The Syme Papers (24 page)

Frankly astonished by the burden of his little speech, nevertheless I gleaned from this tirade the particulars I desired. Thanking the boy – who directed his attention once more at projecting a coin off his thumbnail, while chewing the left portion of his lip – I made my way (considerably puzzled by the import of his last remark) to the market square. There the slender footbridge bore me over the icy flood. I stood at the middle and watched the water hurrying below me, East towards the Chesapeake and thence into the broad tide of the Atlantic – in which perhaps, a drop or two might carry even to Hamburg and lose itself in the spill of the Elbe running cold and clear from Neuburg. There are few things that suggest … regret so clearly as a fleet river – which can reproach us equally for the places we have not seen and the distance we have travelled from home. I was glad, for once, to suffer from the latter reflection; and, dropping a bon-bon upon my sour tongue, made my way to the brown house on the far shore.

The bridge ran into a muddy path, considerably trampled and dripping with the remains of the snowfall. Only by clambering up the side (awkwardly, at one point, upon cold hands and knees), where a bank of snow had been packed hard by someone’s spade, could I avoid the gleaming puddles. Thus with considerable difficulty I approached unsullied the back of the house, which appeared on closer inspection to be in an advanced state of dilapidation: shutters dangling off the hinge, windows cracked, curtains pressed to the leaking pane, then fluttering free. But a bright glow fell from somewhere on to the snow in the yard and suggested occupation. The porch I mounted (heart beating quick) groaned beneath my steps; the boards had been warped by the damp, and the brown paint covered in a wrinkling spread of mildew. A clatter and bustle were audible inside, and I strained my ear to catch the murmur of voices – low, expectant, the shifting, reverberant hum of a church before the pastor comes. The close heat of a full house seeped through the wooden boards and drew me in. I knocked once, briskly, and waited.

And yet – such is the perversion of the human spirit that I must say, standing there in the cold, I felt some considerable confusion regarding my imminent acquaintance with the object of my long journey. We always hesitate at the door of belief – aware of the great change between the outside and the in. And yes, I knew as I stood there that I had come so far to be persuaded of a new faith – or, rather, for the two go hand in hand, to become a new and less fearful man.
Of course,
a part of me wished to believe that the obscure and arrogant Professor on the far side of the door, had stumbled upon a great and shining truth, a revolutionary truth, as wonderful as Galileo’s vision of the earth – and that I should serve that truth and, perhaps, make a name for myself and my country in the process that would ring through the ages. That such service would entail a more private revolution within me goes without saying. That I should learn to face bravely and, which is the greater skill, with a free and open heart the company of my – yes, my equals; that I should learn never to shrink from the world, never to doubt my place in it, never to give way to that shameful fear of life that had shadowed my youth. Of course, I felt all these things, as I waited at the door.

And yet – I confess that a part of the excitement I felt at the thought of meeting Professor Samuel Highgate Syme was that of – an uncovering, the unveiling of a fraud. Perhaps, I thought, I would shortly discover a man of some irony – a man who lied with exuberance about his theories, with colour, and with that touch of rebellion that makes all his lies seem deeper and truer than the great swarm of mediocrity that comes to prove him wrong. Perhaps I would take him by the shoulder and say, ‘Come, come, among equals, you know, there is no need for pretence.’ Or better still, I considered, I would marshal the full force of my considerable expertise, hold as it were the mirror up to Syme – in which he would recognize the empty bubble of this hollow world, and turn at last to a more fruitful line of enquiry. Perhaps, then, in some condescension, I would grant him the virtues of the double-compression piston; refine it a little, and bring it home in triumph to my father.

A scramble of steps; a pause, as of a gentleman arranging his attire, catching his breath; and the door, at last, creaked upon its hinges. A thin fellow of medium height with a bird-like cock to his head answered my summons. I noted his features: a broad, high brow above a narrow face, a strong-backed nose and fine, restless lips that sucked upon the stem of a pipe, which stank and smoked, having just gone out. He wore a morning suit, somewhat the worse for wear – covered in gleaming dust, of ash and (unlikely as it sounds) coal, and thin about the knees and elbows. It was also too large for him, and suggested, by this combination of wear and girth, that it may have outgrown him with age, while the gentleman within remained unchanged.

