The Syme Papers (25 page)

The most extraordinary part played in these proceedings belonged perhaps to the gentleman referred to (on more than one occasion) as ‘Tom, damn you’, whose job it was to attend to a slight projection from the revolving globe – a handle, as it were – by which he spun 
the world as swiftly upon its axis as it whirled along its orbit. He performed this task with great nonchalance, standing idly by in his black suit, only touching from time to time, with the tip of his finger, the flying handle, to send the globe upon another month of imaginary days and nights, afresh rotation. The effect of these twin motions upon the … vines of smoke issuing from the globe was phantasmagoric in the extreme; their soft expanding tendrils entwined and parted, flowered in a thousand sudden springs, and shed their white blossoms in thickening cascades in just as rapid autumns.

Yet the impression of the whole – the revolution of the planet – was indeed far more violent, and, to be blunt, terrifying, than this image suggests. The burning colander whirled no more than afoot above the Professor’s head at such pace that the eye grew dizzy chasing it through its arc, whose radius extended perhaps some four or five feet. The pressed body of men leaned forward as it swung away, in an elaborate release of air and wonder – Oh! – and flattened themselves in fear, their breath and bellies retracted, as it hurtled towards them again, almost scraping the hair off their chins as it shot by. A full year passed as swiftly as a man might count to twelve, and encompassed in its revolution an orbit of some thirty feet – which tested the extent of the old tavern, and left few of its corners unlit by the globe’s smouldering path. The ladies were glad of their bay window, I can tell you – and stepped deeper and deeper into its darkening recess, as the large winter sun set behind them, and the small world spun before them. Moreover, each touch, no matter how gentle, of Tom’s finger sent the smoking planet shuddering and wobbling on its way; fresh gasps of fear attended the perilous launch – it is the only appropriate image – of each new day. In short, all was confusion and terror and delight – and none of us could suppress a powerful sense of imminent and enormous and wonderful disaster, of conflagration and world’s end.

The Professor’s discourse on the whole tended rather to soothe than excite. He talked as if he had the birth of creation well in hand – as a gentleman might discuss quite calmly, dismissively even, the glories of a picture whose inspiration he has seen for himself. Yes, he
seemed to say, this and this is like; this much unlike; this touch falls short, this exceeds the original. In general the effect of his re-creation, he implied, was rather disappointing; there was nothing, after all, like having a look at the real thing. He could recommend it thoroughly, he seemed to say, the next time it came around. Much of his lecture he aimed above the education of his listeners, who belonged, as I mentioned, for the most part to the labouring and agricultural classes. Perhaps he believed their minds would delight as much in the fine words and learning they could not understand as their eyes delighted in the rich display they could not quite believe. I prided myself among that company for following the letter of his demonstration as closely as the burning example he had set before us.

‘I will not touch on’, the Professor declared, in as measured a tone as the action of his legs permitted him, ‘the absurdities of Werner.’ (How my heart rose up in protest at this casual slight. I vowed again to challenge so arrogant an upstart.) ‘Much to be said for the ocean – author I dare say of a great many fish – very pleasant, too, on sunny days – but hills, no – veins of coal, no – mountains, improbable.’

Here Tom, the fellow in the morning suit gently spinning the world with an idle finger, interrupted him. ‘Begin at the beginning, Sam,’ he said, ‘see how you like it. As in: description of experiment; method; aims.’

‘Damn you, Tom,’ Syme cried, not for the last time, ‘they know quite well what I’m about. Don’t you, gentlemen? (Beg pardon, ladies, fully aware, three steps ahead of meat least.) Great sin of your nature, Tom. Can’t let a thing speak for itself. Trust the eye and ear, Tom – that’s all. Take in much more than the mouth spits out, believe me. Here we are – birth of planet, you see – all the necessaries. Item one: globe, revolving sweetly. (Mind your bonnet, Mrs Simmons, next time she comes round, there we are, lovely red hair you once had, I know, but to colour in this fashion, something painful.) Spinning gently – once a day, Tom, not a month of Sundays at a go, gentle, gentle, as she comes. Where was I? Item one, the world – which we’ve split down the middle – heaped with 
coal, burning nicely, hot as hell-fire. Subsequently filled with iron, nickel, manganese, etc., to determine, as she cools, the disposition of the interior.’ To be fair, a certain suddenness was unavoidable, given the breathless exercise of his limbs; and Tom, shrugging his shoulders, kept quiet.

