Naïve Super (3 page)

I wonder whether I am a really good guy.

I wonder whether there are any really good guys at all in my generation.

This morning I found a book in my brother’s bookcase. It’s in English and deals with time and the universe and everything.

I flipped through some pages, but started sweating and had to put it down. It was too much for me.

There are limits to what I can handle right now. I walked around in the flat for a while, feeling uneasy.

To divert my thoughts, I started to look through one of my brother’s old photo albums. There are several photographs of me there. I am little. And often dressed in the strangest clothes. Corduroy. Always corduroy.

I must have had outrageous self-confidence as a child.

In one of the photographs I am standing next to my new bike. It’s green and has five red ladybirds on the crossbar. I’m wearing a yellow and brown pair of dungarees. I’m going cycling. That was the only plan.

When I awoke in the morning, I would think; the bike. One thought.

Today I wake up and have a lot of thoughts. At least five. It’s a hassle.

I don’t know what it’s all about. What is it about?

I faxed Kim, asking whether his parents used to dress him up in corduroy when he was little. I also ask him if he knows what it’s all about.

He faxes me back answering yes to the first question but no to the second one.

Kim always faxes me back immediately. It’s like he’s just sitting there waiting for me to fax.

That worries me a bit.

While I sat looking at the sheet from Kim which said yes and no, the uneasiness came back. I realised I had moved, and that I was spending increasingly more time over by the bookcase. The book stood there and I stood a distance from it. I peered at it while moving closer and closer.

In the end I was sitting with it in my lap, thinking I might just as well explore the core of my problem now rather than later.

I’m not quite sure, but I think it was a mature decision.

The book is written by a professor called Paul.

I’m thinking that someone with a name as friendly as that couldn’t possibly want to scare me.

I have been reading for several hours now, and I am discovering that my entire being is becoming influenced.

Even though it says Paul is known to write in simple terms about complicated things, I find it difficult.

Paul dabbles with difficult things.

My basis for understanding him is weaker than average.

I opted out of maths and physics after my first year of secondary school. At the time I figured I could see a whole lot of other things I’d rather base my existence on. Today I’m not so sure any more. Maybe it was a mistake.

In other words, I don’t understand everything. Maybe I understand even less than I think, but what I do grasp fascinates and scares me.

I had no idea my brother read books like this. There are obviously things I don’t understand about my brother.

There’s even more I don’t understand about time.

In a laboratory in Bonn stands a three-metre-long metal cylinder. Paul writes that it is shaped like a submarine and lies in a steel frame surrounded by wires and measuring instruments. It’s an atomic clock, and it is currently the most accurate clock known.

It is more accurate than the earth’s rotation.

Such accuracy amazes me. It obviously has little to do with the earth. It’s just something somebody has decided. I like that. Strangely enough, I feel time becomes more tangible that way.

I think I’d like to have an atomic clock.

To compensate for the irregularity of the earth, a second is added now and then. The last time they added a second was in June 1994. Nobody ever said anything about that.

The definition of time has changed due to atomic clocks. Before, a second used to be one-86,400th of a day, but now it has become 9,192,631,770 cycles of a caesium atom. I think it’s a lot.

This information puts me out of the game. I feel unwell and need to fetch the ball. I throw it for a while against the refrigerator before I’m able to continue reading.

I remember when we used to drink milk in primary school.

Many of us had digital wristwatches. With a chronometer function. We had hundredths. We timed the most absurd things. It was the big thing in those days.

For a long time it was all about drinking your school milk as fast as possible. I always took more than five seconds, but Espen, that thug, drank the entire carton in well under a second.

In light of what I have just read, I think that’s amazing. Personally I engage in very little that takes less than a second. On occasion I take photographs with a shutter speed of one thousandth of a second.

But that’s nothing compared to what caesium atoms get up to. Can I be sure that it’s valid? More than nine billion cycles per second? I can’t picture it. It’s too many. My ability to estimate how many units there are in an amount is limited. I can easily tell whether there are four or nine cows in a field, but if it’s more than fifteen I have to count. And anything more than a thousand doesn’t really matter.

I have no means of controlling the caesium atoms.

I have to assume that Paul knows what he’s talking about.

I have to take his word for it.

Now I’ve read some more.

It gets worse and worse.

Paul says gravity influences time.

The man knows no limits.

Totally without warning he says that time is influenced by gravity and by movement. I look at the sleeve of the book. It’s from a serious publisher. What he’s saying is probably right.

I get annoyed.

Why hasn’t anybody told me about this?

Don’t physics teachers understand that this kind of information makes all the difference? Are they stupid?

The reason I opted out of physics was because we sat drawing protons and neutrons without grasping how it all really fitted together. I was bored. I’d much rather turn to face the girls and make a ring with my left thumb and index finger, and then move my right index finger in and out of this ring repeatedly.

Time was never mentioned.

Not one of my teachers has ever mentioned time – not so much as a word. I ought to find out whether they know anything or not.

Maybe they’ve known all along. In that case I ought to wreak revenge. I ought to give them a hard shove in the back when they least expect it.

I feel cheated.

