The Discovery Of Slowness

by Sten Nadolny

  ‘Mr Forster.’

  ‘Your Excellency?’ The police chief bent toward him.

  ‘Take my glass. Do you see the old man at the point?’

  It seemed as if Mr Forster had never held a telescope in his hand. Endlessly he adjusted distance and sharpness and scanned the horizon. Then he had the man in focus. ‘That’s a recently released convict.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘It’s probably false. Beg pardon, Your Excellency, but he called himself John Franklin.’

  ‘What do you mean, “called himself”?’ asked John. But he did not wait for an answer. Indistinctly he heard questioning and welcoming voices, realised suddenly that he had risen long ago and was now walking toward the point, past the beer-tent, past the cheese-stand.

  Ten steps before the old man he stopped.

  ‘Sherard Lound?’

  The man did not react, looked far into the distance, and ate. He broke off morsel upon morsel from a roll he held in his left hand and put it – odd, where? John still saw only the profile of the left part of his face. It seemed as if the man put the morsels of bread into his right ear. Behind him, he heard Mr Forster’s voice: ‘Don’t be shocked. Because he has –’

  Now John remembered the name and called, ‘John Franklin?’

  The man turned his head but briefly, then looked out to sea again. John walked up to him, behind his back. He now stood on the man’s right side, took off the hat. And as the hat was lowered there emerged behind it Sherard’s face inch by inch: the white hair was matted, the sallow brown forehead was deeply wrinkled, then below the temple the skin became strangely white – a scar – and now the picture remained as if printed inside the eye, superimposed on everything else. This does exist, John thought again and again. This does exist. Sherard’s face reminded him of the nightmare in which the symmetrical figure was suddenly torn asunder into spikes and rags. For there was no face any more.

  The flesh of Sherard’s right cheek was gone, perhaps cut by a blow from a sabre, perhaps burned. The cheek was not there, and the teeth with their many gaps were exposed deep into the back of his mouth.

  ‘Presumably he was a sailor during the Napoleonic Wars,’ Mr Forster muttered. ‘Now he is – excuse me – imbecile. He speaks to no one. Fifteen years he spent in Port Arthur.’

  ‘What for?’ John sat down beside Sherard, laid down his hat, and also looked out to sea.

  ‘Piracy,’ answered Mr Forster. ‘When our frigates caught him, he was in possession of a British brig on course to the South Atlantic.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ said John. ‘Send them all away from here. I’ll follow later.’

  They sat silently. Sherard continued to break off morsel upon morsel of bread and to put them into his face from the side. He pushed the bites deep down, chewed them, and held up his hand so they wouldn’t fall out again. He seemed to have found his peace. There was something he was still waiting for, but entirely without impatience. His eyes remained riveted on the horizon, but not as if he expected the decisive event to happen there at the next moment.

  John recalled the island of Saxemberg, which had never been found. Sherard had said then, ‘If nobody finds it, it will be mine.’

  ‘Where were you going, Sherard? To Saxemberg?’

  No reaction. John looked again at the destroyed side of the face and wondered what actually was so horrible about it. Everyone wanted a face to look at him in an agreeable and friendly way. Everyone wanted to find himself pleasantly mirrored and was horrified when it grinned at him or threatened him with a sneer, when it seemed to grind and curse with teeth of a death’s-head. That alone was the reason. With that knowledge, Sherard’s face became bearable.

  Still, John could not control his feelings. They were connected with the face only on the outside. He felt like a man without footing, not knowing whether he was sad or glad, whether moved by pity or thirst for knowledge. What went on in his head did not torment him, because it was strange to him. It was no battle; rather, it was like the water’s surface stirred by the wind, and his thoughts swirled up like silt from the bottom of the sea near the shore.

  They’reallgone, hethought. Mary Rose, Simmonds, Mockridge, Matthew. Even Eleanor left me. I only anticipated her. And Sherard comes back, dreadfully beaten, a convict bearing my name, administered by me, punished by me.

