Measuring the World

  What look? Long life and health. That's what was there, that's what he said. Did the gentleman like this continent?

  Why?

  He was going to be here for a very long time.

  Bonpland laughed. He doubted it. A long life, here of all places? Certainly not. Unless someone forced him.

  The soothsayer sighed and held his hand for a moment, as if to give him courage. Then he turned to Humboldt.

  Who shook his head.

  It hardly cost a thing!

  No, said Humboldt.

  In one swift movement, the soothsayer grabbed Humboldt's hand. He tried to pull away but the soothsayer was stronger; Humboldt, forced to play along, gave a sour smile. The soothsayer frowned and pulled the hand closer. He bent forward, then straightened up again. Squeezed his eyes together. Puffed out his cheeks.

  Just say it, cried Humboldt. He had other things to do. If something bad was there, it didn't matter, he didn't believe a word of it anyway.

  Nothing bad there.

  But?

  Nothing. The soothsayer let go of Humboldt's hand. He was sorry, he didn't want any money, he couldn't do it.

  He didn't understand, said Humboldt.

  Him neither. It was nothing. No past, no present, no future. There was, so to speak, nothing and nobody to see. The soothsayer looked sharply into Humboldt's face. Nobody!

  Humboldt stared at his hand.

  Of course it was nonsense. Of course it was the man's fault. Perhaps he was losing his gift. The soothsayer squashed a gnat on his belly. Perhaps he'd never had it.

  That evening, Humboldt and Bonpland left the dog tied up next to the oarsmen, so that they could have an insect-free night in the smoke-huts. It wasn't until the early hours of the morning that Humboldt nodded off to sleep, soaked with sweat, eyes burning, his thoughts a blur in the fug.

  He was awakened by a noise. Someone had crawled in and was lying down beside him. Not again, he muttered, lit the candle stub with shaky fingers, and found himself looking at a small boy. What do you want, he asked, what's the matter, what is this all about?

  The child examined him with little animal eyes.

  So what is it, asked Humboldt, what?

  The boy kept staring at him. He was completely naked. In spite of the flame in front of his eyes, he didn't blink.

  What, whispered Humboldt, what, child?

  The boy laughed.

  Humboldt's hand was shaking so badly that he dropped the candle. In the darkness he could hear them both breathing. He reached out his hand to push the boy away, but when he felt his damp skin, he recoiled as if he'd been hit. Go away, he whispered.

  The boy didn't move.

  Humboldt sprang to his feet, bumping his head on the roof, and kicked at him. The boy screamed—since the business with the sand fleas Humboldt wore boots at night—and rolled himself into a ball. Humboldt kicked again and hit the boy's head, the boy whimpered softly and then went quiet. Humboldt could hear himself panting. He saw the shadowy body in front of him, seized him by the shoulders, and pushed him out.

  The night air did him good; after the thick fug in the hut it felt cool and fresh. Walking unsteadily, he went to the next hut, where Bonpland was. But when he heard a woman's voice, he stopped. He listened, and heard it again. He turned back, crawled into his hut, and closed the entrance. The curtain had been open for long enough to let the insects fly in, and a panicked bat fluttered round his head. My God, he whispered. Then, out of sheer exhaustion, he fell into a restless sleep.

  When he woke up, it was broad daylight, the heat was even more intense, and the bat was gone. Impeccably dressed, his uniform dagger at his side, and his hat under his arm, he stepped out into the open air. The area in front of the huts was empty. His face was bleeding from several cuts.

  Bonpland asked what had happened to him.

  He had tried to shave himself. Just because there were mosquitoes was no reason to turn savage, one was still a civilized human being. Humboldt set his hat on his head and asked if Bonpland had heard anything during the night.

  Nothing special, said Bonpland carefully. One heard all sorts of things in the night.

  Humboldt nodded. And one dreamed the strangest dreams.

