Naïve Super (6 page)

Do I see my choices as waves breaking?

I guess in a way I do. I say yes.

The psychiatrist nods and says that’s good. If I didn’t, I would have been psychotic.

We toast my not being psychotic.

I tell the physicist that I’ve been reading a bit in a book about time. I mention a few quick key words: Einstein, the theory of relativity, gravity, that time doesn’t exist.

Exists, doesn’t exist – what’s the difference, he says.

I tell him not to make jokes. I explain that this is important to me.

The physicist says this thing about the theory of relativity is something he hasn’t been particularly occupied with. Not beyond what was on his syllabus a few years back. There aren’t many people who understand the theory of relativity, he says. But he has heard those that do think it’s a beautiful and elegant theory.

I ask him if he understands about time passing slower at the top of the Empire State Building than at the bottom.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t understand it, he says. But he doesn’t doubt that it’s true, and he has learned to accept it. He’s learned to live with it. Most of the time he thinks about other things, and he feels I ought to do the same.

Without warning, Kent begins to talk about a girl he has been seeing. It’s a dirty story. I listen until it’s finished without commenting on it. Afterwards I ask Kent how he’s doing at the Central Statistics Bureau. He’s quite content and I say fine.

Then I say I’m going home to sleep.

You could always give me a call some time, Kent says.

Sure, I say.

The next morning I wake up early, feeling that I have to buy something that can redress the damage done by my contact with Kent. I feel as though I’ve taken two steps backwards.

When the toy store opens, I’ve been standing waiting a good three-quarters of an hour. And I’ve got my list ready.

I want something that:

This is a lot to demand of an object in a toy store. It would be a lot to demand of an object in any store. But it might still work. I am taking my time. There are no other customers in the store. The staff follow me intently with their eyes while I walk around among the shelves. I’ve already told them I don’t want any help. I must do this on my own.

The breakthrough comes at the Brio section. There is a toy that I recognise from when I was little. It has the potential to fulfil all the points on the list. It is a Hammer-and-Peg.

The box is nice and red and the board is pictured with a little boy hammering. The board is yellow and says Brio in large, red lettering. The pegs that you hammer down are yellow and the legs on the board are blue. The hammer is red and green. I feel a good sensation throughout my entire body. I remember the hammer-and-peg as a very satisfying toy.

When all the pegs are knocked flush with the board, a sense of cohesion arises. Things join together. They have meaning. Then you turn the board over and hammer the pegs down again. It is an infinite-action machine that provides its user with a sense of cohesion.

I don’t demand more from anything. Neither people nor objects.

If I hammer for a sufficiently long time, I may be able to achieve a sense of meaning on as much a global as a personal plane. Anyway, I have nothing to lose. Now I’ve bought the hammer-and-peg, and I’m cycling home. Today will be The Day When I Begin to Hammer. Here I go.

The last few days I have hardly done anything but hammer. I’ve hammered morning, noon and night. It is an exquisitely monotonous activity that fills me with pleasure. The thoughts stop coming. I am full of gratitude towards Brio.

Finally I’m on my way somewhere. I am gaining a certain extra energy, and I feel stronger. I’ve even gained courage to read on in the book about time. Now I’m reading about light. That it’s fast. Almost 300,000 kilometres per second. In a vacuum. It is a bit slower in the atmosphere. And a metre is defined as the distance covered by light in the space of one 299,792,458th of a second. In a vacuum.

I fax Kim and ask him about vacuum. Whether it’s something he’s clued up on. Whether he can explain to me what it is.

He faxes me back saying that a vacuum is nothing. A void. Devoid of air, of everything. That’s what vacuum is.

I had hoped it would be something more. But I suppose it’s enough. If it’s already nothing, there’s no reason to say it in a more complicated way.

The bright side of the fax is that Kim knows how a vacuum is created. He has done it a few times, on rainy days, he says.

I am to take a jam jar and fill it half-full of water and put it in my brother’s microwave with the lid off. And leave it there until the water boils. Then I have to take it out and put the lid on. That’s when something will transpire with the pressure inside the jar and I will find myself with a vacuum in my hands. There’s nothing to it.

I open the refrigerator and find a jar of blueberry jam with the expiry date less than a month away. I pour the contents in the loo and clean the jar with soap and hot water. Then I fill it half-full of water and put it in the microwave. I set it to Max and let it rip. Now it’s boiling.

I remove the glass and wait for a few seconds until the steam has died down. Then I put the lid on. I have created a vacuum.

In a way it’s a bit of an anti-climax. There’s nothing to look at, really. But I know that everything inside the jar that isn’t water is a vacuum. It is, strangely enough, quite a satisfying thought. I wonder what I’ll use it for. Light passes through the jar all the time.

I’ve read that light is particles. Photons. And now they’re passing through the jar. Faster than the photons outside the jar.

To add an edge to the proceedings, I take the jar into the bathroom and switch the light off. Then I switch on my bicycle lamp and hold it up to the jar. Silence.

There’s nothing to suggest that something in my brother’s bathroom is moving at almost 300,000 kilometres per second. It is a totally undramatic situation, but I am still gripped by a kind of momentousness.

My brother’s bathroom is smaller than 300,000 kilometres. It’s much smaller. I can’t figure out what happens to the photons. I don’t know whether they stop against the wall or whether they are thrown back. The only thing I know is that they don’t disappear. Paul writes that nothing disappears.

We remain there in the bathroom for quite a while. The vacuum, the photons and I. It’s gripping.

After a while I switch off the bicycle lamp and leave the bathroom. I put the vacuum jar on the windowsill. It can stand there and let the lucky photons that hit it get a surprise. I feel good. Similar to the feeling I get when I feed the little birds, or give money to someone who has less than I do. Then I sit down with the hammer-and-peg and hammer until the
Evening News.

