It is the 23rd of May. Linnæus’s birthday. Now if you must be Linnæus, you can be Linnæus. But Linnæus is afraid.
What is Linnæus afraid of?
He is afraid of finding, when he goes out into his garden, that there is no garden there.
That he will find, when he goes to look at his collections in their glass cases, that there are no glass cases and no collections there.
That is what he is afraid of.
That the twenty-eight disciples will disappear. That his brothers and sisters will disappear.
He goes out into his garden every day, with a view to holding on to it. On these occasions he supplies himself with a motive. It can be a simple one. Like watering a particular plant with the green watering can. Removing some shoots on a shrub to prevent a too vigorous growth. Keeping couch-grass at bay.
This process is profane rather than sacred. Unlike some of the disciples and certain visitors, Linnæus does not apprehend the daily round in the garden as something close to an act of creation. More like an act of management. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the creation, from the time that God left it, has in all probability taken the form of something to be managed, with, sometimes, human assistance.
Therefore he does not stop going out into the garden to give it his attention. He thinks that if he does not go out in the garden it will wither away and disappear.
The gardener to the servant and the coachman:
“Come and see some funny pictures and figures.”
He has got a large pewter dish ready and filled it with water. The farmhand and the coachman lean over it and look searchingly all over the surface.
Then the gardener strikes the surface of the water with the flat of his hand and the water soaks the servant and the coachman. They rub their eyes and are disorientated.
The gardener says:
“Now you are both funny pictures and figures.”
The three of them smile. Linnæus has witnessed this. He sees everything.
Linnæus is talking about his books. How they can store all the knowledge in the world.
“How?” asks the gardener.
“By distinguishing between description and event.”
The gardener stands still for a moment, then hops around in zigzag fashion along the paths, returning to Linnæus and standing still again.
“How? How?”
Linnæus continues.
“Classification does not proceed solely from nature, but just as much from human thought. It is our way of comprehending nature.”
The gardener:
“I cannot imagine anything of the kind.”
It is morning, the 13th of June. As the almanac had forecast, there was a partial eclipse of the sun by eight o’clock. It is dry and warm at this time and Linnæus is watering certain plants several times a day with the green watering-can. It’s an effort to move.
He sprinkles a little water over his wristband and moistens his brow. He looks for the gardener and sees him sitting on the stairs by the east wing. The children have gathered round him. The gardener is gesticulating. Linnæus approaches slowly with the watering-can but is not keen to draw near and therefore cannot make out what the gardener is saying.
There is a knock at the door and the postman holds out an envelope that is flat but bulky. Linnæus signs for the letter and takes it inside. He takes off the wrapping-paper and finds two sheets of cardboard. He separates the two sheets and finds, between two leaves of tissue-paper, a dried plant. An accompanying letter is addressed to him. First come the obligatory long-winded salutations, then the message itself.
“Whatever God may have created on this earth, probably nothing is more remarkable than this flower, which is so obviously rose, lily and hemp at the same time. Not a rose, a lily and a hemp plant, but rose, lily and hemp all at once. One plant but three origins. The discovery, which is one specimen among several found, was made in a marsh south-east of Leiden by a young student called Frans van Haal and is sent by me, Anders Blecke, botanist at Leiden University, for you to marvel at and investigate.”
Linnæus lays the accompanying letter aside. He places the plant on his workbench, fetches the magnifying-glass and examines the plant’s parts. He very soon spots the deception. The plant has been created by human hand in that the different parts have been attached to each other with paste. He can tell from the smell which type of paste was used. He calls for the gardener and proceeds to demonstrate, with the gardener as witness.
“A stupid forgery. Potato paste. A new and excellent type of paste which I have used myself to good effect. For other things, properly.”
Linnæus knows. Everything that is found on earth is created by God and no new species have appeared on earth since it was created. Nothing is new and no new species can arise by mixing together those species that were once created.
Linnæus fingers the long strip of paper.
“The air we inhale has electricity, the air we exhale does not.”
But there are no twenty-eight disciples standing around him. Only the gardener outside the window in the dark. Linnæus starts again.
“The air we inhale …”
“Yes,” says the gardener.
His face is quite close now, right next to Linnæus. But his voice sounds as if it was coming from far away. Linnæus tries again.
“The air we inhale has …”
“I have met people,” says the gardener, “who are mainly inhalation and others who are mainly exhalation.”
Linnæus feels he is under water in a lake. It’s the summertime. He has a bucket over him. Yellowbellied toads all over his body. The gardener is standing on the shore and shouting to him.
“People who have electricity! People who don’t have electricity!”
Next morning Linnæus sacks the gardener and appoints a new one.
The new gardener arrives and introduces himself as Cajanus, the tall Finn. He is a giant who had previously exhibited himself for payment in various parts of Europe and who was rejected for Frederick William’s Guards because he was a head taller than any other man in the whole regiment.
“Take this rake”, Linnæus tells him.
But this morning when Linnæus descends his staircase and comes out into the garden, the usual gardener is standing there talking to the coachman and the farmhand. It’s Thursday. Linnæus goes up and tastes the cheese and butter. The upside-down glasses are ringing in the trees, for the wind is uncommonly strong.
