Food is going to be the main problem, I think yet again as I cram the knäckebröd pulp into my mouth with my fingers, like a cook devouring the scrapings from a saucepan. I stuff half the mash into a plastic bag, which I put back in my rucksack. Stupid of me not to slip a plastic bag over the box in the first place! I should have packed everything in plastic bags to be on the safe side, but I didn’t, just because Arne, Qvigstad and Mikkelsen didn’t either.
Next I take a tube of honey and squeeze the contents into my mouth until it’s empty. Astronauts use tubes to eat from too, they have to squirt the food into their mouths because it’s weightless. Imagine being an astronaut stuck in a spacecraft! I have all the space I could wish for! Me! Not them!
I can do whatever I please. Piss wherever I like, take a shit, scream at the top of my voice. And no-one will be any the wiser, unless I tell them myself.
A black-tailed godwit alights two metres away and struts around for a bit in the cotton grass, its slender bill curving upwards.
A rippling, fluffy blanket of pink is pulled across the sky by invisible hands. It doesn’t keep me warm, in fact I feel very chilly, so I get up again.
I cross the three meandering streams without any trouble, after which I climb another slope. Reaching the top I cast around for a reasonably level spot to take a rest.
I spread out all my belongings around me. Sleeping bag – it would release streams of water if wrung, which I don’t do for fear of compacting the down into a solid lump. Soggy knäckebröd. Six tubes of honey. Cigarettes, which are damp; matches, likewise damp. Notebook, damp. Packet of salt, damp, or, rather, rock hard. Fishing net.
I stuff everything back into my rucksack, as if I’m filling a rubbish bin. Finally I wrap myself in my plastic mac and lie down with my back to the sun, using my moist rucksack for a pillow. I feel truly spent now, and colder than ever. Where will my body get the energy to withstand the freezing cold given off by my wet clothes? From half a box of knäckebröd and a tubeful of honey?
I will have to see about catching a fish with the net. Perhaps two fishes. How many could I catch in one go, if I’m lucky? A hundred? I am so tired that I may actually get some sleep. Not that the mosquitoes have given up, but then Arne isn’t here to keep me awake with his snoring. No sleep, though. Sit up, cover face and hands with mosquito oil, lie back again. Fall.
Did I fall asleep?
The sun is in a completely different position now: beaming on my forehead. My legs are so stiff that I have trouble extricating myself from the plastic mac. I empty my rucksack again and spread out everything that’s wet in the sunshine. Matches in a tidy row on a flat stone, which is already warm to the touch. The box itself has become unstuck, but I lay it out carefully to dry because the striking surfaces are indispensable.
All I can do now is wait. Go back to sleep, preferably. But I’m so hungry I can’t resist finishing the remaining half of the knäckebröd. Having washed it all down with water, I lie down again and shut my eyes. I’m in a light summer suit strolling down a narrow quay, which doesn’t seem to be open to the general public. Moored on either side are tall sailing ships, covered in rust because they’ve never been painted. It’s like being in an alley lined with ships instead of houses. At the end of the quay there’s a flight of steps leading to a lower level. I make my way between the rusty ships and go down the steps, expecting to find a urinal. I push the swing doors open. Not a urinal. A concert hall. Orchestra tuning up. Auditorium filled to capacity. Burst of applause. Not a single vacant seat. Yes, there is, just one – mine, bang in the centre of the auditorium. Tripping over people’s feet, mumbling apologies, I squeeze between the rows towards my seat. I notice that the audience is quite elderly, no-one under fifty. The men are in dinner jackets and the women in evening dress, which means they’re practically naked. Pale flesh, plump arms with a tracery of blue veins. All the women are wearing the same backless gown with décolleté plunging down to the navel and oddly shaped holes in the sides too, exposing further stretches of livid skin. Identical gowns? More than that: identical women. They don’t look like anyone I know.
