Measuring the World (17 page)

Gauss was silent for a moment. What, he asked eventually, really did happen to this Bonpland person?

It was time! Humboldt got to his feet. The reception wouldn't wait. After his introductory speech there would be a small reception for the guest of honor. House arrest!

Pardon?

Bonpland was in Paraguay under house arrest. After their return he'd been unable to settle down in Paris. Fame, alcohol, women. His life had lost its clarity and direction, the one thing that must never happen to anybody. For a time he'd been the director of the imperial gardens, and a superb breeder of orchids. After the fall of Napoleon he had gone across the ocean again. He had an estate and a family over there, but he had attached himself to the wrong side in one of the civil wars, or perhaps it was the right one, but in any case it was the losing one. A crazed dictator named Francia, a doctor to boot, had confined him to his estate under permanent threat of death. Not even Simon Bolívar had been able to do anything for Bonpland.

Horrible, said Gauss. But who was the fellow anyway? He'd never heard of him.

T
HE
F
ATHER

Eugen Gauss was wandering through Berlin. A beggar held out an open hand, a dog whimpered at his leg, a hackney horse coughed in his face, and a watchman ordered him not to be ambling about. On a street corner he fell into conversation with a young priest, from the provinces like him, and very intimidated.

Mathematics, said the priest, interesting!

Oh, said Eugen.

His name was Julian, said the priest.

They wished each other well and said goodbye.

A few steps further, a woman addressed him. His knees went weak with fright, for he'd heard of such things. He hurried on, didn't turn round when she ran after him, and never realized that all she had wanted to say to him was that he had dropped his cap. He drank two glasses of beer in a tavern. Arms crossed, he looked at the wet tabletop. He had never felt so sad. Not because of his father, because he was almost always that way, and not because of his loneliness. It was something to do with the city itself. The crowds, the size of the houses, the dirty sky. He composed some lines of poetry. They didn't please him. He stared straight ahead until two students in loose trousers and with fashionably long hair came to sit at his table.

Göttingen, asked one of the students. A notorious place. Things were blowing up there.

Eugen nodded conspiratorially although he had no idea what they were talking about.

But it'll come, said the other student, freedom, in spite of everything.

It would certainly come, said Eugen.

Right away, said the first, and like a thief in the night.

Now they knew they had something in common.

An hour later, they were on the way. As was the custom among students, Eugen went ahead with one of them, arm in arm, while the other followed thirty paces behind, so that they wouldn't be stopped by any gendarme. Eugen couldn't understand how anything could be so far: always more new streets, always another crossroads, and even the sheer numbers of people also walking seemed inexhaustible. Where were they all going, and how could anyone live like that?

Humboldt's new university, explained the student next to Eugen, it was the best in the world, organized like no other and with the most famous teachers in the country. The state feared it like hell itself.

Humboldt had founded a university?

The elder one, the student explained. The respectable one. Not the one who was a lackey of the French and had squatted in Paris for the duration of the war. His brother had openly summoned him to arms, but he'd behaved as if the Fatherland meant nothing. During the occupation, he'd had a plaque put up in front of his castle in Berlin, saying no plundering, the owner was a member of the Paris Academy. Disgraceful!

The street went steeply uphill, then gradually downward again. Two young men stood in front of a door and asked for the password.

Free in the fight.

That was from last time.

The second student came up to them. The two of them whispered together. Germania?

That was ages ago.

German and free?

Oh my God. The guardians exchanged a look, and told them to go in anyway.

They went downstairs and into a cellar room that smelled of mold. Crates stood on the floor and there were wine casks piled in the corners. The two students turned up the lapels of their coats to reveal black and red cockades stitched through with gold. They opened a trapdoor in the floor. A narrow stair led down into another, deeper cellar.

Six rows of chairs in front of a rickety standing desk. Black and red pennants hung on the walls, and about twenty students were already waiting. All had sticks, some were wearing Polish caps, others Old German hats. Several of them were dressed up in home-tailored wide trousers with broad medieval belts. Torches threw dancing shadows on the walls. Eugen sat down, feeling faint from the bad air and the excitement. They were saying, someone whispered, that “he” was coming himself. Him, or someone like him, they didn't know, he had been arrested in Freiburg at the River Unstrut, yet apparently he was still wandering the country incognito. Unimaginable, if he was here in person. Your heart would explode if you saw him in the flesh.

