Authors: Jan Kjaerstad
When I asked her about this one evening – Martin had served
margueritas
up on deck – about all the things she had done and whether there was any common denominator between them, she had looked at me in surprise, glared almost. ‘I’m a storyteller,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it obvious? The future belongs to the storytellers. I’ve always known that. And that’s the challenge with what we’re doing here. To find the underlying story.’
I sit here in a fjord, surrounded by steep hillsides, and think of fly tying. The questions are always more important than the answers. In Lærdal the salmon flies are the question and the fish is the answer. I am fascinated by the craftsmanship involved. Many salmon flies are real works of art. The
patterns
, and the poetry of the names, make me think of cocktails, or
butterflies
. Golden Butterfly, Yellow Eagle, Evening Star, Jock Scott. A Victorian salmon fly might consist of more than forty materials, some of them taken
from exotic birds and animals; they looked like magical ornaments. If I were part of the OAK Quartet I would weave in lots of information on salmon flies. They keep talking about ‘teasers’, items designed to catch the browser’s interest. Could not the whole story of Lærdal be encapsulated within those flies? They are the perfect bait for the eye.
In the evenings I tend to sit off to one side and listen to them discussing things in the warm light of the paraffin lamp in the saloon. The
conversation
is fast and furious, almost as if they were bouncing rubber balls to one another, or playing a variation on ‘My ship is loaded with …’. A thought which is not so far out, at that. The
Voyager
is a cargo ship. They are loading it with information.
Most of their talk has to do with the task in hand, here in Sognefjord, but they keep straying onto other subjects. They may start out talking about Lærdal fly tier Olaf Olsen, and from there the conversation will turn to Loki, who took the shape of a salmon, before winding up with a discussion of all the Hollywood films they have seen in which fishing plays a key part –
particularly
those in which someone spends their whole life trying to catch the king salmon itself, only to let it go again when they finally succeed. The other day they spent over an hour debating Martin’s assertion that Sisyphus was the happiest man in the world. Hanna maintained that only Job – poor,
tormented
Job, mark you – was happier. In the middle of all this Carl proceeded to hold forth on his fascination with those blue pellets or cubes that used to be found in urinals. As far as I could gather, he believed these could be employed as a form of narcotic. The OAK Quartet have an almost shocking ability to hop, for example, from the question of whether jam should be put on cornflakes before or after the milk, to thoughts on the undulating lines of Alvar Aalto’s architecture, and finish up with an exchange on whether or not Mother Teresa was an egoist – as if all of these issues were of equal
importance
. It reminds me of the talk show which Kristin presented,
Container
it was called: it was in many ways epoch-making television, a real lucky dip of a programme filled with all sorts of rubbish out of which she forged meaning. She had people talking about empty trivia one minute and deeply serious matters the next. So too on board the
Voyager
. They take the same burning interest in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language as they do in the design of a complex motorway intersection or the lyrics of the Swedish Hoola Bandoola Band’s protest songs from the seventies. I have also remarked that they keep branching off into stories. Maybe it’s the boat that inspires them, maybe that is what comes of sitting in the glow of an old paraffin lamp.
I am instilled with their sense for detail. I understand how fraught with meaning ostensibly dry, neutral objects can be. What bearing has the old,
black Bakelite telephone had on my life. All of the different watch-straps I have owned, the appearance and feel of which I can recall with a clarity that astonishes me?
Is there some detail which could explain why she did it?
I have been given the whole of the for’ard cabin to myself – Hanna and Carl occupy the bunks in the saloon, Kristin and Martin share the big bunk in the aft corridor. Every evening I lie here thinking. The creaking of the rigging, the smell of paraffin and tar conjure up memories not only of an old actor, but also of Margrete. Before I go to sleep, my thoughts often go to those two other
Voyager
ships, small vessels sailing along, way out there in space, beyond the rings of Saturn, packed to the gunnels with answers to Bo Wang Lee’s question: What should we take with us?
