Measuring The World Part 15

Oh well, Daguerre whispered good-humoredly into his ear, it would take years before he could take a picture. Certainly the business about getting the exposure right would eventually solve itself, but he and his companion Niepce had no idea how they could fix the silver iodide.

Gauss hissed. Daguerre shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into silence.

Looking into the night sky, said Humboldt, gave no real idea of the sheer extent of this vault. The haze of light surrounding the Magellanic Clouds over the southern hemisphere was not some amorphous substance, some stream or gas; it consisted of suns, and only their absolute distance from earth gave the optical illusion that they all blended into one. A section of the Milky Way, two degrees wide by fifteen degrees long, what could be seen in the eyepiece of a telescope, contained more than fifty thousand countable stars, and up to one hundred thousand if one included those whose weakening light made them impossible to see. Which meant that the Milky Way consisted of twenty million suns, which a human eye that was separated from them by a distance equivalent to their own diameter could only detect as a dull shimmer, one of those patches of mist of which astronomers had counted more than three thousand already. One therefore must ask why, given so many stars, the sky was not permanently filled with light, why there was so much black out there, and one could not avoid accepting the principle that there was something opposed to light, something that acted as a block in the intervening s.p.a.ce, a light-extinguishing ether. Once again this gave proof of the rational order of Nature, because finally every human culture began with the observation of the paths of heavenly bodies.

Humboldt opened his eyes wide for the first time. One of these bodies swimming in the black ether was the earth. A kernel of fire, contained in three sh.e.l.ls, one rigid, one liquid, and one elastic, all of which offered a home to life. Even deep underground he had found plant matter that grew without light. Volcanoes served earth's fiery core as natural vents, and its rocky crust was covered by two seas, one of water and one of air. Both were moved by perpetual currents: there was the famous Gulf Stream, which drove the water of the Atlantic Ocean past the isthmus of Nicaragua and the Yucatan, then through the Bahama channel northeast against the Newfoundland Banks and from there southeast to the Azores, which explained the miraculous appearance of date palms, flying fish, and sometimes even live Eskimos in their canoes along the Irish coast. He himself had discovered an equally powerful current in the quiet sea that carried cold northern water the length of Chile and Peru to the tropics. Despite all his pleading, he smiled half-proud and half-embarra.s.sed, the sailors insisted on naming it the Humboldt current. It was the same with the currents in the ocean of the air, kept in movement by the fluctuations of the sun's heat, and interrupted by the flanks of the huge stone ma.s.sifs, which meant that the division of different kinds of plants didn't follow lines of lat.i.tude, but rather lines that undulated according to isothermic patterns. This system of currents connected the different parts of earth into a functioning unity. Humboldt was silent for a moment, as if the coming thought moved him. As in earth's caverns, so also in the sea and in the air: plants flourished everywhere. Vegetation was the variousness of life itself, laid out for all to see, silent and immobile. Plants had no interior ident.i.ty, nothing hidden, everything about them was external. Barely protected, tethered to earth and its dictates, they still managed to live and survive. Insects, by contrast, and animals and humans were both protected and armored. Their constant internal temperature enabled them to tolerate changing conditions. Look at an animal and you didn't know anything; look at a plant and its entire being was laid open to you.

He was getting sentimental, whispered Daguerre.

Life moved up through stages of increasing concealment of its organization until it made the leap that one could confidently name as its final achievement: the lightning bolt of reason. After this there was no further evolution by degrees. The second greatest insult to Man was slavery. But the greatest was the idea that he was descended from the apes!

Man and ape! Daguerre laughed.

Humboldt tilted his head back and seemed to listen to his own words. The understanding of the cosmos had made great strides. Telescopes allowed one to explore the universe, one knew the structure of the earth, its weight and its trajectory, one had established the speed of light, worked at the ocean currents and the conditions of life, and soon it would be possible to solve the last riddle, magnetic force. The end of the road was in sight, the measuring of the world almost complete. The cosmos would be understood, all difficulties pertaining to man's beginnings, such as fear, war, and exploitation, would sink into the past, and Germany in particular and even more particularly the scientists gathered here tonight must give this their most urgent support. Science would bring about an era of the general good, and who could know if one day it might not even solve the problem of death. For a few moments Humboldt stood there, still. Then he bowed.