More and more students came in, always in twos, always arm in arm, most of them arguing about the password which clearly none of them had known. Here and there one of them leafed through a book of poetry or
German Gymnastics.
Some moved their lips in prayer. Eugen's heart was thumping. All the seats had been filled long ago, any new arrival had to squeeze himself into a corner.

A man came down the stairs with a heavy tread, and everything went quiet. He was thin, and very tall, with a bald head and a long gray beard. It was, somehow not to Eugen's surprise, their neighbor from the next table in the inn, who had butted into their argument with the gendarme the day before. Slowly, arms swinging, he made his way to the desk. There he stretched, waited until a student, who was having trouble with his trembling hands and had to try more than once, lit the candles on it, and then said in a high-pitched, dry voice: You must not know my name!

Way at the back a student groaned. Otherwise it was completely still.

The bearded man raised his arm, waved it, pointed at it with his other hand, and asked if anyone recognized what this was.

No one answered, no one breathed. So he said it himself: muscles.

You are the brave, he went on after a long pause, you are the young, you are the strong, and you must become stronger still! He cleared his throat. If you want to become thinkers, if you want to read deep, all the way to fundamentals, if you want to touch the very essence of things, you must discipline your bodies. Thinking minus muscles is weakness, it's slack, it's insipid, it's French. A child prays for the Fatherland, a young man is wild for it, but the man fights for it and suffers. He bent over and stayed that way for a moment, before pulling up his trouser leg into regular folds. Here too! He thumped his fist on his calf. Pure and strong, ready to do knee bends or leg extensions, anyone who wanted could come and feel it. He straightened up again and glared around the room for some seconds before thundering: This leg is strong. Germany must be like this leg!

Eugen managed to steal a glance at his neighbors. Several of the audience were gaping, many were in tears, one had closed his eyes and was trembling. His neighbor was chewing his fingers in excitement. Eugen blinked. The air was now even worse and the shadow play of the torches made him think he was part of a far larger crowd. He forced himself to swallow down his own tears.

Nothing must force a comrade to bow, said the bearded man. The enemy must be met face to face, chest to chest. What was oppressing the people was not the strength of the enemy but their own weakness. They were tied and bound. He struck his chest with the flat of his hand. They couldn't breathe, they couldn't move, they didn't know what to do with their own God-given will and brave innocence. Princes, French pests, and priests held them in their power, keeping them coddled and lulled into thumb-sucking sleep. But comradeship meant standing together, pure and devout. It meant thinking! He made a fist and struck his forehead. Thinking would make a holy alliance that no Satan could tear apart. Eventually it would lead to the true German church and the conquest of Being. But what did this mean, comrades? He stretched his arms wide, squatted down slowly, then up again. This signified taking control of the body, schooling it—and up, and down, and climb that rope, and stretch and bend—until one was made whole. But where were things today? Just now, while he was traveling incognito, he had been witness to an old man and a student, a German man and his son, two loyal men, being harassed by the police, because they didn't have papers with them. He had courageously interfered, as a German must, and praise be, he had overwhelmed the tyrant bailiffs. Daily one encountered injustice, of every kind and everywhere, and who should defend against it if not good comrades, who had renounced alcohol and women, and dedicated themselves to strength, Germany's monks, fresh and godly, gay and free? The men of France had been driven out, now it was the princes’ turn, the Unholy Alliance would not stand for long, philosophy must seize reality and cudgel a way through, it was time to take command again! He rocked up against the desk and Eugen heard himself and the others cheering. The bearded man stood calmly, very straight, his piercing eyes fixed on the crowd. Suddenly his expression changed, and he took a step back.

Eugen felt a draft. The yelling died away. Five men had walked in: a little old man and four gendarmes.

Good God, said the man next to Eugen. The proctor.

He knew it, said the old man to the gendarmes. All anyone had to do was to watch them all walking around in twos. Luckily they were really that stupid.

Three gendarmes stayed standing in front of the stairs, while one went to the speaker's desk. The bearded man suddenly looked a lot thinner and a lot shorter. He raised a hand over his head, but the threatening gesture had the wrong effect and he was immediately handcuffed.

He wouldn't give way, he cried as the policeman led him to the steps, not to force and not to pleas. His valiant comrades would not permit it. This was the moment when the storm would break. Then, as he was being shoved up the stairs: it was a misunderstanding, he could explain it. Then he was gone.

He was going to fetch reinforcements, said the bailiff, and hurried up the steps.

