The Bone Clocks

First, I beg your pardon. I don’t know if “Marinus” is Mr. or Mrs. or Doctor, your family name or your given name. Pardon also my poor English. My name is Еge Nжss-Шdegеrd. Maybe Mrs. Esther Little told you my name, but in this letter, I will assume she did not. I am a seventy-four-year-old Norwegian man who lives in Trondheim, a town of my native Norway. In case you don’t know why a stranger is sending you an old audio machine, here is the full story.

My father established the Шvre Fjellberg School in 1932, because his brother Martin was born with deafness and, in those days, attitudes were primitive. I was born in 1950 and I could sign fluently (in Norwegian, of course) before I was ten. My mother managed the office of Шvre Fjellberg School and my uncle Martin became the groundsman, so, you can imagine, our school and its students were the life of our family. I graduated from Oslo University in 1975 with a degree in education, and I returned to Trondheim to teach at Шvre Fjellberg. I established a Music and Drama Department here, because also I love the violin. Many nondeaf people do not guess that deaf people can enjoy music in various ways, so it was our school’s tradition to work with our local amateur orchestra to produce a spring concert for an audience of both deaf and nondeaf people. Signing, dance, amplification, images, and so on are used. In 1984, when this story happened, I chose Jean Sibelius’s “The Swan of Tuenola” for our annual performance. It is very beautiful. Perhaps you know?

Anyway in 1984, we had one dark cloud above our landscape (do you say this in English?). Namely, the financial position of our school was critical. Шvre Fjellberg is a charitable foundation but we required a big subsidy from Oslo to pay for salaries, and so on. I will not bore you with old politics, but the national government at that time cut our subsidy, to oblige our students to attend another school, two hours away by car. We protested the decision, but without financial independence or political muscle, our precious school was to be shut, after half a century of excellent work. For our family, this was a tragedy.

However, one day in June of 1984, I received a visitor in my office. She was in her fifties, perhaps. She had short gray hair and masculine clothes and a face of many stories. She apologized for disturbing me in foreigner’s Norwegian, then asked if we could speak English. I said yes. She said her name was Esther Little. Esther Little had attended our students’ recent concert and enjoyed it greatly. She had also heard of the school’s bad financial position, and she wished to assist, if possible. I said, “If you have a magic wand, please, I am listening.” Esther Little put a wooden box on my desk. This is the mahogany box I send to you. Inside was a portable cassette player and one cassette tape. Then Esther Little explained this deal. If I keep these items for some years, and then post it to her friend “Marinus” at an address in New York, she would tell her lawyers in Oslo to make a large donation to our school.

Should I agree? Esther Little read my thoughts. She said, “No, I am not a drug lord, or a terrorist, or a spy. I am an eccentric philanthropist from Western Australia. The cassette is a message to a friend, Marinus, who will need to hear it when the time is right.” As I write this letter today, I don’t know why I believed her, but sometimes you meet people who you believe. It is an instinct. I believed Esther Little. Her Oslo lawyers were a respectable conservative firm, so perhaps this influenced my decision. I asked, why not did she simply pay her Oslo lawyers to post her box to New York on a certain date in the future? Esther Little said, “Lawyers come and go. Even discreet ones are visible, and they all work for money. But you are an honest man in a quiet corner of the world, and you will live a long time.” Finally, she wrote down the donation she offered. I am sure my face became pale like a ghost when I saw the number on the sheet of paper! Our school would be safe for five years, at least. Esther Little said, “Tell your board of governors that the money was donated from a wealthy anonymous donor who believes in the work of Шvre Fjellberg School. This is the truth.” The box and our deal should be our small secret, is what I understood.