The Syme Papers (70 page)

There was nowhere to sit, except the Headless Bicycle, and the boy perched there, in a collared open shirt, forgetful of the tie
around his neck, letting his legs dangle. He looked silly and touching upon it; or, rather, the crazy-thing appeared to be an overgrown toy between Aaron’s bony knees, a boy’s device, simply multiplied in scale to suit adulthood. Once he stretched to reach the pedals, half-slipping from his seat, and spun them, again, again, rising on his haunches to muster weight. The world shuddered briefly and began to whirl, swinging a long loop towards his father’s head; but a sharp word from Pitt cut short boy and world. Still, Aaron looked upon the strange machine with some slight … curiosity, afterwards; as if his father, for once, had invented a game worth playing.

You could almost
hear
the fire when it began to tell – a rich concentration of silence that drew the ear to it. The artificial glare of the garage grew imperceptibly softer, bleached of colour, as the slow smoke filled the space. Pitt lifted the lid on the globe and saw the beginnings of inferno: a churning mash of coal, orange valleys streaked by translucence amid black hills of unconsumed lumps. He shut the globe again by its wooden handle, and touched a finger to his plump, sweating cheek to feel its heat.

‘Come on, boy‚’ he said. ‘Let me get up there and take a turn at the wheel.’

Aaron scrambled off, a figure of comic dishevelment, open-necked, shirt-tails hanging free – a miniature of after-work ease.

‘Watch your head‚’ his father said. Pitt struggled up and began to pump, slowly at first, already sucking wind. (Was it nerves only, or the first blows of failure – Susie’s sudden ‘for God’s sake’ – hitting home at last, in the belly?) The arm creaked awkwardly round. ‘Watch your head‚’ he said again, so Aaron squatted, lay back (how lightly children touch bottom!), resting his head against the concrete floor, while the smoking planet swung above him, once, twice, in great elaborate arcs.

‘No, no‚’ Pitt said. ‘I need you. Don’t get up. I said don’t get up NOW. Roll out of the way first. That’s it. ALL the way out. What I want you to do. Is this. Push the wooden bar as the world comes round. Just enough to set it spinning. That’s it. Lightly. We don’t want it toppling on your head. Just enough. To set it. Spinning.’

The world swung easier now with the weight of its speed. (Pitt should know, the first revolution is always the hardest!) It trailed a flag of smoke behind it, which tore into strips when Aaron touched the bar, spinning, just at the height of his eye. Pitt’s legs pulled swifter now, stronger; he rose on his hams to bring the last ounce of his vital mass to bear upon the pedals. There is joy in the mere fact of
pace,
in the brisk flow of things; and Pitt tasted some of it, in the thrust of his blood, in the sweep of the planet. Such swift years passed around his head! Decades flew by in minutes. Centuries spun round in the hot wind like a weather-cock in spring gusts.

How short the space of time since Sam himself strode the world along its orbit, since Tom touched it into night and day, dressed, like Pitt’s son, in neglected finery. Aaron, for his part, seemed to have entered into the spirit of the thing (and that spirit was joy!):

Pitt saw the beam of a car’s lights swing into the road, heard the hum of an engine easing home. Then the light drifted by and the noise faded. He wished to make an end of things before Joe got back and – saw him, thus. It occurred to Pitt then that Joe might read a certain
desperation
into the experiment; and the word itself arrested his thoughts (though never his legs). Not so much for the misery of it, but the shadow of some former hope the word suggested. Sat upon that strange device, sweating and pumping away, Pitt – more curious than anything – could not for the life of him recall what he had hoped at first to prove. Well, the reason would come back to him, no doubt – only a momentary blank. Strange, he thought, how much of what we manage to do involves forgetfulness.

‘Now‚’ he told the boy, ‘I want you to get the bucket of ice.’

