It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  Adventure – and the experience of having been disappointed too often to believe in adventure.

  “If you’re willing, I will arise and – ”

  “I’m more willing now for when you accepted that I wanted to marry you by fusing our blood without even thinking about objecting I knew that you had accepted me just as I am.”

  “Nine tenth of all complications in this world are due to the fact that we are in doubt about what we really feel and hence also about what we should really do. As I love you I will agree to whatever you want without reservations and second thoughts. If trust is worth anything it is absolute. If one is proven wrong the consequences are mitigated by the satisfaction of having acted whole-heartedly.”

  “I wonder how you have survived?”

  “So do I, and the consequences have sometimes been fairly bitter.”

  “But you do not seem to have lost much of your boyish innocence.”

  “Perhaps not all of it and you do not seem to have lost your girlish innocence either and I know why. Because of your harelip you were left more to yourself than other children, and having to bear the malevolence and suffer the poison of aggression and spite you had to rely on your own resources. You learnt early on to fend for yourself, and hence also to resist a great deal of the brain-washing waffle children normally absorb to such an extent that it determines their attitudes for the rest of their lives; but you were only able to do that because you had the character traits that favoured reflection and independence.”

  “And a very good family. My father was part owner of a trawler and my mother a teacher and they both cared for me as well as they could.”

  “Do you see them still?”

  Her family would now also be his family.

  “My father died three years ago and I often visit my mother.”

  “Does she know what you do?”

  “No, I’ve told her I have a job in an engineering firm, but she’ll be overjoyed when I tell her that I’m going to be married.”

  “If you want to we can have a wedding in Scotland, or we can ask your mother to visit us here.”

  “You would do it for my sake?”

  “For your mother’s rather, she would feel more strongly about it than you do.”

  “You should not be absolutely sure about that, you know.”

  “I did not say you would not enjoy it either. Let’s have it here then and invite her down.”

  “What about your family?”

  “I have two cousins in Lyon, but I hardly ever see them. My parents are dead.”

  “Don’t you have a brother or a sister?”

  “No, do you?”

  “I had a little brother, but he died when I was five years old.”

  Embracing her he tried to soften the touch of her yellowed – wabi-sabi – memories.

  “Do you believe in anything?”

  “Either I know something, which means that it’s a past or a present event, or I don’t, but there’s a third possibility, namely statistical likelihood, which loosely speaking might be synonymous with belief. So I could say that I believe the Sun will rise to-morrow morning.”

  “Then I know something for which I have no words.”

  “Of course you do, and anyway, what’s in a name? It’s best not to demean it with a word.”

  Or even with an α-privativum.

  “Let’s have a look at the weather forecast. Clouds still, but clearing, wind two to four.”

  “I know what you want so let’s go to bed right away.”

  XXIII

  No Dawn had been like this and no Dawn like this would ever come into existence again. Das Ding an sich broke through the triteness of human déjà vu. Nature did not become befuddled or blasée – only the ability to experience it did. In the North-East a sea-grey note in the Sky approached as a harbinger of yet another Day – less – in this – that was his fugitive life but the silhouettes of the trees along the opposite brink were beginning to emerge out of the chaos of darkness – and the drowsy leaves they brushed aside with their heads and shoulders were drenched in dew from the large and hairy lap of Night. The flowers and the leaves were sable but their fragrance green.

  “I have enough towels to dry the boards thoroughly. The mattress was all wet on the bottom.”

  “I forgot it, and you know why. Here’s the bag.”

  He fetched the telescope – the binoculars – the tripod and the mattress.

  “Push it in under the net.”

  The Sky was turning red and a gaggle of geese – further upstream – greeted the coming light. Loosening the moorings he paddled out of the black-shadowed water stillness of the shallows.

  “Listen! That’s another warbler there, a Grasshopper Warbler.”

  Letting the boat drift he crept in under the humid mosquito net. She put her hands up behind her ears. The song was coming from the sedges in front of the Alder trees on the far bank. After a moment it came again – the long monotonous thin and minute brittle chitter which hardly had perceptible pauses – like frore white close-set notes threaded on a fine string.

  “And there’s the cuckoo. How loud it is.”

