Kepler

He peered at her through streaming tears and smiled. "Mama sent me to wake you," she said.

"Ah."

Why was it, he wondered, that her candid gaze so pleased him always; how did she manage to make it seem a signal of support and understanding? She was like a marvellous and enigmatic work of art, which he was content to stand and contemplate with a dreamy smile, careless of the artist's intentions. To try to tell her what he felt would be as superfluous as talking to a picture. Her inwardness, which had intrigued Kepler when she was a child, had evolved into a kind of quietly splendid equilibrium. She resembled her mother not at all. She was tall and very fair, with a strong narrow face. Through her, curiously, Kepler sometimes glimpsed with admiration and regret her dead father whom he had never known. She would have been pretty, if she had considered being pretty a worthwhile endeavour. At nineteen, she was a fine Latin scholar, and even knew a little mathematics; he had tutored her himself. She had read his works, though never once had she offered an opinion, nor had he ever pressed her to.

"And also," she said, stepping in and shutting the door behind her, "I wanted to speak to you."

"O yes?" he said, vaguely alarmed. A momentary awkwardness settled between them. There was nowhere to sit save the bed. They moved to the window. Below them was the garden, and beyond that a little common with an elm tree and a duck pond. The evening was bright with sunlight and drifting clouds. A man with two children by the hand walked across the common. Kepler, still not fully awake, snatched at the corner of another memory. He had sailed a paper boat once on that pond, his father had gone there with him and Heinrich on a summer evening like this, long ago… And just then, as if it had all been slyly arranged, the three figures stopped by the muddy margin there and, a lens slipping into place, he recognised Heinrich and Susa

"I am going to be married," Regina said, and looked at him quickly with an intent, quizzical smile.

"Married," he said.

"Yes. His name is Philip Ehem, he comes of a distinguished Augsburg family, and is a Representative at the court of Frederick the Elector Palatine…" She paused, lifting her eyebrows in wry amusement at the noise of this grand pedigree unfurling. "I wanted to tell you, before…"

Kepler nodded. "Yes. " He felt as if he were being worked by strings. He heard faintly the children's laughter swooping like swifts across the common. There would be a scene with Barbara if they got their feet wet. It was one of her increasingly numerous obsessions, wet feet. Beyond Regina 's head a berry-black spider dangled in a far corner of the ceiling. "Ehem, you say."

"Yes. He is a Lutheran, of course."

He turned his face away. "I see." He was jealous.

 how, how strange: to be shocked at himself; horrified but not surprised. Where before was only tenderness- suspiciously weighty perhaps-and sometimes a mild objectless craving, there suddenly stood now in his heart a full-grown creature, complete in every detail and even possessed of a past, blinking in the light and tugging hesitantly at the still unbroken birthcord. It had been in him all those years, growing u

Regina was blushing.

"It will seem that we have come upon it suddenly, I know, " she said, "and may be we have. But I-we-have decided, and so there seems no reason to delay. " The colour deepened on her brow. "There is not, " a rapid mumble, "there is not a necessity to hurry, as she will think, and no doubt say."

"She?"

"She, yes, who will make a great commotion."

The business was already accomplished in his head, he saw it before him like a tableau done in heraldic hues, the solemn bride and her tall grim groom, a pe

"I wanted to ask you," she said, "if you would-"

"Yes?" and something, before he could capture it, swooped out at her on the vibrating wings of that little word. She frowned, studying him with a closer attention; had she, O my God, felt that fevered wingbeat brush her cheek?

"You do not… approve?" she said.

"I I I-"

"Because I thought that you would, I hoped that you would, and that you might speak to her for me, for us. "

"Your mother? Yes yes I will speak to her, of course," lunging past her, talking as he went, and, pausing on the stairs: "Of course, speak to her, yes, tell her… tell her what?"

She peered at him in perplexity from the doorway. "Why, that I plan to marry. "

"Ah yes. That you plan to marry. Yes."

"I think you do not approve. "

"But of course I… of course…" and he clambered backwards down the stairs, clasping in his outstretched arms an enormous glossy black ball of sorrow and guilt.

Barbara was kneeling at the fireplace changing the baby's diaper, her face puckered against the clayey stink. Ludwig below her waved his ski

"You knew? But who is the fellow?"

She sighed, sitting back on her heels. "You have met him," she said wearily. "You don't remember, of course. He was in Prague, you met him."

"Ah, I remember." He did not. "Certainly I remember." How tactful Regina was, to know he would have forgotten. "But she is so young!"

"I was sixteen when I first married. What of it?" He said nothing. "I am surprised you care."

He turned away from her angrily, and opening the kitchen door was confronted by a hag in a black cap. They stared at each other and she backed off in confusion. There was another one at the kitchen table, very fat with a moustache, a mug of beer before her. His mother was busy at the iron stove. "Katharina," the first hag warbled. The fat one studied him a moment impassively and swigged her beer. The tomcat, sitting to attention on the table near her, flicked its tail and blinked. Frau Kepler did not turn from the stove. Kepler silently withdrew, and slowly, silently, closed the door.

"Heinrich-!"

"Now they're just some old dames that come to visit her, Joha

"Tell me the truth, Heinrich. Is she…" Barbara had paused, leaning over the baby with a pin in her mouth; Kepler took his brother's arm and steered him to the window. "Is she still at that old business?"

"No, no. She does a bit of doctoring now and then, but that's all."

"My God."

"She doesn't want for custom, Joha