Where Tigers Are at Home (40 page)

Athanasius promised the Cardinal he would do his best & seemed very satisfied with the outcome of this meeting. His credit continued to grow among the highest echelons of the Church, ensuring that he had the freedom & resources that were essential for his work. My master made me more and more of a partner in it & during the two following years
I assisted him every day in his research into the meaning of the hieroglyphs; except in 1642 when, for my glory and a few minor aftereffects, my master developed a passionate interest in the science of the air.

This adventure originated in a conversation with Nicholas Poussin, who had come to see him in order to improve his command of the difficult art of perspective. Leafing through one of the codices of Leonardo da Vinci, which had most graciously been lent him by Sieur Raphaël Trichet du Fresne, the librarian of Queen Christina of Sweden, Kircher was struck by the flying machine devised by the Florentine.

“Despite my great admiration for Leonardo,” Poussin said, “I have to admit that he sometimes flouted the most elementary laws of physics. He was a dreamer of genius, but a dreamer all the same—it’s obvious that the air is too sparse & too weak to support the weight of a man’s body, however big his wings.”

Kircher shook his head. “No, Monsieur, definitely not! Just consider the way geese & other large birds flap their wings when they want to take off & fly, & the weight of paper and wood that can be made to glide by pulling them with a string, & perhaps you will change your mind. I am convinced a man can rise up into the air, provided he has wings that are large & strong enough & has sufficient strength to beat the air as needed; which could be done with certain springs, which would make the wings move as quickly & as strongly as necessary.

“It is a persuasive argument, Reverend Father, but you will allow me to dispute it as long as, like Saint Thomas, I have not seen a man rise up into the air with my own eyes.”

‘That doesn’t matter,” my master said, “I will take up the challenge & we will meet again in three months, the time it will take me to carry out certain preliminary experiments. But I insist that it is definitely no more difficult to fly than to swim;
& just as that seems child’s play once it has been learned—even though one would have thought it impossible—we will consider the art of flying quite natural once we have practiced it.”

Monsieur Poussin left that evening, dazzled by Athanasius’s self-assurance, but far from convinced. For my part, I had such confidence in my master that I did not doubt for one moment that he would succeed. I was in a fever of excitement at the idea of flying up into the skies & I pestered Kircher so much that he agreed to grant my desire to be the first man to perform that feat.

The few weeks that followed are the most beautiful I can remember. We abandoned our studies to devote ourselves entirely to this project. Cardinal Barberini and Signore Manfredo Settala were enthusiastic about my master’s undertaking; they advanced the funds necessary & the craftsmen set to work. Three weeks sufficed for the completion of the most astonishing thing seen for decades: it was like a huge bat with no body, an eighteen-foot wingspan covered in white feathers fixed to a framework of canes. The device was fitted to my shoulders by a system of straps & once it was on my back I realized I was able to move the wings without too much effort, though slowly.

“The great eagles of Tartary are like that,” Kircher assured me, “they only take off slowly & with dignity, using the strength of the wind. Don’t worry, Caspar, this machine has been designed not to lift itself up from the ground by its own force, but to move though the air once it has been carried up there.”

One week later everything was ready. Kircher summoned Poussin, Cardinal Barberini & Signore Settala to the top of Castel Sant’Angelo, from which, it had been decided, I was to take off. It was a pleasant June day; a gentle breeze hardly made the leaves stir & I was very excited at the idea of being the first man finally to achieve this old dream of the human race.

“I chose this particular place,” Athanasius explained to his guests, “so that my brave assistant, Father Schott, can land without harm in the waters of the Tiber, in the unlikely case—although a setback can never be excluded—that some adversity will force him to break off his flight. Father Schott being unable to swim, I have provided him with balloons filled with air, which will easily support him in the liquid element.”

Having said that, he had two translucent waterskins—pigs’ stomachs, as it seemed to me—which he tied on either side of my waist. Then I was harnessed & had to beat my wings several times while my master checked they were working properly. The three men were enraptured at the ingenious arrangement of this mechanism.