  She was looking at a tall Oak with new leaves about fifteen yards downstream. They had – in the twilight – still to be quite well camouflaged behind the mosquito net – otherwise he would have seen them immediately. So loud and clear as to make all space feel solid with sound came the disyllabic call to suggest something indefinable – something beyond conceptuality – a submerged dimension embedded in familiar phenomena – a longing for the unknown and the unseen – a whetting of the desire or the will to fare forth on the whale’s way – an irresistible urge – Sehnsucht – like that which animated a migratory bird to fly along with the wind of Spring to transcend the horizon – a ferly urge which incited the soul to yearn for its home beyond the four dimensions. Hand in hand they sat still to catch the cadence and the tonality of the full-throated calls which permeated the air around them – the cells of their bodies and the states of their minds like a field of communion that was so strong that it precluded movements – thoughts and irrelevant periconscious stirrings. Her pronounced negative capability let her absorb the full spectrum of the notes with every fibre of her being – concentrated and at ease – to such an extent that she ceased hearing anything and became the call itself – as nothing existed but the sounds that reverberated every where and every when – for they shared the calls with the river and the forest while also sharing each other’s awareness of the calls. As silently and stealthily as he had come and settled on the branch of the Oak without attracting their attention he suddenly took off to fly across the river and disappear behind the trees – for a couple of seconds only a black hawk-like silhouette darting across the pale Sky in the open space between the crown of the trees. Half a minute or so later he began to repeat his calls which now almost seemed to have a spondaic quality.

  “How suggestive his song really is, as if going to lift a veil and reveal all that which is hidden.”

  “You really heard what you heard. The call of the Cuckoo has a strange quality and you were aware of its unique unanalysable Cuckooness. You had an air of intentness that would have made me fall in love with you if I had not been in love with you already.”

  “I was just going to say that to you. Total concentration is the opposite of willed concentration. I think that must be how you feel when you paint.”

  “It is, and it’s the way you really are beneath the ontological masks modulated by time and space, but you know all that as well as I do, or even better.”

  “Do I?”

  He kissed her – also because her innocence intensified the depth of her experience.

  “But another amazing thing about the cuckoo was that the call was so extraordinarily loud. I have never been so close, I think.”

  �
�The bird weighs two hundred and fifty grammes, and the call can be heard at a distance of one and a half kilometre. The roar of a Lion at one hundred and fourteen decibels may be heard at a distance of eight kilometres. A Lion weighs one thousand times more than a Cuckoo so if the Cuckoo had the size of a Lion his call should be audible at a distance of one thousand five hundred kilometres. We would hear a Cuckoo singing on Vesuvio.”

  “Then I’m glad he has the size he has.”

  The Sun had now appeared above the horizon but they could not yet see it for the trees – but its presence was reflected in the activity of the birds and in the brightening of their flying colours.

  “Nature knows best because the balance of innumerable parameters have to be just right for a phenomenon to develope, as nothing so much exists in itself as it exists through, by and on account of its contexts; but let’s take a stroll later along the brink behind the wood. We’re still stuck in the shallows.”

  “Could we go down the small river again?”

  The water was now recognizing itself in the wonder of its surface.

  “That which you want is what I want as well.”

  “Sympathetic magic?”

  “Maybe, or something like it, according to Frazer’s definition.”

  “Though maybe it’s not magic at all? Mirror neurones, entangled particles?”

  “Probably, and further upstream there are lush meadows behind the trees.”

  He was leading her forward to feel at home in his inner greenery.

  “I don’t know how I could have been living so close to this world without knowing anything about it. I suppose that I did not expect that there were any patches of wilderness worth seeing down here because the whole place gives such an urban impression, and the density of houses, traffic and people is so consistent, at least if one compares it with Banff.”

  “There are tiny oases of life left here and there in this desert of buildings and agricultural devastation. At the Broads you can still get a glimpse of Great Creative Nature.”

  “Isn’t it here we’re going in?”

  “Yes, are you hungry?”

  “Can you feel it?”

  Her sceptical smile distanced itself a cock’s stride from her certain knowledge.

  “You can have no secrets hidden from me.”

  “And neither can you from me, at least not emotionally.”

  If sharing the same wavelength – the same colours. He climbed up on the gunwale to lift the branches of the Rowan in over the mosquito net – and began paddling again. The rays of the Sun painted the leaves so that each leaf sang to them in its own green dialect.

  “We can sense each other’s emotions and sometimes see identical images if they are highly emotionally charged, but we do not share thoughts or purely intellectual concepts.”

  “But it’s only the feelings that really matter. The intellectual superstructure is flimsy, fragile, unreliable and mercurial though of great practical importance. It’s a convenience, but it’s not that which gives meaning to life, which makes life worth living.”

  “In that case it’s not really a wonder that we met. Our lives, unbeknown to us, have made us gravitate towards each other because of our shared predispositions, like molecules of water slipping together because of having an affinity for their own kind.”

  She had become more aware of the fateful possibility and when he had secured the mooring he slipped in under the mosquito net to take the cup she handed him.

  “Though such a perspective could be a subsequent rationalisation it is rather an inadequate metaphor that suggests the vast chains of developing details that formed the entire process whose actual complexity would transcend all intellectual comprehension; and that might support the assumption that the universe neither is non-deterministic nor deterministic, and that its nature transcends human understanding though not necessarily human intuition.”

