Zombie Nation
A novel by Øystein Stene
Translation by Diane Oatley
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!
Tablet VI, Gilgamesh
You don’t need two arms to be able to write.
I have taped the sheet of paper onto the table, at the top and bottom, so it won’t be moved by
the tip of the pen or the back of my hand. That is how I will write down the story, on this stack of copy
paper, while I wait for the other hand to grow out, descend, and assume the same shape as my writing
hand.
I want to record the story of the country I come from. The nation that raised itself up out of the
fog of history – or rather, should I say – out of the sea, and put itself on the map. But only on highly
classified maps, which were stored under lock and key, and guarded, to be taken out at secret meetings
where men with vague job descriptions from anonymous civil service offices took part.
The men were decisive and dynamic and did in the end what had to be done. They
subsequently went home to their wives and children and mistresses and assured them that everything
was as it should be. That there was nothing to fear.
That death was still far out of sight.
The men have grown old. Many of them have passed away. What they know, nobody else has
been made privy to. He who wishes to find proof of the country’s existence will in all likelihood
search in vain. Unless one goes through a number of the Foreign Ministry’s sealed files with a finetoothed comb and is extremely lucky, and comes across an old requisition from an American or a
European Naval Defence Unit. Or hears a rumour, maybe from a retired sailor or soldier.
Soon there’ll be nobody left who can tell the story. Except for me. I’m here. I will be here
after every single tiny trace has been removed. Even after all of the top secret maps have been burned
or have decomposed into soil and humus.
And I can tell the story. I am going to fill these white sheets of paper, one by one.
I remember it down to each minor detail, all of it, details that I wish had long since
disappeared. Dried out, disintegrated, evaporated – like mud puddles you no longer remember the size
or location of after a couple of sunny days.
But nothing has disappeared, I carry it with me wherever I go – as if it’s written into my
movements, a text I must read no matter where I affix my gaze. Even the documents and papers that I
once had access to, and which gave me a uniquely first-rate overview of the nation’s history, I can
remember word for word. Even the paper it was written on – the thickness of it, the surface texture of
the paper, the typeface of the typewriter that imprinted the letters, the colour of the paper covering the
documents – I can still envision it.
During the 20 years that have passed, I never had any plans of writing down this account. Not before
now, as I sit hidden away in a warehouse full of unmailed postcards. Postcards that will probably not
be sent, not ever. The Europeans don’t come here any longer, and if they should do so, they will in all
likelihood not be buying postcards.
The era of the postcard is over.
What I am attempting to do here is not to write myself into the story, but out of it, to search for
a loophole, a passage, an opening; a place where the story cannot reach me or I reach it. So that I can
exist as something other than a part of the nation’s destiny, of the hole it has left in its wake. I am
trying to exist, according to human conditions, as it were. I am trying to make room for something
new. New life.
Life.
Let the dead then bury one another in peace and let the living find a way of living with those
who refuse to die several times over.
One last time I want to let the country rise up for posterity, be real, I want to describe the place
as if it exists completely intact, with all of the dikes, houses, streets, apartments, offices – and, in
particular, the country’s residents. One last time it will be found, here, in this account. One last time
while my hand is growing out.
Not everything that grows is life.
Then the oblivion of history can once again enshroud the country: at the bottom of the ocean
that for reasons unfathomable engendered it. He who hears the name, he who understands the meaning
of the story, he who knows what the surface of the ocean conceals, will perhaps be the last person to
mention it again. Because I will give you the name; subsequently it will be up to you if the rest is to
remain in silence: Labofnia.
If you want access to the memory of a city, into the memory itself, you must locate the city’s archives:
here every single tiny decision regarding the city’s welfare is filed, changes large and small are
stored, buildings that are erected are recorded, those torn down, noted – studies and registrations that
are carried out are documented, evaluations and reports that are made but never reach the point of
execution, still exist. What the city was, is, and could be, is found here: the bygone eras, the dormant
potential, all losses and victories. The history of most cities can be reconstructed from their archives.
Such is the case for Labofnia.
But even a relatively new city will contain tons and tons of documents and a considerable
number of square kilometres of paper surfaces. Enormous amounts of time and patience are required
to learn how to navigate floor by floor, room after room, between rows and shelves, folders and
documents. One is dependent upon an extraordinary stroke of luck in order to find interesting and
adequate information in a city archive. Unless one knows where and how to look. And if one finds the
right documents in Labofnia’s city archives, it is possible to trace the city and the nation’s history. The
seams are indeed loose, at times hidden, at times overshadowed, but if one has the patience to follow
them all the way, the entirety will in the end fall into place.
The oldest document in Labofnia’s city archive is presumably more than one thousand years
old: a cover made of cowhide which presumably came from a hymnal: the word “Psalms” is still
legible. The cut and tanning would imply a time somewhere between the years 500 and 800. The
leather has decomposed in part, but the inside of the back cover is still intact and small pieces of the
stitching used for the binding remain, sewn into the leather. Where and when it was found is
uncertain, but it is located in the Agency for Planning and Building Services’ third technical archive
folder subsequent to the agency’s first year of operations in 1957. In all likelihood it surfaced during
construction work on a building site.
