‘You flatter him‚’ said Tom, but saw that Sam had fallen dark, as if a cloud passed over him. He took a long draft and turned his back to the fire blazing in the grate.
I asked, ‘What do you make of Baconianism?’ and sunshine broke upon him again.
‘The herd that follow Bacon’, he mocked, ‘have isolated one of Kepler’s gifts – not precision itself but rather – a kind of humility that accompanies precision. A vile and gross, slyly boastful, ignorant, arrogant humility. A kind of wilful American pride in saying – I do not know – 1 cannot guess. Baconianism has led us directly into the bog – where we now find ourselves – which but for Kepler’s braggadocio – we should never know to escape. For Precision is a deep fish, to be sure – but it cannot plumb every depth. In the end we must explain this world – by its causes – not by the measurement of its actions.’
‘That is our creed, you see,’ said Tom gaily.
‘As ever, though, I began myself with a precision: that crack in the universe – nicely measured – that opens upon such vague and powerful depths. It was a question of mass – a simple question of mass.’
He paused. The snow had ceased and the sky cleared. We had not yet passed the midpoint of the shortened afternoon. Light fell through the window and on to the blaze, like a bright ghost. There is no cheer so ethereal as a sunny fire. My thoughts strayed from those deep matters, as indeed did Syme’s, for when he spoke again, his tone had softened and his subject changed.
‘I have been much plagued lately – by familiar dreams. For some years – a dream has come to me – in different shapes at different times – but saying the same thing. “Syme, you must get to work and compose – music!”’ He laughed. ‘Formerly I took this to mean what I was already doing; that the dream encouraged me, as fellows cheer – the laggard in a race – that I should continue to practise that particular science I have made my special study.’ He smiled, as though he were ashamed of his fancy, and stared at his boots. ‘Lately it has occurred to me, however – that the dream means nothing of the kind – and that in fact I should listen more closely – and really do as it says, and compose music. Especially since, in this regard, I have fallen some ways behind.’ He stretched his aching arms and hunched his huge shoulders. ‘I talk, upon occasion‚’ he said, ‘a great deal of nonsense.’
Tom and I did not answer, stood around him smiling, out of a peculiar sort of … shyness, I suppose. A truly famous time, but the coachman, like an evil messenger, summoned us at the door. Sam, his tongue loosened, still bubbled over with talk and could not sit quiet in the coach. The fire of his thought had burned its way into his bones and blood. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, stared out of the window, and then put his hands to his knees to keep them still. His eloquence promised well for our visit, and in that confidence I slept all the way to Baltimore.
*
The short day had set before we arrived. Syme had long fallen silent and Tom gave me a significant look as we forced open the frozen gate and followed Sam into the front garden of his old home. A shadow passed across a light within, and soon a figure stood in the open doorway. ‘I had begun to worry‚’ a man’s voice called out clear in the clear night. ‘Sam, my dear.’
Syme nodded and took his father’s hand, but soon pushed past him, calling, ‘Mother!’ and, ‘Bubbles!’ up the stairs and along the hallway. I heard a rush of steps and the delighted sigh of ‘Brother’. Tom shook Mr Syme warmly by the hand. ‘I have returned your son to you, you see. Please to keep him, if you will.’
‘I would if I could, Tom. But you do it better‚’ said the father. ‘It is good to see you. And the famous … Friedrich Müller, I believe, I am glad to meet you. There are some in this godless country, you see, who can speak a civilized tongue. I dare not think of the butchery Tom has practised on your name.’
‘Is it not Mooler, then?’ said Tom, delighted in some peculiar way by his own ignorance. ‘He is already Phidy to us, Mr Syme. I assure you that he is Greek to his heart’s blood.’ In truth I had never been called Phidy (short for Phaedon, I suppose, the steadfast narrator of Socrates’ final days) till that moment, but the name stuck. After that my title in America was always and only Phidy, and the Symes knew me as nothing else.
‘It has been such a pleasure to meet your son, Mr Syme‚’ I said timidly, acutely conscious of my situation. Or rather, ignorant of it – for my particular role regarding the Professor’s enterprise wanted a great deal of clarification. I knew not whether I was Syme’s supplicant or his executor; and wavered in my dealings with him between a kind of administrative arrogance and the humility of an apprentice.