Fact is – and I see that now – Aaron was just too small to lift it. So much came light and easy to the boy, Pitt had forgotten he was only nine: a strapping nine, king among his classmates, broad-shouldered and long-armed, but unfleshed by age, a creature getting by on bones and sugar. ‘Tip it over the world‚’ Pitt said, slowing slightly, ‘as it comes by. Lift it over your head – high as she goes. And tip.’ (Of course, Pitt thought suddenly: the cooling of the earth. Syme posited an end to the perpetual modifications of Hutton’s internal fires. He wished to test the
shape
of it. That’s what this is all about.)

The shock of what happened obscured – for a minute perhaps, or a second – what happened. In the smoke and hiss of warring Nature, Pluto and Neptune set at odds again, I could not distinguish bad from worst. Aaron had staggered, stoop-shouldered, into the path of the world. Globe struck bucket balanced on head, and both (though not, thank God, all three) tumbled down, a furious spitting explosion of ice and fire. The clay split and shattered across the concrete floor. A loose burning shard caught Aaron in the smooth of his cheek, raising a puffed, hot inch of skin – perhaps the lightest scar he would bear from his father’s obsessions. (Pitt crying out meanwhile the familiar declension – you go too far, you have gone too far, you are too far gone.) Sodden smouldering ash lay everywhere in ruins, among glowing splinters of shaved iron and nickel. Icy waters slopped over the floor, soaking the poor boy’s shiny best shoes.

He began to cry; mostly at the fright of it, no doubt, and the noise – only now the coal unclenched its teeth, and the hissing sighed away – and the smoke, so thick that our eyes ran anyway. Partly, I suppose, at the disappointment of his father. At having failed. Pitt wept, too; first at the sting of fumes; then freely, as he climbed off the crazy-thing and shuffled through the burning slush into the clear night, holding his boy. His guilt grew clear at last, welling up; the obscure sense of wrongdoing that had troubled him: the guilt of someone who chases his solitary imagination and
begins to … bump into others along the way, bruising what he cannot see, and stumbling on. (‘Not though I have Truth on my side‚’ Syme said, ‘never doubt that, either. Never doubt it, Tom. But we haven’t such right to it as we pretend.’)

‘Let’s go home‚’ Pitt called gently, from his miserable depths.

‘Should we clear this up?’ Aaron snuffed his nose on the palm of his hand.

Pitt looked at the mess, a scattering of damp grey, only a few glints of the old fire remaining. In his hurry, he had tipped over the Headless Bicycle, which now lay awkwardly on the floor, resting on a cracked arm. ‘Whatever you do‚’ my father told me, ‘make things that last. That’s the great trick.
Sticking.’
It could take an hour or more to sweep what I had made clean. Joe might come upon them, in Pitt’s shame. ‘Look‚’ Aaron said, lifting the shard that struck his cheek from the ice and ash at his feet. ‘Like Texas.’ So it was – that inimitable shape, a slight protrusion from a ragged triangle, unevenly split.

‘Keep that‚’ Pitt said. (If only he had guessed it: the final clue.) ‘We’ll leave the rest for Joe.’

And then Joe appeared. It needed only that. Woken no doubt by the crash, he came from the back door, stood in the light of his laundry room, blinking, his face blurred from an early sleep, his eyes pinched, his nose thick with ‘flu. He looked at the litter of ice and ash; the toppled contraption propped on a broken arm; the smoke; the wet stink; the crying boy and man. Gingerly, he stepped into the mess, wearing loose moccasins; stood in the middle of the garage, surveying the ruins of his workshop.

‘Seems’, Joe said, shaking his head awake, ‘that history does – repeat itself.’ (The hollow spheres keep spinning, the cracks overlap, producing: disaster.) Bianca peered round the door-frame, gangly in her long T-shirt, all arms and legs – astonishingly young. She looked at me, at Aaron, hiding from his father’s humiliation in his father’s arms. ‘
Na
ja‚’
she muttered. ‘I see it did not come off, as they say. It came off so it did not come off. As they say.’

Pitt, for once, had no answer for her quibblings.

I had made myself ridiculous enough.

So we came to Philadelphia, a red town in a green valley, and the
sun tipped its hat over the trees in setting as our carriage rattled on
to Chestnut Street. Stiff of knee and heart, we emerged, and propped
our backs on our hands and looked up at the great clock tower, calm
with time, of Independence Hall.

