Measuring The World Part 14

Different things, this and that. This chamberlain in particular advised the king on important decisions, if his experience extended to some field in which it might be of use. He was often asked to be there as adviser during diplomatic conversations. The king desired him to be present at almost every dinner. He was completely obsessed by information about the New World.

So one was paid to eat and have chats?

The secretary sn.i.g.g.e.red, went pale, and asked pardon, he had a cough.

The real tyrants, said Eugen into the silence, weren't the laws of nature. There were powerful movements afoot in the country, freedom wasn't just a word from the likes of Schiller.

Donkeys' movements, said Gauss.

He had always got on better with Goethe, said Humboldt. Schiller had been closer to his brother.

Donkeys, said Gauss, who would never come to anything. They might inherit some money, and a good name, but never any intelligence.

His brother, said Humboldt, had recently completed a profound study of the works of Schiller. As for himself, literature had never meant that much to him. Books without numbers made him uneasy. And he'd always been bored in the theater.

Quite right, exclaimed Gauss.

Artists were too quick to forget their task, which was to depict reality. Artists held deviation to be a strength, but invention confused people, stylization falsified the world. Take stage sets, which didn't even try to disguise the fact that they were made of cardboard, English paintings, with backgrounds swimming in an oily soup, novels that wandered off into lying fables because the author tied his fake inventions to the names of real historical personages.

Disgusting, said Gauss.

He was working on a catalogue of features of plants and natural phenomena which would be legally obligatory for all painters to consult. Something similar for dramatic poetry would be a good thing. He was thinking of lists of the characteristics of important people, and authors would no longer have the freedom to deviate from them. If Monsieur Daguerre's invention were perfected one day the arts would become irrelevant anyway.

That one writes poems. Gauss tilted his chin at Eugen.

Really, asked Humboldt.

Eugen went red.

Poems and all kinds of nonsense, said Gauss. Since he was a child. He didn't show them to people, but sometimes he was stupid enough to leave the pieces of paper lying about. He was a miserable scientist, but an even worse artist.

They were being lucky with the weather, said Humboldt. Last month had been extremely wet, but now they could hope for a beautiful fall.

He was a parasite. At least his brother was in the military. But this one hadn't learned anything or had any skills. Poems, if you please!

He was studying rights, said Eugen quietly. And mathematics.

And how, said Gauss. A mathematician who didn't recognize a differential equation until it bit him in the foot. That studying per se didn't amount to anything was common knowledge: he had had to stare at the blank faces of young people for decades. But he'd expected more from his own son. Why did it have to be mathematics?

It wasn't what he'd wanted, said Eugen. He'd been forced!

Oh, and by whom?

The changeable weather and seasons, said Humboldt, were what made the beauty of these lat.i.tudes. In contrast to the sheer variety of tropical flora, what Europe offered was the yearly drama of a reawakening creation.

By whom indeed, cried Eugen. And who had employed an a.s.sistant for all the measuring?

Magnificent a.s.sistance. He had had to remeasure mile upon mile because of all the errors.

Errors in the fifth place after the decimal point! They had absolutely no effect, they were utterly irrelevant.

A moment please, said Humboldt. Errors in measurement were never irrelevant.

And the damaged heliotrope, said Gauss. Was that irrelevant too?

Measuring was a high art, said Humboldt. A responsibility that no one could take lightly.

Two heliotropes, come to that, said Gauss. He'd dropped the other one, but only because some idiot had sent him down the wrong path.

Eugen leapt to his feet, reached for his stick and his red cap, and ran out. The sound of the door banging after him echoed through the castle.

That was what you got, said Gauss. Grat.i.tude was a lost concept.

Of course things weren't easy with the young, said Humboldt. But one also should not be too strict, sometimes a little encouragement was more effective than reproach.

If there was nothing there, nothing would become of it. And as for magnetism, the question as posed was wrong: it wasn't a matter of how many magnets the earth contained. Whichever way you looked at it, there were two poles and a single magnetic field that could be described in terms of the force of the magnetism and the angle of inclination of the needle.

He had always traveled with a magnetic needle, said Humboldt. He had collected more than ten thousand measurements.

