The Discovery Of Slowness

by Sten Nadolny

  ‘Where are we?’ he heard the blind man ask.

  ‘At home at the shore,’ he heard himself reply. ‘Behind Skegness on the German Sea. Gibraltar Point.’ He closed his eyes and slid to the ground.

  He still heard the blind man saying something, but he could no longer make it out.

  ‘He’s much better now,’ said the surgeon of the Bedford. He was satisfied. ‘I’ve never seen anything this crazy. A hole in front and a hole at the back. Yet the bullet didn’t pass through his head, only under the skin along the skull, clear all round. It’s something for science. You were presumed dead, Mr Franklin.’

  The wounded man opened his mouth. Whether he had understood was hard to determine. But that didn’t matter to the doctor.

  ‘They were about to bury you. We’re only puzzled by one thing: how you got to the shore in the first place – and so far away from the landing-dock …?’

  John Franklin whispered something: ‘A blind man …’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You haven’t found a blind man?’

  ‘I don’t understand you, sir.’

  ‘A man dressed in white who was blind?’

  The surgeon was startled and looked worried. ‘There was no body near you, not even a dead one. It’s been a few days, of course. Perhaps you have only—’

  ‘Then I’m not paralysed, either?’

  ‘Paralysed? You moved your legs in your fever as if you wanted to cross an entire continent. We had to tie you down.’

  ‘What ship are we on?’

  ‘Your own.’

  Franklin was silent.

  ‘The Bedford, Mr Franklin. You’re second lieutenant here. You are Mr Franklin!’

  The wounded man turned to him with large eyes.

  ‘I know who I am. Only the name was a little strange to me.’

  Then he fell asleep again. The doctor went above to report to the captain.

  Peace. Only the medal for bravery still remained as a reminder of the failed attack on New Orleans. And daily work … for that was now more arduous. So many were missing.

  The battle, they said, had been superfluous. Unfortunately, the news of a long-since-concluded peace had arrived too late. But what did ‘too late’ mean? They hadn’t waited for it long enough. That’s what it meant.

  The ship was now on her way to England. During the first weeks they still talked about their defeat. Five and a half thousand British against four thousand Americans. But in blindly running against them, the British lost two thousand men at the start, while the Americans, thanks to their secure fortifications, lost only thirteen, and those only because they broke out and wanted to become heroes.

  What Franklin had to say about this was amply expressed by his silence. To talk about the senselessness of a battle was to attribute sense to war itself. Then, too, he was still very weak. ‘A few hidden deserters and some contraband,’ one of them said, ‘were not worth a war with the Americans.’ That person could actually imagine aims which might have been worth it.

  ‘We shouldn’t have set Washington and Baltimore on fire. The Americans are relatives, after all.’ War was good, only not against relatives.

  ‘If only Pakenham, that raving-mad general, hadn’t been there!’

  ‘If the Americans hadn’t been such good shots! How did they come by that, actually?’

  ‘They shouldn’t have been given their independence.’

  Franklin groaned and turned to the wall.

  ‘He’s still weak,’ he heard them say.

  Three weeks later he was on duty again. Now he was what he had once been, only even more distinctly. He breathed differently; his body was at rest; his mind was no longer out to cover up, to betray, or to impose its will.

  ‘He’s become different again,’ they said, and watched him closely. And John himself thought, I’m not afraid any more. Can I be affected at all? That question almost called up a new fear.

  The captain was a Scotsman named Walker, a warrior through and through, emaciated, nervous, but always in a grimly happy mood when events began to tumble over one another. He and Pasley, the first officer, were models of brevity and precision. They lived on quickness the way others lived on tea, rum, tobacco, or good words. Their manner to John was outwardly correct yet merciless. In vain he had tried his best. In any event, he had learned a great deal at this price. When they spoke to him it was always either a message or an order. It never contained the slightest commentary. When asked to repeat, they kept the original wording to prevent confusion. But though they already saved much time with their brevity, they tried to save still more with their quick tongues. John had been their favourite victim. They set traps for him every day with their rapid sentences and incomplete messages – big and small traps. The least of them had been to let him do things that had long since been taken care of. ‘But I told you that, Mr Franklin.’ And they harassed him with their impatience when he asked them to repeat what they had just said.

