Beyond Sleep

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  He let me go. Why?

  Why? With the stereoscope in one hand and the batch of photographs in the other, I hobble over to Mikkelsen. Reaching him, I say:

  ‘Thank you very much for letting me see the photographs.’

  ‘Already ready?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, ready.’

  ‘Please, put zem before my tent, will you?’

  I oblige, setting his possessions down on the sheet of plastic in front of their tent.

  Why did Sibbelee let me go? It must have had something to do with Nummedal’s hostility towards him. What’s in it for Sibbelee? If anything, that I’ll discover something that puts Nummedal in the wrong.

  Another complicating factor. It wasn’t until I got to Oslo that I found out that Nummedal was no friend of Sibbelee’ s. How could I have foreseen that? Sibbelee never said anything about him and the celebrated Professor Nummedal not seeing eye to eye. Of course not! Sibbelee wouldn’t dream of telling his students: By the way, the great Nummedal doesn’t think very highly of me.

  Sunk in thought, I limp down the slope, away from the tents. It is not until I am at the water’s edge that I become aware of my surroundings. The sun has been released from its cover of clouds and the ripples on the lake turn into threads of molten copper. Nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, except for the mosquitoes circling round my head.

  ‘This is,’ I say aloud, in a solemn voice, ‘what you might call a defining moment in the life of an inexperienced young man.’

  I’m in a situation where I have no alternative but to carry on with what I’m doing even though I fear It’s a mistake. Like knowing you’ re going in the wrong direction, but It’s too late to turn back, or realising halfway through the race you’ ve bet on the wrong horse. Is Alfred going to the races today? No, he is not. Because if I take all the possibilities going through my mind to their logical conclusion, the best thing for me now is clearly to go straight back to Holland and tell Sibbelee: I’m sorry, Professor, but It’s no go, the research you recommended is not going to yield the results that either of us was hoping for. Good day, sir.

  And then what? I’ ll be back where I started, knowing that I must achieve some great feat, but not knowing how to go about it. How will I ever find out?

  My mother won’t understand when I tell her I gave up because I realised there was no point in what I was doing. She’ ll think I’m ill. Sibbelee won’t understand. No-one will.

  What am I to do?

  I cast my eyes over the lake, the sloping banks where nothing stirs. Few people have ever set foot here. Surely there is something worth finding. Something that has never been found before. There are so few places left in the world where no-one has been.

  ‘Alfred! Where are you?’

  *

  I am being called to supper. This is like being a lodger. It’s them taking all the decisions. They treat me as their guest. I’m sure Qvigstad was only being polite when he asked Mikkelsen to let me see his photographs.

  Making my way back to the camp, where the three of them are sitting around the primus, it comes to me that Arne may well have been thinking: if there really were any meteor craters around here, we’d discover them ourselves – no need for some student to come all the way from Holland to find them.

  An uncharitable thought, but most likely that was what was going through Arne’s mind, for all that he’s my friend and the one I know best. Because I find it very hard to believe that Arne was in the dark about Mikkelsen having the photographs.

  Downcast, suspicious even, afraid they have been laughing at me behind my back, I sit myself down. The porridge is ready. As Mikkelsen starts dishing up he inadvertently jolts the pan, making the contents slop over the side and onto the burner, which goes out, hissing and fuming.

  We all jump up, swear in various languages, laugh.

  Arne pours the remaining porridge onto three plates, then scrapes the bottom of the pan with his spoon for himself. Making fresh porridge is not an option. We’ re low on paraffin as it is.

  We finish our meal with two pieces of knäckebröd each. One with a slice of cheese, which is getting mouldier by the day in its greasy wrapper, and one with honey from a tube.

  ‘Maybe,’ Qvigstad says, ‘it won’t be long before they’ re capable of constructing computers that are cleverer than the cleverest human beings. Those computers can then be programmed to design new computers that are even more intelligent. Once we’ ve got a computer capable of devising problems that are so complex that they couldn’t possibly arise in the brain of a human being – and once we’ ve got other computers to work out the solutions – that’ ll be the end of science as we know it. Science will become something like sport. Like archery contests at folkloric festivals, or rowing, or speed walking.’

