The Discovery Of Slowness

by Sten Nadolny

  He made out things too slowly. Blind, it might work better. He had an idea. He climbed down again, lay on his back, and learned the entire tree by heart from below – every branch, every handhold. Then he tied a stocking round his eyes, groped for the lowest branch, and moved his body from memory while counting out loud. The method was good but a bit dangerous. He didn’t yet know the tree precisely; mistakes happened. He was determined to become fast, so fast that his mouth wouldn’t be able to keep up with the counting.

  Five hours past noon. He sat, panting and sweating, in the fork of the tree and pushed the stocking up on his forehead. No time to lose; just catch a little breath. Soon he would be the fastest man in the world, but he’d make believe slyly that nothing had changed. For the sake of appearance, he’d still seem sluggish about his hearing; his speech would drag; he’d walk as though he were spelling and lag behind everywhere pitifully. But then there would be a public performance: ‘No one is faster than John Franklin!’ At the horse fair at Horncastle he’d have them put up a tent. They’d all come to have a good laugh at him, the Barkers from Spilsby, the Tennysons from Market Rasen, the sour-faced apothecary Flinders from Donington, the Cracrofts – in short, all of them from this morning. He’d show first that he could follow the fastest talker, even with completely unfamiliar phrases, and then he’d answer so fast that nobody would be able to understand a word. He’d juggle playing-cards and balls until everyone’s head swam. Once more John memorised the branches and climbed down. He missed the last foothold and fell. He lifted the blindfold: always the right knee.

  At noon Father had talked about a dictator in France who had been toppled and lost his head. When Father had drunk a lot of Luther and Calvin, John understood well what he was saying. His walk, too, became different, as if he feared that the earth might suddenly give way or the weather might turn round. What a dictator was, John still had to find out. Once he understood a word, he also wanted to know what it meant. Luther and Calvin – that was beer and gin.

  He got up. Now he wanted to practise playing ball. During the next hour he wanted to throw the ball against a wall and catch it again. But an hour later he hadn’t caught the ball a single time and instead had drawn a thrashing and made entirely new resolutions. He cowered on the doorstep of the Franklin house and thought it all over strenuously.

  He had almost succeeded in catching the ball, for he had invented a helpful device: the fixed look. He didn’t, as might be expected, follow the ball with his eyes as it rose and swooped down, but rather kept his eyes on a fixed point on the wall. He knew: he couldn’t catch the ball if he followed it, only if he lay in wait for it. A few times the ball almost fell into the trap, but then one mishap followed another. First he heard the words ‘gap tooth’ – that’s what he was called since yesterday. Tom and the others were there and just wanted to look on a bit. Then came the smiling game. If one smiled at John, he had to smile back. He couldn’t suppress it. Even if meanwhile someone pulled his hair or kicked his shins, he couldn’t get rid of the smile fast enough. That’s what Tom had fun with, and there was nothing Sherard could do to change it. Then they stole the ball.

  In the covered passage next to the Franklin house all noise was forbidden. The shouting brought Mother Hannah to the scene, for she was worried about Father’s mood. John’s enemies noted that she walked and talked just like John. She, too, couldn’t get angry and so let her opponents become insolent. Mother demanded the ball back and they threw it to her but so violently that she couldn’t catch it. The boys had grown big; they didn’t obey a grown-up when she was slow. Now came Father Franklin. Whom did he scold? Mother. Whom did he thrash? John. He told an astonished Sherard never to let himself be seen there again. That’s how it went.

  The fixed look was well suited to reflection. At first John saw only the market cross. Then more was added round the centre: steps, houses, carriages; he surveyed them all without letting his eye leap or race. At the same time, a vast vision about all misfortune formed inside his head, composing itself like a painting, with steps and houses and the horizon forming the background.

  In this place they knew him and were aware of how hard he had to strain. He would rather be among strangers who might possibly be more like himself. There had to be such people – perhaps far, far away. And there he might be able to learn more easily how to be fast. Besides, he very much wanted to see the ocean. Here he would make nothing of himself. John was determined: that very night. Mother couldn’t protect him, nor could he protect her, and he just brought her grief. ‘Nothing about me is simple,’ John whispered. ‘I’ll change and then everything will be different.’ He had to get away, to go east, to the shore where the wind came from. He was already beginning to look forward to it.

