The Syme Papers (59 page)

‘A porous interior could not remain stable long. Dismissing for
the moment the revolution of the planet itself, the earth’s daily rota
tion would, in the first instance, upset the consistency of any vacu
ous interior. In the second, it would naturally itself be upset by it. A
porous, shifting internal mass would necessarily result in an incon
stant gravitational centre, an inconstant rotation, a jagged, uncer
tain orbit. This will not do. Grooved internal spheres alone can
account for the stability of season and day. These grooves must them
selves be of a lighter substance than the crowns, else we have the
whole business to do again
–
the problem of mass. Hence, the specu
lated
existence, since verified in
laboratory work,
of fluvia.

‘This model alone matches undisputed physical laws. Thus far
conjecture. But I have not rested there. Does
the model fit,
or seem
to fit, ordinary rules of Nature, of motion? The crowns revive an
ancient favourite established by the Greeks: circular or spherical
motion, inherited as a birthright by every scientist until the modern
age. Copernicus swore by it, made it the foundation of his own 
revolution in science, Kepler dismissed it only reluctantly, against a
weight of observational data. Galileo was the first to discard it, too
lightly as it happens. For far too long, the science of the father has
been visited on the sons. My theories restore the crown to
circular motion, where it belongs.’ Again I silenced Sam, who
drank, noisily, instead.

‘If I may be allowed to finish. Having shown that my theory fits
both established facts and traditional natural laws, I enquire at last:
does my model offer any new explanations? If true, a host of effects
must follow such a cause. Can these crowns account for any as yet
unaccounted phenomena? Earthquakes, volcanoes, whirlpools, even
atmospheric disturbances such
as hurricanes and tornadoes, can be
explained by the eclipses of vacuii.
Subtler shifts in
continents and
seas, consistent both with aery legend and hard fossilized deposits,
follow likewise, though now I venture into the frontiers of my sci
ence, and I hesitate as yet to stake any claims. The number and
nature of the crowns and vacuii have been calculated according to
well-known eruptions. As with the movement of moon and star, I
account for their number and motions by the pattern of their effects.
If such a method suffice for the heavenly fields, why should we doubt
its more earthly application?’ Sam himself might have spoken those
last words.

Sensing perhaps that his audience had wearied of the debate, the
President of the Zweivierziger, Mr Golding, interceded gently and
Germanically.
‘I
trust now’, he said, ‘that Mr
Soames
has answered
to their satisfaction even the most fastidious doubts.’

Sam rose and bowed. ‘I
submit’, he answered, ‘to the General
Madness
–
not its
truth,’ and sat
down.

Herr
Golding,
a smooth-faced,
stooping, smiling, surprisingly
young man,
thanked his speakers and closed the meeting of the
Zweivierziger Club.
‘Those who wish’, he added, ‘may
join
me in
the Newspaper Room
for a less
rigorous, more human company over
cognac. Members will direct your step, gentlemen.’

A hum followed. A scrape (of chairs) succeeded the hum, and
the sea of dim faces grew clear, carried by sharp legs and well-cut
suits out of the great-hall door. I joined Sam in a buzz of high
spirits, which he shared. ‘Wonderful, Phidy
‚’
he said, crooking his
arm about my neck. ‘You cannot guess the pleasure you have
granted me
–
to hear my own words again
–
as if they lived out
side
my thoughts
–
outside the loneliness of my thoughts.’
How
strong the arm that bent my neck to his shoulder! Briefly, though
long enough for me to catch the thick warmth of him, burning all
the hotter I believe for rare joy. Only Tom had a pinched red look
about him, like that of a boy who has been left too long in the cold.

I puzzled a great deal over our encounter later. It struck me as
odd even then. There I stood, defining and defending with such
assurance ideas in which I believed myself to have so little faith.
There he sat, attacking with such disrespectful ardour theories in
which he had placed all of his. For the first time, I felt a
… conspirator
in their plans. No matter what belief I attached to Sam’s
work, I had shown at least that I was proficient in it, a suitable
apprentice. I could no longer claim the clarity of detached ignorance.
Any knowledge involves you in its object, any truly detailed imagi
native knowledge. One cannot, quite, know and disbelieve at once.
Perhaps Sam suspected something of the sort. His prank may have
been directed at my reticence, to smoke it out of hiding. But I was
not exposed alone. We had both shown something of our colours.
Doubt, too, like a ripe blackberry, cannot be tasted or touched with
out it stain you. There is always some blood of it left on the fingers.
Sam had hunted out my distrust, then turned and watched himself
from my corner. The view did not shake him for a moment, but I felt
strangely … acknowledged. Failure had occurred to him, like any
idea.

The sensibility that could record such nice perceptions may seem
too precise, too quick an observer, to have played a living role at
such a meeting. Ordinarily, I would suspect it myself. Yet it was
not so. I have failed to convey the happiness of the whole. The
company of my countrymen; my new assurance in such familiar
surroundings; the wine of dinner and the cognac afterwards, in
whose fumes the pride of my performance glowed. The simple joy of
having talked so much and been looked at
–
all these fed
my bluff,
blunt good spirits. If I kept a sharp eye for new distinctions, I looked 
from the top of happiness on a clear fine night. I felt that I had
regained my sharp edges, my curiosity, scope, loose tongue, without
losing my admiration for Sam or his protection. And there is noth
ing so seductive as giving pleasure.

Tom collected subscriptions for our journal, as Sam and I drank
our digestifs, and I read the latest German newspapers. ‘We have
five
hundred‚’ Tom declared at last, sitting down, with a heaviness
rare in
him. ‘A toast‚’
he cried, through
a pressed and peevish smile,
‘to the half of our goal. We turn south tomorrow towards
Philadelphia.’

