Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

Arne is doing some kind of gymnastics. Flexing his knees, moving his head forwards and backwards with the Leica pressed to his eye. I charge up the side of his outcrop and join him at the top. Pressing the shutter, he mutters:

‘Perhaps …’

‘Why do you say “ perhaps” every time you take a picture?’

‘My photographs don’t usually turn out very well.’

‘You can’t be serious! Anyone can use a camera nowadays. Plenty of teach-yourself books.’

‘It isn’t that. Look, the lens is loose in the collar — that’s the problem.’

‘Buy a new camera. Ask your father to get you one.’

‘Oh, him. Every time I see him he asks sarcastically whether I’ve taken any pictures lately. The moment I show them to him he offers me a new Leica.’

‘Well then.’

‘I don’t dare.’

‘What’s daring got to do with it? What’s so bad about your father buying you a new camera?’

‘I’d feel I’m not worthy of it.’

‘But you’d be using the camera for work, not amusement.’

‘Makes no difference. Anything new, anything costing money makes me uncomfortable. As if I don’t really deserve it. I’ve always had that feeling. People think I’m tightfisted sometimes. If I were I’d be saving money, and I’m not. Remember we were talking about your father last night?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘In my case it’s got nothing to do with my father — feeling unworthy, I mean. It’s just another example of taking things into account which I don’t believe in.’

‘What don’t you believe in?’

Arne rubs his neck and pats his hair with his free hand; he’s holding the Leica with the other.

‘I know it’s none of my business,’ I mumble awkwardly. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking.’

‘No, I don’t mind, I even told someone on a train once, and I had never met that person before. I believe, or rather I seem to believe — because I don’t — that denying myself things will bring me some wonderful reward one day.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as making a major discovery.’

‘And you reckon a faulty camera will help?’

Arne laughs as he puts his camera back into the battered case. I am not telling him anything he hasn’t heard before from all and sundry, including himself. But he is not about to give up just yet; maybe he wants to see if he can argue me into a corner.

‘Columbus discovered America with a rowing boat,’ he says.

‘There were no better ships in those days.’

‘But he got there in the end.’

‘That was a one-off. There’s no point in discovering America twice over. Your countryman Thor Heyerdahl sailed to Hawaii on a raft, but Hawaii had been discovered ages ago.’

‘He wanted to prove you could get there on a raft.’

‘And I suppose you want to prove you can use your old Leica to …’

‘I know what you’re getting at. But I could never stand setting out with a brand new tent, top-of-the-range instruments, the most expensive camera, the lot, and having nothing to show for it at the end.’

Was it to change the subject that I stepped into the void? What is happening to me?

The world flashes past, I let out a scream as I plummet down, feet first. The pain in my skull is so bad that I don’t dare open my eyes. I am sprawled at the base of the rock. I can sense grit under the palms of my hands, but can’t see anything. Arne stands over me, seizes me under my arms and drags me upright. I try taking a step forward, but my right leg won’t move. There’s blood running down into my right eye. Pushing Arne away with my left hand, I hear myself protesting:

‘I’m all right! I’m all right!’

But he won’t let go. The world floats back into my mind as seen through the bottom of a beer glass. When I wipe my eye my hand comes away covered in blood, and there’s also blood on my right trouser leg. How did it get there?

I am lying by a large fire, stripped to my underpants; Mikkelsen is busy frying half a dozen trout. Now and then the smoke billows over me.

The wind is variable.

My left hand keeps brushing up and down my left leg to chase the mosquitoes away. My right leg has been cleaned and bandaged. There’s a gash from knee to ankle. A big wad of cotton wool taped to my forehead shades my eyes from the sun.

I smoke a cigarette, but the taste is vile — it always is in the vicinity of sizzling margarine. My leather compass case has become scratched in the fall. My precious compass! I snap it open and peer in the little mirror. It looks as if there’s a snowball with a core of ice lodged in my forehead. My beard, too, catches my attention. It’s a shade lighter than the hair on my head, something I wasn’t aware of before. Funny how much there is to discover about a face you’ve known for so many years. For the first time I realise the potential for camouflage offered by a man’s beard.

‘Satisfied with your beard, are you?’

Qvigstad comes over to sit with me. I snap the compass shut and put it back in its case.

‘Shaving,’ muses Qvigstad. ‘Can’t imagine why they invented it. For thousands of years men have been obliged to go around like defoliated trees summer and winter — why? Nobody knows. On the other hand, you’d think great men with beards like Moses, Socrates or Marx must have had their reasons for disguising their faces.’

He puts a cigarette between his lips and holds out his hand. I pass him my matches.

‘Thanks. Heard this one yet? Two colonials are called up for medical examination. The doctor notices that one of them has a tattoo on his shrunken dong — some word, apparently, of which he can only make out the first and last letters, an s and an e . What does it say? he asks. Well, Doctor, on lonely nights in the jungle you can sometimes read it quite clearly, and then it says Simone . Simone? Yes. You see, doctor, it’s my wife’s name, and her name alone is enough to lead me not into temptation. Right. Then the doctor turns to the other colonial and discovers a similar tattoo with an s and an e . Another Simone? No, Doctor. What then? Well, Doctor, it says souvenir d’ une nuit chaude passé e en Afrique Occidentale Franç aise .’

Spreading his arms wide, crucifix-style, Qvigstad roars:

‘Soooo long! Dirty bugger, eh?’

Afterwards we all eat knäckebröd, fried fish and cheese. Arne brews coffee and Mikkelsen produces a bottle of brandy, which we use to lace the coffee.

Arne has washed the blood off the leg of my trousers. He passes them to me, saying:

‘You could have been dead.’

I could have been dead. But I am not. I survived. I am not even seriously injured.

Thinking of my father, I pull the trousers up over my aching knees, squashing insects in the process.

What exactly caused his death when he fell? Did he land on his head? Or was he hit by a stone that rolled down after him? Why didn’t he get away with a knee injury? If he had, I might never have come to Finnmark. I might have become a flautist.

I am not superstitious, but why should all these notions be entering my head just now? Why do I have this sense of having gained a reprieve, temporarily at least? My fall is a replica of the fall that killed my father. The same evil spirit that pushed him off the precipice has been urging me to undertake the same kinds of adventures as my father, so I’ll die the same kind of death. But it hasn’t worked. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve survived. I’m not dead, and my injuries are minor. I’ve put the evil spirit in its place, it won’t bother me again.

If I’m not superstitious, why is it these ideas keep floating into my mind?

I slip my belt through the loops on my trousers and reattach the compass case. It still looks seldom used, and yet I’ve had it for years. It looks new, and the knock it took a while back has left an equally new-looking mark on the leather. It doesn’t signal wear; on the contrary, the case looks newer than ever.