Measuring the World (9 page)

The river, said Julio, didn't tolerate anyone. Before Aguirre had come this way, he had been sane. Only once he got here did he have the idea of declaring himself emperor.

A madman and a murderer, said Bonpland, the first explorer of the Orinoco. That made sense!

This sad man didn't explore a thing, said Humboldt. Any more than a bird explores the air or a fish explores water.

Or a German explores humor, said Bonpland.

Humboldt looked at him with a frown.

Just a joke, said Bonpland.

But an unfair one. Prussians could laugh. People laughed a lot in Prussia. Just think of Wieland's novels or those outstanding comedies of Gryphius. Even Herder knew how to set up a good joke.

He was sure, said Bonpland wearily.

Then that was all right, said Humboldt, scratching the dog's insect-bitten and bleeding coat.

They started up the Orinoco. The river was so wide that it was like sailing on the sea: far in the distance, like a mirage, forests showed on the other bank. Now there were hardly any waterbirds. The sky seemed to shimmer in the heat.

After some hours, Humboldt discovered that fleas had buried themselves in the skin of his toes. They had to interrupt their journey; Bonpland classified plants, Humboldt sat in a camp chair, his feet in a bucket of vinegar, and mapped the course of the river.
Pulex penetrans
, the common sand flea. He would describe it, but nowhere in his diary was he going to mention that he himself had fallen victim to it.

It's not that bad, said Bonpland.

Humboldt said he'd thought a lot about the rules of fame. If it was known that a man had had fleas living underneath his toenails, nobody would take him seriously. No matter what his achievements had been.

Next day they had a mishap. They had reached a particular broad expanse where both banks were invisible when the wind reversed the sail against the direction of the boat, the boat dipped, a wave slopped in, and dozens of pieces of paper were floating away in the water. The boat tilted further, the water reached their knees, the dog howled, and the men wanted to jump overboard. Humboldt leapt up; in a flash he loosened the belt with the chronometer and barked in an officer's voice that nobody was to move. The current let the boat drift, the sail flopped uselessly to and fro, and the gray backs of several crocodiles came closer.

Bonpland volunteered to swim to shore and get help.

There was no help, said Humboldt, holding the belt up over his head. In case no one had noticed, this was primeval forest. The only thing to do was wait.

It was true: at the last moment the sail caught the wind and the boat slowly righted itself.

Bail the boat, yelled Humboldt.

The oarsmen cursed one another and went to work with pots, caps, and drinking mugs. In short order, the boat was back on an even keel. Pieces of paper, dried plants, quill pens, and books were all swimming in the river. Off in the distance a top hat seemed to be hurrying to escape.

Sometimes he despaired, said Bonpland, that he would ever get home.

That was just being realistic, replied Humboldt, checking to see if any of the timepieces were damaged.

They came to the infamous cataracts. The river was full of rocks and the water bubbled as if it were boiling. It was impossible to advance any further with the laden boat. There was a mission there, and the Jesuits, heavily armed and stocky, more like soldiers than priests, received them mistrustfully. Humboldt sought out the head of the mission, a lean man with a fever-jaundiced face, and showed him his passport.

Good, said Pater Zea. He called an order through the window and shortly thereafter six monks brought in two natives. These excellent men, said Pater Zea, who would know the cataracts better than anyone, had volunteered of their own accord to bring a suitable boat through the rapids. Please would the guests wait until the boat was ready further down, then they could continue their journey. He made a gesture; his people led the two natives out and shackled their ankles.

He was most grateful, said Humboldt carefully, but he couldn't allow it.

Oh nonsense, cried Pater Zea, it didn't mean a thing, it was just because these people were erratic. They volunteered themselves and then all of a sudden they were nowhere to be found. And they all looked alike!

The boat for the next stage of their journey was brought. It was so narrow that they would have to sit one behind the other on the chests that held their instruments.

Better a month in hell than this, said Bonpland.

He would have both, promised Pater Zea. Hell and the boat.