  ‘Or chess,’ Arne says.

  ‘Oh no, not chess, because we’ll have unbeatable computers. Or it’ll be possible to look up every single chess move in some kind of computerised logarithm table. Everything will have been calculated by then. Winning at chess will be a question of memory. No, chess won’t be played any more. Makes you wonder what people will do for entertainment.’

  Arne: ‘Same as now: poker games, gossip, fishing, football and a daily fare of the same old newspapers and the same old shows on TV.’

  Qvigstad: ‘Well, yes. But what about the people who are special? There will be a whole lot of unused talent floating around. What an idea! To think: yes I have this talent, but everything I could have done with it has already been done. There’s a machine with more talent than me.’

  ‘Poor us,’ Arne says, ‘because science will become more anonymous than ever. No fame, no personal triumphs. Individual scientists will be swallowed up by their own discoveries. In due course everything about nature will have been discovered, and nobody will care a hoot who did the discovering.’

  ‘Yes, anonymous,’ Qvigstad says. ‘Like the people who discovered fire and invented things like wheels and spinning tops. That won’t stop the universities from giving out academic robes, degrees and honorary doctorates, though.’

  ‘But by then,’ Mikkelsen says, ‘that kind of thing will be a matter of chance. Like now, with people becoming famous for nothing in particular. For instance: there are a hundred thousand girls with nice figures that no-one’s ever heard of, but only one of them will become Miss Universe and get her picture in the paper.’

  ‘Having nice boobs,’ Qvigstad says, ‘is different. There’s a whole lot of girls having a whole lot of fun thanks to their boobs. Without it getting in the papers, I mean, just on the home front. Don’t you think?’

  ‘On the home front there won’t be much call for mathematical genius, I gather, nor for the explorer’s spirit of adventure, what with machines being better at everything and there being nothing left to discover.’

  ‘Anyone aiming to be a famous scientist must be out of his mind,’ Qvigstad says.

  Yes, that is what he said. I wonder what he is thinking. Is he trying to make me feel better?

  ‘Just as the iguanodon became extinct due to its size,’ he concludes, ‘so will the human race die out from sheer redundancy.’

  32

  My sleeping bag is still too wet. Better do without, then, and try sleeping in my clothes.

  It is four o’clock. I have been checking my watch every half hour. Arne’s snoring and a gale is rising, making the tent flap like mad. Good: mosquitoes don’t like the wind. On the other hand, several bloodthirsty flies have sought shelter inside and are even now crawling under my shirt and into my sleeves. They don’t hurt, but they leave fat drops of blood in their wake. They don’t even try to escape their just deserts. I squash them with the tip of my index finger. Small black flies, smaller than the flies descending on the jam back home.

  Raising myself on my elbow, I stare at Arne. He is lying on his side with his face turned to me and his hands under his cheek. His mouth is open, and I can see the full complement of his yellow, decaying teeth. The teeth of
an old man. His whole face is timeworn. He looks as if he’s already outlived the lifespan of his body. I can see the whites of his eyes through his half-closed lids. The dense stubble on his jaws makes him appear ancient, but also decrepit and shabby. A giant tramp, a dim-witted troll whose only means of communication is grunting and snoring. The noise keeps me awake, as on previous nights. Nevertheless, I do drift off now and then, because I wake up the moment the snoring stops. Each time it means Arne has gone outside. I stare at the apex of the pyramid, the mosquitoes’ favourite rallying ground. I heave myself into a sitting position, a vile taste in my mouth. I take a long swig from the water bottle and light a cigarette. Keeping the insects at bay with waves of the hands combined with jets of smoke, I sit there for ten minutes or so, musing. When I reach the end of my cigarette I stick my hand out of the tent, make a hole in the ground with my finger and bury the stub.

