Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

‘But even if she doesn’t, she can still say: I did it for the sake of my children.’

‘So can a burglar.’

‘Who can honestly say they have always made a living off their own wits? Take Sauerbruch, the famous surgeon. Lost it completely when he got old, but that didn’t stop people from flocking to his door. Everyone wanted to be operated on by the celebrated Sauerbruch, even though he was no better than a quack by then. His assistants had their own reasons for keeping quiet. That’s how we all end up in the long run: party to some deception or other. Bakers sell inferior bread to raise their profits, the motor industry makes sure your car breaks down in five years, garages charge you for repairs they never made, clockmakers charge fifty kroner for cleaning your watch by blowing into the casework. Daylight robbery all round.

‘I often think about the people who write those books my mother reviews. People who don’t feel loved enough by their friends to be able to confide their innermost thoughts in them, so they think: Why don’t I write a book instead? Thousands of copies will get printed and with any luck there’ll be one or two readers who love me. So they spend two or three years writing, and then what do they get? They get the kind of ready-made drivel produced by my mother and her colleagues. Unless they get insulted, which happens a lot in their line of business. It’s almost the norm, even.’

‘What about all those people getting paid for writing stuff anyone could think up? That’s stealing, too. Like when they write a thousand pages on a subject they could cover in a hundred?’

‘All the same, it must be a great feeling if you can say: Here I am, I’ve achieved success and it’s all my own work, I didn’t have to lie or cheat to get there.’

‘In a world where everyone’s forever cheating everyone else? A world where practically nothing is known for certain? Don’t give me that.’

‘But that’s my point. Not cheating is one thing, being first is another.’

‘Who’s to say? No-one knows how many cheats honestly believe they’ve always been straight.’

‘In a way I hate my mother and everything she stands for. It’s as if she sets a terrible example, forever saying: Look at me! As long as you get your share of awards, honorary doctorates and special funding, you’ll have nothing to reproach yourself for. Whenever I’m with her I feel I’m making things far more complicated than they need to be. Like insisting on paying with gold in a country of paper currency.’

‘We are all under pressure from those around us — family, friends, acquaintances, people at work. They’re the only people to whom we mean anything, let’s face it. If you want that to change you need to become world famous, and who gets to be world famous?’

‘If my mother were genuinely talented she’d be setting a better example, putting a different kind of pressure on me.’

‘Do you really think children are better off with a genius for a parent? It’s always the same old story: they take to drink, get thrown into prison, commit suicide. Why? Because the son of a genius seldom turns out to be a genius himself — for the simple reason that not enough of them are born. So what can he do? Becoming a genius like his father is not on, whereas that’s all that counts in his world. So the children of geniuses often opt out in the end. They vanish.’

‘I know it’s difficult. If you want to keep your integrity and your independence, you need to think of something worth making sacrifices for.’

‘But then there’s no way of keeping your integrity unless you discover something new — unless you count the integrity of Don Quixote, that is.’

‘And then there’s Galileo, the enviable ease with which he confessed he was wrong when he knew he was right. In the face of incontrovertible truth, personal integrity is just a bagatelle.’

‘Precisely, and don’t you forget it. That’s why scientists are on the whole such an unprincipled lot. And for the most part their discoveries can’t hold a candle to Galileo’s truth, either.’

Flying insects patter against the canvas, inside and out. Arne snores. At least the sun doesn’t shine. All four planes of the pyramid are dingy in equal measure, and shutting my eyes actually keeps out most of the light. I must get some sleep. I am not suffocating in my sleeping bag, my legs hardly hurt provided I keep still, the hardness of the ground doesn’t bother me, and although my head is throbbing I haven’t got a headache. The wad of cotton wool is very hot, though. Must get rid of it in the morning. Treat the flies to some dried blood. The theory is that the wounds of animals heal quickly because they’re kept clean by flies — clean flies, of course, flies that don’t transmit dirt. There is no dirt around here to speak of, so the flies are presumably clean.

The pattering grows louder and also faster and more regular. Could be rain. A cold drop falls on my face. Have I been asleep? I prop myself up on my elbows and cast my eyes in every direction. The tent is leaking all over. Arne carries on snoring. There’s water dripping onto my sleeping bag, making dark stains on the pale yellow silk.

Puddles are forming on the sheets of plastic we’re lying on. What can I do? It is not a major problem, of course, just a little water. But in the care instructions of my down sleeping bag it says that contact with water ‘can cause irreversible damage to the insulation capacity’. As if being stuck without aerial photographs and falling off that rock weren’t bad enough.

I give Arne’s arm a shake. He opens his eyes, mumbles. I crawl out of my sleeping bag. Arne motions me to get off my plastic sheet. I roll up my bag and retreat to a corner of the tent. Cold water trickles down my back. Arne tips the water off the sheet and turns it over before replacing it on the ground. Even his boots and my shoes are full of water. I turn them over. Then we stow all the gear that mustn’t get wet into our rucksacks, put our clothes on and lie down in our macs under a drum roll of rain.

Arne proffers the carton of raisins.

‘Poor us,’ he says. ‘Poor, poor us. Creative labour is perceived by some philosophers to be on a higher, more interesting plane than the drudgery of bus conductors, charwomen, factory workers and navvies. And yet the contributions made by creative minds, completely free of charge, aren’t even mentioned by cultural historians.’

‘Creative minds never get much of a mention. It’s warlords, politicians and other confidence tricksters who get talked about all the time, not people with creative minds.’

‘Not to mention the creative minds that fizzle out,’ he says. ‘Because how much difference is there really between a factory worker and an intellectual? I have always hated the idea of becoming a teacher. Going over the same ground year after year for half a century. Wishing you could tell them something new, yet having nothing to say.’

‘And it can be worse,’ I say. ‘What about being stuck in a rut where there isn’t anything left to discover? Even more ghastly is having a talent that no-one really has any use for. Like a talent for Greek. In a grammar school with five hundred pupils you won’t come across more than one with a genuine interest in learning ancient Greek, and perhaps two or three others who’ll be grateful later on for having had a stab at it. The rest of them leave school barely able to make sense of Homer because they did as little studying as they could. Through no fault of his own, the classics teacher is faced with educating generation upon generation to a poor level of Greek. To learn it properly takes time, and there is no time because no-one really needs ancient Greek. How can he keep his self-respect in those circumstances?’