In the evening they were served the first good dinner in weeks, and even Spanish wine. Through the window they could hear the oarsmen interrupting one another as they argued about the proper outcome of a story.

He had the impression, said Humboldt, that storytelling went on here all the time. What was the point of this eternal singsong recital of totally invented lives, which didn't even have a moral in them?

They had tried everything, said Pater Zea. All colonies banned the writing down of made-up stories. But people were stubborn and even the holy power of the Church had its limits. It was something to do with the country. He wondered if the baron had met the famous La Condamine.

Humboldt shook his head.

But he had, said Bonpland. An old man who fought with the waiters in the Palais Royal.

That was him, said the pater. There were one or two old men around here who remembered him. And a woman, who went into a decline as the result of some powder from a bad medicine man, but couldn't die, a horrible sight, he might add. Their stories were worth hearing. Might he tell them?

Humboldt sighed.

Back then, said Pater Zea, the Academy had sent out their three best surveyors, La Condamine, Bouguer, and Godin, to establish the length of the meridian of the equator. The hope had been, if only on aesthetic grounds, to disprove Newton's ugly theory that the earth was flattening itself by its own rotation. Pater Zea stared fixedly at the table for a few seconds. An enormous insect landed on his forehead. Instinctively Bonpland reached out his hand, stopped, and then pulled it back again.

To measure the equator, Pater Zea continued. In other words to draw a line where no line had been before. Had they looked around outside? Lines happened somewhere else. His bony arm pointed to the window, the bushes, the plants covered in swarms of insects. Not here!

Lines happened everywhere, said Humboldt. They were an abstraction. Wherever there was space as such, there were lines.

Space as such was elsewhere, said Pater Zea.

Space was universal!

Being universal was an invention. And space as such happened where surveyors put it. Pater Zea closed his eyes, lifted his wineglass, and set it down again without drinking from it. The three men had worked with extraordinary precision. Nonetheless, their data never matched. Point zero two degrees of angle on La Condamine's instrument was point zero three on Bouguer's, and half a degree in Godin's telescope was one and a half in La Condamine's. In order to draw their line, they were advised to use astronomical measurements, since practical, portable clocks like this, and here he eyed the chronometer on Humboldt's belt with a mocking glance, didn't yet exist. Things weren't yet used to being measured. Three stones and three leaves were not yet the same number, fifteen grams of peas and fifteen grams of earth not yet the same weight. Then add the heat, the damp, the mosquitoes, the never-ending noises of animals fighting. An unfathomable, pointless rage had overcome the men. The perfectly mannered La Condamine had misplaced Bouguer's measuring instruments, Bouguer in turn had broken Godin's pencils. There were daily battles, until Godin drew his sword and staggered away into the primeval forest. Two weeks later, the same thing happened between Bouguer and La Condamine. Pater Zea folded his hands. Imagine! Such civilized men, with full perukes, lorgnons, and scented handkerchiefs! La Condamine held out the longest. Eight years in the forest, protected by a mere handful of fever-ridden soldiers. He had cut trails which grew back again as soon as he turned his back, felled trees which resprouted the next night, and yet, little by little, with stiff-necked determination, he had forcibly imposed a web of numbers over reluctant nature. He had drawn triangles which gradually approximated a sum of a hundred and eighty degrees and triangulated arcs whose curves finally stood strong even in the shimmering heat. Then he received a letter from the Academy. The battle was lost, the proof followed Newton, the earth was indeed oblate, all his work had been in vain.

Bonpland took a large mouthful from the wine bottle. He seemed to have forgotten that there were wineglasses and that this wasn't done. Humboldt punished him with a glare.

And so, said Pater Zea, the beaten man went home. Four months to travel down a still-nameless river, which he only later christened the Amazon. On the way he painted maps, gave mountains names, tracked the temperature, and worked out the species of fishes, insects, snakes, and humans. Not because it interested him, but in order to stay sane. Afterwards, back in Paris, he never talked about the things that one or another of his soldiers remembered: the throaty sounds and perfectly aimed poisoned arrows that came flying out of the undergrowth, the nocturnal glows, but above all the minuscule displacements of reality, when the world crossed over into otherworldliness for a few moments. At such times the trees looked like trees and the slowly swirling water looked like water, but it was mimicry, it was something foreign, and it caused a shudder. It was at this time that La Condamine also found the channel that mad Aguirre had spoken of. The channel connecting the two greatest rivers on the continent.