  “That would come close to how I feel. Here’s another sandwich and this is really just as it should be, I mean lying here with you, listening to the birds, seeing the changes in the light reflected in the leaves above our heads, with no intentions or second-hand thoughts, just content to let whatever comes along be appreciated as inevitable; and you know, that I accepted you was inevitable, for as we began talking and you explained yourself and your motives, it became more and more evident that I had expected you all along, though it was not like I had formed any mental image of what you would look like, far from it, but I had a sense of what it would feel like to meet you; and as with the images of, for example the stem of a wineglass, which, if pictured as a dark silhouette, just looks like the stem of a wineglass, but which, if focusing on the white space beside it, forms the image of the profile of a face, I felt that I had always been aware of the wineglass but began now to become aware of the profile; so in fact you had been there all along though it was only now that you manifested yourself in my life; and when I saw, and it did not take me very long, for it was unmistakable, that you loved me unconditionally, so that you would continue to love me regardless of what I would do, however silly, stupid, outrageously maddening or furious I might become, but that I would not be able to change your state of mind, I naturally responded in just the way you had hoped for or even expected. There’s no mystery here apart from the chance event that brought us together.”

  “One another’s best.”

  “It’s still a bit chilly, come here.”

  Pulling the blanket up over them both she lay down in the crook of his arm to sigh softly with satisfaction – in tune with the hardly perceptible morning breeze which touched the leaves to make them sway a little to and fro below the Morning Glory blue above. Harmony consisted in an accept of that which was without having any wishes – without having any desires – being content with what life gave – however hard that could sometimes be – but at least it was easy now. She had closed her eyes. Her eyelashes curved upwards with the thrust of the prow of Ormen hin Lange and the furrow between her swung full lips was now only a neat shadow though when she opened her mouth fully he could see a Leopard yawn. Inhaling and exhaling his smell in the morning air her lungs made her breasts rise and subside like a lazy swell at moon-rise. She thrived in the rhythm of the fine-tuned breathing of the universe. The features of her face became serene as the small muscles relaxed in a sate of peace because of a wide-spread coherence in neuronal activity – maybe even furthered by a paracrine information – sic – transfer. So although he may have contributed peripherally to this process she had of course herself been fully responsible for its very existence and subsequent development. He had merely accelerated the process – but she would feel inclined to make him more responsible for it because the intensity of the acceleration had made it appear – not so much as a natural self-fulfilment – but rather as an unexpected gift bestowed by Nature.

  “We must have slept awhile. I woke because it was far too warm with this blanket.”

  Stretching himself he looked up through the dark silhouettes of leafy branches towards the vanishing depth of space beneath the light-hid stars. The day to-day would remain sunny.

  “Should we take a stroll now in the meadow you told me about?”

  “Yes, come on!”

  He held her by the hand as she jumped up to stand on the root of the Alder.

  “Have you been here every morning since spring?

  The binoculars – just in case.

  “Yes, when the weather was fine, apart though from when I was searching for you in Scotland.”

  Behind the gallery of Alders and Goat Willows alongside the brink lay the sheltered meadow green – buttered mellow by the Sun – like a forest glade that only could be found by someone who had lost his way. Burnet Roses in small clusters – pearly white and flamingo-pink heart-shaped petals encaged in luminous light green leaves – and their clear fragrance when they passed – too fine to be spicy
– too light to be cloying – was still dispersed in the air at a fair distance. Bird’s-foot-trefoil here and there – five small sunrise cobras facing each other ready to strike – but the Dog-Violets – with murky green leaves partly hidden by grass – waited to bloom again till August. Cow Parsleys – snowy patches of foam floating upon the green depth below and frail Woodruffs that nodded in agreement with the veering wind. They walked slowly hand in hand among the flowers – absorbed in what they saw but intensely aware of one another.

  “What was that?”

  “A Hobby.”

  “So sharp and high-pitched, thin, hardly matching the powerful flight.”

  “Birds of prey have remarkably quiet and often shrill voices.”

  As they stood hand in hand to absorb the scenery intuitively the growth of the greenery became audible – an all-pervading susurrus of green sounds.

  “Lakelets of Germander Speedwells, plenty of Moon Daisies and all-nourishing Sorrels. And there’s Bladder Campion and pale Red Campion, yolky Meadow Buttercups – ”

  “You know them as your friends.”

  “Most of them maybe. Bloody Poppies, Ragged Robbins – hearty Tormentils and there, a rich Marsh-Marigold.”

  “And look at the butterflies.”

  “There’s a fair range of biological diversity here.”

  “The white ones?”

  “Large Whites. Small fair weather clouds. Their larvae are fond of cabbage leaves.”

  “And the tiny quick one there?”

  “That’s a Large Skipper. A kind of butterfly but resembling a moth, South American in origin, like all other butterflies. There are many now at the end of May and the beginning of June.”

  “You’re truly at home here!”

  “And so are you.”

  “And that one, I’ve never seen such a butterfly before.”

  “A Swallowtail, this species is only found in the Broads and the Ragged Robins there are perhaps where you’ll see them feed most often.”