‘Yes,’ said the father with an air I could not name, ‘I suppose it has.’ We had remained standing in the entrance hall, but Mr Syme took our light travelling cases in hand and led us in. ‘Anne, my dear,’ he called, ‘tonight we have with us a true European. One of the old breed.’
A door opened on our left and a woman stood in its light. She looked as much like Sam as a woman may, though older and perhaps less happy. Her figure was nearly as tall and her bones were built for the same strength, though in her case only the frame was completed, and the flesh hung loose off her neck and collarbones as a well-worn dress. ‘You must forgive my husband,’ she said affectionately, in a voice like old upholstery, both softened and frayed, ‘he is a dreadful snob. For my part, I am pleased to welcome you, Mr Müller, simply for your own sake, and as a friend of my son.’
‘Say rather my judge, Mother‚’ called Sam laughingly from behind the door, ‘or, should I say, my benefactor – Phidy?’ He sat on a low settee beside afire, infinitely younger he appeared already, and more easily – happy. The uncomfortable heat of his blue eyes had been turned low, and he caught my own eye above his mother’s shoulder, without flinching for once. A girl’s head, plain and contented, lay on his lap. The head rose quickly and sat upright on top of its body – which appeared somewhat older, more used to things – and both were flustered at having been surprised in so intimate a posture. ‘Tom!’ she cried, recovering, and flung herself at my … friend. Then she stood straight and smoothed out her hair, more childish still in her sudden propriety. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said to me. ‘Only we are old friends.’
‘Bubbles,’ Tom interposed, ‘meet Phidy.’
‘How-do-ye-do,’ she said, with a curtsy.
Sam called out, ‘You must excuse my sister; she is not accustomed to the ways of gentlemen.’
‘Shame, Brother,’ she urged, from the side of her wonderful mouth, which seemed to wriggle a hundred ways at once, while the rest of her plain good face kept mum; ‘you know better.’
I kissed her hand – ‘Such courtesy!’ cried Sam – and saw a wedding band on her finger. ‘I am a child only for tonight,’ she whispered, observing my look, ‘to see my brother. Tomorrow I return to my husband.’
That evening was the happiest of my stay thus far. Tom and Sam (I shall call him Sam now, happily and easily at last) and Bubbles rejoiced in my new sobriquet and ‘Phidies!’ flew across the supper table like bees at a picnic. Only his mother Anne was quiet, quiet and proper, and called me ‘Mr Müller’ if she passed along the wine. She had what Tom later described to me as a ‘face upon a face, like a painted doll’s’ – a lovely girlish countenance carved within the broader jaw of womanhood and motherhood, yet unfilled, unfleshed by age, out of a curious … abstinence, which I observed already. She said little and ate less. When she did speak, the conversation halted like a boy beside an old woman. But after a decorous moment, away we flew again. Sam’s father was charming, a natural gentleman. But as the evening wore on and the wine ran low, his eyes drained of colour and his face filled with red; the nose looked pinched and pointed. There was something coarse in his aspect then, as rough as parchment, and his tongue grew sharp. ‘Not every son travels to Pactaw to see the world,’ he said, laughing heavily.
Sam replied, deep in the wine himself, ‘The world shall come to us. Is that not so,
Phidy?’ and I scarcely knew what to answer.
We sat before the fire after supper. Sam lay at his mother’s feet with his head on her lap and his legs stretched along the grate. He adored her, this much was clear already; and should have happily opened the earth and led her by the hand into its wonderful heart for her sake alone, to please her. Even though, as I guessed already, she was the kind of lady who did not suffer the extraordinary gladly, as others dislike fools. Sam for his part wished only to amaze her. Mrs
Syme sat quite straight with her hands on his head, though she did not move them nor stroke his hair.
‘You’ll burn your boots, fool,’ cried Bubbles, and busied herself in pulling them from her brother’s feet. She laughed more than he.
‘It is always like this,’ Tom whispered in my ear. ‘For a night, or half of one, he is content to be a child again. But no more. You will know him again in the morning.’
Still, afire is always companionable, and I contented myself silently by reading in its busy flames the thousand images that had impressed themselves upon me in that long week.
