Naïve. Super

  I am writing a card to Lise asking her what kind of tractor she’d buy.

  As I sit on a bench finishing off my milk shake, I have an idea. It is a business idea. These capitalist surroundings are inspiring me. My idea is a telephone service. I want to look into the possibilities for creating one. But I want it to be nice. Most of these telephone services are gross and unpleasant. They appeal to the dark side in us, to people like Kent, my bad friend. They appeal to our urges and our fear of loneliness. I want to create a telephone service with a difference. A pleasant one. A help-line for people who just need a little break. For people who, for a few minutes, need to feel that the world is good. I’m going to ask Børre to sing The Owl and the Pussycat on tape. It’s a good song.

  The owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea,

  In a beautiful pea-green boat …

  The owl looked up to the stars above,

  And sang to a small guitar,

  “Oh lovely Pussy, Pussy my love,

  What a beautiful Pussy you are”

  I am going to open a premium-rate 829-number, pay Børre a one-off fee, maybe a thousand kroner, and then I’ll advertise in a national newspaper and charge those who call twelve or fifteen kroner a minute. It could make me some money. And I feel certain that such a service will fill a gap. That there’s a market for it.

  We all have our melancholy moments. Days when the feeling of meaninglessness creeps in and we sink into cynicism and sarcasm. Days when we stop believing in love and that everything will be all right in the end. At moments like those it would be a blessing to hear the frail and unsteady voice of a child singing a sweet song. If such a telephone service had existed already, I would have been an active user myself. Maybe I would have already made it through this tough spot.

  A warm, friendly telephone service. I am creating a niche. And if it works, I’ll expand with more songs. Goosy Goosy Gander, Old McDonald Had a Farm, Hickory Dickory Dock. The list is long.

  I want to mention this to my brother. Maybe he can throw in some start-up funds, and if it takes off, I’ll pay him back generously. The idea is not to get rich. I don’t need much for subsistence. I just want to be OK, and then I’d like to have a decent watch.

  If the surplus were to become significant, I could donate money to a charitable organisation. I am very happy with this idea. It’s strange that I had to go all the way to America to think of it.

  The Helmet

  I have taken a bicycle helmet. It is a nice helmet. Blue. The first thirty minutes I was very pleased that I had finally acquired a helmet. And I was looking forward to showing it to Børre. But right now it’s not so pleasant any more. The whole thing is a bit bad. The helmet isn’t mine. I have taken something that doesn’t belong to me. My brother quickly made it very clear that he didn’t want anything to do with the helmet, but that he wouldn’t interfere with my choices. I am thinking about my grandfather and his story about the apple tree and the boys.

  I feel like a shady person. Weak, even.

  Taking the helmet came so naturally. I think that’s what scares me. My brother and I were coming out of a big museum where we had been looking at stuffed animals and objects from all over the world.

  I was excited, talking about dinosaurs and whales and African mammals. I was also talking about a big, black man who had asked me to take a picture of him in front of the big brown bear from Alaska. He knew everything about bears and had great respect for them. He had told me that if I had to crash-land a plane in Alaska, I’d have to stay far away from the brown bears. You see, they can run at 35 miles an hour, and kill a man with a single blow.

  While I was describing this to my brother, we went past a parked car with a bicycle helmet sitting on the bumper. I stopped dead. Then I looked around, and a moment later I had constructed a story to justify how the helmet was now mine.

  I figured it was obvious that a cyclist had dropped his helmet in the street and that someone had picked it up and left it on the car, so that it wouldn’t get run over by a bus or some other vehicle. I also thought I had saved the helmet by taking it, whereas if I’d left it there, it would definitely have fallen off and got crushed when the car drove off. Then I took the helmet and put it in my bag, and continued chatting to my brother about entirely different things. But as time passed, I felt the helmet getting heavier and heavier, and by the time we got home it was really heavy.

  Just now I discovered a name and a phone number on the inside of the helmet. That doesn’t make things easier. The owner suddenly has a name. His name is José, and I imagine that he has fled from Cuba and has just got his green card. But he probably doesn’t have a job. He’s only just getting by. And the helmet has definitely been given to him as a present. Having to deal with this is really unpleasant.

  Most of all I feel like sinking deep into a thick book about chaos theory, but the helmet is lying here on my bedside table insisting on its presence. I’ve even had it on my head.

  The whole situation is a bit pathetic. I have to return the helmet, but it’s too late to phone José tonight. Now I am putting the helmet on the floor, so that I won’t have to see it the moment I wake up.

