Naïve Super (8 page)

I carry Børre back to bed and lie next to him until he falls asleep. Then I go and sit on the balcony again. With a glass of water.

I look out over the town. People are sleeping.

I fill my mouth with water and swallow a little at a time. Water is good. If I had to choose between a lot of things, I’d quite definitely choose water.

I feel better than in a long while. First the ball, then the hammer-and-peg, and now this, all the big numbers. The good feeling of freedom from responsibility. Maybe I’m on my way up. Maybe I’ll be all right. And while dawn breaks, I sit there thinking that I’m a really good guy and never mind space and time and all the rest of it.

I am sitting in front of the TV waiting for the hangover to go away so I can start hammering again. I tried tying a piece of cloth around the hammer, but the sound was still too loud. Brio ought to consider making the pegs out of wood instead of plastic.

It would have suited me perfectly to hammer right now. I could have summed up my thoughts from last night in a careful manner. But now I have to wait.

It’s all confusion now. All this stuff about space. I believe I was thinking never mind it all. It doesn’t feel that way now. Hubris.

There was no end to how grateful Børre’s parents were. They wanted to pay me, but I said I would have nothing of it and besides, I had treated myself to their liquor.

Børre didn’t want me to go home to my place. He is a good boy.

TV is a good thing. I ought to watch TV more often. I get pleasantly diverted. I can’t quite tell whether the thoughts I’m having are my own or if they’re coming from the TV. Animal programmes are the best. David Attenborough explaining that nature is intricate and that it all fits together. Wasps that navigate according to the sun. They know what they’re doing, the wasps. They know a lot better than I do.

Now there’s a commercial on. I like car commercials. Almost all of them are set in some desert or other. The cars drive fast in the desert. A solitary car under the sun. Volvo’s latest commercial is also set in a desert. It looks cool. It’s fast. The guy driving has nothing to do but drive around in the desert. He just drives. I think I’ll buy a Volvo. A green one. My brother will like it.

Other things that appeal to me are graphic illustrations of how shampoo and toothpaste work. They’re so wonderfully educational. I can see how the effective ingredients penetrate the hair or the teeth and cleanse and sort things out. And afterwards it’s better than how it was before. That’s the point. That things are supposed to get better. But I get aggressive about little animated things and animated food. Crackers that jump out of their box and dance on the kitchen counter while calling the herb cheese in the fridge, and when the herb cheese comes out, the crackers dive into the cheese and spread it all over themselves. It’s a strain to watch. Advertising people animate anything these days. Someone ought to shoot them in the foot. There are limits to my toleration of stupidity.

These are things that I think should never be animated in a commercial context:

I watch Swedish news for a while. They are in the process of wrapping up a case where some council workers have misused council funds. It’s quite serious, but it puts me in a good mood. People are completely mad.

In this case a group of council workers have been on a survey in Brussels. Things got a bit out of hand, and they happened to pay for a night of merriment in a sex club with the council’s credit card. We’re talking more than thirty thousand kroner. In one night. I see the bank statement. That’s what puts me in a good mood. It says Dahl’s Paint and Hardware, and then it says Texaco a couple of times, and then it says Crazy Love six times in a row.

And those involved have pathetic excuses. One of them says he can’t remember a thing from that night. Another claims he never understood it was a sex club. I feel sorry for them.

Dahl’s Paint and Hardware

Texaco

Texaco

Crazy Love

Crazy Love

Crazy Love

Crazy Love

Crazy Love

Crazy Love

Now I’m watching a series where we follow the police at work. In America. It’s a reconstruction of a good deed two policemen did in Los Angeles a few years ago. I am surprised to find tears coming to my eyes.

I am moved by the reconstruction of the good deed. The two policemen are standing inside the police station telling the story, and at the same time we get to see what happened. The producers have found two actors who look like the two policemen. It’s quite a good illusion.

Here’s what happened.

The day before Christmas Eve a black woman sits crying in front of her house in a poor Los Angeles suburb. The policemen come driving past in their police car. They stop, asking her what’s the matter. The woman explains that while she was at the hospital visiting her cancer-stricken daughter, someone stole everything she owned. All the furniture, the food in the fridge, even the kids’ Christmas presents are gone. And inside the house three kids are sitting feeling sad. There won’t be a Christmas this year.

The policemen say there’s little they can do. These kinds of burglaries are hardly ever solved. But to be on the safe side they take down what kind of presents she had bought her kids.

When they get back in the police car, the two policemen talk about how this kind of stuff really stinks. Society is going the wrong way, et cetera. They decide to buy presents for the woman’s children and pay for them themselves. It’s Christmas after all, and they have everything they need, while the poor woman and her children have nothing.

They stop at a toy store and buy what’s on the list. A couple of hundred dollars’ worth of stuff. They start chatting to the store owner, explaining to him what they’re doing. The store owner is touched by the benevolence of the project and says he will pay for half of it. It’s Christmas.

When the policemen get back in their car to return to the precinct, there is a call from the station.

They must come immediately.

At the station the boss is asking what’s going on, and it turns out the owner of the toy store has called a TV station and that the TV station now wants to interview the two policemen. Happy news stories like this one are hard to come by, and now it’s Christmas and people need something good to draw them together. The ball starts rolling.

More TV stations are picking up the story. CNN roll up. Soon the entire United States knows about it. The policemen are congratulated from near and far, and President Reagan calls to say he is proud of them.

