Beyond Sleep

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  The slope I am now going down is thinly blanketed with mist, as if the ground is simmering. A stretch of water glistens in the deep, beneath the mist. A lake, larger than the other lakes: Lievnasjaurre!

  Arne is way ahead, in the distance. Where will he stop, when will I see him shed his rucksack?

  I glance at my watch: four o’clock.

  It is half past five when Arne halts on a flat-topped rise near the lake and unloads his rucksack. The strong man is next, he too sets his rucksack on the ground, along with the tripod he’s been carrying. But Qvigstad and Mikkelsen just stand there facing each other, talking, their thumbs hooked behind their shoulder straps. In no hurry to get their breath back, apparently.

  They are still standing talking when I turn up a quarter of an hour later. I ease one of the straps off my shoulder and lower the rucksack carefully to the ground. Qvigstad takes out a packet of cigarettes. Interrupting his Norwegian exchange with Mikkelsen, he offers me one, saying:

  ‘Maggots are just as happy to feast on the carcass of a hyena as on a dead bird of paradise. Ever thought about that? Mikkelsen hasn’t.’

  Then he moves away to offer the strong man a cigarette.

  Arne says, in English:

  ‘Fifty kroner will do.’

  We all draw out our wallets to contribute. Mikkelsen has already unpacked the strong man’s rucksack. We let him keep a tin of sardines and a box of knäckebröd for the journey home. Without having sat down even for a moment, he shakes hands with us all and heads off, back where he came from.

  ‘He was very strong man indeed,’ Mikkelsen says.

  A peculiar kind of vivacity takes hold of us, as if the sun, reappearing now higher in the sky, is bearing us along to its own rhythm, blotting out all thought of sleep. I feel as fully awake as if I had just got out of bed. Arne asks me to get the fishing net out of my rucksack.

  All four of us walk to the shore of the lake with the net that is supposed to hang in the water like a curtain so the fish get their gills caught in the mesh.

  A breeze is rising. As we unfold the net it flutters and catches on the bushes at the waterside. Just as well there are four of us, or it would be impossible to untangle the thin nylon strands from the swaying stalks.

  Finding wood for a fire is no picnic either. The polar willows are too wet and the dwarf birches too tough to snap off. There is a type of resinous shrub that can serve as firewood, but it’s not plentiful around here. The flames keep going out, in spite of our taking turns to crouch down to blow on the embers.

  ‘Lapps,’ Arne says, ‘always travel with some birch bark under their shirts, for kindling.’

  Qvigstad puts an end to this challenge of the great outdoors with a dash of paraffin. Coffee is brewed in the small kettle while we work our way through thick slices of bread with tinned meat. The meat is called Lordagsrull. Viking Brand. How apt.

  Slowly chewing my food I take in the view. At the far side of the lake rises a lone mountain, almost perfectly conical in shape. The type of mountain that people who have never seen mountains imagine them to be like, the type of mountain Dutch children put in their drawings. Its name is Vuorje (pronounced: Voor-ye). The low sun floods the peak with crimson, and at the dark base lies an expanse of snow.

  25

  Qvigstad and Mikkelsen have disappeared into their pale green tent with the double-fabric top and sewn-in groundsheet. A cabin of canvas, closed at the front with a triangle of mesh. Insect-proof. Before bedding down they will have used their spray to dispose of any intruders. In other words, they will be shielded from the plague as long as they remain in the tent. A pause in the battle that rages twenty-four hours a day.

  I lie next to Arne, who’s snoring, so I don’t get a wink of sleep. I wonder if I will ever sleep again. Arne’s tent is shaped like a pyramid propped up in the centre with a broken broom handle wound round with copper wire to join the two pieces together.

  This tent does not run to a sewn-in groundsheet. A pair of loose rectangles of plastic is all we have to stop the damp rising into our sleeping bags.

  The white canvas sides are heavily patched, like Arne’s clothing, and are pegged to the ground at the corners only. We have weighed down the edges with stones to keep out the worst of the wind, but there’s no way of keeping out the mosquitoes. So they congregate at the apex of the pyramid, which, since I am on my back, is in my direct line of vision. From there they sally forth to feast on our hands and faces.

