Is that Arne’s tent? No, the man-made object in the distance is not his tent. It is something else. I stop in my tracks, at once joyful and puzzled.
It is the tripod with the theodolite fixed on top. Arne must be somewhere near here, that much is certain. Where else could he be? I have been worried sick for days, and there was absolutely no need. Shielding my eyes from the sun with my hands, I scan the area around the theodolite for a sign of Arne. Nothing. No tent either. But why worry, he is bound to be taking measurements around here somewhere. He will turn up in no time.
Walking towards the theodolite feels like cocking a gun at a sleeping animal.
Damn, I’m exhausted, but it has been worth it. All in all I haven’t done too badly. Found him without a compass. Simple. As simple as finding a meteoric stone right under my nose, which will happen in a day or two.
Taking care to place my feet on matted willow roots, I venture into a stretch of peat alongside the water. The tripod is on the far side, at the base of the other slope. Must not lose my footing now, not a good time to go falling into the river or getting stuck in the mud … Doctor Livingstone, I presume – and a great pool of water collected around his feet.
I laugh so hard it hurts.
I cross the shallows without any trouble and without having to take off my shoes. Reaching the tripod, I look about me in all directions: no-one. In a reflex, I bring my right eye to the telescopic sight. A snow goose comes into sharp focus in the centre of the cross-hairs: alighting on the slope ahead, flapping its wings and pecking at something on the ground before taking off again.
Hesitantly, I make my way towards the place the instrument is directed at.
‘Hey, Arne!’
He is lying on the ground a few paces off.
‘Hey, hey,’ I stammer.
Sprawled on his back, one leg bent, the other flung out. I can clearly see the smooth, worn-down sole of his boot, which has come loose. His head lolls against a rock, which is smeared with a custardy substance. Swarms of flies, of a sort I have never seen before, big and blue. Blue like the hands of a clock.
His mouth is closed in a strange manner, with his decaying upper teeth resting on his lower lip as in a final grimace of pain. For the rest his face looks exactly as it did in his sleep: unaccountably old and tired, wrinkled like the bark of an oak tree. But this is not sleep. This is beyond sleep.
My hand, clapped to my mouth, seems intent on preventing me from breathing.
There are also flies on his beard, his forehead, his half-closed eyes. Not a single mosquito, though.
39
How many times have I run up and down the slope where Arne fell to his death?
First I climb to the top, where I spied his tent. Looking down from there, I notice the notebook lying near Arne’s body. He must have been holding it when he fell. I go down, retrieve the notebook and pocket it. Back up again, to the tent. Pull out the pegs and the supporting pole. I can use the canvas to cover Arne’s body, so down I go again. Then it’s back to the top once more, with the idea that I should do something with the rest of his gear. Can’t think what, so end up wrapping his rucksack and sleeping bag in a groundsheet. Come upon the case belonging to the theodolite. Can’t bear the thought of leaving the instrument on the tripod in all weathers. I go down, unscrew the theodolite, put it back in its case, collapse the tripod. Place both items on the ground beside Arne. Up one more time – don’t know why. Better walk along the river if I’m to locate the trail to Ravnastua, I tell myself, so it’s down yet again. I spring from one stone to the next, my shoulder intermittently grazing the rock face, but it’s as if an invisible parachute keeps me from falling. Falling is the last thing on my mind.
Now and then I look over my shoulder. I am making my way through the valley, and the place where Arne is lying is no longer in sight. Carry on walking. Stop again, squat, pull down trousers. Horrendous belly ache. Diarrhoea. My diet of fish and honey.
Was it stupid of me to leave Arne’s food supplies behind? I’m past caring. Don’t feel hungry. It’s beginning to rain. I plod on. The ravine narrows even further, then comes to a dead end. I clamber out of the cul-de-sac and continue in a straight line. The rain intensifies and I draw my plastic mac over my shoulders. On and on, down into another valley, almost blinded in the downpour. I stumble and manage to regain my balance, but in doing so step on the hem of my mac, causing a huge tear in the plastic. I rip off the dangling flap and toss it away.
