Hera yawned; she had seen this marvel before. “We have time to do some work on you and your Italian existence. We might as well use it.”

“I don’t see why,” Galileo objected, feeling uneasy. “You didn’t want me learning more mathematics.”

“No, but now that you have, you should understand the context. You need to know your life. It doesn’t go away, so you either understand it or remain disabled by forgetfulness and repression.”

“So you are Mnemosyne,” Galileo said. “The muse of memory.”

“I was a mnemosyne.” She gave him a metallic helmet that resembled Aurora’s, or even his own celatone. “Here,” she said. “Put this on.”

Tentatively he placed it on his head. “What does this one do?”

“It helps you to return. Pay attention!”

And she tapped him on the head.

His mother was screaming at his father. Sunday morning, getting ready for church—a regular time for her to yell. Galileo was hiding his head under his Sunday shirt as he put it on. Not pulling it on, staying covered by it, apart.

“What do you mean be quiet? How can I be quiet when I have to go begging more credit from the landlord and the grocer and everyone? What would we do for a roof over our head if I didn’t spend every day spinning and carding and sewing until I go blind, while you moon over your lute!”

“I make a living,” Vincenzio protested. His defense was weak with long use: “I had an appointment at court, and may again soon. I teach classes, I have private students, commissions, articles, songs—”

“Songs? That’s right! You play your lute and I pay the bills. I work so you can strum your lute in the yard and dream about being a courtier. You dream and we suffer for it. Five children going ragged in the street, and you sit there playing your lute! I hate the sound of it!”

“It’s my living! What, would you steal my living? Would you steal my hands, my tongue?”

“A living you call this? Oh sta cheto, soddomitaccio!”

Vincenzio sighed. He turned helplessly to his wide-eyed children, watching this scene as always. “Let’s go,” he begged her. “We’ll be late for mass.”

In the church, Galileo looked around. They did appear a bit shabbier than many of the others there. His uncle was a textile merchant, like so many in Florence, and provided his mother with piecework, and with his workers’ mistakes. While the priest sang the parts of the service set to music, his mother shot his father a black look that Vincenzio tried to ignore. It was not infrequent that she would loudly whisper something poisonously obscene right in church.

One of the acolytes lit a lantern suspended from the rafters overhead, and when he was done the lantern was slightly swinging on its chain. Back and forth, back and forth. Watching it closely, it seemed to Galileo that no matter how big or small an arc the lantern swung through, it took the same amount of time to do it. As the swings grew shorter, they seemed to slow down accordingly. He put his thumb to his other wrist, and pressed down on his pulse to count and see. Yes; no matter the size of the arc, the lantern took the same time to pass through it. That was interesting. There was a little ping in it that made him forget everything else.

He was in space, flying some distance from the dark banded ball that was the back side of Jupiter. He shuddered at the disorientation.

Hera had been studying her console, it appeared. Seeing his thoughts.

“Do you know what happens to a boy who sees his father consistently abused by his mother?” she said.

Galileo could not help but laugh. “Yes, I think I do.”

“I don’t mean, did you experience it. Obviously you did. I mean, did you ever consider what it did to you? How it impacted your later relations?”

“I don’t know.” Galileo turned his head away from her. The helmet was heavy on his head, and pricked at several places on his scalp. “Who can say? I never liked my mother, I know that. She was mean to all of us.”

“This has effects, of course. In a patriarchy, a woman dominating a man seems unnatural. A joke at best, at worst a crime. So, you disliked and feared your mother, and you lost respect for your father. You vowed it would never happen to you. You might even have wanted revenge. All the rest of your life was thereby affected. You were determined to be stronger than anyone. You were determined to stay clear of women, maybe hurt them if you could.”

“I had lots of women.”

“You had sex with lots of women. It’s not what I’m talking about. Sex can be a hostile act. How many women did you have sex with?”

“Two hundred and forty-eight.”

“And so you were free of them, you thought, while still having heterosexual sex. It was a common behavior, easy to see and understand. But the psychology of your time was even more primitive than your physics. Temperaments, the four humors—”

“Those are very evident,” Galileo objected. “You see them in people.”

“You do. Were you often melancholy?”

“I had all the humors in full. Sometimes overfull. The balance sloshed around, depending on my circumstances. As a result I often slept poorly. Sometimes not at all. Loss of sleep was my main problem.”

“And sometimes you were melancholy.”

“Yes, sometimes. Black melancholy. My vital spirits are strong, and sometimes the humors are overproduced, and some get burnt and ascend to the brain in a vapor, rather than a liquid as they should. It’s these catarrhs that lead to abnormal moods. Particularly burnt black bile, that’s the catarrh that leads to a melancholy adust.”

“Yes.” She regarded him. “But it had nothing to do with your mother.”

“No.”

“It had nothing to do with your fear of women.”

“Not at all. I loved women!”

“You had sex with women. It’s not the same thing.”

“There was Marina,” Galileo said, then, hesitating: “I loved Marina. At least at first.”

“Let’s see about that. Let’s see how it began, and how it ended.”

“No—”

But she touched the side of the helmet.

He was at Sagredo’s palazzo on the Grand Canal, waiting for the party girls to show. Sagredo always invited some. Galileo liked all the different girls. Their variety had become something he lusted after—how each was big or small, dark or light, bold or diffident—but mainly, just different. As difference was what he had, difference was what he liked; for when it came to sex, people learned to like what they had. He kept count of them in his head, and could remember them all. There were so many kinds of beauty. So now he listened to Valerio play the lute, full of Sagredo’s wine and the food from the feast, and waited to see what the world would bring to him.

Under the arch of the main door stepped a girl with black hair. In the first seconds of her appearance in the brilliant candlelight Galileo fell under a compulsion.

At first she did not see him. She was laughing at something one of the other girls had said.

What Galileo looked for in female company, beyond sheer difference, was some kind of liveliness. He liked laughing. There were some who were in high spirits during the sexual act, who made it a kind of child’s play, a dance that friends did that made them laugh as well as come—there was some dash to the act, so that the dust in the blood was sent flying, the lanterns sparked, the gilt flaked, the whole world shone as if wet.

Just so this girl seemed to his eye. She had that spark. Her features were not regular, her hair was black as a crow’s, and she had the classic Venice girl’s figure, fish-fed and lush, long-legged and strong. She laughed at her companion as Galileo crossed the room to get closer to her. She had thick eyebrows that almost met over her nose, and beneath them her eyes were a rich brown starred with black radial lines, like stones. Feline grace, high spirits, black hair—then also wide shoulders, a fine neck and collarbones, nice breasts, perfect brown skin, strong arms. Fluid in movement, dancing through the room.