Measuring The World Part 8

He meant it, said Humboldt.

No he didn't, said Bonpland.

Yes he did.

Everyone seemed uneasy and fell silent. Bonpland drew breath, but said nothing. One after the other they turned toward the fire and pretended to be asleep.

From now on Bonpland's fever began to get worse. More and more often he got up during the night, took a few steps, then collapsed, giggling to himself. Once Humboldt got the feeling that someone was bending over him. As if in a dream he saw Bonpland's face, teeth bared, a machete in his hand. He thought as fast as he could. One had strange dreams here, as he knew only too well. He needed Bonpland. So he had to trust him. This must therefore be a dream. He closed his eyes and forced himself to lie there motionless, until he heard the sound of footsteps. When he blinked the next time, Bonpland was lying beside him, eyes closed.

Day after day the hours blended into one another; the sun hung low and fiery over the river, it hurt to look at it, the mosquitoes attacked from every side, even the oarsmen were too exhausted to talk. For a time they were followed by a metal disc that flew ahead of them and then behind them again, glided silently through the sky, disappeared, reappeared, came so close for minutes at a time that Humboldt with his telescope could see the curved reflection of the river, their boat, and even himself in its glistening surface. Then it raced away and never came back.

The weather was clear when they reached the end of the channel. To the north, granite-white mountains reared over their heads, and on the other side gra.s.sy plains stretched away into the distance. Humboldt fixed the setting sun with his s.e.xtant and measured the angle between the path of Jupiter and that of the moon as it wandered on its way.

Now finally, he said, the channel really existed.

On the way back downstream, said Mario, things would go faster. No need to fear the rapids any more and they could stick to the middle of the river. And that way they'd escape the mosquitoes.

He doubted it, said Bonpland. He didn't believe there was a place anywhere that was free of them. They had even worked their way into his memory. If he thought of La Roch.e.l.le, he found the town full of insects.

The appearance of the channel on maps, said Humboldt, would benefit this entire part of the world. It would be possible to transport goods across the continent, new centers of trade would spring up, enterprises no one could ever dream of before would become possible.

Bonpland had a fit of coughing. Tears came pouring down his face and he spat up blood. There was nothing here, he panted. It was hotter than h.e.l.l, there were nothing but stinks, mosquitoes, and snakes. There would never be anything here, and this filthy channel wouldn't make a bit of difference. Now could they please start back?

Humboldt stared at him for several moments. He hadn't decided that yet. The Esmeralda mission was the last Christian settlement before the wilderness. From there it would be a few weeks' journey through uncharted land to the Amazon. And n.o.body had yet discovered the Amazon's source.

Mario crossed himself.

On the other hand, said Humboldt reflectively perhaps it would be imprudent. The thing might be dangerous. If he died now, all the findings and scientific results would die with him. No one would ever know about them.

They shouldn't be put at risk, said Bonpland.

It would be insanity, said Julio.

Not to mention those! Mario pointed to the corpses. No one would ever get to see them!

Humboldt nodded. Sometimes one had to be able to hold back.

The Esmeralda mission consisted of six houses set between huge stands of bananas. There wasn't even so much as a missionary, just an old Spanish soldier to oversee fifteen families of Indians. Humboldt engaged some of the men to scratch the termites out of the planks of the boat.

The decision not to go further was the right one, said the soldier. In the wilderness behind the mission the people were uninhibited murderers. They had several heads, they were immortal, and the language they spoke was Cat.

Humboldt sighed. He was troubled. It angered him that now some other person would find the source of the Amazon. To distract himself, he studied the paintings of suns, moons, and intricately coiled snakes that were scratched into the cliff almost three hundred feet above the river.

The water level must have been higher long ago, said the soldier.

Not that high, said Humboldt. Evidently the cliffs were once lower. He had a teacher in Germany whom he was hardly going to dare tell about this.

Or there were flying people, said the soldier.

Humboldt smiled.

Lots of creatures flew, said the soldier, and n.o.body thought that was odd. While on the other hand n.o.body had ever seen a mountain rising.

People didn't fly said Humboldt. Even if he saw it, he wouldn't believe it.

And that was science?

Yes, said Humboldt, that was exactly what science was.

