The Discoverer (38 page)

Jonas was in no way prepared for what happened next. Although he ought to have been prepared. He was in a strange state of mind. And he was in Samarkand.

‘And you?’ Jonas asked.

‘I too am a tourist, although I suppose you could say this is my own country,’ the young man said.

Jonas was still feeling somewhat shaken by the sight of the other man. His features seemed disconcertingly familiar. Something about him filled Jonas with an uneasy curiosity. ‘I am from Leningrad,’ the young man said. ‘My name is Yuri.’ He offered his hand, they shook. Jonas also introduced himself, finished by saying ‘Norway’. As if it were a mantra. It never failed. Norway
was
a word which elicited a response from people, no matter where, as if they immediately associated it with something exotic, even those who did not even know that Norway was a country. The thought struck Jonas: there might be people in the world for whom Norway was a Samarkand, a spot so unreal that it acquired a magical, seductive aura.

Not so with Yuri. When he heard where Jonas was from he pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something down on it with a pencil, so
vehemently
that the graphite virtually flew in all directions. He handed the slip to Jonas. Then he waited, in evident suspense, as if he had just handed over a passport which would gain him immediate entry into Jonas’s world. On the paper was a fractional equation: figures and letters and infinity symbols. Jonas could make neither head nor tail of it. ‘Abel,’ said Yuri. ‘Abel!’ he repeated, even more emphatically, pointing at the piece of paper. ‘From a proof of
convergence
criteria.’

Jonas realised that this had to be an extract from one of Niels Henrik Abel’s theorems, did not dare to admit that he was completely stumped, even though he had attended the same school as Norway’s greatest mathematician. He merely nodded. Affected to nod enthusiastically, knowingly.

‘One of my teachers showed me this,’ Yuri said. ‘He called Abel the Pushkin of mathematics. The poet of algebra.’

Jonas was quite taken aback by the thought of a country where a
school-teacher
could be acquainted with such advanced mathematics. Unless, of course, there was talk here of a Russian Mr Dehli. Jonas was intrigued by this: Abel, a Norwegian name and at the same time a word, a fascinating word at that, in a universal language. Abel and Samarkand could have been said to belong to the same word-class.

He considered politely taking his leave. He had been planning to visit a museum and then Timur Lenk’s mausoleum. He was constantly reminded by his surroundings of his mongoloid younger brother, Benjamin; Samarkand had been one of the Mongols’ cities, first destroyed by Genghis Khan, then designated their capital by the mighty Timur Lenk, or Tamburlaine, one of those restless rulers who had shaken the world.

But when Yuri invited Jonas to accompany him to a nearby
chaikhana
, or
tea house, Jonas knew right away that this person was more important than any historic sight, more important, even, than Timur Lenk who had made the whole world tremble. Minutes later they were sitting surrounded by old men wearing turban-like headgear or small embroidered skullcaps, drinking tea under large, retouched photographs of Communist leaders. Yuri told him a little about himself. His father was a musician, a pianist; his mother worked in a shop selling ironmongery. He had an older sister who, when she wasn’t driving a truck, did nothing but read novels. ‘And I have a brother, a year older than me,’ Yuri said with a smile. ‘A real tearaway. Best at everything. And an incorrigible womaniser.’

Round about them men were eating
shaslik
or
plov
. Some were playing the mandatory chess or dominoes. Jonas heard what Yuri was saying, but tried to distance himself from it. He was in a ferment. The worst of it was that he knew what was coming. And come it did. ‘I also have a little brother with Down’s syndrome,’ Yuri said. ‘Do you know what that is?’

Jonas nodded. Took a sip of his green tea. Glanced round about, glanced out of the window. Dusk was falling. He ought to be getting back to his hotel. He felt dizzy, disoriented. He had been in a kind of trance ever since he had looked deep into the walls of the buildings on Registan Square, gazed into flat surfaces which had suddenly, as a whole, assumed a depth – or no, not depth: many dimensions, more than three.

The young Russian was still talking about his little brother with Down’s syndrome. Jonas was dreading the revelation of one particular fact. That, too, was forthcoming. ‘It was all my fault,’ Yuri said. ‘I won’t go into detail, but it was because of me that my mother had that baby.’