  Someday he’d come back like Tommy in the book, quick and lissome and clothed in rich garments. He’d enter the church and shout loudly ‘Stop!’ in the middle of the service. All those who had hurt him or his mother would leave the village on their own, and Father would crash down and lose his head.

  Towards morning, he sneaked out of the house. He didn’t walk through the square past the market cross but cut between the stables, heading straight into the fields. They would search for him, so he had to remember to cover his tracks. He passed Ing Ming. He didn’t want to wake Sherard, for he was poor and would want to come along, yet he was too small to be taken on a ship. John reached the stables of Hundleby. It was still damp and cool, and the light was dim. He was eager to know about the strange world beyond, and his plans were well thought out.

  In a narrow drainage ditch he waded as far as the stream Lymn. They’d think he had gone in the direction of Horncastle and not of the sea. He then wandered northwards in a wide arc round Spilsby. When the sun came up he groped through a ford across the River Steeping, shoes in hand. Now he was already far east of the village. Possibly he might still meet the shepherd in the hill country, but the man slept into the late morning, true to his view that dawn belonged to the beasts of the forest. The shepherd had time and he thought a great deal, mostly with clenched fists. John liked him, but today it would be better not to run into him. Perhaps he’d mix in. A grown-up would always have different views about running away than a child, even if he was only a shepherd, a slugabed, and a rebel.

  Laboriously, John trudged through woods and fields, avoiding every road, crawling through fences and hedgerows. When he had wandered in the dark woods and had got out of the forest through the undergrowth, the sun seized him, first with its light, then with its warmth, ever more strongly. Thorns scratched his legs. He was happy as never before because he was now all on his own. Far away, gunshots from a hunting party resounded among the tree trunks. He swung in an arc through the meadowland, for he didn’t want to become their target.

  John was in search of a place where nobody would find him too slow. Such a place could still be far away, however.

  He owned one single shilling, a present from Matthew the sailor. In case of need, he could buy some roast meat and greens with it. For a shilling one could also ride for a few miles in the mail-coach, if one sat outside on the roof. But up there he wouldn’t be able to hold on too well or duck his head in time when they got to low archways. In any case, best of all was the sea and a ship.

  Perhaps he could be used as a helmsman, but then the others would have to have confidence in him. A few months ago they had got lost on a ramble through the woods. Only he, John, had observed the gradual changes, the position of the sun, the rising of the ground – he knew how to get back. He scratched a drawing on the forest ground, but they didn’t even want to look at it. They made hasty decisions which they overturned just as quickly. John couldn’t get back on his own, for they wouldn’t have let him go. Worried, he slunk behind the little kings of the schoolyard, who owed their standing to their speediness and now didn’t know how to go on. If it hadn’t been for the Scotsman driving his cattle, they would have had to spend the night outdoors.

  Now the sun was at its
height. In the distance, a flock of sheep dotted the north side of a hill. The ditches became more and more frequent, the forests thinner. He looked far out into the fens and discerned windmills, tree-lined avenues, and manor houses. The wind freshened, the flocks of seagulls became larger. With slow deliberation, he vaulted fence after fence. Cows came up to look him over, nodding and swaying.

  He lay down behind a hedgerow. Under his closed lids the sun filled his eyes with a red fire. Sherard, he thought, will feel cheated. He opened his eyes to keep from becoming sad.

  If he could just stay there and gaze upon the land like a stone, for century after century, while grassy plains became forests and swamps turned into villages or tilled land. Nobody would ask him a question. He’d be recognised as human only when he stirred.

  Here behind the hedgerow nothing could be heard of the earth’s population except the sound of chickens and dogs in the distance, and now and then a gunshot. Perhaps he’d meet a robber in the forest. Then his shilling would be gone.

  John got up and walked through the marshy meadows. The sun was already dropping toward the horizon, far behind him above Spilsby. His feet hurt; his tongue was sticky. He circled round a village. The ditches to be waded across or jumped over became ever wider, and John was a poor jumper. At the same time, there were no more hedges. He followed a road, although it led toward a village whose church looked just like St James’s. The picture of his parents’ home, and of supper, was easily shoved aside. Despite his hunger, he thought with amusement that they’d now sit and wait, they who couldn’t wait, collecting remarks for his ears which they now couldn’t get rid of.

