Part 13 (1/2)

Pa.s.sed down in the family, the conde repeated disapprovingly. He and his wife left without saying goodbye.

In the early morning, Humboldt noticed that Bonpland wasn't there. He immediately went in search of him. The streets were full of traders: one man was selling dried fruit, a second miraculous cures for every illness except arthritis, a third struck off his left hand with an axe, then handed it round for the crowd to examine while he waited in pain until he got it back again. He pressed it against the stump and dripped a tincture over it. Pale from loss of blood, he then banged on the table to show it had reattached itself. The bystanders applauded and bought his entire stock of tincture. A fourth had a miraculous cure for arthritis, a fifth cheaply printed ill.u.s.trated brochures. One of them contained the story of a miracle-working priest, another the life of the Indian boy to whom the Madonna of Guadeloupe had appeared, a third the adventure of a German baron, who had steered a boat through the h.e.l.l of the Orinoco and climbed the highest mountain in the world. The pictures were really not bad; Humboldt's uniform in particular was well captured.

He found Bonpland where he thought he might be. The house was expensively decorated, the facade covered with Chinese tiles. A porter asked him to wait. Minutes later Bonpland appeared, his clothes thrown on in haste.

Humboldt asked how often he would have to remind him of their bargain.

It was a hotel like any other, Bonpland replied, and their bargain was unreasonable. He had never agreed to it.

One way or the other, said Humboldt, it was still a bargain.

Bonpland told him to spare himself the homilies.

Next day they climbed Popocatepetl. A path led almost the entire way to the summit: Gomez and Wilson, the mayor of the capital, three draftsmen, and almost a hundred sightseers followed them. Whenever Bonpland cut off a plant, he had to show it around. Most of them came back so manhandled that there was no point in putting them in the specimen box. When Humboldt put on his breathing mask in front of a hole in the ground, there was applause. And while he established the height of the summit with the barometer and let his thermometer down into the crater, traders sold refreshments.

On the way down they were addressed by a Frenchman. His name, he said, was Dupres and he wrote for several newspapers in Paris. He had come because of the Academy's expedition led by Baudin. But now Baudin hadn't appeared and he hadn't been able to believe his luck when he'd learned that someone infinitely more important was in the country.

For a moment Humboldt was unable to suppress a self-satisfied smile. He still hoped, he said, he might join up with Baudin and go with him to the Philippines. He intended to catch the captain in Acapulco, so that the two of them could explore the blessed islands.

The two of them, repeated Dupres. The blessed exploration of the islands.

The exploration of the blessed islands!

Dupres crossed it out, rewrote it, and said thank you.

Then they visited the ruins of Teotihuacan. They seemed too large to have been built by man. A straight highway led them to a square surrounded by temples. Humboldt sat down on the ground to do some calculations, the crowd watched him from a distance. Soon one of them got bored, several of them began to curse, after an hour most of them had gone, after ninety minutes so had the last of them. Only the three journalists remained. Bonpland, covered in sweat, came back from the peak of the largest pyramid.

He hadn't imagined it was so high!

Humboldt, s.e.xtant in hand, nodded.

Four hours later, evening was already well advanced, he was still sitting there in the same position, hunched over the paper; Bonpland and the journalists, freezing cold, had dropped off to sleep. Shortly afterward, as Humboldt packed up his instruments, he knew that on the day of the solstice, the sun when seen from the highway rose exactly over the top of the largest pyramid and went down over the top of the second-largest. The whole city was a calendar. Who had thought it up? How well had these people known the stars, and what had they wanted to convey? He was the first person in more than a thousand years who could read their message.

Why was he so depressed, asked Bonpland, awakened by the sound of the instruments being closed.

So much civilization and so much horror, said Humboldt. What a combination! The exact opposite of everything that Germany stood for.

Maybe it was time to go home, said Bonpland.

To the city?

Not this one.

For a while Humboldt stared up into the starry night sky. Good, he said eventually. He would learn to understand these terrifyingly intelligently arranged stones, as if they were natural phenomena. After that he would let Baudin leave on his own for the Pacific and take the first s.h.i.+p to North America. From there they would go back to Europe.

