Measuring the World (4 page)

Only after that did he go to Paris, where his brother was now living as a private person, to raise his dazzlingly intelligent children according to a strict system of his own. His sister-in-law couldn't stand him. He spooked her, she said, his constant activity struck her as a form of madness, and most of all, he seemed to her a distorted copy, a caricature even, of her husband.

He couldn't really contradict her, was her husband's reply, and it had never been easy to be so completely responsible for all his brother's follies, or be his brother's keeper.

At the Academy, Humboldt gave lectures on the conductivity of human nerves. He was standing right there in the drizzle on the trampled grass outside the city when the last section of longitude was measured that connected Paris to the Pole. As it was completed, everyone took off their hats and shook hands: one ten-millionth of the distance, captured in metal, would become the unit of all future linear measurements. People wanted to name it “the meter.” It always filled Humboldt with exultation when something was measured; this time he was drunk with enthusiasm. The excitement stopped him from sleeping for several nights.

He made enquiries about expeditions. A certain Lord Bristol wanted to go to Egypt, but soon landed in prison as a spy. Humboldt learned that the Directory wanted to send a group of researchers to the South Seas under the command of the great Bougainville, but Bougainville was as old as the hills, stone deaf, sat in a chair of state muttering into thin air and making gestures of command that nobody could make head or tail of. When Humboldt bowed to him, he blessed him with a pontifical hand movement and waved him away. The Directory replaced him with the officer Baudin. This man received Humboldt warmly and promised him everything. Shortly thereafter he disappeared along with all the money the state had given him.

One evening there was a young man sitting on the stairs of the house where Humboldt lived, drinking schnapps out of a silver flask; he cursed violently as Humboldt accidentally trod on his hand. Humboldt apologized and they got to talking. The man's name was Aimé Bonpland, and it turned out he had been hoping to sign on with Baudin. He was twenty-five, tall, a bit ragged, not much scarred by smallpox, and had only one missing tooth, right in front. The two of them looked at each other, and later neither of them would have been able to say whether they had shared an intimation that each was going to be the most important person in the other's life, or whether it just seemed that way in retrospect.

According to Bonpland, he came from La Rochelle and had endured the low skies of the provinces like the roof of a prison. Every day he had wanted to get out, had become a military doctor, but the university wouldn't recognize his title. While he was finishing his final exams, he had studied botany, he loved tropical plants, and now he had no idea what he was going to do. Back to La Rochelle—he'd rather be dead!

Humboldt enquired if he might embrace him.

No, said Bonpland, appalled.

They both had similar things behind them, said Humboldt, and the same ahead of them, and if they got together, who was going to stop them? He put out his hand.

Bonpland didn't understand.

They could go together, Humboldt explained, he needed a traveling companion and he had money.

Bonpland looked at him closely and screwed the lid on the flask.

They were both young, said Humboldt, and they had both made up their minds, and together they would become great. Or didn't Bonpland feel this way?

Bonpland didn't feel this way, but Humboldt's excitement was infectious. For this reason, and also because it was impolite to leave someone standing with outstretched hand, he followed suit, suppressing a yelp of pain: Humboldt's grip was stronger than he would have expected from the little man.

And now what?

Where else, said Humboldt, but Spain of course.

Not much later on, the brothers took leave of each other with the gestures of two monarchs. Humboldt was overcome with embarrassment when strands of his sister-in-law's hair brushed his cheek as they kissed goodbye. He asked if they would see each other again. Of course, said his elder brother. In this world or the next. In the flesh or in the light.

Humboldt and Bonpland mounted their horses and rode away. The amazed Bonpland noticed that his companion was able to refrain from turning round even once until brother and sister-in-law were out of sight.

On the way to Spain, Humboldt measured every single hill. He climbed every mountain. He hammered rock samples off every cliff face. Using his breathing machine he explored every cave back to its farthest chamber. Locals watching him fix the sun through the eyepiece of his sextant decided they were heathen worshippers of the stars and stoned them until they had to leap onto their horses and flee at a gallop—the first couple of times they escaped unscathed, but the third one left Bon-pland with a bad if superficial wound.