G.o.d in Heaven, said Gauss. Carrying the thing around wasn't enough, you had to think. think. The horizontal component of magnetic force could be represented as the function of geographical lat.i.tude and longitude. The vertical component was best worked out using a power series following the reciprocal earth's radius. Simple functions of a sphere. He laughed softly. The horizontal component of magnetic force could be represented as the function of geographical lat.i.tude and longitude. The vertical component was best worked out using a power series following the reciprocal earth's radius. Simple functions of a sphere. He laughed softly.

Functions of a sphere. Humboldt smiled. He hadn't understood a single word.

He was out of practice, said Gauss. At twenty he hadn't needed a day for children's stuff like that, now he needed to set aside a week. He tapped his forehead. This up here didn't work the way it once had. He wished he had drunk curare back then. The human brain died a little every day.

One could drink as much curare as one wanted, said Humboldt. One had to drip it into the bloodstream for it to be fatal.

Gauss stared at him. Was that true?

Of course it was true, said Humboldt indignantly. He was the one who'd effectively discovered that.

Gauss was silent for a moment. What, he asked eventually, really did happen to this Bonpland person?

It was time! Humboldt got to his feet. The reception wouldn't wait. After his introductory speech there would be a small reception for the guest of honor. House arrest!

Pardon?

Bonpland was in Paraguay under house arrest. After their return he'd been unable to settle down in Paris. Fame, alcohol, women. His life had lost its clarity and direction, the one thing that must never happen to anybody. For a time he'd been the director of the imperial gardens, and a superb breeder of orchids. After the fall of Napoleon he had gone across the ocean again. He had an estate and a family over there, but he had attached himself to the wrong side in one of the civil wars, or perhaps it was the right one, but in any case it was the losing one. A crazed dictator named Francia, a doctor to boot, had confined him to his estate under permanent threat of death. Not even Simon Bolivar had been able to do anything for Bonpland.

Horrible, said Gauss. But who was the fellow anyway? He'd never heard of him.

THE F FATHER.

Eugen Gauss was wandering through Berlin. A beggar held out an open hand, a dog whimpered at his leg, a hackney horse coughed in his face, and a watchman ordered him not to be ambling about. On a street corner he fell into conversation with a young priest, from the provinces like him, and very intimidated.

Mathematics, said the priest, interesting!

Oh, said Eugen.

His name was Julian, said the priest.

They wished each other well and said goodbye.

A few steps further, a woman addressed him. His knees went weak with fright, for he'd heard of such things. He hurried on, didn't turn round when she ran after him, and never realized that all she had wanted to say to him was that he had dropped his cap. He drank two gla.s.ses of beer in a tavern. Arms crossed, he looked at the wet tabletop. He had never felt so sad. Not because of his father, because he was almost always that way, and not because of his loneliness. It was something to do with the city itself. The crowds, the size of the houses, the dirty sky. He composed some lines of poetry. They didn't please him. He stared straight ahead until two students in loose trousers and with fas.h.i.+onably long hair came to sit at his table.

Gottingen, asked one of the students. A notorious place. Things were blowing up there.

Eugen nodded conspiratorially although he had no idea what they were talking about.

But it'll come, said the other student, freedom, in spite of everything.

It would certainly come, said Eugen.

Right away, said the first, and like a thief in the night.

Now they knew they had something in common.

An hour later, they were on the way. As was the custom among students, Eugen went ahead with one of them, arm in arm, while the other followed thirty paces behind, so that they wouldn't be stopped by any gendarme. Eugen couldn't understand how anything could be so far: always more new streets, always another crossroads, and even the sheer numbers of people also walking seemed inexhaustible. Where were they all going, and how could anyone live like that?

Humboldt's new university, explained the student next to Eugen, it was the best in the world, organized like no other and with the most famous teachers in the country. The state feared it like h.e.l.l itself.

Humboldt had founded a university?

The elder one, the student explained. The respectable one. Not the one who was a lackey of the French and had squatted in Paris for the duration of the war. His brother had openly summoned him to arms, but he'd behaved as if the Fatherland meant nothing. During the occupation, he'd had a plaque put up in front of his castle in Berlin, saying no plundering, the owner was a member of the Paris Academy. Disgraceful!

