Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann Page B

go.
    Bonpland muttered something about superstition and untied the ropes. The oarsmen grinned. Once in the middle of the current, Humboldt could no longer understand his own fear. He decided to describe events in his diary the way they should have happened: he would claim they had gone back into the undergrowth, guns cocked, but had failed to find the animal.
    Before he had finished his account, the skies opened. The boat filled with water and they steered hastily for dry land. They reached it to be greeted by a naked, bearded man so covered in filth as to be almost unrecognizable. This was his plantation, for a fee they could spend the night.
    Humboldt paid and asked where the house was.
    He didn't have one, said the man. He was Don Ignacio, he was a Castilian nobleman, and the whole world was his house. And these were his wife and daughter.
    Humboldt bowed to the two naked women and didn't know where to look. The oarsmen attached expanses of fabric to the trees and cowered down underneath them.
    Don Ignacio asked if there was anything else they needed.
    Not at the moment, said Humboldt, exhausted.
    None of his guests, said Don Ignacio, would ever suffer want. With dignity he turned on his heel and walked away. Raindrops pearled on his head and shoulders. It smelled of flowers, wet earth, and manure.
    Sometimes, said Bonpland reflectively, it struck him as an absolute enigma that he was here. Indescribably far from home, dispatched by nobody's ruler, simply because of a Prussian he'd met on the stairs.
    Humboldt lay awake for a long time. The oarsmen kept on whispering wild stories to one another which lodged in his brain. And every time he managed to banish the flying houses, threatening serpent women, and fights to the death, he saw the eyes of the jaguar. Alert, intelligent, and pitiless. Then he came to again and heard the rain, the men, and the dog growling anxiously. At some point Bonpland arrived, wrapped himself in his blanket, and immediately went to sleep. Humboldt hadn't even heard him leave.
    Next morning, with the sun high in the sky, it was as if it had never rained, and Don Ignacio said farewell to them with the gestures of a chatelain. They would always be welcome here! His wife gave a perfect court curtsey, and his daughter stroked Bonpland's arm. He put his hand on her shoulder and pulled a strand of hair off her face.
    The wind was as hot as if it were coming out of an oven. The growth on the banks was getting thicker. White turtles’ eggs lay under the trees, lizards clung like wooden ornaments to the hull of the boat. Reflections of birds kept moving over the water, even when the sky was empty.
    Remarkable optical phenomenon, said Humboldt.
    Optical had nothing to do with it, said Mario. Birds were constantly dying at every moment, in fact they did little else. Their spirits lived on in their reflections. They had to go somewhere and they weren't wanted in heaven.
    And insects, asked Bonpland.
    They didn't die at all. That was the problem.
    And indeed, the mosquitoes came interminably. They came out of the trees, the air, the water, they came from all sides, filling the air with their whining, stinging, sucking, and for every one that got squashed, there were a hundred more. Not even thick clothes thrown over their heads brought any relief, the creatures just stung right through the material.
    The river, said Julio, didn't tolerate anyone. Before Aguirre had come this way, he had been sane. Only once he got here did he have the idea of declaring himself emperor.
    A madman and a murderer, said Bonpland, the first explorer of the Orinoco. That made sense!
    This sad man didn't explore a thing, said Humboldt. Any more than a bird explores the air or a fish explores water.
    Or a German explores humor, said Bonpland.
    Humboldt looked at him with a frown.
    Just a joke, said Bonpland.
    But an unfair one. Prussians could laugh. People laughed a lot in Prussia. Just think of Wieland's novels or those outstanding