40
The trail to Ravnastua is no wider than a shoe, and barely visible in the stony terrain.
Not a dry stitch on my back since I don’t know when. It’s been raining nonstop for at least two days. My eyes are running, my throat is so swollen I can hardly breathe, I cough with each step and my head is pounding. Still, I do pause now and then to put a pebble on top of some larger stone along the way. That’ll be a help to anyone using the trail after me.
Not to Arne. When I take a break – and when the rain lifts somewhat – I leaf through his notebook. All those wonderful drawings going to waste. All those neat entries which I can’t read because they’re in Norwegian, although I try deciphering the occasional word. I see my own name twice in the last of his entries. What did he say about me?
Coming upon a small round lake, I dump my rucksack on the ground. I take out the fishing net and hang it in the water, which is fringed with tall bushes. Not far from the shore I lie down on my side and screw my eyes up tight. I need to sleep.
I open the door to the sitting room and hear an agitated film dialogue in a language I can’t understand. Somebody must have forgotten to switch the television off, because there is no-one in the darkened room. I don’t turn on the ceiling light, as I plan to watch television. Not only is there no light in the sitting room, the screen goes blank, too. Guided by the sound, I make my way to the television in the corner, sink to my haunches and twiddle the knobs to restore the picture. Without success. An assailant creeps up on me from behind, pounces on my back and claps his hand over my mouth. Father! I shout, shaken awake by fear.
Waking from a nightmare in broad daylight is hideous. What has come over me? Why call for my father? Me, father-less for eighteen years, calling for a father who has been dead too long for me to remember ever having called his name!
It was my own hand on my own mouth.
The rain has stopped, but there is a strong wind and the sky is overcast. I stay on my back staring up at the clouds for a long while. Then, having reconsidered all the angles I have considered already, I get to my feet, walk to the lake, untie the net and start pulling it in. A trout. Another trout. When the net is about half way out of the water it becomes incredibly heavy. A gust of wind blows the part that’s above the surface into the bushes. I tug hard to get the rest out of the water, which is in commotion close to the net, as if it’s boiling. Another fish. I take a few steps back and pull with all my might. The net is choked with fishes, there’s one caught in each mesh, it’s like a carpet of glistening, wriggling fishes, hundreds of them. What am I to do? I can’t pluck them off one by one, I haven’t the energy. I must eat first.
How many matches have I got left? Four. All the bushes are dripping wet after the prolonged rain. I set about building a small pyre, taking care to shake the drops off each twig before adding it on top. I strike the first match. It goes out: too much wind. The second and third go out too. The fourth keeps going long enough to light a thin twig, but the flame dies almost immediately. The twig continues to smoulder. I blow on it. No good. It stops glowing altogether. I look on in despair, chew the knuckle of my thumb, then cut the trout into pieces, roll them in salt and eat them. Tastes almost like pickled herring.
When I feel I have eaten enough I go back to the lakeside to try to disentangle the net from the bushes. But each time I have laboriously extricated a few meshes, the wind blows them into other branches. The fishes have fallen still, except for the occasional twitch at unexpected moments. Frantic now, I pull so hard th
at the net gets torn in places, but still it won’t let go. In the end I leave it there, draped over the bushes, looking like the tinsel deposit of a tidal wave. The web of a gigantic spider.
41
I now stop on each rise to look at my map. It is raining again, and visibility is very poor. But I know that Ravnastua is not far away. It is afternoon, or evening. Not morning, at any rate.
Every hundred paces I have to rest, and my strides are becoming shorter all the time. I’m too tired to keep track of how long they are. Not sixty centimetres, for sure. The sole of my left shoe has come loose. I’ve already tried going barefoot, but found it too painful. I tear a strip of plastic from my mac and tie it round the shoe, but it keeps coming undone. The longer it takes me to get to Ravnastua – and truly I’ve been trying to make haste – the less it seems to matter. No-one knows I’m here. Where are the Lapps, the last wild men of Europe? I haven’t come across a single one. It could just as well have been me that got killed instead of Arne. Strange, what happened to Arne is exactly what I was so afraid of happening to me. I almost feel left out.
