The Discovery Of Slowness

by Sten Nadolny

  Their difference in point of view about penal sentences weighed more heavily between them. The landowners’ newspapers, The True Colonist and Murray’s Review, raised outcries over the ‘new fashion of granting rights to prisoners and prosecuting supposed abuses of corporeal punishment’. And a landowner with whom John talked privately said it even more succinctly: ‘If Port Arthur is no longer a place of terror, how can we intimidate the working convicts who are assigned to us? If prison becomes a paradise of fair treatment, our own workers will bash our heads in so as to get there.’

  Oddly, of all people, Maconochie appeared to the newspapers as the proponent of strict prison discipline, perhaps a misunderstanding. And it was just as odd that the secretary accepted this impression and did nothing to correct it. Obviously he enjoyed the praise. He thought it was useful for a good cause, whether or not it happened in error.

  The system was good, but John lacked a private secretary he could depend on. In practice, therefore, it looked different. He had a premonition of evil. If he had to supervise everything, his sense of duty commanded him not to waste time and to use every minute for the good of the colony. But the more he did this, the more he limped behind, until he lost the present altogether. The multiplicity of things made him nervous. He caught himself making quick, improvised decisions only to get some burden temporarily off his back.

  One late evening he left Jane to her action novel and walked out of the house. At first he thought of visiting Hepburn, for whom he had procured a position as a tutor. However, he decided not to seek comfort but to think.

  Drinking from a bottle of rum, he walked barefoot in the governor’s garden in order to keep himself open to a few useful and promising ideas. If natural slowness proved inadequate to protect peace and concentration, he simply wanted to help it along a little. So he decided he would dispose of only part of the governor’s business quickly and get the other part done with deliberate slowness: more pauses in sentences, more partial deafness when others reported to him. And as for demands made upon him, only those who refrained from making them for a long time would receive positive replies. He needed to create reserved space for himself in which he could protect his time.

  The rum went to his legs.

  John had wanted to start with tea. Whatever the pressures, tea time needed to be kept. And he wanted to raise the cup to his lips so slowly that others would think him dead, yessir. He wanted to stir it so that nobody could tell whether he stirred left or right. In the Van Diemen’s Land Chronicle, one would read: ‘Proof delivered. The governor doesn’t move at all any more.’

  His Excellency Sir John Franklin giggled and sat on the wall. He swung his legs and looked out over the sea, glittering in the moonlight. Before him he saw the distraught faces of Montagu and Maconochie at tea. He burst out laughing and slapped his thighs. He was governor; he was allowed everything! What was needed were calm, clarity, and durable projects. He wanted to put that together while there was time.

  He noticed that his laughter had become tired. The sea seemed as distant as a star yet also deep down below him like an abyss. That’s how it looked from the top of the cliff at Point Puer. But he didn’t think at all of hurling himself down. That’s the advantage of growing old, he thought, without having ever been confronted with the law. I was lucky.

  He no longer needed a water column rising out of the sea against the force of gravity to devour his enemies or to show him the way. He no longer missed the white-clad Sagals, who turned a friendly face to him and rocked him in safety. None of all that. He was fifty-two years old now. He looked out for himself and for others.

  Sixty years was nothing, Sophia had said. Sensitive! But how did she get to sixty? I should have met her when I came back from the war. At that time she hadn’t even been born …

  He went back into the house, a little drunk, only slightly invigorated.

  The system? It didn’t work. Besides, he didn’t like the word any more, because his opponents were using it. In some strange way the concept permitted them to succumb to all their pitilessness and blindness. No more system. No pose of a wider perspective, but a real perspective gleaned from the observation of details, navigation.

  What remained was the habit of taking everything to its proper conclusion. On dry land this was hard. ‘What does that mean?’ he grumbled. ‘It’s never been easy.’

