The Syme Papers (77 page)

‘Yes?’ he answered, withdrawing, leaning against the edge of the
table and waiting patiently.

‘I speak out of love, not doubt. You see …’ I paused again, puzzled to proceed, until my tongue found its thought, and poured forth
a year’s worth of hesitations in a single torrent. ‘You see … there is such force to your early calculations, the question of mass, I mean,
the
doubts you cast,
rather than the … rather than the … which
are only after all speculations

‘Faint heart,’ he said, looking me full in the face.

‘Not at all, not at all,’ I answered, perhaps too quickly, my heart on
my lips, and I uncertain whether my laves or my doubts would come
tumbling forth. ‘There is such virtue in clearing the ground, razing
old errors and letting the grass grow beneath them again. You have
done that, Sam, brilliantly; we need not supply their place.’

‘You are a critic‚’ Sam replied, in a precise, cold voice, ‘by trade
and inclination. You delight in
pruning,
Phidy.’ And then he
smiled and said with the sweet breath that replenishes a sigh, ‘I
grow and grow and grow – and time will sort the ruins.’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ I stammered again, to nothing and every
thing at once. ‘Only …’ But ‘only’ died on my lips, for then an
extraordinary thing began to happen. Sam began to dance, an odd
jig beginning at the feet, shivering from his knees to his elbows,
strangely slow and moving and wonderfully happy, in time to noth
ing and no one but the flaws and starts of his own delight.

‘In for a penny
‚’
he chanted, smiling, lifting his knee to his elbow,
again, again, ‘in for a pound.’ I could not help but smile back at
him, warmed by the fire of his own joy, delighted at the
sudden conflagration. ‘Hanged for a horse as a …’

‘Sheep,’ I answered, joining in, fetching his hands again and
swinging together across the ice-cold parlour, upsetting chairs and
rattling the pots on their hooks, making such music as if the spheres
themselves sang fitfully to our dance.

‘We go to press
‚
’ he declared at last, resting his hands on his hips
and gasping forth white, chill air.

Yes, I thought, we will set down in stone such gossamer tissues
that one strong gust will see them dispersed to the winds.

Tom came to town to see it done. The business took all Saturday,
and we grew smudged and inky ourselves, like characters running
on a wet page. Sam had a smear of black under one eye that made
him look more than ever like a navvy. Fifty pages lay in afresh heap
on the long table, with the ink still shining like molasses and looking
just as sweet. ‘The New Platonist: an American Science’ stood big
and black on the first page. Edited by Professor Samuel Highgate
Syme, for Sam was proud of his middle name, a rare gift from his
father. I turned the page, delicate as china, and there stood the decla
ration in pride of place. It looked to me now, after printing, like a
jumble of letters, all correct but without sense, like the bright black
spots on lucky dice:

Not a word in it to Tom Jenkyns who now stands above the soft pile
and takes Easy by the hand and says, ‘Come, I believe you owe us
supper!’

It was a famous night. The three of us were together once more,
and though Easy stood somewhat in the shade, he seemed content
there; at least he did not murmur. He ordered champagne for us at
the grand new Boathouse Hotel, and we poured it down cold as rain
with our heads in the cloud. Chops followed, and, bone in hand,
Sam was at his finest, at bay against the three of us, keen in dispute.
The contest was over Faith and Knowledge, and Sam (to my sur
prise) took the part of the former, crying out, ‘Faith! I will buckler
thee against a million!’ For once Tom stood against him, but we
were no match for Sam in his heyday, and we fled the field in ruins.
In my youth, before the shyness set in, I used to clamber up behind
the farmers’ carts, full of apples or pigs, going to market. Some of
the farmers took a stick to me, but I remember only the swaying and
the shouts and bumps and laughter. That night we were drunk as
lords and I remember the same scrambling joy. Only when Tom – of
all people you, Tom! – said, ‘What follows, Sam?’ did we fall quiet,
and then Easy, stout-hearted, raised a meek voice and piped,
‘Another,’ and then Sam said, ‘Another!’ and I cried, ‘ANOTHER!’
and soon we were chanting, and another bottle came. Tom left soon
after, almost sober, tenderly dislodging himself from our embraces,
and I never saw him again. Easy followed behind, and then Sam and
I, blind drunk, staggered home, across the familiar footbridge and
the roaring wintry river.

‘Faith and Knowledge’ was still the cry as we walked arm in arm
up the porch-steps. I was in a happy rage. To prove his point, Sam
proposed an experiment. The house opened into a narrow hallway
that led to the staircase, with a door to the parlour left of the stairs.
A low lamp hung from the hall ceiling. We often struck our skulls
against the bright brass, until we learned the habit of sailing past,
like a ship on a leeward tack, leaning. Sam ran to the parlour and
came back with a thick cloth, which he asked me to bind
around his temples, obscuring his eyes. I did so. His cheeks were hot
with joy.

‘Stand in the parlour
‚’
he commanded. ‘I will come in blindfolded
and drunk. Mark if I hesitate – even the flutter of a step –
before I
reach the stairs.’

My high spirits had laughed at everything all night, and in their
ebb I was apt to giggle long, and to myself. I giggled now, leaning
against the parlour door. Sam opened the front door, stood in the
entrance while a man might count to five, then with five straight,
bold steps, ducking like a pope on the third beneath the bright brass
lamp, he reached the stairs beside me and strode up them two at a
time. As he reached the landing, he tore the blindfold from him, cry
ing out in triumph, ‘That is faith, Phidy.’

Then he danced on the stairs, kicking up his knees. I stood
beneath him. He caught his breath and cried, ‘Knowledge, viz. –
that there are thirteen feet to the door – and six before you must
stoop for the lamp – will only bring you on hands and knees to these
steps.’ I giggled again.

