The Discovery Of Slowness (5 page)

In the afternoon he went for a walk with the Traill family through dark alleys alive with the sound of bells. They came upon a hill where they saw houses freely exposed to the light, white like the faces of brand-new clocks, roughly built and without ornaments, and the land around them not green but pale red. Mr Traill told of a great earthquake many years ago. Gwendolyn walked ahead of them, moving daintily. She got all kinds of things going inside John's body without even looking at him.

But time passed, and the opportunity had slipped by. ‘It's all right to think things over,' Father used to say, ‘but not for so long that the offer is made to somebody else.' A man lagging behind by
a full cycle commanded too narrow a present; thin was the line between land and sea. Perhaps he should try to catch the right moments like a ball: if he applied the fixed look in time, these moments would be ready to be grabbed when the opportunity arose and wouldn't escape him. All a matter of practice!

‘Soon Lisbon will celebrate the Feast of St Mark,' Mr Traill told them. ‘They'll bring a bull to the holy altar, a Bible between his horns. If he goes wild, the city will be facing hard times; if he holds still, everything will be fine; then he'll be butchered.'

Gwendolyn was not completely out of reach. Sometimes she gave him a look. John sensed, beneath all the impatience she imposed on herself, also a kind of patience, perhaps a purely feminine patience he couldn't get at. If he had been unquestionably a sailor and a courageous man, Gwendolyn would have granted him a lot of time. As if to reinforce that thought, a massive three-decker on the Foz da Tejo fired off an interminable salute, which the coastal batteries answered. Gwendolyn and the sea: so far, the two didn't go together. They were like two chairs, and if one sat down between them one fell on one's behind. So he should become an officer first, and defend England, and then find a woman to live with. Once Bonaparte had been defeated, there'd still be time. Gwendolyn would wait and show him everything. Before then there'd be no point in attracting attention. In any case, his ship was to leave in two days.

‘Well, then,' Gwendolyn said unexpectedly after dinner, ‘let's go to the poet's grave.' She was as dogged as John with his mathematics.

Nettles were growing on Fielding's grave, as on the graves of all people who had amounted to something in life. That this was so John knew from the shepherd in Spilsby.

He looked at Gwendolyn, determined to prove that he could do this in all freedom without stammering or his ears turning red. Suddenly he found himself putting his arms round her neck and felt his nose being tickled by a strand of hair. Again, clearly, an entire piece of the act was missing. Gwendolyn's eyes grew anxious, and she pushed her hands between his breast and hers. The situation was somewhat confused. However it was,
he felt caught in an opportunity and so decided to ask his much-rehearsed question: ‘Would you agree to sleep with me?'

‘No!' said Gwendolyn, and she slipped out of his arms.

So he had been wrong. John was relieved. He had asked his question. The answer was negative; that was all right. He took it to be a hint that now he really had to decide in favour of the sea. Now he wanted ocean and war.

On the way back, Gwendolyn looked suddenly strange, her face flattish, her forehead wide, her nostrils clearly marked. Once again John reflected on why the human face had to look the way it did at all and not completely different.

He had also learned from the shepherd in Spilsby that in this world women wanted something quite different from men.

Seen from the harbour wall, Lisbon shone like a new Jerusalem. This harbour – it was truly the world! By contrast, Hull on the Humber was only a threadbare landing-place for sloops in need of help. All kinds of ships were here, three-decked, with golden names on their forecastles. Through such artful slanted windows John would one day scan the horizon as a captain.

Their own ship was small. But it floated by itself like all the others and had a captain just like the largest ships. The sailors came on board late, rowed to the ship by natives. Some of them were so drunk that they had to be heaved over the rail by the winch. Father had now and then taken a glass too many, Stopford a few more, but what these sailors did to themselves had to be called by a different name. They fell into their bunks and didn't emerge again until after the anchors had been weighed. Earlier, one of them, who was less drunk than the others, showed John his back: the brown skin was furrowed, criss-crossed by white scars carved out by a belt; they looked like craters and cliffs, so many pieces of skin had been torn off and grown back wrong. The hair on his back, originally of even density, had adjusted itself to the landscape and formed small groves and clearings.

The proprietor of the exhibit said, ‘This is the navy. For every little shit you get the whip.' Could one die of this punishment? ‘And how!' said the sailor.

John now knew that there was something worse than storms. Moreover, there was alcohol, and one had to keep up with that – it was all part of bravery. They already passed him a glass: ‘Try it! We call this wind.' It was a thin, fluid, sticky sauce, red and poisonous. With strenuous nonchalance John got down two swallows, then listened within himself. He determined that earlier he had been in a somewhat dejected mood. He drained the glass. Now things looked different.

The stories he was hearing about the navy were surely not for the brave!