I sink into my seat and the lights go down. The conductor lifts his baton and the orchestra, which consists entirely of wind instruments, bursts forth with a deafening salvo. Tucked away among the musicians is a girl. I can see her as clearly as if I’m studying a photograph of the orchestra through a magnifying glass. She plays the cymbals, even though she’s next to the flautist. In each raised hand she holds a huge brass cymbal, poised to clang them together. Shoulder-length blond hair falling from a centre parting. With each crash of the cymbals her hair billows up on either side of her face, lifted by the blast of air from the collision.
Her head looks as if it has wings. Her glazed eyes are fastened on mine. Abruptly, the orchestra falls silent, with the exception of the flautist. The girl clearly belongs to him. This is confirmed by a deafening crash of the cymbals, which wakes me up.
My eyes open quite easily, but they’re the only part of me that hasn’t gone completely stiff. I haul myself into a sitting position. My watch doesn’t tick, not even when I shake it. Kaput. I have visions of the steel mechanism being cancerated by rust until only brown dust remains.
A bolt of lighting fractures the grey slab of sky. One, two, three, four seconds later comes the thunderclap. It’s raining already in the environs of Vuorje: a rainbow overarches the mountain, as though signalling some highly sacred event taking place on the summit. I have never seen a rainbow of such dazzling brightness. I feel I’m levitating, suspended in a soap bubble. My goal surrounded by a halo. With excruciating effort I stand up, open my flies and aim a jet of urine exactly at the centre of the arc. More thunder.
At my feet lie the contents of my rucksack. Not a soul for miles and miles around to take any notice. The seventeen matches aligned on the flat stone are now dry. The flattened matchbox cover – four rectangles joined together: blue, black, yellow-and-red, black – is dry. Seventeen cigarettes, their surgical white tubing stained brown: dry. Maps: dry. Notebook: dry. Sleeping bag …?
I shake it out, plump it up, try teasing out the lumpy swansdown. Still too wet. I also check my camera in case the film has miraculously got unstuck. It has not.
I squirt half a tube of honey into my mouth, drink some water and smoke a cigarette. The wind is rising and between gusts the mosquitoes’ buzzing intensifies. It isn’t raining yet, although the sky has turned black save for a small patch of blue overhead. If only I knew where I am on the map, I could use my position plus the mountain to align the map properly, and then I’d be able to work out what time it is on the basis of the sun. All the stuff I’ve learnt is useless. But why do I need to know what time it is?
I gather up my belongings with deliberation, packing each item away as safely as possible (the matches go into my breast pocket wrapped in a bit of plastic – the least chance of them getting wet if I sink into a bog).
When I’ve finished packing I load my rucksack and take a last look round. No, haven’t left any traces. No clues to my ever having been here. Not such a good idea, perhaps. I tear a sheet out of my notebook and write:
I am on my way to Vuorje. Alfred.
I fold the note in four and leave it lying on top of a large stone with a small stone as a paperweight.
36
Mount Vuorje has three flanks: one facing south, one north-west and one north-east.
I am approaching the mountain from the south, but won’t be able to climb that side because it’s too steep.
Judging by the indications on the map, the north-west flank will present the least difficulty.
The terrain I am walking on now is already rising steadily. The rain has reached me, or I have reached the rain. Fat drops – actually hailstones that have only just melted – fall on my plastic mac, rapidly forming rivers running down to my trousers and into my shoes. By now the note I left on the big stone will be soaking wet, reduced to pulp, vanishing without trace.
&nbs
p; My thoughts are becoming as monotonous as the rain, as boring as my aches and pains. My fear of Mikkelsen being on the scent of a major discovery is a suppurating sore.
And yet, despite the fear, there are moments when I realise with a shock that I’ve been going for several minutes (how many?) without scanning the stones at my feet for meteorites.
Round holes containing only water don’t occur at this altitude, nor do lakes.
I can now see the south side of the mountain in its entirety. A blue-black wall encrusted with ribbons of eternal snow. Trickles of whitish shale run down from the top like tentacles widening into enormous suction pads. I stay out of harm’s reach. My progress is slow, but it’s progress. In the face of my diligence even the clouds give up and drift away. The sun floods the landscape with russet and red.
