The Man Who Turned Darwin Upside Down
by Bertil Falk
The first time I saw him was at an Afro-American gathering in Harlem, where he showed an enormous amount of knowledge when it came to slavery, black heritage and anything that had to do with African-American history. He was a very small man. The reason that I noticed his presence was that he was the only white person at the meeting.
When lunch was served, he turned out to be a gourmand. He was eating as if it was the first time in his life he had seen food. He was not exactly shabbily dressed, but his suit had seen better days. Well, there are all kinds of people, so why not?
A year later I attended a completely different kind of meeting in midtown Manhattan. Specialists in the field of invertebrates, in Scandinavia of all places, were holding a convention. I went there to see a friend of mine who had come from Finland for the occasion.
And there he was!
I am not talking about my friend, but about the person I had seen at the Afro-American meeting in Harlem. He stood at the rostrum and was evidently putting some very intelligent questions to some authority on some spineless thing in Scandinavia. His speech was met with thundering applause, showing that he was at least as good at things without backbones as he was well informed about Afro-American history. Well, you never know, and as far as I was concerned I forgot the incident — but not for long.
About three weeks later I went downtown to a one-day conference on preserving scents for posterity that otherwise would disappear forever. I was there as a specialist, not in fragrances, but in orchids. I was surprised to learn that not only species but also odours are under threat of extinction and that — at least to some degree — the two things are coherent. I should have known, for when an orchid becomes extinct, its scent goes as well. It is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that is, if you accept an orchid being the bathwater.
If that fact was a surprise to me, the emergence of that white guy for a third time was an even bigger surprise. He showed an incredible knowledge about all kinds of fragrances and parfumes and scents. He come forth with interesting ideas for preserving them for coming generations of scientists. It was an impressive performance, and his contribution to the discussion was probably the best. His name was Mr. Bjorkland.
Now I took an interest in this thin little man, who seemed to know everything about anything. I watched him. This time I found that he was very well dressed and not as eager to eat as he had been fifteen months ago, when I first ran into him in Harlem. But at lunchtime, he went to the buffet more than once. I came to understand that he filled not one, but at least three doggy bags with food and put them in his briefcase. When the meeting was over, I tried to find him, but he had left.
Even though it was no concern of mine, I pondered over the remarkable man, who had now taken on the shape of a mystery. Had I not seen him at three totally different occasions showing off an enormous amount of knowledge, insight and understanding concerning various disciplines?
I would not have imagined that we still had universal geniuses amongst us. Goethe is supposed to have been the last person who almost could encompass all the knowledge of his time. After him, the amount of knowledge became so enormous that one person alone cannot possibly embrace it. It seemed to me that this small fellow was the nearest we can get to such an individual in our time.
Another year went by. One day in February, when icy winds swept the canyons of the big city, I arrived at Grand Central Station and walked over to New York Public Library at the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. Even though I was dressed in winter clothing, I was not well dressed for the occasion. A blizzard in Manhattan, when it is very cold, has to be experienced to be believed. I tried to cover my face with my arm, but the stinging cold penetrated this useless visor. Soon my face was like the ice-rink at Rockefeller Center. The only thing missing was a skating queen cutting figure eights on my cheeks.
The space between Grand Central and the Library is in normal weather conditions a walking distance. But in a snowstorm, that walking distance is more like a ramble in the Himalayas or something like that, and getting in from the cold to the cathedral of knowledge and wisdom was relieving.
In the reading-room, I began studying Las Orquidas del Mundo. I then realized that no less a man than Mr. Bjorkland was sitting not far from me. I kept him under observation. This time, Mr. Mystery would not escape me. He did not.
When he rose from the worktable, I approached him and said in the manner of a well-known forerunner, “Mr. Bjorkland, I presume.”
His lips were small and he smiled a very thin smile. “So, you have found me again. I know that you took an interest in me at the conference on fragrance.”
“You’ve made me curious,” I said. “As far as I can understand, you must be one of the most well-read, well-informed and competent persons in this city, perhaps the most.”
“Really?” He looked up at me and added, “And what can I do in order to assuage your curiosity?”
I looked at my wristwatch and considering his food habits, I said, “The time is now 1 pm. Let me take you to lunch.”
“Are you serious?”
“You bet I am,” I said.
The blizzard was still on. We took a yellow cab down to an Indian restaurant in Soho, where he with the air of a connoisseur chose from the menu.
“What do you know about me?” he asked.
I looked at him. “I know that over the past one and a half years you have turned up on three different occasions and showed an incredible knowledge in the most varying disciplines. It seems to me that you don’t represent any university or institution or company. You’re a lone wolf of some kind. You may not even have any academic credentials whatsoever. You may be a self-made, a self-taught person, an autodidact.”