The street went steeply uphill, then gradually downward again. Two young men stood in front of a door and asked for the pa.s.sword.

Free in the fight.

That was from last time.

The second student came up to them. The two of them whispered together. Germania?

That was ages ago.

German and free?

Oh my G.o.d. The guardians exchanged a look, and told them to go in anyway.

They went downstairs and into a cellar room that smelled of mold. Crates stood on the floor and there were wine casks piled in the corners. The two students turned up the lapels of their coats to reveal black and red c.o.c.kades st.i.tched through with gold. They opened a trapdoor in the floor. A narrow stair led down into another, deeper cellar.

Six rows of chairs in front of a rickety standing desk. Black and red pennants hung on the walls, and about twenty students were already waiting. All had sticks, some were wearing Polish caps, others Old German hats. Several of them were dressed up in home-tailored wide trousers with broad medieval belts. Torches threw dancing shadows on the walls. Eugen sat down, feeling faint from the bad air and the excitement. They were saying, someone whispered, that "he" was coming himself. Him, or someone like him, they didn't know, he had been arrested in Freiburg at the River Unstrut, yet apparently he was still wandering the country incognito. Unimaginable, if he was here in person. Your heart would explode if you saw him in the flesh.

More and more students came in, always in twos, always arm in arm, most of them arguing about the pa.s.sword which clearly none of them had known. Here and there one of them leafed through a book of poetry or German Gymnastics. German Gymnastics. Some moved their lips in prayer. Eugen's heart was thumping. All the seats had been filled long ago, any new arrival had to squeeze himself into a corner. Some moved their lips in prayer. Eugen's heart was thumping. All the seats had been filled long ago, any new arrival had to squeeze himself into a corner.

A man came down the stairs with a heavy tread, and everything went quiet. He was thin, and very tall, with a bald head and a long gray beard. It was, somehow not to Eugen's surprise, their neighbor from the next table in the inn, who had b.u.t.ted into their argument with the gendarme the day before. Slowly, arms swinging, he made his way to the desk. There he stretched, waited until a student, who was having trouble with his trembling hands and had to try more than once, lit the candles on it, and then said in a high-pitched, dry voice: You must not know my name!

Way at the back a student groaned. Otherwise it was completely still.

The bearded man raised his arm, waved it, pointed at it with his other hand, and asked if anyone recognized what this was.

No one answered, no one breathed. So he said it himself: muscles.

You are the brave, he went on after a long pause, you are the young, you are the strong, and you must become stronger still! He cleared his throat. If you want to become thinkers, if you want to read deep, all the way to fundamentals, if you want to touch the very essence of things, you must discipline your bodies. Thinking minus muscles is weakness, it's slack, it's insipid, it's French. A child prays for the Fatherland, a young man is wild for it, but the man fights for it and suffers. He bent over and stayed that way for a moment, before pulling up his trouser leg into regular folds. Here too! He thumped his fist on his calf. Pure and strong, ready to do knee bends or leg extensions, anyone who wanted could come and feel it. He straightened up again and glared around the room for some seconds before thundering: This leg is strong. Germany must be like this leg!

Eugen managed to steal a glance at his neighbors. Several of the audience were gaping, many were in tears, one had closed his eyes and was trembling. His neighbor was chewing his fingers in excitement. Eugen blinked. The air was now even worse and the shadow play of the torches made him think he was part of a far larger crowd. He forced himself to swallow down his own tears.

