The Man on the Bicycle

translated from the Swedish by Ken Schubert

JIPF-monographs 1994: no. 1 (Jews for Israeli - Palestinian Peace, Stockholm)

It was a radiant Monday morning at the end of October when a man came pedaling along the road that winds its way through the softly undulating hills of Blidstena. The early-morning frost was still on the ground and glittered in the brilliant sunlight. Down in the bowl of the valley sparkled a little inlet of Lake Storsjön. The cows stretched their necks toward the sun and bellowed. In short, a lovely day. Right at that instant, at that tiny spot on the earth's surface, the world was as beautiful as you could possibly desire. So if the man on the bicycle had raised his eyes from the road, he would have discovered that he had good reason to thank the Creator of Heaven and Earth for, when he had designed the tract around Blidstena, having made it so exquisite that even the stones wept in ecstasy. But the man on the bicycle - who was, by the way, of Jewish descent, though not especially religious, so that there would actually be no particular cause to even mention the fact of his origins had it not been for that which was to occur later on that rather ordinary October day - did not raise his eyes more than a few millimeters from the road. He was in a hurry. He was riding an old rusty woman's bicycle; the man himself was approaching middle age and could hardly claim to be in the best shape either. Today, this morning in fact, he planned to make it as far as Överum, where he intended to leave his bicycle in a bike rack and proceed by bus to Gamleby. He was to be in Gamleby at 9:00 in order to begin a course in brick-masonry sponsored by the National Employment Office. Not that he imagined that he would ever be able to obtain a job as a brick-mason, but it would undoubtedly sound better if he could say that he was an unemployed brick-mason than an unemployed nothing-at-all.

It was now approximately 7:47 a.m. The bus from Överum was to depart at 8:23 sharp. The man who came cycling over the hills of Blidstena huffed and puffed from the unaccustomed exertion, standing up on the bicycle and pedaling for all he was worth. A pair of deer examined him inquisitively from the ditch-bank before retreating at an easy pace back towards the edge of the woods.

When the man came out on Överum Road at Hyllela, he hopped off his bicycle for a moment, removing a chrome-plated watch from his pocket in order to check the time. As the hands stood at 8:11, the man who was cycling to Gamleby realized that he would be able to catch the bus at Överum only with the greatest of difficulty. What should he do? While standing there deliberating with himself, he unexpectedly caught sight of a camel that stood munching on some nettles in a little pasture not far from the road. The man, who most certainly, or at least in all likelihood, was about to miss the bus to Gamleby, had a sudden idea. It wasn't all that often that he had an idea, sudden or otherwise, but conveniently enough it happened just this very morning.
"Just think if I could borrow the camel," he thought to himself.

The man in question certainly had rather limited experience of camels. Once when he was on vacation in Egypt, he had been led around by a camel driver on a worn-out old circus animal, but that was the full extent of it. However, he had a clear recollection of having seen the Bedouins ride their camels post-haste over long stretches, and he recalled that the tourist guide had related that a speed of 60 kilometers per hour was far from impossible for even the most ordinary of camels. The man on the verge of borrowing a camel made some hasty calculations. On his bicycle he could hope at the very best to achieve an average speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Thus, in 12 minutes he would progress 3 kilometers, assuming he was lucky. But Överum was still at least 5 kilometers away. On the back of a camel, he could anticipate a forward velocity of at least twice his cycling speed. Consequently, he would have a good chance of still catching the bus.

The man who had now definitely resolved to borrow a camel parked his bicycle by the wooden fence, not even taking the time to lock it.
"Who would go to the trouble of stealing a rusty woman's bicycle?" he reasoned as he approached the camel. She, for the creature was clearly of the female gender, hesitant at the prospect of having to serve as a beast of burden once again, averted demonstratively her glance. The man who was at the point of mounting a camel rummaged desperately through his mind for the words that command a camel to lie down. Meanwhile, Bitem - for that was precisely the name of this particular camel, call other camels what you will - had detected the pungent aroma of a bag of peanuts that lay somewhere down in the left pocket of the man's tattered old leather jacket. Her interest in the man peaked considerably, since peanuts, next to acacia leaves, constituted her greatest pleasure in life. (Furthermore, there are not a whole lot of acacia trees around Blidstena, so that the camels in the area have to content themselves with the next best thing). Now, since females tend to be smarter than males, and Bitem was no exception to this rule, she quickly arrived at the conclusion that it could be to her advantage to display her more obliging and compliant side to this unfortunate stray, presumably not particularly intelligent, human being. So bending her front legs, she lay down on the ground in order to be mounted. The man who was now in the process of climbing onto a camel recalled suddenly that he had no camel saddle in his possession. But he was not fully incapable, at least in critical situations, of hitting upon a thought or two that, if they could not be said to be earth-shattering exactly, contained at least an element, however modest, of creativity. Furthermore, since he was still quite sweaty after his furious pedaling, the new idea more or less stared him straight in the face: he quickly wriggled out of his old leather jacket and threw it over the camel's back in front of her hump.