  Next day they turned in to the Río Negro, where the mosquitoes were less plentiful over the dark water. The air too was better here. But the presence of the corpses was weighing on the oarsmen, and even Humboldt was pale and silent. Bonpland kept his eyes closed. He was afraid, he said, that his fever was coming back. The monkeys screamed in their cages, rattled the bars, and pulled faces at one another. One of them even managed to open its door, turned somersaults, plagued the oarsmen, went climbing along the edge of the boat, jumped onto Humboldt's shoulders, and spat at the snarling dog.

  Mario asked Humboldt if he would please tell them a story.

  He didn't know any stories, said Humboldt, as he straightened his hat, which the monkey had turned around. And he didn't like telling them. But he could recite the most beautiful poem in the German language, freely translated into Spanish. Here it was. Above all the mountaintops it was silent, there was no wind in the trees, even the birds were quiet, and soon death would come.*

  Everyone looked at him.

  That's it, said Humboldt.

  Yes, but, asked Bonpland.

  Humboldt reached for the sextant.

  Pardon, said Julio, but that couldn't have been the whole thing.

  Of course it wasn't some story about blood, war, and shape-changing, snapped Humboldt. There was no act of magic in it, nobody got turned into a plant or began to fly or ate somebody else. With one swift grab he seized the monkey who was just in the process of trying to undo his shoes, and stuck him in his cage. The little creature screamed, tried to bite him, stuck out its tongue, moved its ears, and showed him its backside. And unless he was mistaken, said Humboldt, everyone on this boat had work to do!

  Near San Carlos they crossed the magnetic equator. Humboldt watched the instruments devoutly. He had dreamed of this place when he was a child.

  It was almost evening when they reached the mouth of the legendary channel. Swarms of biting flies immediately descended on them. But as the heat dissipated, so did the haze; the sky cleared, and Humboldt could measure the degree of longitude. He worked all night, measuring the angle of the moon as it tracked across the Southern Cross. Then, by way of confirmation, fixing the ghostly spots of Jupiter's moons in his telescope. Nothing could be relied on, he said to the dog, who was observing him intently. Not the tables, not the instruments, not even the sky. One had to be so precise as to be immune to disorder.

  It was almost dawn when he finished. He clapped his hands, get up everybody, no time to lose! One end of the channel was now pinpointed, and they had to reach the other as quickly as possible.

  Sleepily Bonpland asked if he was afraid someone might beat him to it, given that it was at the end of the world, and entire centuries had passed without the goddamn river attracting the slightest attention.

  One never knew, said Humboldt.

  The region had never been mapped, and they could only guess where the water was carrying them. Tree trunks crowded the bank so tightly that it was impossible to land, and every few hours a thin spray of rain would moisten the air without cooling it or discouraging the insects. Bonpland made a whistling sound whenever he breathed.

  It was nothing, he said, coughing, it was just that he didn't know whether it was the fever or something in the air. Speaking as a doctor, he suggested it wasn't a good idea to inhale too deeply. He suspected the woods were giving off unhealthy vapors. Or maybe it was the corpses.

  Out of the question, said Humboldt. The corpses had nothing to do with it.

  Eventually they found a place to land, and took machetes and axes to chop out a small space where they could spend the night. Mosquitoes crepitated in the flames of their campfire. A bat bit the dog in the nose; he bled profusely, turned circles growling, and wouldn't settle down again. He went to
hide under Humboldt's hammock, and his rumbling kept them awake for a long time.

  Next morning neither Humboldt nor Bonpland was able to shave: their faces were too swollen from insect bites. When they went to cool their swelling in the river, they realized that the dog was missing. Humboldt quickly loaded his gun.

  Not a good idea, said Carlos. The forest was at its thickest, and the air was too wet for guns. The dog must have been taken by a jaguar; nothing to be done.

  Without saying a word, Humboldt disappeared into the trees.

  Nine hours later they were still there. The seventeenth time Humboldt came back, drank water, washed himself in the river, and tried to set off again, Bonpland held him back.

  There was no point, the dog was gone.

  Never. Absolutely not, said Humboldt. He wouldn't permit it.

  Bonpland put a hand on his shoulder. The dog was damn well dead!