Here is another story. This one is also about a good world. It took place before I was born.

My brother and my parents were on holiday in Denmark. They had rented a cottage at the beach. I don’t know how old my brother was that summer, but I think he was quite young. Maybe seven years old. He just ran around, swam in the sea and threw sticks and other things into the water. He must have been having a good time.

One day he found a bird that had hurt itself. I think it was a baby seagull. It just lay there. It couldn’t fly. My brother had no experience of sickness and death. He just felt sorry for the bird. He felt sad about it lying there, sick and all alone. He wanted it to be well again, and fly off to its family and be happy and do the things baby seagulls usually do.

My brother took care of the bird. He carefully carried it home to the cottage and put it in a box lined with cotton. He gave it food and water and talked to it.

The bird was the first thing my brother thought about when he woke up in the morning, and the last thing he thought about before he went to sleep.

In the morning he would run outside and see how the bird was doing, and at night he would say goodnight to it and gently stroke its wing.

My brother began to love the bird. It became important to him that it would get well. My parents also hoped it would get well. They could see how much feeling my brother was investing in the bird. They were afraid he would be sad if it died.

My brother thought the bird was getting better by the day. He figured he could see it. He kept thinking it would get well anytime, and that it would fly back to freedom. But it didn’t turn out that way.

One morning, while my brother was still asleep, Dad found the bird dead. He buried it a distance from the cottage. When my brother awoke, Dad said the bird had got well and had flown away. He said my brother had cared for it so well and been so good to it that it had got well again.

Neither Mum nor Dad had the heart to say that the bird was dead. Maybe they thought my brother would experience painful things soon enough. They wanted to protect him while they could. My brother had done everything in his power to save the bird. And now he was told that it had flown away. He was happy. It was good to think that the bird was out there somewhere. In good health. And that he had helped it. The only thing he felt a little bit bad about was that he didn’t get to say goodbye.

My brother must have had a feeling that the world was good. That it was possible to do something, and that things sometimes didn’t get worse, but better. My brother still believes the baby seagull got well. Nobody has ever told him what really happened.

It’s early morning and the doorbell is ringing. I’m putting the hammer-and-peg aside to open the door. Børre is outside, with a man who I guess is the dad. I’m surprised, but I ask them in. The dad introduces himself and we shake hands. I can see Børre has been crying. The dad is a bit ill at ease. He asks me if I’m redecorating the apartment.

I say no and ask him what made him think I was.

He heard someone knocking something, he says.

I tell him the way it is, that I use the occasional spare moment to knock a little. All by myself. Sort of. And I show them the hammer-and-peg. Børre’s dad nods. He doesn’t quite know what to believe.

The story is that the family are driving to Hamar to visit Børre’s sick grandmother, but Børre is refusing to come along. He thinks it is so sad. So now they don’t know what to do. Børre has been very difficult. He has been crying for quite a while. That’s why his dad came to think of me. Børre has been talking a lot about me. And about my bike.

He knows very well that it’s a lot to ask, but still, if I have the time. It would be such a great help. It’s kind of a desperate situation. Grandma will be so sorry if they don’t come. I ask

Børre if he wants to spend time with me.

He nods his head, swallowing.

I say it’s perfectly all right. That I didn’t have a single plan for the day anyway.

The dad’s very grateful. They’ll be away overnight, but will return the next day.

I am given the keys to Børre’s apartment and instructions for when Børre is supposed to sleep and when he’s supposed to eat.

The dad repeats that he is grateful.

I tell him to think nothing of it, and then I ask him what it was like to see a polar bear.

He says it was stupendous. It’s an extreme animal. Very big.

Then Børre’s mum and dad and little sister leave for Hamar. We go down into the courtyard to wave them off. And now it’s Børre and I. We had better come up with something to do. Preferably something fun.

While I have breakfast, Børre is sitting by my brother’s desk drawing. He’s drawing a racing car. I tell him he may borrow the hammer-and-peg, but Børre would rather draw. He spends a long time on the racing car. In the end he colours it in.

When Børre has finished the drawing, a fax comes through from my brother. Børre thinks it’s wonderful. A mystery. He doesn’t understand how it’s possible. A sheet of text coming straight into the room. He wants to know where it’s coming from. I tell him I think it’s from Africa.

Børre is asking if he can have the sheet.

I’m just going to read it, then he can have it, I tell him.

I’m reading the fax from my brother now. It sorts out a misunderstanding. It becomes clear that he’s not in Africa, but in America. I must have mixed the two continents up. Both of them begin and end with A. And they’re both far away. In a way it disappoints me.

Africa is a lot more exotic than America. To have a brother in Africa is exciting. It’s a little like having money in the bank. You never know quite how much it has become when you go to withdraw it again. A brother in America is far less spectacular. Everybody has a family member in America at some stage.

I understand my brother has sold something over there. He has made good money and now he wants to ask me a favour. It’s something about the dollar being very favourable against the Norwegian krone right now. Very favourable. My brother is asking me to buy a car for him. He will be needing a car the minute he gets home. It would be good if all the formalities concerning purchase and registration have been taken care of. He’s asking me to buy a car.

I have to fax him my account number immediately, then he’ll transfer enough money to pay for a car. I write my account number on the back of Børre’s racing car drawing. I also jot down a few questions regarding the car. What kind of car does he want? What colour? Does he want it to come with an airbag? Then I fax the sheet to America.

A few minutes later the racing car drawing comes back out of the fax machine, in black and white. Børre is ecstatic. Now he’s got two racing car drawings in his hand. An original and a second-generation fax copy.

My brother has written; What’s this? And where’s the account number? across the drawing.

I turn the sheet with the racing car drawing over and fax the account number and the questions again.