Doppler (5 page)

Before going to sleep, both Bongo and I go for a piss in the usual place and look out over the town and the fjord. The night is cold and clear and I notice that there are lights in some of the windows at the Meteorological Institute. They must be busy day and night, I suppose. The weather has to be tracked and analysed and models have to be made. There’s no end to it. The weather never finishes and never has a break. And the snow is long overdue. Last year it came early and stayed. It stayed from back in October, but this year there’s not a snowflake in sight. Just sun and unmitigated glee for everyone. But I would rather have snow. Snow is the only weather I really like. Nothing makes me less grumpy than snow. I can sit by a window for hours watching it fall. The silence of snowfall. You can use that. It’s best when there’s background lighting, for example a street lamp. Or when you go outside and let it flutter down on you. That’s real riches, that is. That’s more fun than anything you can do yourself. And, what’s more, I enjoy shovelling snow. Can’t have enough of it. Furthermore, I like the fact that there are people who don’t like snow. Who become irritable when the snow arrives. Who, after a whole life-time in Norway, haven’t managed to accept snow and still allow themselves to be riled by it. So I gloat when it snows. There is an element of schadenfreude in it. But now the buggers at the Meteorological Institute are taking the snow away from me. The snow has become fickle and I’m not even sure it will ever come back, and that’s hard to bear. I would have preferred snow to almost anything. To most people. Perhaps even to you, Bongo, I say as we shake off the last drips. But it’s a hypothetical question, so let’s not dwell on it, I say. Don’t think too much about it. Yes, I like you too, Bongo. You’re OK. But you’re not exactly snow.

As a teenager I found it intolerable that so many people in Africa lived in poor conditions while I had it so good. I sat listening to The Wall and felt this on many an evening. Most things seemed depressing and unjust and I saw no end to them. But then this phase passed. As suddenly as it had come. And nowadays I hardly give it a thought. Nowadays I’m as hard up as most people in Africa, I suppose. I live from hand to mouth. I’m a hunter-gatherer. I spend just as much time fetching water as your average African. If I’m very thirsty I might dip my bottle in the marsh up here, but the water is brown and stagnant and must have been here for a thousand years, so I prefer to go to one of the streams in the area. But you can’t rely on streams. At times they dwindle to nothing and I can’t collect water in any practical way. Nowadays I’m the one who’s in Africa, I muse. In a sense, I’m under-developed, apart from my organ which is more on the over-developed side, and while the world around me may consider that I need help, I’m proud, just like Africa, and I would prefer to cope on my own. The biggest difference between Africa and me, I suppose, is that I don’t like people, whereas Africa likes them a lot. It’s a characteristic trait of Africans that they like to be surrounded by people, by friends and family, whereas I shy away from people, from friends and family, that’s a characteristic trait of mine. Beyond that, we’re like two peas in a pod, Africa and I.