  As a doornail, said Julio.

  Gone for good, said Mario.

  It was certainly the deadest dog in history, said Carlos.

  Humboldt looked at them all, one after the other. His mouth opened and closed, but then he laid down the gun.

  It was days before they saw another settlement. A missionary turned half-witted by the silence greeted them in a stutter. The people were naked and brightly colored: some had painted tailcoats on themselves while others had painted uniforms which they themselves could never have seen. Hum-boldt's face lit up when he was told that this was a place where they prepared curare.

  The curare master was a dignified, gaunt, priestly figure. This, he explained, was how the twigs were peeled, this was how the bark was rubbed on a stone, this was how—careful— the juice was poured into a funnel made from a banana leaf. The most important thing was the funnel. He doubted that Europe had produced anything so ingenious.

  Well, yes, said Humboldt, it was certainly a perfectly respectable funnel.

  And this, said the master, was how the stuff was evaporated in a clay vessel, please pay attention, even watching it was dangerous, and this was how the concentrated infusion of the leaves was added. And this, he held the little clay dish out to Humboldt, was now the strongest poison in this world and the other world too. It would kill angels!

  Humboldt asked if one could drink it.

  It was put on arrows, said the master. Nobody had ever tried to drink it. They weren't insane.

  But people ate the animals killed by it right away?

  Yes, said the master. That was the point.

  Humboldt looked at his index finger. Then he stuck it in the bowl and licked it clean.

  The master screamed.

  Not to worry, said Humboldt. His finger was intact and so was the inside of his mouth. If one had no wounds, the stuff must not be deadly. The substance had to be researched, so he had to take the risk. But he must excuse himself, he was feeling a little weak. He sank to his knees and then remained sitting on the ground for some time, rubbing his forehead and humming to himself. Then he stood up with great care and bought all the master's supplies from him.

  The onward journey was delayed for a day. Humboldt and Bonpland sat side by side on a fallen tree. Humboldt's eyes were fixed on his shoes, and Bonpland endlessly chanted the first line of a French counting rhyme. They knew now how curare was prepared, and together they had proved that one could ingest an astonishing amount by mouth without suffering worse effects than some dizziness and hallucinations, but that if even the tiniest amount was dripped into the blood, unconsciousness resulted and even a fifth of a gram was sufficient to kill a monkey, though the monkey could be saved by blowing air hard into its mouth for as long as the poison paralyzed its muscles. After an hour the effect would wear off, its capacity to move would gradually be restored, and there would be no ongoing effect except the ape would feel a bit sad. So they thought it must be a delusion when the bushes suddenly parted and a man with a mustache, wearing a linen shirt and a leather jacket, stepped out in front of them, sweaty but composed. He seemed to be in his midthirties, his name was Brombacher, and he was from Saxony. He didn't have plans and he wasn't going anywhere, he said, he just wanted to see the world.

  Humboldt said why didn't he come with them.

  Brombacher said thank you but no. One had more experiences on one's own and besides, home was full of nothing but Germans.

  Stumblingly out of practice in his mother tongue, Humboldt asked which town he was from, how high the church spire was, and how many people lived there.

  Brombacher replied calmly and politely: Bad Kürthing, fifty-four feet, eight hundred and thirty-two souls. He offered them dirty flat cakes of dough; they declined. He told them about the wild game, the animals, and the lonely nights in the forest. After a short time he stood up, raised his hat to them, trudged off, and the foliage closed behind him. Among all the absurdities in his life, Humboldt wrote next day to his brother, this meeting was the most extraordinary. He would never be quite sure whether it had really happened or whether it had been a last aftereffect of the poison on their imaginations.

  Toward evening, the curare had passed off sufficiently for them to be able to move around, and they even felt hungry. The inhabitants of the mission were turning spits over a fire with the head of a child, three tiny hands, and four little feet with what were clearly toes. Not human, explained the missionary. They stopped that wherever they could. Just little monkeys from the forest.

