Measuring the World (11 page)

The curare master was a dignified, gaunt, priestly figure. This, he explained, was how the twigs were peeled, this was how the bark was rubbed on a stone, this was how—careful— the juice was poured into a funnel made from a banana leaf. The most important thing was the funnel. He doubted that Europe had produced anything so ingenious.

Well, yes, said Humboldt, it was certainly a perfectly respectable funnel.

And this, said the master, was how the stuff was evaporated in a clay vessel, please pay attention, even watching it was dangerous, and this was how the concentrated infusion of the leaves was added. And this, he held the little clay dish out to Humboldt, was now the strongest poison in this world and the other world too. It would kill angels!

Humboldt asked if one could drink it.

It was put on arrows, said the master. Nobody had ever tried to drink it. They weren't insane.

But people ate the animals killed by it right away?

Yes, said the master. That was the point.

Humboldt looked at his index finger. Then he stuck it in the bowl and licked it clean.

The master screamed.

Not to worry, said Humboldt. His finger was intact and so was the inside of his mouth. If one had no wounds, the stuff must not be deadly. The substance had to be researched, so he had to take the risk. But he must excuse himself, he was feeling a little weak. He sank to his knees and then remained sitting on the ground for some time, rubbing his forehead and humming to himself. Then he stood up with great care and bought all the master's supplies from him.

The onward journey was delayed for a day. Humboldt and Bonpland sat side by side on a fallen tree. Humboldt's eyes were fixed on his shoes, and Bonpland endlessly chanted the first line of a French counting rhyme. They knew now how curare was prepared, and together they had proved that one could ingest an astonishing amount by mouth without suffering worse effects than some dizziness and hallucinations, but that if even the tiniest amount was dripped into the blood, unconsciousness resulted and even a fifth of a gram was sufficient to kill a monkey, though the monkey could be saved by blowing air hard into its mouth for as long as the poison paralyzed its muscles. After an hour the effect would wear off, its capacity to move would gradually be restored, and there would be no ongoing effect except the ape would feel a bit sad. So they thought it must be a delusion when the bushes suddenly parted and a man with a mustache, wearing a linen shirt and a leather jacket, stepped out in front of them, sweaty but composed. He seemed to be in his midthirties, his name was Brombacher, and he was from Saxony. He didn't have plans and he wasn't going anywhere, he said, he just wanted to see the world.

Humboldt said why didn't he come with them.

Brombacher said thank you but no. One had more experiences on one's own and besides, home was full of nothing but Germans.

Stumblingly out of practice in his mother tongue, Humboldt asked which town he was from, how high the church spire was, and how many people lived there.

Brombacher replied calmly and politely: Bad Kürthing, fifty-four feet, eight hundred and thirty-two souls. He offered them dirty flat cakes of dough; they declined. He told them about the wild game, the animals, and the lonely nights in the forest. After a short time he stood up, raised his hat to them, trudged off, and the foliage closed behind him. Among all the absurdities in his life, Humboldt wrote next day to his brother, this meeting was the most extraordinary. He would never be quite sure whether it had really happened or whether it had been a last aftereffect of the poison on their imaginations.

Toward evening, the curare had passed off sufficiently for them to be able to move around, and they even felt hungry. The inhabitants of the mission were turning spits over a fire with the head of a child, three tiny hands, and four little feet with what were clearly toes. Not human, explained the missionary. They stopped that wherever they could. Just little monkeys from the forest.

Bonpland refused to taste any. Humboldt hesitated, but took a hand and bit into it. It didn't taste bad but he didn't feel well. Would people be offended if he didn't eat it all?

The missionary shook his head, mouth full. Nobody would notice!

In the night, animal noises kept them awake. The imprisoned monkeys hammered against the bars and kept on screaming. Humboldt wrote the beginning of a treatise on night sounds of the forest and animal existence, which was to be understood as the continuation of an ongoing struggle, and consequently, the opposite of paradise.

He thought, said Bonpland, that the missionary had lied.

Humboldt looked up.

The man had been living here a long time, said Bonpland. The forest exerted enormous power. It must have been awkward for him, which is why he'd made his assertion. People here ate human flesh, was what Pater Zea had said, and everyone knew it. What could one missionary do against that?

Nonsense, said Humboldt.

No, said Julio, that sounded right.

Humboldt was silent for a moment. He begged their pardon, but they were all completely exhausted. He quite understood. But if any one of them said again that the godson of the Duke of Brunswick had eaten human flesh, he would reach for his weapon.

Bonpland laughed.

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 grassy plains stretched away into the distance. Humboldt fixed the setting sun with his sextant 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 Rochelle, 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 hell, 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 nobody 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 nobody thought that was odd. While on the other hand nobody 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. Hoarsely 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.