The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,147

a thinker or philosopher I haven’t heard of before, someone the church doesn’t want us to know about? Someone who might know answers to those new questions?”

“Gilles de Rais?” Celtis froze, and his face turned ashen. “Where did you come across that name?” Now Celtis’s voice sounded biting and cold, and as sharp as a sword’s cutting edge. “Tell me, how do you know it?”

“I . . . I don’t remember exactly,” stuttered Johann, feeling extremely uncomfortable all of a sudden. He felt himself blush. “I think it was in the arts library.”

“Wherever it was, you need to forget that name again immediately. It brings nothing but evil.”

“But—” said Johann.

“Do you believe in evil?” asked Celtis abruptly. “I don’t mean the evil of everyday life, like the pickpocket cutting off a purse, the greedy murderer lurking in the dark of night, the counterfeiters, the traitors . . . I mean evil in its purest form as the antagonist to good, like Manichaeism used to teach. Do you believe in such an evil?”

Johann frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand . . .”

“Well, I haven’t fully made up my mind on the matter,” continued Celtis. “But if such an evil does exist, it found its perfect vessel in Gilles de Rais. It is for the best that he is forgotten by history. And now I’d like to discuss more-pleasant matters.” He gave Johann a sharp look. “Study hard, young Faustus. And before you return to your so-called new questions, find answers to the old ones.”

With those words, Celtis turned away and left Johann alone with his thoughts.

16

JOHANN SPENT THE next few hours in a trancelike state. He still took part in conversations, but everything he said and did was mechanical, like a puppet on strings. How could he have been so presumptuous? One of the greatest scholars of the empire—the teacher of the two electoral princes—had spoken to him, and all Johann had asked about was a goddamned name. On top of that, he had bad-mouthed everything that constituted humanism. He had made a complete fool of himself! Even Valentin shook his head again and again.

“You shouldn’t have said those things,” he whispered to Johann. “Telling Celtis that antiquity isn’t the measure of all things and that the current university courses aren’t any good?” Then he snickered. “I wouldn’t have had the balls.”

“Shut up!” snapped Johann. “I know I messed up.” He saw from the corner of his eye how the other students stared at him and whispered. Clearly, the news was beginning to make the rounds.

Johann angrily stabbed the slice of roast meat in front of him; it came served on a piece of delicious-smelling white bread. He chewed without tasting anything and kept his eyes down. He thought there was a good chance that the university would expel him following the disastrous conversation. Why should Rector Gallus continue to sponsor him when Johann considered everything he learned at the university to be dated and pointless? For the remainder of dinner, neither Celtis nor Gallus came near his end of the table, and he didn’t get the mirror for the laterna magica. It seemed Gallus had chosen to forget about his promise. From one moment to the next, Johann had become persona non grata.

The following days, in every class he attended, Johann was also made to feel that he had gone too far. The whole university seemed to know about his arrogant speech at the castle. Some students smirked when he walked past, while others shoved him or jeered. Hans Altmayer used every opportunity to mock him.

“Make way for Doctor Faustus, our new deacon!” he exclaimed loudly when Johann entered a lecture hall. “I hear he’s going to found his own school, where he’ll teach the eighth art of snobbery and blathering.”

The other students laughed, and Johann quickly sat down at his desk, keeping his head low. He soon found out that the magisters and doctors, too, were ill-disposed toward him. Old Partschneider interrupted his lecture several times to address Johann directly.

“So much for Plato’s doctrine of forms,” he said coldly and shut his book. “But perhaps young Faustus knows something that goes beyond Plato’s idea. Or are the Greek philosophers perhaps not sophisticated enough for him? How about a brief excursus on the matter, dear colleague?”

His fellow students laughed; Johann said nothing, staring at his papers.

Life at the university became hell for him. No matter where he went and what he did, people either avoided him or mocked him. Valentin