‘Professor
Syme?’
I
ventured,
somewhat
disappointed.

He looked me up and down, and seemed if anything unimpressed by this investigation. He took the pipe from his mouth and smacked his lips. ‘You’re almost too late,’ he declared at last, and slapped his pockets. ‘Have you brought fifty cents? Oh, never mind, come in. We’ll see about that later. Come
on.’

Then I heard a roar from within, a deep, throaty bellow, like a bear in a humour. ‘Tom, damn you!’ the roar roared. ‘Where have you got to? Blast him!’ The murmur of voices ceased suddenly; a 
frightened
silence
followed,
and
I
could
hear
the
creak
of
a
floorboard
where
someone
nervously
shifted
upon
his
feet.

‘Damn yourself, Sam!’ the gentleman before me called out cheerfully, and, turning to me, lifted the left corner of his lip and the left arch of his eyebrow – as if to say, ‘There’s more of this smile when you need it.’ Then he cried, ‘I’ve brought another. Coming directly.’

‘The world’s about to stop, that’s all,’ came the somewhat mollified reply.

Tom, thus appealed to, led me along the dark corridor and then up a short flight of steps. A stout door stood ajar, a beam of flickering light glowing beneath it, whence a thin mist of smoke likewise escaped. Tom turned gracefully upon his heel, and, crooking his elbow behind his back around the edge of the door, whispered to me: ‘Don’t mind the smoke, sir; we’re only making the world from scratch, that’s all.’ Then he swung into the room and I followed.

Nothing had prepared me for the scene that met my eyes. I entered a large room lit by the cold sunset, which streamed over the river and through the great bay window at the far wall. This space had evidently formed the main tavern of the Boathouse at one stage of its operations, and was a grand chamber still, with a huge hearth great enough to roast a horse at the centre, a fire blazing within it almost as high as a man. A cascade of crystal chandelier hung from the stippled ceiling and reflected the firelight in a thousand flickering ways. The glow trembled like a butterfly, alighting now here, now there, upon this staring countenance or that, among the men and women who massed against the long wall, intent upon the curious operations in the middle of the room.

The heat was palpable, thick to the touch as honey; it pressed against the huddled spectators, whose faces sweated and shone in the firelight. Indeed, a pungent odour of humanity spread outward from the packed bodies, who, to be frank, seemed mostly to belong to the lowest order of men: farmers and labourers, in their heavy boots and work-stained vests, their broad arms crossed, their eyes wide with innocent amazement. Coughs and sneezes and shuffling feet broke the heavy silences, and there were many pinched noses and 
mopped brows. A pocket of more respectable ladies stood somewhat apart, bonneted and shawled, in a corner of the bay window. I noted in particular the trim figure of a young woman in a blue frock, whose sharp eyes shone despite a complexion alas somewhat ruined by the smallpox; and the more elderly elegance of a lady who had clearly once been a great beauty in her day – and had retained the charms of an ivory forehead and neck, large and trembling blue eyes, and a mouth still full and red, only a little softened by the years.

But the attention of a newcomer fixed immediately upon the fantastical operation under way in the middle of the bare wood floor – a space cleared of the tables, chairs and dresser now heaped together against the wall on my left hand. Tom ushered me towards the mass of men opposite me, an attention I particularly resented; but I drew forth my handkerchief to muffle the stench of the creatures among whom I had been thrust. Crossing my yellow leg behind me, I crouched to the ground, for the twin purposes of obtaining a clearer view of the experiment and ducking beneath the thick of the heavy atmosphere. Tom himself joined the figure in the centre, crying, ‘Now what’s all this fuss – everything’s turning nicely, hey?’ To which the Professor – for such I supposed him to be – only grunted before asking him, ‘Kindly to quit playing the fool, and give the world another spin, if it wouldn’t trouble him too much.’