For the first time I became aware of the serious position in which my thoughtlessness had placed me: a fearful abyss yawned beneath my feet & the Tiber down below seemed tiny … Pictures of my previous fall, during one of the first trials, crowded my memory; I was sweating abundantly & as the strength drained from my arms, my legs began to tremble piteously. I was terrified.

“Off you go, Caspar,” my master suddenly cried in grandiloquent tones, “& may the day come when your fame will outshine that of Icarus!”

For a fraction of a second the mention of that unfortunate hero seemed an ill omen, but as Athanasius had accompanied his words of encouragement with a friendly & vigorous push on my calves, I lost my balance &, rather than simply fall, I launched myself into the void.

It was the most extraordinary feeling of my whole life: freed from the fetters of my body, I was gliding like a seagull, or like a sparrow-hawk circling above its prey. However, this pleasurable sensation did not last long; I realized that I was in
fact rapidly losing height & that, far from gliding, as I thought, I was well & truly falling, although more slowly than if I had not been wearing my false wings. The waters of the Tiber were approaching rapidly &, terrified, panic-stricken by the horror of my situation, I tried to beat my wings with the energy of despair. My fear was so great that I managed to move them several times without, however, raising myself higher at all. The only result of my efforts was, thanks be to Heaven, to slow down my fall a little. Not enough, though, to stop me plunging into the Tiber in a manner that I would have wished were more dashing. My last conscious act was to recommend my soul to God before I had the sensation of crashing into a surface as hard as marble …

When I came to, several hours later, I was lying in my bed in the Roman College with both legs fractured in several places & numerous bruises. The tormented expression on Kircher’s face told me that coming to my senses was more of a resurrection than a simple awakening.

When I was fully conscious again, my first words were to express my concern about the Cardinal’s reaction and to apologize to Kircher for a failure that would do such damage to his reputation. It was not the machine that was at fault, but the weakness of my constitution & the panic that had paralyzed me, thus ruining the hopes founded on this project; I was unworthy of the trust my master had placed in me & I could not forgive myself for the boastfulness with which I had claimed a role so obviously beyond my modest powers, & to tell the truth it would have been better had I perished during my fall as a just punishment for my sin of pride …

Kircher would not let me go on: I was wrong about everything, since the project, far from being a setback, had succeeded beyond his wildest hopes. After expressing their natural concern about my fate, his guests had commended my exploit. A body thrown
from the ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo would have fallen straight down & crashed into the moat, while the artificial wings had allowed me to make progress through the air & reach the Tiber. So flight had been achieved, thus proving that man could rival the eagles; all that remained was to add certain improvements to the machine & train future pilots sufficiently. The problem was no longer one of physics, but of technology, & the human mind had always shown its skill in surmounting problems of that order. The years to come would see to it that they perfected what had been merely sketched out in this experiment: one day we would fly as far, as high & as swiftly as the most agile birds of prey. And I was the one who, through my courage & my faith, had procured this certainty for our century … Moreover, Cardinal Barberini had sent his personal physician to care for me &, combining charity with generosity, proposed to continue to fund from his own purse the flight trials with prisoners who had been condemned to death, thus offering those poor wretches an unhoped-for opportunity of saving their lives.

These comforting words gave me the strength & the patience to endure being confined to my bed. Monsieur Poussin came to see me several times, bringing me albums of sketches or prints, & we spent many pleasant hours chatting about painting. The Cardinal himself once did me the honor of coming to see me. He repeated word for word what Kircher had told me & congratulated me again on my bravery and selflessness. As for my master, he came to see me as often as his numerous occupations would allow. Nothing that would make my life pleasant was too much for him: he read to me, told me stories about China or the Indians of Maranhão & kept me informed about his progress in deciphering the hieroglyphics. He even went so far as to invent an unusual musical instrument with the sole aim of amusing me.