I feel I can’t trust anybody any more.

Time on the sun passes one two billionths slower than with us. It has to do with gravity. Paul says gravity is stronger up there.

I thought time was time and gravity was gravity.

Evidently that’s not the way it is.

With a couple of really good atomic clocks one could prove it in the Empire State Building.

I’m not making this up.

If one places an atomic clock at the bottom of the Empire State Building and another one at the top, after a while one will see that the one at the top goes faster.

During the course of a human life one would save a few thousandths of a second by staying at street level.

Those sitting at the top would be a little older than the rest of us.

Now I’m putting the book down.

I feel I’m becoming groggy. I’m in rebellion.

There is no time.

I can hardly see the conclusion being any other.

There is at least not any one, single time.

My time. Your time. Paul’s time. The sun’s time.

Lots of times.

Many times equals no time.

If that’s the case I ought to be glad.

Why aren’t I glad?

I feel stressed.

Maybe I’ll be glad later.

I’m still not glad.

I was mad to read that book. Blind courage.

I no longer feel so sure that Paul is just friendly.

It is possible that time does not exist, although things still move. Life is in motion. We are born and we die. I grow older. What good does it do that time is not the same on the sun?

Someone ought to come and employ me. Someone ought to ask me to build something. Carry something really heavy. Sandblast something very big.

It’s been a long time since I worked up a real sweat.

I’ve written a new list. It shows what used to excite me when I was younger. It’s quite long.

My existence was full of these things. It was so nice and uncomplicated. When I wasn’t sleeping I ran around and was excited. I never walked. I ran.

I look at the list for a while and then fax it to Kim. I feel I owe him a fax now.

I speculate about making a list of things that excite me today. I find pen and paper, but notice that I am hesitating.

I am afraid the list will be a short one.

I should never have stopped running.

Now I’m on my way down to the shop to buy a litre of skimmed milk. When I return, the courtyard is full of children. There’s a kindergarten in the courtyard. I hadn’t noticed until now.

A boy on a tiny bicycle with side wheels comes over to me. He is wearing dungarees and a cap. And on top of his cap he has a blue bicycle helmet. He looks at me and at the milk I’ve bought. He asks if I’m the owner of the cool, red bike. I nod in the direction of my bike, which is parked against a wooden fence, and ask him if that’s the one he’s talking about. It is.

It’s mine, I say.

The boy is full of wonder. He says he wants to have a bike like that.

We walk over to my bike to have a look at it. It is big and red. The boy feels the frame. I am wondering how he knew it was my bike.

He’s seen me lock it, he says. And he tells me that he lives in the next building. All the way up top.

Then you have a short way to the kindergarten, I say.

He nods.

I’ve seen you throwing the ball too, he says.

Are you awake that late? I ask him.

Sometimes, the boy says.

I ask him his name and he says it’s Børre.

You’ve also got quite a cool bike, I say.

Børre says it doesn’t belong to him.

He says it belongs to the kindergarten.

Børre is quiet for a while. Then he asks me whether I use a helmet.

I feel like lying and saying yes, but stop myself. I say no.

You must, Børre says. And he thinks I should buy a helmet as soon as possible, and preferably today.

He explains how one of the dads in the kindergarten crashed into a car while he was cycling. He didn’t have a helmet and had to spend several days in hospital.

You’re right, Børre, I say. I’ll buy a helmet.

Børre asks me if I’m going cycling now. But I’m not. I’m going upstairs to drink milk. He wants to know if I might be going cycling later. I don’t know. Maybe tonight, I tell him.

Børre wants to watch me cycle, but he’s not in the kindergarten at night, he says.

Maybe you’ll see me from the window, I say.

Maybe, says Børre.

He stands there looking at me as I walk towards the stairs. He waves when I turn around.

Later it strikes me that I should have put Børre on the bike and wheeled him around the courtyard.

He would have liked that.

Once I played until I fainted.

I had just got slalom skis and was so excited that I forgot to eat. I skied the whole day without eating.

In the end I fainted from exhaustion and crashed into a lamp post. I had concussion, and Dad had to take me to the hospital.

The doctor said that playing all day long was fine, but that I had to remember to eat in between.

I fainted because what I was doing was so much fun that I didn’t have time to take a break.

Something about that is incredibly good.

That eagerness.

It’s quite far away.

My mood has been varying these last few days.

I am trying to get a picture of my situation, but the pieces won’t quite fall into place. I don’t really know where I am.

A lot has changed over the last few weeks.

The days have become different. The nights as well.

But I don’t feel satisfied. Not yet. There’s definitely a handful of essential things missing. I have no idea where to look.

But I have the ball.

Fortunately, I have the ball.

Every night I throw the ball against the wall for quite a long while.

My brother is coming back in a month’s time. Then I can’t live here any more. I have a month.

I admit I am nervous about how this is going to turn out.

I am trying not to act tough. I could have lit a cigarette and acted as though nothing was going on. Maybe I could have fooled somebody. A couple of girls. Kim. I could possibly have fooled Kim. But sooner or later I would be sitting there again. On the grass, with my brother’s or somebody else’s arm on my shoulder, crying.