I am writing again, something which comes almost as a surprise to me. Not that I don’t do a lot of writing now anyway, I
am
a secretary. What I mean is: writing about myself. I have been stimulated. By her. I know she is writing something. She has always been a great one for writing. I think she means to have it published. I have nothing against that.
My motives in writing are somewhat different this time around. I feel as if I am suffering from amnesia. I want to try to remember. And more than anything I want to try to remember the middle part.
In Grorud, when I was a boy, there were some old stonemasons who were real hard drinkers. We did not know what to make of them: these drunks – grown men lying senseless on the edge of the wood in the middle of the day – never moved us to feel critical of society or of our home town. But we were not scared of them either. They wouldn’t have hurt a fly. On one
occasion
we crept up on one of them to pinch the empty bottles that lay scattered around him on the grass. Suddenly the old drunk came to and started telling us a story, as if we were a longed-for audience. He stank of beer and piss, his crotch area was all wet and disgusting. We stayed and listened for a while; I thought it was very interesting, it was all about the cutting of the stone, about the huge, unwieldy blocks, but the others were itching to get away, to cash in the empties, buy gumballs from the new vending machine from which a lucky turn of the handle might deliver a ring as well. I went back later. The drunk man was still sprawled on the grass and I was able to catch the end of the story; and a pretty powerful ending it was, something to do with meeting a nursing sister, a future wife, in a hospital – not even the stench of beer and piss could spoil it. I ventured, from a safe distance, to ask why he had told this story. The drunk answered that it was a good story. He just
had
to tell it, even if no one was listening. This taught me something about stories.
About telling stories to no one. Even more importantly, though, I was filled with curiosity. I had heard the beginning and the end, but not the middle bit. And what I wondered was: what had occurred between what I knew of the beginning, the part about the stone cutting, and the wonderful ending? An accident?
A tale told by a drunken man. I think of what I wrote in my cell, the lengthy manuscript which I destroyed. I know a lot about my childhood and youth and I know a lot about the time since I went to prison. But what
happened
in between? What is the midpoint of my life?
Margrete.
And at the centre of this story?
Margrete on her knees on the bed, banging her head against the wall. Margrete in a white bedroom, in the light streaming through gauzy curtains. And me looking at her, standing there paralyzed, watching.
In retrospect it is alarming – and vexing – to think how clear it was to me that this would be the most significant moment of my life. In personal terms, as moments go this was the equivalent of the Big Bang, the mystery of what happened during those first seconds in the history of the universe. If I could understand what was going on here I would understand everything. I stood at a crucial fork in the road.
So why hang back so?
It was Margrete who made me see that I was not only a wonder. I was also a fool.
At first I did not believe it possible; no one could be engulfed by
darkness
in such a bright room, certainly not after such incandescent lovemaking. It was as if she had drawn down a black blind inside herself. And a blind between us. It crossed my mind that she must have remembered something terribly sad. This was, as I say, at the time when she was doing her
specialist
training in skin disorders, including venereal diseases. She came across enough distressing cases, heard lots of disillusioning stories. For one crazy, almost grimly comic, moment I wondered whether she might be trying to test how much her skin could withstand. Or how thick-skinned she was.
One night, in the dark, she told me what had made her decide to become a doctor. She had actually had her heart set on becoming an actress. While living in Paris she was part of a travelling theatre group which staged
dramatisations
of episodes from
The Mahabharata
– Margrete often entertained me in bed with little stories from the Indian epic; I really enjoyed them,
particularly
the adventures of the hero Arjuna who was conceived through the offices of the god Indra. Then one of her girlfriends suddenly became
seriously
ill and died in terrible pain. The helplessness she had felt then, at her
friend’s sickbed, made her decide to study medicine. To help people. Ease suffering. Margrete had a tendency to take things upon herself.