They travelled more than two hundred nautical miles west, out into the Atlantic, to keep from having to run against the Portuguese norther. Besides, this allowed them to evade the British men-o'-war lurking along the coast, eager to replenish their crews with men from presumably oversupplied merchant ships. A few on board had already been through that; they had been captured like wild animals, had gone through battles, and had escaped again at the first opportunity. They were simply afraid, John thought.

Ten more days and they were again in the English Channel. John was now permitted to eat with the captain, who, besides this honour, gave him grapes and oranges. John also learned from him that every ship had a maximum speed which it could not exceed even with the most favourable wind, even if it were equipped with a thousand sails.

John watched the work on the ship very closely. He let himself be taught how to tie knots. He noted a difference: in training, the name of the game was how fast one could get the knot tied; in real situations, how firmly it held. John watched the sails closely to see which manoeuvres actually required speed. In tacking, it was clear: the ship's loss of momentum was greater the longer its sails stood against the wind, and so work on the braces had to be fast. There were more such situations. John decided to memorise them in the course of time, like the tree from below.

Now it was up to Father. He had to write to Captain Lawford and see to it that his son would get a place as a volunteer. That he
would do this was not very likely. There was still a second possibility: that Matthew would show up after all and take John along.

John was home again. Matthew continued to be lost. Nobody liked to talk about it, and did so only to dissuade John from going to sea. Just before the end of the summer holidays, the Franklins assembled round the large dining-room table. Father allowed the family to contribute to some decisions. He himself said the most important things, and the others said only as much as was required, giving the impression that they had said nothing.

‘To sea? Once and never again,' Grandfather said in a firm voice. Of course, he had to be reminded that he had never gone to sea.

But John needed no support, because something unexpected had happened: Father had changed his mind. Suddenly – as the only one in the family – he was most enthusiastic about a maritime career for John and went over to his side. It also seemed that John didn't have to convince Mother any longer. She looked so encouraging and cheerful; perhaps Father's change of mind had been her work. She didn't have to speak, anyway, not even in a family council. John was too confused for a time to be able to feel pleasure.

Thomas said nothing; he only smiled slyly. And his little sister Isabella wept loudly, why nobody knew. With that the matter was settled.

‘If you don't understand an order at sea' – Thomas spoke slowly – ‘then simply say, “Aye aye, sir,” and jump overboard. It would definitely not be wrong.' John concluded that he didn't have to think about such remarks.

He wanted to tell the news to Sherard. Sherard would be pleased about it, he knew that, but he couldn't find him. The estate manager said he was working in the fields with his parents and other people from Ing Ming. He didn't want to say where. He didn't want any interruptions during working hours.

It had grown late. The coach was waiting.

Just one more year of school. For someone like John that was almost as good as nothing.

‘J
ohn's eyes and ears,' Dr Orme wrote to the captain, ‘retain every impression for a peculiarly long time. His apparent slowness of mind and his inertia are nothing but the result of exaggerated care taken by his brain in contemplating every kind of detail. His enormous patience …' He crossed out the last phrase.

‘John is dependable with figures and knows how to overcome obstacles with unorthodox planning.'

The navy, thought Dr Orme, will be torture for John. But he didn't write that down. After all, the navy was the addressee.

John knows no self-pity, he thought.

But he didn't lower his pen to paper, for to be admired by a teacher rarely helps, and especially not in the navy.

Whether the captain would even read the letter before their departure … It was John himself who was determined to go to war. And he was too slow, and only fourteen years old … What could he write? Misfortune sits in its own shoes, he thought. He crumpled the letter and tossed it into the wastebasket, propped his chin on his hand, and began to mourn.

John Franklin lay awake at night and replayed the fast events of the day at his own slow speed. There were many of them. Six hundred men on such a ship! And everyone had a name and moved about. Then the questions! Questions could come at any time. Question: What's your assignment? Answer: Lower gun deck and sail practice in Mr Hale's department.

Sir. Never forget to say Sir. Dangerous!

All men aft for ex … exe-cu-tion of punishment. That should be pronounceable! Execution of punishment.

All hands to the sails!

Receive arms.

Clear for action: a hard job to grasp the whole picture.

All guns loaded, sir. Run in to gunports. Secure guns.

Lower gundeck cleared for action! Anticipate everything exactly without question.

Take that man's name, Mr Franklin! Aye aye, sir – name – write – fast!

The red paint in the quarters below was supposed to prevent spattering … the spattering of blood. No, to make it inconspicuous. The sand spread on the floor was supposed to keep people from slipping on blood. All part of combat. Trim sails aft, and so forth, that much was clear …

Compliments of the captain, sir. Please come below deck. Sails: mizzen topgallant royal, main topgallant royal, fore topgallant royal. One sail farther down and there was already a hitch. He knew how to calculate the height of the stars at night, their angles of elevation – knowledge he didn't need at all. That kind of thing nobody wanted to know. But which line belongs where? Where does the jib-boom fit on the martingale, or vice versa? Shrouds and backstays, halyards and sheets, that endless pile of hemp, mysterious as a spider web. He always joined others in lashing things where they also lashed them, but what if they were wrong? He was a midshipman; that meant he was considered an officer. Now then, once more: mainsail, topsail, topgallant …

‘Quiet,' a voice hissed in the bunk next to him. ‘What's all that whispering about in the night?'