‘Come,’ said Tom. ‘Tomorrow is our great day. A bite of one
thing and a swallow of something else and then bed. Sam needs his
sleep.’ He took Sam’s bag and his own, and strode towards the
Liberty Hotel under the fat green leaves. The Liberty was a fine,
square-cut Georgian establishment, with tall, bright windows
rounded at the top, scattering the chestnut trees in their shimmer
ing glass. This was the smartest roof I had known in the New
World.

Sam followed without a word, through the great doors.

I slept like a king in a deep bed and could not prevent curiosity
and joy, those sly tempters, from stirring in my blood as I awoke. I
walked to the window, pushed it open with elbows scraping the sill,
and looked out. The sweet air was too thick to come in, and I must
needs poke my head and naked shoulders into the street to snuff it. I
looked at the great red forehead of Independence Hall and thought of
those sweating men, almost a half-century before, dropping blood
with ink, and spelling a new country with the compound. Now a
different revolution would be born within its halls. Who could not
hope there, where so much had been hoped for and won? For all my
earnest, decent protestations to the contrary, THIS, I thought, was
too rare a chance to have missed
–
to see Sam dressed in clothes as
grand as himself, walking upon rich carpets, under high ceilings. I
had come for this, not the squalor of race-tracks and barns and
agricultural lectures.

I dressed and ran to breakfast.

In the morning, Sam sat for Charles Peale, the painter, and a naturalist in his own right. ‘What do you think of my museum?’ he asked proudly, in his thin, strained voice, like a reed in sand. I visited the museum, too; an odd collection of devices, natural and artificial, shells and telescopes, on the second floor. ‘If I had such a library‚’ Sam said, ‘I should not look for books.’ That always surprised me in Sam, that he could flatter when he pleased and when it suited. Indeed, it suited now; for he owed his engagement at the hall to Peak, a generous and curious man, as well as just and proud, who had founded his Museum of Natural History and Technologies some years before.

He was past eighty then – the famous dry face and leather hands. ‘I have only got the patience for a sketch‚’ he said, drawing forth a case of pencils. ‘I do not like to start anything I can’t finish, and at this age, I have no faith in finishing anything.’ I watched them, painter’s hand and Sam’s face, as the former drew the latter to itself, in lines as sharp and bare as the green veins over its knuckles. The delicate temples and too big eyes, the face sad, inward, except for the butting, jutting chin, stubborn and strong above the white cravat; the hair thinning over the large forehead. Later, he added colours, and the tip of a brush darkened the eye with blue and the cheek with red. But the sketch was truer; and caught without keeping, as only a pencil can that does not hide her strokes, the face in time, fluid, aware that the next stroke or moment could mean another line, an altered look.

In the afternoon came the speech in the great hall. The mayor was there, a pink man in a green suit, along with the lady mayoress, taller, with a sharp nose. A geologist from Harvard had come down, quite a young man, with tiny, restless feet. Name of Potts, I believe – he mentioned it often enough in shame-faced asides, ‘poor Potts’, foolish Potts’, ‘hopeless Potts’, and the like. He hopped about like a wren, looking perhaps to pick up scraps of preferment round the feet of the great Dr Benjamin Silliman himself – a proud, pompous creature he proved to be, fat-cheeked, red-breasted in a silken waistcoat, fonder of politics than geology, it seemed, and a ‘particular friend’ of the lady mayoress. Then another specimen from Yale, tall and loud, with swinging elbows and a sharp cane, Mr Polidori. His tongue 
stuck in his cheek as he spoke, his words came out half-chewed. He could be heard lecturing over a circle of littler men. The Pennsylvania University had sent its delegates, too, a row of comfortable old locals, sitting down from the first, gossiping. The elegance of Philadelphia was also on hand – gentlemen in black leading a perfect rainbow of ladies. The hall rang with well-bred echoes; chairs scraped the floor in a hushed tone. The sun still shone through broad windows, flung open against the thick air. Its beams were stopped short, here and there, caught by necklaces and diamond studs, trapped in the flat silver of watches, glittering in the dust of shining shoes.