There is cause to believe that the cover of the book was first brought to Labofnia by a
missionary around 520: Since the early Middle Ages there have been stories in circulation about St.
Brendan, an Irish monk who was to have set out on a daring ocean voyage to find Paradise.
According to the Irish myths of the time Paradise was to be found on the other side of the Atlantic
Ocean.
The story of St. Brendan’s journey of adventure was first written down and published in Latin,
later in Flemish and English. The story tells of how St. Brendan, along with fourteen other monks, set
out on a ship. Out in the middle of the open sea they reach a small island, described as a skerry. There
is a naked man on the skerry, clinging to the cliffs for dear life, terrified that he will be swept away by
the waves. Brendan holds that the man must be Judas, the disciple who betrayed our Lord. For who
else would be put here, in this place forsaken by God and all men? The naked and confused man on
the island is not allowed to enter hell or to return to the fold of humanity. He is placed out here to
suffer in solitude, for all eternity.
The most well-known version of the story of St. Brendan is G.R. Waters’ translation from
1928, The Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan. The descriptions of the island and the naked Judas
are found in Chapter 26, where it is written that “the ocean waves broke over him relentlessly, his life
was death without end.”
In the foreword of Waters’ edition, convincing documentation is presented, substantiating
that Brendan was in fact an Irish monk, born in the year 485 and deceased in the year 578. He was
believably of royal blood, but renounced his life of nobility to become a monk and missionary. There
are historical grounds for believing that he founded monasteries in Wales and Brittany, and that he set
out on a lengthy missionary voyage which included the Hebrides and the Orkney Islands around the
year 520. Some have also claimed that he got as far as Greenland and Canada, searching for new
peoples to convert to Christianity.
There are also many indications that St. Brendan reached a point off the coast of Labofnia on
his sea voyage, possibly following problems with storm and bad weather, and after having searched
for land for a long time. Perhaps he and the crew were the very first people to set foot on Labofnia.
And perhaps they found a naked Labofnian on the island. Lying down, standing, staggering around –
aimlessly and in confusion. Perhaps St. Brendan thought that the psalms would help him to withstand
his suffering.
To wake up suddenly in Labofnia is like suddenly waking up anywhere else. The difference is in what
happens immediately after awakening – during that precise moment when consciousness is restored,
so to speak.
Usually one will perhaps register familiar sounds and voices, recognise the texture of the
bedclothes, open one’s eyes and immediately see the things that were there the night before. Trousers,
jumper, socks. The bed, the night stand, the closet, the shelves, the floor, the carpet.
Clues that answer the elementary questions regarding who, what, where and how.
A background story is established simply and effortlessly, just as evidently as the awakening
itself. A reason for why one is where one is, about what one is where one is. And, on those rare
occasions when one is unable to answer that, a possible explanation for that as well: One assumes that
one has been in an accident, one has been drunk, one is in shock. At a certain point in time there will
be something about the circumstances that will provide a hint. A lead. Of something.
He who awakens for the first time in Labofnia, has no such clues.
*
For my own part I woke up in a storage room in Labofnia’s city hall. Between a few boxes full of
forms and empty report books. With my right hand squeezed in between two brownish-grey and
slightly battered cardboard boxes. My head on the hard metal shelf. The balls of my bum against the
ice-cold concrete floor. And immediately: an attempt to come up with an explanation. A background
story.
So what does one do, when one wakes up in Labofnia without knowing why? Or how? What
did I do?
Before I start relating my personal reactions, I must specify that I don’t consider myself to be
unique or special in any sense. I am, like any other Labofnian, exceedingly ordinary, and should
therefore be suitable as a representative for the Labofnian people in my account. If there is anything
that sets me apart, it must be precisely this, my complete and sincere insight regarding my lack of
uniqueness. And perhaps it is exactly this which has brought me here, before the page, telling the
story.
And the place where we should start is exactly here, at the moment one awakens in Labofnia.
One thing is to awaken in some place other than where one fell asleep. That is an experience
that some people have had for sure. Those who have not, can certainly imagine it, how it feels.
Regardless; the majority have surely at some time or another awoken and not known where they are, if
only for a fraction of a second.
Until a few seconds later when one has recognised the room, one’s own body, one’s
surroundings. Until one finds something or other to hold onto. The sound of a train passing, the smell
of cooking fumes from the floor below, a poorly painted cornice.
On the basis of some detail or other, a reconstruction of the situation begins. And as soon as
such a process has commenced, the most essential and critical questions are answered.
The inability to carry out such a reconstruction will normally be diagnosed as a loss of
memory. Waking up in Labofnia can, superficially speaking, be compared to waking up with amnesia.
I came to, as it were, in a small, oblong room with shelves along the walls. Lying between
some cardboard boxes, half on the floor, in a twisted position. I could register the feeling of cardboard,
metal and the concrete floor against my skin. The sound of the ventilation system from a pipe up under
the ceiling.
I must have lain there like this for a brief moment. Meanwhile, I had my first sensory
experiences as a Labofnian: objects were visible, but without making a strong impression, sounds
could be heard, but not with the clarity that one would expect. And without any sense of smell or taste.