The students are scanning:
“Monandria, Diandria, Triandria, Tetrandria, Pentandria, Hexandria, Heptandria, Octandria, Enneandria, Decandria, Dodecandria, Icosandria, Polyandria, Didynamia, Tetradynamia, Monadelphia, Diadelphia, Polyadelphia, Syngenesia, Gynandria, Monoecia, Dioecia, Polygamia, Cryptogamia.”
The gardener wakes up in the shed. Linnæus goes over there and takes him by surprise:
“You were sleeping.”
“It’s the heavy rain. It makes me drop off and go into a deep sleep.”
“You are at work.”
“Forgive me.”
Linnæus looks along the walls. Asks:
“What have you got in here?”
“I call it my museum.”
“What is it?”
The gardener gestures towards the walls of the hut and the tools hanging there. He says:
“There are sometimes very strange flowers in this garden.”
Linnæus, thirsty, at the well, fills the scoop with water and drinks greedily, drinks it dry, fills the scoop again and drinks, fills it yet again and drinks, slower now, waits for a moment, looks around, drinks it dry and fills it again, his thirst slaked now, but goes on drinking water.
The children have gathered round the gardener. Linnæus approaches and hears him telling them about centaurs. There are giants and monsters and gods and heroes, says the gardener.
Linnæus thinks that the gardener wants to include him in the audience, yes, that his words about monsters have a special subtext.<
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“The children ask me things”, says the gardener. “I tell them.”
“What you, gardener, call monsters are flowers and plants which have their origins in normal forms. Any forms other than those originally created by God do not exist.”
“Then what’s this?” says the gardener, leading Linnæus to a strangely-shaped ranunculus which most certainly is not recorded in the System. “Does it exist or not?”
Linnæus replies:
“Gardener! The poet has a need to enlarge and to diminish. But in reality everything has its correct size. The poet also tries to join together elements from different quarters in order to create new fantasies. One such is your centaurs. The horse and the man are natural forms in the world of nature. But centaurs do not exist in reality. They exist only in the imagination. Your ranunculus is at first sight something unique, distinct. But if you look more closely you will see that it does not constitute a new species but is only a variety of its kind.”
The gardener says:
“But mules and hinnies exist. I’ve seen them.”
The disciples Sparrman and Thunberg depart.
Early July. Night. No wind. Warm. Linnæus wakes up and can’t get back to sleep again. He hums a song in an attempt to become sleepy. What were the words? “In artless repooose …, in artless repooose …”
Like this, from the start:
“Two friends were sitting …”
And finally:
“What disturbed them? – Raaa-iiin.”
Linnæus does not sleep again that night. In the morning he goes out and leads the gardener to the plant that was used as a demonstration.
“It so happens,” Linnæus says to the gardener, “that the Creator has allowed nature a sort of sense of humour. Accordingly, there are two differences between plants. One of them is a genuine difference. It is the diversity brought about by the infinitely wise hand of the Almighty. But the other difference, which expresses itself as variations in the outer shell, is nature’s work in a momentary jest. This is what you, gardener, know how to exploit. I therefore distinguish between the Almighty Creator’s species, which are genuine, and your abnormal specimens. The former I regard as being of the greatest significance for their Author’s sake. The latter I reject because of their Author. The former exist and have existed from the beginning of the world. The latter, which are monstrosities, can boast of only a short life. Your monsters will have no descendants.”
The children run to and fro over the Uppsala plain. They move around as a group, here and there, just as the mood takes them. Linnæus is standing motionless, balancing on his heels, looking out of the window at the children. Understanding nothing. He seeks the assistance of the Italian terrestrial telescope. Then he spies the dragon. The dragon is puffing here and there over the Uppsala plain and the children are running after it. It is high up, it is sailing well, it swoops like a swallow, it pounces furiously down towards the children but turns aside just in time, Linnæus holds his breath, the dragon climbs, it drifts sideways and gets caught in an oak-tree. Stillness. Linnæus takes a step to the side and breathes out.
The children arrange themselves around the oak. Linnæus wants to go down and tell the gardener to help them. He looks out over the garden and notes that the gardener is being thrown here and there. It’s the wind.
Dry leaves cling to a wall. Linnæus feels the glass of the window-panes, which are bending inwards. He wants to wave to the gardener. But the gardener is preoccupied with his own affairs.
Linnæus:
“There are varieties so different that although they are of the same species, botanists have assigned them to two distinct species, such as Polygonum amphibium, water knotweed, because in water it floats, whereas on land it is erect or a climber.”
Linnæus warns the botanists about their tendency to see varieties as new species, whereby the number of plant types is increased too much, insofar as no boundaries are observed.
Linnæus to the gardener:
“You are the person in the middle and I am on the fringes.”
The gardener:
“I can’t understand something like that.”
The students sometimes ask Linnæus to tell them about his trip to the north. Linnæus is reluctant on these occasions. The students take his reluctance as a hero’s modesty at the mention of his feat. But Linnæus knows that his reluctance is for another reason.