Since his return from Paris, whispered Daguerre under the cover of the applause, the baron hadn't been the same as he used to be. He was having difficulties concentrating. And he was inclined to repet.i.tion.

Gauss asked if it was true he'd come back because of lack of money.

Mostly because of an order, said Daguerre. The king had no longer been willing to tolerate his most famous subject making his home abroad. Humboldt had responded to all letters from the Court with evasions, but the last one contained such a clear warning that he could only resist it at the cost of making a complete break. And for that, Daguerre smiled, the old gentleman lacked sufficient funds. His long-awaited account of his journey had disappointed the public: hundreds of pages crammed with measurements, almost nothing personal, and for all intents and purposes no adventure. A tragic circ.u.mstance, it would curtail his fame. A renowned traveler was only renowned if he left good stories behind. The poor man had simply no idea how to write a book! Now he was sitting in Berlin, building an observatory, conceiving a thousand projects and getting on the nerves of the entire city council. The younger scientists made fun of him.

He didn't know how things were in Berlin. Gauss got to his feet. But in Gottingen he'd never met a young scientist who wasn't an a.s.s.

Even the business about the highest mountain wasn't true, said Daguerre as he followed Gauss toward the exit. In the meantime it had been discovered that the Himalayas were far higher. A bad blow for the old man. For years he had refused to accept it. Beyond which he had never recovered from the collapse of his expedition to India.

On his way to the foyer Gauss jostled a woman, trod on a man's foot, and blew his nose twice so loudly that several officers gave him looks of contempt. He was quite unused to conducting himself in such a crowd of people. Intending to be helpful, Daguerre took his elbow, but Gauss let fly at him. Don't! He thought for a moment, then: a salt solution.

Oh yes, said Daguerre sympathetically.

Gauss told him not to gape at him like an idiot. One could fix silver iodide with a simple salt solution.

Daguerre stopped dead. Gauss pushed his way through the hubbub to Humboldt, whom he'd seen at the entrance to the foyer. Salt solution, Daguerre called out behind him. Why?

One didn't have to be a chemist for that, Gauss called back over his shoulder, all it took was a little understanding. He walked hesitantly into the foyer, applause broke out, and if Humboldt hadn't immediately seized him by the arm and pushed him forward, he would have fled. More than three hundred people had been awaiting him.

The next half hour was torture. One head after the other pushed itself in front of him, one hand after the other reached for his arm and pa.s.sed it to the next hand, while Humboldt whispered a meaningless row of names into his ear. Gauss calculated that at home it would take him almost exactly a year and seven months to meet this many people. He wanted to go home. Half the men were in uniform, a third of them had mustaches. Only one seventh of the audience were women, only a quarter of these were under thirty, only two weren't ugly, and only one was someone he'd have liked to touch but seconds after she had curtseyed to him, she was already gone. A man with thirty-two bars of decorations held Gauss's hand negligently between three fingers, Gauss bowed mechanically, the crown prince nodded and moved on.

He didn't feel well, said Gauss, he had to go to bed.

He noticed his velvet cap was missing, someone had taken it from him, and he didn't know whether that was the usual thing or whether it had been stolen. A man clapped him on the shoulder as if they'd known each other for years, and possibly that might indeed be the case. While someone in uniform clicked his heels and someone else wearing spectacles and a frock coat swore that this was the greatest moment of his life, he felt tears coming up in his eyes. He thought of his mother.

Suddenly everything went still.

A thin old gentleman with waxy skin and unnaturally erect posture had come in. Taking tiny steps, apparently without moving his legs, he glided up to Humboldt. The two of them stretched out their arms, took each other by the shoulders, and bowed their heads a few centimeters, then each of them took one step back.

What a joy, said Humboldt.

Indeed, said the other.

The bystanders applauded. The two men waited until the applause had subsided, then turned to Gauss.

This, said Humboldt, was his beloved brother, the minister.

He knew, said Gauss. They had met in Weimar years ago.

Prussia's teacher, said Humboldt, who had given Germany its university and the world the true theory of language.

A world, said the minister, whose composition and natural organization had been unlocked by none other than his brother. His hand felt cold and lifeless, his eyes fixed like a doll's. Most of all, he was no longer a teacher, not for years. Only a private citizen and a poet.

Poet? Gauss was glad to be able to let go of his hand.

He dictated a sonnet every day to his secretary between seven and eight thirty in the evening. He'd been doing it for twelve years and would continue to do so until his death.