If anything is felt, it is first and foremost the cold skin. One’s own cold skin.
And no specific memories, no clear recollections.
When I finally tried to move, my entire body felt sluggish, drowsy and heavy, almost too
heavy to be moved. I managed nonetheless to lift my head enough to establish that I was naked, with a
body consisting of two feet, two legs, two hands, two arms, a head, an upper body, a lower body, male
genitals. I could also register that I had extremely pale feet, hands and genitals – almost white, with
traces of blue, purple or greenish markings here and there. It immediately occurred to me that this
should frighten me, that my skin was so discoloured, but simultaneously, my relation to this body was
also too unclear for it to have the power to frighten me: if this body didn’t mean anything to me, was
there really any reason to worry about it?
My legs obeyed me when I tried to pull them towards me, but only in part, like two heavy,
cold and dry lumps of flesh. The right leg came all the way up, the left halfway, before it then dropped
limply down to the floor. I turned over onto my stomach and tried to push myself up with my hands,
using what I had of muscle strength, or what I presumed I had of muscle strength. Finally I was up and
crawling on all fours, with my palms and knees on the floor.
I took a few test steps forward, on all fours. It proved difficult to coordinate several
movements, such as moving my right foot and left hand at the same time. The simplest was to
concentrate on one foot or hand at a time.
I looked up, ahead of me: a white door and a door handle. I put my palms against the wall and
pushed myself a little backwards, making sure that the entire sole of my foot was placed on the floor,
while allowing my legs to lift me up onto my two feet, all the way until I stood upright, balancing,
surprised that it was even possible.
I stood there in some kind of body, without swaying much to speak of, but to be on the safe
side, with one hand against the wall.
I don’t know what I had expected, but it was possible to move this body. Albeit completely
without any kind of flexibility whatsoever, only in jerks and without any finesse, as if the joints in the
skeleton had stiffened, the muscles hardened and tendons rigidified. But nonetheless, it was possible to
move.
I stood with my back to the door and looked around. The walls were a cream-yellow, the
shelves white lacquered metal. The room was roughly five metres long and two metres wide. The
shelves lining the walls held office supplies – pencils, pens, tape dispensers, staplers, copy paper,
paper clips, and boxes of forms.
There was nothing in the room that told me anything of significance. Anything about who I
was, what I was. I held my hand up in front of my eyes. It was still pale and bluish-grey, the marks
were the same and all of the joints were still stiff. I tried making a fist, but only succeeded in partially
getting my index finger and middle finger under my thumb.
Yes, I could recognise and identify this hand as a hand; except for the colouring and the rough,
dry skin, it was like any old hand. But it wasn’t a hand that I had any relation to, any history with.
I turned towards the door. I took hold of the handle, pulled it carefully downward. I viewed the
movement that I had instigated as if it should already have been completed. As if there were no
potential for something new in the movement once it had been started. The only thing that remained
was to observe the movement’s culmination.
While I made the movement and observed myself doing so, it hit me that I hoped the door
would be locked. If it were locked, all of this would turn out to be a riddle that would be impossible to
solve. A locked door would be more promising than an open door. A locked door would tell me that
somebody or something was keeping me locked up. Somebody who did not want me to get out. That I
was worth locking up. That there was something out there that I wasn’t supposed to see, that I wasn’t
supposed to know about. Being locked up had meaning, with a locked door there were causes, effects,
circumstances.
But the door handle went all the way down, the movement changed direction and I pulled the
door handle towards me, the door followed and an another gasp from the ventilation system could be
heard.
An open door tells you nothing about who you are.
I looked out; a long corridor. Also in the same anonymous cream-yellow colour as the storage
room. There were several doors down along the corridor. White, completely identical doors. The
corridor, the doors, the colours – nothing made any wholly straightforward, distinct impression.
Anonymous, ordinary, practical, no more and no less.
I went back into the storage room. I lifted one of the boxes of forms, and put it on the floor. Or
rather, lifted the box sounds like a targeted action; with my extremely limited fine-motor skills it is
more accurate to say that I knocked it over, dug the papers out. The movements became an absurd
parody of what I was trying to do, not only was it clumsy and ridiculous, it was also extremely
ineffective and slow.
Finally, I managed all the same to empty the box. I tried to push the forms into one corner so
they wouldn’t be left scattered across the entire room. I had no way of knowing whether somebody at
a later point in time might scold me for my messiness. I opened the box, pulled it down over me. I
found some grey, wide packing tape and made one clumsy attempt after another at winding the tape
around me to make the cardboard box stay in place. To begin with the tape ended up only on my skin
or on the cardboard, it got tangled up or torn off, but eventually I succeeded in attaching the cardboard
like a kind of loincloth around me. The cardboard box covered my entire crotch down to my knees.
Then I went out into the hallway again, closing the door to the storage room behind me. I
toddled forward, essentially without bending my knees, while I held my hands in front of me or
supported myself from time to time against the walls.
I reached the end of the corridor and a new door. I opened the door with just as much care and
ignorance as I had the last one. Through the crack I could see a kind of hall, a lobby. In the middle of
the lobby, there was a reception desk with a female receptionist behind it wearing a dark blue suit. She
wore huge earrings.