  Suddenly John asked himself if he was a good man. That wasonly one of many unanswered questions which drifted along and beat against the shore with the surf; it was like the sea working on the sand. John wanted to allow every question and suffer with confidence what it wrought. I have never been good, he thought; even slowness does not produce good. And often I should have had more malice.

  Then Sherard, without turning his eyes away, passed him the bread to break off a bite for himself. Lound’s store to prevent famine, ‘Franklin Harbour’, the cold store, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It was all again present in John’s mind. He took a piece and chewed it, in tears. Like a crocodile, he thought. To top it off, he even had to laugh. Maconochie, Montagu and Tasmanian politics were far away.

  Sherard Lound sat peacefully and guarded the horizon. A rock on the shore, not to be shaken again. He has reached my goal, thought John.

  John shielded his eyes with his hands and peered attentively into the dark. When he looked around again he did not know how much time had passed. Everything was so clear now: children, boats, show booths. The faces that looked over to him seemed friendly. Wide awake he felt, alive, thankful for his life, strong in head and limbs. Strangely young.

  Forster reported.

  ‘Your Excellency, the awards ceremony! The victors are already––’ John only laughed. The victors could wait.

  Sherard now lived in Government House. Nobody knew whether and with how much comprehension he still perceived things. During the day he still sat by the shore on the very same spot, with strangely wakeful eyes. ‘He won’t live more than six weeks,’ surmised Dr Coverdale, who examined him on the orders of the governor. ‘This disease is incurable. But he seems to be more content than we are.’

  ‘Perhaps he has found the present,’ John murmured. ‘At any rate, he’ll die a discoverer.’

  Dr Coverdale scrutinised him, astonished.

  * * *

  That John had fallen in love with Sophia he admitted only to himself, not to her. He walked through the park on her right side, without a sword, and watched her movements from his window when she walked alone. He drank tea with her, stirred his cup endlessly, and told her of William Westall and the coastlines in the Arctic. He did not permit himself more. If he found love again, he also put it where it belonged. The moral quality of all his acts lay in the length of time they had endured or in their intended duration. He did not believe that exceptions to this rule could bring him luck. When one evening Sophia stood alone with him in the drawing-room and suddenly embraced him, he stroked her hair and hurriedly recapitulated the entire agenda of the legislative council in order to remain completely calm. The end of each paragraph read, ‘Your wife is called Jane.’ Then he kissed the top of her head. But that was all.

  ‘I will certainly be dismissed soon, so I can forget about tactics.’ John Franklin no longer had to be careful about the opinions of the men in big riding-boots and their newspapers. He wanted to use his remaining time to leave lasting traces behind. The entire coastline of the island was mapped anew; the charts were corrected. Whalers and local trading-vessels were freed of harbour fees, whereupon the number of ships increased rapidly. ‘A few more sailors will do this land a lot of good,’ John said in public. Over the furious protests of several big landowners he did everything he could to relieve the island of the character of a penal colony. He applied to London for a change of name: instead of Van Diemen’s Land it should be called Tasmania in the future, for the merchants, craftsmen and townspeople called themselves proudly Tasmanians and hated the old name – John didn’t worry about the resistance to the change he encountered in both councils.
He founded a Tasmanian Museum of Natural History, and with meagre funds completed Parliament House and supported the theatre. He bought land on the River Huon, leased it to former convicts under liberal conditions and for little money. Week after week he spoke every evening with scholars, churchmen and settlers about problems of education. He wanted to found a school.

  When Lady Franklin returned from New Zealand he ostentatiously solicited her advice on all government affairs. Although she had no right to participate in discussions of the councils, she was present at every session. Her unofficial role was accepted as a matter of course. The malicious voices and nasty rumours ebbed away. People could see that it was not weakness but a sense of sovereignty that led a governor to choose the advisers he found most suitable for him.