This was the last night we could afford to be light-hearted.
President Golding came slowly towards us, stooping from chair to
chair. He offered me a cigar (which Sam pinched, brazenly accepting
on my ‘behalf), bowed at us all, thanked me again, and smiled in an
odd, sweet manner, like a clown smiling behind smiling paint. He
asked me a few questions. I answered them. Then he drew out his
pocket-watch, a great ticking silver engine of time, and mulled over
it. It appeared to satisfy him, and he took his leave, observing, ‘The
short man in the purple frock, you see, will show you to your cham
bers. I hope you will be comfortable. Yes, I do hope you will be com
fortable.’
The last word echoed On like the rumble of wheels. He
bowed again, smiled again, bade us good night and left a faint per
fume of smiling behind him.

We took our signal and rose to go.

I awoke the next morning clear-headed as a drained glass, wakeful
and empty. I have taken my place, I thought. We had early business,
though the fair day was still grey outside. Tom and Sam rose sharp
as well, and we met in the hall by some common instinct, about to
knock on one another’s door. After a quick breakfast, in that peculiar
silence of early mornings, distended like an image in a spoon, we
sought the road, companionably enough if only in the shared con
centration of spirits. Philadelphia approached, Tom’s crowning
engagement of the summer tour. Independence Hall would be filled,
professors, publishers and even government representatives
promised attendance. Sam had an hour and a half in which to make
his fortune.

‘I
am
confident of three
hundred subscriptions at the least‚’
Tom
said on the barge from New York. ‘You must charm the other two
hundred from them. That would tally our thousand, and we could
begin our proper business, the magazine.’ A summer shower blew us
indoors, where we found a large old gentleman looking for a game of
whist. Tom loved the water, for it tied him to idleness, and we played
deep into the afternoon. Such hands the old man had, big as roots.

He caught me staring, and answered my thought.
‘I
was a boxer
in my youth. Gentleman George, they called me. What have you got
there?’

A broadsheet announcing the Philadelphia engagement peeped
from Tom’s portmanteau. ‘Sam Syme, The Illustrious Geonomist,
Independence Hall,
August
17,’
etc.
Jackson
took it and held it to
the sunset cast out to sea.

‘There is nothing like a real crowd,’ he said, ‘and youth.’

Sam turned a green face to him, for he took a sea swell badly. I
have kept the placard of that event as well
–
and hang
it proudly in
the sitting room, a record of one brief, clear triumph.

The weeks till his great speech turned into counted days. Because of
our wandering lives, mail had not reached us for several months.
Tom often journeyed a day in advance to fix our schedule, but no
post could chase us down. All the news issued from our little band.
Sam wrote to Mrs Simmons once a week. Tom wrote to his ‘sweet
bun’ (as Sam called Kitty, the baker’s daughter) nearly every day. I
wrote to
…
Ruth once, and never to my father.

We reached Pottstown, a village outside Philadelphia, on 14
August. It was an old, poor settlement, not so much a village as a
few wide thoroughfares connecting busier towns. We walked down
Main Street, a line of dust, broken only by the post office, an apothe
cary’s shop and the tavern. But it lay among riches, like a beggar
outside a castle, indifferent to his abode. Pottstown stood in a valley.
High straight woods surrounded it, clean and smooth as something
built by man, but nothing by man could look so old and free of histo
ry. A lake lay a few miles away, the only clear opening in the land,
as surprising as blue eyes in a bearded face.

The afternoons held on long in the town. They stretched even
longer around the lake, as the water kept the sun. Summer children
rowed and splashed late into the light evening, their calls and oars
slapping the soft billows and coming to the land like echoes. What
wealth the town could boast sat at the shoreline, a few gentlemen’s
summer cottages, a stone’s throw from the bank. Tom’s cousin lived
in one of these.

‘My
cousin James’, Tom told us, amid the clack and clatter of
our steps on the stony footpath, ‘is a gentleman, or, rather, he is
rich enough for idleness, if nothing more. He is lay-preacher at
the white-boarded church to which the main street rises. He
writes, too
–
histories, of Indian
traditions, folk
tales, the growth
and slow decay of the early settlements, like Pottstown. He is a
dear man and a good friend.’

Tom approached the cottage eagerly, thinking no doubt of the two
months’ accumulation of a lover’s news (and glad perhaps of a
cousin’s company to break the increasing
closeness
of our little
band). We walked along the road by the lake, where thick dry roots
tore up the parched brown bank to stretch their hot toes in the
water’s edge. It was a stumbling, up and down amble. We bent our
heads down to watch the broken ground and shield our eyes and
open nostrils from the swarms of midges that passed in clouds. The
evening was already cooling, though the blue sky still fell bright on
the lake. We turned from the shore and rose up the pebbled path to
the porch. A thick figure sat on the steps, in the loneliness at the end
of a lovely afternoon.

James greeted us mopping a wet brow with a wet handkerchief,
and extending a newly dried hand. A fine light sweat still pricked
from the skin. It had been a hot day. And the evening was still hot
inside, though no lamps were lit, nor curtains drawn, and the
windows were flung wide. The air was still light, but grey without
the sun to watch it. We were very tired. A heap of letters lay on the
plain wood dining table, in expectation of our arrival. James brought
a jug of lemonade and set it down beside them. He came back with
three glasses held in the fingers of one hand and set them down awk
wardly. I looked in the other hand and he held a pipe, newly lit.
Then I smelted it come like a dog in the thick air. We sat down.