When the boat was repaired and Bonpland's fever had subsided, they started the return journey. As they said goodbye, the soldier asked Humboldt to put in a good word for him in the capital, so that he would be transferred elsewhere. It was unendurable. Just recently he'd found a spider in his food, and here he held both palms next to each other, that big! Twelve years, you couldn't expect that of anybody. Full of hope, he gave Humboldt two parrots as a gift and kept waving for a long time as they left.

Mario was right: going downstream was faster and out in midstream the insects weren't so aggressive. A short time later they reached the Jesuit mission, where Pater Zea greeted them with amazement.

He hadn't expected to see them again so soon. Remarkable robustness! And how had they got on with the cannibals?

He hadn't encountered any, said Humboldt.

Odd, said Pater Zea. Almost all the tribes up there were cannibals.

He couldn't confirm that, said Humboldt with a frown.

His people in the mission had been absolutely restless since their departure, said Pater Zea. They had been very stirred up by their ancestors being taken from their graves. Perhaps it would be better if they switched back into their old boat at once and continued their journey.

It looked as if a storm was coming, objected Humboldt.

This couldn't wait, said Pater Zea. Things were serious and he couldn't guarantee anything.

Humboldt thought for a moment. Then he said that they must obey authority.

The next afternoon clouds gathered. Thunder rumbled distantly over the plain, and suddenly they were plunged into the most cataclysmic storm they had ever encountered. Humboldt ordered the sail to be hauled down, and the chests, corpses, and animal cages unloaded onto a rocky island.

They'd had it coming, said Julio.

Rain had never yet hurt anybody, said Mario.

Rain hurt everyone, said Carlos. It could kill a person. It had already killed a lot of them.

They would never get home, said Julio.

And what if they did, said Mario. He'd never liked home.

Home, said Carlos, was death.

Humboldt instructed them to moor the boat over there against the other bank. They cast off and at that moment there was a surge in the river which carried the boat with it. For a moment, Bonpland and Humboldt saw one of the oars fly overboard, then the foaming water blocked their sight. Seconds later the boat flashed again a long way in the distance, then it and all four oarsmen were gone.

And now, asked Humboldt.

Since they were already here, said Bonpland, they could inspect the rocks.

A cavern led under one of the cataracts. Water thundered over their heads, and poured down in thick spouts through holes in the roof, but between them it was possible to stand dry. Hoa.r.s.ely Bonpland suggested they measure the temperature.

Humboldt seemed to be exhausted. He couldn't explain, but sometimes he felt close to just letting go. Slowly he occupied himself with the instruments. And now, they must get out again-the cavern could flood at any moment!

They raced back into the open.

The rain was coming down even harder. The water poured down over them by the bucketful, soaked their clothes, filled their shoes, and made the ground so slippery that it was hard to keep their footing. They sat down to wait. Crocodiles slid through the boiling water. The monkeys were roaring in their cages, pounding on the doors and pulling at the bars. The two parrots hung from their perches like dripping wet towels. One of them was staring miserably in front of it, while the other kept muttering curses in bad Spanish.

And what, asked Humboldt, if the boat didn't come back?

It would, said Bonpland, hush.

The rain came down even harder, as if the sky were trying to wash them off the island. The horizon flickered with lightning, and thunder broke over the cliffs on the other bank of the river, making the echo of each clap merge into the next.

This wasn't good, said Humboldt. They were surrounded by water, and they were sitting on the highest point. They must hope Mr. Franklin was wrong in his theory of lightning strikes.

Bonpland didn't say anything. He pulled out his flask and drank from it.

And he was surprised, said Humboldt, that there were so many lizards in among the rapids. It contradicted the suppositions of biology.

Bonpland took another swallow.

On the other hand there were known examples of fish that could even climb waterfalls.

Bonpland raised his eyebrows. The thunder had become a single, deafening, relentless uproar. At the other end of the island, not fifty feet away, something large and dark heaved itself onto the rock.

If they died, said Humboldt, n.o.body would know what had happened to them.

And if they did, said Bonpland, throwing away the empty flask, dead was dead.

Humboldt looked apprehensively at the crocodile. If they managed to return to the coast, he would send everything off to his brother: plants, maps, diaries, and collections. On two separate ships. Only then would he leave for the Cordilleras.

