I screw up my eyes with frustration and it’s as if my spirit has already taken leave of this mountain. So where is it now? Somewhere in space, where the stars, such as there are, belong. For the most part there aren’t any stars in space, for the most part there’s nothing at all. Out there in that void somewhere there’s me, gazing on the earth, a planet no bigger than a football. I can see the white mould of polar ice and snow-capped mountain ranges.
Never have I been so acutely aware of the thinness of the atmospheric layer that sustains human existence. Man finds life hard all over the planet, but we need only travel to the extreme north or the extreme south, or climb a mountain for that matter, for us to reach our limits. It has taken cunning, brute force, conspiracy, shiftwork, centuries of scientific endeavour and billions of man hours to launch one manned spacecraft. I know I am nothing but a chemical compound in a particular state of equilibrium, strictly confined within distinct, incontrovertible boundaries. In my mind’s eye I see the world as a globe, a sphere covered by a thin membrane, which is the substance within which I am able to exist to the exclusion of all else. The membrane thins out towards the poles …
Jesus had an easy time of it — taking it for granted that fig trees grew all over the world.
But the other planets, a bit further away from the sun, or a little closer … what have they got? Dust storms, maybe, as on Venus. Or ice crusts of pure ammonia, as on Jupiter. What difference would it make if there were people living on other planets? I have never heard of Europeans feeling less lonely after Columbus discovered America and its population.
Seen from a distance, my globe looks as if it is supposed to be covered in ice. Warm winds have blown it off in places, but the poles and the tallest mountains are still ice-bound, for the ice has not been defeated. It expands underground. In the next Ice Age it may get as far as the tropics. The end of the world. Ragnarok. All it would take is for some object to come between us and the sun, screening us from the heat. A cloud of cosmic dust, say, or a dense swarm of meteorites.
I am standing with my feet on different stones, one in front of the other, leaning forwards with my head down and my left arm, with which I am holding my left knee, propping up my upper body. I can hardly bring myself to cast my eyes yet again over the small area that I can see: stones and mist and little else. I do not feel sad, only profound pity for all those people who are so distant from me, and even if I had a radio transmitter at my disposal there would be no point telling them what I think. They are beyond my understanding, and I am beyond theirs. Stamped indelibly on their minds are the craziest fairy tales, variations on megalomaniac notions dating back to their caveman ancestors, for whom a cave stood for the entire universe. And even if they do not believe in fairy tales, that doesn’t mean they have given up hope of gaining spiritual revelations from manifest mumbo jumbo. Because, they say, we cannot go on living like this, we are lost souls and we need consolation. (I go on living, don’t I? And who’s consoling me?)
So they put popes in palaces and feed diamonds to the Aga Khan. They never think of the abuse suffered by millions in the name of their false consolations, they turn a blind eye to the preposterous religious laws existing in even the most civilised countries, because all they want is to lose themselves in fairy tales, and the more bloodshed there is the firmer their belief. For blood is all they possess, and the only incontestable existential fact is their insatiable thirst for the blood of others.
I would rather die a victim of the elements than of people. If I were struck by lightning, or hit on the head by a falling meteorite, or if I fell down the mountain from sheer exhaustion, it would be weeks before anyone discovered I had gone missing. That would suit me fine. It is even possible that I would never be found. A gratifying thought, but to savour the gratification I would have to survive for a while in spirit, or I wouldn’t know they hadn’t found me. Vanishing from the face of the earth like that would at least mean that my death is in keeping with what I know. Because my life will never be in keeping with what I know.
Never … I can’t stay here. I begin to walk, down into the mist.
Eva would say I had gone to heaven.
But I do not fall down the mountain. I duck under the cloud, and a moment later I have left the stony summit behind. I am treading on moss, low heather. The slope is cushioned in mosses of every shade, black, blue, pale green, even orange and red. A flock of wild geese skims overhead.
I look out over the lake and recognise the far-off shore where we pitched our tents before. No Mikkelsen and Qvigstad.
Here, where I am standing now, is where we saw the immense herd of rumbling reindeer. The person herding them must have been here too, at some stage. But there is no sign of either now.
There is no doubt about it: in my current state of destitution the most sensible thing to do is to get back to civilisation. What will come of my scientific research? I didn’t even get hold of the aerial photographs. Mikkelsen has them. He can see what I can’t. If I ran into him now I’d kill him. But I don’t run into him.
Compass lost, camera broken. Bleeding and bruised, feverish from lack of sleep, empty stomach. My mind is a blank. I don’t even know the time.
The best thing now would be to head back to Skoganvarre, twenty-five kilometres away. But of course I can’t do that, because of Arne. He could go on looking for me for weeks. And I’m pretty sure he’s still waiting for me at the ravine.
Fantasising about ways of letting Arne know I’m heading back to Skoganvarre (walkie-talkie, carrier pigeon, sighting some Lapp I could ask to pass the message on to Arne, seaplane, helicopter — which I could hail, but there haven’t been any flying overhead), I plod on towards the shore of Lake Lievnasjaurre. I sit down and peer at my map through my magnifying glass. At least I know exactly where I am now. Here, right near me, the water discharges from the lake into the Lievnasjokka. This is the stream we crossed in our socks. If I keep to it, along the right bank, then the fourth tributary will be the Rivo-elv. And if I continue down the Rivo-elv valley, I’ll arrive at the ravine. It’s a long way round, but my best bet if I want to avoid all risk of getting lost again. How far? About twelve kilometres, I think. I can easily get there by tomorrow evening.
In the meantime I have finished the last of the knäckebröd. I light a cigarette and spend the next twenty minutes staring at the ripples. Then I take the fishing net out of my rucksack, untangle it and carry it to the water’s edge. I might be lucky, who knows? Now I have to unroll the net as I walk along the bank in search of a spot where it can cut off a small bay. But it keeps snagging, so I have to keep stopping to loosen the meshes from leaves and twigs. This is no good. Better to wade. I take off my shoes and my trousers. Having done that, I feel an irresistible desire to undress completely, despite the mosquitoes settling on my legs. My clothes smell foul as I pull them over my head. My trunk is streaked with tidemarks of sweat and pimpled with dried blood covering the bites of carnivorous flies. My right leg is swollen and has turned a purply blue all the way up to and over the knee. The sight of my own decrepitude disgusts me, and on an impulse I plunge my hand into the depths of my rucksack and bring out my soap to brandish it in the midnight sun. Oh, I know everything that I am and own appears incongruous in this setting. Yet the bar of soap in my hand bears a marked resemblance to the stones on the ground. A smooth green stone, a bezoar, an amulet. Clutching it as if it has magic powers, I stumble towards the water’s edge, suffering hellish pain to the soles of my lacerated feet. Then I bend down, soap myself all over, wade into the lake up to my knees, drop forward and swim. Dirt and soapsuds instantly vanish. In water as pure as this, the traces are diluted a million times.