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Authors: Peter Høeg
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rapid breathing, I woke up. Often I would simply lie awake, thinking that the air I was breathing was the air he had just exhaled.
8
Bertrand Russell wrote that pure mathematics is the field in which we donât know what weâre talking about or to what extent what we say is true or false.
Thatâs the way I feel about cooking.
I eat mostly meat. Fatty meat. I canât keep warm on vegetables and bread. Iâve never managed to acquire an understanding of my kitchen, of raw ingredients, or of the basic chemistry of cooking. I have only one simple work principle: I always make hot food. Thatâs important when you live alone. It serves a mental hygienic purpose. It keeps you going.
Today it serves another purpose as well. It puts off two telephone calls. I donât like talking on the phone. I want to see whom Iâm talking to.
I put Isaiahâs cigar box on the table. Then I make the first call.
Iâm actually hoping that itâs too late; itâll be Christmas soon, and people should be leaving work early.
I call the Cryolite Corporation. The director is still in his office. He doesnât introduce himself; he is merely a voice, dry, implacable, and unsympathetic, like sand running through an hourglass. He informs me that the government was represented on the board, and since the company was now in the process of closing down, and the foundation was being reorganized, it had been decided to
transfer all papers to the national archives, which houses documents dealing with decisions made by public authorities. Some of the papersâhe was not able to tell me which onesâwould fall into the category of âgeneral resolutions,â which remain confidential for fifty years, while othersâagain he could not, as I must understand, tell me which onesâwould be regarded as personal files, which enjoy eighty years of protection.
I try asking him where the papers are, the papers in general.
All information is still physically under the safekeeping of the corporation, but formally the documents have already been accepted into the national archives, which is where I would have to inquire, and is there anything else he could do for me?
âYes,â I say, âdrop dead.â
I take the rubber bands off Isaiahâs box.
The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I donât need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions itâs nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor.
But I understand the love for a shiny blade. One day I bought a Puma skinner for Isaiah. He didnât thank me. His face showed no surprise. He lifted the short, wide-bladed knife out of the green felt box, carefully, and five minutes later he left. He knew, and I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he left to go down to the basement under the mechanicâs workbench to curl up with his new possession, and that it would take months for him to comprehend that it was actually his.
Now itâs lying in front of me, in its sheath, in his cigar box. With a wide, meticulously polished hilt of antler. There are four other things in the box. A harpoon point of the type children in Greenland find at abandoned encampments and which they know theyâre supposed to leave for the archaeologists but which they pick up and lug around anyway. A bear claw, and as usual Iâm amazed at the hardness, weight, and sharpness of this one nail. A cassette tape, without a box but wrapped in a sheet of faded green
graph paper covered with figures. At the top it says in capital letters: NIFLHEIM.
And there is a plastic bus pass holder. The pass itself has been removed, so the holder now serves as a sleeve for a
8
Bertrand Russell wrote that pure mathematics is the field in which we donât know what weâre talking about or to what extent what we say is true or false.
Thatâs the way I feel about cooking.
I eat mostly meat. Fatty meat. I canât keep warm on vegetables and bread. Iâve never managed to acquire an understanding of my kitchen, of raw ingredients, or of the basic chemistry of cooking. I have only one simple work principle: I always make hot food. Thatâs important when you live alone. It serves a mental hygienic purpose. It keeps you going.
Today it serves another purpose as well. It puts off two telephone calls. I donât like talking on the phone. I want to see whom Iâm talking to.
I put Isaiahâs cigar box on the table. Then I make the first call.
Iâm actually hoping that itâs too late; itâll be Christmas soon, and people should be leaving work early.
I call the Cryolite Corporation. The director is still in his office. He doesnât introduce himself; he is merely a voice, dry, implacable, and unsympathetic, like sand running through an hourglass. He informs me that the government was represented on the board, and since the company was now in the process of closing down, and the foundation was being reorganized, it had been decided to
transfer all papers to the national archives, which houses documents dealing with decisions made by public authorities. Some of the papersâhe was not able to tell me which onesâwould fall into the category of âgeneral resolutions,â which remain confidential for fifty years, while othersâagain he could not, as I must understand, tell me which onesâwould be regarded as personal files, which enjoy eighty years of protection.
I try asking him where the papers are, the papers in general.
All information is still physically under the safekeeping of the corporation, but formally the documents have already been accepted into the national archives, which is where I would have to inquire, and is there anything else he could do for me?
âYes,â I say, âdrop dead.â
I take the rubber bands off Isaiahâs box.
The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I donât need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions itâs nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor.
But I understand the love for a shiny blade. One day I bought a Puma skinner for Isaiah. He didnât thank me. His face showed no surprise. He lifted the short, wide-bladed knife out of the green felt box, carefully, and five minutes later he left. He knew, and I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he left to go down to the basement under the mechanicâs workbench to curl up with his new possession, and that it would take months for him to comprehend that it was actually his.
Now itâs lying in front of me, in its sheath, in his cigar box. With a wide, meticulously polished hilt of antler. There are four other things in the box. A harpoon point of the type children in Greenland find at abandoned encampments and which they know theyâre supposed to leave for the archaeologists but which they pick up and lug around anyway. A bear claw, and as usual Iâm amazed at the hardness, weight, and sharpness of this one nail. A cassette tape, without a box but wrapped in a sheet of faded green
graph paper covered with figures. At the top it says in capital letters: NIFLHEIM.
And there is a plastic bus pass holder. The pass itself has been removed, so the holder now serves as a sleeve for a
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