‘Following Hutton, you see – great man, went far – not far enough. He believed in fire, had a great passion for it – declared it lay at the heart of everything, always burning, never ending. Then
his
stopped short. Question was: what happens
after
the fire? As she cools? Question is: are there ends and beginnings, or only a great stretch of
middles?
(Mixed company – I know, Miss Thomas, don’t blush. Speaking geologically, of course.) Is it only repetition, repetition, repetition – or do we get
on
after a time and come to something else:
new
beginnings,
new
ends? As I said, Hutton, old fool, thought not, consigned us for ever to a great moiling and broiling, endless fires and modifications. Very unsettling to the stomach. Nonsense, of course, reasoned thus: anything with a beginning has an end; anything with an end has a beginning.’ He paused shortly to let this settle; some of the farmers nodded; this was talking, after all, stood to reason, don’t think much about this Hutton fellow.

‘Here we plan to have a look at both,’ he resumed, still pumping away. ‘How
are
we getting on? Internal fire, wonderful; fluid metallic interior, moiling and broiling, quite delicious, good, good. (Damn me – left out the action of the sun, pulling at the brew. Never mind, never mind, carry on.) Let me tell you what I think we’ll find, when tempers cool. In clumsy approximation of the original: the interior separated according to composition: iron, nickel, etc., smooth spheres, rounded by constant revolution like clay at a potter’s wheel, ha? Nested in each other, sphere upon sphere, quite hollow, like Russian dolls.
If we’ve spun it fast enough, that is –
that’s the great thing. The proof of our little experiment lies … lies less in my head than my feet – physiognomy of faith, hey? Jog on, jog on, and all that – a merry heart goes all the way … There’s nothing like creation after all for working at speed.’

This is the best impression I can give of his commentary, ranging as it did, quite democratically, through such broad zones – and 
appealing, by turns, to the greatest and least of his audience, myself included. He had a rich, deep voice, somewhat patrician indeed, and faintly clipped by the edge of – I conjectured – an English accent, though the breadth of his vowels and the heavy intonation of his first syllables were patriotically American. He spoke well, I suppose, if rather abruptly, as one who could summon his thoughts quickly and dismiss them lightly, willing slaves all. And there was a kind of intimacy among his conjectures, as if they all got along quite well together, and managed to survive, through the force of long habit, with scarce a word said between them. Unfortunately, we did not share this intimacy; and I often had the sense, then and later, in listening to Syme, of having stumbled upon a family of thoughts, brothers, sisters and cousins, among whom I hesitated to address any of them singly, uncertain of their relations to one another.

He spoke, I must add, with a certain peculiarity, which struck me sensibly at the time and ever after absorbed my interest: he held his head as a blind man might, upright, gazing steadily before him, as if his audience, though plentiful and just at hand, were somehow beyond him, out of sight – indeed, almost as if he feared to look his company in the eyes. As if – as if – now for an absurdity of my own – as if we filled his head and not his house, and he teased only the creatures of his own imagination, and never the thick flesh and blood sweating in the room.

At last even his powerful frame appeared to flag; the zest had gone out of the years, and the world spun gentler now, spilling less heat and ash upon its way. ‘Perhaps,’ he gasped, quite red in the face and sweating freely now, I’m not quite up to creation yet, on my own. Another minute – there – suppose we’re all well cooked by now. I need strength even for the cooling down. (Especially for the cooling down.) Where are the buckets of ice? Attend to them, Tom. Shall we, gentlemen, ladies, prepare to observe the end of creation, the beginning of the world? Mind the smoke, of course.’

Several buckets of snow, largely melted, stood at Tom’s side – a precaution I had supposed against the hot ash flying from the spinning globe. (Indeed, the black streaks of divers trampled fires marked the broad floor, where a particularly blazing particle of coal
had fallen from the punctured sphere and burned away.) But I found now that I had been mistaken. Tom gave the globe an almighty thrust as it shot by, and then stooped to one of these buckets at his side – a great slushy composition of ice and water dusted by snow. He lifted it two-handed roughly by the lip and … and – what happened next I cannot describe with any precision. I suppose I saw the globe wheel burning towards him; I saw him lift the pail above his head, as the black tail of his suit slid up his rump; and I must have observed the first sudden cascade of ice, delayed an instant as it stuck against the wooden sides, before it came crashing down upon the burning planet.

