Kepler by John Banville Read Free Book Online Page B

Graz. He had squandered half a year on a craving for princely favour. It was a lesson he told himself he must remember. Presently, though, the whole humiliating affair was driven from his thoughts by a far weightier concern.
    It was one of the school inspectors, the physician Oberdörfer, who first approached him, with a stealthy smile and- could it be?-a wink, and invited him to come on a certain day to the house of Herr Georg Hartmann von Stubenberg, a merchant of the town. He went, thinking he was to be asked to draw up a nativity or another ofhis famous calendars. But there was no commission. He did not even meet Herr Burghermeister Hartmann, and forever after that name was to echo in his memory like the reverberation of a past catastrophe. He loitered on a staircase for an hour, clutching a goblet of thin wine and trying to think of something to say to Dr Oberdorfer. In the wide hallway below groups of people came and went, overdressed women and fat businessmen, a bishop and attendant clerics, a herd of hip-booted horsemen from the Archduke's cavalry, clumsy as centaurs. One of Hartmann's children was being married. From a farther room a string band sent music arching through the house like aimless flights of fine bright arrows. Johannes grew agitated. He had not been officially invited, and he was troubled by images of challenge and ejection. What could Oberdorfer want with him? The doctor, a large pasty man with pendulous jowls and exceedingly small moist eyes, vibrated with nervous anticipation, scanning the passing throng below and wheezing under his breath in tuneless counterpoint to the rapt silvery slitherings of the minstrels. At last he touched a finger to Kepler's sleeve. A stout young woman in blue was approaching the foot of the stairs. Dr Oberdorfer leered. "She is handsome, yes?"
    "Yes, yes," Johannes muttered, looking hard at a point in air, afraid that the lady below might hear; "quite, ah, handsome."
    Oberdorfer, whispering sideways like a bad ventriloquist, inclined his great trembling head until it almost rested against Kepler's ear. "Also she is rich, so I am told." The young woman paused, leaning down to exclaim over a pale pursed little boy in velveteen, who turned a stony face away and tugged furiously at his nurse's hand. Kepler all his life would remember that surly Cupid. "Her father," the doctor hissed, "her father has estates, you know, to the south. They say he has settled a goodly fortune to her name." His voice sank lower still. "And of course, she is certain to have been provided for also by her…" faltering "… her late, ah, husbands. "
    "Her…?"
    "Husbands, yes. " Dr Oberdorfer briefly shut his little eyes. "Most tragic, most tragic: she is twice a widow. And so young!"
    It dawned on Johannes what was afoot. Blushing, he ascended a step in fright. The widow threw him a fraught look. The doctor said: "Her name is Barbara Müller-née, aha, Müller. " Johannes stared at him, and he coughed. "A little joke, forgive me. Her family is Müller-Müller zu Gössendorf-which is also by coincidence the name of her latest, late, her
last
that is, husband…" trailing off to an unhappy hum.
    "Yes?" Johannes said faintly, turning away from the other's aquatic eye, and then heard himself add: "She is somewhat fat, all the same."
    Dr Oberdorfer winced, and then, grinning bravely, with elephantine roguishness he said:
    "Plump, rather, Master Kepler, plump. And the winters are cold, eh? Ha. Ha ha."
    And he took the young man firmly by the elbow and steered him up the stairs, into an alcove, where there waited a sleek, grim dandified man who looked Johannes up and down without enthusiasm and said: "My dear sir, " as if he had, Jobst Müller, been rehearsing it.
    So began the long, involved and sordid business of his wiving. From the start he feared the prospect of the plump young widow. Women were a foreign country, he did not speak the language. One night four years previously, on a visit to