I tell myself I’m keeping to an altitude of 720 metres. In any case, I’m taking the left way round the mountain. My horizon changes from one moment to the next. At last! Lake Lievnasjaurre! I can see the Obbarda-elv winding towards it. Another two kilometres and I’ll have a view of the whole lake. Qvigstad and Mikkelsen must be somewhere around here. Where’s their green tent? With each step I take – and my steps are small – I can see a bit more of the lake, some three hundred metres down from where I am now.
At last there’s no need to lift my weary head up high each time I want to survey my surroundings.
But the green double-roof tent is nowhere to be seen.
I sit down, stare at the mountain, stare at my map. I could, possibly, save time by not walking all the way to the foot of the north-western flank first. The sooner I get to the top the better. From there I’ll have a view to all sides, and I’ll spot Qvigstad and Mikkelsen, assuming they haven’t yet left.
Striking diagonally across the base in the direction of the summit means gaining altitude early on.
The north-western flank is surprisingly easy to climb. It isn’t bare rock, rather an undulating cover of stones and sand – originally mud flow, presumably, after which compaction was supplied by plants, creating the wrinkled effect of the skin on boiled milk.
There are some puzzling horizontal gullies running across the slope, dividing it into terraces. Probably gouged out of the mountainside by ice ridges in former times, creating an amphitheatre for giants with fifty-metre-long shins. But when I reach the uppermost rank I’m still a long way from the summit. Mountains always increase in height once you start climbing.
The vegetation peters out. I now come to a vast expanse of cobbles the size of cannon balls. The foot must be placed exactly on the middle of each stone or it slides off. Each step requires calculation, not the slightest move must be made without considering the consequences of a false step: foot jammed between cobbles, falling over, leg snapping like matchwood.
Every twenty paces or so I pause unsteadily to look about me. I do not dare to sit down, for fear of losing my balance when I get up again and being flung to the bottom at a dizzying speed, a gob of flesh and splintered bone spat out by Mount Vuorje.
Now and then I inadvertently dislodge a stone, at which it bounces up, comes thundering down, then bounces up even higher before crashing onto the cobbles further back. I can only breathe through my mouth now. My limbs are draped in sweat-drenched curtains. I have never read a description of what it’s like to climb a mountain such as this. That all you can see ahead of you is ten or twenty metres of slope ending in a sharp ridge, beyond which the sky begins. And that as you climb further the distance to the top of the ridge increases. Like being on a treadmill, some gigantic cylinder made to revolve under your feet. Is there no end to it? Why do I keep thinking I have reached the top when I haven’t? Maybe the people who have done this sort of climbing don’t want to admit how harrowing the experience was. Or they simply forget. Nobody can recall precisely what the dentist’s drill feels like. The pain is so excruciating and the sense of powerlessness so overwhelming that it is not something you dwell on, never mind put down in writing.
Another pause. I am panting heavily. A cloud comes drifting my way. Which it has every right to. I have ascended to the land of clouds, I am an intruder in their domain. The cloud sidles up to the mountain much as an airship in the old days, a zeppelin looking to use a church spire as a mooring-post. The cloud begins to envelop me. It is not nearly as dense as I had expected. Not a cloud, really, more like eddies of white mist. I take a deep breath and start walking again. A thin white deposit has formed on the crowns of the stones. Hoarfrost. The slope grows gentler at last, and then, abruptly, ceases to be a slope at all. I am at the summit.
Something stirs on the ground close by. Stirs, then stops. Some animal. A polar fox. White fur with brown markings on its back. It is standing right in front of me, wide-legged, head lowered between the shoulders, boxer-fashion, tufted ears pricked up. What does it want? Has it never seen a human being before? I wish I could coax it to come closer, like a dog. Suddenly it turns and trots away at a leisurely pace, as though dissembling its fright. Tail down, the tip almost touching the ground, it vanishes into the mist.
The summit.
What do I see? Nothing. White fog whichever way I turn. I can only see the small patch of level ground where I’m standing. I pace around in anguish: precipices on all sides, fringed in vapour. Where can Mikkelsen and Qvigstad be? They may be close by, but I can’t see them. The mist swirls past me as if I’m sitting in an aeroplane. The density of the cloud varies, but it appears to be endless, endlessly prolonging my blindness.