The last time I wrote in my notebook was the day before yesterday. That was five days after finding Arne. By then I was already beginning to feel there was no need to hurry, as if it might be better if he were left lying there, undisturbed. One month in the wilderness is enough for the standards of civilisation to become those of the wild. A dead reindeer left in the open changes into a skeleton, until only an antler, a rib or a vertebra remains, and what difference would it make to Arne if the same happened to him? Funerals, eulogies and wreath-laying are the concerns of people who live on paved streets and who gather ten to a room in ten-storey tower blocks, a charade strictly bound to time, place and community.
The prospect of a square meal doesn’t arouse me, nor the prospect of a proper bed. Even the fear that consumed me before to the point of hysteria – getting killed in an accident like my father – has turned to indifference.
Because, what am I bringing back with me? Not a discovery. Just bad news: that someone has got killed.
As if I’m not exhausted enough already, I have the added burden of the message I must deliver. I can’t think about anything else. God Almighty! The mere thought of having to tell people what has happened makes me dread my return to the civilised world.
But return I must. Staying right where I am is not an option. So I draw up my knees, lean on my left hand and push myself up. There I stand, unsteadily but on my own two feet, as befits the crown of creation. Slowly I start up the next rise.
For some time I have noticed the narrow trail becoming more clearly defined. It’s quite easy now to distinguish it from the surroundings. It even looks maintained. A sure sign: Ravnastua can’t be far away.
It is not far to the top of the hill either. And what do I see when I get there? The largest animal I have seen for many a long day. A horse.
Dun-coloured, with a tufted black mane sticking up like the hackles of a hyena. The horse is grazing, and lifts its head when it hears me. It goes brrrr with its lips and shifts a foreleg. It is tethered to a stake in the ground with a long rope. What can it be eating? It is nibbling at a straggly shrub. There is no grass. Horses can’t survive here on their own. So there must be people nearby.
Going over yet another hill I catch sight of a wooden house – no, three cabins painted reddish-brown. From the roof of the main one sprouts an enormous FM antenna, twenty or thirty metres high. Near the cabins I notice trees, the first I’ve seen in a long time. Proper beeches, although they’re not very tall.
My progress is extremely slow. I keep having to sit down and rest. I’m long past caring where I sit. On a peat boss preferably, but mostly I don’t bother to look for a spot that’s dry. Not that I’m in a hurry. As I approach the main building I notice there are some steps up to the front door, which I’ll have to negotiate somehow. I manage to haul myself up them, but my head’s swimming as if I’m drunk. I reach for the door handle, but can’t put a hand on it: I have to grope like a blind man.
The door opens. There’s no-one there, just a sort of timbered hallway with a telephone and what looks like a large black filing cabinet against the wall. And another door.
The living room. Wooden walls. Seated by the window is a very pregnant woman with black hair in two short plaits and sallow, wrinkled skin. She looks ancient. I blurt a few words in English. She smiles, gets up and leaves the room. Isn’t she much too old to be pregnant? The ceiling is hung with those strips of sticky paper that flies settle on, never to come unstuck.
The walls are bare except for three large calendars. Three. Along the base of the walls the floor is strewn with house-hold goods: stainless steel pans, small chests, a sewing machine, bundles of clothes. Children appear, naked and dark-skinned. They don’t make a sound, huddle behind each other, suck their thumbs. Through the door to the next room, which is ajar, I glimpse bunks. The children hover in the doorway, ready to slam the door in my face should I do something to alarm them. I freeze, but sway all the same. One, two, three, a lot of naked children.
