Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

Made it. I am standing beside Arne. He lifts my camera and map pocket by the straps and hangs them round my neck as if they were medals of office.

When I get home at about five and have nothing to do while Eva makes tea, I often take out the hefty MALLINCKRODT MEMORIAL VOLUME OFFERED BY HIS STUDENTS from the cabinet it shares with my father’s other books.

It invariably falls open at the page with the big pasted-in photograph, which unfolds to twice the width of the book.

The picture shows the participants of the Botanical Conference at Lausanne in July 1947.

They are ranged in five rows. The ones in the front, mostly women, are sitting on chairs, those in the second row are standing, with the heads of the third and subsequent rows hovering above them. How this was achieved is unclear; presumably they stood on chairs.

My father’s head is in the last row, almost in the middle, and he is one of the few participants not looking into the lens. He is shown in three-quarter profile, as if he’s saying something — or otherwise listening — to a very old man with a beard diagonally in front of him. Such a mistake! The bearded professor (Von Karbinski, Cracow) isn’t talking to him at all.

How do I know his name is Von Karbinski?

Very simple.

On the facing page is a diagram of the group. It is quite small, and very schematic. All it shows, really, is the pattern in which the heads are arranged. Each head is rendered in outline, and each has a number. The numbers correspond with a list of names. So it’s easy to see who the participants are and where they’re from. That’s how I know that the old man diagonally in front of my father is Von Karbinski from Cracow.

However, there are two heads without numbers, and consequently without names. One belongs to a girl in the far left of the front row. Some secretary, no doubt, who happened to be there when the portrait was taken. But the other head belongs to my father. Not yet famous enough, I suppose, when he accompanied the great Professor Mallinckrodt to the conference in Lausanne in 1947.

A century from now, or two or three, when my mother, sister and I are long dead, anyone who cares to will be able to find out who attended the conference in Lausanne by consulting the MALLINCKRODT MEMORIAL VOLUME. Von Karbinski from Cracow, Stahl from Göttingen, Pelletier (Lyon), James (Oxford) … but when their gaze stops at my father’s face they won’t know who he is.

My mother, Eva and I are the only possessors of the memorial book who know him: one of the youngest men in the picture, black quiff, no spectacles, no old-fashioned wing collar either, no, his attire seems scarcely outdated.

Alfred the First (my grandfather’s name was Paul, my great-grandfather’s Jurriaan, but my most illustrious ancestor was Hendrik, Lutheran dominee at Purmerend and author of Parnassus: A Collection of Peerless Poesy , published in 1735. No-one reads it any more. We don’t even have a copy).

Alfred the First, I mutter, sliding the book in amongst the others on the shelf. Usually I glance in the mirror after that. Died young. Before he had the chance fully to develop his talents .

What is odd is that I do this quite often, several times a week in fact, and it has been going on for years: opening the book while waiting for tea, taking a look at my father, noting the absence of a number in his head, muttering ‘Alfred the First’, and so on.

Not so odd, though, that this ritual should come to mind now. Arne and Qvigstad might well become very famous (Mikkelsen strikes me as too dim). One of the pictures we took in Skoganvarre will be published in a book, duly furnished with names and date. My name has got to be there along with the others. It must be.

We have been following this river for quite some time. Flat terrain, I mean no rise and fall. But now our route takes a different turn, and up another slope we trudge.

There is a constant alternation between plains and rises, stony ground and mosses, rock formations and peat. Difficult becomes easier, then easy becomes more difficult. My forebear the Lutheran dominee would have said it was the other way round. The rivers are my main worry — how many more are there? Eight? Nine? And they won’t all be shallow either.

Tough becomes tougher, but there is an upper limit. Climbing brings elevation, steep becomes steeper, but in the end it always eases off again.

The bare stretches are strewn with small stones, not one of which merits pocketing. Here and there a tussocky shrub is covered in tiny pink flowers. I don’t know the first thing about plants, can barely tell the difference between bilberry and bell heather. The Dryas Octopetala with its yellow-and-white flowers is the only one I recognise, thanks to the geological period named after it.

Knowing a bit more about the flora would give me something to do in the absence of interesting types of stone. But plants have never interested me. Maybe I was put off by my father having died in pursuit of them. A victim of science — my mother seldom refers to him otherwise at solemn moments.

We are now surrounded by mountains on all sides. It’s like walking on the bottom of a serving dish covered by a lid of black cloud, except that the lid is slightly off centre, creating a slit through which the brassy sunshine pours in.

Arne has been adjusting his pace to mine.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ he asks.

‘Are you?’

‘Ravenous. Cold, too. We must have something to eat soon.’

We each have a piece of dry knäckebröd and a handful of raisins the next time we stop for a rest.

Descending to a stream, scooping water, knocking back four cups in a row while the sweat turns icy on your skin, wading through wetlands, more polar willows, dwarf birches. The ground is no longer cushioned. I need so much air that I barely get the chance to close my mouth and roll my tongue to work up some saliva.

I have to cautiously worm my hand under my head-net to wipe the sweat from my eyebrows. The stink of mosquito oil assaults my eyes. Maybe I have rubbed some into my mucous membranes, despite the dire warning in the instructions.

The terrain becomes ever harder, no more dwarf birches, just scattered rocks with no level ground between them. Tortured muscles form iron cuffs around my ankles, and lugging my rucksack feels like dragging a cartload of flour.

This slope is very long. Longer than the last one?

Arne is the first to reach the top, where he makes a halt, leaning his rump against a rock. He is joined by Mikkelsen and the strong man, both of whom lean back in the same way. Qvigstad, who is just ahead of me, looks round for another conveniently sized rock to lean against. The two of us lean back. He offers me a cigarette. I flip up my head-net to have a smoke. My face is instantly covered in mosquitoes. Once the cigarette is alight I lower the net again, but have to keep it away from my face to avoid burning holes in it. The smoke is trapped underneath and I seize up, coughing. My ears throb and I have never known my heart to make such a deafening noise. My torso feels like plate iron enclosing a gleaming, high-powered engine relentlessly propelling me forward in life.

Qvigstad says something, which I don’t catch.

‘What did you say?’

He raises his voice to a shout:

‘Anna Bella Grey! A beauty with two heads and three tits!’

I want to say who’s she when she’s at home, but decide it is too silly. He doesn’t need encouragement anyway.

‘I saw a picture of her naked,’ Qvigstad roars. ‘Unbelievable. Completely normal from the waist down. See the potential? A tit for each hand and another for your mouth. And that’s not the end of it. What she can do with her two heads, or rather her two mouths … it’s mind-boggling.’