Measuring the World (15 page)

Eventually he found the shed and was able to mark it too. It would probably be days before his assistants tore it down. Then he would be able to specify the angle against the baseline, and the net would be larger by one more triangle. That was how he must work his way up, step by step, all the way to the Danish border.

Soon all this would be trivial. People would go up in balloons and measure off distances on magnetic scales. They would send galvanic signals from one measuring point to the next and work out distances by the diminution of electrical intensity. But none of this helped him now, he had to do it with a measuring tape and theodolite in muddy boots, and also work out methods using pure mathematics to balance out inaccuracies of measurement: tiny errors added up every time to a catastrophe. There had never been an accurate map of this region or any other.

His nose itched; a gnat had bitten him. He wiped away the sweat. He thought of Humboldt's report on the mosquitoes of the Orinoco: humans and insects couldn't coexist over the long haul, not forever, not for all time. Just last week Eugen had been stung by a hornet. Presumably there must be a million insects for every human being. Even with great luck and skill, one couldn't exterminate them all. He sat down on a tree stump, pulled a hard crust of bread from his pocket, and bit into it cautiously. Seconds later the first wasps were buzzing round his head. Looking at it soberly, one had to assume the insects would win.

He thought about his wife Minna. He had never lied to her. First he had considered marrying Nina, but Bartels had convinced him in a long letter that he was not permitted to do that. So he had explained to Minna that he needed someone for the children, and for the housekeeping, and his mother, that he couldn't live alone, and besides she had been Johanna's best friend. Her engagement with some idiot had recently been broken off, she wasn't young any more, her chances of marrying weren't good. She had giggled in shame, left the room, come back in again, and pulled at her dress. Then she had cried a little and accepted. He thought of their wedding, of the fright it had given him to see her in white, her big teeth bared in a happy smile. That was when he recognized his mistake. The problem wasn't that he didn't love her. The problem was that he couldn't stand her. That her presence made him nervous and unhappy, that her voice sounded like a piece of chalk on a blackboard, that even the sight of her face in the distance made him feel lonely, and the very thought of her was enough to make him wish he were dead. Why had he become a land surveyor? To get away from home.

He noticed that he had lost his sense of direction again. He looked up. The treetops soared into a hazy sky. The forest floor under his feet was springy. He must be careful, one could easily slip and fall on the damp roots. He would have to find lunch with a farmer, and as always he would get stomach cramps from the bread soup and the fat milk. And every doctor in the country said that sweating wasn't healthy.

Hours later, Eugen found him wandering in the woods, cursing.

Why not till now, roared Gauss.

Eugen swore that he couldn't help being late, a farmer had sent him in the wrong direction, then he had missed the marking on the hut, it was too small, and a goat had been lying right in front. When he did notice the cross mark, the animal had attacked him. He had never been bitten by a goat before. He didn't know such a thing could happen.

Gauss sighed and stretched out his hand; expecting a slap on the ears, the boy flinched away. He had only intended to pat him on the shoulder. Anger rose up in Gauss; now he could no longer complete the gesture without embarrassing himself. So he had to give him a slap on the cheek. It landed a little too hard, and Eugen stared at him wide-eyed.

Why are you slouching there like that, said Gauss to justify the blow. Stand up straight! He took the heliotrope Eugen had collected from his hands. No doubt about it, the boy had Minna's intelligence and from his father only a tendency to melancholy. Gauss gently stroked the crystal mirror, the scales, and the swiveling telescope. People would use this invention for a long time! He wished, he said, that he could have demonstrated the instrument to the count.

What count?

Gauss groaned. Since childhood, he had had to accustom himself to other people's slowness. But he could not permit it in his own son. Stupid donkey, he said, and started walking. The very thought of how much there still was to do made him dizzy. Germany was not an urbanized country, it was peopled by farmers and a few eccentric aristocrats, and it consisted of thousands of woods and little villages. He felt he was going to have to visit every one of them.

T
HE
C
APITAL

In New Spain, the first reporter was waiting.

