Authors: Jan Kjaerstad
In the evenings, when my aunt was making dinner, I was allowed to shut the kitchen door and play in the living room. Aunt Laura bound a silk scarf around my head like a turban and lent me a torch. Then I switched off the living-room light and made believe I was a sultan going out in disguise to see how things stood in my realm – just like the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid in the
Arabian Nights
. I was especially fond of pretending that I was walking around the bazaar, where I envisaged the most arcane occurrences taking place. The platter of oranges on the table was transformed with ease into a cornucopian fruit stall, the bowl of little pistachio cakes turned into an
aromatic
pastry shop and the coils of silver wire on the workbench in the corner became glimpses of palaces in a distant city. My imagination was given added wing by the delicious smells issuing from the kitchen, often from my aunt’s speciality: Lebanese dishes, including my favourite,
machawi
, small chunks of meat threaded onto a skewer and grilled – the skewer was a treat in itself. When I shone the torch on the many different oriental rugs they altered
character
. As with the one in Karen Mohr’s home they, too, concealed doors of a sort leading to new and exciting chambers. Their labyrinthine patterns took on a fascinating depth and revealed an assortment of tableaux; took me on
journeys of discovery to cities such as Baghdad and Basra and, if I was lucky: to far-off Samarkand.
One evening, when Aunt Laura spent longer than usual in the kitchen, I fell asleep among the soft cushions on the sofa. I was woken by my aunt shaking me gently. Other children might wake with a start and imagine that they had just grown in their sleep. I tended, instead, to wake with a shudder. As an adult it struck me that this was not unlike the spasms of an orgasm. On this occasion, too, that deep tremor ran through me from top to toe, as if all the molecules in my body were swapping places. I looked around me.
Everything
was different. The same, but altered. When I had switched out the light there had been a platter of oranges on the table. Now the dish was piled high with lemons, inflamingly yellow and with that little tip which, later in life, always made me think of a girl’s breast. When I had last seen Aunt Laura in the kitchen, she had been wearing a gold sea-horse on a chain around her neck, a piece of jewellery she claimed was made from the wedding rings of men with whom she had slept. But now a dolphin dangled before my eyes.
I said nothing. Not because I was not sure, but because I was scared. The Jonas I had now become had more to him than the Jonas who had fallen asleep – whatever had happened. There was much to suggest that whatever I had, until then, taken to be myself was only a fragment of a much larger whole. Amid all my fear and confusion, however, I also detected another,
conflicting
emotion: one of wild excitement.
It is tempting to dismiss all of this as no more than a fanciful childish or youthful daydream. Nevertheless, for years it coloured my life; I have no wish to deny it. The same went for my suspicion that the pressure I occasionally felt, that sense of being unfolded, was connected to something else. For, while my brother Daniel had a constant fixation with soul, I let myself be seduced, possibly as a protest, by a rival concept within those same hazy and exalted spheres. Spirit. I would not be surprised if that was why we ended up in such different walks of life, despite having one lowest common
denominator
: the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin’s impassioned rendering of ‘Spirit in the Dark’, more especially the live version, sung with Ray Charles – Aretha’s ecstatic scream of ‘Don’t do it to me!’ left us both with goosebumps on our inner thighs. This was soul and spirit in perfect harmony.
I automatically pricked up my ears at any mention of the phenomenon. I cherished words such as ‘spirited’ and ‘inspirit’. I understood that life and spirit were inextricably bound up with one another. Always, without thinking about it, I would say inspire rather than inhale. I felt the same about
breathing
as other people did about the heart or the pulse. Even as a small child
I would find myself taking big, deep breaths, in and out, as if performing an exercise of some sort; as if I instinctively knew that I had not mastered this vital function, nay, this art. Whenever I saw pictures of the lungs they reminded me of sails, two spinnakers designed to speed us along. I would eventually come to have great respect for the wise men of other cultures who called attention to the link between breathing and thinking, between
breathing
and our potential for reaching unknown areas of the mind.
