Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

I explored eight small round lakes today. Walked around each one, inspecting the margins for any ridges or ramparts. Most meteor craters are encircled by a low bank of matter thrown up by the stone’s impact. Didn’t see anything note-worthy. Slowing down to a snail’s pace, I became increasingly aware of the raindrops impacting on the water, making it squirt up thickly like ripe tomato juice.

That is all I saw.

Picked up a few rocks on the way, though.

Returning to the tents I catch sight of Arne, who appears to be sketching. Before reaching him — before he has even noticed me, I hope — I discard the rocks. Afraid of him asking: What did you collect those for? I wouldn’t know what to tell him.

As it is, Arne gives no sign of having seen me. He is sketching. One knee resting on the stony ground and the other raised at right angles, like a chair sliced down the middle. The seat of the chair serves as a prop for his notebook, which is shielded from the rain by a piece of clear plastic. He is drawing with his hand under the plastic.

Far be it from me to wish to disturb him. Ah! The wonderful solitude of nature study in the Arctic wilderness! How impressive is his dedication! This sounds a bit over the top, I know, but it doesn’t mean to say I think he is ridiculous in any way. On the contrary, I find myself bowing my head as I advance.

Arne’s eyes go back and forth between his notebook and the view confronting him. He is drawing with a stub of yellow pencil, but the point is perfectly sharpened and on the end is a metal cap. Cheap, but efficient.

I am now just behind him, a little to one side.

He sketches with short deft strokes, to very good effect. I couldn’t produce anything half as good as this. I don’t even enjoy drawing, really. More’s the pity.

Arne uses the right-hand pages of his notebook for illustrations and the left for his notes, which I can’t read because they’ re in Norwegian. But they look very neat and self-assured. Nothing crossed out, no smudges. Clearly numbered, well spaced. Not the kind of illegible jottings that can only be deciphered by the person who made them. These will keep their value even if Arne loses the notebook and it isn’t found again for fifty years. Even if he drops dead.

Notes befitting a true scientist, travel notes inspired by immediacy: here I am, now. I must observe everything there is to observe, NOW. I must record all my observations in unambiguous terms comprehensible to all, mindful of the fact that any detail I miss or neglect to write down will be lost for ever, because going back for a second look is an impractical luxury.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘You make me jealous, being so good at drawing.’

‘Really?’

He doesn’t look up. His drawing looks like a plate in a textbook.

‘Keeping notes is not my forte,’ I flounder on. ‘Fountain pens vanish into thin air, biros dry up the moment I get out in the open. And the points of my pencils keep breaking off, too.’

‘You should get one of these,’ he says, indicating the protective cap stuck on the end of his pencil stub. ‘Dirt cheap, and It’s got a little ring you can slide over it to keep it in place.’

He demonstrates how the ring slides up and down.

‘don’t they have them in Holland?’

‘No,’ I lie. ‘Never seen one before.’

‘Biros,’ Arne says. ‘Another newfangled idea. Invented purely to make people pay more for a complicated version of something that’s served everyone perfectly well for hundreds of years.’

I agree with him. But even with pocketfuls of sharp pencils to hand I wouldn’t be able to draw as well as he does.

I wander off and sit myself down on a stone at some distance away, to let him get on with it.

When Qvigstad classifies his rock samples, he takes a small notepad and puts a number at the top of the sheet followed by the date of collection and the find-spot. Next he examines the sample through his magnifying glass to establish the geological type, writes that down too and tears off the sheet, which goes into a water-resistant paper bag along with the sample. Some days he comes back with as many as ten samples, each weighing two hundred grams or more. Obviously, he’s accumulating an extra two kilos daily. This doesn’t seem to worry him in the slightest. In fact his rucksack appears to expand by the day to accommodate fresh supplies of stones. I have never heard him grumble, either.

Then there is Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen collects grit and sand in little bags, but isn’t above picking up the odd stone — quite big ones occasionally — which he then takes back and displays on top of the clothes in his rucksack as souvenirs.

I watch them coming over the hill towards me in single file, fishing rods over their shoulders.

Qvigstad has made another catch. The fish is very big this time; he can’t remember what It’s called in English, but naturally knows the Norwegian name: Harr .

Harr. I enter the name in my notebook. They check to see if I’ve got the spelling right.

We go inside the green tent and Mikkelsen lights the primus.

Arne joins us a moment later.

‘Starving,’ he says.

‘Starving,’ Qvigstad echoes. ‘That reminds me, I ran into [ unintelligible ] the other day. Just back from India, for some United Nations welfare programme, I believe. He said that seeing the effects of famine over there doesn’t stop European travellers from going to the local Hilton hotel for dinner. I said to him: If you really were cast from a different mould than Hitler or Himmler, you wouldn’t have been capable of doing that. You had your eight thousand kroner or thereabouts for travel expenses. You could have shared out that money among four thousand starving people. It could have been used to fill the stomachs of four thousand people. A drop in the ocean, true, but for people who’ ve gone hungry most of their lives getting enough to eat for once must be an unforgettable feast. That done, you’d have to make for the nearest airport, of course, on foot or with money borrowed from some consul. Not much fun, that bit, I grant you. Tail between your legs. But how bad is that compared to the suffering of four thousand starving people?’

‘What did [ unintelligible ] say to that?’

‘He said: Of course I’d have been glad to do as you suggest. But I wasn’t supplied with funds so that I could give them away. I was supposed to write a report about the Social Science Relief Programme.’

‘We all have duties to fulfil.’

‘The guards at Auschwitz had families to feed, and crocodiles can’t go without food either. Christ, what a smell in here.’

The tent is filled with blue smoke, but the fish tastes good. The bread we eat with it is soggy. Whose fault is that? Not mine!

‘Nuclear disarmament under international supervision,’ Qvigstad says. ‘D’ you know what that means? It’s a bit like having a wound on the back of your left hand and using the same hand to stick a plaster on it.’

He glances at Mikkelsen, who strikes me as someone who’d be familiar with this type of problem, but Mikkelsen doesn’t respond.

‘I wouldn’t mind being an inventor,’ Qvigstad goes on, ‘of the cancan, say. It would be great to have invented the cancan, but It’s been done already. I can’t think of any other invention I’d care to take credit for.’

Arne says something to him in Norwegian. The conversation continues in Norwegian for a spell, at the end of which all three put on their waterproof clothing. I follow suit. Qvigstad and Mikkelsen are going fishing again, I take it, and It’s probably time Arne and I headed back to our tent, since this one is too small for the four of us to sleep in.

Not until I am outside does it dawn on me that we are striking camp.