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 unnoticed towards this sudden incarnation. And what was he supposed to do with it now, this unbidden goddess come skimming up on her scallop shell out of an innocent sea? But what else was there to do, save smile crookedly and scratch his head and squint at the window, pretending to be Heinrich, and say: "Well, married, yes, that's… that's…"
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 pennant flying and the sky pouring down fat beneficent rays behind the scroll announcing factum est! and below, in a draughty underworld all to himself, Kepler inconsolabilis crouched with the hoof of a hunchbacked devil treading on his neck. He turned warily from the window. Regina had been watching him eagerly, but now she dropped her gaze and considered her hands clasped before her. She was smiling, amused at herself and embarrassed, but proud too, as if she had brought off some marvellous but all the same faintly ridiculous feat.
"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 skinny legs, crowing. She glanced over her shoulder at Kepler. "I thought as much," was all she said.
"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, Johann." He grinned ruefully and shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches. "They are company for her."
"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, Johann. They still come, especially the women." He grinned again, and winked, letting one eyelid fall like a loose shutter. "Only the other day there was a fellow-"
"I don't-"
"-Blacksmith he was, big as an ox, came all the way over from Leonberg, you wouldn't have thought to look at him there was anything-"
"I do not want to know, Heinrich!" He stared through the window, gnawing a thumbnail. "My God," he muttered again.
"Ah, there's nothing in it," said Heinrich. "And she's better value than your fancy physicians, I can tell you. " Resentment was making him hoarse, Kepler noted wistfully: why had such simple loyalty been denied to him? "She made up a stuff for my leg that did more for it than that army doctor ever did. "
"Your leg?"
"Aye, there's a weeping wound that I got in Hungary. It's not much."
"You must let me look at it for you. "
Heinrich glanced at him sharply. "No need for that. She takes care of it."
Their mother shuffled out of the kitchen. "Now where, " she murmured, "where did I leave that down, I wonder." She pointed her thin little nose at Barbara. "Have you seen it?"
Barbara ignored her.
"What is it, mother," Kepler said.
She smiled innocently. "Why, I had it just a moment ago, and now I have lost it, my little bag of bats' wings. "
A crackling came from the kitchen, where the two hags could be seen, shrieking and hilariously shoving each other. Even the cat might have been laughing.
Regina came tentatively down the stairs. "You are not fighting over me, surely?" They looked at her blankly. Frau Kepler, grinning, scuttled back into the kitchen.
"What does she mean, bats' wings?" said Barbara.
"A joke," Kepler snapped, "a joke, for God's sake!"
"Bats' wings indeed. What next?"
"She's nobody's fool, " Heinrich put in stoutly, trying not to laugh.
Kepler flung himself on to a chair by the window and drummed his fingers on the table. "We'll put up at an inn tonight, " he muttered. "There is a place out toward Ellmend-ingen. And tomorrow we'll start for home. "
Barbara smiled her triumph, but had the good sense to say nothing. Kepler scowled at her. The three old women came out of the kitchen. There was a fringe of foam on the fat one's moustache. The thin one made to address the great man sunk in gloom by the window, but Frau Kepler gave her a push from the rear. "O! hee hee, your ma, sir, I think, wants to be rid of us!"
"Bah, " Frau Kepler said, and shoved her harder. They went out. "Well," the old woman said, turning to her son, "you've driven them away. Are you satisfied now?"
Kepler stared at her. "I said not a word to them."