Tyll Read online

  “Yes,” said Olearius. “The dragon!”

  “We will soothe it with music. I may presume that the gentlemen have studied my book Musurgia universalis?”

  “Musica?” asked Olearius.

  “Musurgia.”

  “Why not Musica?”

  Kircher frowned at Olearius.

  “Naturally,” said Fleming. “Everything I know about harmony I learned from your book.”

  “I hear that often. Almost all musicians say that. It is an important work. Not my most important, but indisputably important all the same. Several princes want to have a water organ constructed according to my design. And in Braunschweig there are plans to build my cat piano. It astounds me a little. Really I presented the idea mainly as an intellectual game, and I doubt that the results will please the ear.”

  “What is a cat piano?” asked Olearius.

  “You haven’t read it, then?”

  “My memory. I’m no longer so young. Since our arduous journey it does not always obey me.”

  “God knows,” said Fleming. “Do you remember what it was like when the wolves surrounded us in Riga?”

  “A piano that produces sounds by torturing animals,” said Kircher. “One strikes a note, and instead of a hammer hitting a string, well-dosed pain is inflicted on a small animal—I propose cats, but it would work with voles too, dogs would be too big, crickets too small—so that the animal makes a noise. When one releases the key, the pain stops too, the animal falls silent. By arranging the animals according to their pitches, the most extraordinary music can be produced.”

  For a little while it was quiet. Olearius looked into Kircher’s face. Fleming chewed on his lower lip.

  “Why, then, do you write your poems in German?” Kircher finally asked.

  “I know, it sounds strange,” said Fleming, who had been waiting for this question. “But it can be done! Our language is only just being born. Here we sit, three men from the same country, and we’re speaking Latin. Why? Now German may still be awkward, a boiling brew, a creature still in the midst of development, but one day it will be grown up.”

  “Back to the dragon,” Olearius said, to change the subject. He had experienced it often: Once Fleming got on his hobbyhorse, no one else would have a chance to speak for a long time. And it always ended with Fleming, red-faced, reciting poems. They were not bad at all, his poems, they had melody and power. But who wanted to hear poems without warning, and in German to boot?

  “Our language is still a confusion of dialects,” said Fleming. “If one is faltering in a sentence, one avails oneself of the appropriate word from Latin or Italian or even French, and one somehow bends the sentences into shape in Latin fashion. But this will change! One must nurture a language, one must help it thrive! And to help it, that means: write poetry.” Fleming’s cheeks had turned red, his mustache was bristling slightly, his eyes were staring. “He who begins a sentence in German should force himself to finish it in German!”

  “Isn’t it against God’s will to inflict pain on animals?” asked Olearius.

  “Why?” Kircher furrowed his brow. “There’s no difference between God’s animals and God’s things. Animals are finely assembled machines that consist of even more finely assembled machines. Whether I elicit a sound from a column of water or from a kitten, what’s the difference? You surely wouldn’t claim that animals have immortal souls—what a teeming mass that would be in Paradise. One wouldn’t be able to turn around without stepping on a worm!”

  “I was a choirboy in Leipzig,” said Fleming. “Every morning at five we stood in the Saint Thomas Church and had to sing. Each voice was supposed to follow its own melodic punctus, and whoever sang out of tune got the switch. It was hard, but one morning, I remember, I understood for the first time what music is. And when later I learned the art of counterpoint, I understood what language is. And how one writes poetry in it—namely, by letting it prevail. Being and seeing, breath and death. The German rhyme: a question and an answer. Pain, rain, and again. Rhyme is no accident of sounds. It exists where ideas fit together.”

  “It’s good that you are well acquainted with music,” said Kircher. “I have sheet music for melodies with which a dragon’s blood can be cooled and a dragon’s spirit calmed. Can you play the horn?”

  “Not well.”

  “Violin?”

  “Passably. Where did you get these melodies?”

