Galileo’s Dream. Kim Stanley Robinson
Giulia was even now a more fearful presence to Galileo than Marina, no matter Marina’s black gaze, her cobalt-edged tongue and thick right arm. He had heard so many harangues in his life that they simply bounced off him; he was an expert in them, a connoisseur, and there was no doubt in his mind that the old rolling pin was champion of the world. He recalled his father’s hung head, the tightness at the corners of his mouth-the way he would pick up his lute and hit its strings, playing double time and fortissimo, even though this only served as accompaniment to Giulia’s dread arias, which were louder by far than the lute-these scenes were all too clear in Galileo’s mind, if he did not avoid them.
And yet here he had gone and done the same thing as his dad: coupled with a younger woman; no doubt it led to some fundamental imbalance, or just the natural contempt of youth for age. In any case here was another Galilei about to get thrashed by a strong-armed woman, hesitating to knock at the door. Fearful to knock.
He knocked. She answered with a shout, knowing by the rap who it was.
He entered. She kept the place clean, there was no doubt of that. Perhaps she did it to emphasize the paucity of furniture, or the confusion and squalor of his place. She stood in the kitchen doorway wiping her hands, as beautiful as ever, even though the years had been hard on her. Black hair, black eyes, a face that still caught Galileo’s breath; the body he loved, her hand on her hip, washcloth flung over her shoulder.
‘I heard,’ she told him.
‘I figured you would.’
‘So-what now?’
She watched him, expecting nothing. It wasn’t like the time he had explained what their arrangement would be, sitting on the fondamenta in Venice with her five months pregnant. That had been hard. This was merely awkward and tedious. They hadn’t been in love for many years. She was seeing a man out near the docks on the canal, a butcher he thought it was. He had what he wanted. Still, that look, that time in Venice-it shot through into this time too, it was still there between them. He had a particular sensitivity to looks, no doubt the result of growing up with Medusa for a mother.
‘The girls will come with me,’ he said. ‘Vincenzio is too young, he still needs you.’
‘They all need me.’
‘I’m taking the girls to Florence.’
‘Livia won’t like it. She hates your place. It’s too loud for her, there are too many people.’
Galileo sighed. ‘It will be a bigger place. And I won’t be taking in students any more.’
‘So now you’re a court creature.’
‘I am the prince’s philosopher.’
She laughed. ‘No more compasses.’
‘That’s right.’
They both went silent, thinking perhaps about how his compass had been an ongoing joke between them.
‘All right then,’ she said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll keep paying for this place. And I’ll need to see Vincenzio. In a few years he’ll need to move to Florence too. Maybe you can move to Florence then too, if you want.’
She stared at him. She could still flay him with a look; but the tightness at the corners of her mouth reminded him of his father, and he felt a stab of remorse, thinking that maybe now he was the Giulia. A horrible thought; but there was nothing for it but to nod and take his leave, the back of his neck crawling under the heat of that fiery gaze.
All during this time he continued to make his nightly observations, and to spread the word concerning the usefulness of his glass. Occhialino, visorio, perspicullum-different people called it different things, and he did too. He sent excellent glasses to the Duke of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and Cardinal del Monte, among other nobles of court and church. He was now in the service of the Medicis, of course, but the Medici would want the capabilities of his glass advertised to as many of the powers in Europe as possible. And it was important to establish the legitimacy of what Galileo had reported in his book by having it confirmed in other places by influential figures. He had heard there were people like Cremonini refusing to look through a glass, and others claiming his new discoveries were merely optical illusions, artifacts of the instrument itself. Indeed he had suffered an unfortunate demonstration in Bologna, when he had tried to show the famous astronomer Giovanni Magini the Medicean stars, and only been able to see one himself; which may have been because three were behind Jupiter, but it was a hard case to make, especially with the odious Bohemian climber Martin Horky there smirking at every word, obviously delighted that things weren’t going as planned. Afterward he heard that Horky had written to Kepler telling him that the visorio was a fraud, useless for astronomy.
Kepler was experienced enough to ignore backstabbing by such a loathsome toad, but his characteristically long and incoherent letter in support of Galileo’s discoveries, published as a book for the world to read under the title Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, was in some ways as bad as the Horky nonsense. Confusions from Kepler were nothing new, although up until this point they had always made Galileo laugh. One time for the entertainment of his artisans he had translated into Tuscan Kepler’s claim that the music of the spheres was a literal sound made by the planets, a six-note chord which moved from major to minor depending on whether Mars was at perihelia or aphelia. This idea made Galileo laugh so hard he could barely read. He wiped tears from his eyes as he went on: ‘The chapter’s title is “Which Planet Sings Soprano, Which Alto, Which Tenor, and Which Bass!” I swear to God! The greatest astronomer of our time! He admits he has no basis for this stuff except his own desire for it, and then concludes that Jupiter and Saturn must sing bass, Mars tenor, Earth and Venus alto, and Mercury soprano.’
‘But of course!’ The workshop gang then sang in their usual four-part harmony one of their rudest love songs, replacing all the usual girls’ names with ‘Venus’.
That was Kepler: a good source for jokes. Now, reading Kepler’s defence of his discoveries, Galileo felt an uneasiness that sharpened the further he read. Lots of people would read this book, but much of Kepler’s praise was so harebrained it cut both ways:
I may perhaps seem rash in accepting your claims so readily with no support from my own experience. But why should I not believe a most learned mathematician, whose very style attests to the soundness of his judgement? He has no intention of practising deception in a bid for vulgar publicity, nor does he pretend to have seen what he has not seen. Because he loves the truth, he does not hesitate to oppose even the most familiar opinions, and to bear the jeers of the crowd with equanimity.
What jeers of the crowd? For one thing there hadn’t been that many, and for another, Galileo did not bear them with equanimity: he wanted to kill every critic he had. He liked fights in the same way bulls are attracted to red-not because it looks like blood, or so they say, but because it has the colour of the pulsing parts of cows in heat. Galileo loved to fight like that. And so far he had never lost one. So equanimity had nothing to do with it.
Then further on in Kepler’s fatuous endorsement he asked what Galileo saw through his perspicillum when he looked at ‘the left corner of the face of the Man in the Moon,’ because it turned out that Kepler had a theory about that region, which he now propounded to the world-that a certain mark there was the work of intelligent beings who lived on the Moon, who must therefore have to endure days the equal of fourteen days on Earth. Kepler wrote,
Therefore they feel insufferable heat. Perhaps they lack stone for erecting shelters against the sun. On the other hand, maybe they have a soil as sticky as clay. Their usual building plan, accordingly, is as follows. Digging up huge fields, they carry out the earth and heap it in a circle, perhaps for the purpose of drawing out the moisture down below. In this way they may hide in the deep shade behind their excavated mounds and, in keeping with the sun’s motion, shift about inside, clinging to the shadow. They have, as it were, a sort of underground city. They make their homes in numerous caves hewn out of that circular embankment. They place their fields and pastures in the middle, to avoid being forced