Footsteps on the stairs – heavy boots – blocked the escape route. She ran to the window, ripped off the ramshackle frame with the mosquito net that blocked her way, and, with a pounding heart, looked down into the darkness. Maybe the tall grass below would cushion the fall. But it must be at least four meters!
She swung one of her bare legs smoothly over the window frame and hesitated. She caught a glimpse of Pierre’s pajama-creased back when he bravely turned back towards the strangers. She heard the dull thud of a rifle butt hitting a cheek and how her boss tumbled heavily to the floor.
Jump or die flashed through her mind as she pulled her right leg sharply over the wood. She left blood on the frame, but didn’t notice the scratch as she fell from the second floor into the darkness. When she landed, the only thing she could feel was a stabbing pain in her left knee. She fell helplessly backwards and everything mercifully went black.
1
People do not decide to become extraordinary.
They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.
Sir Edmund Hillary
Peter saw the ad for the first time on a flight home from London. A handsomely styled picture of Lennart Stavenius advertising an exclusive brand of watch. Tall, with stylishly greying hair and dressed like some kind of Indiana Jones, he stood in front of his Cessna Skyhawk on a pontoon, with the Himalayas bathed in golden evening sunlight in the background. The caption said:
People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.
Something beyond the ordinary.
Peter felt pride flood through his body like an adrenaline kick. Not everybody had a father like his! He was filled with a desire to be in an ad like that himself when he was 54. He reclined his wide, business class seat all the way back and put his hands behind his head. The likelihood that he would get the chance was good, because the family business was a recognized export success. The idea of following in his father’s footsteps was agreeable and filled him with a pleasant feeling of going from one success to another. He shifted his gaze and looked out the airplane window at the sunlit clouds. He could see a long way in the beautiful, light blue world.
2
Vera sat in the university teacher’s office. She maneuvered her crutches so that they supported her left leg at the one, slightly bent, angle that didn’t hurt and wondered nervously what the red-haired woman would say.
‘Your request isn’t unusual.’ Åström was a graduate student, and she was in charge of the summer course that Vera really wanted to take. She turned towards her computer screen and clicked on an email. ‘The Development of the Discipline of Economics isn’t full… but we haven’t contacted everyone on the reserve list. We can’t let you in ahead of people who applied before the deadline.’
She must be the university’s dream employee, thought Vera. Calm and matter-of-fact, groomed like an old-school movie star and with a bookcase stuffed with knowledge behind her.
Åström glanced at Vera with a slight smile. ‘But there’s nothing more boring than calling and fussing with half-hearted types… Have you any particular reason for thinking you should attend the sign-on lecture? That would give you a good chance of being admitted.’
Cecilia Åström’s blazer was exactly the same color as her light, grey-blue eyes. Vera looked down at her not entirely clean khaki pants and tucked her sandaled foot with the dirty big-toe nail under her damaged leg. But she had no trouble answering the question. ‘Yes, and it’s a reason I’m sure you haven’t heard before.’
Two weeks later, Vera sat on the bus on the way to campus. The sun shone and she looked out of the window, gazing in wonder at the dripping from the birch trees onto the warm asphalt. Raised in a village in the northern Swedish forest, she usually took them for granted, but now she saw the trees with fresh eyes. Givers of life. Brilliant sun-catchers.
Up at the front of the bus, a turquoise, dolphin-shaped balloon on a thin string floated in the air. The balloon consistently moved in the wrong direction. Vera noticed it immediately – the dolphin went forward when the bus accelerated, backwards when the driver braked. On the roundabout, when centrifugal force pushed everybody to the right, the balloon went left.
Just like me, she thought. Starting over at 30, when everyone else is settling down. A new chance? A new life? She considered the strange phenomenon until she understood what she was seeing. The law of inertia also influenced the air molecules in the bus! They move backwards exactly like the rest of us when the bus increases speed, forcing the balloon forward.
The abnormal behavior of the dolphin was understandable. But what’s my excuse? Tears burned behind her eyelids. Vera looked out of the window and forced herself to stop by taking a deep breath. She discreetly dried her tears and told herself that her knee would soon heal, and that everything else would too. She thought about midsummer, at home by the river. How many magical nights like that would she get to experience in her life; shouldn’t she be living as intensely as possible?
Since her teens Vera had felt like she had an antenna tuned in to the universe. It sat in the middle of her body, right in front of her backbone, and it picked up a unique signal from somewhere. The result was a life guided by a warm feeling of self-evident direction. But the antenna wasn’t the same after everything that had happened in Colombia; it disappeared, flickered only for short periods, pointed her in an entirely different direction. There was nothing secure and consistent about it any more. It was like a dying person with regrets, who wanted to tell a secret that would change everything. And huge questions were the only thing she carried inside herself now. What are we doing? What science can explain why it doesn’t help to try to save the world with your own two hands?
She was pulled back into the summer day by the braking of the bus as it reached the university. With small drops of tears dried on the inside of her glasses, in cut-off jeans, grey hoodie and backpack, she raised herself up with the help of her strong right leg. The rings on Vera’s left hand twisted and chafed against the crutch. If someone had noticed her make-up free face, they would have seen rounded features accentuated by bushy eyebrows and protruding ears.
It was the beginning of the second week of the summer course, and they were going to study the classics. She eased herself off the bus with her bandaged left leg, her messy brown braid swaying. She hadn’t understood it, but she had followed her dying antenna just the same and was now on her way towards the unknown.
Because this – the world as it is – surely this can’t be the best we can do?
3
Peter didn’t know what it was down to. Was it the summer day, calling to him to throw down the chalk and go to the beach? Was it Sandra’s distracting glances and embarrassingly flirty comments during the break? Or maybe the lecture wasn’t going too well because of that grey girl on crutches and her irritating questions. It was true that he hadn’t been teaching very long, but even so. He had never even heard of anyone questioning The Wealth of Nations before!
He had just explained Adam Smith’s classic theory about the Invisible Hand – how acting in one’s own interest actually promoted the common interest – when she started in. She was already asking the question as she raised her hand.
‘Why did Smith think that?’
Peter said something about England in the 1700s and how industrialization increased the speed of exploitation, which suddenly created great prosperity.
‘What