Jonas sat for a while saying nothing, hardly dared to ask. But: ‘What do you do?’ he said.

What was he to think if the young man opposite him told him that he was going to university, but that he had still not made up his mind which subject to study.

‘I’ve just been offered a job in television,’ his companion said.

Jonas breathed a sigh of relief. Some of his sense of unease left him.

‘Television,’ he said, laughing out of utter relief. ‘What’s so exciting about that?’

‘It’s the future – I thought everybody knew that,’ Yuri said, genuinely amazed that anyone should respond in such a way; not only that, but a young man from what could almost be described as an eastern province of the USA. ‘I want to make programmes,’ Yuri said. ‘Programmes that will work a change in people, make them think differently. Without that there is no hope for this bizarre country, these countries. You see – I can say this to you – Communism
is already dead.’ The way he said this, lowering his voice and glancing wryly at the portraits of Politburo members, allowed Jonas to laugh even more.

It was almost dark when they left the tea house. Yuri pulled Jonas towards a bus. ‘I want to show you something that far too few people know about,’ he said. They alighted in the north-eastern quarter of the city and walked up a hill. Jonas thought they must have come there for the view, but Yuri headed towards a small building. A man was just locking up. Yuri spoke to him,
beckoned
to Jonas. They could go in. It transpired that hidden away inside this building, a simple vaulted structure, was something extraordinary: a hollow cut out of the rock face. This was all that was left, Yuri told him, of Ulug Beg’s massive observatory; a circular building thirty-five metres high. They were standing next to the remains of a gigantic instrument. Yuri explained that this was part of a narrow meridian arc, two parallel rails covered in
polished
marble slabs. He pointed to incisions in the stone, marking the degrees. This instrument had been used to make various astronomical observations. Jonas looked at the arc, tried to imagine the rest of it extending towards the heavens. It looked like a ramp.

They were back on the square outside. The weather was clear. The points of light in the darkness above their heads seemed unusually close. ‘I am going to use the television camera like a telescope,’ Yuri said. ‘I mean to find the stars on earth, among my own people.’ He said this lightly, but something in his voice spoke of serious intent.

They both stood with their heads tilted back. This place, the remains of the observatory, inspired them to assume this position. ‘Did it ever cross your mind that we could give the constellations new names, start from scratch, if you like?’ Yuri asked. When Jonas did not reply Yuri went on talking, but his voice began to fade, as if Jonas were being picked up, carried off. Which was only natural. Because, having achieved what was just about the most
impossible
thing on earth and made it to Samarkand, to the edge of a flat world, there was only one way to go and that was
out
. Samarkand was one big launch pad. With his head tilted back, his eyes fixed on the stars, Jonas realised that he would have to go beyond Samarkand; he had to get out there – out into space – to find the spot for which he was searching.

So, for anyone who still has not grasped it, it was here, on a little hill in Samarkand, that Jonas Wergeland decided to study astrophysics, to take the step, so to speak, from the Silk Road to the Milky Way. Here, in Uzbekistan, possibly due to the limpid blue his eyes beheld on the domes of the mosques, or because of the stars in the mosaic patterns of the Ulug Beg
madrasah
doorway on Registan Square, suddenly, although never before, not for one moment, had he considered such a move, he took the first step into a realm of
red dwarfs and supergiants and black holes and hundreds upon
mind-blowing
hundreds of billions of galaxies. It struck him that astronomy could be his Samarkand. A standpoint from which he would be able to see everything, including the world, from the outside. After all, it goes without saying really: there is only one reason for taking up astrophysics: a desire to understand the Earth. Or, to be more precise: a desire to understand oneself.

And Margrete was probably still there at the back of his mind, in the form of a belief that concealed within science there was alchemy, that there was, nonetheless, a link between astronomy and astrology. Jonas may have been hoping, through research, through some grandiose project, to influence future occurrences, alter predestined chains of events. In other words: if he could make his name shine, quite literally, all across the sky, maybe she would see it. Come back.

Later, when Aunt Laura asked him, what he had found in Samarkand, Jonas answered without a second thought: ‘In Samarkand I met myself.’

