The Discovery Of Slowness. Sten Nadolny

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СКАЧАТЬ at himself with displeasure. The way he came at you, for example: his legs wide apart, his round eyes, his head askew like a dog’s. His movements seemed glued to the air, and he talked like an axe thumping on a chopping-block. He didn’t find much to laugh at, and when he did he laughed too long. His voice had become hoarse, as though a rooster were crowing inside him. That wouldn’t matter at sea. But then there was something else new which kept happening unexpectedly, a swelling which disappeared only very slowly. Of all things, to be conspicuous in such a place! ‘That’s normal,’ Bob had remarked. ‘Revelations, Chapter 3, Verse 19: “Those whom I love I reprove and chasten.”’ Again proof of the Bible’s total unintelligibility. John regarded the bustle of the fair with his glassy fixed look, as if he were about to catch a ball. Spavens, the one-legged man who had written a book of seafaring memoirs, stood by the fence. ‘The money has croaked,’ he announced. ‘Everything’s twice as dear, and my publisher pretends to be deaf.’

      Not far from him was the booth with the miracle turntable. If it turned fast enough on its own axis, Harlequin and Columbine, who were painted on opposite sides, were united as a couple. It had to do with speed, but John thought that today he didn’t have a head for it. He went back to Spavens, who talked slowly, coming up with one word after another the way one puts pictures up on a wall. ‘Peace, that’s God,’ he shouted, his nose dripping. ‘But what does He send? War and want.’ He pushed out from under his coat the stump of his leg, with its well-turned wooden peg, polished with shoe wax. ‘He sends us those costly victories to test us even more.’ With each sentence he stabbed his peg more deeply into the lawn: he had already stamped so violently that he had scooped out a little ditch, and now muddy water spurted at the bystanders’ stockings each time he made a jab. Bob Cracroft whispered, ‘I believe he isn’t particularly objective,’ and then began to talk about himself.

      John had come to be well liked as a listener just because he asked when he hadn’t understood. Even Tom had said. ‘If you understand something, it must be right.’ John wondered what he meant by that and answered, ‘In any case, I understand nothing too soon.’

      This time John was not a good listener. At the other end of the fair he had noticed the model of a frigate as tall as a man: its hull was black and yellow, and it had all the guns, yards and rigging it was supposed to have. The model was in the navy’s recruiting-tent. John studied every inch closely and asked at least three questions about each detail. The officer asked to be relieved after an hour and dropped into his bunk.

      In the evening, John wrote in his notebook: ‘Two friends, one fast, the other slow, get through the entire world. Sagals, Book XII.’ He noted it and placed it on top of Tom’s linen.

      They sat on the bank of the Lud near the mill. Not a soul was near; only now and then a coach rattled across the bridge. Tom had his foot in the water, one of those extremely beautiful feet. He said, ‘They fought about you.’ John’s heart beat high up in his throat. Had Tom read his ‘Noteworthy Phrases’?

      ‘Burnaby said there’s good stuff in you. You have insight into authority, and your further education would be worthwhile. By contrast, Dr Orme thinks you’re someone who learns things by rote, who is done no favour with ancient languages. He wants to speak to your father to see about an apprenticeship for you.’

      Tom had eavesdropped in the evenings at the open window of the Wheatsheaf Inn. ‘I didn’t hear everything. They didn’t say a word about me. Burnaby said––I thought this would interest you.’

      ‘Yes, very much,’ John said. ‘Many thanks for trying.’

      ‘Burnaby talked about your fine memory. Later he remarked that freedom was only an interim stage. I don’t know if that was about you. He shouted in rage, “The pupils love me.” I believe Dr Orme was furious, too, but quieter. He said something about “being God-like” and “equality” and that Burnaby wasn’t mature enough yet. Or that the time wasn’t. His voice was rather low.’

      A coach drove over the bridge out of town. Now John managed to bring out his question. ‘Have you read my book?’

      ‘What book? Your notes? What should I want with them?’

      Then John began to speak about Matthew and how he was determined to become a sailor. ‘Matthew is in love with my aunt. He’ll take me along, and you, too.’

      ‘What for? I’m going to be a doctor or an apothecary. If you want to drown, do it by yourself.’ And as though to confirm this Tomtook his beautiful foot out of the Lud’s water, in which surely no human being could drown, and put his stocking back on.

      Burnaby actually taught mathematics of late, always on Saturdays. It didn’t seem to give him any real pleasure that John already knew a lot about it, but his smile remained. When John discovered an error in Burnaby’s explanations, the teacher started to talk about education – beseeching, fiery, or a little woebegone, but always smiling. John wanted to try to understand education, for he wanted to make Burnaby very happy.

      Dr Orme sat in on Saturdays and listened. Perhaps he knew mathematics better than Burnaby, but a clause in the school’s constitution prohibited his teaching anything but religion, history and languages.

      Now and then he smiled.

      John Franklin sat in detention. When somebody had turned away impatiently and had not waited for his answer he had simply grabbed him and held him tight, without considering sufficiently that the person was Burnaby. I can’t let go, John concluded from this, not of any image, any person or any teacher. Burnaby, however, had concluded from this that John must be severely punished.

      Detention was the harshest punishment. Not for John Franklin, who could wait like a spider. If only he could have had something to read! For he had come to love books of all kinds. Paper could wait: that wasn’t pressing. He knew Gulliver, Robinson, and Spavens’s biography; recently also Roderick Random. Just now poor Jack Rattlin would have almost had his leg sawed off. The incompetent ship’s doctor, Mackshane, probably a secret Catholic, had already put the tourniquet on him when Roderick Random stopped him. With a venomous glance, the quack fled; six weeks later Jack Rattlin reported back for service on two healthy legs. A good argument against all hasty decisions. ‘There are three points in time: a correct time, a missed time and a premature time.’ John wanted to write that in his copybook when he got out.

      It wasn’t very comfortable in detention. The stones in the cellar were still wintry. Lying on his back, John spoke to Sagals through the vaulted ceiling – to the spirit who had written all the books in the world, to the creator of all libraries.

      Burnaby had shouted: ‘That’s how you all reward me!’ Why ‘you all’? It was only John in whose grip he had wriggled. And Hopkinson murmuring, full of admiration, ‘Man alive, are you strong!’

      He wouldn’t be able to stay at school. Where could he wait for Matthew? He should have shown up long ago. Better get out as soon as he could. Hide on a barge under a load of grain. Let them think he had drowned in the Lud.

      In the port of Hull he could start on a coal-carrying ship, like the great James Cook.

      There was nothing doing with Tom. Sherard Lound would have gone along. But he was now hoeing beets in the field.

      While John was taking counsel with Sagals, the cellar door opened and Dr Orme entered, his head way down between his shoulders as though he wanted to show that a school cellar wasn’t really designed for teachers.

      ‘I’ve come to pray with you,’ said Dr Orme. He looked at John very carefully, but not in an unfriendly СКАЧАТЬ