The Syme Papers (26 page)

And then, for I lingered above the smoking globe and heard, still more quietly, and with a deeper rage, from the slumped figure on the saddle who had not budged, ‘Damn you, Tom.’

I confess the recent display had done nothing to alleviate the confusion under which I laboured; indeed, rather than resolving me one way or another, the experiment had fuelled equally the
suspicion
that I had come upon a charlatan practising a hoax and the faith that I had discovered a Galileo of Geognosy, a pioneer of the internal world. So intimately bound are the faculties of belief that we can often exercise and strengthen both faith and doubt by a single action of the mind, intensifying both, and the conflict between them. At least, I have found this to be true with respect to me.

At last the room cleared – two of the ladies in particular (the pock-marked girl in the blue dress and the aging beauty) hesitated at the door, and took rather less … scientific leave than the others. ‘No,’ the girl declared, stomping her foot lightly, ‘I don’t understand it, and I
won’t
understand it. Nothing was proved; a certain … difficulty in creation, that’s all; a way of going wrong.’ (Did a quick kiss from Tom persuade her otherwise?) The fading beauty, moving melodiously in a faint cloud of her own chiffon, remarked only, ‘I have never seen such
wonder, Herr Professor;
it was – as if – the stars had become our playthings – you know?’ There was a certain lingering at the door; and then the silence of near companions alone again. When I had dried, as best I could, my soaked garments at the blazing hearth, till I fancied my legs glowed like roast pig beneath their trousers, I ventured to introduce myself to the great Professor and his assistant.

They for their part seemed rather surprised to see me, having fancied themselves, I suppose, finally rid of their goggle-eyed guests. Tom, however, recovered his humour quickly, and declared, ‘Why, this is white of you. I had forgotten completely – fifty cents at the door, lost in the hurry. Splendid, splendid
…’

I quickly disabused him, though strangely shy at last of a proper introduction. ‘No, I’m afraid, sir, you mistake me. You’, and I declared this as grandly as I could, puffing my blue chest and tucking my hands behind my back, ‘have sent for me. Dr Friedrich Müller, at your service; come from Kolwitz-Kreminghausen.’

The smile never faltered on Tom’s fine-boned face. ‘Splendid, splendid,’ he repeated, a great favourite of his, I discovered, and variously applied. His use of it, aided by the natural sunniness of his disposition, was curiously persuasive. In short, it rubbed off on one; and, after a time, one could not help but feel rather splendid around him, among splendid people, in a splendid place. (This despite the fact that a vile, damp, chilly smoke lingered in the room; the fire was dying; a cold wind blew off the river through the unclosed window; a muddy soot of trampled ash covered the burned floor, among clay fragments of the world; and I distinctly heard a weary mutter, ‘Damn me, never heard of it,’ under Syme’s breath.)

‘Sam, Sam,’ Tom cried, lightly at first and then with sudden sharpness, as his colleague warmed himself, slumped, in front of the fire. Sam turned partly round, lifted his head above a lowered shoulder, and smiled a faint smile that died long before it could reach his cold blue eyes. ‘Tom Jenkyns,’ Tom introduced himself, pushing the sleeve back from his wrist and taking me vigorously by the hand. ‘Professor… Mooler, I believe, from Neuburg? A protégé of the great Werner himself, unless I’m mistaken,’ he continued, drawing me subtly towards his master, until Syme and I had exchanged a similar salute.

The Professor seemed to rouse himself, and asked with a sweeter smile, ‘Author of that excellent little paper – somewhat longer title – on the convexity of the seas – internal architecture, etc. – dose of Werner, with a drop of Jameson, no? – wonderful etc. stuff …’ I 
remarked again upon the peculiarity in his manner, for he would not catch my eye, but stared, quite happily it seemed, at a fragment of the world that had fallen to my feet.

‘Thank you,’ I said, not knowing what else to answer. And yet – shall I say it? – strangely pleased, flattered even, by this knowledge, as one may be by the acknowledgement of a – superior. As I stood beside him for the first time, I noted – unless this were my fancy only – a sweet scent about him, like the odour of shaved wood, both slight and powerful at once, and, above all, warm with his recent exertions. I could not help an impish desire simply to catch his eye. But he swung away from me once more, strode briskly towards the window, and shut it against the cold coming over the river.

