Measuring the World (19 page)

He couldn't either, said Humboldt. But he felt the same way.

Perhaps this thing and that were still possible. Magnetism. The geometry of space. His head wasn't what it once was, but then again it wasn't useless.

He had never been to Asia, said Humboldt. That was not an appropriate state of affairs. He found himself wondering if it was not in fact a mistake to rule out the invitation to Russia.

Naturally he would need new collaborators. He couldn't do it on his own any more. His eldest son was in the army, the youngest was still too young, and Eugen was out of the picture. But he'd taken to the Weber fellow. And he had a pretty wife! There was a vacant post of professor of physics at Göttingen.

It wouldn't be easy, said Humboldt. The regime would want to control him every step of the way. But if anyone thought he was weak or submissive, they'd made a mistake. They'd kept him away from India. But he would go to Russia.

Experimental physics, said Gauss. Something new. He'd have to think about it.

With any luck, said Humboldt, he could even get as far as China.

T
HE
S
TEPPES

What, ladies and gentlemen, is death? Fundamentally it is not extinction and those seconds when life ends, but the slow decline that precedes it, that creeping debility that extends over years: the time in which a person is still there and yet not there, in which he can still imagine that although his prime is long since past, it lingers yet. So circumspectly, ladies and gentlemen, has nature organized our death!

When the applause ended, Humboldt had already left the podium. A coach was waiting outside the Choral Hall to take him to his sister-in-law, who was lying on her sickbed. She was gently sinking away, without pain, between sleep and semi-consciousness. She opened her eyes one last time, looked first at Humboldt, then, a little frightened, at her husband, as if she had difficulty distinguishing between them. Seconds later she was gone. Afterwards the brothers sat together facing each other; Humboldt held his elder brother's hand, because he knew the situation required it, but for a time they totally forgot to sit up straight and say classical things.

Did he remember the evening, his elder brother asked finally, when they read the story of Aguirre and he decided to go to the Orinoco? It was a date the world would remember!

Of course he remembered, said Humboldt. But he no longer believed the future world would care, he also had doubts about the significance of the journey upriver itself. The channel didn't produce any benefit for the continent, it was as abandoned and mosquito-ridden as ever, Bonpland had been right. At least he had spent his life without being bored.

Boredom had never troubled him, said the elder brother. He had just not wanted to be alone.

He had always been alone, said Humboldt, but it was boredom that had terrified him to death.

He had found it very hard, said the elder brother, that he had never been made chancellor of Germany, but Hardenberg had prevented it, though it had always been his destiny.

Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.

The elder brother leaned back and gave him a long look. Still boys?

You knew?

Always.

Neither of them spoke for a long while, then Humboldt rose and they embraced as formally as ever.

Will we see each other again?

Certainly. In the flesh or in the light.

He was awaited at the Academy by his two traveling companions, Ehrenberg the zoologist and the mineralogist Rose. Ehrenberg was short, fat, and had a pointed beard. Rose was more than six foot six and seemed to have perpetually damp hair. Both wore thick glasses. The court had allotted them to Humboldt as his assistants. Together they checked over all the equipment: the cyanometer, the telescope, and the Leyden jar from his trip to the tropics, an English clock that ran more accurately than the old French one, and for measuring magnetism, a better dipping compass needle made by Gamberg himself, and also an iron-free tent. Then Humboldt had himself taken to Charlottenburg Palace.

He saluted this journey into the empire of his son-in-law, said Friedrich Wilhelm slowly. So he was elevating Chamberlain Humboldt to the position of True Private Adviser, who from now on was to be addressed as Excellence.

Humboldt was so moved that he had to turn away.

What is it, Alexander?

It was only, said Humboldt hastily, because of the death of his sister-in-law.

He knew Russia, said the king, and he also knew Hum-boldt's reputation. He wished for there to be no problems! It was not necessary to weep tears over every unhappy peasant.

He had given his assurances to the tsar, said Humboldt in a tone that sounded as if he'd learned the words by heart. He would occupy himself with inanimate nature; he would not be studying the relations of the lower classes. It was a sentence he had already written twice to the tsar and three times to high officials of the Prussian Court.