  I discover that I can’t raise my right knee. The leg is swollen and weirdly discoloured. But I can still walk on it, presumably. Walking will be a sight easier than getting a wet sock over the foot. To do that requires contortions painfully similar to indoor gymnastics, which is something I never went in for, even when I was a boy and such exertions did not hurt. Lunging forward over my stiff leg I finally succeed in getting the open end of the sock over my upturned toes. The other sock is not a problem. I get to my feet, step into my shoes and crawl outside. It’s half past ten.

  Harsh sunshine.

  The coffee pot, hooked from the end of a stick planted at an angle, is positioned over a small fire. There is nothing else to be seen. The green tent belonging to Mikkelsen and Qvigstad has vanished. What’s up now? I don’t see Arne either. Hobbling up the slope, I catch sight of him at the lakeside folding up the blue fishing net.

  Glancing back and forth between him and the kettle, I can’t decide how I can best make myself useful: shall I go down to help Arne with the net or head back to tend the fire – but if I do that I won’t find out where Qvigstad and Mikkelsen have gone until later. The thin stick supporting the kettle is catching fire while the flames underneath are going out.

  I limp back as fast as I can. It would be better if the kettle were propped up by stones, but there don’t seem to be any stones of the right size hereabouts, nor any stronger sticks. Getting a kettle of water to boil without a primus is a complicated business.

  I go down on my knees to blow on the glowing embers, carefully slipping in bits of moss and twigs.

  When Arne turns up with the net, the water is finally beginning to simmer. He hasn’t caught any fish.

  ‘Where are Qvigstad and Mikkelsen?’

  ‘They left about two hours ago.’

  ‘Oh, I was wondering where they’d got to. I expect they’ll be waiting for us with fried trout when we join them tonight.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re going somewhere else. I’ll show you on the map.’

  Arne goes off to fetch his map while I tip some ground coffee into the boiling water. Our meal will consist of knäckebröd with honey from a tube, because the powdered milk and the oats are in Qvigstads’s and Mikkelsen’s luggage.

  Arne settles down with the map. I nerve myself to put the question foremost in my mind:

  ‘Was there any special reason why they left so suddenly?’

  ‘A special reason? How do you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to them.’

  ‘Oh, that. But you were still asleep.’

  He unfolds the map and takes up his magnifying glass.

  ‘Are we supposed to be meeting them somewhere later on?’ I ask

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be possible.’

  I sink down beside Arne. My moustache has grown long enough for me to draw the bristles in with my underlip, and I sit there chewing them while my thoughts drift vaguely from one gloomy consideration to the next.

  Arne explains that it was something to do with Qvigstad’s research that made him and Mikkelsen decide to head north, after which they plan to return to Skoganvarre by way of Mount Vuorje.

  ‘For us, though, it’s best if we go south – down to here …,’and he points to a thin dotted line which on an ordinary map would represent a road, but evidently not on this one.

  Our route, he declares, means following a trail that is only ten centimetres wide and hardly visible in the terrain, although it’s marked with stones. That’s to say, any sizeable stone along the way has a smaller stone on top, left there by previous travellers. This way of marking a trail is widespread in Norway.

  Messages used to be carried along this route in the old days. From each marker stone the next one can usually be seen some way off, indicating the direction to be followed. It is customary for everyone using the trail to replace any pebble that might be missing from a big stone for one reason or another: displaced by the wind, or by melting snow. Because not only on the map is it a dotted line – it is in reality, too. With gaps of several hundred metres at times, where the trail has been erased, washed away or overgrown.

  He puts aside his magnifying glass to pour coffee into our cups and squeeze honey onto pieces of knäckebröd. I take another look at the map, wondering whether Arne’s planned itinerary will be to my advantage. Once we hit the trail with the marker stones we go east until we arrive at a place called Ravnastua. It’s marked on the map, but isn’t really a village or even a hamlet. Arne says there’s just one main house inhabited by Lapps and some annexes that serve as guest quarters. Hardly anyone goes there, of course, even in the summer. The place is maintained by the state as a refuge in the inhospitable wilderness. The nearest settlement is Karasjok, but the journey from there to Ravnastua is too long and too arduous to attract tourists, apparently. You might see the occasional eccentric angler, or a stray biologist or geologist, or a Lapp fallen on hard times. Arne has been to Ravnastua twice, and both times he was the only guest. Food and other necessities are delivered with caterpillar vehicles.

