The Discovery Of Slowness

by Sten Nadolny

  ‘Most regrettable.’

  ‘When the captain took off in the boat for Sydney to get help, the first of the crew began to give up hope. The sandbank was no more than just a few feet above water level. Provisions were scarce. No one counted on the captain’s possibly getting through. We waited for fifty-three days.’

  ‘And Franklin?’

  ‘He never gave up hope. He’s probably incapable of doing that. He seemed to get things organised to last for years. We elected him to the Sandbank Council.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The men were close to mutiny. Franklin convinced the most desperate among them that there was time and that a slow mutiny was better than a quick one. The Sandbank Council was the government of all for all.’

  ‘Sounds very French. But perhaps appropriate for sandbanks. Now, what special things did this Franklin accomplish?’

  ‘Right from the start he began building a scaffold on which to store the provisions high above ground. When we were done with that after three days, a storm came and flooded the sandbank but not the scaffolding. Because Franklin is so slow, he never loses time.’

  ‘Good. I’ll take a look at him. And you, Mr Fowler? Could you perhaps train our guncrews? Peace is over again. We have to count on French capers.’

  ‘You’ll let yourself be drawn into combat, sir?’

  ‘Possibly. My squadron will consist of sixteen ships, and none of them unarmed. Well, then?’

  Formally, Fowler was a passenger. But he gladly took this opportunity to get in a few licks at Napoleon Bonaparte. He agreed.

  Since the Earl Camden was not due to leave for a few more days, John Franklin sat idly next to the painter William Westall in the harbour of Whampoa watching what was being loaded. Ships with a draft of more than eight feet were not permitted upstream to Canton. They were waiting for their cargo here in Whampoa: copper, tea, nutmeg, cinnamon, cotton and more. Just now the port officer asked for a sample from a bag of spices. John had heard that a lot of opium was shipped here, too – many thousands of cases a year. People who smoked opium saw colourful images and didn’t think of how things might be improved. But in this bag there was only agar-agar – sea algae pressed into the shape of rods to be used to jell the juice of English pig’s heads to make head cheese.

  John also knew now what homesickness meant.

  In the warm spring sun, the wall they sat on smelled exactly like the gravestones at St James’s in Spilsby.

  ‘I’ve been painting the wrong pictures. This won’t do any more. One has to paint differently,’ Westall said in a low voice, with a furrowed forehead. ‘All I’ve done is describe everything in exact detail – forms of the earth, plant growth, human figures, exactly as in nature – to be recognised.’

  ‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’ John remarked.

  ‘No, it’s deceptive. We don’t see the world as a botanist who is at the same time an architect, a physician, a geologist and a ship’s captain. Recognising isn’t at all like seeing; the two often don’t even agree, and it’s sometimes a less effective way of determining what is. A painter shouldn’t know; he should only see.’

  ‘But then what does he paint?’ John asked after extensive reflection. ‘He already knows a lot.’

  Westall replied, ‘His impression. What is strange, or at least what is strange within the familiar.’

  John Franklin, always looking on with a friendly and faintly surprised expression, was an ideal listener for relentless thinkers. Therefore he heard many phrases no one else wanted to hear. And he remained curious even when he hadn’t understood. Thoughts strange to him filled him with respect. Naturally, he had become cautious. Ideas could go too far. Boatswain Douglas had announced shortly before his death that in infinity all parallel lines came together at a right angle. He had maintained this entirely without teeth and then died immediately – scurvy. John also recalled Burnaby, how he had talked about equality, smiling with wide-open eyes, yet at the same time often so confused. Caution could do no harm.

  ‘From now on I’ll ask all possible questions,’ said Westall. ‘Anyone who refuses to ask questions will do nothing right one day, not to mention painting.’ He started on it at once: ‘For example, we think we know what’s permanent in this world and what’s changeable. We know nothing! Only at our best moments do we have an inkling, a presentiment. And good pictures contain that presentiment.’

