Beyond Sleep

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  Copyright

  This edition first published in the United States in 2007 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  NEW YORK:

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  for bulk and special sales orders, contact sales@overlookny.com

  Copyright © 1966 by Willem Frederik Hermans

  English translation copyright © 2006 by Ina Rilke

  This translation was made from the most recent, 27th impression of Nooit meer slapen, published in 2003 by De Bezige Bei; this is identical to the 15th impression, published in 1978, which also contains the author’s postscript, appearing here on p.311.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connectionwith a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-375-9

  I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

  Isaac Newton

  Contents

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Author’s Notes

  About Beyond Sleep

  1

  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.

  Silence.

  On the desktop before him are papers and two large stones. Also some small porcelain bowls containing smaller stones dusted with cigar ash. Across the papers lies a magnifying glass the size of a frying pan.

  ‘Professor Sibbelee asked me to pass on his best regards to you.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  Another silence.

  My tongue is a hand groping in the depths of a black sack for some way of steering this conversation to my purpose in coming here. Nothing tactful comes to mind. Plunge in at the deep end, then.

  ‘Did you, by any chance, manage to get hold of those aerial photographs for me?’

  ‘Aerial photos? What do you mean, aerial photos? Of course we have aerial photos here. But I do not know whether anyone is using them at present. There are so many aerial photos.’

  He doesn’t know what I am talking about! Could he have forgotten his promise to Sibbelee, that he would give me the aerial surveys I need for my fieldwork? I have a feeling that further explanations of my need will be counterproductive, but I can’t think of anything better. I can hardly give up without having tried every tack.

  ‘Yes, Professor, the aerial photographs …’

  ‘Is it the entire collection you wish to see?’

  ‘There has been … there was …’

  My left hand is down between my knees holding my right, which is bunched into a fist. My elbows press against my sides.

  ‘There was mention of a set of aerial photographs I could use for my research in Finnmark.’

  I am not sure what I just said rates as correct German, but I can’t imagine there was anything Nummedal would have any difficulty understanding, and I articulated the words clearly and without faltering.

  He draws a deep breath and says:

  ‘I consider Qvigstad and Jordal among the best pupils I have ever had, and I speak of a period of many years, you understand. They know all about Finnmark.’

  ‘Of course. I have only met Qvigstad briefly, but Arne strikes me as someone from whom I can learn a great deal, which makes it all the more a privilege for me to accompany him.’

  ‘A privilege, sir? Indeed it is! Geology is a science that is strongly bound to geographic circumstance. In order to obtain results that amaze and impress, one must practise geology in areas with something left to discover. But that is the great difficulty facing us. I know a fair few geologists who went looking in places where no-one had bothered to look before because it was assumed there was nothing there. They never found anything either.

  ‘May I let you in on a secret?’ he goes on. ‘The true geologist never completely forsakes his gold-prospecting forebears. You may laugh at me for saying this, but I am old. Which gives me a certain right to romanticise.’

  ‘No, no! I know exactly what you mean!’

  ‘Ah, so you know what I mean. But for you as a Dutchman, the concept must be somewhat unpalatable. Such a small country, densely populated for centuries and with scientific standards known to be among the highest in the world. I can well imagine the geologists in Holland having to stand on each other’s toes, and being sorely tempted in the process to palm off a stray toe as the incisor of a Cave Bear!’

  ‘The country is small, admittedly, but the soil is exceptionally varied.’

  ‘That is what you people think, just because there is a geologist with a microscope on each square metre. That does not change the fact that there are no mountains. No plateaux, no glaciers, no waterfalls either! Marshland, mud and clay, that is all! It will end with them counting every single grain of sand, I shouldn’t wonder. To me that is not geology. I call it bookkeeping, hair-splitting. Verfallene Wissenschaft, is what I call it, verfallene Wissenschaft.’

  My laughter is both civil and sincere.

  ‘Oh, Professor, they have also found coal, salt, oil and natural gas.’

  ‘But the important issues, my dear sir. The big questions! Where did our planet come from? What is its future? Are we heading towards a new ice age, or will there be date palms growing on the South Pole one day? The big questions that make science great, the questions that are the true function of science!’

  Pressing both hands on the creaky desktop, he rises.

  ‘The true function of science! Do you understand? Coal to burn in the stove, natural gas to boil an egg for breakfast, salt to sprinkle on it – mere household words, as far as I’m concerned. What is science? Science is the titanic endeavour of the human intellect to break out of its cosmic isolation through understanding!’

  2

  Nummedal comes out from behind his desk. He keeps his fingertips in contact with the desktop throughout.

  ‘I propose taking you on a little tour of the environs of Oslo this afternoon. Where are those maps …?’

  He moves towards one of the long tables covered in maps.

  ‘That would be very nice,’ I say.

  I spoke without emphasis or reflection.

  What if I had said I had to continue my journey northwards this afternoon?

  He flips down his extra glasses and holds one of the maps up close to his eyes. What if I come right out and tell him the only reason I called on him was to get hold of the aerial photographs?

  His jaw sags.

  What if I tell him I’ve already booked a seat on the plane to Trondheim? That I must leave in fifteen minutes?

  But what if he takes offence, and lets me go off to Finnmark without the photographs?

  I step closer to him. We stand side by side at the long table. The m
ap in his hands has been rolled up for a long time, the corners curl inwards. Nummedal leans forward to spread it out on the table and I help him hold down the springy paper. It is a heliotype print. Could it be an unpublished map, one he has picked out as a special favour to me?

  No, it is an ordinary geological survey of the Oslo district. He says:

  ‘I must have a better copy somewhere, in colour.’

  As he moves down the table he upsets a pile of papers, spilling them across the floor. I squat on my heels to retrieve them.

  ‘Oh, there is no need!’

  Looking up, I see he’s holding another map, a cloth-backed one this time. With my hands full of papers, I straighten up. Nummedal takes no notice.

  ‘Here it is. Come along now, let’s go.’

  I lay the papers on the table and follow him.

  Which map has he got now? While I hold the door open for him, I see it is the coloured version of the geological survey of Oslo. Does he really have no idea why I am here?

  ‘This one is mounted on linen,’ he says, ‘but not in the proper way. It can’t be folded.’

  And he hands me the map.

  The corridor. We move towards the stairs, me on his left with the roll under my arm.

  ‘I was in Amsterdam before the war,’ Nummedal says, ‘I visited the geological institute there. Splendid building. Fine collections from Indonesia.’

  His right hand trails along the wall.

  ‘Losing the colonies must have been a terrible blow for geologists in your country.’

  ‘It would seem so on the face of it. But fortunately there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere? My dear young man, don’t delude yourself! Other countries have their own geologists. The science is bound to suffer in the long run if your geologists have no alternative but to set their sights abroad.’

  The thirteenth tread of the second flight down.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Still, you know, nowadays, with all the new international organisations, and borders becoming so much easier to cross …’

  ‘All that looks fine on paper! But where does it leave the profound insights and natural affinity with the big questions, if people receive their training in a tiny, flat country of mud and clay without a single mountain?’