No talking, said one of the gendarmes. Not a word from anyone to anyone. Otherwise they wouldn't believe what would land on their heads.

Eugen began to cry.

He wasn't the only one. Several young men were sobbing uncontrollably. Two of them who had leapt to their feet sat down again. Fifty students with knobbed sticks, thought Eugen, and three policemen. Only one of them had to attack and the others would follow. And what if it was him? He could do it. For a few seconds he imagined it. Then he knew he was too much of a coward. He wiped his tears away and stayed sitting in silence while the bailiff came back with twenty gendarmes under the command of a big officer with a walrus mustache.

Take them, the officer ordered, first interrogation in the lockup to get the facts, tomorrow hand-over to the competent authorities.

A slight young boy went down on his knees to him, clasped his boots, and begged for leniency. The officer stared at the ceiling, upset and embarrassed, until a gendarme hauled the boy away. Eugen used the moment to tear a page out of his notebook and write the news to his father. Before he was handcuffed he was able to crumple the paper and hide it in his fist.

Police wagons were waiting on the street. The prisoners sat squashed together on long benches with gendarmes standing behind them. By chance Eugen found himself sitting diagonally opposite the bearded man, who was staring dully into space.

Should we make a break for it, whispered a student.

It was a misunderstanding, the bearded man replied, his name was Kösselrieder, he came from Silesia, and he'd stumbled into this. A gendarme hit him on the shoulder with his iron rod and he subsided, muttering quietly to himself.

Anyone else, asked the gendarme.

Nobody moved. The doors shut with a crash and they set off.

T
HE
E
THER

Eyes half-closed, Humboldt talked of stars and currents. His voice was quiet, but it was audible throughout the reception hall. He stood before the gigantic stage set of a night sky, with stars on it that formed concentric circles: Schinkel's scenery for
The Magic Flute
, re-erected for this occasion. Between the stars someone had inscribed the names of German scientists: Buch, Savigny Hufeland, Bessel, Klaproth, Humboldt, and Gauss. The hall was filled to the last seat: monocles and spectacles, a myriad of uniforms, softly waving fans, and in the center box, the motionless figures of the crown prince and his wife. Gauss was sitting in the first row.

Oh well, Daguerre whispered good-humoredly into his ear, it would take years before he could take a picture. Certainly the business about getting the exposure right would eventually solve itself, but he and his companion Niepce had no idea how they could fix the silver iodide.

Gauss hissed. Daguerre shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into silence.

Looking into the night sky, said Humboldt, gave no real idea of the sheer extent of this vault. The haze of light surrounding the Magellanic Clouds over the southern hemisphere was not some amorphous substance, some stream or gas; it consisted of suns, and only their absolute distance from earth gave the optical illusion that they all blended into one. A section of the Milky Way, two degrees wide by fifteen degrees long, what could be seen in the eyepiece of a telescope, contained more than fifty thousand countable stars, and up to one hundred thousand if one included those whose weakening light made them impossible to see. Which meant that the Milky Way consisted of twenty million suns, which a human eye that was separated from them by a distance equivalent to their own diameter could only detect as a dull shimmer, one of those patches of mist of which astronomers had counted more than three thousand already. One therefore must ask why, given so many stars, the sky was not permanently filled with light, why there was so much black out there, and one could not avoid accepting the principle that there was something opposed to light, something that acted as a block in the intervening space, a light-extinguishing ether. Once again this gave proof of the rational order of Nature, because finally every human culture began with the observation of the paths of heavenly bodies.

Humboldt opened his eyes wide for the first time. One of these bodies swimming in the black ether was the earth. A kernel of fire, contained in three shells, one rigid, one liquid, and one elastic, all of which offered a home to life. Even deep underground he had found plant matter that grew without light. Volcanoes served earth's fiery core as natural vents, and its rocky crust was covered by two seas, one of water and one of air. Both were moved by perpetual currents: there was the famous Gulf Stream, which drove the water of the Atlantic Ocean past the isthmus of Nicaragua and the Yucatán, then through the Bahama channel northeast against the Newfoundland Banks and from there southeast to the Azores, which explained the miraculous appearance of date palms, flying fish, and sometimes even live Eskimos in their canoes along the Irish coast. He himself had discovered an equally powerful current in the quiet sea that carried cold northern water the length of Chile and Peru to the tropics. Despite all his pleading, he smiled half-proud and half-embarrassed, the sailors insisted on naming it the Humboldt current. It was the same with the currents in the ocean of the air, kept in movement by the fluctuations of the sun's heat, and interrupted by the flanks of the huge stone massifs, which meant that the division of different kinds of plants didn't follow lines of latitude, but rather lines that undulated according to isothermic patterns. This system of currents connected the different parts of earth into a functioning unity. Humboldt was silent for a moment, as if the coming thought moved him. As in earth's caverns, so also in the sea and in the air: plants flourished everywhere. Vegetation was the variousness of life itself, laid out for all to see, silent and immobile. Plants had no interior identity, nothing hidden, everything about them was external. Barely protected, tethered to earth and its dictates, they still managed to live and survive. Insects, by contrast, and animals and humans were both protected and armored. Their constant internal temperature enabled them to tolerate changing conditions. Look at an animal and you didn't know anything; look at a plant and its entire being was laid open to you.