They had almost not made it that far, because the captain of the only ship to Acapulco had refused to allow foreigners on board. Passports were neither here nor there, he was from New Granada, Spain didn't interest him, and Urquijo's seal was meaningless, here in any case and now back there as well. Humboldt hadn't wanted to pay bribes out of principle; eventually they solved it by Humboldt giving the money to Bon-pland and Bonpland slipping it to the captain.

On the way, the volcano Cotopaxi had erupted, setting off a storm, and because the captain had ignored Humboldt's advice—he'd been doing this run for years, and it was going against the law of the sea to criticize your navigator, members of his crew could get hanged for doing that—they were driven way off-course. So that the storm wouldn't be useless, Humboldt had himself tied to the bow fifteen feet above the water, to measure the height of the waves out clear of the coast. He had hung there for a whole day, from first light until nightfall, the eyepiece of the sextant held to his face. Admittedly he was a little confused after it was over, but also all red, refreshed, and full of good cheer, and had been unable to grasp why the sailors took him for the Devil after that.

So—a man with a big mustache was standing at the gangway when they reached Acapulco. He introduced himself as Gómez, writing for numerous journals both in New Spain and in the mother country. He asked, humbly, if he might accompany the count.

Not count, said Bonpland. Merely baron.

Since he wished to write up his journey himself, this struck him as unnecessary, said Humboldt, casting a reproachful look at Bonpland.

Gómez promised he would be a shadow, a ghost, effectively invisible, but that he wanted to witness everything that needed witnesses.

Humboldt first of all established the geographical position of the capital. An exact atlas of New Spain, he dictated to Gómez as he lay on his back and aimed his telescope at the night sky, could encourage the settlement of the colonies, hasten the conquest of nature, and steer the fate of the country in a favorable direction. Apparently a German astronomer had calculated the path of a new wandering planetoid. Unfortunately it was impossible to know in exact detail, journals here were late in arriving. Sometimes he wished he were home. He lowered the telescope and asked Gómez to strike the last two sentences from his notes.

They headed into the mountains. Bonpland had recovered from his fever: he looked thinner, and pale despite the sun, and he had his first wrinkles and noticeably less hair than a few years before. A new thing was that he chewed his fingernails and coughed from time to time out of sheer habit. He was missing so many teeth now that eating was hard for him.

Humboldt, by contrast, seemed unchanged. With his old industriousness he was working on a topographic map of the continent. He drew in the vegetation zones, the incremental drop in air pressure, the layering of rock inside the mountain ranges. To distinguish between the stone formations, he crawled into holes in the rock so small that he got stuck more than once and Bonpland had to haul him out by the feet. He climbed a tree, a branch broke, and Humboldt fell on top of Gómez as he busily took notes.

Gómez asked Bonpland what kind of a person Humboldt was.

He knew him better than anyone, said Bonpland. Better than he knew his mother and father, better even than he knew himself. He hadn't sought this out, but that's the way it had happened.

And?

Bonpland sighed. He had absolutely no idea.

Gómez asked how long they'd been traveling together.

He didn't know, said Bonpland. Maybe a lifetime. Maybe longer.

Why had he taken all this on?

Bonpland looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

Why, repeated Gómez, had he taken all this on? Why was he the assistant—

Not the assistant, said Bonpland, the collaborator.

So why had he remained this man's collaborator through all their trials, for years on end?

Bonpland thought. Lots of reasons.

For example?

Well, said Bonpland, he'd simply always wanted to get away from La Rochelle. Then one thing had led to another. Time went by so ridiculously fast.

That, said Gómez, wasn't an answer.

He had to dissect cacti now. Bonpland turned away and briskly clambered up the little hill.

Meanwhile Humboldt was climbing down into the mine at Taxco. He spent some days observing the silver extraction, inspected the timber casings for the tunnels, hammered stone, and talked to the foremen. With his breathing mask and miner's lamp he looked demonic. Wherever he turned up, workers fell to their knees and begged God to help them. More than once the foremen had to shield him when stones were thrown.

