The Dinosaur Feather(60)

When Johannes had gone, Anna closed the door to their study. The tears started rolling down her cheeks. It happened again and again. She was treated unfairly and when she retaliated, her reaction obliterated everything and the injustice she had suffered faded into the background. Just like with Troels and Karen. Suddenly, it was all her fault they were no longer friends. As if Troels was completely blameless! It was also her fault Lily’s father no longer lived with them.

“No guy will put up with the way you behave,” Thomas had said, conveniently ignoring the reasons for her behavior. And countless times Jens had said, “Don’t be so hard on your mom, Anna Bella!”

As if Cecilie had never been hard on her!

And now Johannes. It was he who had blurted something utterly ludicrous to the police, but suddenly she was the one being unreasonable!

It took her a long time to calm down. She blew her nose and made herself a cup of tea. Once her anger subsided, she felt ashamed. Johannes was her friend, she knew that. He was right. He had helped her so much in the past year.

At the start of June, she had hit her second dissertation crisis and come close to throwing in the towel. She had read everything about the controversy surrounding the origin of birds and familiarized herself, in detail, with the scientific implications of feathers. She had long been convinced that Helland and Tybjerg’s position was scientifically the stronger, and that it was nonsense for Freeman to carry on fighting to convince the world of the opposite. All experts agreed that birds were present-day dinosaurs, and that predatory dinosaurs, theropods as they were called, had undergone an evolutionary reduction when they started hunting their prey by leaping between knolls and tree stumps before moving on to trees. Once up there, they developed first a primitive gliding flight between treetops and, later, actual flight. All the evidence pointed to dinosaurs having feathers, even before flying became a part of their behavior.

What prompted the crisis was that Anna had no idea what to do with her newfound knowledge. Countless scientists before her had attacked Freeman’s position. World-famous vertebrate scientists everywhere, ornithologists, laden with PhDs and chairmanships, had taken Freeman’s arguments apart in papers, at symposia, and in books. But Freeman had remained immune to these experts. How could she, Anna Bella Nor, ever come up with a contribution that might add or change anything? Surely that was impossible? All she could do was repeat what had already been said and write a historical dissertation that reviewed the controversy from Solnhofen up until the present day. It would be nothing but a synopsis, and no student could be awarded even a pass for work that was ultimately a summary. She had to add something new.

Johannes had come to her rescue.

He had said: “Have you examined Freeman’s underlying premises properly?” and she had nearly throttled him. Johannes was forever boring her with science theory and had written a highly intellectual theoretical science dissertation about Cambrian arthropods and been awarded a first. However, her dissertation was about bones and feathers, she had no use for his philosophical musings, she thought, and she had told him so. She had brushed him aside and carried on wallowing in her crisis. Finally, Johannes lost patience with her and gave her an ultimatum.

“Tomorrow morning, 10 a.m., in the lecture hall. If you don’t show, you’re on your own forever. I mean it.”

That evening she reluctantly conceded that it would be in her best interest to show up.


When Johannes had failed to arrive by 10:10 a.m., she had been on the verge of leaving. She had just gotten up and reached for her bag when he stormed in, gasping for breath.

“Great,” he panted, “you’re here.”

“It sounded like an order yesterday, not an offer.”

Johannes pulled off his jacket and faced her.

“Anna,” he said calmly, “it is an offer. You want out?”

Anna didn’t dare nod even though everything inside her urged her to.

They went up to the board.

“Take a seat,” Johannes said, pointing to the tall desk. She climbed up and looked at the empty board.

“Right, Anna Banana . . .” he said and quickly massaged his forehead. “When you say the word ‘science,’ most people imagine a strict, objective discipline that is impersonal, general, and true. We like and accept that literature, architecture, and politics are subjective, but most of us would bridle at this being applicable to, say, chemistry or biology.” Johannes cleared his throat. “The strictly objective view of science is represented, among others, by the philosopher Karl Popper, who lived from . . . ah, that escapes my mind . . . Popper was in search of an absolute set of rules for science, and he used the so-called hypothetical-deductive method, which says scientific theories must always be tested by conclusive experiments. Only when a theory could be falsified, could it be called scientific. Do you follow?” Johannes looked directly at Anna.