  But that was over now. All at once John was strong enough to bear the impatience of others, and with that the game was at an end. He moved at his own pace. He gave orders the way a carpenter drives nails, each straight and deep until it held. He paused where he wanted to, and not where others interrupted him. He renounced the fixed look and the snarl, even when things got tight.

  It was not a comfortable voyage home. Many times breezes turned into storms, and just before they got to the Azores the shout went up, ‘Fire in the stern!’ Each time, John Franklin was the officer on watch.

  He had long since realised that there were better officers than he, for he knew his profession intimately. He lacked the capacity for fast action, and without quick, alert friends he got into difficulties. But suddenly he had these friends.

  ‘Check if the watch is complete, Mr Warren. You can do that faster.’ John was satisfied that Midshipman Warren did what he was told at the required speed. He depended on others and carefully selected whom to rely on for what occasion.

  ‘Things aren’t any easier for him than before,’ Captain Walker said through his teeth, ‘but suddenly he has pulled himself together. He knows what he can and what he can’t do. That’s half the job.’

  ‘But he’s lucky, too,’ remarked Pasley. Then they ceased to make comments for several weeks. And looked for other victims.

  Peace lay ahead, but it also meant poverty. For unemployed officers there was only half-pay, not to speak of now non-existent prize money. For petty officers and crews there wasn’t a penny. And in England there was want.

  ‘We don’t have a chance,’ grumbled the paymaster.

  A pause; a thoughtful silence. ‘Then we should take it,’ joked another.

  ‘We ourselves are the chance.’ The listeners turned their heads: Franklin. Not that they had understood him. But if anybody considered carefully what he said, it was Franklin. So they still thought about it for a little while. He always had the courage to look stupid long enough to be smart – you would do well to copy that. In other respects, too, he had a tough skull. No bullet could get through it. God surely still had plans for Franklin. They helped him where they could.

  John felt that after his conversation with the blind man, who might not even have really existed, he had greater strength than ever before. Besides, the scar on his forehead earned him a new, inexplicable respect, and that made him even stronger than he actually was.

  The last will be the first, he told himself, and saying that he also recalled Walker and Pasley – after all, he was no saint.

  The time had really come for him to have his own command.

  Peace. Even if for the second time! After the first peace Napoleon had been imprisoned on Elba. But he had broken out and made himself master of France once more. War again, and then the great defeat. This peace seemed to be final now – all of London was blazing with flags.

  For the officers there were balls and elegant dinners. Speeches in honour of … cheers, champagne and beer.

  John sto
od on the side, somewhat detached. At the same time, he had nothing against this jubilation for peace. But it seemed to him that he was not well suited for general enthusiasms, and now less so than ever. He wasn’t very happy about it. I have to manage, he thought, even out of a sense of duty, not to be completely out of step with the nation.

  John talked about the Investigator and about Sherard with another officer. ‘How’s that?’ asked the other. ‘Sherard Lound? Are you sure his name wasn’t Gérard? I heard about a Gérard Lound.’ John asked for details.

  This Gérard was supposed to have been second lieutenant on the Lydia on its voyage to the Central American coast. He had a somewhat dubious reputation. Also, there was thought to have been something between him and Lady Barbara Wellesley on the voyage around Cape Horn. Yes, yes! The captain himself had intervened, by the way – and the teller of the tale looked around – rather to the displeasure of the lady. Lound had disappeared without a trace after a skirmish in the year 1812, and there is a rumour that the captain himself …

  John was not interested in these stories about love triangles, and he believed firmly that it was all a mix-up of names. Sherard Philip Lound built on Australian land and lived in wealth and pleasure; John did not want to doubt it.

