Nicolai Houm - The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland

“How was it for you?”

Oh, Christ.

She sat up but his hand followed her like an animal looking for warmth, and she had to lift it away before bending over him to grab her clothes.

Ulf fired up the Primus stove. The heat intensified the smell of armpits and damp wool. Streaks of rainwater ran down the outside of the tent like oil in a greasy frying pan. They sat in silence at opposite ends of the tent and ate freeze-dried curried stew. Then Ulf broke the silence. As if time had stood still inside his head, he followed up what they had talked about the day before:

“That great, superior entity of yours? Or is it a place? Is it where souls go?”

She had been considering if she shouldn’t tell him that she was done with this trip, and would prefer to back out. But it felt like admitting defeat.

“The physicist deliberately didn’t use the word soul . He only spoke of awareness .”

“Smart,” Ulf remarked.

She so did not need to speak about that TED Talk. Not anymore. She was angry with herself for mentioning it. Tom Belotti had sent her the link and she had been watching the lecture over and over again for three days. Tom had meant well. And he was the one who had found her. The door had been left open and two stove burners left on. His first thought was that she had killed herself. When he discovered her sitting in the study in front of the screen, his fear turned to rage that made his neck flare red. But he had taken her broken soul home with him to his kitchen and tried to patch her up with Vladlena’s help.

When she told them that she planned to go to Norway, Vladlena had said something in Russian.

“What did she say, Tom?”

And Tom had replied, with a sigh, “That you remind her of an animal that leaves the herd in order to die alone.”

Vladlena had punched him on the shoulder.

“But that is what you said!”

“Yes. Not go, Jane,” Vladlena told her.

“Listen, this guy surely thought the point was that it should be possible to meet those you loved and missed in some form or another? That in the greater whole, you can meet again?” Ulf asked.

“I recommend you listen to his lecture,” Jane said.

“Sorry. But that thought has nothing to offer except false reassurance.”

To refute the idea seemed to mean something positive to Ulf.

“I think you should consider a different line of thought, Jane. To think that your sense of loss can be understood as nothing more or less—like everything else—than atoms and molecules. Electrochemical signals, endlessly fired off.”

Ulf moved and knelt in front of the stove to shut the gas feed off. The wheezing ended and the tent filled with a stillness that laid everything to waste.

She didn’t know what made her continue. “It’s the last mystery for science.”

“What is?”

“Life and death.”

“What, have you found stuff online about that, too?”

He folded the gas stove’s supports before putting it away in a small container. Then Ulf got his evening routine underway: he lay down on his back and began pulling off one woolen sock. She clenched her jaw. His thigh was level with her eyes.

“We have a pretty good idea of what life is,” he said with a slight effort.

Then he straightened out again, placed the first sock on his chest, and folded it slowly and methodically.

“We can introduce an electric current into a mixture of appropriate chemicals and create elements of organic life.”

He groaned as he reached for his other foot. Possibly, this was to impress her by showing that he could get his socks off.

She longed for Greg as someone who is suffocating longs for air.

Ulf took out his nasal spray and shot a dose up first one nostril, then the other.

“And we can end the process in an analogous way,” he said through a rather blocked nose. “Mass doesn’t disappear after death. And there is no evidence for consciousness being anything other than the sum of neural functions that shape our perceptions of the world.”

“Fuck you.”

“The thing is…” He was pointing at her with the nasal spray. “You people believe that we’re after something when we tell you these things. But the facts we uncover are in no way charged with meaning. Not by us, anyway. They are just facts.”

She wondered about Ulf’s motives. Was he trying to toughen her up by telling her harsh truths? Or was he furious because his penis hadn’t taken her straight into seventh heaven? She turned away from him and pulled the sleeping bag over the back of her head.

“I simply tell you the way things are. All you can do, Jane…”

In the moment he placed his hand where her shoulder was under the sleeping bag, she knew what he would say and realized that her reaction would be impossible to control.

“… is let time do its healing work.”

“Go to hell.” The words came out in a low growl, as if from deep down a hole in the ground. “Go to hell!” She was shaking inside the sleeping bag. “I hate you. I hate you and your simpleminded cod philosophy and your crummy social skills and your shrunken little dick.” That last bit came out in a shrieking wail. Then she collapsed on the sleeping mat, her muscles contracting twitchily and her tongue growing thick inside her mouth.

In the morning, he had gone.

“AT THE DEEPESTlevel, my novels deal with the way we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of others while remaining fundamentally alone, and how we always long to become something more than just one being, more than a solitary brain inside an isolated organism.”

“Would you agree that this longing is given a religious dimension in your books?”

“Yes. Isn’t that what religion is, simply put? A fusion of our tendency to wish to be part of a greater entity and to yearn for meaning. What I am trying to say is there is only one contemporary and also widely accepted answer to the question about the meaning of life, which is that life is sufficiently meaningful in itself. It is easy to see why this last line of defense is often articulated as a demand or a duty. We are obliged to respect and protect life, so also to recognize the worth of one’s own and others’ existence. It’s one way of putting it.”

“But surely interactions between individuals are also important in your books? And this offers us hope, wouldn’t you agree?”

“And yet, how impossible it seems.”

“How is that?”

“There are so many fools out there.”

“Ha ha.”

“If only everyone had been like Jane Ashland.”

“Indeed, yes… ha ha. Many of your protagonists are religious. Are you a believer?”

“No, I’m not, but I think the characters I write about end up believing because they discover their limitations… that is, they become disillusioned. And then they turn to God.”

“My impression is that you have always been well known at university level, in creative writing schools and among people who write for and read literary magazines. Is that right? A writers’ writer, in a sense? Would you agree?”

“Well, yes. It’s a compliment, in a way. But then, maybe not.”

“Now, though, with The Age of Plenitude , things have really… gone your way? As a journalist and a mother of two, I can’t help wondering how you find time for everything. You know, what with the writing and…”

“And writing?”

“You teach as well, don’t you?”

“I have a good husband. Unlike you, I don’t have two children. Only one, and she is growing up fast now.”

“How old is…?”

“Her name is Julie, and she is eleven.”

“And your husband?”

“Greg.”

“What does having a supportive family mean to you?”