Willem Hermans - Beyond Sleep

The porter is disabled.

The oak reception desk at which he sits, staring through cheap sunglasses, is bare but for a telephone. His left ear must have been ripped off in the explosion that caused his disfigurement, or possibly it was burnt in a plane crash. What is left of the ear resembles a misshapen navel and offers no support for the hook of his dark glasses.

‘Professor Nummedal, please. I have an appointment with him.’

‘Good day, sir. I don’t know if Professor Nummedal is in.’

His English sounds slow, as if it’s German. He falls silent, doesn’t stir.

‘I made an appointment yesterday with Professor Nummedal’s secretary — for ten thirty today.’

Automatically I glance at my watch, which I adjusted to Norwegian summer time upon arrival in Oslo yesterday. Half past ten.

Only now do I notice the electric clock above his head, also indicating half past ten.

As if wanting to dispel every vestige of doubt in the disabled porter’s mind, I bring out the letter given to me by Professor Sibbelee in Amsterdam and say:

‘Actually, the date was fixed some time ago.’

The letter is from Nummedal to Sibbelee, mentioning today, Friday 15th, as a possible date for a meeting. I wish your pupil a good journey to Oslo . Signed: Ørnulf Nummedal .

I unfold the letter and hold it out for the porter to read. But he doesn’t move his head, only his hands.

On his left hand the fingers are missing, and all that remains on the right is a nail-less stump and the thumb. The thumb is completely unscathed, with a clean, well-kept nail. It almost looks alien to him. Not one finger left for a wedding ring.

His wristwatch has a small metal cover, which he snaps open with his thumbnail. There is no glass beneath the lid.

The porter runs the nail-less stump over the dial and says:

‘It is possible that Professor Nummedal is in his study. Two flights up and second door on your right.’

Open-mouthed, I put the letter back in my pocket.

‘Thank you.’

Why I thanked him I don’t know. The cheek! Treating me as if I were just anyone, someone who’d wandered in off the street without having an appointment.

But I suppress my rage. I’m prepared to have pity on him, like his employer, who evidently sees fit to keep him on despite his inability to perform simple tasks, such as receiving visitors without treating them as though they can drop dead for all he cares.

In the meantime I have counted the treads on the two flights of stairs: twenty-eight each with an interval of eight paces across the landing. From the top of the stairs to the second door on the right is another fifteen paces. I knock. From inside a voice calls something I don’t understand. I push open the door, rehearsing my English phrases under my breath: Are you Professor Nummedal … Have I the pleasure … My name is …

… Where are you, Professor Nummedal?

The study is a vast oak-panelled room. My eyes seek out the professor and locate him in the farthest corner, behind a desk. I advance between two tables laden with half-furled maps. To the side of the small grey figure behind the desk looms the white rectangle of a drawing board in upright position.

‘Are you Professor Nummedal?’

‘Yes?’

He makes a half-hearted attempt to rise.

A shaft of sunlight falls on his spectacles, which are so thick as to appear opaque. He raises his hand to flip up the extra pair of lenses hinged along the top of the frame. Four small round mirrors are now trained on me.

I step up close to his desk and explain that I telephoned his secretary yesterday and that she told me to be here today at this hour.

‘My secretary?’

His English is very hard to distinguish from Norwegian, which I don’t speak, and his voice is as ancient as only a voice can be that has said all there is to say:

‘I do not recall my secretary saying this to me, but perhaps it was her intention. Where does you come from?’

‘From the Netherlands. I’m that student of Professor Sibbelee’s. I’m going to Finnmark with your students Arne Jordal and Qvigstad.’

My hand reaches into my inside pocket and once more draws out the letter Nummedal wrote to Sibbelee.

I find myself unfolding the letter, as I did for the porter.

‘Well, well. You is a Nedherlander, you is …’

I chuckle by way of assent and also to show my appreciation for his near-perfect pronunciation of the Dutch word.

‘Nedherlanders!’ he goes on. ‘Clever people. Very clever. Can you follow me? Or do you prefer to speak German?’

‘It is … all the same to me,’ I say.

‘Niederländer,’ he retorts in German, ‘a highly intelligent nation, they speak all languages. Professor Sibbelee writes to me in a mixture of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. We call that Scandinavian. Take a seat.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, in English.

He sticks to German.

‘I have known Professor Sibbelee for many years. Let me see, when did I first meet him? It must have been before the war, at the conference in Tokyo. Yes. The year I presented my paper — which has become a classic, if I may say so — on the milonite zone in Värmland and its expansion into Norway. Vielleicht kennen Sie die kleine Arbeit?’

He pauses for a moment, but not long enough to compel me to confess my ignorance of the said opus. Then, brightly, he continues.

‘Sibbelee opened a debate about it at the time. Things got quite heated. He could not agree with a single argument I put forward. Can you imagine? Such a to-do! Sibbelee is thirty years younger than me and in those days he was very young indeed, very young. The passion of youth!’

Nummedal bursts out laughing. Even when he laughs the creases in the far too ample skin on his face remain for the most part vertical.

I laugh along with him, although I’m a bit concerned about his memories of the very person who recommended me to him.

Can he see what I’m thinking?

‘Das sind jetzt natü rlich alles alte Sachen! All water under the bridge, now. Sibbelee changed his tune eventually. He even worked here at my institute for a spell. I can’t for the life of me remember what sort of research he was engaged in. One can’t remember everything. In any case, he spent quite some time here. The results didn’t amount to much, as far as I know.’

Exit Sibbelee, down the hatch. I can sense my mentor’s nemesis rubbing off on me. Wouldn’t it be better to take my leave now? But the aerial photographs?

‘I am eighty-four years old,’ Nummedal says. ‘I have seen a great deal of scientific work done to no avail. Warehouses filled with collections no-one takes any notice of, until the day they are thrown out for lack of space. I have seen theories come and go like wild geese or swallows. Have you ever eaten braised lark? Incidentally, there is a restaurant here in Oslo where they serve gravlachs. Have you heard of it? A sort of salmon, not like smoked salmon — well there is a similarity I suppose, but more delicate, more subtle. Raw salmon, buried underground for a time and then dug up again.’

His voice has grown more subtle, too, to the point of being inaudible. The skin of his neck droops slackly in his too-wide collar, and when he purses his lips in deep thought the folds seem to travel upwards, unimpeded by his chin, to corrugate his whole face.