‘Never mind me,’ Tom said, as he stepped out of his black coat, hung it gently over the edge of the door, and grasped the handle of a broom hidden behind it. He began to sweep the damp soot into the centre of the room, would bustle swiftly into the dark corners and then, like a dancing wave, move towards me again, scratching, scratching, chatting all the time.

‘I have heard such splendid things,’ he began improbably, ‘of Kolwitz-Kreminghausen. A little state, I believe, on the rise?’

‘It suited me, once,’ I declared, to my own surprise, wonderfully happy to talk of my home among these strangers. ‘A small place only, it is true. A potatoes and candle place, actually. The heart of the North German wax industry: famous for the lightest, the most mysterious and ethereal of candles. And famous too for the best, the earthiest potatoes.’

‘Splendid, splendid,’ Tom said, sweeping, sweeping, as if I had gratified him deeply by this account and he were much obliged. This was always his way; and I have never known since a gentleman so deft at putting a stranger at his ease. This he accomplished by the wonderful combination of two rare gifts – a natural curiosity and a studied (I can use no better term to describe the care he took with it) sincerity. ‘I believe your lot have set up a brand-new university on the – pardon me – Elbe. This is just the thing with us, sir; there is nothing like learning, after all, wouldn’t you say? Though perhaps Sam would disagree?’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ Sam answered, staring darkly at the river with his back towards the room. ‘Though I have never favoured what you might call a “factory of education”. A thing can only be learned – learned by the root
– contra mundum.
There is that in the nature of man – which imperceptibly adjusts – even the most original concep tion – to the general understanding – or rather, the general misunderstanding. What you get is – in short – slush.’ Then he turned, smiling broadly, ‘What would your poet say, Dr Müller?’ Upon which he succumbed to what at first appeared a most painful coughing fit, though, in point of fact, I believe he meant to say:
‘Noch so ein Kerl wie ich, und die Welt geht zugrunde?’

‘I have got that by heart,’ he continued, in his abrupt manner. ‘Wonderful man, your Schiller – they put on
The Robbers
at the Dewdrop last summer – I shouldn’t have missed it for the world. So – droll. Barnaby Rusk himself (your host, I believe?) declared – it was like going eighty-four rounds – with George Jackson – only this time – he thought he lost. Lest you despair of me – as a hopeless mis anthrope – I should say – I have a great faith in man – particularly your American man (or mine, rather) – though little enough in men, I confess.’

The Professor squatted before the fire, rubbing his hands; then sat down gently on the broad stones in front of the grate. He had a restless frame, I soon discovered, that required constant revisions. Idly, he lifted a fragment of the burning planet that had fallen towards the hearth and studied it, turning it in his palm.

Tom meanwhile had busied himself about the room, and brought it to some degree of order. The table had been pushed into the bay once more, scraping across the boards, an operation which seemed to concern Syme not in the slightest, and for which I had been too shy to proffer any help. Chairs, likewise, were restored to their place, along with the large dresser – and a rather wretched sample of cups and plates returned to its shelves and hooks. Tom picked up the broom again and formed a small heap from the broken shards of the globe in the centre of the floor, which resembled nothing so much as the remains of a great grey egg, from which the chick had escaped. The scrape and swish of broom-straw on the boards seemed to me 
wonderfully soothing, and for the first time I felt, standing against the fire – well, I know not myself what I felt – only that, perhaps, something expected had yet to occur.

‘Now,’ said Syme quietly, to his own hands, ‘what shall we talk about?’

I have such a heavy-handed soul, and could not refrain, despite an underlying wish to the contrary, from entering at once upon an examination of the theories that had brought me so far. And so we talked, beginning with my beloved Werner, and the question of the fluidity of the earth; moving from thence to an account of geological time, succeeding epochs that correspond to the variety of mineral deposits discovered at divers strata of the earth’s crust, which I ascribed to distinct precipitates of the universal ocean, he to an igneous origin; turning at last to Hutton’s notion of continual modification, the effects of internal heat, and finally, the experiment performed that afternoon, which attempted (with such dramatic failure) to discover a possible conclusion to the Plutonic system, which, the Professor confidently maintained, could yield only a hollow earth, composed of distinct metallic spheres, nested within one another.