  Hugh Willoughby, a relative of that sculpted Lord Peregrine Bertie, had discovered islands hundreds of years ago on which the sun produced no days or hours. John had never forgotten that. Now it obtained a new meaning for him. John Franklin, lieutenant of the Royal Navy, currently unemployed and on half-pay like thousands of lieutenants, was the only one who knew precisely what he wanted. In society he kept his dream to himself. But in his own mind he said again and again, ‘Nobody has been to the North Pole yet.’ Since the sun did not set there in the summer he was sure of two things: there would be open water and time without hours and days.

  In London. John stayed at the Norfolk Hotel, where he had seen Matthew Flinders for the last time. He even managed to rent the same room; that was important to him.

  Over there on that bed the captain had sat five years ago, pale and red-eyed from his imprisonment and all that worry. The French had changed the map of Australia without further ado: Spencer Gulf and the Gulf of St Vincent they had named after Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais, and the only man who would have never allowed this, Captain Nicholas Baudin, had perished in a storm. Add to all this his treatment as a spy, years of arrest in damp quarters, illness – poor Matthew.

  Trim the tomcat, his only friend on Mauritius, had landed in the cooking pot of hungry natives. They sent the fur back to Matthew. Meanwhile, the maps were corrected again; one could even find Franklin Harbour once more. Only Trim Bay, an inlet in the extreme north of Port Philip, was not entered. If ever a settlement were to be built there, it must be called Trim City. John would work for that if he ever gained influence.

  If Matthew were still alive. John thought, he’d want to go to the North Pole, too. Just to see what was there.

  Dr Brown – Robert Brown of the Investigator – was now a well-known natural scientist. John needed his help for the North Pole project and looked for him.

  It was towards noon. There seemed to be no one at the Royal Society whom he could ask. They all sat in the lecture hall listening to a disquisition about astronomy by a man named Babbage. John found himself a chair and concentrated. He knew so much about the stars that he could follow even a fast speech.

  Two women entered and sat down in the row behind him. John’s neighbour turned round and said in an undertone, ‘Since when do women have any business in science? They should stay at home and make puddings.’ The women heard it. The younger one leaned forward and said, ‘But the pudding is already done, or we wouldn’t be here.’ Then they both burst out laughing and infected others who had overheard the exchange. Dr Babbage asked the audience with some heat what was so funny about Galileo’s discoveries; he pretended to want to laugh, too. But everyone quickly saw that he didn’t really, for he took the stars too seriously.

  After the lecture, John went up to the younger of the two women and asked her what she found especially interesting about astronomy. She looked at him quizzically and replied that she adored Charles Babbage. She didn’t mean it seriously. John found this out with a few well-aimed questions, and she eventually admitted it. There was a twittering sound to her voice, and she enjoyed questions she could answer unseriously at first. Now and then she laughed and hopped on one foot. A crazy young woman she was.

  ‘Our man of the Sandbank Council!’ Dr Brown called out. ‘Do you still remember the Great Reef? What a giant you’ve become. A man whom no one can stop, am I right?’ John pondered for a long time how to respond to this. He didn’t care for such talk, but he needed Dr Brown.

  ‘I can be stopped,’ he replied. ‘My mind is open to arguments.’ Dr Brown laughed and exclaimed, ‘Good answer!’ They had become strangers to each other after all those years.

  But then they talked about Matthew Flinders and came closer again. Dr Brown had not forgotten the brave captain and had many words of love and respect for him. ‘But one thing is a shame: he invented a method whereby one can adjust a wrong declination of a compass by inserting a small metal rod, and he has never written it up.’

  ‘I know all about it,’ said John.