  17

  The Man by the Sea

  There is a lawyer in Hobart Town who employs a convict cook on assignment as a domestic servant. The lawyer is known as a champion of leniency in criminal justice, the cook as a master of his craft whose sauces taste three times as good as those of his colleague at Government House. The lawyer goes on a trip and leaves the management of his house to the cook. When he returns he finds that some of his furniture has been sold, coins are missing from his strongbox, and files are gone whose contents might have been very interesting to some people. The cook maintains he knows nothing. The lawyer reports him to the authorities for punishment. The cook is convicted and sentenced. He is glad that he is not sent to Port Arthur.

  Now enters a further figure: the colonial secretary, an adherent of law and order, a fighter for loyalty to principle, and, moreover, a man who values good food. He has often been able to convince himself of the cook’s excellence. He therefore persuades a judicial figure loyal to him to make an exception and assign the cook to a new employer: himself.

  The lawyer is not pleased. He complains to the governor. After a fresh examination of the case and careful deliberation, the governor orders the cook transferred to road construction in accordance with the sentence. The colonial secretary feels deeply humiliated by the decision: true, principles have to be upheld as a basic policy, but a good cook is not just any convict; he is of interest to the state; and the colonial secretary is not just any subject.

  Then there is the governor’s private secretary, who sees himself as an unyielding fighter against slavery. In line with his readings of scientific tracts, he believes in the natural superiority of the white race, so he finds the enslavement of white-skinned people the worst of all evils. This slavery he believes is realised in the system of assignment that the governor supports. This he calls slavery, whereas he designates as criminal justice all the cruelties of bored wardens in state prisons. Although he is only a private secretary, he believes he can put his position to good use for his cause: when a committee of jurists in England, with the noblest intentions, wants to know further details about penal sentences in Van Diemen’s Land, he composes a lengthy, sharply worded report in which he attributes to assignment all the evils in the colony, including even alcoholism and venereal disease, converting a few exceptions into regular occurrences to support his thesis. Resolutely he slips the manuscript into a cache of papers sent home by the governor so that it reaches London as an official document under his seal. A few months later the governor finds out from The Times that his private secretary, purportedly in agreement with him, has called the settlers ‘incapable of the humane treatment of convicts’. The settlers are horrified and feel betrayed by the governor. He dismisses the secretary, without, however, exposing him publicly. At the urging of his wife, the governor even allows the secretary to stay for a limited time in his house. The big landowners and the colonial secretary see this as a sign that the governor has merely sacrificed his secretary to whitewash himself, that in reality they are in league. The ‘sacrificial lamb’ does nothing to correct this impression; rather, he makes remarks like ‘I could say a good deal more about this.’ He interprets his dismissal as an act against progress and humanity and thinks of himself as a saint more than ever. ‘This governor,’ he said, ‘does not deserve my services.’

  Meanwhile, in London the Home and Colonial Offices are debating the recommendations of the committee of jurists. Should assignment be abolished? The former governor of Van Diemen’s Land, the very man who had initiated assignment and practised it inhumanely, now solemnly speaks against it and calls it perfect sl
avery. Sir George Arthur knows when and how to gain approval.

  The present governor knows less about that and doesn’t care. He conceives of humanising the assignment system as the best way of giving convicts a chance to prove themselves outside the prison walls. At the same time, he continues, not without success, to fight against corruption and cruelty in the penal institutions. He tries to base his policy on the support of city people – merchants, craftsmen, shipbuilders – who agree with his objectives, and he applies to London for permission to change the legislative council into a chamber to be picked in general elections.

  At this point, the colonial secretary asks for extended furlough, supposedly for personal reasons, and leaves for England.

  John preferred saying ‘the colonial secretary’ to saying Montagu, and ‘the private secretary’ to saying Maconochie. But that helped very little. The terms had become dusky vocables just as much as the names. Even by rearranging language, the tormented, sullen head would not be relieved of its bitterness.

  Maconochie, Montagu. Why was he chagrined by two individual gentlemen of questionable character? There were hundreds or thousands of their ilk in the world. But the bird’s-eye view didn’t help any more. If one wanted to purge oneself of bitterness and regain the ability to have a careful view of things, one could not take refuge in, of all things, the fixed look.