Gauss asked if they were good sonnets.

He certainly hoped so, said the minister. But now he must excuse himself.

Such a pity, said Humboldt.

Nonetheless, said the minister, a wonderful evening, a great pleasure.

The two of them stretched out their arms and repeated the ritual from before. The minister turned toward the door and went out with neat little steps.

An unexpected joy, said Humboldt again. Suddenly he looked depressed.

He wanted to go home, said Gauss.

A little longer, said Humboldt. This was Commander of the Gendarmerie Vogt, and science owed him a great deal. He was planning to issue all Berlin gendarmes with compa.s.ses. This would allow them to collect new data on magnetic field fluctuations across the capital. The Commandant of Gendarmerie was six feet six inches tall, with a walrus mustache and a terrifying handshake. And this, continued Humboldt, was Malzacher the zoologist, Rotter the chemist, and over here Weber the physicist from Halle and his wife.

Delighted, said Gauss, delighted. He was close to bursting into tears. All the same, the young woman had a small, well-shaped face, dark eyes, and a dress with a deep decollete. He transferred his gaze to her in the hopes that it might cheer him up.

He was an experimental physicist, said Weber. Working on electrical forces. They tried to keep themselves hidden, but he wasn't giving them a chance.

That's the way he'd done it too, said Gauss, without taking his eyes off the pretty wife. With numbers. A long time ago.

He knew that, said Weber. He'd studied the Duquuitiones Duquuitiones more closely than the Bible. Which admittedly he had never studied that closely at all. more closely than the Bible. Which admittedly he had never studied that closely at all.

The woman had delicate, very highly arched eyebrows. Her dress left her shoulders bare. Gauss wondered what it would be like to press his lips to those shoulders.

He dreamed, he heard Doctor Weber from Halle talking on, that a mind such as the professor's, in other words not a specialized mathematical mind but a universal one, one that solved problems wherever they presented themselves, would dedicate itself to an experimental exploration of the world. He had so many questions. It was his greatest wish to pose them to Professor Gauss.

He didn't have much time, said Gauss.

That might be, said Weber. But in all modesty, it was essential and he wasn't just n.o.body.

Gauss looked at him for the first time. A young man with a narrow face and pale eyes stood there in front of him.

He had to say it, explained Weber, smiling, for the sake of the project. He had studied the wave movements of electrical fields. His writings were widely read.

Gauss asked how old he was.

Twenty-four. Weber blushed.

You have a beautiful wife, said Gauss.

Weber said thank you. His wife bobbed a curtsey but didn't look embarra.s.sed.

Your parents are proud of you?

He thought so, said Weber.

He was to come visit him next afternoon, said Gauss. He could have an hour, but then he'd have to take himself off.

That would do, said Weber.

Gauss nodded and went to the door. Humboldt called out that he must stay, the king was expected, but he couldn't do it any more, he was dead tired. The commander of gendarmerie with the big mustache stepped into his path, each of them went right and then left and then right again to try to get past the other, and it took several awkward moments before they succeeded. A warty man stood by the cloakroom surrounded by students, cursing in broad Swabian: natural scientist, know-it-all, no perspective, no grasp of dialectic, mindless, the stars too were mere matter! Gauss ran out onto the street.

He had pains in his stomach. Was it true that there were vehicles in big cities that one could simply stop and they would take one home? But there were none visible. It stank. At home he'd have been in bed long ago, and although he didn't like seeing Minna, didn't want to hear her voice, and nothing made him more nervous than her presence, he missed her out of pure habit. He rubbed his eyes. How had he grown so old? One didn't feel right any more, one didn't see right any more, and one thought at a snail's pace. Aging wasn't a tragedy. It was a farce.

He concentrated until he recalled every detail of the route Humboldt's coach had taken from Packhof number 4 to the Choral Hall. He didn't get every curve in the right order, but the direction seemed clear: obliquely to the left, northeast in fact. At home he would have settled it with one look upward, but in this sewer there were no stars to be seen. The light-extinguishing ether. If one lived here, that was the sort of idiocy that would occur to one!

