Read Online The Discovery Of Slowness by Sten Nadolny - Free Book Online Page B

fifth lieutenant, who actually listened to him as a result of a hefty rum ration. ‘Every ship’s hull has its own maximum speed, which it can never exceed, no matter what the rig or the wind velocity. And so it is also with me.’
    â€˜Sir. I must be addressed as “sir,”’ answered the lieutenant, not unkindly.
    Explanations were usually followed by orders. On the second day, he had made clear to another lieutenant that for his eye all quick movements left a streak in the landscape. ‘Climb up to the foretop, Mr Franklin. And I want to see a streak in the landscape.’
    Meanwhile, things got better. John stretched out contentedly in his bunk. Seamanship could be learned. What his eyes or ears couldn’t manage, his head did during the night. Intellectual drill balanced slowness.
    Only the battle remained. That he couldn’t imagine. Determined, he fell asleep.
    Â Â Â Â 
    The fleet had already passed through the Sound. They would soon be in Copenhagen. ‘We’ll show ’em,’ said a tall man with a high forehead. John understood the sound of these words very well, since they had been repeated several times. The same man told him, ‘Go, cheer the men on.’ Something was up with the mainsail; there was a delay. Then the crucial words: ‘What would Nelson think?’ He marked both sentences for the night. He also included difficult words, like those Danish landmarks Skagerrak and Kattegat, or words like cable gat and colour vat. In response to a carefully phrased question asked after they had received their rum ration, he also found out that the Danes had been busy for weeks strengthening their coast fortifications and equipping their ships for defence. ‘Or do you think they’ll wait till we can join their council session?’ John didn’t understand this at once. But he had fallen into the habit of automatically acknowledging any answers couched in the form of questions ending on a rising intonation with ‘Of course not,’ which instantly satisfied the person who always countered with a question.
    They arrived in the afternoon. That night, or early in the morning, they would attack the Danish gun emplacements and ships. Perhaps Nelson might still come aboard their ship that day. And what would he think? So the day ended hectically, with shouting, gasps and bruised joints, but without fear orrage. John felt he could keep up, for he always knew what was coming. An answer was yes or no, an order went up or down, a person was sir or not sir, his head banged into running or standing rigging. All that was altogether satisfying. A new difficult word had to be memorised: Trekroner. It was the most powerful coastal battery defending Copenhagen. When it started to fire, the battle had begun.
    Nelson didn’t come after all. The lower gundeck was clear, the fires in the stoves had been extinguished, the sand was spread, and all men were at the stations where their duties required them to be. One of them, alongside the gun barrel, kept baring his teeth. Another, who pushed the shot into the breech, opened and closed his hand perhaps a hundred times and observed his fingernails carefully each time. Amidships somebody started up in terror, shouting, ‘A sign!’ so that all heads turned towards him. He pointed aft, but there was nothing. Nobody said a word.
    And while the veteran sailors were feverish or frozen, John experienced one of those moments that belonged to him, for he could ignore the fast events and noises and turn to changes which, in their slowness, were barely perceptible to others. While they were crawling towards morning and the guns of the Trekroner, he enjoyed the movement of the moon and the transformations of the clouds in the night sky almost dead with calm. Unceasingly he gazed through the gunport; his breath deepened; he saw himself as a piece of ocean. Remembrances began to drift by, images that wandered more