  Bonpland refused to taste any. Humboldt hesitated, but took a hand and bit into it. It didn't taste bad but he didn't feel well. Would people be offended if he didn't eat it all?

  The missionary shook his head, mouth full. Nobody would notice!

  In the night, animal noises kept them awake. The imprisoned monkeys hammered against the bars and kept on screaming. Humboldt wrote the beginning of a treatise on night sounds of the forest and animal existence, which was to be understood as the continuation of an ongoing struggle, and consequently, the opposite of paradise.

  He thought, said Bonpland, that the missionary had lied.

  Humboldt looked up.

  The man had been living here a long time, said Bonpland. The forest exerted enormous power. It must have been awkward for him, which is why he'd made his assertion. People here ate human flesh, was what Pater Zea had said, and everyone knew it. What could one missionary do against that?

  Nonsense, said Humboldt.

  No, said Julio, that sounded right.

  Humboldt was silent for a moment. He begged their pardon, but they were all completely exhausted. He quite understood. But if any one of them said again that the godson of the Duke of Brunswick had eaten human flesh, he would reach for his weapon.

  Bonpland laughed.

  He meant it, said Humboldt.

  No he didn't, said Bonpland.

  Yes he did.

  Everyone seemed uneasy and fell silent. Bonpland drew breath, but said nothing. One after the other they turned toward the fire and pretended to be asleep.

  From now on Bonpland's fever began to get worse. More and more often he got up during the night, took a few steps, then collapsed, giggling to himself. Once Humboldt got the feeling that someone was bending over him. As if in a dream he saw Bonpland's face, teeth bared, a machete in his hand. He thought as fast as he could. One had strange dreams here, as he knew only too well. He needed Bonpland. So he had to trust him. This must therefore be a dream. He closed his eyes and forced himself to lie there motionless, until he heard the sound of footsteps. When he blinked the next time, Bonpland was lying beside him, eyes closed.

  Day after day the hours blended into one another; the sun hung low and fiery over the river, it hurt to look at it, the mosquitoes attacked from every side, even the oarsmen were too exhausted to talk. For a time they were followed by a metal disc that flew ahead of them and then behind them again, glided silently through the sky, disappeared, reappeared, came so close for minutes at a time that Humboldt with his telescope could see the curved reflection of the river, their boat,
and even himself in its glistening surface. Then it raced away and never came back.

  The weather was clear when they reached the end of the channel. To the north, granite-white mountains reared over their heads, and on the other side grassy plains stretched away into the distance. Humboldt fixed the setting sun with his sextant and measured the angle between the path of Jupiter and that of the moon as it wandered on its way.

  Now finally, he said, the channel really existed.

  On the way back downstream, said Mario, things would go faster. No need to fear the rapids any more and they could stick to the middle of the river. And that way they'd escape the mosquitoes.

  He doubted it, said Bonpland. He didn't believe there was a place anywhere that was free of them. They had even worked their way into his memory. If he thought of La Rochelle, he found the town full of insects.

  The appearance of the channel on maps, said Humboldt, would benefit this entire part of the world. It would be possible to transport goods across the continent, new centers of trade would spring up, enterprises no one could ever dream of before would become possible.

  Bonpland had a fit of coughing. Tears came pouring down his face and he spat up blood. There was nothing here, he panted. It was hotter than hell, there were nothing but stinks, mosquitoes, and snakes. There would never be anything here, and this filthy channel wouldn't make a bit of difference. Now could they please start back?

  Humboldt stared at him for several moments. He hadn't decided that yet. The Esmeralda mission was the last Christian settlement before the wilderness. From there it would be a few weeks’ journey through uncharted land to the Amazon. And nobody had yet discovered the Amazon's source.

  Mario crossed himself.

  On the other hand, said Humboldt reflectively perhaps it would be imprudent. The thing might be dangerous. If he died now, all the findings and scientific results would die with him. No one would ever know about them.

  They shouldn't be put at risk, said Bonpland.

  It would be insanity, said Julio.

  Not to mention those! Mario pointed to the corpses. No one would ever get to see them!