I paused, looking through the door crack and reconsidered for a brief moment. Were there
security guards here? Should I stay in the hallway or the storage room until nightfall when the building
was closed? Try to sneak out unnoticed? Should I search for another exit? Or should I simply walk
past the receptionist with a matter-of-fact expression, despite the fact that the only clothing I was
wearing was a cardboard box?
It was somewhere around this point that I began to understand truly that my situation was
difficult to define, to understand, to address. Because regardless of how immobile I was now,
regardless of whether I moved clumsily or with poor orientation, and although I couldn’t account for
my presence, I stood here and was able to identify the desk in there as a reception desk, the woman
behind the desk as a receptionist, her suit as dark blue, I could even establish that her earrings were
large. There was in other words an inkling of these things within me from before. Although I didn’t
know anything at all about who I was and where I was, I was nonetheless able to identify what I might
find in front of me at any given time. I had some categories, concepts and ideas about the world. I
even tried to make some calculations about whether it would be smart to make my presence known to
those in my surroundings, or whether this should remain hidden.
There I stood, wearing a cardboard box, in front of a door leading into a lobby with a receptionist. To
run from something that did not appear to be a threat seemed absurd. Although I did not understand
much, at least I understood this. Finally I opened the door and padded as quietly and smoothly as I
could over to the reception desk. But I couldn’t bend my knees very much and I was afraid of falling; I
had to hold my arms out to the sides to keep my balance. I understood that I must have looked pretty
strange, so I was prepared essentially for just about anything from the receptionist.
The woman behind the desk lifted her head. She too, it struck me, in a somewhat slow and
insistent way. Her earrings jingled and twinkled. She looked at me. Not with a look of surprise, as I
had expected.
I had planned to ask her to call me a taxi, but I didn’t get that far.
“Welcome to Labofnia,” she said.
I stood there in front of her, completely inert, my hands hanging straight down.
“Have a seat on one of the benches there, you’ll be given a blanket and a cup of tea.”
She pointed towards some metal benches on the other side of the reception. It was almost as if
I had been expected, as if they had been waiting for me all along.
The next object in Labofnia’s city archives is far from being as old as the cowhide cover. This object is
found in an unregistered folder, also from the Agency for Planning and Building Services. Again, the
artefact may have been found during works carried out by the agency, and thereby ended up in the
agency’s own papers, to then finally wind up in the city archives.
This is also a book, or the remains of one. Most of the paper has rotted away and crumbled,
but here and there some ship’s coordinates can be discerned. The coordinates indicate that the book is
a ship’s log, perhaps for a captain or first mate. Almost the entire front page has disintegrated, but on
the colophon page one can make out the title: «Busse Emmanuel», which in the English of the
Renaissance meant «Sailing ship Emmanuel», something which backs up the conjecture that it is a
matter of a ship’s log.
With the exception of a short time period during the Viking Age, shipping in the northwest
Atlantic Ocean was essentially non-existent – up until the Renaissance, when voyagers and
mapmakers again began crossing the ocean. In 1578 the British admiral Sir Martin Frobisher set out
on his third expedition to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. On the journey home, his
ship the Busse Emmanuel was to have been driven off course during a storm. After a few days he came
across a previously undiscovered island. Supposedly only two of the crew members went ashore,
among them, the first mate. Frobisher reported information about the island after his arrival in Great
Britain that same year. The island was named Buss Island, after the ship, and was immediately
included on the naval maps of the time.
In the beginning of the 17th century, a few years after Frobisher’s death, different stories
began circulating about his excursion to the island. The first mate is to have stated that the island had
been inhabited, by some extremely confused souls, perhaps survivors of a shipwreck. But it was
impossible to know who they were and a big disagreement broke out on board about whether or not
they should take them along. Some of the crew held that the islanders’ confused behaviour would
create problems during the crossing. Since under the law one was obliged to take castaways on board,
Frobisher and his crew agreed not to tell anyone about the individuals they had encountered on the
island. Nonetheless, Frobisher was too ambitious to allow the discovery of a new island remain
unknown.
William Baffin, a British navigator and contemporary, wrote about Frobisher and his crew’s
encounter with these island inhabitants in different contexts. Rumours about how the island was
populated by human beings began to spread. People who had no knowledge of who they themselves
were, people who seemed to be something other than what they appeared to be. Some of these stories
found their way into the literary works of the time. William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night from
1602 appears to have been influenced by the rumours: the play revolves around a shipwreck on a tiny
island, where nobody seems to be who they are and complete confusion reigns, and the strangest thing
of all: where love is only referred to as “such a suffering, such a deadly life”.
Whatever the case may be, it is likely that the ship’s log that has ended up in Labofnia’s city
archives comes from a ship with the same name as Frobisher’s, which was driven off course in 1578
and arrived at what at the time was an unknown island. It could be that the first mate lost the log book
in all the commotion; it could be that for various reasons it was left behind.
Several attempts were made to find the island, among these by the Scottish Admiral John Ross
on his Arctic expedition with Isabella in 1818. Also at that time without success. In 1818 the island
disappeared from the naval maps of the Atlantic Ocean: Buss Island was believed to be nonexistent.