  *

  This cannot go on. Not getting any sleep at night is going to do me in, sooner or later. I push down my sleeping bag and sit up. Out with the mosquito oil, then, for another lavish application. After that I put on the hat with the head-net and tie the flap securely under my chin. Finally I crawl back into my sleeping bag, pull up the zips, wriggle my arms inside and try to remain absolutely still. My eyelids are red curtains. The sun is already so high and so harsh that even from inside the tent it hurts to look at the side it is beaming on.

  Arne snoring. The fjelljo trimming its hedge. Birds in general twittering, screeching, circling overhead with beating wings. The sweat starting out on my legs collects into drops which trickle down, causing an itchy sensation. Mosquitoes and flies raise and lower the pitch of their buzzing in full accord with the Doppler effect. Oh, you can tell exactly where they are simply by ear. Over the past day I have developed a successful technique of killing them by means of slaps to the head, my hands being guided by sound not sight. The sonar-driven coup de grâ ce. In my current position slapping is impossible, and besides it shouldn’t be necessary. The head-net should offer full protection. But a pinprick sensation on my nose makes me suspicious. I open my eyes. Settled on the mesh just above my right eye is a mosquito. The net is in contact with the tip of my nose. So I may not have imagined the pinprick at all, the insect could easily have attacked me through the mesh. By blowing hard I manage to shift the net a few centimetres away from my nose, and, as the fabric is fairly stiff, it stays like that. Provided I keep my head perfectly still.

  The mosquito that bit me returns to the big top in triumph, boasting of its heroic exploit. Several dozen of its siblings swarm down to see if it’s telling the truth. They alight. Ascertain at a glance that I’m unattainable.

  A glance is all it takes! Whereas my own eyes ache from trying to focus on the pests at such close quarters.

  I close my eyes, the better to eavesdrop on a debate in the insect world.

  ‘He’s lying,’ one mosquito says, ‘he didn’t bite, he just had a sniff round.’

  ‘Yes, I bet that’s what he did,’ another chimes in. ‘Because the smell around here is mouth-watering.’

  ‘Mouth-watering, you say?’ a younger sibling asks.

  ‘Precisely. Mouth-watering. You’re not old enough yet, you haven’t learnt to appreciate the smell of mosquito oil.’

  ‘Like a kid who’s too young to appreciate a dab of mustard on his beef.’

  Then mama mosquito pipes up with the explanation:

  ‘No, it isn’t that. The mosquito oil manufacturers have invented a new product. The stuff they make nowadays makes people smell much better than before.’

  What drivel, I think to myself, but how else am I to conserve what little humour I have left? A sense of humour is a precious asset in precarious circumstances.

  In due course several mosquitoes discover that my filter is not hermetically sealed. Treading with caution, no doubt mindful of the memoirs of the world’s leading speleologists, they are in the process of insinuating themselves into the bowels of my sleeping bag. This is intolerable.

  I tug furiously to open the zips and sit up. It’s as if a wave of hot steam discharges from the sleeping bag when I peel it down to inspect my legs. Drops of blood here and there. This can’t be the work of mosquitoes. Horseflies, more like. The mosquitoes, observing my uncovered state, descend on me to celebrate the capitulation. I have to keep my hands flapping madly from my groin to my toes to fend them off. Some of them seem
to think the hairs on my shins provide excellent cover, a wonderful camouflage designed expressly for their benefit. A misapprehension savagely avenged by the thunderclap of my hand. But what can my hand do against thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes? About as much as God’s lightning can do to strike down sinners: fascists, communists, capitalists, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, animists, the Ku Klux Klan, Negroes, Jews, Arab refugees, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Americans in Vietnam, the English in Ireland, the Irish in England, Flemings, Walloons, Turks, Greeks and any other miscreants I may have overlooked.

  I light a cigarette, crawl out of the tent. Ouch, my grazed knees.

  My trousers are hanging out to dry on some shrubs. They’re still wet, but I drag the clammy fabric up my legs anyway. The same goes for the socks.

  I go back inside and lie down on top of my sleeping bag, fully dressed. I can’t protect my hands. Too bad.