A different species lined the galleries at the back. Shy youths, the sons of mechanical men, came with notepads and blunt quills, cut too often. For them this was not only an Occasion, but a lecture ‘On the Structure & Composition of the Earth’s Core – a New Answer to an Old Question’, advertised in the
Inquirer.
Wives with
scraped thick-fingered hands had come from their chores,
perhaps for the relief of a spare afternoon in the shade, but Sam’s ‘news’ had a deeper spell as well. ‘The Earth is Hollow! The Earth is Hollow!’ the newspaper cried, mostly in mockery, as it announced Sam’s visit today on the front page. ‘The Seas are seeping through. We must arrive in Boats to the Lecture!’ Some had come hoping for a hoax, to be sure; but there were others, and many indeed among the jokers, who had come because a man stood there telling us that we were all wrong, and somewhere we desire this to be true, and partly believe it as well. Lastly, as always, came the Doomsday set, hoping for any kind of hopelessness, believing that an empty earth would do as well as anything. I had long grown accustomed to them, and saddened that such flies buzzed about my Sam, louder, more faithful, than any other. For once there were brighter creatures to obscure them. Sam rose up to speak, with a sheaf of notes clasped between elbow and rib.

O Sam! My heart dwelt in his fingertips, lest he should drop
those papers, and my heart fluttered with the papers, too. Tom
gossiped with a gaggle of newspapermen, old friends, from the
Inquirer,
but I could scarcely look up.

‘I have often wondered’, he began, in a voice slower and lighter
than usual, but broken up into his familiar
staccatos,
‘why we place
such trust in our feet.’ No one had expected this, and there was a
great shuffle of the appendage in question, and the vast settling sigh
of a mass of mankind.

‘We question every matter of this’, he continued, touching his heart, ‘and that‚’ touching his head. ‘Whatever flies above us – puzzles us to perplexity. We stare and stare. Stars, moons, suns, involve us in fierce disputes, fiery faiths, passionate doubts. We argue for centuries.

‘We spend lifetimes of love and doubt – on what lies before us and behind us. We turn and turn to catch – what flees behind our backs – tiptoeing years; and yearn forwards – gazing to know what some cloud portends for the next day.

‘But we never question what lies beneath our feet. That at least, we seem to say, is sure. There is nothing there to trouble us. So we move onward, look upward, curious – indeed, we mock the downward gazers – hunched old men and babies with their faces to the floor.

‘Yet it has always seemed to me
–
that theirs is the most
practical
curiosity. We have slight hopes of prying into the stars. The past behind us is – too tight – for our clever fingers; nothing lies ahead but what we put there. Yet the ground beneath our feet awaits our consideration. I have always been puzzled by the story of Babel. Why did they wish for a tower? A curious race, I believe, would have looked below – and dug a great pit towards the heart of God – for there at least lay hopes of an answer.

‘So I ask you now – to suspend your faith an hour – and dig with me some ways below our feet.’

They were caught; that light hook that pulls us by the ear and thought deep into another man’s mysteries had stuck, though slight, and drew us towards him.

I knew the argument well, that question of mass (‘I shall begin with a calculation – an error no greater than a man’s hand …’), the list of possibilities, dismissed one by one. I knew it well, but I had never heard him speak so … lovingly before. He had changed: the massive, restless strength was gone, but something sweeter had 
replaced it. That great energy, for which I loved him, had ebbed with
grief, but left behind to my surprise a surer faith. He knew – this fact never struck me more forcibly – he
knew
that he was right.
And so he spoke with less bluster. He marshalled his arguments one by one, slowly, inevitably – he did not circle his audience with a restless swarm of proofs and considerations. He left things out – trusting the main path, as though he walked a familiar way again, noting the points of interest to himself, secure in the faith that we would follow. We did.