Another 100 years would go by before this assumption would be challenged.
Labofnia is a ship on a set course through its own uncertainty, anchored at the bottom of a sea
containing as many questions as waves. And here I stood, at a reception desk in the island’s City Hall.
Compared to many other arrivals, it was certainly among the less dramatic. One can in a sense say that
I was fortunate, I was quickly greeted with normalisation, and I was not observed running around
naked by a large number of Labofnians. Such factors to a certain degree have an impact on the
newcomer’s view of everything, and on his or her first weeks here.
I turned around and looked at the bench she had asked me to sit down on. I took a few steps
across the floor towards the benches. My steps were heavy, shaky – I was afraid of falling down with
each step. When I had made my way over to the bench, I bent way down, trying take hold with my
hand in order to lower the rest of my body – as if I had to steady myself and the place could at any
moment begin moving, rocking, be swept away by waves. I fell down awkwardly into a kind of sitting
position.
I sat there gazing at the floor, unsure of what was expected of me. The woman came over first
with a large wool blanket which she wrapped around me. Then she disappeared for a moment, and
came back with a cup of tea. She placed the teacup in my hands, but it was clear that lifting the cup up
to my mouth and putting it against my lips would require significantly greater fine-motor skills than I
possessed. I therefore ended up just sitting there with the cup in my hands, and I noticed that it did not
feel as warm as it should, taking into consideration the steam from the tea water.
“You will be given more information, but right now you must just try to be patient.”
The reasonable manner in which she said this, along with the blanket and the cup of tea – all
of this indicated that there was nothing particularly unusual about the situation.
She took her place behind the reception desk again and made a telephone call.
“Arrival 2:30 p.m., City Hall,” she said.
She stood with the receiver in her hand, nodded and said yes a couple of times. After hanging
up, she smiled at me, and then leafed through some papers. From time to time a man or woman in a
suit came in. They paid no particular attention to me, merely signed in on the receptionist’s register
and walked into the elevator right behind the desk.
I sat listening to the receptionist’s brief chats on the phone, the comments she exchanged with
some of the people who walked in and out of the building, who disappeared into the elevator.
Fragments of conversations and short phrases such as “good morning,” “how are things going here,”
“I have a delivery for this address.”
I understood that this was a language unlike other languages.
I could figure out a number of words in the language immediately, and formulate a number of
sentences. A distinctive language that I was able to understand. A language that I understood to be
unique because it was neither English nor German, languages in which I could also manage to work
out clear sentences, or French and Swedish, which I also had a relatively clear grasp of.
I discovered what every person who wakes up in Labofnia sooner or later discovers: one is
able to speak Labofnian the minute one is there. I heard the words, I understood them, but I had no
idea of when and how I had learned them. In Labofnia, consciousness and language emerge
simultaneously: Labofnian – with its many consonants and few, but long vowels, perhaps not
dissimilar to a mixture of Esperanto and Finnish with elements of Dutch and Czech sounds – is
essentially comprehensible for all those who suddenly and for no apparent reason end up there.
The majority can remember other languages as well. English, German, French, Flemish,
Spanish, Italian. In some cases also Portuguese, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Scandinavian,
Baltic or other smaller European languages.
There was, however, no doubt in my mind that Labofnian was my true language. The term
mother tongue in this context is too imprecise, if not to say misleading – mother tongue refers to an
identity, to an upbringing and socialisation, to a culture, to parents. Labofnian is something one
knows, without knowing anything about the Labofnian culture. The Labofnian language is thereby
disconnected from the Labofnian culture.
Studying the language as a means of understanding the culture is in the case of Labofnia
meaningless. Labofnian is not a language one has strong opinions about. This is especially the case for
Labofnians. Besides, it is first and foremost a practical language; it is among other things completely
lacking in any grammatical case related to pronouns. And only two pronouns exist, vu and vaa, which
can be translated as “the” and “the other”. “The” covers both the singular and plural, such as “I” and
“us” – just as “the other” covers both “you” and “them”, etc. For a more precise description of the
pronouns’ relations to one another, combinations of prepositions and adjectives are used.
But the details of the Labofnian language’s grammatical system were not what I was predominantly
concentrating on while sitting here. Two men entered the lobby. One of them came over and stood in
front of me. He was relatively heavy-set, with facial hair. He appeared to be good-natured, smiling
down at me melancholically.
“I’m Max,” the man said.
Even with the heavy wool blanket around me, I shivered. He observed me for a brief moment,
before he bent down, crouching before me. He continued, articulating clearly while watching me.
“We’re going to take you to the Labofnian arrival terminal.”
I was unsure as to whether I should ask “what?”, “where?”, or “how?”, or perhaps all three,
but I worked out that “why” was the best. I attempted to put my lower lip against my teeth to start the
first sound of the word, but succeeded poorly in pushing my lower lip far enough up. I thought that I
should nonetheless try, despite the stiffness and lack of precision in both my lips and tongue. I didn’t
really know how this would come out, how my voice would sound, when I now tried to speak this
language.
“Ffff…”
An aspirated f-sound that evolved into a few drier and unarticulated gurgling sounds, from
deep down in my throat. That was all.