  The point now is to start feeling drowsy. I try merely relaxing, eyes closed, hands loosely folded on stomach. That’s better. I relax some more, yes, I think I’ve got it, I am getting drowsy, my jaw sags, could that be the onset of a yawn? I think it is, because my eyes are watering. Oh what bliss to be asleep now … I yawn, and it appears to be a genuine yawn, I mean when your mouth remains agape longer than expected and then closes of its own accord. Time I got to sleep. Not sleeping night after night – how will I ever get the brilliant research done to fulfil my father’s legacy? … I must sleep, but how? Sleeping while the light is getting stronger all the time … is like … now what would be a good comparison? Shedding woollies at the onset of winter. Or … damn! It was bad enough with Arne’s snores making a din like a wooden craft being splintered on the rocks, but now my hand is itching like mad, too. I can feel my heart racing with anger, and the next thing I know I’ve opened my eyes to inspect the back of my hand. Five bumps and three mosquitoes, their ringed posteriors tilted up scorpion-like. I slap them with my other hand, shake off the moist remains, sit up and scratch the bumps with slow deliberation.

  Arne stops snoring. I turn my head to look: his eyes are open.

  ‘Maybe we’ll pay heavily in the afterworld,’ he says.

  ‘As if we’re not paying enough in this one. Some creation this is – billions of creatures having to depending for their survival on the blood of others! I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Wriggling halfway out of his sleeping bag, he reaches for his water bottle and a carton of Sunmaid raisins.

  We help ourselves to a handful, which we chew slowly with a drink of water.

  Arne says: ‘I often wonder whether people realise that they might be completely mistaken about their place in the scheme of things. Remember that stuff about the first being last, the last first? Who’s to say we won’t be welcomed into the afterlife by a host of mosquitoes? Wielding the sceptre up on the big throne could be a virus – the foot-and-mouth virus, say.’

  He pauses, then gives a laugh.

  ‘Hell, I’m beginning to sound like Qvigstad. You should ask him, he’ll tell you. Qvigstad’s a metaphysics buff. He knows all there is to know about things like the afterworld, the future a thousand years from now, life after nuclear war, test-tube babies.’

  26

  Qvigstad puts his arm out sideways, holding one end of a branch between forefinger and thumb. The branch hangs perpendicular to the ground, with a large fish impaled by the gills on a snapped-off side shoot.

  ‘See this? Red belly!’

  ‘Freeze!’

  I raise my camera to my right eye.

  ‘Could you lift it up a bit?’

  The fish, in sharp focus, fills the centre of the frame along with the branch and the hand holding it. Beyond the hand Qvigstad’s arm arcs back towards his head, which will probably be blurred, but still recognizable. I use a wide aperture. Mount Vuorje in the background and the dark clouds against the blue sky will be dimly visible.

  ‘With that hat and beard you look like a highwayman – except there aren’t any highways here.’

  Clutching my camera like a priest his prayer book, I move closer.

  ‘This is lake trout,’ he says, pointing to the fish, ‘red belly. Much bigger than the other sort.’

  I would like to prolong our conversation, but can’t think of anything more to say. Qvigstad is one of those people you feel like asking: What do you really think of me? (but who’d ever ask such a question?), to which he’d say: Nothing at all (but who’d ever give such an answer?).

  We are joined by Mikkelsen, after which the three of us walk back to the tents. Mikkelsen takes the stick with the fish from Qvigstad, saying:

  ‘It is not surprising that the founders of great religions were mostly fishermen.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I ask, to humour him.

  ‘Of all the things going on in the world, life under water is the least visible to man. Nothing is further removed from us than the world under water. That’s why the water world is the most powerful symbol of the afterlife. Heaven is reflected in water. Fishermen know more about the water world than anybody else. They take out creatures never seen before, they sink to the bottom in a shipwreck. That’s why all the great prophets are fishermen.’

  ‘And they drown, too,’ Qvigstad says. ‘A most intelligent interpretation – had it been you writing history.’

  Back at the tents he squats down and starts gutting the fish with a knife as big as the ones Lapps wear on their belts.

  Arne is busy folding the net into zigzag pleats. Mikkelsen goes off to cook porridge on the primus. I have nothing to do. It is probably wiser not to help my companions at all than to hinder them. They have been on dozens of these expeditions before. They know exactly how things should be done, or in any case how they want them to be done. If I offered to help they’d be too polite to say no, but what they’d be thinking is: it takes ages to explain exactly what he’s supposed to do, and as he’s so inexperienced we can do everything in half the time.