He began to wonder. Was it really necessary, they were just passing through after all, they were headed for Madrid, and it would be a lot quicker if they made straight there, dammit.

Humboldt thought. No, he said, he was sorry. A hill whose height remained unknown was an insult to the intelligence and made him uneasy. Without continually establishing one's own position, how could one move forward? A riddle, no matter how small, could not be left by the side of the road.

From now on they traveled at night so that he could do his measuring undisturbed. The coordinates on their maps needed to be fixed more precisely than had been done to date. These Spanish maps were inaccurate, Humboldt explained. One wanted to know where exactly one's horse was headed.

But we know that, cried Bonpland. This was the main high road and it went to Madrid. Who needed more than that?

It wasn't a question of the high road, Humboldt replied. It was a question of principle.

As they approached the capital the daylight took on a silvery tint. Soon there were almost no more trees. The middle of Spain was no basin, Humboldt explained. Once again the geographers were wrong. It was much more of a high plateau and had once been an island that towered up out of a prehistoric sea.

Obviously, said Bonpland, taking a pull from his flask. An island.

Madrid was run by the minister Mariano de Urquijo. Everyone knew he was sleeping with the queen. The king was powerless, his children despised him, the country thought him a joke. It couldn't be done without Urquijo, for the colonies were closed to foreigners, and there had never been an exception. Humboldt sought out the Prussian, the Belgian, the Dutch, and the French ambassadors. At night he learned Spanish.

Bonpland asked if he ever slept.

Not if he could help it, replied Humboldt.

After a month, he succeeded in being granted an audience with Urquijo in the Aranjuez palace. The minister was plump, nervous, and full of worries. Because of a misunderstanding, and perhaps also because he had once heard mention of Paracelsus, he thought Humboldt was a German doctor and enquired about an aphrodisiac.

Beg pardon?

The minister led him to a dark corner of the stone hall, laid a hand on his shoulder, and lowered his voice. It wasn't about satisfaction. His power over the land rested on his power over the queen. She was no longer a young woman, nor was he a young man now.

Humboldt blinked and looked out of the window. In the white midday glare the park spread out its unreal symmetry. A jet of water rose sluggishly over a Moorish fountain.

There was still much to do, said Urquijo. The Inquisition was still powerful, there was a long way to go before the abolition of slavery. People were plotting in every corner. He didn't know how long he could hold up. Literally. Was he making himself clear?

Slowly, balling his fists, Humboldt walked over to Urquijo's desk, dipped the quill into the ink, and wrote out a prescription. Cinchona bark from the depths of the Amazon, extract of poppies from central Africa, Siberian moss from the high plains, and a flower that had entered legend from Marco Polo's account of his travels. Make a strong decoction of the above, and draw off the third infusion. Drink slowly, once every two days. It would take years to gather all the ingredients. Hesitantly he handed Urquijo the piece of paper.

Never before had foreigners received such documents. Baron von Humboldt and his assistant were to receive every kind of support. They were to be sheltered, handled well, given access to whatever interested them, and could travel in any ship belonging to the crown.

Now, said Humboldt, they just had to break through the English blockade.

Bonpland asked why the documents talked about an assistant.

No idea, said Humboldt absentmindedly Some misunderstanding.

Was there time to correct it?

Humboldt said that was a bad idea. Passports like this were a gift from heaven. One didn't question them, one took them and set off.

They took passage on the first frigate that was leaving La Coruña for the tropics. The wind was blowing hard from the west and the seas were heavy. Humboldt sat on deck in a folding chair. He felt freer than he had ever been. Luckily, he wrote in his diary, he was never seasick. Then he had to throw up. But this was a question of will! With utmost concentration, interrupting himself only occasionally to hang over the rail, he wrote three sides on how the departure felt, the night falling over the sea, and the lights of the coast dwindling away in the darkness. He stood beside the captain until daybreak, watching him navigate. Then he fetched his own sextant. Round about noon he began to shake his head. At four in the afternoon he laid his equipment aside and asked the captain why he worked so imprecisely.