  John nodded and looked at the gigantic city built on water, a compound of junks and landing platforms. He listened within himself to see whether he had understood Westall’s statement. Thousands of people moved and traded before his eyes – hungry as well as rich people. Everything John saw served trade: mat sails, parasols, walls with undulating ramparts, raftlike barges unloading, and the long poles used to punt them toward the larger ships. For days he had watched business life around him: grass mats being exchanged for copper coins, silk for gold, pieces of lacquered wood, or fragile things made of glass. What was truly significant was not immediately apparent. It’s an element that is always present, an element not perceived the way a painter sees things but known by logical reflection: without patience no trade could be trade. Without patience, merchants were just robbers. Patience functioned like the escapement in a clock.

  ‘I’d certainly like to know what’s permanent,’ John told Westall, who had expected no answer and so had long since gone on talking. John felt related to the unchangeable, but it was difficult to grasp.

  By now he had come to know so many different places; still, he had found no greater certainty among them. In fact, it was always questionable why the unchanging did not change. Why did the ostrich have feathers yet not fly? Why did the turtle wear heavy armour, whereas not a single fish did? Why did stallions grow no horns whereas roebucks did? ‘There’s simply no certainty,’ insisted Westall.

  Almost more disquieting was the dissimilarity among human races, especially since opposites clashed in each one of them. Australian people supported themselves on canes and gazed slowly, but they could also grab fish out of a stream with their bare hands as quick as lightning. The Chinese held their bodies upright with effortless tension; they appeared so proud. Yet if one spoke to them they made many bows one after the other. The French were solemn and enthusiastic and wanted to change everything, yet they used an infinite amount of time preparing and consuming their meals. They loathed English cooking even when they were on the point of starving. John had seen this himself in Sydney. As for the Portuguese, they always thought of the next earthquake and built their houses accordingly. But their churches were constantly rebuilt in the greatest splendour in just the places where they had collapsed. And the English! They were full of love for their country, yet liked to travel as far away from it as possible.

  Westall nodded. ‘Nothing can be predicted. Nobody can give a reason why something happened in this way and not in another. Stronger than all predictions are coincidence and contradiction.’

  John admired the painter. He was only five years older than John, yet had the strength to take up the challenge of things and to ask whether they really were as they appeared. For him, John, this wasn’t the point at all. People who asked a lot of questions had to do it fast. Everyone tries to shake a questioner as quickly as possible. Moreover, John knew very well that one could not always agree with the answers. After an out-of-place answer one also had a sense of disquiet.

  He would have liked to hear more about coincidences, especially about accidental death.

  Denis Lacy was stretched out again before his inner eye. He had crashed down upon the deck from the topgallant, fifty feet up. Why did the quickest plunge down and not the slowest? Why did it happen after they had won through, and the remaining crew was on its way to Canton? John again saw the dreadful picture with precision. The entire city on the water could not cover it over. He saw the pool of blood Denis lay in with his smashed skull: bone splinters stuck through the cloth of his shirt like long spokes; his chest still heaved and
sank; foam oozed out of his mouth and nose, then his heart stopped beating. To get away from this image, John recalled Stanley Kirkeby, how his backside was bitten by a seal on Kangaroo Island, quite painfully, to be sure. But even here, why did something like this happen? Why didn’t it fail to happen? Or the cargo officer being pitifully stung by a red jellyfish when he fell from the boat. The rash could be seen for weeks, and it had been the only jellyfish far and wide. Or Master Sailmaker Thistle and Midshipman Taylor, eaten by sharks when their boat capsized in the surf – why only they? Why not Mr Colpits, for whom this would have been at least no surprise? But he was the sort who didn’t get lost. On the contrary. He now sat in Sydney, administering a warehouse by order of the governor, and ate regularly and well.

  ‘One should work out tables on how people live and die,’ said John. ‘A kind of geometry.’ He already knew how to do it. With constant measurements for all imaginable speeds. He involuntarily thought of the ‘time guardians’ and of Matthew, who was now on his way to England with those invaluable charts, with the mail, and with Trim the tomcat. He’d see Matthew again in Spilsby. Sherard, on the other hand, had stayed in Terra Australis in order to settle and perhaps build a harbour. Nothing could keep him from it.

