We pitch the tents and take off most of our drenched clothes to spread them out to dry. Mikkelsen found a reindeer antler earlier on, and hangs on to it like some silly tourist. First he tied it on top of his rucksack so it appeared to be sprouting from his head. Now he sticks the antler in the ground in front of his tent to dry his socks on. Come winter and it’ ll hang over his bed in his student lodgings, I’ve no doubt.
Qvigstad and Arne move towards the water with the fishing net.
I take my sleeping bag and try to separate the lumps in the down through the fabric. Perhaps it won’t be ruined after all.
While I’m busy doing this, my eye falls on Mikkelsen. He is lying stomach down in front of their tent … doing what? Peering through a stereoscope. Laid out on a sheet of plastic before him is a batch of photographs, which he studies two at a time through the instrument. What is in those photos? I can make out pale blotches in the black borders, could be the imprint of drawing pins. But they could also be part of the image — that is, the faces of clocks and altimeters. Aerial photographs!
I drop my sleeping bag and go over to him.
My heart leaps into my mouth, almost as if it wants to get out.
‘Hey, have you got aerial photographs?’
Stupid question, I must admit.
‘Okay,’ Mikkelsen says, still peering through his stereoscope. I am standing right in front of him, in full view of the top of his skull, which appears to have plumes of greyish dust growing on it instead of hair.
‘Have you got photographs of the whole area?’ I persist.
He lifts his head at last and rolls over onto his side. Leaning on his elbow, he looks up at me.
‘Yes. I have pictures of all the places I have to go to.’
He gestures towards the map lying beside him. It’s the same map I have, the small-scale one, too small for any detail, but there are no better ones.
I crouch down for a closer look.
‘Without these you can’t get anywhere,’ Mikkelsen says. ‘Not in this place. I am very glad I have these air pictures.’
‘Aerial photographs,’ I reiterate, by way of correction. This sounds patronising, of course, but I have to get back at him somehow.
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Nummedal gave them to me.’
‘Did Nummedal have any others besides these? More copies, I mean?’
‘I don’t know. These are from Hvalbiff’s institute. Nummedal borrowed them from Hvalbiff.’
‘When was that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do try and remember.’
He rolls back onto his stomach without comment, slides two fresh photographs under the stereoscope and then, before falling to, gathers the rest into a pile which he turns over face down.
At this point my hatred of Mikkelsen is so intense that I can hardly breathe. The notion of a monstrous conspiracy ranged against me takes hold.
It could have gone like this: Sibbelee sent Nummedal a letter telling him about the research I planned to do, at which Nummedal thought: Aha! Now’s my chance to get back at Sibbelee for having contradicted me at that important conference all those years ago.
Sibbelee needs a favour from Nummedal. It would obviously be bad form for a professor flatly to turn down the request of a colleague, but Nummedal is too crafty for that anyway. More devious. He summons his pupil Mikkelsen and proposes an interesting little research project for him to undertake — my research.
Which is just fine with Mikkelsen. Why wouldn’t it be? Nummedal gets Hvalbiff to supply him with all the photographs that I might be needing. Then Nummedal sends off his letter to Sibbelee — the very letter I have in my wallet still, saying I wish your pupil a good journey to Oslo, followed by his signature.
The Dutch pupil has a good journey to Oslo and calls at the appointed hour. In the meantime Nummedal has issued instructions. There won’t have been many — none at all, in fact. He just doesn’t tell the porter he’s expecting a visitor. What could be simpler. Despite the porter’s not being informed of my visit, I get into the building. Nummedal hears me coming up the stairs. He ensconces himself behind his desk. Acts the innocent. Aerial photographs? Of course we have photographs here! And all along he knows exactly which photographs I’ ll be needing and also exactly where they are. All those hours of pontificating back in Oslo, acting the Great Master imparting knowledge that was useless to me — he knew full well that I was wasting my time.
The mould-infested hulk lying at my feet has got hold of my aerial photographs. The hulk has no English, so I can’t explain to him what’s in my head. Loathsome runt. Strange, when I address a few words to him my own English comes out sounding runty. Murder comes to mind … I look around me, no sign of Arne and Qvigstad. At the same time I know I’m not really going to kick Mikkelsen’s head in. I walk around him, panting. Nothing escapes me now. I know that going round him in circles acts as a surrogate for kicking him to death, which I could easily do.
Is there anything worse than being obsessed with a plan you know you’ ll never carry out, the kind of plan that would only succeed in a dream-world in which you’ re omnipotent? Such as kicking Mikkelsen to death, not even touching him with my hands, no, not even with my left foot. Just kicking and kicking my right foot into his face. No resistance from him except that he goes into spasms, letting out a hoarse grunt with each fresh blow. Then he chokes, after which he stops moving altogether save for the jolts caused by the final thrusts of my shoe.
I leave him lying there, stuff the photographs in my map pocket and stride away, indefatigable, straddling rivers on winged feet, knowing exactly where to go — because I spotted half a dozen or more meteor craters on those photographs of Mikkelsen’ s. Seven small ones and a large one in the middle. What is that I see? My attention is caught by a couple of shiny, glazed potatoes lying on the ground. I pick one up and am struck by its weight: seven times that of an ordinary potato, three times that of a normal stone of that size.
They are meteorites.
31
‘Training for the hop, skip and jump, are we?’
Starting awake from my reverie, I notice Qvigstad and Arne standing by my side. Arne grins at me.
‘How d’ you mean?’ I ask, and hear with shame an edge of hostility to my voice.
‘You seem to have made a good recovery.’
I am racked with pain. My left calf muscle is seized with cramp, I can scarcely stay upright. I feel as if knitting needles are being poked through the marrow of my bones.
‘He’s got the aerial photographs,’ I mutter.
‘I didn’t hear, what did you say?’
‘He’s got my aerial photographs,’ I repeat, hardly raising my voice.
‘Your aerial photographs? What do you mean?’
‘I spent an extra day in Oslo,’ I say, with my eyes fixed on Qvigstad, ‘for the sole purpose of collecting the aerial photographs Nummedal had promised me. But when I got there Nummedal said he knew nothing about them. He told me I should go to Trondheim and apply to Direktør Hvalbiff. So I went to Trondheim. No luck there either, because the Trondheim people had long ago passed the photographs to Nummedal. Nummedal was just pretending. He knew perfectly well that Mikkelsen had those aerial photographs.’
*
I have never seen Qvigstad look at me with so much interest. Arne is standing just behind him, a little to one side.
‘Arne,’ I say, ‘remember what I told you when you asked me if I had any aerial photographs?’
‘Did I ask you that?’