Gustav Lundgren, retired Civil Gardener in the town of Västervik, had awoken unusually early this morning. The night had been uncharacteristically cold for this time of year. But the climate had always been very different here in the area surrounding Överum, barely twenty miles up from the coast, than down in Västervik. As he walked out to his garden, the grass crunched under his boots. Gustav was anxious to check up on his latest pet project, which his brother-in-law had presented to him upon his recent return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Of course, the project was still in its experimental stages. But if it succeeded, it would create a sensation, assuming that there was still any justice left in the world, that is. If he was lucky, it would be the first time that anybody had been able to cultivate an acacia tree at this latitude. He might conceivably even end up on the front page of the Västervik Daily News. Gustav had nursed the young plant with infinite patience. In order to protect it, he had rigged up a little home-made plastic tent and installed a tiny battery-run heating fan. Inspecting the plastic tent, he discovered to his great relief that it had remained undisturbed, the elk and deer having passed it by. Former Civil Gardener Lundgren looked at his precious plant with a sense of satisfaction. He addressed a few friendly words to her, inquired politely concerning her health - she wasn't about to catch cold out there by any chance? - and praised her still dormant beauty, which wouldn't burst into full bloom until the springtime. Having tended to the plant with the care that only a retired Civil Gardener can muster, he returned contentedly to the warmth of his cottage. Though hardly an everyday occurrence, Gustav was in such a good mood on this particular morning, now that his apprehensions about the plant had turned out to be entirely groundless, that he decided to indulge himself a little breakfast nip. With a bit of a flourish, he raised to his lips a little shot glass filled to the brim with his own home-brewed spiced snaps and swallowed it in one gulp, as Civil Gardeners are wont to do, after which he uttered a zestful "Aaah!"

When Bethlehem-born spice merchant Elias Hussein, who had resided for the last ten years in Småland, in the area just north of Överum to be more precise, stepped out to his courtyard that morning - the time was approximately 8:19 - he became immediately aware that something wasn't quite as it should be. His favorite camel Bitem, whom he kept for promotional purposes, i.e. to attract customers to the flourishing little food market he ran down at the Gamleby town square, was nowhere to be seen out in the pasture. Instead, a rusty woman's bicycle of Fram manufacture was leaning against the fence. Spice merchant Hussein rubbed his eyes. That was the last thing he ought to have done, of course, since he had just been engaged in grinding a particularly fine brand of cayenne pepper, which he planned to take down to his shop. While his loving wife - Margareta Johansson-Hussein, originally from Fästad, a shapely and good-natured woman, who in addition was President of the Municipal Housewives' Association - dabbed his burning eyes with the corner of a cold washcloth, Elias was engaged in profound meditation about who could possibly want to trade down from an old bicycle to a camel. He had learned enough about Sweden during his time here to realize that a woman wasn't necessarily involved simply because a woman's bicycle had been left in exchange. Nor could the unknown person's motives be financial, he concluded. Even a Swede, especially one from Småland's notoriously thrifty stock, had to comprehend that a camel is considerably more expensive to maintain than a bicycle. Even a little pedal-moped was fuel-efficient in comparison with his Bitem. Spice merchant Hussein did not dare to think that some kind of racism lay behind what had happened, that somebody had quite simply wanted to provoke and harass him because he was a foreigner. He had come to know the people of the northern Tjust region as peaceloving and industrious folk. As long as you worked and made your own way, they generally treated an outsider as cordially as they did a native - albeit without immoderate hospitality, but without any backbiting either. Animated outbursts of feeling, of one extreme or the other, were not people's way in these tracts. They were sufficiently occupied with trying to make ends meet. And to the extent that they nursed any sort of mistrust or even out-and-out animosity, it was directed primarily against the authorities and bureaucrats - in Västervik, Kalmar - the county capital, Stockholm and Brussels - rather than against a harmless spice merchant from Bethlehem, whose wife was President of the Municipal Housewives' Association to boot. The only explanation he could come up with was that it must be a Zionist conspiracy intended to mock and humiliate him. Sinister images from his earlier life passed before his eyes. So they had finally caught up with him again. He shouldn't be surprised. He knew, of course, that Mossad had its agents everywhere. Would he never find any peace of mind? But just when his cogitations were at their gloomiest, his loving wife called him in to breakfast. So spice merchant Hussein shrugged his shoulders at the whole matter and promised himself to observe greater vigilance in the future, whereupon he sat down at the kitchen table and reveled in his semolina porridge along with a cup of strong coffee spiced with cardamom.

