by Sten Nadolny
Gwendolyn laughed and Father Traill threw her a glance. The grave of Fielding. John answered that he didn’t know him and that altogether he didn’t know much about Portugal.
All that burring and hissing that came out of people’s mouths here was most unpleasant. People in Lisbon talked as if they would burn their lips with every word they didn’t get out at once and they blew out a lot of air before and after each of them. At the same time, they fanned and waved with their hands. When John got lost and found himself at the aqueduct near the Alcántara, he asked to be shown the way. But instead of pointing in one direction which he could have followed without trouble to the Traills’ house, they gesticulated. He found himself in the square in front of the monastery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Of course, they were Catholic here; that was to be expected. Not expected, however, was that they would poke fun at the contrast between mighty England and helpless John. After dinner, the Traill parents retired. John was alone with Gwendolyn. She talked about Fielding. Her freckled nostrils flared; her neck reddened: he didn’t know Fielding! The great English poet! She got herself properly inflated, as though she would rise at once like a Montgolfier balloon if no one held on to her. John said: ‘I know great English sailors.’ Gwendolyn had never heard of James Cook. She laughed; one could always see her teeth, and her dress rustled because she moved around so much. John learned that Fielding had gout. How can I get her to shut up, he wondered, and how do I manage to cohabit with her? He began to prepare a question but was sidetracked because Gwendolyn never paused. He would have loved to listen to her for a long time if only she had kept silent for a single moment. She talked about someone called Tom Jones. Probably another grave. ‘Let’s go there,’ he said, and seized her arms. But that was wrong thinking again. Since he was already holding her, he should logically not have talked about going and should have kissed her instead. But he didn’t know how that worked. All that had to be planned better. He let go of her. Gwendolyn vanished with a few quick words, which were perhaps not meant to be understood. John knew only one thing: he had reflected too long. That was the disturbing effect of the echo Dr Orme had mentioned; he hung on too long both to the words he heard and to his own words. But a person who always kept on wondering about his own formulations surely couldn’t persuade a woman!
In the afternoon he went for a walk with the Traill family through dark alleys alive with the sound of bells. They came upon a hill where they saw houses freely exposed to the light, white like the faces of brand-new clocks, roughly built and without ornaments, and the land around them not green but pale red. Mr Traill told of a great earthquake many years ago. Gwendolyn walked ahead of them, moving daintily. She got all kinds of things going inside John’s body without even looking at him.
But time passed, and the opportunity had slipped by. ‘It’s all right to think things over,’ Father used to say, ‘but not for so long that the offer is made to somebody else.’ A man lagging behind by a full cycle commanded too narrow a present; thin was the line between land and sea. Perhaps he should try to catch the right moments like a ball: if he applied the fixed look in time, these moments would be ready to be grabbed when the opportunity arose and wouldn’t escape him. All a matter of practice!
‘Soon Lisbon will celebrate the Feast of St Mark,’ Mr Traill told them. ‘They’ll bring a bull to the holy altar, a Bible between his horns. If he goes wild, the city will be facing hard times; if he holds still, everything will be fine; then he’ll be butchered.’
Gwendolyn was not completely out of reach. Sometimes she gave him a look. John sensed, beneath all the impatience she imposed on herself, also a kind of patience, perhaps a purely feminine patience he couldn’t get at. If he had been unquestionably a sailor and a courageous man, Gwendolyn would have granted him a lot of time. As if to reinforce that thought, a massive three-decker on the Foz da Tejo fired off an interminable salute, which the coastal batteries answered. Gwendolyn and the sea: so far, the two didn’t go together. They were like two chairs, and if one sat down between them one fell on one’s behind. So he should become an officer first, and defend England, and then find a woman to live with. Once Bonaparte had been defeated, there’d still be time. Gwendolyn would wait and show him everything. Before then there’d be no point in attracting attention. In any case, his ship was to leave in two days.
‘Well, then,’ Gwendolyn said unexpectedly after dinner, ‘let’s go to the poet’s grave.’ She was as dogged as John with his mathematics.
Nettles were growing on Fielding’s grave, as on the graves of all people who had amounted to something in life. That this was so John knew from the shepherd in Spilsby.
He looked at Gwendolyn, determined to prove that he could do this in all freedom without stammering or his ears turning red. Suddenly he found himself putting his arms round her neck and felt his nose being tickled by a strand of hair. Again, clearly, an entire piece of the act was missing. Gwendolyn’s eyes grew anxious, and she pushed her hands between his breast and hers. The situation was somewhat confused. However it was, he felt caught in an opportunity and so decided to ask his much-rehearsed question: ‘Would you agree to sleep with me?’
‘No!’ said Gwendolyn, and she slipped out of his arms.
So he had been wrong. John was relieved. He had asked his question. The answer was negative; that was all right. He took it to be a hint that now he really had to decide in favour of the sea. Now he wanted ocean and war.
On the way back, Gwendolyn looked suddenly strange, her face flattish, her forehead wide, her nostrils clearly marked. Once again John reflected on why the human face had to look the way it did at all and not completely different.