One thing became clear to me very early on: in order to unfold as a person, I had to have spirit. Once, when I was in elementary school, I went into town with my father. We were strolling along the dockside at Pipervika – we had just bought a bag of shrimps from one of the boats tied up there – when we were witness to a demonstration down by Hønnørbrygga of a new type of life-raft. At first I could make nothing of it. The raft was just a small white egg, a glass-fibre pod with two halves to it. But when the container was thrown into the water and a man tugged on a cord a raft proceeded to swell out of the egg, truly to unfold, black and orange, like a brightly hued bird emerging from a conjuror’s hand. It must have been very closely packed, because it was big. Our curiosity aroused, we moved closer and heard a man saying that there was a gas cylinder inside the pod. The cord was attached to a trigger which punctured a membrane inside the cylinder, thus releasing air into the raft and inflating it. ‘Do we have a cylinder like that inside us,’ I asked my father. I think there was a hopeful note in my voice.
In ancient languages such as Hebrew and Greek, the word for spirit and wind is the same. I have the feeling that this may explain my weakness for the organ, an instrument which so perfectly combines these two words,
converting
wind into spirit. My father often said to me: ‘Playing the organ, Jonas, that’s truly inspired work.’
Not until long after my father’s funeral did my mother tell us what she had done when she got the urn back from the crematorium. She took some of the ashes and put them into five separate, airtight envelopes which she addressed to five organists in different parts of Norway, all of them good colleagues and friends of Haakon Hansen who had agreed to carry out the Grorud organist’s wishes and his plan. These five went to their respective organs and poured the ashes down into one of the large pipes producing the deepest pedal notes, and at a prearranged moment they began, simultaneously, to play the same Bach prelude. ‘That was your father’s real funeral,’ my mother told me. I saw it more as a resurrection. He had been assured of a kind of eternal life. The thought appealed to me: my father lying there in different parts of Norway, vibrating in the air from his favourite chords, hovering on that exquisite music. As spirit.
The aim was not, of course, to become spirit. The aim was to become more of a person. I often thought of that incident when I saved a little child from drowning and how, afterwards, completely disillusioned, I had felt that my mission in life had been accomplished, that my life had, as it were, been
fulfilled
. It took a while for me to realise that this, all the practising, had simply been a preparation, training for a more difficult task: that of being filled with spirit. In order to expand and grow. All of the diving, those many minutes under water, had simply been an excuse for learning to control my
respiration
. My diving was a testimony to my powerful lust for life.
I had this same feeling as I swam down into the depths of Svarttjern,
frantically
diving after Margrete’s gold bracelet. My ability to hold my breath was finally to come into its own.
This
was what I had been training for. I had been training to win Margrete. I had been training to save my own life.
Every time I surfaced her eyes met mine, questioningly. Even from a distance I saw those eyes only as pupils – like deep, black pools. I had the feeling that I was as much diving in them, after the gold in them; that this was also my first attempt to get to the bottom of her. Of Margrete’s ‘Persian beauty’. She sat perfectly still, said not a word, and yet, with her eyes she was saying: How long can you hold your breath for me?
I took a rest then dived again, determined to beat every record going. I slipped down into the darkness, pinched my nose and blew through my mouth, equalising the pressure. Five metres down the water was noticeably cooler. I could not see a thing. But it was as if I was being given a warning: this is what life with her will be like, a long dive into the darkness, hunting for gold.
I noticed that my thoughts ran along different lines when I was
underwater
. It may have had something to do with the pressure, the buoyancy, the lack of oxygen. I acquired second sight. Down in the darkness I saw images from a whole future drift past my eyes, as if the water was developing fluid. I saw a golden elephant, a long-playing record, a dangerous swim, two adults in soft spring rain, a doctor’s white coat, a flat full of things from all over the world, a woman banging her head against a wall, a child, a television studio. And finally I saw a gun.