He was getting sentimental, whispered Daguerre.

Life moved up through stages of increasing concealment of its organization until it made the leap that one could confidently name as its final achievement: the lightning bolt of reason. After this there was no further evolution by degrees. The second greatest insult to Man was slavery. But the greatest was the idea that he was descended from the apes!

Man and ape! Daguerre laughed.

Humboldt tilted his head back and seemed to listen to his own words. The understanding of the cosmos had made great strides. Telescopes allowed one to explore the universe, one knew the structure of the earth, its weight and its trajectory, one had established the speed of light, worked at the ocean currents and the conditions of life, and soon it would be possible to solve the last riddle, magnetic force. The end of the road was in sight, the measuring of the world almost complete. The cosmos would be understood, all difficulties pertaining to man's beginnings, such as fear, war, and exploitation, would sink into the past, and Germany in particular and even more particularly the scientists gathered here tonight must give this their most urgent support. Science would bring about an era of the general good, and who could know if one day it might not even solve the problem of death. For a few moments Humboldt stood there, still. Then he bowed.

Since his return from Paris, whispered Daguerre under the cover of the applause, the baron hadn't been the same as he used to be. He was having difficulties concentrating. And he was inclined to repetition.

Gauss asked if it was true he'd come back because of lack of money.

Mostly because of an order, said Daguerre. The king had no longer been willing to tolerate his most famous subject making his home abroad. Humboldt had responded to all letters from the Court with evasions, but the last one contained such a clear warning that he could only resist it at the cost of making a complete break. And for that, Daguerre smiled, the old gentleman lacked sufficient funds. His long-awaited account of his journey had disappointed the public: hundreds of pages crammed with measurements, almost nothing personal, and for all intents and purposes no adventure. A tragic circumstance, it would curtail his fame. A renowned traveler was only renowned if he left good stories behind. The poor man had simply no idea how to write a book! Now he was sitting in Berlin, building an observatory, conceiving a thousand projects and getting on the nerves of the entire city council. The younger scientists made fun of him.

He didn't know how things were in Berlin. Gauss got to his feet. But in Göttingen he'd never met a young scientist who wasn't an ass.

Even the business about the highest mountain wasn't true, said Daguerre as he followed Gauss toward the exit. In the meantime it had been discovered that the Himalayas were far higher. A bad blow for the old man. For years he had refused to accept it. Beyond which he had never recovered from the collapse of his expedition to India.

On his way to the foyer Gauss jostled a woman, trod on a man's foot, and blew his nose twice so loudly that several officers gave him looks of contempt. He was quite unused to conducting himself in such a crowd of people. Intending to be helpful, Daguerre took his elbow, but Gauss let fly at him. Don't! He thought for a moment, then: a salt solution.

Oh yes, said Daguerre sympathetically.

Gauss told him not to gape at him like an idiot. One could fix silver iodide with a simple salt solution.

Daguerre stopped dead. Gauss pushed his way through the hubbub to Humboldt, whom he'd seen at the entrance to the foyer. Salt solution, Daguerre called out behind him. Why?

One didn't have to be a chemist for that, Gauss called back over his shoulder, all it took was a little understanding. He walked hesitantly into the foyer, applause broke out, and if Humboldt hadn't immediately seized him by the arm and pushed him forward, he would have fled. More than three hundred people had been awaiting him.