There was something else. It seemed as though some pent-up joy had been loosened by his mourning, and that he now tasted it again. We tasted it too. The cook came in at one point (a great supper was laid on for the elect). Some usher must have alerted him – of what, I can only guess: ‘Believe him, believe him; it’s all true!’ I saw him in the doorway, wiping his great farmer’s hands on his knees. He listened unmoving for a while, then began to nod, slowly at first, then longer, happier, great sweeps of his great head up and down, as though he said, Now you see, this is what I have been trying to prove all along, with my duck … and my lobster salad … and particularly my marzipan torte!

I guessed then (wrongly, alas!) that Sam would not come this way again. This was the end. He talked slow and long because it was the last time. I wondered what had settled him, as he laid each familiar thought glowing to rest one by one. His mother’s death? He was a young man, remember. We were all young men. He stopped short at her death, as an older son might not have, turning to look at that great gap behind him, forever empty, unfilled, unfillable. He would turn back home, I knew, at least for a time.

Another thought occurred to me, less kind, more jealous. I am suspicious of this thought myself. He was quits because of Tom, that pure man, selfless in the cause. Sam wished to be free of Tom, his tireless shadow, striding always a pace before. I turned to look for Tom. He sat by the great door, with the cook smiling and nodding beside him. Tom’s chin propped upon his hands, his hands buttressed by his elbows, his elbows laid upon his knees. He was half-asleep, but he waited there to greet the men ‘who might be of some use, perhaps, in 
your business, Sam’, as they walked out. Then he looked up for the
sweet close to Sam’s valediction. The proof was over.

‘There are further questions to be asked‚’ Sam said, and paused, putting aside his notes. Five hundred feet shuffled and resettled, and you may be sure their owners stared at them now, and beneath them. There was a quick shower of coughs and sneezes, and Sam gathered himself for the end. ‘We have begun to stop at the answers – a great mistake – one which the churchmen do not make. The answers are our harbours. From there, the lesson begins. We have a page before us – richer than all our books. It is written in a thousand languages – in water and leaf – in finger prints and firmaments. One might puzzle over it for centuries. But it is only the first page.

‘We should take our thoughts in earnest – and accept the coin of our intellects at the market-place of ordinary life. I will have no half-measures – none of the legerdemain of our own philosophical constitutions – that can propose with our pen and tongue – what we reject with our hearts and our stomachs. Let us not turn as Hume did – to the light of day and breakfast – and forget the dark book on which we spent our nights. What can we learn from this hollow earth?

‘I draw two lessons – that touch me deeper – puzzle me more profoundly every day. I wonder ever more at the wisdom of such an Architect. The first is this – that God delights in device. Spheres under our feet – hurl themselves – in endless rotations – below. They shine only in dark air – but they shine. These spheres are built for Beauty, sure – and Size – and Sweep – but also for sheer, bloody-minded, heartbreaking Complexity. The Architect delights in shapes – in speed – in gambits. There is a rush to these inner spheres – that must please him – as a sharp wind and a flying sea delight a sailor – who understands that such tides – such bouts of breeze – require this course – these sails – set hard and sharp at just such an angle. I marvel each minute that the heavens below us do not break apart – that the Creator who watches over His work trusts and revels in His nice eye.

‘The second lesson moves me less to wonder – more to Grudge. We do not stand on rocks – but fleeting, turning, HOLLOW balls.
There is no core – no anchor – no Bone set fast below – but layer upon layer, and at the Heart, a gap. Imagine an onion – as rich and revealing at the first sharp cut below the skin as at the last. This troubles me – we are scientists – would like a final resolution. When Galileo argued that the sun – not this slight satellite – lay at the centre of things – the churchmen, appalled, knew well what stood at stake. Light and Heat and Mass lie at the heart of this Space – not we. A great lesson. WE cower in the distant shadows. They were right to imprison him. They understood him and took him at his word. What shall I say to you – as I propose – that the earth beneath is hollow? Where is the hope or the lesson in that?

‘The core haunts me, I tell you,’ he said, brisker now, rubbing his hands. ‘It troubles my sleep – like a deed undone or a lost love. The core of cores – the seed at the heart of the fruit. If nothing is there? Nothing at all, at the centre? Tap your foot, again, again – imagine the echo in that space.