  London turned down the request to convert the legislative council into a parliament – that was Montagu’s work. The consequences were embarrassing, for the tradesmen and craftsmen were disappointed and felt they had been dallied with. They believed that Sir John had taken the first step, only to withhold the second. ‘In his reports to London,’ the word went, ‘he talks quite differently from the way he talks to us.’

  Finally, the Coverdale case.

  An old man lies dying after a bad fall from a horse. His family sends for Dr Coverdale, a convict physician in the government health service assigned to the district. The messenger does not wait for the return of the absent doctor but leaves a message. This the doctor doesn’t see – perhaps the wind blows the note away. The patient gets no treatment and dies. The family points to the messenger’s statement that he informed the doctor personally; they demand the doctor’s punishment and dismissal from the health service. Montagu supports this claim; the governor decides accordingly. But soon doubts arise concerning the messenger’s credibility. Settlers support the doctor, who has done nothing wrong until now. The governor talks with him, then with the settlers, and also wants to hear the messenger. Montagu advises strongly against revoking the earlier decision. Lady Franklin, however, believes the doctor is innocent and refuses to keep her opinion to herself. The governor finds contradictions in the messenger’s statements. He rehabilitates the doctor and restores him to his position.

  From this day on, reading the Van Diemen’s Land Chronicle gives Sir John Franklin no more pleasure. He is called incompetent and vacillating. He is charged with being but the pitiful shadow of the erstwhile polar hero, now under the thumb of his wife, doing whatever she prescribes. She alone is the governor. One word he had to look up in the dictionary. It was ‘imbecile’: ‘weak, especially feeble-minded, idiotic’.

  He suspects that the colonial secretary makes common cause with the editor of the newspaper. Montagu denies it. A little later, however, the lie is exposed because the editor himself brags about his prominent support. Now Montagu switches arguments and talks about misunderstandings. He has been co-editor of the paper for years and mentioned this to Sir John long ago. Moreover, he has hardly any influence on editorial policy. Sir John has a different picture in mind. He knows Montagu now. He dismisses him from his post.

  Caught in an open lie, Montagu loses any sense of guilt, any remnant of self-doubt for just that reason. He is permeated by solemn feelings; lies become truths. Everyone now hears from his lips that Lady Franklin exercises a witchlike influence upon the governor. At the same time, he applies to her personally in the name of friendship and begs her to intercede with Sir John on his behalf. He acts so contritely that in the end she does so out of pity, for she believes in the reconciliation of all men of good will. With Sir John she is unsuccessful. Montagu has to be content to represent her intervention – against all logic – as one more proof that she meddles with politics. Then he leaves Van Diemen’s Land, returns to England, and does everything possible there to effect John Franklin’s dismissal from his government post. In London a new Secretary of State for the Colonies has been installed, Lord Stanley, with whom Montagu has some connections.

  ‘Details,’ John told Sophia. ‘They’re time-consuming even to enumerate, and the sum total can be bitter. But it’s not the fault of politics. I did something wrong myself. Why didn’t I dismiss those two in time?’

  Tasman Day, 1841, the day of the Grand Regatta.

  John had been in office for five years. He knew that there were better governors, for he knew the work intimately. Navigation was important here, but it was not enough.

  Blue flags with silver acacia blossoms were flying everywhere in the harbour. Lady Jane had designed the emblem herself before leaving for New Zealand. In place of the first lady, Sophia Cracroft was permitted to accompany the governor as he strode down to the shore to open the festival.

  He wore his blue captain’s uniform, all buttoned. The two-cornered hat covered his baldness as well as the old scar on his forehead – lately the head wound was used in the colony to explain John’s slowness. He held a bouquet of red roses, ‘English roses’. Symbols alone were enough to keep a governor busy.

