Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

I see low shrubs studded with soft fleshy fruits resembling oversized, bright yellow raspberries. I pick one and put it in my mouth. It is full of seeds, yet the taste is slightly sour, like skimmed milk. Are they unripe or do they always taste like that?

There isn’t much around here that is edible. Have I ever been on my own in a Dutch forest without any food? No, I have not. How would I survive? You can’t eat beech nuts or acorns. Blueberries, brambles, mushrooms, that’s all I can think of.

I extract one of the two sodden boxes of knäckebröd from my rucksack. The cardboard has split open in places. My health-giving crackers, so crisp and tasty, recommended by the world’s leading doctors, also for anaemia, have turned into brown mush oozing from a disintegrating box.

Food is going to be the main problem, I think yet again as I cram the knäckebröd pulp into my mouth with my fingers, like a cook devouring the scrapings from a saucepan. I stuff half the mash into a plastic bag, which I put back in my rucksack. Stupid of me not to slip a plastic bag over the box in the first place! I should have packed everything in plastic bags to be on the safe side, but I didn’t, just because Arne, Qvigstad and Mikkelsen didn’t either.

Next I take a tube of honey and squeeze the contents into my mouth until it’s empty. Astronauts use tubes to eat from too, they have to squirt the food into their mouths because it’s weightless. Imagine being an astronaut stuck in a spacecraft! I have all the space I could wish for! Me! Not them!

I can do whatever I please. Piss wherever I like, take a shit, scream at the top of my voice. And no-one will be any the wiser, unless I tell them myself.

A black-tailed godwit alights two metres away and struts around for a bit in the cotton grass, its slender bill curving upwards.

A rippling, fluffy blanket of pink is pulled across the sky by invisible hands. It doesn’t keep me warm, in fact I feel very chilly, so I get up again.

I cross the three meandering streams without any trouble, after which I climb another slope. Reaching the top I cast around for a reasonably level spot to take a rest.

I spread out all my belongings around me. Sleeping bag — it would release streams of water if wrung, which I don’t do for fear of compacting the down into a solid lump. Soggy knäckebröd. Six tubes of honey. Cigarettes, which are damp; matches, likewise damp. Notebook, damp. Packet of salt, damp, or, rather, rock hard. Fishing net.

I stuff everything back into my rucksack, as if I’m filling a rubbish bin. Finally I wrap myself in my plastic mac and lie down with my back to the sun, using my moist rucksack for a pillow. I feel truly spent now, and colder than ever. Where will my body get the energy to withstand the freezing cold given off by my wet clothes? From half a box of knäckebröd and a tubeful of honey?

I will have to see about catching a fish with the net. Perhaps two fishes. How many could I catch in one go, if I’m lucky? A hundred? I am so tired that I may actually get some sleep. Not that the mosquitoes have given up, but then Arne isn’t here to keep me awake with his snoring. No sleep, though. Sit up, cover face and hands with mosquito oil, lie back again. Fall.

Did I fall asleep?

The sun is in a completely different position now: beaming on my forehead. My legs are so stiff that I have trouble extricating myself from the plastic mac. I empty my rucksack again and spread out everything that’s wet in the sunshine. Matches in a tidy row on a flat stone, which is already warm to the touch. The box itself has become unstuck, but I lay it out carefully to dry because the striking surfaces are indispensable.

All I can do now is wait. Go back to sleep, preferably. But I’m so hungry I can’t resist finishing the remaining half of the knäckebröd. Having washed it all down with water, I lie down again and shut my eyes. I’m in a light summer suit strolling down a narrow quay, which doesn’t seem to be open to the general public. Moored on either side are tall sailing ships, covered in rust because they’ve never been painted. It’s like being in an alley lined with ships instead of houses. At the end of the quay there’s a flight of steps leading to a lower level. I make my way between the rusty ships and go down the steps, expecting to find a urinal. I push the swing doors open. Not a urinal. A concert hall. Orchestra tuning up. Auditorium filled to capacity. Burst of applause. Not a single vacant seat. Yes, there is, just one — mine, bang in the centre of the auditorium. Tripping over people’s feet, mumbling apologies, I squeeze between the rows towards my seat. I notice that the audience is quite elderly, no-one under fifty. The men are in dinner jackets and the women in evening dress, which means they’re practically naked. Pale flesh, plump arms with a tracery of blue veins. All the women are wearing the same backless gown with décolleté plunging down to the navel and oddly shaped holes in the sides too, exposing further stretches of livid skin. Identical gowns? More than that: identical women. They don’t look like anyone I know.

I sink into my seat and the lights go down. The conductor lifts his baton and the orchestra, which consists entirely of wind instruments, bursts forth with a deafening salvo. Tucked away among the musicians is a girl. I can see her as clearly as if I’m studying a photograph of the orchestra through a magnifying glass. She plays the cymbals, even though she’s next to the flautist. In each raised hand she holds a huge brass cymbal, poised to clang them together. Shoulder-length blond hair falling from a centre parting. With each crash of the cymbals her hair billows up on either side of her face, lifted by the blast of air from the collision.

Her head looks as if it has wings. Her glazed eyes are fastened on mine. Abruptly, the orchestra falls silent, with the exception of the flautist. The girl clearly belongs to him. This is confirmed by a deafening crash of the cymbals, which wakes me up.

My eyes open quite easily, but they’re the only part of me that hasn’t gone completely stiff. I haul myself into a sitting position. My watch doesn’t tick, not even when I shake it. Kaput. I have visions of the steel mechanism being cancerated by rust until only brown dust remains.

A bolt of lighting fractures the grey slab of sky. One, two, three, four seconds later comes the thunderclap. It’s raining already in the environs of Vuorje: a rainbow overarches the mountain, as though signalling some highly sacred event taking place on the summit. I have never seen a rainbow of such dazzling brightness. I feel I’m levitating, suspended in a soap bubble. My goal surrounded by a halo. With excruciating effort I stand up, open my flies and aim a jet of urine exactly at the centre of the arc. More thunder.

At my feet lie the contents of my rucksack. Not a soul for miles and miles around to take any notice. The seventeen matches aligned on the flat stone are now dry. The flattened matchbox cover — four rectangles joined together: blue, black, yellow-and-red, black — is dry. Seventeen cigarettes, their surgical white tubing stained brown: dry. Maps: dry. Notebook: dry. Sleeping bag …?

I shake it out, plump it up, try teasing out the lumpy swansdown. Still too wet. I also check my camera in case the film has miraculously got unstuck. It has not.

I squirt half a tube of honey into my mouth, drink some water and smoke a cigarette. The wind is rising and between gusts the mosquitoes’ buzzing intensifies. It isn’t raining yet, although the sky has turned black save for a small patch of blue overhead. If only I knew where I am on the map, I could use my position plus the mountain to align the map properly, and then I’d be able to work out what time it is on the basis of the sun. All the stuff I’ve learnt is useless. But why do I need to know what time it is?