Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

She pulls into a parking area at a promontory jutting out over the fjord, so that we can admire the view.

‘So weird,’ she says, ‘us being here together, now. I can’t believe it. I often think there isn’t really that much difference between living and dreaming. The difference is illusory, because when we’re awake we’re too busy interpreting all the sights around us to see that life’s a dream, too.’

I lean back with my arms folded across my chest. I’m all ears. She tells me she is a music critic, and that she writes about music for several leading weeklies.

‘No-one is more painfully aware of the demise of human culture than the American in Europe. There are plenty of landscapes like this in the States, but all of them are ruined. You wonder why that is. There are buildings here too. The trees are much the same as back home, and they’re sawn into the same kind of planks. But it’s as if Americans keep getting the proportions wrong by about two inches. You can’t imagine how irritating it is to find a big nation like the United States being copied the world over in the silliest of ways. All those cigarette brands with American names, in countries where they don’t speak English. Why? South State Cigarettes. I ask you. What does it mean? It’s the most banal name you could think of. But calling a European packet of cigarettes South State apparently improves the taste. And then all those youngsters getting together in pathetic little jazz bands with crazy English names, singing American songs in crazy accents. Hipsters, beatniks, real gone guys. It’s so incredibly sad to see all those kids busting their guts for the sake of mere imitation. Just as sad as a Texan oil millionaire displaying a fake Picasso in his lounge, no, even sadder, because millionaires don’t deserve any better. Those kids are wasting their energy on a sort of spiritual enslavement, because they’ re trying to become Miles Davis or John Coltrane in ways that’ll never work. And then there are more and more people nowadays writing poems, and even novels, in the most awful broken English. Of course, I can see why Europeans speak English with an accent. I have profound admiration for anyone who knows a second language. But the moment people find out I’m American they start speaking English with a strange throaty accent which they take to be American. It’s the same all over Europe. The other day I was in a restaurant having dinner and there were two Germans at a neighbouring table. I don’t understand much German, but I could clearly hear one of them larding his conversation with the English expression “ so what!” He obviously thought he was very clever. So what!’

It was not the shortest route back to town by any means. I confided in Wilma that my first ambition was to be a great scientist like my father, and that I had wanted desperately to possess a meteorite from the age of six, but that after my father died I was set on becoming a flautist instead of a scholar — that is, until I was fourteen and discovered I had learnt to play the wrong kind of flute.

She commiserated. Said I could still become a flautist if I wanted, mentioned great musicians — Americans I’ve never heard of — who turned to music full-time later on in life.

‘But it’s hardly a good sign that I didn’t even get out of the car to visit Grieg’s home, now is it?’ I say. She retorts that we’ll go back there as soon as my leg is better.

What is she thinking of? And isn’t this at odds with her theory about living and dreaming? I can’t imagine chance meetings with the same person happening three times in a dream.

She occupies a plush suite with a wide balcony on the top floor of the hotel. A waiter comes in bearing a silver platter covered by a napkin and an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne.

We stand together on the balcony looking out over the town. Here in Bergen you can actually speak of darkness falling. Not black darkness. Blue. Impossible to describe the shade: a blue that is almost incandescent.

An illuminated cable car rises against a black mountainside.

Down on the pavement in front of the hotel three Salvation Army soldiers strike up a tune on a tambourine, a guitar and a banjo.

‘It’s very hot,’ Wilma says. ‘Hold on a moment.’

She retreats from the balcony. I wonder what brought those Salvation Army people here. Do they know I am about to start a new life? Did Nummedal send them after me?

I too go back inside, switch on a small lamp and lie down on the divan. The rumble of traffic, the Salvation Army singers, the shower splashing close by.

Wilma emerges from the bathroom. She has on a kind of pyjama suit of tea-rose satin. A short top and long narrow pants, low-waisted and with a showy zip-fastening on the front.

Smiling at me, Wilma goes to the door, turns the key and then crosses to the side table. She uncorks the champagne and fills two glasses.

With a glass in each hand she says:

‘The zip’s pretty neat, don’t you think? Men usually find this sort of thing very sexy.’

‘Because it doesn’t …’ I mumble

She perches at the end of the divan.

‘Sköl,’ she says, and drinks.

I find her beautiful, like an exotic doll.

She says:

‘I know exactly what you were going to say. A zip fly on a woman’s pants is just decoration, because it doesn’t serve the same purpose as for men.’

I laugh, realising that she amuses me and, unknowingly, comforts me too.

Wilma says:

‘But the real explanation lies elsewhere. I’m sure the designer of these pants sought advice from a psychoanalyst. You know why?’

‘I don’t know anything about psychoanalysis.’

My eyes linger on her thighs in the slinky skin-tight trousers with tiny, almost invisible creases in the side seams. The straining fabric is even sexier to me than her fly fastening, but what would be the psychoanalytical explanation for that?

It’s too complicated to ask her.

Wilma says:

‘A thinker with a simplistic outlook once told me it’s because a fly fastening on a woman’s pants resembles what’s underneath. Gross, don’t you think? And not very psychoanalytical either. It’s the actual fastening that it’s all about. We must think in terms of repressed homosexual components in the psyche of the normal, heterosexual male.’

‘Must we?’

‘Let me explain. Heterosexual men are sent into a panic by the mere thought of opening another man’s flies. That’s what defines them as heterosexual. That sense of panic. The sight of any zip fly immediately rouses unconscious fears in them, which are promptly allayed by their consciousness when they realise that the fastening in question belongs to a woman. What it comes down to, you understand, is that a woman appeals more fully to the male heterosexual psyche in pants like these than in a skirt — more even than if she’s completely naked. Because it’s not only the heterosexual component in his psyche that is prevailed upon, it’s also his repressed homosexuality. Therefore the stimulus is far greater.’

‘Rather complicated, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all. What does a normal man think? That other people’s flies are taboo. Taboos invite breaking. What happens if the man breaks the taboo when it’s a woman wearing the pants? Not the dreaded forbidden fruit is his reward, but the garden of paradise. It’s as simple as that.’

She takes my hand and strokes the inside of my wrist with the tips of her fingers. She settles back on the divan, folds one leg beneath her and stretches the other in a long slanting line down to her varnished toenails.

‘So now you know. A detail on a woman’s clothing that appears to be merely decorative can turn out to serve a purpose that is, to some extent, rationally evident.’