  The village was called Ingoldmells. The sun had set. A girl with a bundle on her head disappeared into a house without noticing him. Then, beyond the village, John saw what he had been looking for.

  A leaden-gray, immensely extended plain lay there, dirty and foggy, like rolled-out dough, a bit menacing, the way a faraway star would look when seen up close. John breathed deeply. His feet fell into a stumbling trot, and he ran toward that rolled-out thing as fast as he could. Now he had found the place that was all his own. The sea was his friend. He sensed that, even if at the moment it didn’t look very pretty.

  It grew dark. John searched for the water. He found only mud and sand and thin rivulets; he had to wait. Stretched out behind a boat-shed, he stared at the blackish horizon until he fell asleep. During the night he woke up, wrapped in fog, chilled and hungry. Now the sea had come; he heard it. He walked towards it and, bending over, dipped his face into it a few fingers from the line where the land merged with the sea. But where that line was could not be precisely made out. Sometimes he’d be sitting in the sea, sometimes on land. That was food for thought. Where did that much sand come from? Where did the sea disappear to at low tide? He was happy and his teeth were chattering. Then he went back to the shed and tried to sleep.

  In the morning he padded along the shore and watched the spray of the surf. How could he get on a ship? Among the black, smelly, mouldy nets, a fisherman was hammering away on the bottom of his upturned boat. John needed to think carefully how to ask his question and to try it out a little first, so the fisherman wouldn’t lose patience at once. Far in the distance he saw a ship. The sails shimmered in the morning sun with many varied reflections. The hull had already dropped below the surface of the sea. The man saw John’s glance, half closed his eyes, and examined the ship’s sails. ‘That’s a frigate, a man-o’-war.’ A somewhat surprising sentence. Then he went on hammering. John looked at him and asked his question. ‘Please, how can I get on a ship?’

  ‘In Hull,’ said the fisherman, and he pointed north with his hammer, ‘or in Skegness in the south, but only with a lot of luck.’ With one quick glance he looked John over from head to toe, with interest, holding his hammer still in mid-air. No further words escaped his mouth.

  The wind tugged and shoved. John trudged southwards. He’d certainly be lucky, so it had to be Skegness. He hardly ever took his eyes off the waves eating incessantly into the land. Now and then he rested on one of the wooden pilings set up at regular intervals to hamper the sea’s work on the sand. He looked on as new channels, pools, and holes constantly opened up, soon to be transformed back again into smooth, shining surfaces. Triumphantly the gulls screeched, ‘That’s right!’ or ‘Go to it!’ Best not to beg at all. Straight onto a ship: there’d be food there. Once they had taken him, he’d travel three times round the world before they could send him back home again. The houses of Skegness were already shimmering behind the sand dunes. He was weak but confident. He sat down, and for a while he stared at the fine-ribbed sand and his ears took in the sound of the town’s church bells.

  The landlady at the inn in Skegness saw the way John Franklin moved, looked him in the eye, and said, ‘He can’t move another inch, that one. He’s half starved.’ John found himself seated at a table with a rough cloth and a plate with a slab on it that looked like thick-sliced bread but was made up of small pieces of meat. He was allowed to keep his shilling in his pocket. It tasted cool, sour and salty, and was to the gullet what the bells were to the ears and fine-ribbed sand to the eyes. He ate with deep pleasure, smiling through his meal, unbothered by the greedy flies. The future, too, now looked rich and beckoning; he could view it all in a single glance, like a meal arranged on a plate. Already he was off to faraway continents. He would explore and learn speed. He had found a woman who had given him food. So a good ship couldn’t be far away.

  ‘What’s this called?’ he asked, pointing his fork at the plate. ‘That’s a jellied dish,’ said the landlady. ‘Brawn, made of pig’s head. It’ll give you strength.’

  Now he had his strength, but no ship was to be found. No further luck in Skegness. Brawn, yes; frigate, no. But that couldn’t deter him. Not far off should be Gibraltar Point, and many ships passed there on the way to the Wash. He’d look around there. Perhaps he could build a raft and get himself out to the shipping-lanes; they’d see him then and have to take him along. He wandered out of the village and turned south: Gibraltar Point.