  This is what I have seen today:

  – A man in a white shirt lighting a cigarette on a stone staircase while relaxing for the first time in a long while (at least that’s what it looked like)

  – A telephone booth where two receivers were dangling from their cords

  – A man with a Walkman who hurried through the part of the natural history museum which dealt with the evolution of the human race

  – A boy in a cafe who kept looking out into space every time his girlfriend said something, but who wanted her to look at him whenever he said something

  – A man combing his beard

  – A man who was playing a harmonica in the middle of the street and who hardly twitched when he almost got run over by a truck

  – A family of three fat Germans asking if there was an elevator up to the first floor of a McDonald’s restaurant

  – A man holding hands with another man

  – A police woman who stood for a long time gazing at an apple

  – A woman who said please leave me alone when I asked if she needed help to carry her bags up a flight of stairs

  The Note

  I can’t sleep. I am thinking about how keeping the helmet is incompatible with being a really good guy. And when I finally fall asleep, I dream that nobody likes me. It’s a bad night. The first thing I do when I wake up is to call José. I tell him who I am and that I’ve found the helmet and that he can pick it up from the doorman at the address where I live. José is very glad. He thinks it’s generous of me to call. He never thought he’d get the helmet back. People in New York are like wolves, he says. I say it’s only right and that he must think no more of it.

  My brother is proud of me, and wants to buy me breakfast at a Chinese restaurant nearby. I’m grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly I’m having the best time. I imagine that I am feeling better now that I have returned the helmet, than I would have had I never taken it. It’s really weird that way.

  I eat noodles and talk about my plans for the Owl and the Pussycat phone line. My brother is a bit sceptical, but not dismissive, and he doesn’t exclude the possibility of contributing with some start-up capital.

  When we’ve finished our food, a young Chinese girl comes over with a tray that she sets down on the table. On the tray lie the bill and two small cookies. Inside the cookies we find a piece of paper each with a little prediction on it.

  On my brother’s note it says: You are the center of every group’s attention.

  My note says: You will be advanced socially without any special effort.

  It’s a fantastic thought. In many ways a cushion. It does not inspire me to action in any way. But it’s good. I won’t have to do anything at all. And I’ll still get something back. It doesn’t get any better than that.

  Many

  One can say a lot of th
ings about New York, but I feel convinced that it is one of the few places in the world where you can have fun even when you don’t try.

  Today a lot of things have happened. Four of them have to do with time.

  First I found this postcard.

  Then I saw an advertisement in the New York Times. It was Tiffany & Co. advertising a watch called the Tiffany Tesoro watch. It costs 7500 dollars. If enough people call the Owl and the Pussycat phone line, I might be able to buy it. I think the ad text is really good. Especially the bit about the sound of gold. My brother liked it too.

  What we remember

  is what touches our heart.

  A certain gesture.

  The play of light.

  The sound of gold.

  The very moment itself.

  A little later, when my brother and I were on our way to a museum, we passed a girl writing poetry for money. She said that if I’d give her anything between five dollars and twenty dollars, she would write me a poem. I gave her seven dollars and said it had to be about time. She spent ten minutes writing. She wrote a nice little poem. I can see how one could probably have done some more work on it, but one shouldn’t always be so critical and opinionated. And the girl seemed very friendly.

  Here’s the poem:

  The fourth thing that had to do with time, I experienced at the Museum of Television and Radio. My brother was sitting watching some old TV programme. He was taking far too long, and I was getting bored.

  I sat down in front of a computer and started pressing keys at random. I don’t know what I wrote, but it might have been Time or perhaps Timex. Whatever it was, a selection of watch advert descriptions came up. It hit the spot. I do want a watch. I sat there for a while reading synopses of watch commercials. It was good. Now I feel that I’ll be more capable of choosing a watch, when that day comes.

  Here are a few of the synopses.

  The first one:

  This commercial shows how Citizen is a wristwatch with style, and that it appeals to sophisticated men and women. Photographs are shown of men and women preparing to meet each other while the song ‘About a Quarter to Nine’ is played on the soundtrack.

  Slogan: No other watch expresses time as beautifully.

  The second one:

  In this commercial for Seiko, several men and women explain that their Seiko watches have given them completely reliable time indications for years. They all agree that their Seiko watches have been worth every krone.

  Slogan: Man invented time. Seiko perfected it.

  The third one:

  In this commercial for Swatch, a young woman is listening to a taped Italian lesson, while sitting in her bedroom putting on nail polish.

  The fourth one:

  In this commercial for Timex, we see a giant wristwatch together with pictures of people at work and at play. A voice-over explains that Timex have created a collection of watches the user can be proud of. Whether you need a watch for sporting activities, leisure or the business world, Timex will have something to suit your needs.

  Slogan: Bring the value of Timex Quartz into your world.

  The fifth one:

  In this commercial for Timex, John Cameron Swayze goes to Acapulco to test how waterproof a Timex really is. While Swayze is watching, the world champion diver, Paul Garcia, jumps off the top of the most famous cliff in Acapulco, La Perla, with a Timex on his wrist. When he surfaces again, the watch is still working. Is it surprising that more people buy Timex than any other watch in the world, Swayze asks?

  Slogan: It took a licking and kept on ticking.