From my low vantage I had every opportunity to study Tom’s associate, sitting no more than half a dozen feet from the tip of my weak chin, propped upon my knee. Allowing for his position, he seemed by no means a tall man. Indeed, he struck me as somewhat below the average height but appeared all the more powerfully built because of that: lantern-jawed, with a brave and stubborn chin, slightly darkened by a day’s growth of beard; a straight, strong, unhesitating nose; a thin upper lip bitten between his teeth, above a plump, rosy lower lip; sharp, broad cheeks crackling and shining with animal spirits in the skin drawn tight across them; thick, liver-spotted forearms bared to the elbow, trembling with his exertions; broad shoulders, with a slight hunch like the growl of fur upon a tiger’s neck. In short, a muscular creature, utterly at ease in his skin, well suited to the constant struggle of the flesh against the 
hard inanity of the world. And yet above his bright cheeks, the finer, more elegant spirit appeared: fair temples, those delicate doors to the brain; a broad and lofty forehead (furrowed in concentration) above the ‘O’s of his eyes, impossibly blue and large and strangely unhappy – as if they opened too wide upon the miseries of the world. Yes, a handsome gentleman, I confess, and a form worthy of the beauty of his enterprise – a journey through the eye of the mind to the heart of the world. I knew at once I had found my man.

His dress was coarse and plain, to say the least: loose trousers, much patched and stained; a cotton shirt, filthy with sweat and rolled up to the elbow; a leather jerkin, unbuttoned, and bald in several patches where the fire had caught it; leather sandals upon his feet. It was these that drew our collective attention, and the curious device by which they drove a burning globe madly above his head, spitting fire and smoke like a world reeling free of its orbit.

I will do my best to describe the contraption – I can give it no better name – upon which the Professor, well, perhaps
rode
is the only word for it. It appeared at first glance to be a greatly elaborated version of a spinning-wheel. Syme (as I supposed him to be) sat upon a kind of saddle, propped upon a pole – perhaps it
was
a saddle, for the device itself suggested the cobbling together of a dozen common items, rather than the execution of afresh design. From this vantage, he plied exhaustively the pedal at his feet, beating his sandals up and down – up and down – with such vigour, I half-expected the machine to stand up of its own accord and begin to gallop. This motion accorded his frame a curious recumbent activity, and accounted perhaps for the contradictory suggestions of strain and complacency upon his handsome features. Everyone in the room I am convinced suffered from the powerful illusion that the Professor was – to put it simply – going somewhere impossibly remote and difficult of access – despite the fact that, like the rest of us huddled about him, he had not budged from his spot.

The spinning-wheel thus driven by his considerable efforts glittered and grinded with speed, and lifted and retracted, lifted and retracted, at great pace a kind of piston or leg, which rose and fell in front of the Professor’s face – which suggested somehow the
 
ludicrous expression of a man being dragged from behind by a one-legged horse (though neither horse nor rider of course shifted an inch). I mention this not to demean Syme’s unimpeachable dignity (and it requires a wonderfully weighty gravitas indeed not to be unseated by such athletic exertions), nor to introduce an unwarranted note of the comic into this remarkable scene, but to convey, somehow, the joyous quality of the whole. We stared spellbound at the experiment, with the same unconscious pleasure occasioned by a great display of natural power, a flash of lightning or a gust of wind – when some hereditary affinity with the living world moves in us a portion of the delight inseparable from
energy
of any kind. Yet the wonder of the Professor’s invention is to come.

By some arrangement of gears and levers, some confusion of cogs and wheels, the vertical motion of the lifted
leg
(I’m afraid the device has beggared my scientific vocabulary, and I must appeal to common objects to convey my impressions) had been translated to the circular and horizontal motion of – if I may be forgiven another commonplace – an arm; which held in its hand an enormous burning globe. This it swung in a dizzying circle around and around its – well, the machine had no head, unless it held
that
in its hands, but – shall we say? – around the absence where a head might have been. The globe itself resembled nothing so much as a smoking (again, it is far from my thoughts to demean the dignity of the experiment, but I wish to set down, as accurately as possible, the physical impression conveyed, for the use of posterity and such experiments in future)
colander;
for the sphere, composed of some well-fired clay, was holed on all sides like a pricked balloon, and from these cavities issued a thousand streams of black and ashy fume. Upon such clouds, we coughed and choked and spluttered, but held our breath as best we could, to attend to the running commentary issuing from the Professor, who exercised his tongue almost as tirelessly as he pumped his legs.