  Mockridge was dead. Three men had drowned when the Cato had been smashed on the cliff, only three, and one of them had to be Mockridge. One could accept that people were different and that one liked some and not others. But that chance did as it pleased in these things, that was bitter. John pulled himself together and returned to his conversation with Westall. ‘That stuff about precision and presentiment – I still have to think about it,’ he said. ‘I can’t paint pictures. I want to become a captain. For that reason, I’d rather know as much as possible.’

  ‘And now let’s hear what you’ve been through, Mr Franklin,’ said Captain Dance. ‘Please give me a comprehensive report.’ John had expected that. Dance wanted to form a picture of him. As far as the voyage itself was concerned, he had undoubtedly heard it all from Lieutenant Fowler. John was prepared. He had considered what would be pertinent in his summary.

  Every report had its external aspect, which hung together logically and was easy to grasp, and an internal one, which would light up only inside the speaker’s head. What he had to suppress was that inner aspect, which would only have caused irksome stuttering and all kinds of mistakes in delivery. John therefore had to allow time for it without allowing it to affect the outer aspect. Only a few months ago he would have been inclined to repeat the last word of each passage for the sake of those inner pictures, before he would go on with his story. Now he knew how to make pauses. Cold-bloodedly, he took the risk that the other person might interrupt him and be offended if John didn’t let himself be stopped.

  He began with a well-rehearsed sentence. It contained the names of the ship and captain, the size of the crew, the number of guns aboard, the time and date of departure from Sheerness. From then on: key words, dates, positions, everything in as regular a sequence as possible. The information fixed in this way appeared generally valid as properly reported. Up to the encounter of the Investigator and the Géographe – thirty-six, Captain Nicholas Baudin – Dance had accepted his pauses patiently. At that point, however, he said: ‘Faster, Mr Franklin. What’s there to think about? You were there, weren’t you?’ For that, too, John was prepared.

  ‘When I tell something, sir, I use my own rhythm.’

  Dance swung around and stared at him with astonishment. ‘I’ve heard something like this only once. From a Scottish church elder. Go on.’

  John reported on their two-year voyage round Terra Australis – or Australia, as Matthew would call it for the sake of simplicity. He spoke of Port Jackson, of their stay at Kupang on Timor, of the dreadful outbreak of just that disease which Matthew had sought to conquer. Numbers of losses. The ship almost sinking, kept above water only by the backbreaking pumping of the few healthy men left. What had happened, the dying, the pumping, the dread of falling ill – all that John packed into his pauses. Dance heard only numbers, geographical terms, and pauses. Port Jackson for the second time. The governor declared the ship no longer seaworthy, a wreck. For the voyage home via Singapore the crew was distributed among the ships Porpoise, Cato and Bridgewater. Those who wanted to remain in the colony in order to settle there would receive permission. Long pause for Sherard Lound. A quarrel had not been in question – Sherard simply had his own dreams. ‘This pause is becoming too long,’ Dance reminded him sternly. He feared the young man would be even more halting when they got to the first shipwreck: Porpoise and Cato at the same time in the middle of the night. No help at all from the Bridgewater, sailing in the immediate vicinity. Captain Palmer! East India Company man like Dance himself. He knew him from the early days. A miserable whist player; now, too, a sailor who neglected his duty. Ugh! Dance noticed, with amazement, that he had raced ahead of John’s report and had therefore not been able to follow him. While he had exercised himself about Palmer, the midshipman had clearly overtaken him, and despite a long pause for the shipwreck, the noise of bursting planks, the screams of the helpless, the bleeding cuts from coral, and the dead Mockridge, Franklin was already on the sandbank with the provisions they had managed to save. Hunger and waiting. An officer shoots two men dead in self-defence. Fowler hadn’t reported that at all. Franklin didn’t say a word about the mutiny. He talked around it. The proposal to build rafts from the remaining wood and to paddle west was discarded. He talked more extensively about Flinders, their captain: ‘He sailed a good nine hundred miles in an open boat back to Port Jackson in order to return with three ships and save his crew. Matthew Flinders – an extraordinary navigator!’ The midshipman concluded with a single sentence: ‘The people on the sandbank went on to Canton in the Rolla; only the captain’ – here a small pause for Trim – ‘went directly to England on the schooner Cumberland.’