Sam’s father excused himself quite early. ‘I am afraid I am too old for my children now, Phidy. I must to bed.’ The room seemed much emptier after he had gone; Anne’s uneasiness grew in proportion and filled his absence. Her eyes had followed him anxiously as he left and fixed themselves on the closed door while her ears traced his light steps up the stairs. She remained stiffly in her seat and could not think for the life of her what to do with Sam’s head. But when he shifted to punish some foolishness of Bubbles, she rose quickly and excused herself and bade us good night. That was the general signal and we did not linger long.
I tiptoed upstairs and Sam followed more heavily with a lantern. ‘We have given you Bubbles’ room,’ he said. ‘She must make do with the study. Never fear,’ he added laughing, ‘she is a tough Bubbles.’ He opened a door to a cold, fireless room, and I saw shadows and a white bed. ‘I am glad you have come, Phidy, good night.’ I fell in love then, I think, with the charm of being taken in by a new family in a new world. ‘Do not be taken in,’ my father had said. The Symes were a curious gallery of characters, and I rolled their pet name for me on my tongue, in each of their various tones and accents. Need I say that Bubbles’ voice fell most often on my inward ear? I wondered what manner of man her husband might be and fell asleep to the echo of her teasing ‘Phidy’.
*
The great affair of Sunday afternoon was dinner, after church. A rare patch of sun from her own slight stores of happiness had fallen on Anne Syme’s head that day. She had prepared a feast. Her face was red with steam and toil and her hair wrinkled in the kitchen heat. But she was happy for once and did not glance for ever after ‘Father’.
There is no beauty like a well-laid table. Anne sat upright at the head and watched her son carve the swelling ham, and she offered the first cut to ‘Phidy’. I did not know her well then, nor Sam’s father who in time I came to know better. Like Sam, he had his faults, but envy was not among them, and he had that rare grace that can charm equally in the corner or in the light. For Anne shone and Sam shone in her heightened looks.
That Sunday dinner was significant for more than a woman’s brief good spirits, however. The talk turned to Sam’s ‘great theories’, as Anne called them, and she wished to hear my opinion of them. ‘I confess’, she said, ‘that I am a little surprised, a gentleman such as your self, sir, should have come such a long way to see my strange son.’
‘He sent us such an extraordinary petition,’ I said, ‘it would have been churlish to decline. I pledge my life, he declared, I pledge my life; the least I could undertake was a sea voyage.’
‘And what do you’, she enquired, touching a corner of her lips with a napkin, ‘make of Sam?’
‘So far we have discussed only the bright surface of his theories. We have not yet ventured inside to the matter of them.’
‘Do you mean the papers and all those numbers?’ she asked. ‘I always quiz Sam for being so close with them. “In time,” he says, “in time.” But I think nobody can work entirely alone. I know Tom is there, bless you, Tom, but he’s not much good with figures, are you? Sam needs somebody else with a head for figures. I was good with them when I was a girl, I suppose that’s where Sam acquired the habit. But I haven’t kept in practice and I don’t know all the new fashions. I cannot understand any of the numbers he tells me and I would have thought anybody could understand a number. But Tom says you are a hot-off-the-press scientist in Germany. I think it is so important to have colleagues.’
‘I told you before, Mother,’ said Sam. ‘He is not my colleague, he is my-judge.’
‘That sounds awful,’ said Anne. ‘You aren’t, are you?’
‘I am only a curious onlooker,’ I said. ‘I am his student, I suppose.’
‘There, you see,’ Bubbles broke in. ‘I suppose you are always asking him questions? I bet he doesn’t tell you. What do you ask him, perhaps I can help?’
‘I should like to ask him what he is investigating at present. What work is there to be done and what do you still hope to learn?’
‘I’m sorry, Phidy,’ he said, in his curious interrupted manner, a flow of words like a frozen river breaking into ice. ‘You have come in the middle of – a barren season. I am looking for a hole or a crack – in the first crown, you see, under Virginia. Something we could poke our noses into. The only clue we have is escaped fluvia – the gas between the crowns. We reckon that if it leaked – it would make its way through earth or water – into plants or the ground or the air. So we test them in the spring – with a lantern-like contraption of my own devising. Fluvia burns blue. But under all this snow, nothing can get out, so we have – little enough to do.’
‘What have you discovered so far?’
‘Traces here and there, of course. Branches of birch – burning like a blue heaven. Odd ponds with strange plants in them. But nothing yet substantial enough – to suggest a real fissure in the crown.’