‘Reefing-point,' John whispered. ‘Gaff jigger.'

‘Say that again,' said the other, very quiet.

‘Forestay, martingale, martingale guys, martingale stays.'

‘Oh, I see,' growled his neighbour. ‘But that's enough for now.'

He could do it with his lips closed: only his tongue moving behind them remained indispensable. For example, he visualised in this way how to get from the bottom of the foremast to the maintop by way of the foretop, the fore topmast cap, and the fore topgallant, by climbing up the ratlines and outside the futtock
shrouds, because only that was considered proper seamanship.

Would he be able to notice mistakes? For example, could he discover why the ship lost momentum and stopped moving? And what would he do if part of the running rigging tangled up?

He also noted all the questions that had so far remained unanswered. It was important to ask them at precisely the right moment, and therefore they had to wait. A jib was something very special; why? They were moving against the Danes; why not against the French? He also had to recognise those questions that might be asked of him, John Franklin. Question: what's your assignment? Or, question: what's the name of your ship, Midshipman? The name of the captain? When they went ashore after the capture of Copenhagen, there'd be lots of admirals running about, perhaps even Nelson himself. HMS
Polyphemus
, sixty-four guns, sir. Captain Lawford, sir. Everything in order.

He had memorised entire fleets of words and batteries of responses so as to be ready with answers. In speaking, as in acting, he had to be prepared for anything that might come up. If he had to get it through his head first – that would take too long. If a question addressed to him became only a signal allowing him to rattle off the requested response without hesitation like a parrot, there would be no reprimand and the answer passed. He had done it! A ship, bounded by the ocean, could be learned. To be sure, he couldn't run very fast. And yet the entire day was filled with running, transmitting orders, running from one deck to the other – all narrow passages! But he had memorised every route; he had even drawn them and had repeated them to himself every night for two whole weeks. Running was all right if nobody came at him unexpectedly. Then, of course, there was nothing to be done, and he kept to his route without agile manoeuvres; the appropriate formula for apologies had to be well rehearsed. Soon the others learned that it was better to get out of his way. The officers took the lesson with displeasure. ‘Please see it this way,' he had said three days before to the fifth lieutenant, who actually listened to him as a result of a hefty rum ration. ‘Every ship's hull has its own maximum speed, which it can never exceed, no matter what the rig or the wind velocity. And so it is also with me.'

‘Sir. I must be addressed as “sir,”' answered the lieutenant, not unkindly.

Explanations were usually followed by orders. On the second day, he had made clear to another lieutenant that for his eye all quick movements left a streak in the landscape. ‘Climb up to the foretop, Mr Franklin. And I want to see a streak in the landscape.'

Meanwhile, things got better. John stretched out contentedly in his bunk. Seamanship could be learned. What his eyes or ears couldn't manage, his head did during the night. Intellectual drill balanced slowness.

Only the battle remained. That he couldn't imagine. Determined, he fell asleep.

The fleet had already passed through the Sound. They would soon be in Copenhagen. ‘We'll show 'em,' said a tall man with a high forehead. John understood the sound of these words very well, since they had been repeated several times. The same man told him, ‘Go, cheer the men on.' Something was up with the mainsail; there was a delay. Then the crucial words: ‘What would Nelson think?' He marked both sentences for the night. He also included difficult words, like those Danish landmarks Skagerrak and Kattegat, or words like cable gat and colour vat. In response to a carefully phrased question asked after they had received their rum ration, he also found out that the Danes had been busy for weeks strengthening their coast fortifications and equipping their ships for defence. ‘Or do you think they'll wait till we can join their council session?' John didn't understand this at once. But he had fallen into the habit of automatically acknowledging any answers couched in the form of questions ending on a rising intonation with ‘Of course not,' which instantly satisfied the person who always countered with a question.

They arrived in the afternoon. That night, or early in the morning, they would attack the Danish gun emplacements and ships. Perhaps Nelson might still come aboard their ship that day. And what would he think? So the day ended hectically, with shouting, gasps and bruised joints, but without fear or
rage. John felt he could keep up, for he always knew what was coming. An answer was yes or no, an order went up or down, a person was sir or not sir, his head banged into running or standing rigging. All that was altogether satisfying. A new difficult word had to be memorised: Trekroner. It was the most powerful coastal battery defending Copenhagen. When it started to fire, the battle had begun.