He had been doing it for thirty years, said the captain.

With all respect, said Humboldt, that astonished him.

One wasn't doing it for the mathematical exercise, said the captain, one wanted to cross the sea. So one followed the degree of latitude, more or less, and sooner or later, there one was.

But how could one live with it, said Humboldt, grown fractious because of his struggle with seasickness, when accuracy meant nothing?

Easy said the captain. And besides, this was a free ship. If someone didn't like something, he was welcome to leave.

Shortly before Tenerife, they sighted a sea monster. In the distance, almost transparent against the horizon, the body of a snake rose from the water, coiled itself twice, and stared at them with eyes that showed in the telescope as being made of gemstones. Filaments as thin as beard hair hung down around its jaws. Seconds after it submerged again, everyone thought they must have imagined it. Sea mists, perhaps, said Humboldt, or bad food. He decided not to write anything down.

The ship stayed anchored for two days while they took on fresh supplies. While they were still in harbor, they were surrounded by a group of loose women who reached for them and groped their bodies, laughing. Bonpland wanted to allow himself to be abducted by one of them, but Humboldt called him sharply back to order. One of the women stepped behind him, two naked arms wrapped themselves around his neck, and her hair cascaded over his shoulder. He tried to pull himself loose, but one of her hooped earrings had snagged in one of the clasps of his tailcoat. All the women laughed, and Humboldt didn't know where to put his hands. At last she jumped back, giggling. Bonpland was smiling, too, but when he saw Humboldt's expression, he turned serious again.

There's a volcano over there, said Humboldt, his voice shaking, there's not much time, we can't drag our feet.

They hired two guides and began to climb. Beyond a wood of chestnut trees were ferns, then a sandy plain full of whin and furze. Following Pascal, Humboldt worked out their altitude by measuring the air pressure. They spent the night in a cave that was still filled with snow.

Stiff with cold, they bedded down in the shelter of its entrance. The moon hung small and frozen in the sky, the occasional bat swooped past, and the shadow of the summit was etched on the cloud cover below them.

All of Tenerife, Humboldt explained to their guides, was a single mountain jutting up out of the sea. Didn't this interest them?

Frankly, said one of them, not that much.

Next morning they established that not even the guides knew where they were going. Humboldt asked if they had never even been up here before.

No, said the other guide. Why would they have?

The summit was encircled by a field of scree that made it almost impassable; every time they slipped, stones went rattling down into the valley. One of the guides lost his footing and broke the water bottles. Thirsty, with lacerated hands, they reached the summit. The crater of the volcano had been cold for centuries, its floor covered with petrified lava. The view stretched away to La Palma, Gomera, and the mist-shrouded mountains of Lanzarote. While Humboldt examined the peaks with barometer and sextant, the hostile guides huddled on the ground, and Bonpland, chilled to the bone, stared off into the distance.

In the late afternoon, parched, they reached the gardens of Orotava. Humboldt, stupefied, was face to face with the first plants of the New World. The sight of a hairy spider sunning itself on the trunk of a palm tree filled him with shock and delight. That was when he first noticed the dragon tree.

He turned around, but Bonpland had vanished. The tree was gigantic, and certainly thousands of years old. It had been here before the Spaniards, and before the ancient tribes. It had been here before Christ and Buddha, Plato and Tamburlaine. Humboldt held his watch up to his ear. It carried time within itself as it ticked away, while this tree warded off time: a crag against which its river broke. Humboldt touched the deeply corrugated trunk. High above, the branches opened out, and the twittering of hundreds of birds pierced the air. Tenderly, he stroked the bark. Everything died, every human being, every animal, every moment. Only one thing endured. He laid his cheek against the wood, then drew back and glanced around horrified in case anyone had seen him. He quickly wiped away his tears and went in search of Bonpland.