The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,206

entries, almost like secret messages the master had left for him. Johann thought about the coded messages he and Margarethe had written to each other in Knittlingen. Surely there was a solution to this riddle, too, some kind of key to read the rows of numbers. But try as he might, he couldn’t figure it out.

Johann spent many hours trying to solve the mystery, during the day as well as at night. He started with fright every time there was a noise outside—snow falling off the trees, a startled wildcat on the prowl, or the goddamned cawing of the crows. With every sound he thought Tonio had returned.

But the master didn’t come. Maybe he had left this place for good?

During clear nights, Johann climbed atop the platform and watched the stars. After a few failed attempts he had finally managed to set up the tube. It wasn’t so different from the laterna magica: on the inside were lenses that improved one’s eyesight so much that the stars stood clear and bright before him. Everything that usually seemed so far away appeared suddenly within reach. The moon—normally a round yellowish disc with blurred edges—was suddenly covered in craters and lakes of sand, almost like a small version of the Earth. The planets, too, and even the constellations of the eighth sphere were much clearer through the tube.

But Johann still couldn’t tell what lay beyond the eighth sphere; he guessed the lenses weren’t quite strong enough. And so he hadn’t come an inch closer to answering his pressing questions.

He had tried to inspect the lenses closely without taking them out. They appeared to be cut better and more precisely than anything he’d ever seen from glaziers in the empire. They seemed like small miracles to Johann, and not for the first time he asked himself where Tonio had gotten the apparatus. He had never seen anything like it anywhere, not at any courts or at any universities.

As if it stemmed from a foreign world.

Satan enjoyed the warmth and barely ever left the fireplace. Johann always tried to feed her the best cuts of meat, but the dog hardly ate anything. She grew skinnier and skinnier, only lapping up the theriac from time to time. Every time Johann stroked the large animal, she looked at him with loyal eyes. Those eyes nearly broke his heart.

What am I supposed to do when you’re no longer with me? he wondered before calling himself a fool for posing such a question to an animal.

On their journey to the tower, they had bought enough provisions so they wouldn’t have to go into the village. By now it was snowing so heavily that they couldn’t have gone far even if they’d wanted to. The snow piled up outside the door and the windows, so that they had to shovel their way out every time they needed more firewood.

“I feel like we’re imprisoned,” moaned Karl one afternoon when they once again sat together over a game of chess.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Johann as he took Karl’s queen. “I told you once before: you could be sitting in Cologne right now, waiting to be burned at the stake.”

“Then why can’t I at least go up to the third floor? Or up on the platform? That thing you use to watch the stars with . . . does it really bring them that much closer?”

“I said no, and that’s my final word on the matter.” Johann checkmated his student with his next move, turned the board around, and sorted the pieces anew. “From the beginning. You’re black this time.”

In fact, Johann didn’t really know why he wouldn’t allow Karl upstairs. There was nothing there. Only a faded brownish pentagram that wouldn’t go away. Just like the bad memories.

A pile of dirty, torn children’s clothes.

Johann had tried to wash away the pentagram many times—in vain. It remained a steady reminder that Tonio might return at any moment.

Satan died during one particularly cold night in December. The evening before, she had rested by the fire and lapped up a bit of theriac, and the following morning, Johann found her cold and stiff like a log—a giant skeleton held together by a bit of shaggy fur.

Johann knelt down beside her and stroked her for a long time. He remembered all the wonderful moments they’d shared. Satan had been his companion since his escape from Heidelberg, and even though she was only a dog, Johann loved her more than he’d loved most people. He curled