  “I have composed them in accordance with the strictest science. Don’t worry, you won’t need to fiddle anything for the dragon, we will find musicians for that. For reasons of rank alone, it would be unseemly if one of us played the instruments.”

  Olearius closed his eyes. For a moment he saw in his head a lizard rising from the field, its head as high as a tower against the sky: this, then, could be the end of me, he thought, after all the dangers I have survived.

  “With all due respect to your zeal, young man,” said Kircher, “German has no future. First of all, because it’s an ugly language, viscous and unclean, an idiom for unlearned people who don’t bathe. Secondly, there is no time at all left for such a prolonged period of development. In seventy-six years the Iron Age will end, fire will come over the world, and our Lord will return in glory. One need not be a great astrologer to foresee it. Simple mathematics suffices.”

  “What sort of dragon is it anyway?” asked Olearius.

  “Probably a very old lindworm. My expertise in dracontology falls short of that of my late master Tesimond, but on a day trip to Hamburg little coiled fly clouds gave me the necessary sign. Have you ever been to Hamburg? It is astonishing, the city has not been destroyed at all.”

  “Clouds?” asked Fleming. “How does the dragon cause—”

  “Not causality, analogy! As above, so below. The cloud resembles a fly, hence the name fly cloud; the lindworm resembles an earthworm, hence the name lindworm. Worm and fly are insects! Do you see?”

  Olearius propped his head up on his hands. He was feeling somewhat queasy. In Russia he had spent thousands of hours in coaches, but that was some time ago now, and he was no longer young. Of course, it could also have had to do with Kircher, who had, in a way that he could not have explained, become hard for him to bear.

  “And when the dragon is tranquilized?” asked Fleming. “When we have found it and caught it, what then?”

  “We draw its blood. As much as our leather skins can hold. I will bring it to Rome and with my assistants manufacture it into a cure for the Black Death, which will then be administered to the Pope and the Kaiser and the Catholic princes…” He hesitated. “…As well as perhaps to those Protestants who deserve it. To whom exactly will have to be negotiated. In this way, perhaps, we can end the war. It would indeed be fitting if it were I of all people who, with God’s help, put an end to this slaughter. I will duly mention the two of you in my book. Strictly speaking, I have done so already.”

  “You have already mentioned us?”

  “To save time I have already written the chapter in Rome. Guglielmo, do you have it here?”

  The secretary bent down and rummaged, groaning, under his bench.

  “As for musicians,” said Olearius, “I would propose that we look for the traveling circus on the Holstein heath. There’s a great deal of talk about it, people come from far away to see it. There will certainly be musicians there.”

  His face flushed, the secretary straightened up and produced a stack of paper. He leafed through it for a moment, blew his nose in a no-longer-clean handkerchief with which he then wiped his bald head, apologized softly, and began to read aloud. His Latin had a distinctly Italian melody, and he beat time in a somewhat affected way with his quill. “Thereupon I embarked on the search in the company of German scholars of outstanding merit. The circumstances were unfavorable, the weather rough, the war had withdrawn from the region but still sent this or tha
t squall of adversity, so that one had to be prepared for marauders as much as for bands of robbers and degenerate animals. I did not let it chagrin me, however, having commended my soul to the Almighty who had until now always protected this his humble servant, and erelong I found the dragon, which was at length soothed and defeated by skillful measures. Its warm blood served me as the basis for many an undertaking that I depict elsewhere in this work, and the most terrible pestilence, which had long kept Christendom in distress, could finally be fended off from the great, mighty, and worthy men, so that in the future it may torment only the simple people. And when one day I—”

  “Thank you, Guglielmo, that’s enough. I will, of course, insert your names after the words ‘German scholars of outstanding merit.’ No need to thank me. I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

  And perhaps, Olearius thought, this really was the immortality meant for him—a mention in Athanasius Kircher’s book. His own travelogue would vanish almost as quickly as the poems poor Fleming now and then had printed. Time devoured almost everything, but it would be powerless against this. About one thing there was no doubt: as long as the world existed, people would read Athanasius Kircher.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning they found the circus. The keeper of the inn where they had spent the night had pointed them west; keep following the field path, he had said, then you can’t miss it. And since there were no hills here and all the trees were cleared, they soon saw a flagpole in the distance, on which fluttered a colorful scrap of cloth.