At home there were two letters. One from the elder brother, thanking him for the visit and his support. Whether we see each other again or not, now once more, it is just we two, as it always was fundamentally. We were inculcated early with the lesson that life requires an audience. We both believed that the whole world was ours. Little by little the circles became smaller, and we were forced to realize that the actual goal of all our efforts was not the cosmos but merely each other. Because of you I wanted to become a minister, because of me you had to conquer the highest mountain and the deepest caverns, for you I founded the greatest university, for me you discovered South America, and only fools who fail to understand the significance of a single life in double form would describe this as a rivalry: because there was you, I had to become the teacher of my country, because there was me, you had to become the scientist who explored an entire continent; nothing else would have been appropriate. And we always had the most acute sense of what was appropriate. I beg you not to allow this letter to be found sometime in the future with the rest of our correspondence, even if, as you yourself told me, you no longer hold any brief for the future.

The other letter was from Gauss. He too sent his good wishes along with several formulae for magnetic measurements of which Humboldt understood not one line. Besides this, he recommended that Humboldt learn Russian along the way. He himself had recently begun to do the same, not least as the result of a long-standing promise. Should Humboldt encounter a certain Pushkin, would he please not forget to assure him of his great admiration.

The servant came in and announced that everything was ready, the horses had been fed, the instruments loaded, they would be set to leave at dawn.

In point of fact Russian really did help Gauss survive the aggravation at home, Minna's endless wailing and reproaches, his daughter's sad face, and all the questions about Eugen. Nina had given him the Russian dictionary as a parting present: she had gone to her sister in East Prussia, leaving Göttingen forever. For a moment he had wondered if she, and not Johanna, had been the woman of his life.

He had softened. Recently he had even succeeded in looking at Minna without distaste. There was something in her narrow, elderly, perpetually complaining face that he would miss if she were no longer there.

Weber was writing to him frequently now. It did seem likely that he would soon be coming to Göttingen. The professorship was opening up and Gauss's word carried weight. Such a pity, he said to his daughter, that you're so ugly and he already has a wife!

On the return journey from Berlin, when the swaying of the coach had made him more ill than ever in his life before, he had tried to help himself by thinking through the shuddering, shaking, and rolling to their fundamentals. Slowly but surely he managed to separate out all the parts of the whole combination. It really didn't help much, but in the process he had understood the principle of the smallest possible force: every movement corresponded with that of the system as a whole for as long as it could. The moment he had reached Göttingen in the early hours of the morning, he had sent Weber the notes he'd made, and Weber had returned them with clever comments. The paper would be published in a few months. So now he'd become a physicist.

In the afternoons he took long walks through the woods. Over time he'd ceased to get lost, he knew this area better than anyone, after all he'd fixed every detail of it on the map. Sometimes it was as if he hadn't just measured the region, but invented it, as if it had only achieved its reality through him. Where once there had been nothing but trees, peat bogs, stones, and grassy mounds, there was now a net of grades, angles, and numbers. Nothing someone had ever measured was now or ever could be the same as before. Gauss wondered if Humboldt would understand that. It began to rain, and he took shelter under a tree. The grass shivered, it smelled of fresh earth, and there was nowhere else he could ever want to be but here.

Humboldt's baggage train was not making much progress. His departure had coincided with the time of the spring thaw; a failure in planning of a kind he had never committed before. The coaches sank into the mud or kept sliding off the waterlogged roads; again and again they had to halt and wait. The column was too long, there were too many of them. They were already late by the time they reached Königsberg. Professor Bessel greeted Humboldt with a rhetorical deluge, led them through the new observatory, and had his guests shown the greatest collection of amber in the country.

Humboldt asked him if he hadn't once worked with Professor Gauss.

The high point of his life, said Bessel, if not exactly easy. The moment in Bremen when the Prince of Mathematics had recommended that he give up science and become a cook or a blacksmith, if neither of these was too much of a challenge, was one from which he'd taken a long time to recover. Nonetheless he had been lucky; his friend Bartels in Petersburg had had an even harder time with him. In the face of such superiority, the only thing that helped was sympathy.