He had also learned from the shepherd in Spilsby that in this world women wanted something quite different from men.
Seen from the harbour wall, Lisbon shone like a new Jerusalem. This harbour – it was truly the world! By contrast, Hull on the Humber was only a threadbare landing-place for sloops in need of help. All kinds of ships were here, three-decked, with golden names on their forecastles. Through such artful slanted windows John would one day scan the horizon as a captain.
Their own ship was small. But it floated by itself like all the others and had a captain just like the largest ships. The sailors came on board late, rowed to the ship by natives. Some of them were so drunk that they had to be heaved over the rail by the winch. Father had now and then taken a glass too many, Stopford a few more, but what these sailors did to themselves had to be called by a different name. They fell into their bunks and didn’t emerge again until after the anchors had been weighed. Earlier, one of them, who was less drunk than the others, showed John his back: the brown skin was furrowed, criss-crossed by white scars carved out by a belt; they looked like craters and cliffs, so many pieces of skin had been torn off and grown back wrong. The hair on his back, originally of even density, had adjusted itself to the landscape and formed small groves and clearings.
The proprietor of the exhibit said, ‘This is the navy. For every little shit you get the whip.’ Could one die of this punishment? ‘And how!’ said the sailor.
John now knew that there was something worse than storms. Moreover, there was alcohol, and one had to keep up with that – it was all part of bravery. They already passed him a glass: ‘Try it! We call this wind.’ It was a thin, fluid, sticky sauce, red and poisonous. With strenuous nonchalance John got down two swallows, then listened within himself. He determined that earlier he had been in a somewhat dejected mood. He drained the glass. Now things looked different.
The stories he was hearing about the navy were surely not for the brave!
They travelled more than two hundred nautical miles west, out into the Atlantic, to keep from having to run against the Portuguese norther. Besides, this allowed them to evade the British men-o’-war lurking along the coast, eager to replenish their crews with men from presumably oversupplied merchant ships. A few on board had already been through that; they had been captured like wild an
imals, had gone through battles, and had escaped again at the first opportunity. They were simply afraid, John thought.
Ten more days and they were again in the English Channel. John was now permitted to eat with the captain, who, besides this honour, gave him grapes and oranges. John also learned from him that every ship had a maximum speed which it could not exceed even with the most favourable wind, even if it were equipped with a thousand sails.
John watched the work on the ship very closely. He let himself be taught how to tie knots. He noted a difference: in training, the name of the game was how fast one could get the knot tied; in real situations, how firmly it held. John watched the sails closely to see which manoeuvres actually required speed. In tacking, it was clear: the ship’s loss of momentum was greater the longer its sails stood against the wind, and so work on the braces had to be fast. There were more such situations. John decided to memorise them in the course of time, like the tree from below.
Now it was up to Father. He had to write to Captain Lawford and see to it that his son would get a place as a volunteer. That he would do this was not very likely. There was still a second possibility: that Matthew would show up after all and take John along.
John was home again. Matthew continued to be lost. Nobody liked to talk about it, and did so only to dissuade John from going to sea. Just before the end of the summer holidays, the Franklins assembled round the large dining-room table. Father allowed the family to contribute to some decisions. He himself said the most important things, and the others said only as much as was required, giving the impression that they had said nothing.
‘To sea? Once and never again,’ Grandfather said in a firm voice. Of course, he had to be reminded that he had never gone to sea.
But John needed no support, because something unexpected had happened: Father had changed his mind. Suddenly – as the only one in the family – he was most enthusiastic about a maritime career for John and went over to his side. It also seemed that John didn’t have to convince Mother any longer. She looked so encouraging and cheerful; perhaps Father’s change of mind had been her work. She didn’t have to speak, anyway, not even in a family council. John was too confused for a time to be able to feel pleasure.
Thomas said nothing; he only smiled slyly. And his little sister Isabella wept loudly, why nobody knew. With that the matter was settled.
‘If you don’t understand an order at sea’ – Thomas spoke slowly – ‘then simply say, “Aye aye, sir,” and jump overboard. It would definitely not be wrong.’ John concluded that he didn’t have to think about such remarks.
He wanted to tell the news to Sherard. Sherard would be pleased about it, he knew that, but he couldn’t find him. The estate manager said he was working in the fields with his parents and other people from Ing Ming. He didn’t want to say where. He didn’t want any interruptions during working hours.
It had grown late. The coach was waiting.
Just one more year of school. For someone like John that was almost as good as nothing.
5
Copenhagen, 1801
‘John’s eyes and ears,’ Dr Orme wrote to the captain, ‘retain every impression for a peculiarly long time. His apparent slowness of mind and his inertia are nothing but the result of exaggerated care taken by his brain in contemplating every kind of detail. His enormous patience …’ He crossed out the last phrase.
‘John is dependable with figures and knows how to overcome obstacles with unorthodox planning.’
The navy, thought Dr Orme, will be torture for John. But he didn’t write that down. After all, the navy was the addressee.
