Holger yawned through most of this, and made sarcastic remarks when we were having a drink afterward. “These mat’ematicians vork their brains so hard, no vonder they snap into metaphysics ven off duty. Eqval and opposite reaction.”
“You’re using the right term,” I teased him, “though you don’t mean to.”
“Vat’s that?”
“‘Metaphysics.’ The word means, literally, after or beyond physics. In other words, when the physics you know, the kind you measure with your instruments and calculate with your slide rule, when that ends, metaphysics begins. And that’s where we are right now, my lad: at the beginning of being beyond physics.”
“Voof!” He gulped down his drink and gestured for another. “It has rubbed off on you.”
“Well, maybe. But think a minute. Do we really know the dimensions of physics? Don’t we define them purely with respect to each other? In an absolute sense, Holger, what are you? Where are you? Or, rather, what-where-when are you?”
“I’m me, here and now, drinking some not very good liquor.
“You’re in balance—in tune with?—in the matrix of?—a specific continuum. So am I; the same for both of us. That continuum embodies a specific set of mathematical relationships among such dimensions as space, time, and energy. We know some of those relationships, under the name ’natural laws.’ Hence we have organized bodies of knowledge we call physics, astronomy, chemistry—“
“And voodoo!” He lifted his glass. “Time you stopped t’inking and begun some serious drinking. Skaal!”
I let it go. Holger didn’t mention the subject again. But he must have remembered what was said. Perhaps it even helped him a bit, long afterward. I dare hope so.
The war broke out overseas, and Holger started to fret. As the months passed, he grew steadily more unhappy. He had no deep political convictions, but he found he hated the Nazis with a fervor that astonished us both. When the Germans entered his country, he went on a three-day jag.
However, the occupation began fairly peacefully. The Danish government had swallowed the bitter pill, remained at home—the only such government which did—and accepted the status of a neutral power under German protection. Don’t think that didn’t take courage. Among other things, it meant the king was for some years able to prevent the outrages, especially upon Jews, which the citizens of other occupied nations suffered.
Holger cheered, though, when Denmark’s ambassador to the United States declared for the Allies and authorized our entry into Greenland. About this time, most of us realized that America would sooner or later be drawn into the war. The obvious plan for Holger was to await that day, then join the Army. Or he could sign up now with the British or the Free Norwegians. He admitted to me, often, hurt and puzzled at himself, that he couldn’t understand what was preventing him.
But by 1941 the news was that Denmark had had enough. Not yet had matters developed to the explosion which finally came, when a national strike led to the Germans ousting the royal government and ruling the country as another conquered province. But already you were beginning to hear gunshots and dynamite. It took Holger a lot of time and beer to make up his mind. Somehow he had gotten a fixation that he must return home.
That didn’t make sense, but he couldn’t get rid of it, and finally he yielded. At seventh and last, as his people say, he was not an American but a Dane. He quit his job, we gave him a farewell party, and he sailed off on a Swedish ship. From Halsingborg he could take a ferry home.
I imagine the Germans kept an eye on him for a while. He gave them no trouble, but worked quietly at Burmeister & Wain, the marine engine manufacturers. In mid-1942, when he judged the Nazis had lost interest in him, he joined the underground… and was in a uniquely good position for sabotage.
The story of his labors doesn’t concern us here. He must have done well. The whole organization did; they were so efficient, and in such close liaison with the British, that few air raids ever needed to be carried out on their territory. In the latter part of 1943 they brought off their greatest exploit.