He was no friend of big words, he shied away from lofty pretensions, and he might even hesitate at the most ordinary of expressions, finding them awkward, heavy and cumbersome. He felt sweaty, filthy and sullied whenever he had to deal with them. And besides, they were unreliable.
Should he jeopardise his dignified grief and the memory of his dead son with words and statements that anyone might misunderstand, and out of sheer malice distort, misuse and drag through the mud?
He had seen the most pure-hearted of people be insulted; he had even contributed himself with his ingrained distrust. What was there to indicate that he would succeed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Time passed. In an uncertain, fruitless waiting for something unknown.
An invitation came from the Affect Commission to participate in one of their open forums. An unnamed source had recommended him as an expert with experience that might be of value to the current project. He was said to have experience that ought to be utilised.
Hanck assumed that the unnamed person was the shopkeeper. The man harboured great respect for all so-called scientific activity, and he had probably recommended Hanck out of sheer benevolence. He may have thought that Hanck needed to get out a bit, see people, meet some like-minded individuals, other experts who were dedicated to the very same matters.
The shopkeeper was extremely busy with his move to the City Under the Roof, but he still made time to come and say hello every once in a while. One day he stood there in Hanck’s workshop, looked at the workbench with the bottle of vodka, the revolver, the piece of brick and the typewriter holding a blank piece of paper.
‘Not one word?’ he said.
‘Not one word.’
‘In other words, you’re going to need a lot of paper.’
Later he returned with several reams of paper that he’d found when they were cleaning up. He wanted to offer as much encouragement as he could. Writing and science had a great deal in common. ‘And you’re a true obsolete, Hancken.’
They no longer had any business dealings with each other, and Hanck could have told him to go to hell without paying a price for his rudeness. But he didn’t. He let things remain as they were. Perhaps the old fellow was right. He’d been right before.
And Hanck had nothing to lose by accepting the invitation.
He was prepared to subject himself to anything at all, he feared absolutely nothing. He’d been to the bottom, and had crawled his way out of the abyss, inch by inch, day by day. Whoever met him on the street might take him for anyone at all, a short, grey fellow-citizen who might be approached for directions. Nothing in his appearance gave any inkling of the demons that he’d dealt with, the furies and maledictions that had plagued and tormented him, keeping him awake for weeks at a time, lucid and bewildered, dangerous to the public.
Sometimes he wished that he was back there again, back in that state of demented recklessness and self-glorifying despair, the feeling of standing at the centre of the world, in the eye of the storm. That was gone; it was a passage, a lost world. Sometimes he missed it now when his courage deserted him, when he sat down in front of the typewriter and that blank piece of white paper. He felt powerless and incompetent, an amateur, a bungler, obliterated out of respect for his subject matter. Perhaps it was a form of humility, which also belonged to love.
That was his state of mind when he was awakened one morning by a familiar silence.
It had stopped raining. Abruptly and brutally, as expected.
He got out of bed, opened the window facing the street, and peered into the pale morning light, at the streets that were starting to dry out. No more rain coming down steadily day and night. Only tranquillity and quiet.
He had to show up for that meeting. He needed clothes, clean clothes, dry clothes. He had neglected that aspect of his life, wearing his old, worn-out clothes for the entire rainy season. They smelled of mould.
He had no real idea how the other participants would be dressed, but he didn’t want to stand out or draw attention.
Finally he went into Toby’s room. It had been closed up for months. He hadn’t had the strength to go inside, out of some sort of deference, perhaps mostly to himself.
It was still messy and in need of cleaning. The filthy old cushion was still lying on the floor where he had once left it. The bed was unmade. But in the middle of the bed lay a package, a present, a turtleneck sweater, wrapped in cellophane.
With a vague pang of guilt he picked up the package, opened it, and pulled out the unworn sweater that still smelled new. It might be a little warm for this time of year, but he’d just have to put up with that.
Wearing this new garment he showed up at the meeting of the Affect Commission. They held their meetings on the first Wednesday of each month, in premises that had been put at their disposal by the Administration, since their work had once been deemed to be of public interest.