Max leaned forward, looked me in the eyes.
“You can’t expect to be able to speak like that right away.”
I paused for a moment, uncertain as to whether he meant that I should therefore be quiet or
that I should try again. He waited, I waited, and then he answered as if I had asked.
“You will receive a more detailed explanation at the terminal.”
I tried clearing my throat, but then no sound whatsoever came out. Max nodded as if I had
asked a question.
“I work there, I bring in new arrivals.”
His colleague opened a handbag, I saw him grasping for something or other, but Max made a
hand gesture in his direction and said: “I don’t think it’s necessary.”
Loudly enough so I could also hear it. The colleague shut the bag.
“You’re a cooperative new arrival, aren’t you?” Max said and nodded at me.
I looked at Max, then at his colleague, finally back at Max again. I made a helpless jerking
motion with my head that was meant to resemble a nod.
“That’s good. If you come along with us, we will answer your questions to the extent that’s
possible.”
Max sat down on the bench, beside me. Took the cup out of my hands, placed it on the floor.
Then he took hold of my shoulders, and lifted me up slowly, but surely. He carefully led me forward, I
limped after him, towards the entryway, around the huge revolving door. We continued like this out of
the building, a cold wind blew past us and down along a stairway. On the stairway there was wet snow
and melting ice. Max held me securely while we walked down the steps, carefully, so we wouldn’t slip
and fall. For some reason or other they allowed me to go barefoot, but neither did this cold feel too
intrusive. Just cold, like everything else, including my body.
At the bottom of the stairway, up against the sidewalk, there was a parked car. It could have
been an ambulance, except for the fact that it was completely green.
The colleague opened the back doors, Max helped me inside. There was a wheeled stretcher in
the back and Max insisted that I lie down. He sat down beside the stretcher. The colleague closed the
back door, went to the front and started the car.
Lying here, on my back with Max beside me, I received my first viewing of Labofnia. Some viewing –
I was only able to observe the view through the side window, from a quite inconvenient angle. But I
was able to gain a certain impression.
What could I say, there, right off the bat?
It is difficult to assess or explain a first impression without taking into consideration one’s
expectations, but in that a Labofnian arrives in Labofnia without any expectations whatsoever, the first
impression has another quality.
The streets of Labofnia can be described in the same way as the discovery of one’s own body,
or the Labofnian language: One accepts it and understands it, but without feeling at home, without
feeling any sense of belonging.
The buildings are expressive of Labofnia’s history: a lot of unplanned, haphazard and
temporary architecture. Apartment buildings and office complexes of concrete, stone and glass,
warehouses of tin and aluminium. The district around the city hall and the most central offices stand
out, however, in that there are some larger and well-designed buildings. The newer blocks here and
there can, with a bit of good will, resemble recently constructed city blocks found in any small
European city. The houses are relatively tall, also the apartment buildings, as if one really wanted to
make use of the available space adequately; as if one had suddenly understood that Labofnia perhaps
one day would no longer have enough room.
When one arrives, there is a large probability that there will be some type of precipitation or
other. That is also how it was on this day. Not heavy and hard rain, but a drizzle, verging on fog. The
air was full of teeny, tiny drops of water. One could have the impression that these drops would stand
still, that they would remain hanging in thin air forever, if it had not been for the wind: A wind that did
its best to ensure that the rain didn’t come from above, but from the side, or at best, on a diagonal. It is
therefore seldom that one sees anyone with an umbrella in Labofnia – it essentially doesn’t help to any
noteworthy extent.
Labofnia is then a place where everything sooner or later becomes damp, where water
penetrates all cracks, all weak points, all materials. Where nothing will remain dry. Except for the
Labofnians’ dried out and stiff bodies, which all the oceans in the world cannot soften.
*
The drive ended at a kind of garage, in front of double glass doors. Max opened the doors in the back
of the vehicle.
“Do you want me to roll you on the stretcher, or would you prefer to walk,” he said.
This was a question requiring a more detailed response than an attempted shaking of the head,
so Max stopped himself, and made signs of wanting to reformulate his question. I took hold of the
stretcher and pushed myself slowly off of it, Max helped me out.
“That’s fine, come this way,” he said.
This time I walked alone, without Max supporting me. Now and then he adjusted the blanket
all the same, so it didn’t fall off me. After a few steps I understood that I would certainly have looked
less ridiculous if I had let him help me: I lifted my foot stiffly, barely bending the knee, before putting
the sole of my foot down hard on the ground again. I had to keep my arms out in front of me at all
times, almost completely stretched out, so as not to lose my balance.
Max did not look surprised, he didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile; he did not even allow himself
to take notice of it. I tried dropping my arms, to let them swing more easily back and forth at my sides,
but I immediately came close to losing my balance and almost had to pull up short.
The glass doors opened automatically and we entered a kind of waiting room. The waiting
room was reminiscent of a departure lounge in a small airport. Benches, small tables, a candy vending
machine, a soda machine. In the room there were six other people, three couples. They sat together,
two by two, each in their own spot in the room. One of each was covered with a blanket, like me,
while the companions were dressed in green, like Max.
