The only contribution I get to make is lining up the rucksacks on the shore of the lake, as there are five of them. I take the rucksack intended for the strong man and can barely lift it with both hands.
‘Arne, are you sure this isn’t going to be too heavy?’
‘That man’s as strong as a Sherpa!’
‘Hold on,’ Qvigstad says. ‘We’ll give him the eggs as well. If he breaks them, I hope for his sake he’s as strong as he thinks!’
‘How long will he stay with us?’
‘For the first twenty-five kilometres, then he’ll go back. Otherwise there won’t be enough food left for us.’
In other words: after the first twenty-five kilometres the contents of the five rucksacks will have to be divided over four, which we will have to carry the rest of the way ourselves.
If only I had done more sport! If only this wasn’t my first visit to Norway, then I wouldn’t be so worried about having to cross raging rivers using stepping stones, with thirty kilos on my back. Even in the Pyrenees last summer, with Diederik Geelhoed, there was the village for us to return to at night. We didn’t do much carrying at all. Just sandwiches, and on the way home a couple of rock samples. I think back on the salted meat and runner beans with oil, our daily fare in Setcases.
The sun glitters crimson in the water, pushing light and heat towards us like a bulldozer. My head still aches and my eyes sting.
Each of us stands up in turn, positions his camera, cocks the self-timer and hurries back to pose with the others. Click. Arne is the only one to take a photo without himself in it, because he hasn’t got a delayed-action timer.
‘What’s keeping the strong man?’
‘I saw a monument for a strong man in Tromsø. Carried a stone weighing three hundred and seventy-one kilos, apparently.’
‘A monument?’ Qvigstad asks.
‘Yes, the actual stone. It’s still there, with a bronze plaque on top.’
‘I expect they left it there because he didn’t have the strength to take it away.’
Mikkelsen and I laugh. Arne stands up, peers through his fists binocular-wise and says:
‘There he is.’
The V-shaped ripples drawn by the long boat with the outboard spread over the entire lake.
There’s only room for Qvigstad on board, and we hand him all five rucksacks plus the tripod. The boat, which is no wider than a tree trunk, can’t take more than two people. Arne, Mikkelsen and I are to walk around the lake and then some distance along a river, up to an agreed spot where Qvigstad and the strong man will be waiting. Then we will continue on foot, straight across the watershed. Over the Vaddasgaissa range and then to a lake. Lake Lievnasjaurre.
I follow Mikkelsen and Arne across the river as before, leaping from stone to stone. I wish I could stop having these sombre visions of what will happen if I lose my footing.
What if the moulded rubber soles of my hiking shoes lose their grip all of a sudden? In the meantime I am keeping count: it is six paces across the river, over five half-submerged stepping stones.
Made it, once again.
Now for the higher ground. The slope is studded with mounds of greensward harbouring a core of ice. My ankles buckle with every step.
We have left the last of the trees behind. Nothing but black crowberry, knee-high polar willows, and dwarf beeches no taller than heather, apart from which they are exactly like ordinary beeches: same trunks though no thicker than a twig, same leaves though no bigger than toenails. They could be scale models for a mock-up landscape.
It is now seven thirty, and marginally less hot than it has been all day; the wind has dropped.
I take a colour photograph now and then, just as a souvenir. Something to show my mother and Eva later on. What was that girlfriend of Eva’s called, the one she brought home with her the day before I left? She confused me so much I didn’t catch her name. She wasn’t in the house more than ten minutes. Pretty young, eighteen I’d say. Oh well. I could show her the photos some time and tell her about my trip. Might even be someone I could marry, two years from now, say, when I’ve finished my thesis. We could get engaged on the day I receive my PhD. That would be a banal thing to do, in Diederik Geelhoed’s opinion. But what do I care if hundreds or indeed thousands of other people have done it before — it’s hardly the sort of occasion that calls for anything inventive.
Some people can be so boring about those things. Including Diederik Geelhoed. The kind who go around in sandals instead of shoes, just to be different. I think it’s sad when people can’t channel their energy into areas where being different really makes a difference. I wouldn’t go around with Diederik if he weren’t so easy to talk to. There’s no-one I can open up to as much as to Diederik. Which is strange. Or is it? Maybe it’s just the feeling that there are certain issues you can only raise with someone you think will know what you’re talking about. But there are also things I wouldn’t for the life of me share with Diederik. There’s a limit to what you can give away about yourself to even the closest of friends. Everything beyond that limit is forbidden territory, and is best not even hinted at. Which is why you say: ‘Right you are, Diederik, marry in haste repent at leisure. The faculty is a business venture run by comedians, and the professors wear black academic robes to disguise their intellectual conmanship. Enemies of the Working Class to a man!’
Never will I let on to Diederik there are only two or three things I want so desperately that failing to achieve them would mean my life was not worth living. One is finding a meteor crater, another obtaining a cum laude for my PhD thesis, and then there’s marrying Eva’s girlfriend, becoming a university professor …
Qvigstad and the strong man are waiting for us at the prearranged spot along the river, where the bank is steep and slippery. The boat is moored to a rock. The five rucksacks are lined up in readiness along with the wooden tripod.
Gnawing the hangnail on my thumb, I watch as the strong man sinks to his knees, slips his right arm through the corresponding strap of his rucksack, draws himself up with the load angled on his hip, then slips the other strap on. He smiles. He hooks his thumbs behind the straps and takes a few slow steps. Then, after a moment’s pause, he stoops to pick up the tripod as well.
I wait for Arne, Mikkelsen and Qvigstad to take their pick of the remaining rucksacks. The last one will be for me. Protestations flit across my mind (‘No need to leave the smallest one for me! Oh, come on, don’t overdo the hospitality!’), but there doesn’t seem to be a single English word left in my vocabulary, so I keep quiet.
I take up the burden assigned to me, aping their gestures. Damn, even heavier than I thought. Bowed down by my rucksack, I follow in their footsteps, initially sinking to my ankles in the mud, then placing my feet gingerly on the soggy slope. My camera and the pocket containing my map, both dangling from my neck, knock against my stomach with each step. Having to jerk my head up to look in the distance makes me feel like a mole or some other creature designed for keeping their eyes to the ground. I can feel the blood swelling in my temples and hammering on the ache in my skull. Having let down my head-net, I survey the landscape through a green haze of mosquito netting.
Twenty paces already. I am not lagging behind. They are walking as slowly as I am. Feeling the weight of their rucksacks, just like me. No-one speaks.
Two birds swoop across my path, strenuously flapping their wings as though intent on flustering me.
How stupid of me not to listen when that girl said her name. Her expression was a mix of levity and melancholy, a bit like certain sonatinas. It is not often I compare a girl to a piece of music, but when I do it is always a girl I am so dazzled by that even if I saw her every day it would be months before I dared to touch her. As if I had to study the music first.