  Falling grain and wool prices led to a shortage of money in the colony. Times were bad. On top of it, London now sent more convicts than ever before and at the same time discontinued ‘assignment’ altogether. New prisons therefore had to be built and more money found to support the convicts. Franklin made as much use as possible of his right to pardon minor offenders, and kept his eye on his supervisory personnel with unwavering distrust. Only big landowners, remnants of the Arthur party, and prison officials were against him. ‘But that’ll be enough to topple me,’ he said to Jane with equanimity.

  ‘First we’ll travel across the unexplored part of the island,’ she demanded.

  ‘And while we’re at it we’ll discuss the new school.’

  Sherard brought good luck, or, more probably, kept bad luck and those who might perpetrate it away. He said nothing, perhaps also understood nothing, but anyone who didn’t avoid Government House altogether sensed an effect: shock, mourning, thoughtfulness, serene calm, joy in activity. John considered having Sherard take part in the council session but abandoned the idea as too crazy. Also out of respect for Sherard’s love of the sea: for him a session would have been a waste of time.

  Despite the physician’s definite verdict, Sherard was not yet ready to die. He took evident pleasure in every ship that anchored at the mouth of the Derwent. They were not only convict transports. The old Fairlie brought a number of scientists, including the Polish geologist Strzelecki, as well as Keglewicz, that always dissatisfied land-surveyor with his mad drive for precision and his suffering soul. A few weeks later the Erebus and Terror arrived, commanded by John’s friend James Ross, with the mission to explore the Antarctic. John set up a navigational observation station for him at his own expense.

  It seemed as though Sherard’s eyes pulled in people of good will from beyond the horizon while keeping the others out of range.

  ‘The new school must teach lasting values without being dull,’ Lady Franklin mused. ‘That’s just what schools can’t do.’

  It rained fiercely. One could barely light a fire. But Gavigan, one of the convict crew, tried his best. And the travellers were as happy as children. ‘Once again the governor does as he pleases,’ the chronicler of the Chronicle had written. ‘Instead of preparing himself for a presumably early departure, he goes on an adventure trip into the bush with his wife and a band of convicts.’ Now the fire at least started to smoke. ‘The pupils must learn how to discover things. Above all, their own way of seeing and their speed, each for himself,’ said John. Jane was silent, because she knew that when John’s eyes were still fixed on a specific point, he hadn’t finished yet. ‘Bad schools,’ John continued, ‘keep everyone from seeing more than the teacher––’

  ‘On the other hand, one can’t force the teachers to say more.’

  ‘They must be respectful enough,’ John countered, ‘not to push anyone to hurry. And they must be able to observe.’

  ‘Will you order that?’

  ‘Demonstrate it. Respect comes from seeing. The teachers must be not only teachers but also discoverers. I had one of those.’

  ‘As founders we can’t prescribe more than the usual school subjects,’ Jane declared.

  ‘Not even those, if the Church holds a different view. The Church wants Latin.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Anything that gives the pupil a chance. Mathematics, drawing – above all, observation of nature.’

  The cloudburst gained momentum; the fire went out. John shut the tentflap. Jane put her head in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. ‘You should write all this to Dr Arnold at Rugby. Perhaps he knows a good headmaster for your school.’

  The convicts proved their mettle, above all Gavigan, a strong, heavy-set man with eyes which were red with watchfulness and presence of mind. Also circumspect and dependable was French, who looked as if two medium-sized men had been put on top of each other: he was exactly seven foot, two inches tall. At river crossings he relied on his height and therefore got himself too easily into deep water. Still, he never lost his footing. The other ten were as eager as only convicts can be who hope to preserve their dignity for a few months.

  Lady Franklin sprained her ankle in a thicket and had to be carried for a while in a wooden contraption. It went on raining; the rivers became swollen. Time was short. A schooner had been waiting for them in the Gordon estuary for weeks. They were late. Finally, one river – the Franklin – could not be crossed without a boat. If the ship left them stranded they would be lost, for in the meantime even the streams they had managed to cross had turned into wild torrents. There was no way back. ‘Somebody must get across and let them know,’ said John.

