Excerpts from
The Deathwatch Beetle
By Vibeke Grønfeldt
In the bowl of the silver sugar spoon there are seventy holes, which form the five petals of a stylized rose. Every morning Severin Hansen sprinkles oblivion through this rose over a bowl of strawberries - or in the winter over his hot oatmeal.
He wakes up at five o´clock because of the sunshine coming through the green shade, the heat, and the birds singing - or he wakes up at five o´clock because the darkness is pressing in around the house and around the lonely man´s childhood dreams. And he keeps lying there for half an hour with his eyes closed in order to rid himself of the forgotten emtions. The he goes out to the pantry, washes himself, puts on a clean blue shirt, and tears off yesterday from the kitchen calendar.
The street and the town farther up the fjord are still asleep when he opens his shop door, looks at the thermometer, empties the mailbox from the day before - invoices, second notices, circulars - and puts it all in a box under his desk for some other day.
Finally he puts on a kettle of water, scalds the bowl and spoon, polishes both, and goes out to the back yard to fill the bowl with dark red berries in which the fine layer of sugar will soon sink to the bottom.
The new day finds its way into his body, through his taste buds. The sun and the shadows from the chestnut tree move closer. Newly-hatched flies buzz in the heat. The young next-door neighbors throw open their window and on their radio with a blast.
Severin Hansen again considers waylaying one of them and offering to fix their speaker. A simple little defect in the coil is causing the dissonance, which obviously doesn´t seem to bother them. It´s not really the dissonance itself that irritates him. It´s the defect in the delicate apparatus that´s upsetting. Just as he sits on molded plastic chair to eat his berries instead of using one of the hundreds of chairs that he lias designed and built or refurbished over the years.
He takes the book about Australias fauna out to the workshop with him, and pulls out the telephone cord when Minna Mikkelsen and his customers start calling.
Every day is practically the same - and thus disconcertingly different in the very marrow of events. Severin Hansein delibarately tries to follow a schedule in order to deciphier, candidly and clearly, the meaning streaming toward him and figure out what the day is all about.
"Phalangers are tree-dwelling animals, many of which never once touch the ground in their lives. This is true, for example, of the thirteen-centimeter-long feathertail glider and the vulpine opossum. Their eyes are designed for night vision and their prehensile tails function both as a rudder, as they leap from branch to branch, and as a gripping device."
Before Severin has finished studying the beautiful photos of the koalas, which eat only, one kind of food, eucalyptus leaves, Minna Mikkelsen is standing in the shop. With a sigh he puts the book down and asks her what she wants.
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
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