I screw up my eyes with frustration and it’s as if my spirit has already taken leave of this mountain. So where is it now? Somewhere in space, where the stars, such as there are, belong. For the most part there aren’t any stars in space, for the most part there’s nothing at all. Out there in that void somewhere there’s me, gazing on the earth, a planet no bigger than a football. I can see the white mould of polar ice and snow-capped mountain ranges.
Never have I been so acutely aware of the thinness of the atmospheric layer that sustains human existence. Man finds life hard all over the planet, but we need only travel to the extreme north or the extreme south, or climb a mountain for that matter, for us to reach our limits. It has taken cunning, brute force, conspiracy, shiftwork, centuries of scientific endeavour and billions of man hours to launch one manned spacecraft. I know I am nothing but a chemical compound in a particular state of equilibrium, strictly confined within distinct, incontrovertible boundaries. In my mind’s eye I see the world as a globe, a sphere covered by a thin membrane, which is the substance within which I am able to exist to the exclusion of all else. The membrane thins out towards the poles …
Jesus had an easy time of it – taking it for granted that fig trees grew all over the world.
But the other planets, a bit further away from the sun, or a little closer … what have they got? Dust storms, maybe, as on Venus. Or ice crusts of pure ammonia, as on Jupiter. What difference would it make if there were people living on other planets? I have never heard of Europeans feeling less lonely after Columbus discovered America and its population.
Seen from a distance, my globe looks as if it is supposed to be covered in ice. Warm winds have blown it off in places, but the poles and the tallest mountains are still ice-bound, for the ice has not been defeated. It expands underground. In the next Ice Age it may get as far as the tropics. The end of the world. Ragnarok. All it would take is for some object to come between us and the sun, screening us from the heat. A cloud of cosmic dust, say, or a dense swarm of meteorites.
I am standing with my feet on different stones, one in front of the other, leaning forwards with my head down and my left arm, with which I am holding my left knee, propping up my upper body. I can hardly bring myself to cast my eyes yet again over the small area that I can see: stones and mist and little else. I do not feel sad, only profound pity for all those people who are so distant from me, and even if I had a radio transmitter at my disposal there would be no point telling them what I thin
k. They are beyond my understanding, and I am beyond theirs. Stamped indelibly on their minds are the craziest fairy tales, variations on megalomaniac notions dating back to their caveman ancestors, for whom a cave stood for the entire universe. And even if they do not believe in fairy tales, that doesn’t mean they have given up hope of gaining spiritual revelations from manifest mumbo jumbo. Because, they say, we cannot go on living like this, we are lost souls and we need consolation. (I go on living, don’t I? And who’s consoling me?)
So they put popes in palaces and feed diamonds to the Aga Khan. They never think of the abuse suffered by millions in the name of their false consolations, they turn a blind eye to the preposterous religious laws existing in even the most civilised countries, because all they want is to lose themselves in fairy tales, and the more bloodshed there is the firmer their belief. For blood is all they possess, and the only incontestable existential fact is their insatiable thirst for the blood of others.
I would rather die a victim of the elements than of people. If I were struck by lightning, or hit on the head by a falling meteorite, or if I fell down the mountain from sheer exhaustion, it would be weeks before anyone discovered I had gone missing. That would suit me fine. It is even possible that I would never be found. A gratifying thought, but to savour the gratification I would have to survive for a while in spirit, or I wouldn’t know they hadn’t found me. Vanishing from the face of the earth like that would at least mean that my death is in keeping with what I know. Because my life will never be in keeping with what I know.
Never … I can’t stay here. I begin to walk, down into the mist.
Eva would say I had gone to heaven.
But I do not fall down the mountain. I duck under the cloud, and a moment later I have left the stony summit behind. I am treading on moss, low heather. The slope is cushioned in mosses of every shade, black, blue, pale green, even orange and red. A flock of wild geese skims overhead.
Beyond Sleep Page 20