The Cordilleras?

Humboldt nodded. He would like to see the great volcanoes. The question of Neptunism had to get settled once and for all.

Soon they lost all sense of how long they had been waiting. Once a dead cow was propelled past them, then the lid of a piano, then a chessboard and a broken rocking chair. Humboldt carefully took out the clock, listened to its Parisian tick-tock, and peered at the hands through its waxed cloth cover. Either the storm had only begun a few minutes ago, or they'd been sitting fast for more than twelve hours, or then again perhaps the storm hadn't just wreaked chaos on river, forest, and sky, but on time itself; and simply washed away the hours, so that noon had now merged with the night and the following morning. Humboldt wrapped his arms around his knees.

Sometimes, he said, things made him wonder. By rights he should have been an inspector of mines. He would have lived in a German castle, had children, hunted deer on Sundays, and visited Weimar once a month. And now he was sitting here in the middle of a flood, under foreign stars, waiting for a boat that would not come.

Bonpland asked if he thought he'd made a mistake. Castle, children, Weimar-that would be something!

Humboldt took off his hat, which the rain had reduced to a useless lump. A bat rose from the forest, was caught by the storm, forced down by the rain, and after a few wing beats was dragged away by the current.

The thought had never occurred to him.

Not even for a second?

Humboldt leaned forward to look at the crocodile. Then he shook his head.

*Translator's note: Alert readers will recognize this as a scientist's prosaically exact rendition of Goethe's "Wanderer's Nightsong." It must be said that Goethe did it better.

THE S STARS.

After he had announced where and when the planet would appear next time and of course n.o.body had believed him, and the poor lump of rock had materialized out of the night punctual to the very day and the very hour, he became famous. Astronomy was a popular branch of science. Kings involved themselves in it, generals followed its development, princes endowed prizes for discoveries, and the newspapers reported on Maskelyne, Mason, Dixon, and Piazzi as if they were heroes. A man who enlarged the horizons of mathematics forever was a curiosity. But a man who discovered a star was a made man.

Yes, said the duke, now it was obvious. Now he'd done it.

Gauss, who didn't know how to respond to this, said nothing and bowed.

And what else, asked the duke after the usual pause for reflection. Personally? He had heard there was a desire to marry?

Yes indeed, said Gauss, yes.

The audience chamber had changed. The mirror on the ceiling, obviously no longer in fashion, had been replaced by gold leaf, and there were fewer burning candles. Even the duke looked different: he had aged. One eyelid sagged, his cheeks were puffy, and his heavy body seemed to press painfully hard on his knees.

A tanner's daughter, if he was correct?

That was correct, said Gauss, and smiled as he added Your Highness. What a form of address! What a place. He must get hold of himself lest he become disrespectful. Yet he liked this duke. He wasn't a bad man, he tried to do things right and by comparison with most people he wasn't even stupid.

A family, said the duke, must be fed.

It couldn't be denied, said Gauss. Which is why he had dedicated himself to Ceres.

The duke looked at him, puzzled.

Gauss sighed. Ceres, he said slowly and clearly, was the name given to the planetoid that Piazzi had been the first to sight and whose orbit he, Gauss, had worked out. He had only applied himself to the problem because of his wedding plans. He had known that he needed to achieve something practical now that people could understand, even people who were less ... He stopped. Even people who weren't interested in mathematics.

The duke nodded. Gauss remembered that he must not look at him directly, and dropped his gaze. He asked himself when the offer would finally be made. Always this boring toing and froing, always these circ.u.mlocutions. All this time wasted in chatter!

Along these lines, he had an idea, said the duke.

Gauss's eyebrows shot up, miming surprise. He knew the idea was Zimmerman's, who had spent hours talking to the duke.

Perhaps it had occurred to him that Brunswick still had no observatory.

None too soon, said Gauss.

Pardon?

It had occurred to him.

Now he was wondering if the town shouldn't have one. And Doctor Gauss, despite his youth, should become its first director. The duke put his hands on his hips, and his face broadened into a big smile. That would surprise him now, wouldn't it?

He wanted the t.i.tle of professor to go with it, said Gauss.

The duke said nothing.