“The very wrong Master to slight in any way. The Master, in fact, who lives in this house.”
“I feared so. But I’ve heard nothing of it but from you and Gottlieb.”
“You’ll hear nothing else but cautionary whispers. The Brute won’t let his own name be dragged into it. But I still have it in my head to take that pamphlet to Lieber the printer and have him make me a hundred copies. Everyone knows the Brute’s a tyrant, but then they’d see how petty he is, too.”
“You won’t. And Lieber wouldn’t print it anyway.”
“You’re right, Leonhard, he wouldn’t. He’d be run out of town. Or worse. Far worse.”
I strayed past the Boot and Thorn midafternoon. A half dozen students were at a table and I joined them. Gluck was among them, very glum.
“We’re toasting Gluck, on his departure!” I was told.
“What’s he departing for?” I asked.
“Master Cassini’s told him that his studies aren’t satisfactory, and he’ll not have him any more in his lectures.”
“And Master Paleologus has said the same.”
“And his room at Frau Minn’s is needed for another boarder, so he’s to be out of it.”
He himself turned to me from the end of the table. “It’s good riddance, too,” he said. He took off his student’s brimmed hat. “And I just bought it. Who would buy it from me?”
A student at the table, who was also new to Basel and who’d been friendly with me, said, “Sell it to Leonhard. He needs one.”
But another student, who was my elder, answered, “No. He’s a gentleman now. He won’t wear a low student’s hat.” I was in brown, the only one at the table so.
“But look at him!” They took to jesting with me, which I didn’t mind. “In brown? He’s no gentleman!” “But you’ve seen his tricorne!” “Is he below us or above us?” “Is he buoyant or sinking?”
“I lost my hat,” I said. “And I’d dear like it back.”
“Then I’ll sell you this,” Gluck said, and named a price.
“I’ll find mine own instead.”
“Too expensive?” the elder student said to me. “Ask Gustavus. He has old robes and hats and rags.”
“Plague-ridden rags, you mean!” he was answered.
“He’d have burned anything from a plague house.” Besides the clothes of plague victims, innkeepers would gather clothing from any sickbed, usually to burn, though sometimes to sell to travelers.
So then, the talk turned to Huldrych and plague. I said to Gluck, “No, I’d like my old hat. My father gave it to me.”
“Afraid he’ll roast you for losing it? My father’ll chop me to pieces when he hears I’ve been sent down.”
“You should keep your hat,” I said. “You may find yourself at another University.”
“I will,” he said, the hat in his hand. “And no Master Johann at it.”
Friday evening I took early to my room. My grandmother would have questioned me about my day but I had my door closed before she had all the kitchen cleaned.
The thoughts in my brain were like a billow of starlings, too many to count and too whirling to hold. I did what I only could, then. I took paper, and pen, and ink, and lit my candle. I knew when I did that I would just blink and hours would go by.
I thought of squares, and circles. I put my quill on the pages and took it around a circle. The ink drained from the feather to the paper. But instead of putting it back to the well, I kept it travelling the path it had made. Around it went, and again, and again around. There was no end to its infinity.
I felt something in my coat pocket and I pulled it out, and it was Desiderius’s Faustbook. This Faust was a man who sold his soul for knowledge. And renown? The man in Basel who held the greatest renown was Master Johann; and there was renown for any man who won a Chair in Basel.
The circle continued to return to its beginning, though it had no beginning.
Why had Desiderius pressed this book onto me?
Knipper had been in Master Johann’s kitchen.
From the edge of the paper, the quill would only seem to go up and down. And from the top of the paper, the quill would only seem to go back and forth. But as I looked down, from above and outside the page, I could see the whole circle.
Huldrych had choked on the dust. And the trunk had been in his house. And Jacob, who had owned the trunk, had died . . . of the plague also?
The circle was an infinity contained on a single sheet of paper.
Daniel had stood at one side, seeking everything about his Uncle Jacob. Then he’d been on the other side, claiming he didn’t care at all.