Nelson didn't come after all. The lower gundeck was clear, the fires in the stoves had been extinguished, the sand was spread, and all men were at the stations where their duties required them to be. One of them, alongside the gun barrel, kept baring his teeth. Another, who pushed the shot into the breech, opened and closed his hand perhaps a hundred times and observed his fingernails carefully each time. Amidships somebody started up in terror, shouting, ‘A sign!' so that all heads turned towards him. He pointed aft, but there was nothing. Nobody said a word.

And while the veteran sailors were feverish or frozen, John experienced one of those moments that belonged to him, for he could ignore the fast events and noises and turn to changes which, in their slowness, were barely perceptible to others. While they were crawling towards morning and the guns of the Trekroner, he enjoyed the movement of the moon and the transformations of the clouds in the night sky almost dead with calm. Unceasingly he gazed through the gunport; his breath deepened; he saw himself as a piece of ocean. Remembrances began to drift by, images that wandered more slowly than he himself. He saw a congregation of ships' masts, standing close together, and behind them the city of London. Always when ships were assembled so closely and quietly, a city belonged to them. Riggings by the hundreds loomed over the port buildings like a criss-crossed far-reaching cloud. The houses were pushing up to London Bridge as though they were determined to get into the water and be part of it, and were hesitating only at the last moment. Now and then a house really fell off the bridge, always when no one was looking. The houses in London had completely different faces from those in the little village at home. Arrogant, surly, often boastful, sometimes as if they were dead. He had also seen a fire in the docks, and a
lady who asked to have all her clothes brought from a shop to be examined through the window of her carriage, because she didn't want to walk through the muck with her shoes. The shopkeeper had customers waiting, but he remained at the carriage door, imperturbable, and answered all questions most courteously. He was so quiet that John regarded him as an ally, although he sensed distinctly: this man is fast. He had a kind of merchant's patience, which was pleasant but not related to his own.

A girl sat in the carriage. White-armed, slender, slightly embarrassed, red-headed English girls were among the eight or ten reasons why it was worth keeping one's eyes open. Thomas had pulled him away in the manner of all older brothers who had to take care of younger ones and were filled with hatred in their impatience. They had bought the three-cornered hat, the blue coat, the buckled shoes, the sea chest, the dagger. A volunteer first class had to outfit himself. As they climbed up the memorial in Fish Street, he counted three hundred and fifty steps. A cold spring; the smell of acrid smoke everywhere. Far in the distance castles could be seen clinging to green parks. He observed an epileptic who banged something with his forehead, then stared into the distance. There were highwaymen around, he heard, but a gallows stood in Tyburn. As a midshipman, said his elder brother, he had to behave like a gentleman. In the market they observed a quarrel. It was about a fish which had perhaps been artificially puffed up, or perhaps not.

Everywhere one could see the masts of ships, at least from the topgallant yards upward. The city's thousand chimney pots were one level lower. It was difficult to conceive that ships could be moved across the sea with the help of the wind, following well-devised plans, even if one knew Moore's
Practical Navigator
by heart. Sailing was something royal, and the ships looked it. He knew what was needed to make an entire wall of sailcloth stand in the wind at full speed. First one had to build hulls – all the curved, splinted wood, screwed tight, carefully polished, caulked, tarred, painted carefully, even overlaid with copper. Aship's great dignity derived from those many materials and arrangements that were necessary for its construction.

Boom!

That was the Trekroner and the battle.

Act like a gentleman. At the side of the gun, be as little in the way as possible. Running from the gundeck to the quarterdeck and back. Understand orders at once if possible or, if impossible, forcefully request a repetition. ‘Listen, men!' shouted the officer with the high forehead. ‘Don't die for your country.' Pause. ‘See to it that the Danes die for theirs.' Shrill laughter. Yes, they stirred up the men. After that, the battle seemed to become heavy. The Trekroner and the other guns scored one hit after another. For a man who always reacted a little too late, all support was lost with each one of these jolts. Their own broadsides were the worst. Every time they went off, the ship seemed to take a leap. The regular routine went on as they had learned it, only now the purpose was to cause chaos for the enemy, and that came back at them with the kind of suddenness John disliked. From one minute to the next the black gun suddenly bore a repulsively glittering deep scratch, almost a furrow, as if made by an immensely powerful tool which had slipped. The ugly shimmering of this metal wound made a deep impression. A moment later nobody was upright. Who could still get up? Their mechanical tasks were well learned; now partners' work had stopped, for half of them were no longer around. Then all that blood. To see it washing all about was worrisome. In the end, somebody had to be losing it, for it poured out of people, everywhere.

‘Don't just stand there! To the guns!' That was the man who had shouted, ‘A sign!' Suddenly the gunport had become much wider than before. The missing wood covered several bodies amidships. Whose bodies were they?