The ice, I believe, was to blame; not Tom. He had not accounted for the solid block it had become, had hoped, no doubt, to tip a scattering of snow as the world came by, and cool the planet piecemeal, a little each year, as it were. As it was, he might as well have hurled the bucket at the globe and been done with it – not that we could see much of what followed. There was, at first, a tremendous hiss – as if the full ire and venom of the world had been roused to spitting vengeance. The smoke, the cloud that arose, as thick as nightfall, was instantaneous, and filled the room, blinding us all to the catastrophe to come. We heard, of course, the screams; mostly from the direction of the bay window, though I confess, guiltily, to a slight yelp. Each of these echoed and swelled, magnified immensely in our imaginations by the darkness, the stifling darkness – though again, darkness is perhaps an inadequate description of the lurid
sightlessness
to which we were confined, as the fire blazing in the hearth cast its red and flickering glow through the muffled air.

We all heard the crash; and I dare say most of us guessed at once what it portended, though we could not see the fallen planet at first. But our eyes grew accustomed to the pall, and as the burning entrails of the cracked globe spilt upon the floor, we saw it too, splitting as it rolled towards the mass of men against the long wall, myself included. I suppose, in retrospect, I can say that we had little to fear; one or two of us suffered a slight burn from the scattering of molten ash; nothing more. But by this point our imaginations had been lifted to such a pitch, and our identification of the ball of fired 
clay with our own planet was so powerful, that we could not suppress a sense of the apocalyptic, in what was, after all, nothing more than a geological experiment gone slightly awry. The globe smouldered and disintegrated as it rolled towards us – both unavoidably, it seemed, and unbearably slowly. It trailed smoke and fire, spilling its red guts with every revolution; it split into jagged fragments that spun as they settled, bearing each one a little dish of white-hot coals; it fell open at last at my feet, spent and cracked to the heart, and died visibly before our eyes, as the thick red blood running from it grew white and then black and then grey.

The first distinct words I can remember hearing, barring the general coughing, screaming, gasping, shouting of the terror-stricken crowd, were – ‘Damn you, Torn!’ spoken with a compressed power of emotion quite unlike the casual tone of his previous imprecations. Spoken quite quietly, in fact, as the Professor, still pedalling idly from time to time, squeaking a little, sat in his saddle and surveyed the wreckage. Tom, meanwhile, had accomplished the first sensible thing to be done, and opened the broad bay window. How cold and grateful the wintry gust appeared, thinning the cloud of smoke and cooling many an overheated brow! How quickly we became gently cold, then simply cold, then decidedly cold, and then bitterly, achingly cold, as the sweat dried upon us, and the first faint bells of the headache rang between our temples. By this time, Tom, swishing his coat-tails behind him, had scuttled about the room, stomped on the clusters of fire burning away upon the floorboards, and emptied the remainder of those icy buckets over the larger fragments of the shattered globe. Most of which, unfortunately, lay at my feet; which were, along with the legs attached to them and the fine yellow trousers encasing them, well soaked by the icy waters and covered in a curious sooty mixture of coal-ash and leftover snow.

Tom was tireless and, at least to my disgruntled glance, strangely exhilarated by the catastrophe, crying out, as he ushered his assorted guests from the room, ‘A proper first-rate show, I believe, ladies and gentlemen, splendid, splendid – the best show for fifty cents from here to Baltimore! A truly scientific disaster, unplanned, unpremeditated, unrehearsed – over and above the 
entertainment offered on the bill. Confidentially, if I had known, I would have charged a dollar, ladies and gentlemen,
two
dollars a head, for a show like that – the best Apocalypse in town, in the State of Virginia, in the Union itself. As much fire and smoke as you please – world’s end, conflagration, and I don’t deny it, a little spice of fear, mixed in the pot. Mind your step as you go! Let the word go round – Professor Syme himself, lately of Yale College, by a rare act of condescension, explains the Universe to Pactaw! Come again!’