He is especially embarrassed when the students want to hear about the journey from Sörfold to Malmströmmen.
Linnæus is the only person who knows that it never took place.
The same with Kaitum. He was never there.
But the students want him to describe again the swift-flowing melt-water streams which forced him to depart from the path and wander barefoot in perilous swamps, or to walk in a state of undress through the cold melted snow.
Linnæus tells the stories, ashamed of how animated his performance can become. It is not that he regrets the untruthfulness. There were reasons for it. But he is worried that he has introduced something into the world that was not there before.
Now it is there, and it is his fault.
It’s a civil day, Linnæus says to himself.
Meaning: an unusual sky, an amazing heat.
“It’s odd,” Linnæus says to himself.
Meaning: the laws of life, the star system, the development of the butterfly, the night.
The disciples Osbeck, Adler and Hasselquist depart. The gardener shows Linnæus a leaf from a mapletree. On it are a number of black spots of varying shapes with yellow edges. The gardener knows that there is a parasitical fungus that attacks maple leaves. He holds the leaf close to his ear and listens.
“Fungi are strange,” he says. “You don’t know what they do. You don’t know if they are animals or plants. You don’t know anything.”
“Rhytisma acerinum,” says Linnæus, after a while.
Linnæus creeps into a tunnel. The tunnel is forbidden. Elbows. Mud.
Stones. He exists. The prohibition exists. His knees. There is no sun in the tunnel. His knees. It is forbidden to speak. He remembers the sand. It is forbidden to move. He remembers his hands. It is forbidden to think. Tears. He remembers the tunnel. His knees. The prohibition holds. Sand. Stones. He is not there. But the prohibition does not always apply. Him. His hands. But the prohibition can apply at any time. His knees. Stones.
It is the 23rd of July. The dog days are here. Linnæus is standing in the garden, sweaty, dazed by the heat, and thinking about the stone fence he has ordered to be erected. Out there, in the fields, are the goats that come into his garden at night, laying waste to it and fouling it. He finds it strange that, according to the regulations, it is the owner of a farm who is responsible for fences. Surely it is the beasts’ owners that should be fenced in, not the farms.
The gardener:
“At Lövsta the goats climb right up onto the stone walls. They’re made for the mountains. On Bielke’s lands the stone wall is the wildest, steepest thing there is. The goats want to be there and their wandering to and fro loosens the stones.”
The wife of Pastor Corvin in Skanör showed off her discovery of an egg within an egg. The smaller egg, a hen’s egg like the larger one, was as small as a musket ball and on being opened it was found to contain only egg-white, no yolk.
Several eyewitnesses saw it, as the egg was opened up at breakfast. Linnæus remembers their jocular speculation as to whether another egg might be found within the egg that was inside the egg, and so on to infinity in ever smaller forms.
Linnæus has a sense of unease when he remembers this and feels unsure of the cause of his unease.
Linnæus arranged for Artedi to travel to Amsterdam. 3,000 fish in the collections of Seba the apothecary to order and describe. It was the second distinction.
Linnæus adopts a reproachful tone and warns his friend, in jest.
“Don’t swim too much in the canals!”
The students occasional
ly ask Linnæus to tell them about his time with Boerhaave in Holland, especially the story of the Swedish whitebeam.
Boerhaave pointed out a tree in his arboretum which he declared to be a curiosity, not yet described by any naturalist. Perhaps an addition to the Creation? Linnæus immediately recognised it as our common Swedish whitebeam, Sorbus intermedia.
Boerhaave disputed this.
Linnæus then told him that Vaillant had given a detailed description of the species in his Botanicon Parisiense.
Boerhaave disputed that too. He said he possessed that book and had carefully studied its contents. The book was sent for and it emerged that Linnæus was correct.
Linnæus likes telling this story. Boerhaave had claimed to have found a species outside the System. But Linnæus had shown that it was already there, named and clearly described. Nothing had been added to what already existed.
The beginning of the month of September. Three nights of frost. The frost threatens to damage the Indian cress, the marigolds and the Turkish beans.
The gardener lays blankets and covers over his plantings.
Black terns are in the thick sedge in the alluvial mud along the Funbo, Lagga and Sävja rivers. Linnæus sketches their plumage of black velvet with a blue-grey cloak around it. At the base of the beak he notices a red, rapid movement.
Where the gardener has been sitting, Linnæus finds small fragments of cork, and asks the reason why. But he receives no answer or he does not remember the answer. Linnæus feels weak. The extremities of his hands and feet are numb. He takes a needle and presses the point against his skin, but feels no pain. Instead he experiences pricking sensations in his hands and itching and crawling along his forearms. Tip of the nose cold.
Linnæus is with his siblings. They are ill. Pale. A fragile, whispering unease surrounds them.
Linnæus:
“Where does it hurt?”
His siblings’ slow gaze:
“In my side.”
Linnæus:
“Can you say where?”
“In my side.”
His siblings make a gesture. An arm, a hand, a wrist, an elbow, rises slowly and sinks back.
The Garden Page 3