Max pulled a queue number ticket from a small dispenser by the entrance door.
“Let’s have a seat here,” he said.
He led me to a bench by the soda dispenser, I flopped down. A woman was seated right in
front of me and she stared stiffly at a point above us. She looked almost like a statue. There was a man
dressed in green clothing seated beside her as well. I tried formulating a word again, softly and with
my mouth closed, since I didn’t know what sound would come out of me.
“Smm…”
Max leaned forward, spoke to me in a subdued voice.
“Your tongue. Try to decide how to position it, that helps.”
I tried again, created a kind of s-sound, before I then had a try at the other letters.
“Ssss-ame?”
The intonation sounded wrong, so I tried as well to point discretely at the woman in front of
me, and then at myself. It turned into just a kind of toss of my hand, but it looked as if Max understood
what I was thinking.
“You could say that, but everyone reacts a little differently.”
Max looked around indifferently.
“It’s pretty quiet here now. It can vary enormously. The number of arrivals differs from day to
day, month to month. From none at all to a waiting room filled up to capacity. That’s just how it is.”
Max puckered his mouth as if he were about to whistle and blew intermittent bursts of air out
from between his lips. But no sound was emitted, just sharp puffs without any melody.
On a screen above a door, the number 23 was displayed. I looked at the ticket Max held in his
hand. 27. I don’t know for how long we sat this way, newcomers arrived, those ahead of me
disappeared through the door. Max air whistled.
If I had known everything I later came to know, it could be that I would have preferred to
remain sitting here, for all eternity. In uncertainty. With Max whistling beside me. That this moment
would not be met with anything else, by anything else, that it could stand alone, into all eternity. Big,
safe, whistling Max who had accepted the situation.
This waiting room – waiting for a kind of knowledge that will make all the difference, but
nonetheless, change nothing – can in a certain sense serve as an image of Labofnia. Of the condition
the country finds itself in. A waiting room that extends into eternity.
Whoever wishes to understand the Labofnian, must take into account this waiting room.
Anyone wishing to gain an appreciation of the Labofnian people’s fundamental sentiment, as it were,
can start by using this image. Envision such a waiting room. With rows of chairs screwed to the floor
and small tables at the end of each row. Anonymous, provisional. And then, when one is able:
concentrate on the feeling. The feeling of I would rather sit here. For all eternity I would prefer to sit
here, rather than know what follows.
The reasoning is of course completely meaningless, but it gives the Labofnian a kind of sense
of something primordial. And since Labofnia lacks anything primordial, it offers even more meaning
to try and find the point that is closest at hand, where it is still possible to think about there being a
beginning and an end. Even for a Labofnian.
When it was finally and irrevocably my turn, Max followed me through the door beneath the monitor,
down a hallway and in through another door which was half open, into a narrow corridor and at the
end of it, to a door with a frosted plate glass window. Max rapped on the glass four times before he
opened the door.
Inside the office sat an attractively dressed man in a shirt and tie and with a somewhat sad,
hairless appearance. When we entered the office, he put the final piece of a cookie into his mouth. He
got up behind the desk, extended his hand towards me resolutely.
“Walter,” he said.
I held my hand out towards him, he took it, shook it. His hand felt cold, like my own. He
nodded at Max and Max nodded at me.
“Good luck.”
Max went out and closed the door. Walter remained on his feet for a few seconds and assessed
me. Walter’s skin looked dried out and pale, just like the receptionist’s skin and Max’s, and my own.
There did not appear to be any significant difference between us. Except for the fact that Walter
seemed perhaps better adapted, as he stood there in his suit and observed me. It grew quiet; I could
hear the wind wailing in the ventilation system.
“I’m your terminal handling agent,” Walter finally said.
He pointed at the chair in front of the desk. I fell down onto the chair, tried to wrap the blanket
around me. I still had the cardboard box taped around my loins. I tried curling myself up inside the
blanket sufficiently so it wouldn’t show. It was warm in the office, but I was still shivering.
Walter walked around the table and sat down in his chair. Put his elbows on the table top with
his fingertips against one another other.
“Welcome,” he said.
Walter arranged a smile, a kind of stiff, but seemingly accommodating smile. Then he moved
his tongue up along his upper teeth, as if to retrieve the final crumbs from the cookie. He swallowed
the crumbs he found, to subsequently smile once again.
“Uwwwh,” I gurgled.
Walter looked at me, without moving a muscle in his face. I tried again.
“Uwwwheeeh,” was what I managed to get out this time. Walter just sat and waited.
“Wheeere?” I finally managed.
“This? Well, this is the democratic island ministry of Labofnia in the Atlantic Ocean, 22
February, 1989,” he said.
“Before?” I gurgled.
“No, there is nothing to indicate that you’ve been here before. That you have been anywhere
before. It is difficult to say exactly why you have had that thought. It’s feasibly connected to your
being able to speak the language without understanding why. Or that you know a number of things
already. Without that necessarily making matters more comprehensible.”
Walter leaned back in his chair, as if he were waiting for me to come with more follow-up
questions. But I understood that each and every additional question from me now would require more
than the gurgling of one or two syllable words. Walter continued.