  ‘I’ll carry Gavigan across the river,’ said French, after long deliberation. ‘I can touch bottom, and his weight gives me enough firmness to stand.’ He hoisted the heavy man on his shoulders and started wading. Although they were overturned and momentarily disappeared in the rapids, they got across alive, shouting ‘Cooee!’ – native Tasmanian for ‘Hurrah!’ – through the hollows of their hands. They covered the remaining fifteen miles to the Gordon in less than four hours, found the bend of the river where the schooner was just about to weigh anchor. They stopped it in time, asked for some food, and five hours later were again at the Franklin shouting, ‘Cooee!’

  After two days a good outrigger had been finished. The party got across the river without getting wet. The trip ended happily. John relieved the two rescuers of the remainder of their sentences. No sooner were they free men than they married. This, too, was something that distinguished convicts from free citizens: convicts were not permitted to marry.

  Sherard could no longer go down to the shore to keep the dangers away. He had to accustom himself to his sickbed and did so without resistance. The year 1843 was irrevocably the year of Sherard’s death. More and more he looked like a hawk, and pale like yellowed paper.

  A ship landed at the pier of Hobart and discharged a man who was constantly surprised at everything. He asked to be shown the way to Government House, and each time he received directions he muttered: ‘Odd, odd!’ When he got there he asked to speak to Sir John, was eventually admitted, and gave his own name. ‘Eardley Eardley,’ he said, evidently seeming to expect a reaction. John only nodded politely and kept on looking at him. ‘Eardley Eardley,’ the other man murmured once again. John thanked him for these kind repetitions but asked him to refrain from continuing them. ‘But that’s my full name,’ responded the new arrival. ‘I’m your successor as governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Here is the written confirmation from Lord Stanley.’ He probably imagined that now Sir John would introduce him to all the officials with pomp and circumstance, but the governor only laughed uproariously and could not stop himself. At last he shrugged. ‘Mr Montagu must have succeeded in placing all the blame at my door. How does he do it?’

  Then he turned to packing.

  Sherard remained in Tasmania to die.

  Hepburn took the post of assistant master in the new school. Little Ella cried because she had to leave her pony behind. Sophia wept because she knew that the man she loved had been unjustly treated and hurt. ‘If only I were the Queen!’ she exclaimed, sobbing. Lady Franklin laughed, curs
ed and organised the entire move from her bird’s-eye perspective.

  On the day of departure, beach and harbour were crowded as otherwise only at the Grand Regatta. John counted three hundred riders on horseback and far more than a hundred carriages. Settlers and their families came from great distances to wave their farewells. An extraordinary number of women and men pressed his hand, many in tears. Former convicts, sailors, small farmers, tailors’ apprentices, trappers from the bush, and, in the midst of them all, Dr Coverdale and massive Mr Neat of the True Colonist, who rushed up to him, grasped his hand, and declared, ‘If this land ever finds the way to dignity and good neighbourliness, it will be in the footsteps that the noble, patient spirit of Your Excellency has left behind.’

  Neat had sweaty hands, but they took none of the comforting effect away from his words. John put the moistened hand to his heart and said, ‘I only wanted to give everyone a chance.’

  18

  Erebus and Terror

  Unwavering, John Franklin glanced at the arrogant features of the Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Stanley, and demanded an explanation. ‘Why, my lord, did you believe Mr Montagu’s unproven stories and act upon them without giving me a hearing?’

  Lord Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby, administrator of the British colonies and hence de facto one of the most powerful rulers on earth, beautifully raised his right eyebrow. He managed that convincingly: he could raise each eyebrow independently of the other. ‘I shall give you no explanations. At any rate, I owe those only to the Queen and the Prime Minister.’ He considered it beneath his dignity to revise an opinion once he had formed it.