‘Is there a pattern to them?’ I asked. Sam looked puzzled. ‘I mean do the traces follow a particular pattern?’
‘You understand, Phidy,’ Sam said, sighing I suppose over my misdirected curiosity, ‘that in theory at least the gases escape through aberrations – random cracks that develop in the first crown, which does not move. Each year the traces should be found over the same cracks – unless a new one develops. But beyond that there need be no – consistency – to our readings.
‘Unless,’ he continued, then stopped still as a gravestone. ‘Unless,’ he said again and we all fell silent. ‘Not a word for a minute!’ he cried, almost angrily, though we had not spoken. We sat foolishly in our chairs and did not dare to eat. Anne coughed. Only Bubbles took a piece of ham to her mouth with a sly look. The ham was arrested in mid-air as Sam spoke again.
‘Phidy,’ he said at last, looking into his plate (and did not Tom flinch, as if a blow had struck him, when Sam called my name), ‘suppose there was a pattern. Suppose – the traces in a particular spot – grew weak and strong, not only from season to season, but from year to year. What would you interpret from that fact?’
‘Either that the path fluvia followed to the outer air was blocked or irregular, or that the source of fluvia itself was blocked or irregular.’ I was in a curious spot, describing a man’s madness to himself in terms as crazy as his own. Did I believe it now – him, now?
‘Exactly,’ he said, scarcely heeding me. ‘I had assumed the path – was blocked; but suppose the source itself was irregular – or, rather, that it followed a fluctuating and regular pattern. Then I thought – what could account for those fluctuations? And the answer came as soon as the question. What if not the rotations of the crowns themselves? Suppose again – that the gaps in two crowns over lapped in a kind of negative eclipse – would not the resulting stream of fluvia be doubly powerful? And stronger still for a triple eclipse? Could we not deduce – from the strength of those traces – the motions
of the crowns themselves – and even the regions of their imperfections?’
Sam was away, in a flight of fancy as improbable as it was enchanting. Yet was there not some cold, sober good sense to his reasoning, an air of matter of fact? The meal was broken up at once, and I shall not soon forget Anne’s delight declaring itself to any who would listen.
‘Have I not said, Sam,’ she cried, ‘Father, you have heard me, that he needs the company of men such as himself? Phidy, I have told him often enough, he needs colleagues.’ Poor Tom, I thought. ‘No wisdom can grow entirely in loneliness, I have learned that myself. Bubbles, is it not a treat to see your brother thinking before us, reasoning aloud?’
She was always somehow a motionless woman, but now pride sang from her straightened back and could barely be contained by her still hands held against the front of her dress. ‘For once, I have you all to witness, and you see that I am not such a fool. I was right, wasn’t I, Father?’
‘I am sorry, Mrs Syme,’ I began, ‘to have been the innocent cause of ending such a happy meal …’
Sam had cleared a space before him, and plates of ham and jugs of ale and a dish of butter and spilled cups and dirty knives lay all in a heap, thrust together and puzzled at one another’s company. Sam shouted at Bubbles to bring it all away, and Mr Syme stood aside and said quietly to no one, ‘Scientific discovery seems very unsettling to the digestion,’ and left. Tom laughed (unhappy and shrill) and spurred Bubbles on with the carving knife.
‘Nonsense, Phidy,’ Anne said, and Sam took up the word: ‘Phidy, we must go into this at once – while the mind is hot, so to speak. We need space, Mother – a tableful of space. Fetch the papers with me, Phidy. Tom, quit fooling for once – see to it that we have some elbow-room to work when we return.’
*
There was a great deal to be done. Sam and I sat long poring over charts of figures, comparing them, combining them, mapping them on to larger charts until my brain grew numb against the cold obstruction of numbers. Tom drowned among them and stared helplessly out of the window, fighting his feet and hands to keep still, lest he rouse Sam’s sharp tongue. In the end, Tom settled on the task of making tea, which he accomplished admirably and miserably and to great honour. The day grew grey without us, and then black. Still we worked, until a bell somewhere tolled eight times and Anne said, absolutely, she must have the table clear for supper. Sam and I looked up, spent, and knew in each other’s eyes that after five long hours of calculations, we had discovered that grand thing, a possibility.
The Syme Papers Page 30