I did not know her. I had a suspicion that her past had been one long search for the next adrenalin rush. My lack of ardour was a constant source of annoyance to her. As was the fact that I was so reserved. ‘You’re not shy, you’re spineless,’ she said. I had been the baffled witness to her occasional need to scream from a mountaintop – quite literally, I mean: she would actually climb to the top of a mountain and
scream
for all she was worth. That was why I did not react right away to the head-banging. I was prepared to regard it as some necessary, harmless exercise.
She was a tireless advocate of the wisdom of feelings. ‘I feel sorry for you; you’re not in touch with your feelings,’ she often said to me. One evening I found her lying blubbering for no apparent reason, when I came to bed. I asked what was wrong, but received no answer. ‘Get a grip!’ I cried when she kept on sobbing. ‘Why should I?’ she asked, suddenly angry.
At such moments it was as if words failed her. ‘If something’s worrying you, won’t you please tell me what it is?’ I said on one of the few occasions when I found her like this. ‘There are no words to describe it,’ she had said. She had had this helpless, sorrowful look on her face. ‘It’s like it goes deeper than thought,’ she said. I could not understand it – this intelligent woman, a brilliant doctor in the making, all that reading – that she should be lost for words. But when I looked into her eyes, nor could my own thought penetrate the black depths of her pupils.
I stood there naked, holding a mug, watching her bang her head against the brick wall. I had the desire to translate this sight into something rational. But behind it all I knew: this was a scream. A scream for help disguised as a senseless action.
It is easy to say that I should have stopped her, that I should have done something, slipped a pillow, a fender, between the wall and her forehead, grabbed hold of her and pulled her away from there by force. But just at that moment that monotonous, destructive action seemed to have a paralyzing effect on me. Something about the unexpectedness of it – we had made love, I had only gone out to fetch a mug of iced tea – made me feel as though I had fallen into an ambush. I got it into my head that I had to stay perfectly still, to save anything even more awful from happening.
Or at least, that is not the whole truth. I know, I remember, that I had the rather cruel, almost delirious, thought that if I stopped her right now, if I threw myself between her and the wall, I would miss this chance of seeing her
reveal a side of herself of which, until now I had known absolutely nothing. Just a few minutes ago I had asked her whether she was content. ‘Content?’ she had replied. ‘Not just content – happy.’ What if there was no
contradiction
between the fact of being happy and the act of beating one’s head against the wall as I had at first thought. What if, in her world, this was an expression of a deeper, logical deduction. As if she were saying: ‘I am happy and I slam my head against the wall.’ Or: ‘We all have our ways of generating ideas. You skip. I beat my head off the wall.’
Egoism disguised as impotence. I felt my thoughts shooting off in lots of directions at once, as if the sight of her had provoked an amazing shift in
consciousness
, so powerful that for a while I forgot about her and instead stood there with all of my attention focused inwards as I attempted to pursue as many as possible of the countless lines of thought which were branching
outwards
at breathtaking speed and which might, if I could only mobilise all of my powers, lead me to some unique flash of insight which would justify the fact that I did not intervene. She went on beating her brow against the white wall, as if trying to break through a barrier, using her head as a battering ram. I stayed where I was, mug in hand, staring at her and pursuing my own thoughts while, with another part of my brain – in a third corner of my mind I could not help admiring this facility – every now and again, mainly to salve my own conscience perhaps, saying her name: ‘Margrete’. It came out almost as a
question
, as if I was afraid of waking her. Something about the golden statuette in the room moved me to imagine, just for a second, that this might be some sort of religious ritual, much like making one’s devotions to a god in a temple. One which, in this case, would have to be akin to Kali, the goddess of destruction.
Oh yes, she knew how to destroy. I was only twelve years old when she all but broke me. I have always felt that that was why I was afraid of love. That that was why I did not dare to try again for such a long time. Or never dared. After all, how was it possible? How could anyone be so broken up inside, so
miserable
, simply for the want of a slender hand to hold, a mouth to which to press one’s lips, a body to put one’s arms around? The most powerful force on earth, so they say, is that created between two particles in an atom. I would venture to suggest, however, that no force on earth is greater than the love between an adolescent boy and girl.