Part 9 (2/2)

Unwillingly, because Johanna was already pregnant again, he went to Bremen to go through the Jupiter tabulations with Bessel. During the week before the journey he slept badly, had nightmares, and was irritable and depressed for days. The journey was even worse than the one to Konigsberg, the coach even narrower, his fellow travelers even more unwashed, and when a wheel broke, they had to stand for four hours in a muddy landscape while the cursing driver repaired it. The moment that Gauss, exhausted, with a heavy head and a sore back, had climbed out of the coach, Bessel asked him about the calculation of Jupiter's ma.s.s from the disturbances in Ceres' trajectory. Had he worked out a consistent orbit yet?

Gauss saw red. He didn't have it yet, what could he do! He had spent hundreds of hours on it. The thing was unimaginably difficult, a torture, dammit he wasn't young any more, people should spare him, in any case he didn't have long to live, it had been a mistake to launch himself on this rubbish in the first place.

Very subdued, Bessel asked if he'd like to see the sea.

No expeditions, said Gauss.

It was really close, said Bessel. A mere stroll! In fact it was another laborious journey and the coach rocked so violently that Gauss got his colic again. It was raining, the window didn't shut tight, and they were soaked to the skin.

But it was worth it, Bessel kept saying. The sea was something one had to see.

Had to? Gauss asked where that was written.

The beach was dirty and even the water left something to be desired. The horizon seemed narrow, the sky was low, and the sea looked like soup under a sc.u.m of mist. A cold wind blew. Something was burning nearby and the smoke made it hard to breathe. The body of a headless chicken washed up and down in the waves.

Fine. Gauss blinked into the haze. And now they could go home, yes?

But Bessel's entrepreneurial spirit was unbounded. It wasn't enough to see the sea, one also had to go to the theater!

The theater was expensive, said Gauss.

Bessel laughed. The professor should consider himself a guest, it would be his honor. He would hire a private coach, they would be there in no time at all!

The journey took four agonizing days and the bed at the inn in Weimar was so hard that Gauss's back pain became unbearable. Besides which the bushes along the Ilm made him sneeze. The court theater was hot, and sitting for hours a trial. The play being performed was a piece by Voltaire. Somebody killed somebody else. A woman cried. A man complained. Another woman fell to her knees. There were monologues. The translation was elegant and melodic, but Gauss would rather have read it. He yawned till the tears ran down his cheeks.

Moving, wasn't it, whispered Bessel.

The actors flung their hands up in the air, paced endlessly back and forth, and rolled their eyes as they spoke.

He thought, whispered Bessel, that Goethe was in his box today.

Gauss asked if that was the a.s.s who considered himself fit to correct Newton's theory of light.

People turned around. Bessel seemed to shrink into his seat and didn't say another word until the curtain fell.

As they were leaving, a gaunt gentleman came to speak to them. Did he have the honor to be addressing Gauss the astronomer?

The astronomer and mathematician, said Gauss.

The man introduced himself as a Prussian diplomat, currently posted to Rome, but en route to Berlin where he would take up a position as director of education in the Interior Ministry. There was a great deal to do, the German educational system needed to be reformed from the ground up. He himself had enjoyed the finest education, now he had the opportunity to offer some of it to others. He stood very straight, without leaning on his silver stick. Moreover, they were alumni of the same university and had acquaintances in common. That Herr Gauss was also active in mathematics was something he hadn't known. Uplifting, wasn't it!

Gauss didn't understand.

The performance.

Oh, yes, said Gauss.

The gentleman understood perfectly. Not quite the right thing at this moment. Something German would have been more appropriate. But it was hard to argue with Goethe about such matters.

Gauss, who hadn't been listening up till now, asked the diplomat to repeat his name.

The diplomat bowed and did so. He too was a scientist!

Curious, Gauss leant forward.

He researched old languages.

Ah, said Gauss.

That, said the diplomat, sounded rather disappointed.

Linguistics. Gauss shook his head. He didn't wish to be offensive.

No, no. He should say it.

Gauss shrugged. Linguistics was for people who had the precision for mathematics but not the intelligence. People who would invent their own makes.h.i.+ft logic.

The diplomat was silent.

Gauss asked him about his travels. He must have been everywhere!

That, said the diplomat sourly, was the other von Humboldt, his brother. A case of mistaken ident.i.ty, and not the first time it had happened. He said goodbye and left with small steps.

That night the pain in his back and stomach gave Gauss no rest. He twisted and turned this way and that and quietly cursed his fate, Weimar, and most of all Bessel. Early next morning, Bessel wasn't yet awake, he ordered the coach to be hitched up, and instructed the driver to take him to Gottingen at once.

When he finally arrived, his traveling case still in his hand, alternately bent double because of his stomach pains and leaning over backwards at an awkward angle to ease his spine, he went to the university to enquire when construction would begin on the observatory.

There wasn't much sound from the ministry right now, said the official. Hannover was a long way away. n.o.body knew anything precise. In case he had forgotten, there was a war on.

The army had s.h.i.+ps, said Gauss, s.h.i.+ps needed to be sailed, navigation needed astronomical charts, and astronomical charts weren't so easy to make at home in the kitchen.

The official promised to have news soon. What was more, there were plans to resurvey the kingdom of Westphalia. The herr professor had already done work as a geodetic surveyor. They were looking for an industrious person who could count, to be leader of the enterprise.

Gauss opened his mouth. Using every ounce of willpower he managed not to scream at the man. He closed his mouth again and left without saying goodbye.

He wrenched open the door to his apartments, called out that he was home and wouldn't be leaving again any time soon. He was pulling off his boots in the hall when the doctor, the midwife, and his mother-in-law stepped out of the bedroom. Ah, wonderful, this time he wouldn't have to reproach himself. Smiling broadly, a little too exuberantly, he asked if it had arrived yet and if it was a boy or a girl and most of all, how much it weighed.

A boy said the doctor. He was dying. As was his mother.

They had tried everything, said the midwife.

What happened after that was beyond his capacity to recall clearly. It seemed as if time were racing both forwards and backwards, and multiple possibilities had simultaneously opened and closed. One memory had him at Johanna's bedside, as she opened her eyes for a moment and gave him a look that was empty of all recognition. Her hair was sticking to her face, her hand was damp and limp, the basket with the infant was standing next to his chair. This was contradicted by another memory in which she was no longer conscious when he stormed into the room, and a third, in which she died at that very moment, her body pale and waxlike, and a fourth in which the two of them had an appallingly clear conversation: she asked if she had to die, after a moment's hesitation he nodded, whereupon she told him not to be sad for too long, one lived, then one died, that was how it was. Only after six o'clock in the afternoon did things come together again. He was sitting at her bedside. People were whispering in the hall. Johanna was dead.

He pushed back the chair and tried to accustom himself to the thought that he would have to marry again. He had children. He had no idea how one brought them up. He couldn't run a household. Servants cost money.

Quietly he opened the door. This, he thought, is it. Having to live although everything was over. Arranging things, organizing things: every day, every hour, every minute. As if there were still some sense in it.

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