The origin of these premises was disputed; perhaps they had housed some sort of former secretariat with a number of offices and a large, elaborately decorated hall. The address was centrally located, in the City Under the Roof. On weekends the premises were used for a casino.
The waves had reached high levels inside. During one era it had been considered of great importance to reach out, to engage the man on the street, to popularise the whole thing. They had made use of consultants to facilitate these contacts, and prominent members had ended up on the sofa – or, as was then the case, on the rack – on TomBola’s show and become known to the public, ‘out there in the heartland’, as the saying goes. It had been a huge success.
Especially when they reached the section that would be exclusively devoted to ‘Happiness’. It prompted a national uproar. The golden hall was packed with representatives of the public who believed that they possessed valuable information on the subject and felt called to testify. Occasionally the meetings were stormed by berserkers, who, with a great hullabaloo, demonstrated that it was a valid expression of happiness to wreck the premises and scare the shit out of those who were present.
Even this sort of happiness deserved recognition. But it had become difficult to heed, especially since the antagonisms within the commission were so great. Widely differing approaches came to light, expressed in words and actions that could make sporadically-appearing saboteurs look like virtuous noblemen.
The ‘Happiness’ section became a watershed. Members lied, slandered one another, carried on campaigns behind each other’s back, all for the purpose of promoting their own points of view. Some people left, citing health reasons and blaming the pressure from the public, or they simply refused to show up. Some people died under mysterious circumstances.
After several decades of strife, a volume was finally produced that satisfactorily fulfilled the demand for scientific integrity, but it was written in a spirit that had very little to do with the actual topic itself.
Subsequently a number of corrections to policy were made, new forces were summoned. So when the part dealing with topics ranging from ‘Hatred’ to ‘Ill will’ was to be compiled, the entire commission seemed to be inspired by the ‘Harmony’ of the previous part. A much longed-for peace and quiet was established for their work, and the project proceeded calmly and serenely, without conflicts, as if they had finally found themselves on firm ground.
This sense of peace had lasted all the way to ‘Love’. They were on the threshold of a new era, under yet another of these headings that seemed to have such a strong attraction for troublemakers, quarrelsome, self-appointed experts who could turn the simplest statement into an insoluble topic of contention.
Hanck was lucky enough to appear on a Wednesday that looked to be calm and quiet. Other activities were taking place in the city: a big shipment of vodka was due to be sold in a barn, and there were rumours of a marketplace in the suburbs that was filled with new monitors.
Not even everyone on the commission seemed to be present. Hanck had previously held a vague notion that they were scrawny, dried
-up old fogeys, but now as they one by one took their seats on a podium, he saw that this was only partially correct. They were rather young, at most middle-aged. Grey and diffident, a bit suspicious-looking. There was no display of feelings other than apprehension.
After a number of introductory remarks from the chairperson, the members and attendees were welcomed. The floor was then yielded to a member who was supposed to explain some of the basic principles for the research.
She was a short woman with prematurely greying hair; she wore chequered trousers with what looked like egg stains on her beige jumper.
Hanck didn’t need to feel apologetic for his attire. His sweater was in better shape than hers. But it was already starting to feel hot.
She was a professional, a specialist, a scholar, and that was how she talked. Hanck heard terms such as ‘dubious postulate’ and ‘ontological structures’, words that very quickly made him feel unsure of himself. He listened as attentively as he could, but the harder he tried, the less he understood.
And his sweater was much too hot.
But the people in the audience seemed spellbound, nodding in agreement at one thing or another. They were engrossed, they took notes, and sometimes they looked as if they wanted to interrupt the speaker to make comments.
The presentation seemed to be about the fact that the basics were still fluid, that the topic hadn’t yet been clearly defined and laid bare, that it had a tendency to join forces with others and could get mixed up with entirely alien phenomena, that this had been found to be so insidious that in some circles people were questioning the fundamental premise itself, as if it were a topic that could be extracted, delimited and demonstrated in a pure form.
This took an entire morning to explain. The involvement of the audience sank at the same pace as the oxygen was used up in the hall. Some of the members on the podium had even arranged their bodies in reclining positions and were listening with their eyes closed.