At every step he glanced around. He was afraid of robbers, of dogs and filthy puddles. He worried that the city was so large that he would never find his way out again, that it was a labyrinth that would hold him fast and never let him go home. But no, one mustn't let mere nothings escalate! A city, a city was just houses, and in a hundred years the smallest of them would be bigger than these, and in three hundred years- he frowned, it was no simple task to calculate an exponential growth curve when one was nervous and unhappy and had stomach cramps, so in three hundred years there would be more people living in most towns than lived today in all the states of Germany combined. People like insects, housed in honeycombs, doing lowly jobs, siring children and dying. Of course the corpses would have to be burned, there would be no cemeteries large enough to cope. And all the excrement? He sneezed and wondered if he was now getting really ill.

When his host came home two hours later, he found Gauss in the big armchair, smoking a pipe, his feet up on a little Mexican stone table.

Where had he vanished to so abruptly, cried Humboldt, people had been looking for him, they had feared the worst, and there had been a magnificent buffet! The king had been disappointed.

He was sorry about the buffet, said Gauss.

It was no way to behave. Many people had journeyed here strictly on his account. One just couldn't do things like that!

He liked that Weber, said Gauss. But light-extinguishing ether? Absolute rubbish.

Humboldt crossed his arms.

Occam's razor, said Gauss. The number of hypotheses required to arrive at an explanation should be as small as possible. Moreover s.p.a.ce was certainly empty, but it was curved. The stars were wandering through a very eerie vault.

That again, said Humboldt. Astral geometry. He had to say he was astonished that a man like Gauss would champion such a line of thought.

Not what he was doing, said Gauss. He had decided early on never to publish anything on the subject. He had had no desire to lay himself open to mockery. Too many people held their own a.s.sumptions to be the fundamental laws of the universe. He blew two little clouds of smoke up toward the ceiling. What an evening! He almost had got lost on the way home and in order to be let in by the lazy staff, he'd had to wake the whole household. There couldn't be filthier streets anywhere.

Being possibly more traveled, he could correct that, said Humboldt sharply. And he a.s.sured him there were filthier ones. And it was a major mistake just to walk off when so many people had come together who could help set projects in motion.

Projects, snorted Gauss. Plans, intrigues. A whole palaver with ten princes and a hundred members of the Academy before you were even allowed to put up a barometer somewhere. It wasn't science.

Oh, cried Humboldt, so what was science, then?

Gauss pulled on his pipe. A man alone at his desk. A sheet of paper in front of him, at most a telescope as well, and a clear sky outside the window. If such a man didn't give up before he reached an understanding, that, perhaps, was science.

And if this man went on journeys?

Gauss gave a slight shrug. Whatever was hiding way out there in holes or volcanoes or mines was accidental, unimportant. That wasn't how the world would become clearer.

This man at his desk, said Humboldt, would naturally need a nurturing wife to warm his feet and cook his food, along with numerous children to clean his instruments and parents who tended him like a baby. And a solid house with a good roof against the rain. And a cap so that he would never get earache.

Gauss asked what he meant by that.

He was speaking in general.

In that case: yes, he'd need all that and more. How else would a man survive?

The servant, in his nightshirt already, came in.

Humboldt asked what kind of manners these were, couldn't he even knock?

The servant gave him a piece of paper. It had just been handed in, by a street urchin. It seemed to be important.

Uninteresting, said Humboldt. He didn't accept letters at night from who-knew-who. It was like something out of a play by Kotzebue! Reluctantly he unfolded the paper and read it. Curious, he said. A poem. Terribly badly rhymed. Something about trees, wind, and the sea. There was also a raven and a medieval king. Then it stopped. Obviously no one could find a rhyme for silver. silver.

The servant asked him to turn the piece of paper over.

Humboldt did so, and read. Dear G.o.d, he said quietly.

Gauss sat up.

Apparently young Mr. Eugen had got himself into difficulties. He had smuggled this out of the police prison.

Gauss stared at the ceiling, motionless.

This was really rather unpleasant, said Humboldt. He was, after all, a state official.

Gauss nodded.

And nor could he help. Things would take their course. Besides one could rely on Prussian justice, there would be no miscarriage. If someone had done nothing, there was nothing to fear.

Gauss looked at his pipe.

It was shaming, said Humboldt, most vexatious. Nonetheless it involved his guest.

There had never been a thing you could do with the boy said Gauss. He pushed the pipe stem between his teeth.

They were silent for a while. Humboldt stepped over to the window and stared down into the dark courtyard.

So what could one do?

Yes, said Gauss.

It had been a long day, said Humboldt. They were both tired.