  The sixth one:

  In this black/white commercial for TAG Heuer Sports Watches, swimmers and athletes are shown battling against the clock.

  Slogan: Success is a mind game.

  The seventh one:

  In this commercial for Seiko we are shown a series of pictures of men and women with a lot of responsibility both at home and at work.

  Slogan: When people are counting on you, you can count on Seiko.

  I was a bit disappointed that Rolex wasn’t featured, and that it didn’t say anything about atomic clocks. But Timex, Seiko and TAG-Heuer appealed to me. It’s about not going for just any watch. I wonder what type of watch Paul has got. He probably has a good one. Maybe he’s got an atomic clock. As far as ordinary citizens are likely to have atomic clocks, Paul is probably one of them.

  Lucky pig.

  I don’t often experience four things that all have to do with time. At least not all in one day. It will probably be a while before it happens again. And I’ve also seen a lot of other things. I am starting to become saturated.

  This is what I have seen:

  – An elderly man who thanked me and called me brother for giving him money for the subway fare

  – A Vietnamese waiter who tried to explain to my brother that the one crab on the menu was hard and the other one was soft

  – A street not far from Wall Street that was closed off while a lot of stock brokers were playing baseball

  – A Latin American cycling in far too low a gear

  – A TV report about the guitar brand Fender, where a heavy rocker said that a Fender is like a woman, that it must be treated gently and with respect

  – A group of men in their 40s playing basketball, none of whom was as good as Dad

  – Clint Eastwood arriving at the Museum of Modern Art in a limousine

  – A man in an expensive suit who laughed, looking at some coins he was carrying in his hand

  – A well-dressed woman saying asshole to a cyclist

  – An elderly black man sitting guard in front of an elevator, who was shouting something to another man, a friend passing by, wearing a green uniform

  – A woman who asked; are you going to make someone happy? when I bought flowers for the people whose apartment we are borrowing

  – A girl on TV who was crying because her mum had never been good to her, but who had said instead that she was fat and ugly and that she didn’t want to see her any more

  – A man yawning a big yawn

  – An exhibition where an artist had painted very many pictures of a blue dog

  – A black man in a red outfit on Times Square shouting in a microphone: Where is the love in our society today? There is no love

  The Building

  Now my brother and I are playing Kim’s game. It’s the one where you first display some objects lying on the floor or on a table, and then you cover them with a piece of cloth, and then the other one has to remember what they were.

  We’ve agreed that the winner gets to decide what we are going to do today. I remembered everything, but my brother forgot quite a few things.

  This is what he didn’t remember:

  – His own keyring bunny

  – A beer-bottle top

  – A subway token

  – A balloon

  It is always unpleasant to forget obvious things. When I removed the piece of cloth after he had given up, and he saw the keyring bunny, he just said oh! the keyring bunny! in a way that made me understand that he was pretty disappointed with his effort. I consoled him by saying that he’s so much better at all kinds of other things. Everybody is good at something. My brother sulked for a while, but we’ve put it behind us now.

  We are on our way to the Empire State Building. As we approach it, I try to tell my brother how time and gravity are connected, but every time I open my mouth, he raises his right hand and shakes his head to shut me up. While my brother is buying the tickets, I take down the number for a coin-operated telephone on the ground floor: 502 5803. I have a plan. I’m not going to mention it to my brother.

  We have to queue to get to the elevator. An elderly lady standing in front of me has a brochure with facts about the building. I peer over her shoulder. It says it’s 443 metres tall and that it has 77 elevators that travel at between 200 and 400 metres per minute. I know very well that the Empire State Building is not the tallest in the world. It’s not
even the tallest in New York City.

  A few days ago there was an article on skyscrapers in the New York Times. It said the Petronas Towers in Malaysia is the tallest building in the world right now. It is the first time in over a hundred years that America hasn’t held the record. Sears Tower in Chicago has for a long time been the tallest, but a body called the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has just decided that TV aerials are no longer going to count when measuring height, and that makes the building in Malaysia the tallest. Soon the World Financial Center in Shanghai will be finished, and then that’ll be the tallest.

  The leader for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Dr Lynn Beedle, refused to call this a sad moment for American architecture, the article said. And he was quoted having said; No, no, no, there are still many great things about American buildings. Oh, many, many, great things.

  To me none of this really matters. The Empire State Building is the biggest. It’s the one I’ve seen in movies. It’s the one in the middle of New York City. It’s the one Paul writes about. The other ones can be as tall as they like.

  Now we’re taking the elevator. After a few seconds I feel my ears go thick. The digital counter inside the elevator only counts every tenth floor. It goes from fifty to sixty in just a few seconds. Paul should see me now. I feel like clapping my hands.

  The view is fantastic. I can see everything. The sea. The city. The mountains on the horizon.

  My brother is very systematic. He is taking his time, and he is reading in the guide book about what lies in the various directions. He wants to point and explain, but I move away a little.