On the next stage of the journey, to Tilsit, the roads were covered in ice, and several times the wagons broke down. At the Russian border they found a troop of Cossacks under orders to accompany them.

That really wasn't necessary, said Humboldt.

He must trust him, said the commander, it was necessary.

He had spent years in the wilderness without protective escort!

This wasn't the wilderness, said the commander. This was Russia.

Outside Dorpat there were a dozen journalists waiting, along with the entire Faculty of Sciences. The first thing they wanted to do was show them the mineralogical and botanical collections.

Gladly, said Humboldt, though in fact he was here not for the museums but for Nature.

Let him take care of that in the meantime, offered Rose, eager to be useful, that shouldn't hold them up, that was precisely why he'd come!

While Rose was measuring the hills around the town, the mayor, the dean of the university, and two officers led Humboldt through an unbelievably long suite of poorly ventilated rooms full of samples of amber. One of the stones held a spider of a kind Humboldt had never seen before, and in another there was an extraordinary winged scorpion, which deserved to be called a fabulous creature. Humboldt held the stone up close to his eyes and blinked, but it did no good, he didn't see well any more. He must have a drawing of it made!

Of course, said Ehrenberg, who all of a sudden was standing right behind him, as he took the stone from his hand and bore it away. Humboldt wanted to call him back, but then he let it go. It would have looked strange in front of all these people. He didn't get the drawing and he never saw the stone again. When he asked Ehrenberg about it later, he couldn't remember anything.

They left Dorpat in the direction of the capital. An imperial courier rode ahead, two officers had attached themselves to them along with three professors and a geologist from the Petersburg Academy, one Volodin, who Humboldt kept forgetting was there, so that he gave a start every time Volodin chimed in with some comment in his light, quiet voice. It was as if something in this pale figure resisted being fixed into memory, or as if it commanded to perfection the art of rendering itself invisible. At the river Narva they had to wait two days for the ice to yield. In the meantime their numbers had swollen to the point where they needed the large ferry to cross, and it could only do that when the river was completely clear. So they were late in reaching St. Petersburg.

The Prussian ambassador accompanied Humboldt to his audience. The tsar held his hand for a long time, assured him that his visit was an honor for Russia, and asked about Hum-boldt's elder brother, whom he remembered clearly from the Congress of Vienna.

Did he remember him fondly?

Well, said the tsar, to be frank he had always found him rather intimidating.

Every European envoy gave a reception for Humboldt. He dined several times with the imperial family. The finance minister, Count Cancrin, doubled the promised travel funds.

He was grateful, said Humboldt, although he did think with longing of the days when he had financed his travels on his own.

No reason for longing, said Cancrin, he had every freedom and this, he pushed a piece of paper at Humboldt, was the route that would be permitted. He would be escorted along the way, he was expected at every stopping point, and all provincial garrisons were under orders to provide for his safety.

He wasn't sure, said Humboldt. He wanted to move about freely. A scientist must be able to improvise.

Only if he'd failed to plan properly, Cancrin reproached him with a smile. And this plan, he could promise him, was outstanding.

Before they went on to Moscow, Humboldt got letters again: two from his elder brother, whom loneliness was rendering talkative. A long letter from Bessel. And a card from Gauss from the depths of his experiments in magnetism. He was taking the thing seriously now, he had had a customdesigned windowless hut built, with an airtight door, and nails of unmagnetizable copper.

At first the town councilors had thought he'd gone mad. But Gauss had cursed them at such length, threatening and wailing and dangling so many totally invented advantages for trade and the economy and the town's fame before their eyes that they finally agreed and had put up the hut next to the observatory. Now he was spending the majority of his days in front of a long hanging iron needle in a galvanometer. Its movement was so weak as to be invisible to the naked eye; one had to direct a telescope at a mirror set up over the needle to see the minuscule oscillations of the movable scale. Hum-boldt's supposition was correct: the earth's field fluctuated, its strength altered periodically. But Gauss was measuring in shorter intervals than he had, he was measuring more accurately, and naturally he measured better; it amused him that it had eluded Humboldt that one had to take into account the stretching of the thread from which the needle was suspended.