The woman returns with a fair-haired man in tow, who speaks quite good English. As for me, I can barely speak at all. I show him on my map where I found Arne. He takes the map from me and turns away, motioning me to follow him into the hallway. He goes up to the black metal cabinet I saw when I arrived. It’s a small radio transmitter. He cranks it up and talks on the telephone.
When he has finished he returns the map to me.
‘They’re sending a helicopter to search for him,’ he says.
Together the woman and the man escort me to one of the other cabins, which has a sign saying STATENS FJELLSTUE.
I am sitting on a stool at a white wooden table in a room with bunk-beds against the walls.
On the table in front of me are a plate, a knife, a stainless steel frying pan containing reindeer mince with gravy, a steel pot containing potatoes boiled in their skins, a loaf of bread a metre long and a pitcher of milk.
Minced reindeer tastes almost like venison.
My hand goes back and forth between my plate and my mouth in slow motion. I chew in slow motion, too.
So many things I haven’t seen or heard for ages. Such as the drone of an aeroplane. The noise grows louder and louder, how can it take so long to get so loud? Must be a slow aircraft. When the noise is at its peak I look out of the window and see a helicopter skimming the treetops.
I can’t keep my eyes open any more. I can just stagger to the nearest bunk.
When I open my eyes again the light is as weak as when I shut them. I am lying on reindeer hides and am also covered by one.
But it is twenty-four hours later.
I get down from the bunk and wash myself in a bucket of cold water. With soap!
42
I didn’t catch his name, of course, and keep wanting to ask him what it is, but don’t get round to it. He’s a biologist and mycological expert working for the Natural History Museum in Tromsø. He has stopped asking questions about Arne.
While I pay the woman for my food and lodging, he says:
‘She is only thirty-nine and expecting her fifteenth child. Many children, Lapps like many children. See how the house is furnished? As if they are still living in a tent: everything is kept on the floor.’
He presses a glass tube of aspirin into my hand and lends me a pair of rubber boots. How I wish I’d had them from the start!
He has been on the phone to arrange for a Lapp with a motor-powered canoe to take me down the Karasjokka to Karasjok.
From here it’s a twelve-kilometre walk to the river. It will be easy to find. I say goodbye to the woman and the man and set off.
After a few paces he calls out and comes after me:
‘Are you sure you’re up to it? Walking to the river, I mean?’
‘Yes, yes, I can manage.’
‘Do the boots fit all right?’
‘Yes, they’re excellent.’
‘I hope so.
Because of course you could stay here if you prefer, then I’ll ask them to send a Weasel from Karasjok to collect you.’
‘Thanks, but no. I’m fine. Thank you very much!’
I have no problem finding the way to the river. There’s a proper road, albeit knee-deep in black mud and puddles, but evidently wide enough for a Weasel, because the tracks of caterpillar tyres are still visible in places.
All of a sudden everything is much more normal: the road, the clumps of trees – I am now a hundred metres below the treeline. I won’t get above it any more, because it’s downhill all the way to the Karasjokka valley. The bend in the river where the canoe will be waiting is only a hundred and sixty metres above sea level.
This is not an expedition any more. This is a walk in the woods.
Suddenly, a harsh yellow glow lights up the cloud bank to my left, followed by a boom like a jet breaking the sound barrier. The glow fades, leaving the sky as grey as before, but the boom is followed by a prolonged rumble as if there’s a goods train crossing a viaduct nearby.
I stop to listen, and remain standing quite still until after the din has subsided and there’s nothing to be seen or heard save great flocks of screeching birds winging into the distance.
When they drop out of sight I turn off the road and climb to the top of a rise. But I can’t see anything because of the trees, and there’s no trace of fire or smoke.
*
Arriving at the river, I come upon a small house. There is little else, only green marshy plants and the canoe with the outboard motor close by, its prow hauled up on the bank. The Lapp appears at my side. He speaks a few words of German and offers to carry my rucksack to the canoe. I ask him if he heard that booming noise a while ago.
Beyond Sleep Page 22