But first they went to Jorullo, the volcano that had suddenly erupted fifty years before in thunder, a storm of fire and a blizzard of ashes. As it appeared in the distance, Humboldt clapped his hands in excitement. He must climb it, he dictated to the journalists, it would provide the final refutation of the theory of Neptunism. When he thought of the great Abraham Werner, he spelled out the name, he almost felt sorry for him.

At the foot of the volcano they were received by the governor of the province of Guanajuato with a great retinue, including the first man to climb it, Don Ramon Espelde. He must insist on leading the expedition. It was too dangerous to be left to laymen!

Humboldt said he had climbed more mountains than anyone else on earth.

Unmoved, Don Ramon advised him not to look directly into the sun and every time he set down his right foot to pray to the Madonna of Guadeloupe.

They dragged along slowly. They kept having to wait for this one or that; Don Ramon in particular kept losing his footing or getting so exhausted he couldn't go on. Humboldt regularly, to universal astonishment, went down on all fours to listen to the rock with his ear-trumpet. Once at the top, he let himself down into the crater on a rope.

The fellow was totally mad, said Don Ramon, he'd never seen anything like it.

When Humboldt was pulled up again he was streaked with green, coughing piteously and his clothing was scorched. Nep-tunism, he called out, blinking, was officially buried as of today!

A tragedy really, said Bonpland. It had had a certain poetry.

In Veracruz they took the first s.h.i.+p back to Havana. He had to admit, said Humboldt as the coastline sank away into the haze, he was happy that it was all coming to an end. He leaned against the rail and squinted up into the sky. It occurred to Bonpland that for the first time he didn't look like a young man any more.

They were lucky: in Havana a s.h.i.+p was just leaving to head up the continent, then up the Delaware to Philadelphia. Humboldt went to the captain, showed his Spanish pa.s.sport one more time, and requested pa.s.sage.

My G.o.d, said the captain, you!

Heavens, said Humboldt.

They stared blankly at each other.

He didn't think it was a good idea, said the captain.

But he had to get north, said Humboldt, and promised not to check any of their positions during the voyage. He trusted him completely. The ocean crossing back then had stayed in his memory as a brilliant feat of seamans.h.i.+p. Despite the disease, the incompetent s.h.i.+p's doctor, and all the false calculations.

And Philadelphia of all places, said the captain. If it were up to him, all rebellious settlers could drop dead, the ones over there and the ones here.

He had fourteen chests full of rock and plant samples, said Humboldt, plus twenty-four cages of monkeys and birds and some gla.s.s cases with insects and spiders, which needed special handling. If it was all right, they could begin loading immediately.

This was a busy port, said the captain. Another s.h.i.+p would certainly turn up soon.

He himself would have no objection, said Humboldt. But he had this pa.s.sport from their Catholic majesties, and they expected him to hurry.

Humboldt kept to his promise and didn't meddle in the navigation. If a monkey hadn't escaped and succeeded on its own in eating half the supplies, loosing two tarantulas, and reducing the captain's cabin to tatters, the voyage would have been without incident. He spent the journey on the afterdeck, sleeping more than usual and writing letters to Goethe, his brother, and Thomas Jefferson. When the chests were unloaded in Philadelphia, the captain and he said another round of farewells.

He very much hoped they would meet again, said Humboldt stiffly.

Certainly no more than he, replied the captain, in his uniform with its scarecrow repairs.

Both saluted.

A coach was waiting to take them into the capital. A messenger delivered a formal invitation: the president asked to have the honor of offering them hospitality in the newly built government residence; he was most eager to learn everything and then more about Herr von Humboldt's already legendary journey.

Uplifting, said Dupres.

Too feeble a word, said Wilson. Humboldt and Jefferson! And he was going to be there too!

And just how was it Herr von Humboldt's journey, asked Bonpland. Why not the Humboldt-Bonpland journey? Or the Bonpland-Humboldt journey? The Bonpland expedition? Could somebody explain it to him just once?