There wasn't a great deal of traffic out on Överum Road this morning. Besides an occasional Volvo station wagon or tractor, the only vehicle in sight was a lonely camel, answering to the melodious name of Bitem and weighted down by one middle-aged budding brick-mason. Northern Tjust is certainly a lovely district, but for a camel, especially a hungry one, this particular stretch offers relatively little of interest. Bitem, who had actually begun to feel that the whole thing was rather unpleasant, now that she had run out of peanuts, had already seriously entertained the possibility of returning to her own little pasture. Of course, the man who had exchanged his bicycle for a camel was still happily ignorant of what his traveling companion had in mind. In addition, it took all the concentration he could scrounge up to remain upright on his provisional saddle while simultaneously reaching into one pocket and taking out his watch in order to confirm to hissatisfaction that he still had a reasonable chance of catching the bus from Överum to Gamleby. But the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all that wanders thereupon - thus camels as well - with the unwitting co-operation of former Civil Gardener Gustav Lundgren, arranged things such that the man who in his imagination already saw himself reveling in the pleasure entailed in sinking into a cushiony old seat on one of Kalmar County's well-traveled buses would remain ignorant of the subversive plot being hatched a mere yard and a half from his own head. For at that very moment, Bitem, who, for a camel, was equipped with extraordinarily refined olfactory sensibilities - possibly as a result of her long intercourse with the spice merchant - caught the aroma of the acacia bush that, blissfully unaware of what was in store for it, was still slumbering in its plastic tent on gardener Lundgren's lot located on the hill directly above Överum. The consequences were dramatic, not only for the young acacia plant, but also for retired Civil Gardener Lundgren's already impaired cardiac capacity, not to mention for the prospects that the man who by now was well on his way toward falling off a camel would be able to catch the bus to Gamleby.

The man who had just fallen off a camel finally succeeded, with a satiated and contended camel leading the way as as through the mobolization of his utmost resources, to make it to the glittery new National Medical Center in Överum, where it was confirmed that he had suffered but a mild concussion, at which point he was sent home with a thin bandage over one eye and with a warning to wear a helmet during all future camel excursions. When the man who now had definitely missed the bus to Gamleby stepped back outside through the revolving doors of the National Medical Center, he saw by the clock that it was 9:19 a.m. The south-bound train to Gamleby wouldn't leave until 10:10. The man who still aspired to be a brick-mason drew the immediate conclusion that the quickest, indeed the only, means of transportation over the remaining stretch to Gamleby, other than by taxi, which could depart at any time, was - you guessed it, the camel. Thus he unilaterally resolved to ignore the doctor's recommendations and mounted the camel once again. Bitem, who had stood tethered outside the medical center, immediately took off at a swift pace on the road to Gamleby, grateful for the renewed opportunity for activity, which also served to facilitate her digestive processes. She was in an exceptionally good mood after having enjoyed to the fullest the various pleasures offered by an acacia plant. Contented with life, Bitem traversed mile after mile at a rapid trot, arriving in Gamleby without any further delays well before the clock had struck 10:00 a.m.

Once inside the city limits, she took off directly for the town square, most particularly toward one green sign with ornate lettering: "Norra Tjustbygden's Oriental Spice and Grocery Market", which was the somewhat prolix name of her owner's spice store. Now, like most camels, Bitem was not particularly sentimental by nature, but she wasn't averse to an outbreak of genuine Middle Eastern emotion arising from the little pique of gladness she felt in her heart upon catching sight of the gray Toyota van that normally stood in her master's driveway. The man who arrived in Gamleby on the back of a camel - his name, by the way, was Joseph Goldman - experienced a certain sense of satisfaction over having at last reached his final destination, particularly since he found there, parked in a bike rack outside the Norra Tjustbygden's Oriental Spice and Grocery Market, a familiar old and rusty women's bicycle of Fram manufacture. However, his ancestors had lived and died for too many centuries now in this cold country - they had died in their Jewish walnut-framed beds, on DUX spring-mattresses, wrapped in blankets manufactured by Scandinavian Quilts Inc. Consequently, weighed down by the legacy of this protracted exile, he had lost the ability to publicly express the sense of well-being, if not out-and-out pleasure, that swept over him in that magical moment of reunion. So the man who was at the point of alighting from a camel proceeded to do just that, and, after taking a hasty farewell of his companion and rewarding her with one last peanut that seemed to have been hiding in the inner lining of his leather jacket, tethered her without further adieu to the bike rack. He was just about to resume his interrupted bicycle tour when, fully intent upon immediately setting off on the final few miles to the Unemployment Office trailer hut, he discovered to his great chagrin that the bicycle was chained. The man who had just said farewell to a camel meditated silently for several minutes. Though his greatest wish was to slip away from this place as undetected as possible, he saw no way out, given his position and the lateness of the hour, other than to make his presence known and attempt to recover his bicycle. Thus, he screwed up his courage, straightened his cap so that it concealed the bandage over his eye and entered the shop.