Well, I spend a lot of time fetching water. Not to mention milk. But the deal has worked. The ICA boss puts out the milk he said he would put out. And I take it. So the need for liquid is covered. And I get vitamins and minerals through the milk, and also from Bongo’s mother, of whom I still have quite a lot left. But I can’t satisfy the need for sweet things anywhere. I haven’t tasted anything sweet since the berry season finished and that’s over a month ago. That makes me a trifle uneasy. I am, after all, like every other person, a finely tuned piece of machinery that has to be lubricated in the right way to function properly. Too much of anything is wrong and too little is just as wrong. Without sugar, things go downhill for me, and I start getting edgy when I notice that I’ve been walking around the tent like a sick animal for hours, just thinking about sugar, and after a few days of this unease I take Bongo down with me to Düsseldorf’s house. From experience I know that Düsseldorf keeps chocolate in the house. He’s mad about chocolate, is old Düsseldorf. And I’ve taught Bongo to carry things. I’ve sewn two bags or panniers or whatever you call them from his mother’s hide, and I sling them over him and tie them under his belly. It works a treat and Bongo doesn’t seem to mind. He’s happy as long as he can be with me. He’s my pack moose.  And he carries wood and water and milk as if he’s never done anything else. We stand watching Düsseldorf’s activities at our leisure from the perimeter of his garden. He’s making another model kit. I can’t see what it is, but he’s fully concentrated and is working with tweezers and glue. He’s been on his travels again. On the kitchen worktop there is the biggest Toblerone that money can buy. It weighs four and a half kilos; it’s over a metre long and as wide as my thigh. I’ve often seen bars like that myself. At Kastrup and other airports I used to fly on business before moving into the forest. But I’ve only ever bought the small ones. I’ve never dared to go the whole hog and buy the big one. It was being nice that held me back, I recollect. Always being nice. Small Toblerone bars are nice. They demonstrate a father’s consideration for his family. He remembered them. He thought of them. But big Toblerone bars are too big to be nice. They’re extreme and say dark things about the buyer. He’s got an eating problem. He’s lonely. He’s weird. He’s capable of anything. I notice that I respect this side of Düsseldorf. This ability to think big. And this evening he’s airing the house. The back door is ajar because he’s airing the house and he’s doing this because he’s a smoker. Even smokers who live alone air their houses. That’s the pretty pass that things have come to now. And I can take advantage of that. I tell Bongo to stay behind a bush, as quiet as a mouse, and I sneak over to the door and in I crawl, along the kitchen floor, to the Toblerone, to the enormous, not to say monstruous, Toblerone that every gram of me desires, it’s more than a desire, I have a craving for sugar, a physical urge for sugar, and with this chocolate I will be assured of a supply of sugar for months, maybe for a whole year, and I stretch out my arm over the worktop and pull the behemoth towards the edge, closer and closer to the edge,  and soon it’s on the edge and teeters, and I don’t make a sound, as indeed hunter-gatherers never do, we’ve never made a sound while at work, we’ve been quiet for forty thousand years, and now I almost have it, and I stretch, stretch out, oblivious to Düsseldorf getting to his feet, coming into the kitchen, I’m in the concentrated mode that filters out unnecessary noise, and the mode defines Düsseldorf’s arrival as unnecessary, it’s a fatal misjudgement and I don’t suspect a thing, I’m like a retard, then he suddenly rounds the corner to the kitchen, sees what is about to happen, runs over to the Toblerone and grabs it and there is a tussle. I refuse to let go of the huge chocolate bar and Düsseldorf holds on tight, it’s man against man, a classic showdown, and even though on paper there’s no doubt I’m stronger than he is, I see myself becoming a startled witness to Düsseldorf gradually wresting the Toblerone out of my hands and hitting me on the head with it several times, hard. I black out, and on coming to again, I’m lying trussed up like a chicken, as they say, unfortunately, on Düsseldorf’s kitchen floor, which by the way has been laid with brown linoleum.

The hours pass and I can hear Düsseldorf’s model-building noises from the sitting room. He continues his activities undaunted and leaves me lying there. That testifies to an impressive introversion. He’s a complete obsessive.

What are you making? I ask at length.

Model-building noises.

What are you making? I repeat.

I assume it was you who stole the jam and meat from the cellar, he says.

I’m afraid it was, I say. I did take a few bits and pieces at one time, but I’ve stopped now.

You stopped because I had an alarm fitted, Düsseldorf says.

You could be right about that, I say.

And now you’ve started again, he says.

I have a pressing need for sugar, I say. I must have sugar.

He resumes his model-building. Then I hear him put something on the table and get up.

He comes into the kitchen, unwraps the Toblerone and cuts off a chunk with a kitchen knife. He gives me the chunk.

Straight into my mouth.

Aha! my body thinks.  Sugar! My insides are filled with silent cheering. They didn’t require much. That’s the way we’re constructed. So bloody banal.

Düsseldorf goes back to the sitting room.

So you make models, do you? I venture again after a while.

Yes, I make models, Düsseldorf says.

I assume he’s going to go on, so I lie there quietly waiting, but obviously he’s said his piece.

What are you making? I ask again.

I can hear him putting something down on the table and then he goes quiet.

I sense a kind of annoyance. He carries on working.

I’m making a German Steyr Type 1500A/01, he says eventually from the sitting room.

I wait for him to say more, but there is silence again.

I see, I say.

The Germans were good in the first phase of the war, he says. And part of the reason for that was that they had good equipment. They had good vehicles, good tanks and aeroplanes and so on.

Silence again.

But as far as I remember they didn’t do so well in the latter part of the war, I say, wriggling noiselessly towards the back door.