“One arrives without any clear memories of a personal nature. One has general knowledge,
sometimes superficial, other times precise knowledge. Some will perhaps remember the capitals of all
of the European countries, others will know how milk is produced, while still others can give an exact
account of all of the items on a standard national budget.”
Walter paused here, to see whether I followed, I assume. I didn’t know exactly what he
expected, so I just sat there and looked at him.
“Nothing of what defines a person, like specific characteristics, personal memories or
emotional preferences, precise physical features, exists. One wakes up, in other words, with a basic
character, and without that which normally speaking is associated with a personality.”
Walter sat there watching me again. It could seem as if he was trying to imagine which
questions I would have asked, if I only succeeded in pulling myself sufficiently together.
“And you wake up without knowing anything whatsoever about Labofnia. Except for the
language.”
The earliest first-hand description of an encounter between Labofnians and Europeans is from 1914.
This description is signed by one Franklin Wilroy, submitted to the British navy. It is dated August
1914, allegedly one month following Wilroy’s homecoming and his first – and presumably his last –
visit to the island.
In the report it emerges that Wilroy was the captain of a cruiser sent to patrol the area
between the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Canada, far outside the bounds of normally active shipping
lanes. The cruiser was, however, hit by a German 151 submarine. Captain Wilroy remained in the
cabin sending emergency signals on the Morse code transmitter until the ship went down. The ocean
swallowed up the final remains and quietly came to rest.
Captain Wilroy lay on the surface of the water with the soaking wet Morse code transmitter in
his hand. Nonetheless, he desperately hung onto the device, the last thing that could put him in contact
with civilisation. In the evening the wind began to pick up, the waves grew taller, the water colder.
Captain Wilroy registered that his strength was ebbing away, that he would not manage to hold out
for long in the ocean in this way.
As dusk approached, he noticed something on the horizon. There was something that lay
rocking on the waves. He could just glimpse it every time the waves lifted him high enough. He tried
swimming in the direction of the object, in hopes that it could be driftwood, some kind of floating
material from the ship; something or other that could keep him afloat for yet another few hours.
Captain Wilroy set out swimming as best he could, with the Morse could transmitter in tow.
And now and again he took carefully calculated breathers to confirm his position, check that he could
still see the object, that he was on the right course in his struggle towards the day’s final rays of
sunlight sliding along the surface of the ocean. And finally, as the sun disappeared, he reached the
object; it now lay just one wave ahead of him, rocking heavily and majestically: a naval mine. It must
have torn loose from the British Empire’s mine-ridden coastal strip and been carried out here, to the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Captain Wilroy could have set out swimming with all of his strength in another direction. But
he did not. He was exhausted; he no longer had anything to lose. He carefully took hold of one of the
horns on the mine, closed his eyes and exhaled. Captain Wilroy remained lying there like this for two
days. With one hand grasping a horn, the other around the Morse code transmitter. Until he finally
saw land.
When Captain Wilroy took his first steps in towards the island, he could make out some
figures a half kilometre away. He sprung into action − it occurred to him that he had by some stroke
of luck perhaps floated all the way to the coast of Canada. Then he discovered that the figures there in
front of him were naked. Five people who were stumbling around, as if they were blind, with their
arms stretched out in front of them, and with stiff, heavy gaits. Pale, almost blue-skinned.
Captain Wilroy’s first meeting with these creatures caught him off guard. “I had many a time
been afraid out there at sea, but this vision gave birth to a wholly different kind of fear, an anxiety that
I still don’t really know how to describe,” he writes in the report. They still hadn’t discovered him,
they seemed completely disoriented as they reeled about.
Captain Wilroy lay down, crawled forward to some stones to find a hiding place. Here he lay
for the entire day and watched the five of them – three men and two women. In the report to the British
marine commander he describes how his fear wasn’t alleviated by the sight of the figures. “There was
something deeply disturbing about them; while they had a human form, they showed simultaneously
no immediately recognisable human behaviour.” They did not appear to achieve any particular kind
of contact with one another either, they did not appear to have any clear objective at hand. They
seemed blinded. By madness? Illness? What did he know?
He lay there hiding between the stones, drinking water from a mud puddle. The Morse code
transmitter eventually dried off and he began regularly and desperately sending emergency signals
and the position of the boat when it had gone down. From time to time he continued observing the
creatures.
By chance one of them passed by his hiding place and Wilroy describes how terrified he was
of being discovered, how a feeling of complete horror overwhelmed him. He could not fully explain
why, but a kind of uncertainty arose over what would happen if they discovered him. The skin of this
figure did not look like the skin of a living creature and his movements resembled more those of a
marionette than a human being.
After two days he could finally glimpse a ship on its way towards the island. A British search
vessel had come to look for the wrecked cruiser, and had picked up Wilroy’s signals. When the vessel
had come quite close to the island, Captain Wilroy broke into a run and threw himself into the ocean.
He was on the verge of drowning when the crew hauled him on board.
The crew claimed they had seen others on the island. But Wilroy insisted, trembling with
hunger, exhaustion and fear, that they must immediately set their course back to Scotland. Before the
vessel did so, it plotted, for the first time in history, the correct coordinates for Labofnia.