The thing that fascinated him most was the workers’ genius for thievery. No one was allowed into the mine bucket before being completely searched. Nonetheless they always found ways to take clumps of earth with them. Humboldt asked if for reasons of scientific research he might take part in the body searches. He found lumps of silver in the men's hair, their armpits, their mouths, even their anuses. This kind of work was repugnant to him, he said to the mine superintendent, one Don Fernando García Utilla, who was watching him in a kind of dreamy state as he felt around a little boy's navel; but science and the welfare of the state required it. An orderly exploitation of the earth's deep treasures wasn't possible if one didn't counteract the selfish interests of the workers. He said the sentence again so that Gómez could keep up. Moreover it would be advisable to do some repairs on the mine itself. There were too many accidents.

They had enough people, said Don Fernando. Anyone who died could be replaced.

Humboldt asked if he'd read Kant.

A little, said Don Fernando. But he'd had his objections. He preferred Leibniz. He came of German stock, which was how he knew all these wonderful mad ideas.

The day of their departure there were two captive balloons stationary in the sky, round and shining in the sun. It was the fashion these days, Gómez explained, every man of means and courage wanted to fly at least once.

Years ago he had seen the first balloon over Germany, said Humboldt. It was a lucky man who went up then. When it was no longer God's miracle but before there was anything earthly about it. Like discovering a new star.

At Cuernavaca they were hailed by a young man from North America. He had a wonderfully coiffed beard, his name was Wilson, and he wrote for the
Philadelphia Chronicle.

It was all getting too much for him, said Humboldt.

Naturally the United States was in the shadow of its mighty neighbor, said Wilson. But even in this young country, the public had a growing fascination with General Humboldt and his deeds.

Mine inspector, said Humboldt, to head off Bonpland. Not general.

Outside the capital, Humboldt put on his grandest dress uniform. A delegation from the viceroy was awaiting them on a hill, bearing the keys to the city. Since Paris they had not set foot in any metropolis on this scale. There was a university, a free library, a botanical garden, an Academy of the Arts, and an Academy of Mines, patterned on the Prussian model and headed by Humboldt's former Freiberg fellow student Andrés del Río. The latter did not seem overjoyed to see him again. He put his hands on Humboldt's shoulders, held him at arm's length, and looked at him through slit eyes.

So it was true, he said in broken German. Despite all the talk.

What talk? Since the meeting with Brombacher, Humboldt hadn't needed his mother tongue. His German sounded wooden and uncertain, and he kept having to search for words.

Rumors, said Andrés. Along the lines that he was a spy for the United States. Or for Spain.

Humboldt laughed. A Spanish spy in the Spanish colonies?

But yes, said Andrés. They would not remain a colony for long. They knew that over there, and here they knew it even better.

Near the main square, excavations had begun on the remains of the temple destroyed by Cortés. Yawning workers stood around in the shadow of the cathedral, and the penetrating smell of tortillas hung in the air. On the ground were skulls with gems for eyes, dozens of obsidian knives, stones beautifully incised with pictures of human slaughter, and small clay figures with open ribcages. There was also a stone altar made of crudely carved skulls. The smell of maize troubled Humboldt, it made him feel sick. As he turned around he saw Wilson and Gómez with their notepads.

He asked them to leave him alone, he needed to concentrate.

This was how a great scientist worked, said Wilson.

Alone, so that he could concentrate, said Gómez. The world must know this!

Humboldt was standing in front of a gigantic stone wheel. A whirlwind of lizards, snakes’ heads, and human figures broken into geometric fragments. In the center, a face with outstretched tongue and lidless eyes. Slowly the chaos resolved itself; he recognized correspondences, images that enlarged one another, symbols repeated at minutely regulated intervals, and that encoded numbers. It was a calendar. He tried to draw it, but couldn't, and it had something to do with the face at the center. He asked himself where he had seen that look before. He thought of the jaguar, then of the boy in the mud hut. He stared uneasily at his drawing tablet. For this he would need a professional artist. He stared into the face, and it must have been the heat or the smell of maize that made him suddenly turn away.

Twenty thousand, said a worker in a pleased way. Twenty thousand people were sacrificed when the temple was dedicated. One after the other: heart out, head off. The rows of waiting victims had stretched all the way to the boundaries of the city.

My good man, said Humboldt, don't talk nonsense!

The worker looked at him, insulted.

Twenty thousand in one place, in one day was unthinkable. The victims would never tolerate it. The audience wouldn't tolerate it. What was more, the world order would not support it. If such a thing ever happened, the universe would come to an end.