He would prove its existence, said Humboldt. All great rivers were connected. Nature was a unity.

Oh yes? Pater Zea shook his head skeptically. Years later, when La Condamine, long since a member of the Academy and old and famous, was able (mostly) to wake from sleep without screaming and once again to make himself believe in God, he declared the channel to be an error. Great rivers, he said, had no inland connection. Such a thing would be a disorder of nature, and unworthy of a great continent. Pater Zea fell silent for a moment, then got to his feet and bowed. Dream well, Baron, and wake in good health!

Early next morning they were jolted from sleep by howls of pain. One of the men chained up in the courtyard was being beaten with leather whips by two priests. Humboldt ran out and asked what was going on.

Nothing, said one of the priests. Why?

A very old affair, said the other. It had nothing to do with their onward journey. He kicked the Indian, who took a minute to understand before summoning his bad Spanish to say that it was a very old affair and had nothing to do with their journey.

Humboldt hesitated. Bonpland, who had joined him, looked at him reproachfully. But they had to move on, Humboldt said quietly. What was he supposed to do?

Pater Zea called to them to come, so that he could show them his most priceless possession. A moth-eaten parrot, who could say several sentences in an extinct language. Twenty years ago the people who spoke it had still existed, but they had all died out and nobody could understand what the bird was gabbling.

Humboldt stretched out his hand, the parrot pecked at it, looked at the ground as if thinking, flapped its wings, and said something incomprehensible.

Bonpland enquired why the tribe had disappeared.

It happened, said Pater Zea.

Why?

Pater Zea stared at him with narrowed eyes. It was easy to be like that. A person came here and pitied anyone who looked sad, and back home there would be bad stories to tell, but if that person suddenly found himself with fifty men ruling ten thousand savages, wondering every night what the voices in the forest meant, and being amazed each morning to find himself alive, perhaps he would judge things differently.

A misunderstanding, said Humboldt. Nobody had intended to criticize.

Well, yes, maybe he had, said Bonpland. There were some things he wanted to know. He stopped, unable to believe that Humboldt had just kicked him. The bird swiveled its head between them, said something, then looked at them expectantly.

Correct, replied Humboldt, who didn't want to be impolite.

The bird seemed to think about this, then added a long sentence.

Humboldt stretched out his hand, the bird jabbed at it, and turned away, insulted.

While the two Indians were navigating the boat through the cataracts for them, Humboldt and Bonpland climbed the granite cliffs above the mission. There was supposed to be an ancient burial cave at the top. It was almost impossible to find a foothold, the only supports were protruding crystals of feldspar. Once they were up there, Humboldt put pen to paper to compose a piece of perfect prose describing the view of the rapids, the rainbow soaring over the river, and the watery glints of silver in the distance. The only thing to break his concentration was the need to keep slapping at mosquitoes. Then they balanced their way across the ridge to the next peak and the entrance to the cave.

There must have been hundreds of corpses, each in its own basket of palm leaves, the bony hands clasped around the knees, the head pressed down against the chest cavity. The oldest were already reduced to skeletons, others were in varying states of decay: parchment scraps of skin, intestines dried in clumps, eyes black and small as fruit kernels. Lots of them had the flesh scratched from the bones. The noise of the river didn't penetrate this high; it was so quiet they could hear their own breathing.

It was peaceful here, said Bonpland, nothing like that other cave. Down there had been the dead, here there were just bodies. Here it felt safe.

Humboldt tugged several corpses out of their baskets, detached skulls from spines, broke teeth out of jawbones and rings from fingers. He wrapped the bodies of a child and two adults in cloths and tied them together so tightly that two people could carry the bundle.

Bonpland asked if he was serious.