  Arne’s route, complete with detours and the old postal trail, means we have another hundred and fifty kilometres or so to go. At least by the end of it I’ll have covered most of my research terrain. So Arne’s route makes good sense.

  But the question as to why Qvigstad and Mikkelsen decided to head north keeps nagging at me.

  The sun bears down more fiercely than ever, promising oppressive heat for today. There are also clouds: massive ones, the size of twenty atom bombs exploding simultaneously. They look as if they’re made of hot gas, not moisture.

  I get to my feet, stamp out the remains of the fire, spread the embers around, empty the kettle and hobble to the lake to rinse out the dregs.

  Norwegians, I have noticed on several occasions, approach one another with considerable reserve. There are about four million of them living in a country ten times the size of Holland, but Holland has three-and-a-half times as many inhabitants. Population density in Norway is eleven per square kilometre, not three hundred and sixty as it is where I come from. To a Norwegian, crossing the path of another member of the human race counts for something. They stop about three paces short of the other person, make a little bow, smile, think: might be a highwayman for all I know, shake hands and make discreet enquiries into health and happiness. I wonder if their farewells are any less formal.

  I can’t imagine that being the case. So why did Qvigstad and Mikkelsen make off without saying goodbye? At what unearthly hour can they have risen for them to have managed that? There was their tent to be taken down and their belongings to be packed, they had breakfast and talked to Arne. I must have been very sound alseep. But why the hurry?

  Trekking in this harsh landscape is just a stroll in the park as far as they’re concerned, I tell myself as I return slowly with the dripping kettle. They’ve been coming here for years, it’s their home.

  I am surprised by them in much the same way as other people are surprised by the Dutch, particularly the way we keep our balance
on bicycles, dodging trams and cars in narrow streets and teetering along the edges of deep canals.

  What am I doing here anyway, so far from home? Maximal results aren’t necessarily achieved through maximal efforts alone, rather through the maximal efforts of whoever has the maximal advantage. The best shot isn’t fired by the best marksman, but by the best marksman with the best range and the best rifle.

  There have been no hints, no allusions of any kind to make me feel unwanted, but I can now barely stop myself from uttering the question out loud: Don’t they regard me as wanting to beat the Norwegians at their own game? I bet that’s how Nummedal saw me from the start – Oh by all means let him join the expedition, he must have thought, let him come a cropper.

  Maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad if I hadn’t, on the whole, found the Norwegians I have met so likeable. Even Mikkelsen, all things considered.

  Take Arne.

  When I get back, he has already struck camp and packed. What is this? There’s hardly anything left for me to put in my rucksack.

  Until now we have divided the tent between us: I carried the canvas and he took the two segments of tent pole.

  ‘Where’s the canvas?’

  ‘In my rucksack.’

  ‘In your rucksack? Why?’

  ‘It’s better if you don’t carry too much weight, with that swollen knee of yours.’

  ‘But I hardly feel it any more.’

  ‘That’s not the point. It could get worse, so that walking becomes impossible. Then what would you do?’

  ‘We’ll see about that. Come on, give me the tent.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll take it. Tomorrow maybe.’

  He starts walking. He has also claimed the hefty wooden tripod.

  ‘Arne, give me that tripod!’

  Without stopping, he says, over his shoulder: ‘By all means, next time.’

  I kneel and pack my rucksack. My load now consists of my personal belongings – sleeping bag, soap, toothbrush, underwear, various items I haven’t even unpacked yet – and very little besides. Just two boxes of knäckebröd, seven tubes of honey, the kettle, a packet of salt and the aerated bundle of blue fishing net.