Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

My thoughts turn to all those geologists, thousands of them who, like me, never breathe a word about such annoyances as being in debt, going without food, suffering sunstroke, undertaking long expeditions to no purpose, people working against you, underhand behaviour.

I feel an irresistible urge to conjure up the worst possible scenario: that all my effort will have been wasted. Think of those occasional boulders you see on the moors in eastern Holland — who’s to say they weren’t dragged there by some primitive man, slaving away year in year out to advance half a metre a day, sleeping beside his boulder at night …

No horses in those days. Let’s hope primitive man was aware of the possibility of using tree trunks as levers. He grew old. People aged much more rapidly in those days. My barrow-builder, grizzled by the age of thirty! Fell ill and had to give up long before his boulder was close enough to another one for us, his descendants, to think: Hey! A barrow for the dead!

There is no trace of anyone having devoted his entire life to getting that particular boulder to budge. It looks no different from the others dotted about the moors, and no archaeologist would give it a second thought. It’s pathetic, and what’s even worse is that when we do recognise a boulder as being part of a barrow, we still have no idea who the architects were, let alone what they were called. Their names will never be known. There’s no-one in the whole universe who knows. And if, a thousand years from now, they find some way of tracing those identities it won’t make any difference to me. I’ll die without ever knowing the answer, like Christiaan Huygens, who died not knowing that one day people would be sitting in The Hague watching gunfights between rebels and soldiers in San Domingo, or Julius Caesar, who died unaware of the existence of America. The Aztecs performed human sacrifices on a nightly basis, to ensure that the sun would rise in the morning. They had done so since time immemorial, the way we wind up our clocks before going to bed. Not a murmur from anyone, not a soul who dared suggest it might be worth finding out what would happen if they skipped the ceremony for once.

Was there ever an Aztec who raised his voice to protest: ‘What we’re doing is insane!’

In a world where so many sacrifices have already been made without any effect at all, how can anyone believe there are still sacrifices worth making?

My eye is caught by a stone that looks slightly different from the others. I stoop. The rucksack pitches forward against the nape of my neck. I flail my left arm to keep my balance. I pick up the stone.

Not particularly heavy. A piece of gneiss, scattered here by the million. Having taken the trouble to pick it up, I slip it in my pocket.

The slope I am now going down is thinly blanketed with mist, as if the ground is simmering. A stretch of water glistens in the deep, beneath the mist. A lake, larger than the other lakes: Lievnasjaurre!

Arne is way ahead, in the distance. Where will he stop, when will I see him shed his rucksack?

I glance at my watch: four o’clock.

It is half past five when Arne halts on a flat-topped rise near the lake and unloads his rucksack. The strong man is next, he too sets his rucksack on the ground, along with the tripod he’s been carrying. But Qvigstad and Mikkelsen just stand there facing each other, talking, their thumbs hooked behind their shoulder straps. In no hurry to get their breath back, apparently.

They are still standing talking when I turn up a quarter of an hour later. I ease one of the straps off my shoulder and lower the rucksack carefully to the ground. Qvigstad takes out a packet of cigarettes. Interrupting his Norwegian exchange with Mikkelsen, he offers me one, saying:

‘Maggots are just as happy to feast on the carcass of a hyena as on a dead bird of paradise. Ever thought about that? Mikkelsen hasn’t.’

Then he moves away to offer the strong man a cigarette.

Arne says, in English:

‘Fifty kroner will do.’

We all draw out our wallets to contribute. Mikkelsen has already unpacked the strong man’s rucksack. We let him keep a tin of sardines and a box of knäckebröd for the journey home. Without having sat down even for a moment, he shakes hands with us all and heads off, back where he came from.

‘He was very strong man indeed,’ Mikkelsen says.

A peculiar kind of vivacity takes hold of us, as if the sun, reappearing now higher in the sky, is bearing us along to its own rhythm, blotting out all thought of sleep. I feel as fully awake as if I had just got out of bed. Arne asks me to get the fishing net out of my rucksack.

All four of us walk to the shore of the lake with the net that is supposed to hang in the water like a curtain so the fish get their gills caught in the mesh.

A breeze is rising. As we unfold the net it flutters and catches on the bushes at the waterside. Just as well there are four of us, or it would be impossible to untangle the thin nylon strands from the swaying stalks.

Finding wood for a fire is no picnic either. The polar willows are too wet and the dwarf birches too tough to snap off. There is a type of resinous shrub that can serve as firewood, but it’s not plentiful around here. The flames keep going out, in spite of our taking turns to crouch down to blow on the embers.

‘Lapps,’ Arne says, ‘always travel with some birch bark under their shirts, for kindling.’

Qvigstad puts an end to this challenge of the great outdoors with a dash of paraffin. Coffee is brewed in the small kettle while we work our way through thick slices of bread with tinned meat. The meat is called Lordagsrull. Viking Brand. How apt.

Slowly chewing my food I take in the view. At the far side of the lake rises a lone mountain, almost perfectly conical in shape. The type of mountain that people who have never seen mountains imagine them to be like, the type of mountain Dutch children put in their drawings. Its name is Vuorje (pronounced: Voor-ye). The low sun floods the peak with crimson, and at the dark base lies an expanse of snow.

Qvigstad and Mikkelsen have disappeared into their pale green tent with the double-fabric top and sewn-in groundsheet. A cabin of canvas, closed at the front with a triangle of mesh. Insect-proof. Before bedding down they will have used their spray to dispose of any intruders. In other words, they will be shielded from the plague as long as they remain in the tent. A pause in the battle that rages twenty-four hours a day.

I lie next to Arne, who’s snoring, so I don’t get a wink of sleep. I wonder if I will ever sleep again. Arne’s tent is shaped like a pyramid propped up in the centre with a broken broom handle wound round with copper wire to join the two pieces together.

This tent does not run to a sewn-in groundsheet. A pair of loose rectangles of plastic is all we have to stop the damp rising into our sleeping bags.

The white canvas sides are heavily patched, like Arne’s clothing, and are pegged to the ground at the corners only. We have weighed down the edges with stones to keep out the worst of the wind, but there’s no way of keeping out the mosquitoes. So they congregate at the apex of the pyramid, which, since I am on my back, is in my direct line of vision. From there they sally forth to feast on our hands and faces.

*

This cannot go on. Not getting any sleep at night is going to do me in, sooner or later. I push down my sleeping bag and sit up. Out with the mosquito oil, then, for another lavish application. After that I put on the hat with the head-net and tie the flap securely under my chin. Finally I crawl back into my sleeping bag, pull up the zips, wriggle my arms inside and try to remain absolutely still. My eyelids are red curtains. The sun is already so high and so harsh that even from inside the tent it hurts to look at the side it is beaming on.