Elias Hussein awoke from his meditations with a start when the little doorbell rang announcing his first customer for the day. Drawing back the curtain that partitioned off his little office space from the rest of the shop, he encountered at once the slightly hesitant glance of a man who turned out to be remarkably like himself. He seemed to have seen this face somewhere before, but he couldn't recall where. Spice merchant Hussein permitted himself something approaching a gracious smile.
"May I be of some assistance, kind sir?"
The man who wished to trade a camel for a rusty women's bicycle started off a bit circuitously.
"Well, the thing is that, just by coincidence, I happened to be riding by on my camel, and it struck me suddenly that it would be a fantastic advertisement for your spice shop if you had a real live camel standing outside. People might even imagine that your spices have actually been shipped all the way here to Gamleby directly by caravan. Just think what a sensation it would arouse! Children would love it and they would nag their parents to bring them here!"
Spurred on by his own enthusiasm, the man who was on the way to bartering away a camel became more and more emboldened in his argumentation. He hadn't even noticed that during the time he had been talking, the gracious smile on Elias Hussein's' face had given way for an expression tinged by extreme suspicion.

Spice merchant Hussein stretched his neck cautiously and peered out the window, through which, sure enough, he caught sight of his favorite camel, Bitem, who contentedly stood and munched on some funeral wreaths that the florist next door had strewn out in order to tempt customers into his shop. His first impulse was to rush out and embrace his recovered treasure, but he restrained himself at once, with the silent admonition that this was a case where discretion was in order. Again, he examined the man standing before him.
"So that's what they look like, Mossad's agents," thought spice merchant Hussein in exasperation. It just went to show that you couldn't trust anybody anywhere these days. Normally, he could have been sworn that the man who wanted to sell back to him his own camel was one of his compatriots.
Pulling himself together again, spice merchant Hussein said out loud, "What are you really after?"
"Well, I was just wondering who the owner is of the old bicycle that's standing outside there."
"I am. Why do you ask?"
"I have a proposal then. I thought, if you agree, that we could make a trade. You get the camel, and I get the bicycle. What do you say?"
"I don't know. I'll have to think it over. But first tell me, why do you want to trade away your camel?"
"Well, if you want to know the truth, she has been a little fussy with her food recently."
If spice merchant Hussein had looked out through his shop window at that moment, he would have seen his favoritecamel in the course of ingesting the remainder of a red silk ribbon from one of the funeral wreaths, on which was written in yellow lettering, "A Farewell Greeting from Chapter 34 of the National Union of Municipal Workers." But fortunately his eyes had not wandered over in that direction. Determined to ferret out the real motives of the man who stood facing him, he didn't dare take his eyes off of him even for a single moment. The man who no longer wished to be the proud owner of a camel did all he could to appeal to his prospective trading partner's vanity, saying
"Whereas I thought that you, with your excellent connections to the Middle East, would be in a better position to obtain at a reasonable price the fodder that camels require."
"And what use would a bicycle be for you?" inquired spice merchant Hussein, without for a second relaxing his vigilance. "Oh well, it's obvious that I really can't keep it a secret any longer," said the man who but a short hour earlier had fallen off a camel, flipping up the brim of his cap so that the bandage was exposed.
"As you see, I'm not a particularly accomplished camel rider and would feel a lot more secure seated on a bicycle instead."
Spice merchant Hussein finally had to concede to himself that the man facing him appeared, at least right at that moment, to be totally honest and sincere. But he knew from bitter experience that you could never be too circumspect in cases like this. There was always a catch somewhere or other.
"Okay," he said at last, "I'll go along with your proposal. But on certain conditions. One, that, as of the formal exchange of owners, all future supervision of the camel will devolve upon me. Two, that you waive all additional claims with regard either to any offspring of said camel or other salable products of various kinds, such as milk or wool."
"I also must stipulate certain conditions for the exchange," said the man who now was but a camel's hair away from accomplishing his objective. "First, that you guarantee that the bicycle is totally safe to ride. Second, that you surrender all rights of compensation for any damages the camel may have occasioned during the time that she was in my possession.
"Agreed," said spice merchant Hussein. But shouldn't we summon a witness before signing anything. I know a Norwegian cab driver who lives down the street. He's often home during the day and certainly would be willing to help out."
"Is he to be trusted?" asked the man who again had begun to wonder whether he had acted wisely in trading away a camel for an old bicycle.
"It's quite possible that he doesn't know very much about either camels or bicycles," conceded Elias Hussein, "but the man is honesty incarnate. He wouldn't think of taking as much as a camel's hair without asking permission."
"Aw, we can let that go. Let him come. But make it snappy," said the man who was now getting a little impatient with spice merchant Hussein's dilatory approach.
"But," it occurred suddenly to the latter man, "who's going to keep an eye on the shop meanwhile?"
"I can," offered at once the man who still hoped to begin a career as brick-mason that very day. "I've worked in the retail branch previously. Furthermore, it's not very likely that many customers will come in during your brief absence."
"I don't know if I can risk entrusting something like that to you."
"Is that what you really think of me? If you can't even trust me that far, perhaps it's just as well that we give up the whole idea of signing an agreement."
The man who, despite everything, wasn't prepared to sell his pride for a camel was genuinely insulted. Spice merchant Hussein, who realized suddenly that a rare opportunity was about to slip through his fingers, hastened to utter a few carefully selected courteous phrases directly translated from his own well-worn copy of the original Arabic Sense and Etiquette in Society. Apparently his trading partner was particularly sensitive to verbal nuances. The trick here was clearly to keep his tongue well in check.