  Still, I am thankful no-one has mentioned my mishap in the river yesterday. Not that they have any reason to complain. I didn’t cause a delay. I managed to keep the contents of the rucksack dry, and not a peep from me about the pain in my knees. So as not to stand around idle I go over to Arne’s tent and get out my notebook. I reread what I wrote yesterday, adding a comment here and there. My entries up to now don’t promise much in the way of new perspectives. Nor have I observed anything to support Sibbelee’s bold hypothesis. This queasiness in my stomach – could it just be that I’m hungry, or is it the smell of paraffin, burnt porridge and fried fish? In the meantime I ponder the definition of scientific practice. Does hunting for something no-one has found yet and then not finding it count as practising science, or as bad luck? Or is it a sign of insufficient talent? Who’s to say? A terrible fear wells up in me: having to go home empty-handed. Nothing to show for myself but a pack of nice colour snapshots, just the thing for handing round during family gatherings. Nothing that might impress either Sibbelee or Nummedal.

  ‘Breakfast ready!’ Mikkelsen shouts.

  I go over to them and sit down.

  It is beginning to dawn on me that Qvigstad seizes every opportunity of putting one over on Mikkelsen.

  I have never seen Mikkelsen laugh, anyway his face is totally unsuited to expressions of amusement. And his skin, pale and dingy with yellowish down, is at pains to hold his lumpy frame together. His arms are thick and flabby like the arms of a female harpist. Were it not for his sturdy boots, shabby head gear (no head-net) and stained work shirt, you wouldn’t think he was up to much. But he is – he can carry the heaviest of loads and take the most perilous of leaps without difficulty.

  If you saw him in a pavement café, smartly dressed (navy blue blazer, grey flannels), you would probably take him for some milksop who spent his allowance on flowers for darling Mummy. The type who gets to be called ‘Buddy’ by everyone after two days in military service … unless he’s
taking a swipe at his fellow conscripts, that is. That’ll be another thing Mikkelsen’s good at, I don’t doubt – not a sound, not a flicker of emotion crossing his pasty face.

  Naturally Qvigstad never says anything that might provoke Mikkelsen into demonstrating what he is capable of. All he does is take issue with practically everything Mikkelsen says, not that he says much.

  ‘But still,’ Mikkelsen says, ‘no-one can deny there must have been a god who made everything.’

  ‘The number of suppositions no-one can deny is infinite,’ Qvigstad says. ‘Just as infinite as the ways in which you cannot split an atom. That doesn’t get us anywhere.’

  I eat fish with a grubby fork from a grubby plate. The fish tastes so delicious I would gladly launch into a panegyric! For the first time in my life it dawns on me what all those back-to-nature philosophers are on about. I am happy. I am eating a fish of such noble taste and freshness as is not elsewhere to be had for love nor money. Take away the fishing net, frying pan, margarine, matches to light the fire, and you’re left with food that owes nothing to civilisation. Now I know why Negroes and Indians didn’t bother to invent blenders or refrigerators, and never again will I laugh at the cranks who dismiss civilisation as a form of collective insanity. Oh for a Lapp to appear at my side! I would press him to my heart, now that I know what riches he personifies.

  ‘But anyway,’ Mikkelsen flounders on in his broken English, ‘anyway God must have created the universe, it is what people believe all over the world.’

  ‘So what does that prove?’

  ‘That people need an explanation.’

  ‘Oh, come on. All it proves is that people content themselves with an explanation that doesn’t explain anything.’

  Arne tugs at my sleeve, saying:

  ‘Hark the great Qvigstad! In his element, he is.’

  ‘Listen here, my boy,’ Qvigstad says. ‘The one problem all those so-called gods never tackle is the origin of matter. Take the Edda, or whatever you like. Snorre Sturlason maintains that it started out with the creation of Niflheim and Muspelheim. Out of what, may I ask? The Edda doesn’t tell us, nor does Snorre. Between Niflheim and Muspelheim lay the yawning void called Ginnungagap, in which the streams coming from Niflheim froze solid. Sparks from Muspelheim fell on the ice, and the resulting pairing of heat and cold gave rise to a hermaphrodite giant by the name of Ymir. Fascinating I grant you, but that is not the point. The point is that you never get to hear where it all came from. Ymir fell asleep and sweated profusely. Then a man and a woman grew under his left arm.’