I had to hunt for the bracelet with the hand that was not holding my nose. I felt about in the most likely spot, directly below the knoll she had jumped off several times. Despite the darkness I swam with my eyes open, as if I thought it must be possible to discern a smouldering glimmer of gold. A glimmer of love, I thought feverishly. I could not see a thing. I was reduced to groping
with my fingers. My lungs were starting to ache. My ears hurt. I thought of van Gogh. I thought I saw tropical fish glide by, like the ones in the
television
Interlude. I would not be able to take it much longer. A shiver ran through me. What if she had taken off the bracelet on purpose? What if she had wanted to test the boys, find out which of them was most deserving of her. Which one was
worthy
. Was she liable to do something like that? Would she be willing to sacrifice her mother’s expensive bracelet even if she received no answer.
I ran my hands over the bottom, centimetre by centimetre. I thought of the tales from the
Arabian Nights
which Rakel had read aloud to Daniel and I when we were small, particularly of those stories in which a character came across a ring embedded in the ground; and when he lifted the ring he raised a trapdoor, revealing stairs leading down into another world. Was it something like this I was searching for, without knowing it?
I have asked myself: what is the greatest driving force in my life? I think I know. It is the desire to work in depth. To invent something simple which would, nevertheless, have major consequences. Something along the lines of the wheel, the rudder, the stirrup. A new alphabet. To work at the most
fundamental
level. Like a power station deep inside a mountain. Lighting up cities far away. Being a spring which suddenly wells up and renders a desert fertile. Or being someone who shakes things up. Shakes up the classifications. Shakes the foundations. Like Samson toppling those pillars and bringing a whole heathen temple tumbling down. Being someone who splits open the shell we have built up around mankind.
I think that was why I loved diving. Diving down into the depths as I was doing now. I understood, somewhere in my subconscious, that this was not merely a search for a piece of jewellery, this was an undertaking which could lead to my making a fundamental discovery.
Even so, when I rose to the surface after one particularly gruelling dive, I was ready to give up. I ached all over. But as I gasped for breath I seemed to take in something else, something more: spirit. One more dive, I told myself. And as soon as my hand reached the bottom my fingers lighted on the circlet. I did not touch gold. I felt I was touching the future.
Later she presented me with a book. We were at her place, alone, in the villa down the road from the school. She wanted to give me something, the finest thing she could think of, as a thank-you for finding her bracelet. It was
Victoria
by Knut Hamsun. ‘It’s a love story,’ she said with a look which implied that
that
said it all. She gave me her own dog-eared copy. I liked the title, liked the association with victory. Too late I discovered that I ought to have
perused more than the title of that novel. A lot of people have had their own personal experience of
Victoria
by Knut Hamsun, I’m sure, but none has been anything like mine.
She had pressed fresh orange juice and this she poured into two elegant wine glasses. We drank as one. I felt strange, as if she had stirred a magic powder into the drink. Then she kissed me for the first time. I felt even stranger. Filled with light.
Filled
. I could have drawn this conclusion at that moment, but I did not: it might be that what I called spirit was just another word for love.
Afterwards we sat in the garden, on a green lawn. I was feeling so
lightheaded
that I had to lie with my head in her lap. There was a sprinkler on the go. Opera music drifted from the house next door. I lay with my head in her lap. I could have lain there for the rest of my life. I looked down on myself from high in the air, saw myself lying there in a luxuriant garden with my head in a girl’s lap; I saw how lovely and how right it was, saw that this might even be what was known as working in depth.
Few triumphs in my life can compare with the moment when, with
swelling
heart, I clambered ashore and handed her the bracelet. We were alone at Svarttjern. We stood on the only rock still in the sun. Neither of us said
anything
. First she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. The metal glowed against her skin. She gazed into my eyes and then she wrapped her arms around me. I stood there inside a circlet of gold. I looked up at the sky. I noticed that the clouds were moving faster, that something was happening to the weather, the whole atmosphere. The water was perfectly still, reflecting the dense, shadowy forest all around. For me Svarttjern would always be a sacred lake. She held me for a long time. No more than that. Just held me. I experienced some of the same pressure that I felt underwater, when I dived. She held me and I unfolded; I stood still, inside a circle of skin, and I was transformed. Being held by Margrete. If God gave me the chance to relive one thing in my life I would choose this: to be held by Margrete. Held, tight, long.