Although Jonas was not really listening. He caught only fragments of a long opinionated monologue on Henrik Ibsen as a nomad. ‘Well, what else would you call a man who had lived abroad for thirty years, but a nomad?’ declared the German, popping an olive into his mouth. Or what would Jonas call someone who spent his whole life moving from one place to another and would never countenance the addition of any personal touches to his homes, with the possible exception of the odd painting? No buts about it: Ibsen was a man who never pitched his tent too firmly, said the German reverently. Did Jonas know that the famous playwright had to have the windows open while he was writing and that, besides taking his daily stroll, he also walked about while he was working? And Peer Gynt, an obvious self-portrait, what was he but a Bedouin in Norwegian national dress? Actually Ibsen was a lot like Moses, said the German, flinging out an arm, as if to encompass the countryside beyond those four walls: a man who had learned from nomads before going on to become an exacting prophet with strict moral precepts, exactly like Ibsen. And weren’t they both obsessed with climbing to the tops of mountains to attain the ultimate insight? Or had Jonas forgotten Gerd in Brand — and at this the German spat out a stone and suddenly began to quote, triumphantly, in broken Norwegian — how she spoke of the Black Peak that ‘pointed straight to Heaven!’ And Irene in When We Dead Awaken who wanted to pass ‘through all the mists. And all the way up to the pinnacle of that tower, that glows in the sunrise.’ All that was missing here among the mountains of Sinai were huge masses of snow under which they could be buried, the German joked, on his way out the door at long last. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘have you seen the sepulchre?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Piles and piles of skulls.’
Jonas shut his eyes and slept.
At three in the morning, while it was still dark and the monks were making their way to the first mass of the day, Jonas began the ascent. For breakfast he had had a grapefruit, that was all, a delicious grapefruit from the Feirân oasis, without feeling overly maudlin, even if the thought of a last supper did cross his mind. Father Makarios met him at the gate and handed him a little loaf of bread stamped with the image of St Catherine, strictly speaking only for communion use.
‘How can you know if that really is God’s mountain?’ Jonas asked, pointing into the gloom, to where he could just make out the contours of the cliff face.
‘Go up and sit there for a while and you will understand.’
On his way up the hillside, next to a thorn bush Jonas met a Bedouin boy carrying a torch who, as far as Jonas could understand, was offering him a camel. Jonas refused. The boy followed him anyway. Out of several possible paths, Jonas chose the steepest, the one Moses himself had supposedly chosen, known as the Penitent’s Way.
At the cliff face the path gave way to stones laid down to form steps. Jonas climbed slowly upwards. The physical action put him in mind of the stairs of his childhood, in the block of flats at Solhaug. He tried to think about his childhood but was unable to focus his thoughts. All he could hear was that quiet sough in the air. A vast presence that scattered all thoughts. Until, out of the blue, he thought of Louis Kahn, of his buildings. And thinking of this he had an impression of climbing a pyramid. Then all thoughts, or the possibility of grasping them, deserted him as if the exertion had deprived him of his ability to think. He started to cry, it is no secret; he walked on, weeping, but not with grief. It was surprisingly cold. Some of the steps were slippery, iced-over almost. He worked his way slowly up the mountain in the early morning, with the darkness already beginning to recede and the boy a little ahead of him, as if wishing to show him the way, as if afraid that Jonas might go astray. There were some steep slopes where Jonas felt as though he was on a ladder. He climbed slowly, step by step, thinking of a thousand trivialities, husbanding his energy, step by step, several thousand steps, several thousand trivialities, little thoughts split up into even smaller thoughts. They passed through two stone gateways, the second one coming just before a plateau on which stood an ancient cypress tree and a tiny chapel. Jonas embarked on the last steep stretch, feeling himself growing weaker and weaker, his thoughts more and more unclear, as if he were being overcome by sleep. He was on the point of collapse when the boy appeared, took his hand, made him sit down.
Jonas regarded the boy curiously. He had noticed that his feet barely seemed to touch the steps.
At the top, which they reached after a break and another two hundred or so steps, was a chapel with a corrugated iron roof and a mosque, both of pink granite. The boy disappeared, and Jonas sat down, exhausted, on a knoll close by the mosque, facing the cliff edge, from which the slope fell away sharply. Right at the very edge lay a little circle of small stones. Jonas walked over to it, still out of breath, and removed a few stones, creating an opening, he had no idea why, then sat down again. The sun was just coming up. Jonas felt limp, listless; he sat there, surveying the rugged mountains stretching out in all directions, sharp, jagged earthenware that had cracked, but which was now starting to turn every shade of violet and pink, making Jonas feel as if the entire landscape had not only been formed in, but had now been transported back to, a bygone geological age, to a time before man walked the Earth. The view did not make him feel at all dizzy or sick, possibly because the whole scene had an abstract air about it, giving no illusion of a broader perspective. It made no difference whether the distances, the heights, were great or small. There was still nothing but light and shade and silence. Jonas sat there on his own: looking out across the mountains and listening to the wind, a soft sough, louder now. All of a sudden, the Bedouin boy popped up out of nowhere with a hot cup of tea. Jonas pulled out his Hohner Chromonica mouth organ and gave it to the lad before he disappeared once more behind some hillocks. Jonas tried to eat, took a piece of the bread stamped with the image of St Catherine, drank half the tea.
All day he sat there alone. No one else came along. The boy did not show himself again either. Jones sat there on the top, in the blazing sun, watching the jagged mountain peaks changing colour, like the spines of gigantic chameleons: pink and blue, terracotta and ochre, shifting to red and grey. Like one huge, glowing crystal. A prism, he thought, breaking the light up into colours. Or lifting the landscape out of time and space. As if he were already in some other place, beyond life. Nothing but light, nothing but shadows, nothing but silence. He tried to think, to take stock as it were, but no thoughts came. He was a blank. And all the while this indefinable soughing was all around him. A sough that was pure silence. At one point, just as he was about to nod off, he felt, or thought he felt, the distinct touch, as of a finger, on his brow, describing a circle several times and then shooting off in a straight line.
What more can I say? Some stories simply cannot be told.
Jonas ate the rest of the bread and drank what was left of the tea. He had been considering staying there, just lying down, shutting his eyes, but as the sun began to go down he felt better and stood up. He was better. He stood for a long time gazing at that prehistoric landscape, shimmering as if with precious stones, and felt himself all over, while the soughing round about him seemed almost to take on the nature of something physical, of a golden room. He walked over to the steps and began the descent. Halfway down, as dusk was falling, rapidly, he met the boy with the torch. The boy smiled, held the mouth organ out to him, a bar of silver in the gloom. Jonas waved it away, giving the boy to understand that he was to keep it.