John knows no self-pity, he thought.
But he didn’t lower his pen to paper, for to be admired by a teacher rarely helps, and especially not in the navy.
Whether the captain would even read the letter before their departure … It was John himself who was determined to go to war. And he was too slow, and only fourteen years old … What could he write? Misfortune sits in its own shoes, he thought. He crumpled the letter and tossed it into the wastebasket, propped his chin on his hand, and began to mourn.
John Franklin lay awake at night and replayed the fast events of the day at his own slow speed. There were many of them. Six hundred men on such a ship! And everyone had a name and moved about. Then the questions! Questions could come at any time. Question: What’s your assignment? Answer: Lower gun deck and sail practice in Mr Hale’s department.
Sir. Never forget to say Sir. Dangerous!
All men aft for ex … exe-cu-tion of punishment. That should be pronounceable! Execution of punishment.
All hands to the sails!
Receive arms.
Clear for action: a hard job to grasp the whole picture.
All guns loaded, sir. Run in to gunports. Secure guns.
Lower gundeck cleared for action! Anticipate everything exactly without question.
Take that man’s name, Mr Franklin! Aye aye, sir – name – write – fast!
The red paint in the quarters below was supposed to prevent spattering … the spattering of blood. No, to make it inconspicuous. The sand spread on the floor was supposed to keep people from slipping on blood. All part of combat. Trim sails aft, and so forth, that much was clear …
Compliments of the captain, sir. Please come below deck. Sails: mizzen topgallant royal, main topgallant royal, fore topgallant royal. One sail farther down and there was already a hitch. He knew how to calculate the height of the stars at night, their angles of elevation – knowledge he didn’t need at all. That kind of thing nobody wanted to know. But which line belongs where? Where does the jib-boom fit on the martingale, or vice versa? Shrouds and backstays, halyards and sheets, that endless pile of hemp, mysterious as a spider web. He always joined others in lashing things where they also lashed them, but what if they were wrong? He was a midshipman; that meant he was considered an officer. Now then, once more: mainsail, topsail, topgallant …
‘Quiet,’ a voice hissed in the bunk next to him. ‘What’s all that whispering about in the night?’
‘Reefing-point,’ John whispered. ‘Gaff jigger.’
‘Say that again,’ said the other, very quiet.
‘Forestay, martingale, martingale guys, martingale stays.’
‘Oh, I see,’ growled his neighbour. ‘But that’s enough for now.’
He could do it with his lips closed: only his tongue moving behind them remained indispensable. For example, he visualised in this way how to get from the bottom of the foremast to the maintop by way of the foretop, the fore topmast cap, and the fore topgallant, by climbing up the ratlines and outside the futtock shrouds, because only that was considered proper seamanship.
Would he be able to notice mistakes? For example, could he discover why the ship lost momentum and stopped moving? And what would he do if part of the running rigging tangled up?
He also noted all the questions that had so far remained unanswered. It was important to ask them at precisely the right moment, and therefore they had to wait. A jib was something very special; why? They were moving against the Danes; why not against the French? He also had to recognise those questions that might be asked of him, John Franklin. Question: what’s your assignment? Or, question: what’s the name of your ship, Midshipman? The name of the captain? When they went ashore after the capture of Copenhagen, there’d be lots of admirals running about, perhaps even Nelson himself. HMS Polyphemus, sixty-four guns, sir. Captain Lawford, sir. Everything in order.
He had memorised entire fleets of words and batteries of responses so as to be ready with answers. In speaking, as in acting, he had to be prepared for anything that might come up. If he had to get it through his head first – that would take too long. If a question addressed to him became only a signal allowing him to rattle off the requested response without hesitation like a parrot, there would be no reprimand and the answer passed. He had done it! A ship, bounded by the ocean, could be learned. To be sure, he couldn’t run v
ery fast. And yet the entire day was filled with running, transmitting orders, running from one deck to the other – all narrow passages! But he had memorised every route; he had even drawn them and had repeated them to himself every night for two whole weeks. Running was all right if nobody came at him unexpectedly. Then, of course, there was nothing to be done, and he kept to his route without agile manoeuvres; the appropriate formula for apologies had to be well rehearsed. Soon the others learned that it was better to get out of his way. The officers took the lesson with displeasure. ‘Please see it this way,’ he had said three days before to the fifth lieutenant, who actually listened to him as a result of a hefty rum ration. ‘Every ship’s hull has its own maximum speed, which it can never exceed, no matter what the rig or the wind velocity. And so it is also with me.’
‘Sir. I must be addressed as “sir,”’ answered the lieutenant, not unkindly.
Explanations were usually followed by orders. On the second day, he had made clear to another lieutenant that for his eye all quick movements left a streak in the landscape. ‘Climb up to the foretop, Mr Franklin. And I want to see a streak in the landscape.’
Meanwhile, things got better. John stretched out contentedly in his bunk. Seamanship could be learned. What his eyes or ears couldn’t manage, his head did during the night. Intellectual drill balanced slowness.