‘Sheer luck,’ I said when I stopped.

‘Nonsense‚’ Sam declared, then he came down. ‘Good fortune can
look like knowledge – never like faith. With luck you could guess the
number of steps – but never
stride
them. Now‚’ he said, throwing
the warm cloth in my face, ‘let’s see the colour of your faith.’

So I stood in the opened doorway. A cloudy midnight had
warmed the cold, clear day and I heard the snow drip down the
porch-steps. I measured the distance stride for stride with my eyes
open. I rehearsed the quick nod of the head in the middle beneath the
lamp. But when Sam bound the cloth over my forehead and led me
by hand to the front of the hall and directed me towards the stairs, I
was at sea.

‘Two steps, duck, then three more‚’ I repeated over and over,
swaying drunk with the soft darkness in my eyes. I could not. I took
a bold step forward, but my courage failed. Then a mincing half-step
and I put forth a searching hand. I felt the heat of the lamp above
me, but it seemed distant as the sun and I could not touch it. I
swayed to the side, and caught at the wall, then edged forward, just
past the lamp as I supposed, until I fell straight into Syme’s arms,
where he stood in the parlour door.

‘Ha!’ he shouted and I giggled again.

‘Once more, once more,’ I cried. And again he bound the cloth
lovingly across my eyes and tied it at the back in my dank hair. This 
time I took two bold steps with the blood pressing against my eyes
and stopped dead. I edged forward with my head bowed low to the
ground in exaggerated dignity. Then I strode ahead and heard the
ring of the brass as it struck my skull before I felt the first hot pain. I
fell back, more shocked than hurt, but Sam caught me and I brought
him dawn and we lay on the bare floor in a tender heap, crying with
laughter.

‘Oh, oh,’ I hooted, still blind, feeling for the angry line the brass
had cut in my scalp.

‘You fool
‚’
Sam said, ‘you faithless fool.’

I lay across Sam’s legs and he lay on his back. The hairs of his
neck stood on end where my hand held him. The wine on his sweet
breath stunk to my very eyes.

‘Enough
‚’
he said, as I looked into
his
–
blue and bright, as his
pupils shrunk against the lamplight. I still looked – my lips parted
to let the breath ease in and out – until his eyes blurred into a blue
shimmer, and his face grew hot and red to the touch of my hand.
‘Enough
‚’
he said again, sighing.

Of what? He did not mean, I think, another stroll beneath the
hanging lamp, but a different exercise, also of faith, perhaps.

A famous night. But in the morning my bruised head could not
but fear the touch of madness in our game, like the liquor in old
honey. In his blind high spirits, Sam would have walked against a
wall to boast his wit. For a few weeks thereafter, I drifted leeward
of him. We spent less time together, for he was busy in Easy’s
company, talking of sales and critics and his father’s money. It
was a happy night, but happiness may make men shy as well as
anything.

Doldrums followed the grand excitement of our first issue. A
heap of the
New Platonist
lay stacked in the hallway – Bull
Harcourt wished to glance one over, before his men collected them
and sent them to ‘every corner of the republic’. Easy left a few
around Pactaw, for the locals to stare at – in ale-houses and inns,
even the white church north of Main Street. The weather grew
warmer, and the snow that had come to us in clouds left us in
streams and puddles. Sam now took Easy with him on his early 
expeditions with the fluvia. He wished to become ‘better acquainted
with the business from every angle’. I felt a pang at first to see them
go in the morning. I still woke at dawn and heard them clattering
on the stairs and in the parlour. Easy often spent a hard night on
Sam’s floor before their forays. When I heard the front door bang, I
rose and walked barefoot to the window, where I could see them, two
dark figures with their heads bent from cold and lack of sleep. But
the dawns were growing warmer, and I felt on my skin the first
prick of spring and envied them their journey.

As I had stood in for Tom, now Easy did for me. Sam loved to
explain, and Tom and I knew all his explanations. Still I would have
followed him at dawn across field and fence to hear and help him. Or
perhaps I would not, as I did not.

It was only later I discovered their true purpose. Sam had got in
his head the thought that ‘something might yet be made of that
visionary device –
of such promise, both to miner and geognosist – in
short, the double-compression piston itself.’ Easy himself had some
training as an engineer, and the two of them spent many dark weeks
locked in the barn behind the Boathouse tinkering with the irrepara
ble, dabbling with the impossible, reconstructing that shapeless heap
of disjunct and fantastical conceptions. And drinking whiskey, I
believe, to keep warm. Somehow Sam knew this would upset me – as
it had upset Tom – and so the pair of them snuck away before dawn
and returned after moon set, to practise their secret, hopeless machi
nations. I can’t say why the thought of that device made me despair.
Something in the terrible proliferation of
problem and solution
it
created – a joint here, broken, a wheel there, fixed – seemed to prove
the futility of Sam’s speculation; offered mechanical evidence of the
fact that his thoughts could never escape the terrible cycle of inspira
tion and confutation.

But I never guessed their business till Sam came home one
afternoon, early, as the low sun glittered off the frozen grass, and
declared the double compression to be ‘finally and fantastically –
fixed and finished.
Reborn. I
–
that is, Easy and I – have
done
it.’
He stood swaying arm in arm with Easy on the windy porch, and
I ushered them in, and boiled a pot of tea for their frozen fingers 
and parched throats; and we lifted hot mugs and drank a toast ‘to
Digging, as the farmer said’. But I didn’t have the heart to test
him, prove him right or wrong again – and did not guess and did
not care which outcome would have disappointed me, pleased me
more.