  Soon they could make out tents and a semicircle of wooden benches, above which two posts were erected, the thin line of a rope stretching between them—the circus people must have brought along all the timber themselves. Between the tents stood covered wagons. Horses and donkeys were grazing, a few children were playing, a man was sleeping in a hammock, an old woman was washing clothes in a tub.

  Kircher squinted. He wasn’t feeling well. He wondered whether it was due to the rocking of the coach or actually due to these two Germans. They were unfriendly, overserious, narrow-minded, they had thick heads, and besides, it was hard to ignore it, they smelled bad. He had not been in the Empire in a long time; he had almost forgotten what a headache it was to be among Germans.

  The two of them underestimated him, that was obvious. He was used to it. Even as a child he had been underestimated, first by his parents, then by the teacher in the village school, until the priest had recommended him to the Jesuits. They had let him study, but then he had been underestimated by his fellow seminarians, who had seen in him only a zealous young man. No one had noticed how much more he could achieve—only his master Tesimond had recognized something in him and plucked him from the crowd of the slow-thinking. They had traveled across the land, he had learned a great deal from the old man, but he too had underestimated him, had believed him capable merely of an existence as a famulus, so that he had had to break away from Tesimond, step by step and with the greatest caution, for you should not antagonize someone like that. He had had to act as if the books he wrote were a harmless whim, but secretly he had sent them with letters of dedication to the important people in the Vatican. And indeed Tesimond had not gotten over the fact that his secretary had suddenly been summoned to Rome; he had fallen ill and had refused to give him a parting blessing. Kircher could still see it clearly before his eyes: the room in Vienna, his master wrapped tight in his blanket. The old wreck had mumbled something and pretended not to understand him, and so Kircher had gone unblessed to Rome, where the staff of the great library had welcomed him, only to underestimate him in turn. They had thought he would be good for mending books, cataloging books, studying books, but they had not grasped that he could write a book faster than it took another man to read it, and so he had had to prove it to them, again and again and again, until the Pope finally appointed him to the most important chair of his university and vested him with all the special authorities.

  It would always be like this. The confusion of the past lay behind him; he no longer lost himself in time. And yet people didn’t recognize what power dwelled in him, what determination, or what a memory he had. Even now, when he was famous all over the world and no one could study the sciences without being acquainted with the works of Athanasius Kircher, he could not leave Rome without experiencing it: No sooner did he encounter his countrymen than he was scrutinized with the same old disparaging looks. What a mistake to have set off on this journey! One should stay in one place, should work, concentrate one’s powers and disappear behind one’s books. One had to be an incorporeal authority—a voice that the world heeded without wondering what the body looked like from which it came.

  He had again given in to a weakness. Actually he had not even been so very concerned with the plague, he had above all needed a reason to search for the dragon. They are the most ancient and intelligent of creatures, Tesimond had said, and when you stand before one, you will be changed, indeed when you hear its voice, nothing will ever be the same again. Kircher had found out so much about the world, but a dragon was still lacking, without a dragon his work was not complete, and if it should really become dangerous, he could still use the last and strongest defense—that magic to which one was permitted to resort only once in one’s life: when the danger is greatest, Tesimond had impressed on him, when the dragon stands before you and all else fails, you can do it once, only once, one single time, so think carefully, only once. First you picture the strongest of the magic squares.

  S A T O R

  A R E P O

  T E N E T

  O P E R A

  R O T A S

  This is the oldest of all, the most secret, which holds the most power. You must see it before you, close your eyes, see it clearly and speak it with your lips closed, without your voice, letter by letter, and then say aloud, clearly enough for the dragon to hear you, a truth that you have never before disclosed, not to your closest friend, not even in confession. This is the most important thing: it must never have been uttered before. Then a mist will arise, and you can flee. Weakness afflicts the monster’s limbs, leaden oblivion fills its mind, and you run away before it can seize you. When it awakes, it won’t remember you. But don’t forget: you can do it only once!