The universe, said the worker, didn't give a shit.

In the evening, Humboldt dined with the viceroy. Andrés del Río and several members of the government were there, a museum director, some officers, and a small taciturn man with dark skin and unusually elegant clothes: the conde of Moctezuma, great-grandson of the last god-king and grandee of the Spanish Empire. He lived in a castle in Castile and had business in the colony for a few months. His wife, a tall beauty, looked at Humboldt with undisguised interest.

Twenty thousand was indeed correct, said the viceroy. Perhaps even more, calculations differed. Under Tlacaelel, the last high priest, the kingdom had become addicted to blood.

Not that the office of high priest was that desirable, said Andrés. Priests were obliged to mutilate themselves on a regular basis. For example, he begged the ladies’ pardon, on important feast days they let blood from their own genitals.

Humboldt cleared his throat and began to talk about Goethe, and also his elder brother, and their common interest in the languages of ancient peoples. They considered them to be a finer form of Latin, more pure, and closer to the origin of the world. He wondered if this might also be true of the Aztec language.

The viceroy looked questioningly at the conde.

He could not provide any such information, said the latter without looking up from his plate. He spoke only Spanish.

To change the subject, the viceroy asked Humboldt's opinion of the silver mines.

Ineffective, said Humboldt absentmindedly nothing but dilettantism and shoddy work. He closed his eyes for moment, and immediately the stone face appeared in front of him. Something had seen him, he could feel it, and would never forget him. Only the enormous surplus of silver, he heard himself saying, allowed an appearance of efficiency. The methods were antiquated, the theft quotient was gigantic, and the personnel were undereducated.

For a few moments there was silence. The viceroy threw a glance at Andrés del Río, who had turned pale.

Of course he was exaggerating, said Humboldt, shocked at himself. A lot of things had impressed him!

The conde looked at him with a faint smile.

New Spain needed a capable minister of mines, said the viceroy.

Humboldt asked whom he had in mind.

The viceroy said nothing.

Impossible, said Humboldt, raising his hands. He was a Prussian, he could not serve another country.

Only later in the evening did he manage to exchange a few words with the conde. He asked him quietly what he might know about an enormous stone calendar-wheel.

About five ells in radius?

Humboldt nodded.

With feathered snakes, and a staring face at the center?

Yes, cried Humboldt.

He didn't know a thing, said the conde. He wasn't an Indian, he was a Spanish grandee.

Humboldt enquired if nothing was passed down in the family.

The conde drew himself up to his full height, level with Humboldt's chest. His forefather had been kidnapped by Cor-tés. He had begged for his life like a woman, had moaned and wept and finally, after weeks of imprisonment, had changed sides. It was Aztecs who had stoned him to death. If he, the conde of Moctezuma, were to walk out now into the main square, he wouldn't stay alive for five minutes. The conde paused for thought. Perhaps, he said finally, nothing might happen at all. It had all been a long time ago, people scarcely remembered any more. He took his wife by the elbow and looked up at Humboldt with narrowed eyes. Everyone who met him searched his face for a glimpse of the god-king. Everyone who heard his name looked through him and into the past. Could Humboldt imagine what it was like to lead one's life as the shadow of a great relative?

Sometimes, yes, said Humboldt.

Passed down in the family, the conde repeated disapprovingly. He and his wife left without saying goodbye.

In the early morning, Humboldt noticed that Bonpland wasn't there. He immediately went in search of him. The streets were full of traders: one man was selling dried fruit, a second miraculous cures for every illness except arthritis, a third struck off his left hand with an axe, then handed it round for the crowd to examine while he waited in pain until he got it back again. He pressed it against the stump and dripped a tincture over it. Pale from loss of blood, he then banged on the table to show it had reattached itself. The bystanders applauded and bought his entire stock of tincture. A fourth had a miraculous cure for arthritis, a fifth cheaply printed illustrated brochures. One of them contained the story of a miracle-working priest, another the life of the Indian boy to whom the Madonna of Guadeloupe had appeared, a third the adventure of a German baron, who had steered a boat through the hell of the Orinoco and climbed the highest mountain in the world. The pictures were really not bad; Humboldt's uniform in particular was well captured.