By the time they approached the lunch break, Hanck was completely soaked with sweat. He couldn’t take off the sweater because he had nothing on underneath. Perhaps he would have understood things better if he weren’t suffering from the heat of that sweater. Toby’s sweater. A fine, warm sweater of the highest quality, purchased one day long ago, a good day, when life could still sing. Hanck had walked along the street with his pockets full of money, looking forward to a delicious dinner prepared by a young master of the kitchen. A day full of love, up until three o’clock.
Now, long afterwards, he sat here listening to this monotonous droning, incomprehensible wording that could crack anyone, turning even the most impassioned amateur into a listless wreck.
But Hanck didn’t take it that way. By lunchtime he had already left, with a light step, feeling fortified and encouraged. He had heard precisely what he needed to hear. It was as if Toby had spoken to him through the sweater, roaring straight at him: ‘Don’t listen! This is not for you! You don’t have to worry, calm down, there’s no risk at all. No one will ever be able to explain anything. Love is unfathomable! The world will go on! If it should be obliterated – so what? Should that risk stop anyone from thinking about love? Whoever doesn’t dare take that risk, whoever isn’t willing to jeopardise the whole world, will never be able to love. No way, José. Whoever can explain the world can also obscure it. That’s their job. They don’t want to change anything. They’re working for the status quo!’
Hanck felt strong and uplifted in the most unexpected way. On his way home he passed the shopkeeper’s premises. A bookmaking agency had taken over the place. It already looked well-established.
It was in an entirely new frame of mind that he sat down at his workbench, shoved the revolver aside, poked a little at the piece of brick, refrained from tasting the vodka, and, with a typical lack of imagination, wrote: ‘Once upon a time . . .’
And something happened.
It was indescribable. He felt it in his whole body. Like some strange new substance. Like a drug.
Hanck was so agitated that he had to stand up and take a few turns around the flat before he could return to the paper and read those four words ten more times. Then, after that was done, he added: ‘Once upon a time a boy . . .’
It was reminiscent of that time when the whole city had gone dark during a major power failure. When the electricity came back on, life returned and everything started up from where it had left off. Time had passed in darkness and silence, time that now would soon be forgotten, drowned out by the highly charged present.
He was back, the boy. Hanck could see him, talk to him as if he were still alive, again follow the life that he loved. He was there, and no one could take him away.
Hanck read those six words ten times, a hundred times. Then he realised that he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten in a long time.
There was no food in the flat. He was forced to go out to find something to cook. It was a specific task, to find a place that was open and had something to sell, to carry home his purchases and make something he could eat.
As he tied his shoes out in the hall he could imagine that soon he would be standing in the kitchen at the cooker and thinking: now how did he used to do that?
In the past it had prevented him from making any attempts on his own. But things were different now. Nothing had happened.
He could prove it. He would resort to the power of example, steer clear of theories and claims of applicability. He would describe love so strongly and intensely and matter-of-factly that it would comprise a proof in itself; it would free itself from any context and emerge as its own materia, its own myth, as tangible as a piece of brick.
He would linger over the introduction, deciding where and how he should begin. He couldn’t start with his son’s birth; there were circumstances that preceded it that had to be clarified. Nor could he start with his own birth, since that too had been preceded by events of significance.
He would have to go further and further back in time to find an appropriate beginning. Perhaps he was facing a task that would keep him occupied for the rest of his life. One day when the heat came, the window facing the street would be open. A black raven would be sitting on the window ledge.
He had never seen a raven there before. After a while another raven would be sitting there. Both of them would regard him in silence from their black moiré shimmer.
He would have difficulty concentrating. ‘Shoo! You’re bothering me!’
The birds would glance away, as if they were thinking about something; then once again they would fix their eyes on him.
He would understand. He would say: ‘Yes, send my greetings! Tell him that I’m full up!’
Both of the birds take off. He follows them with his eyes as they soar over the street, rise up into the air and caw above the whole neighbourhood, above the whole city: ‘Sona-torekk . . . Sona-torekk . . .’ A son is lost.
A little feather remains on the windowsill. It flutters in the breeze. He picks up the feather, sits there for a moment, holding it.
Then he will run it under his nose and make himself sneeze.
The Hurricane Party Page 26