Thus it was that one fine morning, toward the end of my convalescence, I was taken from my room to the Great Hall of the College. All the fathers & their students were gathered there & I was greeted with an ovation worthy of a person of consequence. It was only after I had settled down on a sofa that I noticed the imposing organ case that had been brought into the hall. Oddly enough, no pipes could be seen jutting out above the case, which was elaborately decorated with rustic scenes. Kircher sat down at the console and played a lively air by our old friend Girolamo Frescobaldi: the sound that came from the organ was that of a harpsichord & I was wondering why such a sizeable piece of furniture was necessary to house a mechanism that was, after all, not particularly bulky, when my master, with an amused look on his face, announced, “And now the same composition, but using the bioharmonic pedals!”

His feet immediately started flying over the pedals &, to general hilarity, produced the strangest concert of caterwauling that had ever been heard. Even stranger was the fact that this arrangement of animal cries reproduced the graceful air he had previously played; it was perfectly recognizable, including the most subtle harmonies. Like all my colleagues in the hall, I was enraptured.

Once Athanasius had finished there were many who wanted to try this instrument, the fruit of my master’s inexhaustible genius. Each piece that was played produced new comic effects & nothing was more hilarious than to play in the upper registers. Afterward Kircher showed us some compositions of his own, asking Johann Jakob Froberger, the most gifted musican among us, to play them on the harpsichord.

Even in this simple amusement, Kircher had employed all his knowledge & skill. Once opened, the organ case revealed an exceedingly complex mechanism. When one of the pedals was
depressed, an excellent transmission system operated a kind of hammer that suddenly came down on the tail of a cat strapped to a wooden plate. All the cats making up the two octaves of this instrument had been carefully selected by Athanasius for their natural ability to meow on a certain note. They were enclosed in little boxes, which only allowed their tails to stick out, & even if they did not seem particularly happy at the treatment to which they were subjected, they played their part perfectly.

If I had not already been well on the way to a complete recovery, such a concert would have cured me, I believe, as effectively as a tarantella!

I resumed my studies with gusto & toward the end of 1643 Kircher published his
Lingua Aegyptica Restituita
. This book of six hundred and seventy-two pages contained, apart from the Arabic-Coptic dictionary brought back many years ago by Pietro della Valle, a complete grammar of that language & confirmation of the thesis put forward in his
Prodomus Copticus
: namely that the hieroglyphs were the symbolic expression of Egyptian wisdom, the priests having refused to use the common language, that is Coptic, to express their most sacred dogmas …

Kircher now had no doubts that he had mastered the hieroglyphs. He did not provide the key to them in this publication, but acknowledged that he had advanced toward it thanks to the assistance of a mysterious corespondent, to whom he dedicated the book, as he also did to all Arab and Egyptian scholars, the sole heirs to & possessors of the ancient language.

The year 1644 was decisive. After the death of Pope Urban VIII, Cardinal Pamphilius succeeded him under the name of Innocent X. To celebrate his election, this worthy son of an illustrious family, whose palace had since the fifteenth century been in the Circus Agonalis, the former Stadium of Domitian, decided to complete the restoration of that place & to make
it a memorial to his family & to his name. To that end he commissioned the famous Lorenzo Bernini to design a fountain, the center of which would be the great obelisk that had been lying along the Appian Way since time immemorial.

Our Superior General, Father Vincent Caraffa, had taken it upon himself to inform the Pope of Kircher’s learning & it was naturally to him the Supreme Pontiff turned to design this project.

“Reverend Father,” the Pope had said during their interview, “we have decided to erect a very tall obelisk & it will be your task to study the hieroglyphs carved on it. We would like you, who have inherited so many talents from God, to give yourself heart & soul to this task, doing everything in your power to ensure that those who are amazed at the scale of this project, will come to understand, through your agency, the secret signification of the inscriptions. In addition, you will guide the architect, Bernini, in the choice of symbols that will be the theme of this fountain, taking care to see that the work is carried out with the appropriate spiritual rigor. May God go with you.”