  Sophia had said something. Uncertain, he looked into her eyes. ‘Beg pardon?’ John always heard less well with his right ear. Deafness, the legacy of Trafalgar, which he had so often feigned to gain time for a reply, had now become real. Unfortunately, it was customary for a gentleman to walk on the left side of a lady because of his sword. He couldn’t even move closer to Sophia because crinolines had come into fashion: with those bell-shaped wire frames, the ladies had become even more full-bottomed.

  Sophia repeated her sentence: ‘Are you sad?’

  ‘Not sad, but hard of hearing,’ he answered, ‘and a bit blinder than in the past. I see more things at once, even more quickly, but with individual things my eyesight is worse. I also forget a good deal.’ He became conscious of the fact that he would have never complained about his condition to Jane.

  Jane believed in goodness, trusting everybody gladly, fighting cheerfully. But when she encountered chronic pettiness and hurt, she turned cold and bitter. Eyebrows raised contemptuously, she withdrew and looked for life elsewhere. Now she was in New Zealand, officially because of her nerves. In truth, she had had enough of Tasmanian narrow-mindedness for a while. Should he have kept her away altogether from the irritations of governing? Or should he have let her collaborate more fully?

  They heard the regimental band tuning their instruments. Sophia addressed him once more. John stood still and turned his good ear toward her. ‘I want to fight for something,’ she said, ‘but I don’t yet know what for.’ John contemplated her furious, pretty nose. Sophia was a quiet young lady tending more to deep thoughts than to wild flare-ups. Just for that reason she looked a little droll and touching with her nostrils flared in anger. John turned his eyes away and smiled at a child. The child beamed back. They walked on. Again I can’t get rid of that smile, he thought. Imbecile, feeble-minded.

  ‘He is an unerring temporiser and a well-meaning colossus. Unfortunately, he has a disastrous tendency to make honest speeches. But at least he is not a windy character.’ So much for the prose of Lyndon S. Neat, one of the ‘interpreters of personality’ in the editorial offices of The True Colonist. A few lines farther on: ‘Sir John moves at a reception like a sea lion on land.’ At least Neat was not a creature of the cattlemen; that was a gain. But why couldn’t he do better than alternately admiring and ridiculing a hard-pressed governor? Couldn’t he fight on the right side rather than only write about everything? G
ood. He probably didn’t want it any different.

  ‘The things you’ll fight for,’ John told his niece, ‘you’ve been carrying around inside you for a long time.’

  Did Sophia understand such phrases at all? It was his experience that hardly any person understood what he was told. Yet everyone wanted to understand: they were all angry when success was withheld from them. Even Lady Franklin.

  But Sophia wanted to learn from him. After Dr Orme, she was the second person in John’s life who seriously wanted to learn from him. Lately she had taken it in her head to learn about slowness. She even moved slowly, and on her that even looked beautiful.

  Now the time had come. John stepped up to the balustrade and surveyed the waiting crowd. ‘In the name of Her Majesty the Queen’ – pause for ‘Queen’ – ‘I herewith open the regatta in honor of the one hundred and ninety-ninth anniversary of the discovery of Tasmania.’

  Hurrahs, cannon salvos, the regimental band blaring. John returned to the grandstand and sat down with Sophia, raised the spy glass, and waited for the four-oared gigs to start their race. The glass was excellent. John viewed the beer-tents, the cheese-stand, the stalls for showmen, the shooting-galleries, children, flowers. At the slightest movement of the glass, his sight raced across hundreds of faces turned to the starting-line with craned necks. People were standing all along the entire quay; the crowd thinned out only at the farthest point. Back there someone was sitting a little higher on the pier wall. He was the only person looking not towards the starting-line but out to sea. Clearly, those goings-on did not concern him; he was waiting for something more important – perhaps he saw it coming. It was a good glass, but the man was too far away, his face barely recognisable. Probably a hooked nose and a strong forehead. An old man. He watched – not ‘like a hawk’ but ‘like hawk’. John felt the glass trembling in his eye.