  ‘Let’s hope he gets there,’ said Dance. ‘We’re at war again.’

  John understood and was fearful. ‘But he’s got a pass,’ he said.

  ‘Only for the Investigator.’ The captain’s finger drew as many lines on the table of his cabin as there are furrows on a forehead. Then he came to the point: ‘You’re our passenger, Mr Franklin, but I hear you’re a competent signal man … Are you listening, Mr Franklin?’

  John was troubled. He thought of Matthew. Painfully, he turned back to Dance: ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘The Earl Camden is the flagship for a squadron of East Indiamen. I’m the commodore. And herewith you’re signal ensign.’

  Commodore Nathaniel Dance was sixty years old, tall, haggard, with a large nose and tangled grey hair. His words, if he didn’t explicate Bible passages or talk about intellectual matters, were deliberate and clearly understandable. Each movement emerged from the previous one without strain. His eyes could sparkle mischievously, as happens often with good-natured people. He acted as though he were impatient, yet he listened nonetheless. Sometimes he said something rude, like ‘Thank you. I’m beginning to be bored.’

  He quarrelled with the painter Westall even at table. He believed that art must be beautiful. But it could be so only with the help of precise details. Creation was more beautiful than anything man could imagine. Westall responded cleverly that man was the crown of creation and the spirit within him the highest. What was beautiful was not the physical construction of things but what eye and mind made of it. Premonition, fear and hope were part of it. After the meal, Westall grumbled, ‘The painter Nathaniel Dance is his uncle. For that reason this tar thinks he knows a lot about painting.’

  The next day the quarrel started up again. The commodore seemed to like nothing better than to throw the artist into confusion. ‘Painting fear or the arbitrariness of eyesight? Why not just blindness? I have sixty years of fear and arbitrariness behind me. No, Mr Westall; man must rise above his weakness through God’s mercy. Your brother knows that. Think of Esau Asks Isaac’s Blessing – now that’s a picture! Art
must be edifying.’

  The Earl Camden left Whampoa at the head of a squadron of fifteen heavily loaded East Indiamen. The ships’ armaments were weak and they weren’t as solidly built as warships; above all, they were more weakly manned. No Marines on board. The rigging was made of untarred manila hemp and seemed easy to handle. But after a few days John noticed that this was so not just because of the hemp but also because of the crew. The dark-skinned lascars were superbly trained, quick-witted and hard-working. A few sailors’ wives were on board, too, dark-skinned as well as white. No one thought anything of it. An Indiaman was not a floating combat station. The hull was painted with black and yellow stripes to deceive pirates, but inside it was a peaceful ship. Working day and night, John soon taught himself to remember the entire squadron precisely. He knew the lascars by name, just as he knew the officers. Again and again he wondered what made a good captain and whether this would be true of Dance.

  Who in this world should rule over all others?

  It would, in any case, be true of people like Matthew. There were reasons for this. For example, after the shipwreck he stayed on the sandbank as long as necessary to fix one star in a clear sky and so establish his position. He had to wait three full days for the storm to pass. John knew many people who would have left long before. They would never have reached Port Jackson, not to mention made a return. Perhaps Matthew had been slow, too, before he had made it to captain? If Mockridge had been correct, Matthew had become a midshipman only because the housekeeper of a line-of-battle ship’s commander had interceded for him. And if Matthew hadn’t had friends in the Admiralty, above all a man named Banks, he would have been relieved of his command when his wife was discovered on the Investigator, or at the latest when they ran aground in the Channel.