No, Düsseldorf says. They didn’t. But things went well at first. And, as I said, they had good vehicles. The model I’m making was manufactured in Austria and was available in five different weight categories. This one weighed one and a half tons and was used a lot as a staff car, breakdown truck and ambulance.

A versatile machine then, I say.

That’s right, says Düsseldorf. Four-wheel drive. 3.5 litre V8 engine. 85 horsepower.

Mhm, I say, just reaching the door when I realise that Düsseldorf has taken the precaution of tying my foot to the radiator under the worktop. With an effort I stick my nose out and signal to Bongo to come over. He’s still as quiet as a mouse behind the same bush. He’s the most obedient moose in living memory, and now he’s crossing the lawn and coming to my rescue. I stick my hands out and Bongo starts chewing and gnawing at the rope binding my hands together.

There is nothing like man and animal working in close collaboration against the forces of evil.

Why are you making that particular one? I ask, straining my voice so as not to reveal a) the fact that I have moved across the room, b) that I’m sitting in an impossible position and c) that I’m not in the slightest bit interested in why he’s making that particular model.

He doesn’t answer.

Not that it’s any business of mine, I say. I suppose you have your reasons.

Yes, says Düsseldorf. I do.

Bongo bites through the last fibre of the rope and my hands are free. I loosen the knot around my foot and get up. My first impulse is of course to make a dash for the door, never to darken it again, but I sense at once I’m in thrall to the Toblerone. Firstly because I fancy some chocolate for chocolate’s sake and secondly because I want to show Düsseldorf who’s boss when the chips are down. I tiptoe over and grab the monster Toblerone. You’re mine, I say to myself. And I’ve bloody deserved you. Standing there with the grotesquely large bar under my arm, I suddenly feel I’m in charge and would like to steal a very quick glance round the corner into the sitting room to see with my own eyes how sad it is when an ageing man does something as pathetic as making a model of a German Steyr Type 1500A/01. Anyway, I’ve never seen the sitting room before. I’ve always come in through the back door, gone down to the cellar and out again.

I move towards the corner, without a sound, in the usual hunter-gatherer fashion, but this time with all channels open, one sound from the sitting room now and I’ll be gone before Düsseldorf knows what’s going on. I peep in and see Düsseldorf’s concentrated back bent over a large table overflowing with model paraphernalia. I allow my gaze to drift further into the room and the sight that meets my eyes is amazing, indeed it borders on the shocking. Düsseldorf’s sitting room is a battlefield. Quite literally. A battle is being fought in his room. Over perhaps 50-60 square metres. My knowledge of war is not extensive, yet I can say with more certainty than guesswork that this battlefield is from the Second World War. The colours and the whole iconography of this tableau in Düsseldorf’s sitting room match my conceptions of the Second World War. With a richness of intricate detail approaching reality and thus also joyous insanity, Düsseldorf has built a landscape in the biggest room of his house. It represents a small town with the outlying district. I can see a built-up area, private houses, railway lines, open fields and a couple of farms on the other side of a river or canal furthest away by the large sitting room window. And there are trees, street lamps, fire hydrants. All the visible infrastructure that a real town in the world has, this unreal town in Düsseldorf’s sitting room also has. It has to be a copy of a real town, I imagine. As it was at some point or other during the Second World War. The town is heaving with soldiers. They stand behind house corners, railway carriages and transport of all kinds and much more, shooting at each other. And it’s winter. There’s snow everywhere. Model snow. But it’s realistic enough. The vehicles have left tracks in the snow. There are dead and wounded lying everywhere. It’s a piece of war frozen in time. And I know in my bones that all the details are sure to match the reality that once must have befallen the outskirts of this town. The way the tanks, the supply lorries, the soldiers and everything else have been painted tell me that. The vehicles are the worse for wear, marked by the long, drawn out war. The soldiers are weary. Those operating the machine guns are doing their job in an efficient though disillusioned way while smoking apathetically. The houses are shell-pocked. Chunks of plaster have fallen off and lie in small heaps alongside the walls. Burnt-out cars are overturned and function as shelter for groups of soldiers reloading their guns or sitting and taking a breather. A locomotive pulling a huge cannon has derailed and some men are trying to lift it back with a crane. I estimate that there are a hundred vehicles here and probably three or four times as many soldiers. It must have taken years to make this, I reflect. Düsseldorf has spent years of his life recreating this Second World War winter scene and I think to myself: Respect.