As a basically simple story threatens to become unnecessarily entangled through a combination of Jewish stubbornness and Arabic rhetoric, we will restrict ourselves to confirming that the agreement, in accordance with which the camel Bitem would be returned to spice merchant Hussein's possession, in exchange for which a rusty old women's bicycle of manufacture Fram would be restored to its rightful owner, was at last signed exactly as initially anticipated. The signing took place, sure enough, during a solemn ceremony at Luigi's Pizzeria on the Gamleby Town Square, across from Norra Tjustbygden's Oriental Spice and Grocery Market, in the presence of trusted witness, cab driver Tor Egil Moe, a native of Fredrikstad who had resided in Gamleby for the last five years. As it turned out, he was as judicious and unimpeachable as only a Norwegian cab driver can be, thus actively contributing to the parties' willingness to go that last mile and put their signatures to the document that had been drawn up on a paper napkin. Due to the above-mentioned circumstance, the agreement wound up bearing the somewhat misleading title, "Luigi's - The Best Pizza in Town." (Besides the fact that Gamleby can hardly be dignified with the description "town," it should, in all honesty, be noted here that the place doesn't house more than one pizzeria, whereby the requirements for being "the best pizza in town" are perhaps not so terribly stringent.)

However, the question as to whether all the conditions of the accord herewith entered upon were subsequently adhered to in actuality is beyond the scope of this account. Thus, we are unable to say whether the camel Bitem can, at this juncture, be seen in her pasture several miles from Överum munching distractedly on her nettles and day-dreaming about acacia leaves, nor do we rightly know whether the man who came pedaling over the hills of Blidstena on that October morning ever began his course in brick-masonry. On the other hand, we can affirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that retired Civil Gardener Gustav Lundgren never turned up on the front page of the Västervik Daily News. Not yet at least.

©Joakim Philipson

Translation from the Swedish by:
©Ken Schubert

Joakim Philipson is the author of two novels (in Swedish), Tecknet och tystnaden (= "The Sign and the Silence", 1991) and Jakobs röst (= "The Voice of Jacob", 1996), both of which got very good reviews. He has published articles on art, philosophy, and health care in a number of newspapers and journals, as well as several conference papers for international library conferences, such as Second thoughts : document redistribution and knowledge export (Reykjavik : Nord I&D 11, 2001).
During 1997-2002 he was working at the National Library of Norway, Repository Library, where his main responsibility was the so-called Document Redistribution Database, which he developed and managed. He was also the organizer and head of the 2nd Nordic-Baltic Repository Library Meeting, which took place in October 2000, in Mo i Rana, Norway

From august 2002 Joakim Philipson pursues a doctorate program at the Baltic East European Graduate School, Södertörn University College, just south of Stockholm, Sweden. The theme of his dissertation will be "The reception of Darwinism by the Jewish haskalah-movement in 19th century Russia".

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