47
My mother and Eva have lovingly installed me in the largest armchair in the house, with my injured leg propped up on a footstool.
‘Tell me, Alfred,’ Eva asked a moment ago, ‘what happened to my compass?’ To which I replied: ‘Dumped it, because it indicated the wrong direction.’
The lamp is lit over the round table bearing my mother’s typewriter. But she is not working. After enquiring in detail as to the circumstances of Arne’s death, she heaves a deep sigh and offers her personal summary of the events:
‘A terrible accident, but at least you are safe. I am proud of you.’
Outside it is dark, really dark. For the first time in weeks I can be assured of the light of day being relieved by darkness, the pitch darkness of night, during which sleep is possible — unless you’re tormented by thoughts of having to catch up on all the things you didn’t do during the day and better your ways.
I wonder if Arne’s funeral has already taken place. There was no point in my attending it, as I’ve never met his family. His father presses a handkerchief to his eyes, laments to an aunt or uncle: ‘He wouldn’t take anything from me! He was so hard on himself. Never touched the money I sent him, just kept it in the bank. I told him a hundred times to get himself a new pair of boots.’ The aunt or uncle just think: ‘That wouldn’t have done any good. What he needed was seven-league boots to keep up with your success.’
I also wonder if Qvigstad and Mikkelsen are still trekking through Finnmark, unaware of Arne’s death and my departure. Strange that I will probably never see them again, any more than I will see Arne again.
Brandel comes to mind. Two years ago the pair of us took part in an excursion to Lake Rissajaurre in Swedish Lapland. The Swedish geologist in charge had told us the lake was forty metres deep and the water so clear than you could see the bottom when you swam in it.
When we got there Brandel and I were the only ones to jump in. The water coming from the snow on the surrounding slopes was only a few degrees above freezing. Which was why the others preferred to keep their clothes on.
I swam across the lake and back, and so did Brandel. Later on, long after we’d got dressed again, Brandel asked me ‘Well? Did you look under water? Did you see the bottom of the lake?’
I had forgotten to look down.
As in a nightmare, I then said to myself: You know, you’re not cut out for this line of work. Yes, you try, you’re a virtuoso performer during exams, you don’t mind plunging into freezing water, but then you go and forget the most important thing.
Maybe it would have been better if I had failed in my first year at university. Now it looks as if I am the victim of my own virtuosity.
But then what? What would I have done? Become a flautist after all? How will I ever find out? No-one can start at the same point twice over. If an experiment can’t be replicated, it ceases to be an experiment. No-one can experiment with their life. No-one can be blamed for being in the dark.
To all their questions (What was the rest of your trip like? Any interesting discoveries?) I reply: Not bad, or: Nothing much.
‘Oh, Mummy,’ Eva says in the end, ‘why don’t you give it to him now? He looks so miserable.’
My mother goes to the oak cupboard in which she keeps her newspaper cuttings and comes back with a small parcel.
Dear old Mum! I bet she’s bought me a new watch!
‘How did you know my watch got wet?’ I ask.
‘It’s not a watch,’ she says as I unwrap the parcel.
The paper parts to reveal a jeweller’s box covered in blue velvet.
The box contains a pair of cufflinks. The bar and chain are made of gold, but the cufflinks themselves look like raw stones.
‘Do you know what they are?’
I study them closely. I have never seen stones quite like these before. They are surprisingly heavy. If I’m not mistaken, each cufflink is set with half of the same stone.
‘An expert like you should be able to tell right away!’ Eva says.
‘It looks like some mineral,’ I mumble, annoyed at my blindness — yet again. ‘A chunk of mineral matter, I think, cleaved in two. Look, they fit together.’
The sides are highly polished and gleam like steel. I demonstrate how perfectly they fit together.
‘Well, Alfred,’ my mother explains. ‘Remember you were so keen on having your own meteorite when you were little? You wanted a stone that fell from the sky. I never told you this, but your father bought one for you before he died, as a present for your seventh birthday. I kept it hidden away all these years, never said a word. I couldn’t bear to give it to you, because it wasn’t my present but your father’s. Then it suddenly occurred to me to have a pair of cufflinks made, as a gift for your doctorate. I think your father would have approved. I think he’d have approved if I gave you your present now, too.’
‘A gift from heaven, that’s what it is, Alfred,’ Eva says, ‘truly, a gift from heaven.’
I look at her, crushed. She can’t help it. She’s a fool. Heaven. What does she mean by heaven? If I asked her for a definition she’d be tongue-tied.
I also look at my mother. I will never make her understand the cause of my misery. She is proud of me. And it’s not as if there are any demands being made on me that go against what I myself want and have always wanted. Here I sit, holding a cufflink in each hand. Put the two together and I have one whole meteorite. But not a shred of evidence for the hypothesis I had to prove.
THE END
Groningen, September 1962 — September 1965
Author’s Notes
The report on the Himalayan expedition on pp. 37–40 appeared in Algemeen Handelsblad, 3rd October, 1962.
‘Jane Mansfield’ on p. 51. The author of the graffito was referring to Jayne Mansfield, an American film actress with a very large and at the time very famous bust.
About the Author and the Translator
WILLEM FREDERIK HERMANS
BEYOND SLEEP
Translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke
Beyond Sleep is a modern classic of European fiction, a hilarious and captivating story, set beyond the edge of the civilized word, as one man approaches a breaking point.
The young Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf is determined to win fame for making a great discovery. To this end he joins a small geological expedition, which travels to the far North of Norway, where he hopes to prove a series of craters were caused by meteorites and are littered with extraterrestrial “Issendorfite,” but ultimately realizes he’s more likely to drown in a fjord or be eaten by parasites.
Unable to procure crucial aerial photographs, and beset by mosquitoes and insomnia in his freezing leaky tent, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. Haunted by the ghost of his scientist father, unable to escape the looming influence of his mother, and anxious to complete the thesis that will make his name, he moves toward the final act of vanity which will trigger a catastrophe.
A deadpan comedy reminiscent of Heller or Vonnegut at their best, with more than a dash of Kafka, Beyond Sleep is a unique and illuminating examination of how hard it is to be a true pioneer in the modern world-a masterpiece.
“A novel of worldly disengagement trembling on the edge of tragedy, all the more comic for being related in Hermans’ best pokerfaced manner.”
— J.M. Coetzee
“Thought-provoking, frequently funny, well worth investigating.”
— The Guardian
“[Hermans’] novel does what so few do: it makes one see and feel life afresh.”