Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

Arne snoring. The fjelljo trimming its hedge. Birds in general twittering, screeching, circling overhead with beating wings. The sweat starting out on my legs collects into drops which trickle down, causing an itchy sensation. Mosquitoes and flies raise and lower the pitch of their buzzing in full accord with the Doppler effect. Oh, you can tell exactly where they are simply by ear. Over the past day I have developed a successful technique of killing them by means of slaps to the head, my hands being guided by sound not sight. The sonar-driven coup de grâ ce . In my current position slapping is impossible, and besides it shouldn’t be necessary. The head-net should offer full protection. But a pinprick sensation on my nose makes me suspicious. I open my eyes. Settled on the mesh just above my right eye is a mosquito. The net is in contact with the tip of my nose. So I may not have imagined the pinprick at all, the insect could easily have attacked me through the mesh. By blowing hard I manage to shift the net a few centimetres away from my nose, and, as the fabric is fairly stiff, it stays like that. Provided I keep my head perfectly still.

The mosquito that bit me returns to the big top in triumph, boasting of its heroic exploit. Several dozen of its siblings swarm down to see if it’s telling the truth. They alight. Ascertain at a glance that I’m unattainable.

A glance is all it takes! Whereas my own eyes ache from trying to focus on the pests at such close quarters.

I close my eyes, the better to eavesdrop on a debate in the insect world.

‘He’s lying,’ one mosquito says, ‘he didn’t bite, he just had a sniff round.’

‘Yes, I bet that’s what he did,’ another chimes in. ‘Because the smell around here is mouth-watering.’

‘Mouth-watering, you say?’ a younger sibling asks.

‘Precisely. Mouth-watering. You’re not old enough yet, you haven’t learnt to appreciate the smell of mosquito oil.’

‘Like a kid who’s too young to appreciate a dab of mustard on his beef.’

Then mama mosquito pipes up with the explanation:

‘No, it isn’t that. The mosquito oil manufacturers have invented a new product. The stuff they make nowadays makes people smell much better than before.’

What drivel, I think to myself, but how else am I to conserve what little humour I have left? A sense of humour is a precious asset in precarious circumstances.

In due course several mosquitoes discover that my filter is not hermetically sealed. Treading with caution, no doubt mindful of the memoirs of the world’s leading speleologists, they are in the process of insinuating themselves into the bowels of my sleeping bag. This is intolerable.

I tug furiously to open the zips and sit up. It’s as if a wave of hot steam discharges from the sleeping bag when I peel it down to inspect my legs. Drops of blood here and there. This can’t be the work of mosquitoes. Horseflies, more like. The mosquitoes, observing my uncovered state, descend on me to celebrate the capitulation. I have to keep my hands flapping madly from my groin to my toes to fend them off. Some of them seem to think the hairs on my shins provide excellent cover, a wonderful camouflage designed expressly for their benefit. A misapprehension savagely avenged by the thunderclap of my hand. But what can my hand do against thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes? About as much as God’s lightning can do to strike down sinners: fascists, communists, capitalists, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, animists, the Ku Klux Klan, Negroes, Jews, Arab refugees, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Americans in Vietnam, the English in Ireland, the Irish in England, Flemings, Walloons, Turks, Greeks and any other miscreants I may have overlooked.

I light a cigarette, crawl out of the tent. Ouch, my grazed knees.

My trousers are hanging out to dry on some shrubs. They’re still wet, but I drag the clammy fabric up my legs anyway. The same goes for the socks.

I go back inside and lie down on top of my sleeping bag, fully dressed. I can’t protect my hands. Too bad.

The point now is to start feeling drowsy. I try merely relaxing, eyes closed, hands loosely folded on stomach. That’s better. I relax some more, yes, I think I’ve got it, I am getting drowsy, my jaw sags, could that be the onset of a yawn? I think it is, because my eyes are watering. Oh what bliss to be asleep now … I yawn, and it appears to be a genuine yawn, I mean when your mouth remains agape longer than expected and then closes of its own accord. Time I got to sleep. Not sleeping night after night — how will I ever get the brilliant research done to fulfil my father’s legacy? … I must sleep, but how? Sleeping while the light is getting stronger all the time … is like … now what would be a good comparison? Shedding woollies at the onset of winter. Or … damn! It was bad enough with Arne’s snores making a din like a wooden craft being splintered on the rocks, but now my hand is itching like mad, too. I can feel my heart racing with anger, and the next thing I know I’ve opened my eyes to inspect the back of my hand. Five bumps and three mosquitoes, their ringed posteriors tilted up scorpion-like. I slap them with my other hand, shake off the moist remains, sit up and scratch the bumps with slow deliberation.

Arne stops snoring. I turn my head to look: his eyes are open.

‘Maybe we’ll pay heavily in the afterworld,’ he says.

‘As if we’re not paying enough in this one. Some creation this is — billions of creatures having to depending for their survival on the blood of others! I’m thirsty.’

‘Me too.’

Wriggling halfway out of his sleeping bag, he reaches for his water bottle and a carton of Sunmaid raisins.

We help ourselves to a handful, which we chew slowly with a drink of water.

Arne says: ‘I often wonder whether people realise that they might be completely mistaken about their place in the scheme of things. Remember that stuff about the first being last, the last first? Who’s to say we won’t be welcomed into the afterlife by a host of mosquitoes? Wielding the sceptre up on the big throne could be a virus — the foot-and-mouth virus, say.’

He pauses, then gives a laugh.

‘Hell, I’m beginning to sound like Qvigstad. You should ask him, he’ll tell you. Qvigstad’s a metaphysics buff. He knows all there is to know about things like the afterworld, the future a thousand years from now, life after nuclear war, test-tube babies.’

Qvigstad puts his arm out sideways, holding one end of a branch between forefinger and thumb. The branch hangs perpendicular to the ground, with a large fish impaled by the gills on a snapped-off side shoot.

‘See this? Red belly!’

‘Freeze!’

I raise my camera to my right eye.

‘Could you lift it up a bit?’

The fish, in sharp focus, fills the centre of the frame along with the branch and the hand holding it. Beyond the hand Qvigstad’s arm arcs back towards his head, which will probably be blurred, but still recognizable. I use a wide aperture. Mount Vuorje in the background and the dark clouds against the blue sky will be dimly visible.

‘With that hat and beard you look like a highwayman — except there aren’t any highways here.’

Clutching my camera like a priest his prayer book, I move closer.

‘This is lake trout,’ he says, pointing to the fish, ‘red belly. Much bigger than the other sort.’

I would like to prolong our conversation, but can’t think of anything more to say. Qvigstad is one of those people you feel like asking: What do you really think of me? (but who’d ever ask such a question?), to which he’d say: Nothing at all (but who’d ever give such an answer?).