Feeling himself more a gentleman than he had been in Paris, Roberto, clinging to the ladder with one hand, with the other rubbed shirt and trousers against his dirty body, while scratching the heel of one foot with the toes of the other.
Father Caspar observed him with curiosity but remained silent, wanting Roberto to make friends with the sea. Still, fearing that Roberto’s mind might stray in this excessive concern for his body, the Jesuit tried to distract him. He talked to him of the tides and the attractive powers of the moon.
He tried to make Roberto appreciate a proposition that had something incredible about it: if the tides respond to the summons of the moon, they should be present when the moon is present, and absent when the moon is on the other side of our planet. But, quite to the contrary, flux and reflux continue on both parts of the globe, as if pursuing each other every six hours. Roberto lent an ear to this talk, but he was thinking more about the moon—as he had done all those past nights—than about the tides.
He asked how it is that we see always only one face of the moon, and Father Caspar explained that it turns like a ball held on a string by an athlete who makes it revolve, but who can see nothing but the side towards himself.
“But,” Roberto rebutted, “this face is seen both by the Indians and the Spaniards; whereas on the moon the same thing is not true with respect to their moon, which some call Volva and which is our earth. The Cisvolvians, who live on the face turned towards us, see the earth always, whereas the Transvolvians, who live in the other hemisphere, are unaware of it. Imagine if they were to move to this side! Think of their shock on seeing at night a shining circle fifteen times bigger than our moon! They would expect it to fall down on them at any moment, as the ancient Gauls always feared the sky would fall on their head! To say nothing of those who live right on the border between the two hemispheres, seeing Volva always on the point of rising at the horizon!”
The Jesuit made some ironic and arrogant remarks about the supposed inhabitants of the moon—an old wives’ tale—because all celestial bodies do not share the nature of our earth and are therefore not suited to supporting a living population, so it is best to leave those places to the angelic hosts, who can move spiritually in the crystal of the heavens.
“But how could the heavens be of crystal? If that were so, the comets passing through would shatter them.”
“But who ever told you the comets pass in the ethereal regions? The comets pass in the sublunary region, and here we have air, as you can see for yourself.”
“Nothing moves that is not body. The heavens move. Hence they are body.”
“In order to talk nonsensical, you even become Aristotelian. But I know why you say this. You want air to be also in the heavens, then there is no more differentia between above and below, all turns, and the earth moves its derrière like a strumpet.”
“But we see every night the stars in a different position….”
“Richtig. De facto they move.”
“Wait. I have not finished. You would have the sun and all the stars, which are enormous bodies, make a revolution around the earth every twenty-four hours, and the fixed stars, or, rather, the great ring in which they are set, should travel more than twenty-seven thousand times two hundred million leagues? For this is what would have to happen if the earth did not make a complete revolution in twenty-four hours. How can the fixed stars move so fast? Their inhabitants would be dizzy!”
“If they have any inhabitants. But this is petitio principii.”
And he pointed out that it was easy to invent an argument in favor of the movement of the sun, whereas there were far more arguments against the movement of the earth.
“I know well,” Roberto replied, “that Ecclesiastes says ‘terra autem in aeternum stat, sol oritur,’ and that Joshua stopped the sun and not the earth. But you yourself have taught me that if we take the Bible literally, there would have been light before the creation of the sun. So the Holy Book must be read with a grain of salt, and even Saint Augustine knew that it often speaks more allegorico….”
Father Caspar smiled and reminded him that the Jesuits had long ago given up defeating their adversaries with Scriptural cavils; now they used incontrovertible arguments based on astronomy, on sense, on mathematical and physical reasons.
“What reasons, ad exemplum?” Roberto asked, scraping away a bit of grease from his belly.
“Ad exemplum,” Father Caspar replied, irked, with the powerful
Argument of the Wheel: “Now you listen me. Think a wheel, all right?”
“I am thinking a wheel.”
“Bravo, so you can also think, instead of being Barbary ape and repeating what you heard in Paris. Now think that this wheel is stuck on a pivot, like it is a potter’s wheel, and you want to turn this wheel. What do you do?”
“I put my hands on it, perhaps just one finger on the rim of the wheel, I move my finger, and the wheel turns.”
“You do not think you had done better to take the pivot, in the center of the wheel, and try to make it turn?” “No, it would be impossible….”
“So! And your Galileans or Copernicans want to have the sun in the center of the universe fixed and making move all the great circle of the planets around, instead of thinking the movement from the great circle of the heavens comes, while the earth remains still in the center. How could Dominus Deus put the sun in the lowest place and the earth, corruptible and dark, among the luminous and aeternal stars? Understand your error?”
“But the sun has to exist at the center of the universe! The bodies in nature need this radical fire, and it must inhabit the heart of the realm to meet the needs of all the parts. Must not the cause of generation be set in the center of everything? Has nature not placed the seed in the genitals, halfway between the head and the feet? And are the seeds not in the center of the apple? And is the pit not in the middle of the peach? And so the earth, which needs the light and heat of that fire, moves around it, to receive the solar virtue in all its parts. It would be ridiculous to believe the sun turns around a point that is of no use to it, it would be like saying, on seeing a roast lark, that to cook it you made the hearth revolve around it.”
“Ah so? Then when the bishop moves around the church to bless it with the thurible, you would have the church revolve around the bishop? The sun can turn because it is of igneous element. And you well know that fire flies and moves and is never still. Have you ever seen the mountains move?
Then how does the earth move?”
“The sun’s rays, striking it, make it turn, as you can make a ball spin by striking it with your hand, and even by breathing on it if the ball is little…. And finally, would you have God make the sun race, when it is four hundred thirty-four times bigger than the earth, only to ripen our cabbages?”
To give the greatest theatrical emphasis to this last objection, Roberto wanted to point his finger at Father Caspar, so he extended his arm and pushed with his foot to make himself good and visible, a bit farther from the side of the ship. In this movement his other hand released its grip, his head moved back, and Roberto finished underwater, unable to make use of the rope, now too slack, to return to the surface, as planned. He then behaved like all threatened with drowning; he made uncoordinated movements and swallowed even more water, until Father Caspar tautened the rope properly, pulling him back to the ladder. Roberto climbed up, vowing he would never go down there again.
“Tomorrow you try again. Salt water is like a medicine, do not think it was gross harm,” Caspar consoled him on deck. And as Roberto made peace with the sea, fishing, Caspar explained to him how many and what advantages they would both derive from his arrival on the Island. It was not even worth mentioning the recovery of the boat, with which they would be able to move as free men from ship to shore; they would further have access to the Specula Melitensis.
From Roberto’s report, we must infer that this apparatus exceeded his powers of comprehension—or that Father Caspar’s account of it, like so many other speeches of his, was made up of ellipses and interjections, as
