; the hands knotted around his goblet. "I cannot follow your mathematics, your logic. I have not the knowledge—"
But Einstein leaned forward, and his voice too was less than steady. "You have the brain. And, yes, a fresh view, an insight not blinkered by four centuries of progress point by point. . . down a single road, when we know in this room there are many, many. . . ."
"You cannot explain to me in a few hours—"
"No, but you can get a general idea of what I mean, and I think you, out of everybody who ever lived, can see where . . . where I am astray—and from me, you can carry back home—"
Leonardo flamed.
"No."
That was Taverner. He had come up on the empty side of our table; and he no longer seemed stumpy or jolly.
"No, gentlemen," he said in language after language. His tone was not stern, it was regretful, but it never wavered. "I fear I must ask you to change the subject. You would learn more than should be. Both of you."
We stared at him, and the silence around us turned off the singing. Leonardo's countenance froze. Finally Einstein smiled lopsidedly, scraped back his chair, stood, knocked the dottle from his pipe. Its odor was bittersweet. "My apologies, Herr Gastwirt," he said in his soft fashion. "You are right. I forgot." He bowed. "This evening has been an honor and a delight. Thank you."
Turning, his stooped form departed.
When the door had shut on him, Leonardo sat unmoving for another while. Taverner threw me a rueful grin and went back to his visiting mysteries. The men at the bar, who had sensed a problem and quieted down, now cheered up and grew rowdier yet. When Mrs. Hauksbee walked in, they cheered.
Leonardo cast his goblet on the floor. Glass flew outward, wine fountained red. "Heloise and Abelard!" he roared. "They will have had their night!"
The Old Phoenix Tavern Page 3