People are sending money, and a man offers to give the woman a new house in a better area. Suddenly they realise the woman doesn’t know anything about it. She doesn’t have a TV, or a radio. She and the kids are probably sitting all alone in that empty house. They think there won’t be a Christmas. The policemen decide to wait until the next day,
Christmas
Day
.

The following morning the black woman gets up and wakes her children, saying they’re going to the hospital to wish the cancer-stricken daughter Merry Christmas. The children feel it’s all a bit depressing without presents, but the woman says they have each other and they must be grateful for that.

Sirens. The woman sighs, saying even on this holy day people can’t seem to be good to one another. But then the son looks out the window. The street is full of people. Police cars and fire engines and cameras and people. The two policemen are standing outside on the grass, their arms laden with presents. Somebody starts carrying furniture into the house. The woman doesn’t understand what’s going on, but then she recognises the policemen. They give her a hug and a cheque for eighteen thousand dollars. Then the woman starts to cry. And I cry a little, too.

The headache has passed. I’m hammering.

This business with space again. All the thoughts from last night haven’t exactly made me less mortal. When the universe is ephemeral, one can easily feel that human existence is meaningless. Why should I do anything at all?

On the other hand it is tempting to try and make the best of it. I’m here, anyway. The imagination won’t cope if I try to picture where I’d otherwise be.

I am not ashamed about having thoughts like these. Maybe I should have had them before. I don’t know when people usually think about these kinds of things. Some probably do it as early as age fifteen. I didn’t. But I’m thinking about them now. And I’m not ashamed. The whole point of sitting in this flat is just so that I can have these kinds of thoughts. I hope things will get better when I am finished thinking. As a matter of fact there are quite a lot of things I do appreciate.

This is what I appreciate:

If only I had a feeling that things fit together and that everything will be all right in the end. It would be so good.

Maybe I am spending too much time alone. I ought to spend more time outdoors. Maybe talk to someone. Who would I talk to? Kim is so far away and Kent is a bad friend. I could always chat to my parents, but I don’t like worrying them with my problems. I’d rather they believe I am well and getting better all the time.

When I was little, Dad and I used to walk around our house. He would hold my hand and then we’d walk around the house. For some reason I recall it as a very good and meaningful thing. We lived in the house. It was where I ate and slept. And we also walked around it.

I take a break from hammering and cycle up to my parents to tell Dad I’d like to walk around the house with him.

He has just had his afternoon nap and thinks it’s a little strange. I tell him not to ask any questions. I tell him I need it. I need to know what it feels like to walk around the house with him. It’s part of something I’m working on, I tell him.

Dad puts on wellingtons and a coat, and then we walk around the house. Dad and I. We are walking all the way around the house.

It’s not quite like it used to be, but it’s all right. I hadn’t thought walking around the house with Dad would solve everything. I had moderate expectations. Dad says we can do it again later, if I feel it’s necessary. I tell him it’s quite possible. Dad also says I ought to go out more. Meet people. Maybe a girl.

Why don’t I have a girlfriend? I can’t see any good reason. People not half as friendly as I have girlfriends. Idiots have girlfriends. I absolutely ought to have a girlfriend.

There is a lot of injustice and idiocy in the world. I guess that’s part of my problem.

Is it that unintelligent people are responsible for all the silly music and the idiotic books, magazines, films and all the animated foods in the TV commercials?

Could it be that simple? Sometimes I think it is. It is a very plausible explanatory model. Quite attractive.

Or is it that these people are not really stupid, that they mean well, but fail over and over again? That’s also a possibility. There’s a big difference between being stupid and just being unfortunate. One sure thing is the fact that they have girlfriends. Every single one of them. But not me.

I let myself into my brother’s flat and discover that Kim has faxed me an extremely long fax. It’s probably thirty metres long. It says the same thing almost a hundred times.

Be not afraid.

Kim has loop-faxed it. This is something he’s been talking about. He has dreamt about doing it for a long time. It’s apparently quite simple.

You put the sheet into the fax machine the regular way and punch in the recipient’s number, and while the sheet goes through, you tape the two ends of the sheet together. That way the machine keeps sending the same message until it is stopped, or until the recipient runs out of paper. My entire roll of paper is spent. The expensive roll of thermal paper. It’s lying on the floor. All of it. It’s a sorry sight.

Kim writes that he found the quote on the back of a book the Pope published a couple of years ago. The previous meteorologist must have left it behind. A Catholic meteorologist.

Be not afraid.

It’s a good quote. I’ll give him that, the Pope. But not a hundred times over.

I stick the end of Kim’s fax into my brother’s machine and start sending the Pope’s quote back to him. Kim will be getting a taste of his own medicine. It takes more than an hour to send it all.

Meanwhile, I read a bit more in Paul’s book. He actually mentions the Pope. Paul writes that the Pope is fond of the Big Bang theory. The Pope claims to see the hand of God in all of it. He thinks the theory is definitely compatible with the idea of a Creation. God was behind the Big Bang. It’s ingenious. The Pope must have been happy when he came up with it. It’ll be exciting to hear what he has to say when it all starts to contract. Maybe he’ll fall silent.

I tear off a piece of the fax and hang the quote over my bed. It could be good to look at when I wake up in the morning. Catholic or not. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a Volvo.

I’m on my way to the Volvo shop, but I’ve cycled an alternative route taking me past a big, multi-storey hotel. Now I’m standing in the elevator. I am riding up and down. I’ve been standing here almost three-quarters of an hour. Every time I come down I press the top button, and when I get up top I press the bottom one. People are coming on and going off all the time, but no-one comments on my standing here.