  After half an hour of walking in the glistening sand, he turned to look back. The town had already become blurred again in the haze. But just in front of it a point moved, clearly recognisable. Someone was coming very fast. John watched this movement with concern. The point became more and more oblong; it hopped up and down. That was no person on foot. Hurriedly, John stumbled to hide behind the wood pilings of one of the breakwaters, crawled flat on his stomach up to the water line, and tried to burrow in the sand. Lying on his back, he scratched the ground with his heels and elbows, hoping that the sea, with a few long, licking waves, would let him sink into the sand with only his nose showing. Now he heard barking dogs coming nearer. He held his breath and stared fixedly at the sky, woodenly, as though he himself were the breakwater. When the hunting dogs yelped in his ear, he gave up. They had him. Now he saw the horses, too.

  Thomas had ridden in from Great Steeping; Father had come from Skegness with the dogs. Thomas pulled his arm; John didn’t know why. Then Father took over. The thrashing came at once, right here under the afternoon sun.

  Thirty-six hours after starting out on his escape, John was on his way home, sitting in front of his father on that ever-swaying, jolting horse, and through swollen eyes he gazed at those distant mountains riding back with him to Spilsby as if taunting him, while hedgerows, brooks and fences which had cost him hours flickered past, never to be seen again.

  Now he had no self-confidence left. He no longer wanted to wait till he was grown up. Shut in with bread and water so he’d learn something, he didn’t want to learn another thing. Motionless, he constantly stared at the same spot, unseeing. He breathed as if the air were loam. His eyelids closed only once every hour; whatever went on, he let it pass over him. Now he no longer wanted to be quick. On the contrary, he wanted to slow down until he died. Certainly it wasn’t easy to die of sorrow without help, but he’d do it. Outside the passage of time, h
e would force himself to be late and soon drag himself along until they’d think him dead. The others’ day would last only an hour for him, and their hour would be minutes. The sun raced across the sky, splashed into the South Seas, zoomed over China, and rolled over all of Asia like a bowling-ball. People in the villages twittered and wriggled for half an hour; that was their day. Then they fell silent and dropped with fatigue, and the moon rowed hastily across the firmament because the sun was already panting up on the other side. He would become slower and slower. The alternations of day and night would eventually become just a flickering, and at last, since, after all, they thought him dead, his funeral. John sucked in the air and held his breath.

  His illness grew more serious, with violent stomach cramps. His body cast out whatever was inside it. His mind became cloudy. The clock of St James’s – he saw it through the window – no longer told John anything. How could he still be identified with a clock? At half past ten it was still ten o’clock. Every evening was just like the evening before. If he died now, everything would be as it had been before his birth. He would never have been.

  He was feverish, as hot as an oven! They laid mustard-plasters on him, poured tea made of mullein and linseed into him. In between he gulped down barley water. The doctor ordered the other children to stay away. They were told to eat currants and bilberries; that was supposed to prevent infection. Every four hours a spoon passed across John’s lips with a powder made of Columba root, cascara rind and dried rhubarb.

  Illness wasn’t a bad way to regain one’s perspective. Visitors came to his bedside: Father, Grandfather, then Aunt Eliza, lastly Matthew the sailor. Mother was around all the time, silent and awkward, but never helpless and always peaceful, as though she knew for sure that now everything would be all right after all. They felt superior to her, but they needed her just the same. Father won, but always in vain. He constantly assumed a lofty position, especially in his talk, even when he wanted to say something kind: ‘It won’t be long before you’re at school in Louth. There you’ll learn declensions; they’ll knock those into your head, and a lot more besides.’ Protected by his illness, John could study them all with detachment. Grandfather was hard of hearing. He regarded anyone who lisped or mumbled as a provocateur. And anyone who dared to understand what a mumbler said was a traitor: ‘That’s how he gets into the habit.’ During this lecture, John was allowed to see his pocket watch. On its richly decorated face, the watch bore a Bible quotation starting with ‘Blessed are they …’ It was in a crabbed script. Meanwhile, Grandfather told him that when he was a boy he had run away from home to the seashore. He, too, had been caught. The report ended as abruptly as it had begun. Grandfather touched John’s forehead and left.