The Discovery Of Slowness. Sten Nadolny

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?

      On deck, he learned that three of twelve ships had run aground, but not the Polyphemus. White smoke billowed out of the side of another ship close by. That image remained fixed in John’s eye. On the Polyphemus, pieces of splintered wood skidded across the deck as fast as lightning, slicing in circles like mowers’ blades. Sadly, John watched ordinarily sedate officers who never had to get out of the way jump aside with most undignified leaps. Of course, they acted correctly, but it remained somehow degrading. He delivered his messages.

      Now the companionway looked very different. Obstacles protruded from the wall, detached themselves from above, and swung down at the height of his forehead. Since he could neither get out of the way nor stand still, he received scratches, cuts and bruises, which certainly made him look like a hero. And at all times he tried to act like a gentleman. One could easily lose an eye; Nelson had only one. What did Nelson think now? He stood on the quarterdeck of the Elephant. Nelson would always know everything.

      He could hear pumps working. Perhaps they were on fire? Or was the ship taking in water? People were reeling on deck as though they were drunk. The captain sat on top of a cannon, shouting, ‘Let’s all of us die together!’ Earlier they had made very different noises. Next to the captain the head of a listener was suddenly missing, and with it the listener himself. John became unhappy. All sudden changes confused him, whether of seating-order, deportment or systems of coordinates. It was hard to stand these constant disappearances of more and more people. Besides, he felt it was a deep humiliation for a head when, in consequence of actions by totally different people, it lost its body just like that. It was a defeat and not really an honour. And a body without a head, what a sad, indeed what a ridiculous sight!

      When he got back to the gundeck he was greeted by a sudden sharp brightness and an enormous racket: a ship had exploded nearby. He heard ‘Hurrah!’ and in between, again and again, the name of a ship. In the midst of the hurrahs, however, he heard a penetrating creaking, rasping noise, and then felt a jolt: a Danish ship had come up alongside them. And through the demolished gunport someone jumped aboard.

      John caught the image of a light, foreign boot which suddenly pushed its way in and got a foothold. It was a quick, threatening move. Its image remained fixed in John’s mind and kept him from a full awareness of further events. His head thought automatically: we’ll show ’em! For this was the situation he had thought of when he first heard this slogan. Next he saw just that man’s open mouth and his, John’s, thumbs on his neck. By some chance the man had come to lie under him. Now he had a hold on him – he, John!

      When John grabbed a person, there was no escape. Now he saw the pistol emerging at the lower periphery of his vision. The sight paralysed him immediately. He didn’t look at it but rather kept his eye on his strong thumbs as though they could prevail over the pistol, which СКАЧАТЬ