  Kircher contemplated his fingertips. Should the music fail to soothe the dragon, he was resolved to turn to this last resort and flee on one of the coach horses. The dragon would then presumably devour the secretaries—it would be a shame about them, especially Guglielmo, who was very quick and eager to learn—and probably the two Germans too. But he himself would escape, thanks to science; he had nothing to fear.

  This journey would be his last. He would not subject himself to travel again. He was simply not suited for such exertions. While traveling he was always queasy, the food was always dreadful, it was always cold, and the dangers were also not to be underestimated: The war may have moved south, but that didn’t mean things up here were pleasant. How ravaged everything was, how wretched the people! He had, it was true, found several books in Hamburg for which he had long been searching—Hartmut Elias Warnick’s Organicon, an edition of Melusina mineralia by Gottfried von Rosenstein, and a few handwritten pages that might have been penned by Simon von Turin—but even this was no consolation for the weeks without his laboratory, where everything was manageable, while everywhere else chaos reigned.

  Why did God’s Creation prove to be so recalcitrant, whence came its stubborn tendency to confusion and jaggedness? What was clear within the mind revealed itself outside to be a tangle. Kircher had grasped early on that one had to follow reason without being flustered by the quirks of reality. When one knew how an experiment had to turn out, then the experiment had to turn out like that, and when one possessed a distinct conception of things, then, when one described them, one had to satisfy this conception and not mere observation.

  Only because he had lear
ned to trust entirely the Holy Spirit had he been able to accomplish his greatest work, the deciphering of the hieroglyphs. With the old tablet of signs that Cardinal Bembo had once bought he had gotten to the bottom of the mystery: He had plunged deep into the little pictures until he understood. If one combined a wolf and a snake, it had to mean danger, but if there was a dotted wave under it, then God intervened and protected those who deserved his protection, and these three signs side by side meant mercy, and Kircher had fallen to his knees and had thanked heaven for such inspiration. The half-oval open to the left stood for judgment, and if there was a sun too, then it was the Day of Judgment, but if there was a moon, then this meant the torment of the man praying at night and hence the soul of the sinner and sometimes even hell. The little man must have meant person, but if this person had a staff, then it was the working person or work, and the signs behind it indicated what sort of work he did: if there were dots, then he was a sower; if there were dashes, he was a boatman; and if there were circles, he was a priest, and because priests wrote too, he could just as well be a scribe—it depended on whether he was situated at the beginning or at the end of the line, for the priest was always at the beginning, whereas the scribe came after the events that he recorded. Those had been ecstatic weeks. Soon he no longer needed the tablet; he had written in hieroglyphs as if he had never done otherwise. He had no longer been able to sleep at night, because he dreamed in signs. His thoughts consisted of dashes and dots and wedges and waves. So it was when one felt grace. His book, which he would soon have printed under the title Oedipus Aegyptiacus, was the greatest of his achievements: for thousands of years humanity had stood baffled before the mystery, no one had been able to solve it. Now it was solved.

  The only irksome thing was that people were so dull-witted. He received letters from brothers in the Orient who informed him of sequences of signs that did not conform to the system described by him, and he had to write back to them that it didn’t make a difference what some oaf had carved into a stone ten thousand years ago, some little scribe who, after all, knew less about this script than an authority like him—what, then, was the point of concerning oneself with his errors? Had that little scribe received a letter of thanks from Caesar? But Kircher boasted one. He had sent the Kaiser a hymn of praise in hieroglyphs; he always carried with him the grateful reply from Vienna, folded and sewn into a silk pouch. Involuntarily he placed his hand on his chest, could feel the parchment through his jerkin, and immediately felt somewhat better.