Nothing must force a comrade to bow, said the bearded man. The enemy must be met face to face, chest to chest. What was oppressing the people was not the strength of the enemy but their own weakness. They were tied and bound. He struck his chest with the flat of his hand. They couldn't breathe, they couldn't move, they didn't know what to do with their own G.o.d-given will and brave innocence. Princes, French pests, and priests held them in their power, keeping them coddled and lulled into thumb-sucking sleep. But comrades.h.i.+p meant standing together, pure and devout. It meant thinking! He made a fist and struck his forehead. Thinking would make a holy alliance that no Satan could tear apart. Eventually it would lead to the true German church and the conquest of Being. But what did this mean, comrades? He stretched his arms wide, squatted down slowly, then up again. This signified taking control of the body, schooling it-and up, and down, and climb that rope, and stretch and bend-until one was made whole. But where were things today? Just now, while he was traveling incognito, he had been witness to an old man and a student, a German man and his son, two loyal men, being hara.s.sed by the police, because they didn't have papers with them. He had courageously interfered, as a German must, and praise be, he had overwhelmed the tyrant bailiffs. Daily one encountered injustice, of every kind and everywhere, and who should defend against it if not good comrades, who had renounced alcohol and women, and dedicated themselves to strength, Germany's monks, fresh and G.o.dly, gay and free? The men of France had been driven out, now it was the princes' turn, the Unholy Alliance would not stand for long, philosophy must seize reality and cudgel a way through, it was time to take command again! He rocked up against the desk and Eugen heard himself and the others cheering. The bearded man stood calmly, very straight, his piercing eyes fixed on the crowd. Suddenly his expression changed, and he took a step back.

Eugen felt a draft. The yelling died away. Five men had walked in: a little old man and four gendarmes.

Good G.o.d, said the man next to Eugen. The proctor.

He knew it, said the old man to the gendarmes. All anyone had to do was to watch them all walking around in twos. Luckily they were really that stupid.

Three gendarmes stayed standing in front of the stairs, while one went to the speaker's desk. The bearded man suddenly looked a lot thinner and a lot shorter. He raised a hand over his head, but the threatening gesture had the wrong effect and he was immediately handcuffed.

He wouldn't give way, he cried as the policeman led him to the steps, not to force and not to pleas. His valiant comrades would not permit it. This was the moment when the storm would break. Then, as he was being shoved up the stairs: it was a misunderstanding, he could explain it. Then he was gone.

He was going to fetch reinforcements, said the bailiff, and hurried up the steps.

No talking, said one of the gendarmes. Not a word from anyone to anyone. Otherwise they wouldn't believe what would land on their heads.

Eugen began to cry.

He wasn't the only one. Several young men were sobbing uncontrollably. Two of them who had leapt to their feet sat down again. Fifty students with k.n.o.bbed sticks, thought Eugen, and three policemen. Only one of them had to attack and the others would follow. And what if it was him? He could do it. For a few seconds he imagined it. Then he knew he was too much of a coward. He wiped his tears away and stayed sitting in silence while the bailiff came back with twenty gendarmes under the command of a big officer with a walrus mustache.

Take them, the officer ordered, first interrogation in the lockup to get the facts, tomorrow hand-over to the competent authorities.

A slight young boy went down on his knees to him, clasped his boots, and begged for leniency. The officer stared at the ceiling, upset and embarra.s.sed, until a gendarme hauled the boy away. Eugen used the moment to tear a page out of his notebook and write the news to his father. Before he was handcuffed he was able to crumple the paper and hide it in his fist.

Police wagons were waiting on the street. The prisoners sat squashed together on long benches with gendarmes standing behind them. By chance Eugen found himself sitting diagonally opposite the bearded man, who was staring dully into s.p.a.ce.

Should we make a break for it, whispered a student.

It was a misunderstanding, the bearded man replied, his name was Kosselrieder, he came from Silesia, and he'd stumbled into this. A gendarme hit him on the shoulder with his iron rod and he subsided, muttering quietly to himself.

Anyone else, asked the gendarme.

n.o.body moved. The doors shut with a crash and they set off.

THE E ETHER.

Eyes half-closed, Humboldt talked of stars and currents. His voice was quiet, but it was audible throughout the reception hall. He stood before the gigantic stage set of a night sky, with stars on it that formed concentric circles: Sc.h.i.n.kel's scenery for The Magic Flute The Magic Flute, re-erected for this occasion. Between the stars someone had inscribed the names of German scientists: Buch, Savigny Hufeland, Bessel, Klaproth, Humboldt, and Gauss. The hall was filled to the last seat: monocles and spectacles, a myriad of uniforms, softly waving fans, and in the center box, the motionless figures of the crown prince and his wife. Gauss was sitting in the first row.