The next half hour was torture. One head after the other pushed itself in front of him, one hand after the other reached for his arm and passed it to the next hand, while Humboldt whispered a meaningless row of names into his ear. Gauss calculated that at home it would take him almost exactly a year and seven months to meet this many people. He wanted to go home. Half the men were in uniform, a third of them had mustaches. Only one seventh of the audience were women, only a quarter of these were under thirty, only two weren't ugly, and only one was someone he'd have liked to touch but seconds after she had curtseyed to him, she was already gone. A man with thirty-two bars of decorations held Gauss's hand negligently between three fingers, Gauss bowed mechanically, the crown prince nodded and moved on.

He didn't feel well, said Gauss, he had to go to bed.

He noticed his velvet cap was missing, someone had taken it from him, and he didn't know whether that was the usual thing or whether it had been stolen. A man clapped him on the shoulder as if they'd known each other for years, and possibly that might indeed be the case. While someone in uniform clicked his heels and someone else wearing spectacles and a frock coat swore that this was the greatest moment of his life, he felt tears coming up in his eyes. He thought of his mother.

Suddenly everything went still.

A thin old gentleman with waxy skin and unnaturally erect posture had come in. Taking tiny steps, apparently without moving his legs, he glided up to Humboldt. The two of them stretched out their arms, took each other by the shoulders, and bowed their heads a few centimeters, then each of them took one step back.

What a joy, said Humboldt.

Indeed, said the other.

The bystanders applauded. The two men waited until the applause had subsided, then turned to Gauss.

This, said Humboldt, was his beloved brother, the minister.

He knew, said Gauss. They had met in Weimar years ago.

Prussia's teacher, said Humboldt, who had given Germany its university and the world the true theory of language.

A world, said the minister, whose composition and natural organization had been unlocked by none other than his brother. His hand felt cold and lifeless, his eyes fixed like a doll's. Most of all, he was no longer a teacher, not for years. Only a private citizen and a poet.

Poet? Gauss was glad to be able to let go of his hand.

He dictated a sonnet every day to his secretary between seven and eight thirty in the evening. He'd been doing it for twelve years and would continue to do so until his death.

Gauss asked if they were good sonnets.

He certainly hoped so, said the minister. But now he must excuse himself.

Such a pity, said Humboldt.

Nonetheless, said the minister, a wonderful evening, a great pleasure.

The two of them stretched out their arms and repeated the ritual from before. The minister turned toward the door and went out with neat little steps.

An unexpected joy, said Humboldt again. Suddenly he looked depressed.

He wanted to go home, said Gauss.

A little longer, said Humboldt. This was Commander of the Gendarmerie Vogt, and science owed him a great deal. He was planning to issue all Berlin gendarmes with compasses. This would allow them to collect new data on magnetic field fluctuations across the capital. The Commandant of Gendarmerie was six feet six inches tall, with a walrus mustache and a terrifying handshake. And this, continued Humboldt, was Malzacher the zoologist, Rotter the chemist, and over here Weber the physicist from Halle and his wife.

Delighted, said Gauss, delighted. He was close to bursting into tears. All the same, the young woman had a small, well-shaped face, dark eyes, and a dress with a deep décolleté. He transferred his gaze to her in the hopes that it might cheer him up.

He was an experimental physicist, said Weber. Working on electrical forces. They tried to keep themselves hidden, but he wasn't giving them a chance.

That's the way he'd done it too, said Gauss, without taking his eyes off the pretty wife. With numbers. A long time ago.

He knew that, said Weber. He'd studied the
Duquuitiones
more closely than the Bible. Which admittedly he had never studied that closely at all.

The woman had delicate, very highly arched eyebrows. Her dress left her shoulders bare. Gauss wondered what it would be like to press his lips to those shoulders.

He dreamed, he heard Doctor Weber from Halle talking on, that a mind such as the professor's, in other words not a specialized mathematical mind but a universal one, one that solved problems wherever they presented themselves, would dedicate itself to an experimental exploration of the world. He had so many questions. It was his greatest wish to pose them to Professor Gauss.

He didn't have much time, said Gauss.

That might be, said Weber. But in all modesty, it was essential and he wasn't just nobody.

Gauss looked at him for the first time. A young man with a narrow face and pale eyes stood there in front of him.

He had to say it, explained Weber, smiling, for the sake of the project. He had studied the wave movements of electrical fields. His writings were widely read.

Gauss asked how old he was.

Twenty-four. Weber blushed.

You have a beautiful wife, said Gauss.

Weber said thank you. His wife bobbed a curtsey but didn't look embarrassed.

Your parents are proud of you?

He thought so, said Weber.

He was to come visit him next afternoon, said Gauss. He could have an hour, but then he'd have to take himself off.