After his hike around Aurlandsdalen Leonard had made a similar discovery, though of a more down-to-earth nature, more brutal and shocking. And sitting, battered and bruised, you might say, in a basement no longer
redolent
with delicious pasta sauces, he told Jonas all about it. Jonas always felt that the moment of Leonard’s revelation should have been illustrated with a slow-motion sequence like the one at the end of Michelangelo Antonioni’s
Zabriskie Point
, the climax of the film, when a building blows up and we see the explosion replayed thirteen times from different angles and distances. To cut a long story short, Leonard had found out that his father, Olav Knutzen, was not in fact his father. Leonard had been every bit as blind as the central character in
Blow-Up
; he had not seen what was going on in the bushes, as it were.

So who was his father? Leonard met Jonas one Friday afternoon on Youngstorget – which, by the way, standing as it now does as a monument to a sacred, bygone ideal, is the closest one comes in Oslo to Samarkand’s Registan Square. They hung around on the corner of the Trade Union
building
for half an hour. Jonas thought they were waiting for Leonard’s mother, who worked there. Leonard said nothing, just hopped up and down
impatiently
. Suddenly he pointed to a man coming out of a bank across the street which was now closed for the day. ‘That’s him,’ Leonard sobbed. ‘That’s my father.’ Jonas refused to believe it. A smarmy little git, a dark, skinny guy in a blue suit, with slicked-back black hair. He could actually have passed for an Italian, maybe even a film director, but he was just about the very opposite of Olav Knutzen with his weighty, Nobel laureate presence. His name was Dale and Leonard was one jump ahead of Jonas in himself acknowledging
the irony of the legend on the placard he was holding up in the by then
published
photograph from that summer:
SAVE THE DALE
. ‘And shall I tell you what the worst part is?’ Leonard said. ‘He works in a bank, on the cash desk.’ Jonas remembered Leonard’s vituperative, indignant rants against bankers and banking, prompted by the story of how Antonioni had had to earn his living early on in his career. From the way Leonard spoke it sounded to Jonas as though his friend were pronouncing his own death sentence. Leonard had such a morbid obsession with heredity that one look at that little shrimp, his biological father, was enough to tell him that those genes offered no hope whatsoever. Such a man could not possibly sire a prince.

Jonas never did learn how Leonard had found out about it. Whether it was just that his mother had finally got round to telling him, or whether he had, quite by accident, caught something going on in the background while filming the everyday doings on Youngstorget; something which he had blown up, enlarging it until he could make out a detail – a clue. Or whether it should simply be put down to a keen-honed eye. What if a young bank clerk had lodged with the Knutzens when they were just setting up house together, what if the basement really had been a darkroom, a red-lamped love nest.

Whatever the case, this discovery fairly took the wind out of Leonard’s sails. The way he saw it, he no longer had the letters OK, Olav Knutzen’s initials, stamped on him. And in losing the ’z’ in his name, he seemed also to have lost a vital chromosome – that lightning bolt, that flash – the guarantee of a good eye. All Leonard’s grand, elaborate plans were quashed. That ’z’ now seemed more emblematic of sleep. He dropped out of school, shelved his cine camera and the outline for a twelve-minute 8 mm film on reduction, and away he went.

Or at least, before he disappeared he asked Jonas to please meet him at the Film Institute at Røa. Jonas had duly shown up, fearing the worst. They were alone. Jonas was ordered to take a seat in the screening room, and there he sat, surrounded by forty-six other, empty, seats while Leonard ran the film. Which film?
Blow-Up
. But this was a new version. Leonard had re-edited it. Jonas sat all alone in the screening room, watching the film. He was impressed. And intrigued. Because this was a totally different story. Less confusing. As if the gap between art and reality had been edited out. And as far as Jonas could tell, the murder was actually solved. The film, or rather: Leonard’s version of it, ended with the central character going to his studio to photograph, and more or less seduce Verushka, the fabulous fashion model: a scene which, in the original film, came right at the beginning. It was pretty close to a happy ending.

Jonas was often to think that the roots of his best and most famous
television programmes were to be found here, in a tiny cinema in the Oslo suburb of Røa. He sometimes thought of the
Thinking Big
series as being just one film, cut in different ways.