  ‘What? Write a report, Mr Franklin, with all calculations and drawings. I’ll submit it to the Royal Society and to the Admiralty. The invention shall bear Flinders’s name.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ answered John. Then he began to talk about the North Pole. Dr Brown raised his eyebrows, but he listened closely. In the end he promised to use his influence for John. A voyage to the North Pole, or some other voyage of discovery – good! He would speak with Sir Joseph and with Barrow. There was no money at present, but perhaps … ‘I’ll write to you in any case and tell what I’ve found out, Mr Franklin, one way or the other.’

  A written report was even harder than an oral one. For days John had laboured over it. Now he wanted to see something of London. He sought out Eleanor Porden, the lady with the pudding, and asked her whether she would drive him around a little in her carriage. She laughed and agreed at once.

  Her father was an important architect, and rich. He had built castles and rotundas for the king. She was his only daughter.

  ‘Let’s go to the Waterloo Panorama,’ she proposed. ‘It’s supposed to be very true to nature.’ John recalled she had hinted that she wrote poetry. Rather not bring that up, he thought. But as soon as they were in the carriage they got to the subject. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll read you a poem.’ John hardly needed to wait; she read three poems at once. The rhymes seemed to have been done properly. To be sure, some words like ‘Well, now’ and ‘woe’ appeared a little too often.

  ‘I’m having some difficulty with love poems,’ John said with a touch of formality. ‘Perhaps after so many years in the war I’m not well attuned to love.’ The poet fell silent, taken aback, and after a few seconds said, ‘Well, now …’ Since she was now quite still, John decided to recite the only poem he could recall:

  He little knew at what expense

  He was to buy experience.

  It was, he explained, from ‘Johnny Newcome’, but for him it was always a poem about voyages of discovery.

  She was still silent.

  He simply loved short poems, he said, subdued.

  Eleanor pulled herself together. They were now close to the panorama. In the domelike tent John looked absent-mindedly at the many tin warriors and their little horses. The fallen soldiers, especially those of the lower ranks, were always a little smaller than the live ones. Their colour was paler, too; they seemed to blend with the earth. John explained to Eleanor the advantages and disadvantages of the fixed look by using the panorama landscape as a model. Then they went on a little tour through town.

  ‘Odd,’ Eleanor remarked. ‘When you walk through a crowd you don’t get out of anybody’s way. All you do is apologise – that’s the only thing th
at distinguishes you from a bear.’ Her voice twittered. John mused about that. She watches me, he thought. Possibly she regards me favourably as a person. He began to prearrange his sentences in his mind to answer her.

  John experienced the city as rather bewildering. If only people would go about their business and stay their course in a clear and orderly fashion. But there were constantly unexpected turns and arbitrary collisions. Everyone under twenty and male was sparring with someone of the same kind. Either the assailant or the victim could be counted on to get under John’s feet. And then the coachmen! Worried, John stared at these thoughtless creatures with their round hats, watched how they passed each other in the most unmanageable places, hub to hub, racing as fast as they could. All of London seemed to be in love with speed. Good thing there were pedestrian walks now – elevated paved strips along the roadways. But if one ran into four drunken soldiers on these pavements, one would be pushed over the edge and so be doubly endangered. If one stood still to gain a larger perspective, somebody would at once jostle one from behind and step on one’s heels. Throughout all this unpleasantness, Eleanor continued their conversation, unperturbed.

  ‘Would you like to meet my father, Mr Franklin?’

  ‘I can’t support a wife,’ John answered. He had stumbled into a fence and had to pluck a sleeve from the wrought-iron tip. ‘I’m on half-pay and I don’t want other people’s money except for an expedition. We should write to each other, though. I regard you well, too.’

  Miss Porden could look out of the corner of her eyes in such an oblique fashion that you had to be prepared for everything. ‘Mr Franklin,’ she said, ‘that was too fast for me.’

  John looked for work in vain. Hungry sailors and melancholy officers were sitting around everywhere in the ports. Most of the ships had been scrapped or were still kept around for a few years as prison hulks, like the old Bellerophon.