So we talked; as the day turned black without; and the fire died down within, settling against the grate; and Tom swept. And I could not suppress in myself, growing and swelling in proportion to the diminished blaze, a sense of – a sense of frustrated – a sense of vehement – an utterly righteous sense of – of
outrage,
at this obscure and cock-sure gentleman before me, who declared with such dismissive ease that the greatest minds of the century had laboured in absurdity and error, while he – and he alone – in this remote corner of a barbarous land – from this dilapidated vantage-point – a run-down old tavern above the Potomac – had hit upon the exact truth – and what’s more, would prove it, by a series of practical experiments (presumably, after the spectacular fashion of that afternoon’s disaster) that would re-create, in a small way, the birth of time and of the world.

‘How dare you?’ I spluttered at last, trembling violently, and striking the back of my hand upon my palm. ‘How dare you – assert with such – reckless confidence – that the father of geognosy himself  
–
a gentleman I had the privilege to know, and the honour to revere – of magnificent intellect and unmatched practical intimacy – I can use no clearer word – with the workings of the planet – stumbled all his life in utter darkness, while you – while you …’ Words failed me here, a lucky chance perhaps, as who can guess the depth of insult to which I would have descended? And in spite of everything, I have prided myself always upon a certain decorum, and the manner of a gentleman.

Syme for his part seemed unconcerned at first by the temper to which he had worked me. He turned the shard over in his hand, as if some aspect of it struck him afresh, and observed quietly in his piecemeal fashion, ‘I dare quite simply – thus – certain that the one fact – indisputably true of every child (and every nation, for that matter) – at its birth – is this: that all the world is wrong – and I have come for myself – to see what is right.’

My outrage had spent itself by this point, and indeed, Syme’s last words had strangely mollified me, when Tom began to sweep the broken shards upon a cloth laid down for the purpose. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he urged, in a way that suggested to me nevertheless that he partly delighted in each exchange as a boy delights in fire, ‘there is time enough for such disputes, which run all the smoother, I believe, on a full belly and a pint of porter.’ He lifted the cluttered cloth and tied the ends in a loose knot and made his way towards the window. ‘Might I suggest …’ he began, when a roar of Syme’s diverted rage interrupted him.

‘Stop at once,’he cried. ‘What act of ignorance – of wanton waste and destruction – are you about to commit? Answer me, Tom. Indeed, there is no fool like a happy fool; and all you can do is stand there, grinning idly. Give that to me directly.’ And he snatched the parcel from Tom’s hand, and spread it over the flagstones before the hearth, adding the small piece in his palm to the suddenly precious collection. ‘It is not enough’, he continued, bitterly, ‘that my experiments are botched – by his clumsiness – my studies interrupted by his circus antics – but that his ignorance – his really rather astonishing ignorance – don’t you agree, sir? – must be watched, constantly, like a young dog – lest it foul this or that on its way.’

‘Splendid – splendid,’ Tom said, standing quite straight and still, his eyes beginning, ever so slightly, to shine. ‘Perhaps, Dr Müller, we should resume in the morning? I will take you home.’ He set his broom against the wall and lifted his coat from the door. Syme squatted above his broken world and examined each piece of it, carefully and individually, in his hand. And so I – so we – left him, and ventured into the cold.

The snow had set hard with the frost, and we slipped and scrambled along the path towards the slender footbridge. Tom’s spirits, naturally buoyant, had risen to the top again. ‘It is only his way, he’ said, taking me intimately by the elbow. ‘Everything must end in upset – it soothes him, you know. There are such great things still undone, a little storm here and there, now and then, I would almost say, reminds him.’

‘I have known such gentlemen,’ answered, thinking briefly of my Prince, so vast a stretch of water and wind away. Then, stung into a pettiness, by some concern for Tom himself (or envy of his station at Syme’s side?), perhaps a hint of homesickness, I added, ‘They rarely end happy.’

‘Oh, never fear on that score, Professor Mooler,’ Tom replied, untouched by whatever curious whim had moved me. ‘Sam will make a grand old man, a grand old man.’