Water pours from my rucksack, windproof jacket and trousers when I find myself on dry land again. Did Arne notice the difficulty I was in? I don’t think so. Guided by luck or experience, he made his crossing in places where the peat was less thick or the ground-ice deeper down. He has no idea of what I’m going through. I start up the side of the ravine in an elongated zigzag, angling my feet against the gradient.
The glacier makes a rumbling noise like a hundred tubs brimming over in a vast bath house. The ice has the dingy colour of sheets that haven’t been laundered for months, and is so thickly encrusted with dust and grit that there’s no white left. The shards of slate crackle underfoot like glass.
After descent, ascent comes as a relief. Going down is like falling in slow motion. Not like climbing. Sometimes, pausing halfway up a slope for a breather, you look down and are gripped with fear.
You’d like to turn back, but at the same time you know that turning back is just as risky as pressing on, so you press on.
34
I still can’t believe I made it, didn’t fall, hardly slipped even. Arne has given me one of his cigarettes. Mine are sopping wet. We are sitting side by side on a ledge of rock, right above the glacier. Arne hasn’t commented on my wet clothes, he must have noticed how wretched such mishaps make me feel.
I take off my shoes, tip out the water.
Me:
‘Isn’t it strange, all those billions of things that have happened or are happening on earth, just vanishing without a trace?’
Him:
‘It would be just as strange if records had been kept of everything.’
Me:
‘Those records would have to cover every single thing going on in the world from one second to the next: a wave crashing against a pier, raindrops falling, everything three billion people do or think, every flower that blooms and wilts — complete with dimensions, geographical longitude, latitude, colour and weight.’
‘Why only in our world? The exact history of the universe would have to be recorded, too. And an inventory of that magnitude would become a universe in its own right, a duplicate of ours.’
Me:
‘Two universes wouldn’t be enough. Because the history of record keeping would have to be recorded, too, in a third inventory: yet another universe. And so forth. An infinite number of universes, and there wouldn’t be any point to them. They wouldn’t explain anything.’
‘No, they wouldn’t. Wittgenstein said: Facts are internal to the question, not to the answer. The mystery is not how the world is constituted, but that the world is the case.’
‘Ah! So you’ve read Wittgenstein?’
‘He’ll be read by more and more people as time goes on. Did you know he lived in Norway for several years?’
He props his notebook on his knee and starts sketching. I look over his shoulder. He draws the way other people write. Describes what he sees without using words. How I envy him!
I will get the hang of climbing rocks and crossing rivers eventually, I suppose, but not of drawing. I tried hard since early childhood, but it never amounted to anything. I could never stand all those psychologists theorising about the naive creative urge in the very young, claiming that kids draw cars with square wheels because they live in a world of their own!
The world I live in has never been a world of my own, it existed long before I came into it and I do not recall ever thinking cars had square wheels, not even when I was five and drawing them like that.
At five years of age I knew that my pictures were nothing like as good as the pictures in the newspaper, and after hours of scribbling I would tear up my drawing and burst into tears.
All things considered, I have not been overly blessed with the kind of qualities that come in handy for a geologist. Poor memory, to the point of losing my way in places I know very well. Poor fitness, for lack of exercise. Illegible handwriting. Badly executed drawings.
What a mess! I go in for all this only because I set my mind to it, not because it is second nature. All I have is my ability to endure. That, and an ability quickly to distil meaning from books, which explains why I have always done well in exams.
Arne is better equipped for success than I am, and yet he begrudges himself all extravagance in case he fails to perform some great deed of science. Let’s hope his defeatism won’t rub off on me. My compass is better than his, and I’ll show him I know how to use it.
Just sitting here idle is getting to me, and I fall to untying the cords of my rucksack. There is still water dripping from the bottom, inasmuch as the moisture hasn’t been absorbed by my sleeping bag, which is turning from yellow to dark brown.
My notebook is soggy. I wave it gently in the air with my left hand in the hope of speeding up the drying process, meanwhile tapping my teeth with the pencil in my right hand.
Writing is out of the question. The pencil doesn’t leave a trace on the damp paper, and pressing harder would only make holes in it.
This ravine is by far the most impressive phenomenon I’ve seen until now, but I’m incapable of making notes. What to do? Could take a couple of photographs, I suppose.
I take my camera out of its case, hold it up to eye level, press the shutter. That is one picture, but I need some more. I twist the knob to advance the film. It’s stuck! Some water must have got in, dissolving the gelatine coating and jamming the mechanism. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t open the camera, as I’d lose the whole film. It’s not going to get dark here for weeks, and if I don’t open the camera I’ll never get rid of the moisture.
Arne has finished his sketch. He shuts his notebook, takes a picture with his Leica, shakes his head.
‘Perhaps …’
With a feeling that the utmost discretion is called for, I slip my camera back into its case. Then I pull my maps out of their pocket — likewise soaked. I spread them out on the warm ground and study the route we will be taking.
We are in the upland now. Hilly terrain. ‘Bumpy’would be a better word. Like a mock-up of a dune landscape, with mounds of sand, loam and stones, and very little vegetation. It is ten kilometres south-west from here to the lake where we plan to pitch our tent. On the map it looks as if you can get there almost in a straight line, no obstacles of any significance.
I take out my compass to determine south-west.
Arne looks at his own map and stands up.
‘That way!’
The direction he points in is ninety degrees off from mine.
‘You’re joking! It’s over there!’
My turn to point. I am keeping my compass level on the palm of my left hand. There is no doubt in my mind, I am pointing in the right direction.
Arne’s face contorts with suppressed laughter as he tugs at the frayed string attached to the plastic boy scout’s compass in his breast pocket. He proffers his compass like a bar of chocolate, but I don’t deign to look. I bend over, hoist my rucksack and start walking with my compass still balancing on my left palm. I can’t have made a mistake! Arne will catch up with me later, when he realises he’s the one who made a mistake.