“I’m living very close to a lake in Denmark. And one day there was a very heavy fog. And it was a day of loneliness for me so I wanted to be alone. So, I walked into the fog and found a bench at the edge of the lake where I had been sitting often, meditating. And I sat down on that bench speculating about whether I had accomplished something with the books or whether they had been in vain. And after a few minutes I became aware that on the other end of the bench a very young man was sitting. And he must have come, like I, knowing the place and not really looking because you couldn’t see more than a meter in front of you, so he hasn’t seen me.
And after a while he started humming a tune. And then I became somehow scared because the tune was this one [hums Mozart’s Bona nox! bist a rehcta Ox, K. 561], and it’s a lullaby written by Mozart, but it’s very rarely played. And he still hadn’t seen me and then he started to sing. And then I grew really afraid because what he was singing was this, [lyrics from Mozart’s Bona nox! bist a rechta Ox, K. 561], and this is the only text known that Mozart himself wrote. It's a kind of nonsense consisting of the languages he learned.
And then I had to say, ‘ahem’ and he got a shock!
And I said, “Excuse me, I have to ask you, are you from Copenhagen? Because… I mean this song, my father used to sing to me every night before I went to sleep with exactly these words.” And he looked at me and he said, “Yes. I live just here in number fifteen.”
But I mean, we were sitting by the lake in the countryside, there is no number fifteen. There is just woods behind me. So I said, “Where do you think this place is?”
And he said, “Well, this is Overgaden Neden Vandet, this is the street where I was born and I live just here, in number fifteen”, where I grew up.
And then I said to him, “Then you must be Peter Høeg. And I too am Peter Høeg .” And then he looked at me and I said to myself, this is a joke someone is pulling, and I looked into his eyes and then I saw the fear. He was afraid of the same thing, that someone had pulled a joke on him.
So, then he said, “If you think you are the real Peter Høeg , then tell me something about our parent’s apartment that only we know.”
And I said, “Well, in my father’s room there’s this floor of oak, polished once a year. And in my mother’s room, there’s an African mask hanging over a table. A mask that must never be sold but only given away.”
And then he said scornfully, “Anyone who had visited the apartment would know that.”
But I said, “Then listen, inside your room there’ll be this box of metal, and it’s closed and inside that is a letter from a girl explaining how you remove this stone you carry around your neck before you make love. So, the stone will not hit her.” And then I saw in his eyes the fear that I felt myself for some kind of hallucination, a psychosis. Both he and I knew we couldn’t settle the question because the fog was so dense, there was no way.
So, he said, “How will you explain if you were Peter Hoeg, that you forgot, that you, many years ago, met an older man who said he was you?” And then I could see the time loop and I had no answer.
And I said, “…Do you want to know, something about your life, what is going to be?” And he didn’t answer, but I knew it was yes, and I said, “Our father died four years ago, and he died with dignity, the same way he has lived. And our mother still lives and is very strong.” And then I could see that he was going to ask about my younger brother but stopped. And I knew it was because he knew the answer would have been sorrowful. My brother committed suicide just a year before that.
So, I said, “Have you written your first novel?” and he just blushed, and I knew he had, and he hadn’t told anybody. And I said, “Well, you’re going to write novels which will all more or less be variations over that first novel.” And I was pleased he didn’t ask about the success or failure of his books.
And he said, “What about the world?” And I said, “Well, everything that is a disaster around you has become worse. Because nobody has done anything.”
And I looked at him and I felt the same love as I later should feel for my own son. And I could see the pain in front of him and I wanted to relieve some of it, to make it easier for him. I wanted to tell him something about the importance of love, or something like that. Then I could just see his stubbornness and I knew I wouldn’t reach him, and I couldn’t spare him anything of what was waiting for him. And then he just stood up.
But then he said, “There’s something I want to give you”, and he let something fall to my palm. It was gold coin and I recognized immediately it was a ten crown piece of gold that went out of circulation a few years before I was born and that was my luck coin until I lost it sometime in the beginning of my twenties. And then, he was gone.
And I sat on the bench for maybe a quarter of an hour and then I knew I wouldn’t dare to keep the coin, so I just threw it out into the fog and there was a splash, and I knew it disappeared on the bottom of the lake. And then slowly, I walked back and found the path and walked back home. And I have never seen him since.”
dededos
2087
annaxmalina
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