“Go on,” he said, and I saw that he was amused for there was a lively brilliance in his blue eyes.
“You take a certain interest in food,” I continued, “and I have a feeling that you may not have a permanent abode. That’s what I can deduce from what I’ve seen and what I know of you.”
“Is that all?”
“Anything else would cross the lines of deduction and be pure guesswork.”
“You don’t want to guess?”
“No.”
The food came and I took a sip from my glass of salted lassi and felt the steaming heat from my lamb curry.
“I knew that someone some day would cross my path and understand that something was going on,” Bjorkland said. “Yes, you’re correct. And you’re the only one who’s become aware of my secret, if it is one. I’ve not tried to hide anything. But neither have I spread the word about what I’m doing. Do you know what I’m doing?”
“I think so.”
“Please speak your mind.”
“You’re surviving. You’re a survivor. You’ve taken Darwin’s statement about ‘the survival of the fittest’ at face value and in a very ingenious way solved the problem of survival under certain circumstances. As far as I can understand, you must have faced a situation where something had to be done.”
“You’ve an interesting way to put it, but you’re on the right track. Yes, I did. I was fired from my job, I lost my apartment, and I lost my wife and I could not find a way to support myself. I became a hobo. But I still had my brain. I’ve always been reading, anything and everything. One day, when I was awfully hungry, I saw a handbill. It invited people to a one-day conference in a midtown church about ‘God and Manhattan’.
“What struck me was that participants would be treated to lunch. That day I went to a library and read a lot about the church in question. I already knew enough about God and Manhattan. The meeting began with a prayer at 10 a.m. I was there on time, and at 1 pm we were served the promised lunch.
“The food revived my sinking spirits, and during the rest of the day, I came up with some ideas that the people found interesting. I still go to that church now and then, and I do participate in all their meetings, even some without food.”
He used a chappati to eat his chicken buriyani, thereby demonstrating that he was familiar with the Indian way of eating. And he continued: “That day I found out how to survive. Every day there are thousands of different meetings and conferences in this big city, events where you’re treated to a free lunch, mostly trays of sandwiches, trays of hors d’œuvre or bigger smörgåsbords.
“Not only is it possible to eat, you can also take some away. As a matter of fact, when I stay till a conference is over, the people who have arranged the meetings often ask me to take care of some of the leftovers, so that they don’t have to throw them away. When I was sacked and evicted. I starved for more than a month. After that meeting in the church I’ve never been hungry. I’ve always had enough to eat.”
“Where do you live?”
“In that sense I’m like some comic book characters. I’ve a very nice underground apartment in connection with the subway.”
“Am I the only one who has taken you to a restaurant?”
“Certainly not. After conferences and meetings, I’ve often been asked if I wanted to go with people to a restaurant for dinner. I always in all honesty tell them that I would love to but that I cannot afford such luxury. Very often I’ve been treated to dinner. So now you know my secret. I’m obviously not doing anything criminal. Many of the ideas I’ve proposed have saved organizations, been turned into programmes or inspired research of different kinds.”
“You know how to live,” I said. “You’re a connoisseur of the Art of Living.”
“Well,” he said. “You mentioned Darwin. What is his natural selection based on? It’s based on the premise that survivors are those who are better adapted than others to their environment. That’s why an elephant won’t survive for long in the Arctic and a polar bear would have problems in a rain forest.
“If you’re not adapted to the surroundings, what can you do? The answer is that you do things the opposite way around. You make the surroundings fit your needs. Instead of adapting yourself to the environment you adapt the environment to yourself. That’s what I did.”
“I see,” I replied. “You take New York City as it is. It has never changed to meet your needs. You changed your attitude to fit into it.”
He nodded and smiled. “Of course you’re right, but even if I adapted my way of living to the opportunities that New York places at my disposal, it was not by chance that I did so. I used my brain, and I found that I could use the environment for my purpose. I prefer to think that at least in a certain way I’ve turned Darwin upside down and come down on my feet.”
“Are you one of a kind?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not stumbled upon anyone making a living exactly the way I do.”
“The writer G.K. Chesterton would have liked you.”
The man laughed. “He would probably have invited me to become a member of the Club of Queer Trades.”
I have never seen Arthur Bjorkland again. But I am sure that he is still stalking the streets of Manhattan. And if I for some reason, I would like to see him again for another pleasant dinner, I am quite sure that the New York Public Library is the right place to go. That is where he prepares for his extraordinary food-hunting excursions.
Copyright © 2011 by Bertil Falk
