Authors: Jan Kjaerstad
There was one evening when she had hung lots of Chinese lanterns around the terrace. We had had guests, they had just left and she was stretching out in a mahogany chair. The coloured lanterns made the house, made Grorud, look as if it lay under other skies. I thought of something, fetched a thick sheet of paper which I kept at the back of a cupboard. It was a large Chinese character, written – or painted – by Bo Wang Lee as a farewell present. I showed it to Margrete. ‘This means friendship, right?’ She considered it for some time. ‘This is the character for love,’ she said, her face bathed in the glow of the paper lanterns. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘The person who wrote this said it was the sign for friendship.’ She looked up at me, with a smile in her eyes. ‘That’s as may be,’ she said, ‘but this says “love”.’ She explained the intricate character to me, even showed me how the Chinese word for heart – four exquisite strokes, like chambers – lay in the middle of it, like a word within the word. ‘Love without heart is no love at all,’ she murmured, more to herself. Then she looked at me again. ‘Maybe there was something about the person who wrote this that you didn’t understand,’ Margrete said. She was right, of course. There was a lot I had not understood about Bo Wang Lee.
I opened the gate at the bottom of the drive with my heart hammering – like a man in love, I thought. I walked slowly up to the front door, with waves of warmer air wafting towards me, caressing my brow. I knew Kristin was at her grandmother’s, that we, Margrete and I, had the weekend to ourselves. To this day I can recall the distinctive sound of gravel under my shoes, a sound I have always liked and which, on this fragrant spring evening, felt especially good, as if each little stone were scrunching expectantly, welcoming me home.
And then, I open the door, step inside, put down my suitcase, walk into the living room – and there she is, Margrete, this precious person, lying dead in the middle of the room, shot, and not just shot, but shot through the heart.
What was my first impulse? I know no one will believe me, but my first impulse was to get out, fast, and shut the door behind me. Fast. I thought I had come to the wrong place. Not the wrong house, but the wrong reality.
One autumn, when I was a student and working on my Titanic Project X, I accepted an invitation – a rare exception, this – to a party. I do not know whether it was because I was tired, had eaten too little or been working too much, but that evening I had a very weird experience, one which I
interpreted
nonetheless as a sign that I was on the right track, that there really was something lying behind, beyond, just waiting for me. I did not know the people who were holding the party, presumably medical students or pharmacy undergrads: the pure alcohol was flowing freely, mixed with everything imaginable, from juice to the most sickly-sweet essences. There seemed to be about a hundred rooms in the flat, all painted white and almost bare of
furniture
. And in the background, throughout, the lazy sound of Billie Holiday singing. At one point, pretty late on, I set off down one of the long corridors. I was looking for the guys I had come with. I opened a door and stepped inside. And – I swear to God – I found myself in the Forum Romanum; which is to say: I had entered it at the corner closest to the Temple of Vespasian, and not only that, but I was in Roman times, people walked past dressed in togas and everything, although it might not have been Roman times, because there were other things there too, ultra-modern looking objects which were strange to me, I had no idea what they were. I have always regretted that I did not attempt to speak to someone, to ask, but I got such a fright that, more or less on instinct, I fled back out of the door, slamming it shut behind me, and hurried off down the corridor. Once I had calmed down I went back and opened the door again. Behind it now was a large, white-painted room and a couple having it off on a mattress in the corner, next to a Ludwig drum kit. I opened the other doors round about, but found only white rooms, sparsely furnished, and partygoers with glasses in their hands, standing around,
flirting
or discussing Schopenhauer. I know it sounds crazy, but it was not a dream, nor was it a hallucination.
After having stood – for I don’t know how long – outside, I opened the
living
-room door again. So great was my belief, or my hope, or my horror, that I fully expected another sight to meet my eyes: she would be sitting there, pen in hand, she would turn to me, smiling. But she was still lying on the floor, shot through the heart, just as dead. In my dressing gown. For ages I stood there, looking down at her, as if there was a tissue-thin sheet of paper lying on her face, covered in the loveliest handwriting. A letter to me.
We have reached Balestrand. We are moored right alongside the aquarium, at the mouth of the little Esefjord, surrounded by towering peaks: Vindreken, Tjuatoten, and in the middle Keipen – the ‘Rowlock’ – with its characteristic
notched peak, with Gulleplet Crag in front of it. It is a breathtaking sight, even for a Norwegian used to such landscapes. Fruit trees in bloom at the feet of these sculpted, snow-capped massifs. I can well understand why the artists of the nineteenth century reached frantically for their brushes the moment they set eyes on this scene.
There was a letter waiting for me at the hotel reception desk. From Viktor Harlem, a friend from high school, now a name known to all of Norway. He knew I was coming here. It was nothing really, just a hello and a line from
The
Cantos
by Ezra Pound: ‘And then went down to the ship …’ The others collected the company’s mail, forwarded to the local post office. I had noticed that they received amusing – and creative, also in their outward appearance – missives from all over the world. Benjamin immediately started clamouring for the stamps. The OAK Quartet think nothing of being in close contact with individuals, groups, with similar interests, in other countries. Without even being aware of it, Kristin and her friends tend to think in terms of
categories
which transcend national boundaries. In sailing the fjord they are also sailing all over the world. I like to think that they are in the process of
founding
a county within a virtual space, populated by ‘Sogn folk’ from every corner of the globe.
Kamala and I had decided to book in to Kvikne’s Hotel for the days when we were docked at Balestrand. Kamala wanted to stay in the old house, a grand and graceful, wooden, Swiss-style building overlooking the fjord. The manager gave us one of his best rooms, high up and with its own balcony. I thought at first this was for my sake. Then I realised it was for Kamala’s.
The most obliging manager also allowed Benjamin to pitch his well-used, twelve-man army tent on the lawn next to the hotel, just across from the little islet of Lausholmen. We gave him a hand. Benjamin is a nomad. As soon as his tent is up he is home. Benjamin. There’s a whole book right there. I often think about how mad I was when he was born. I was so upset that I spent years after that fuming with rage in a basement we called the Red Room. I pretended to be incensed by everything and everybody, when I was really only angry at myself. I abhorred my thoughtless act of sabotage, that imperceptible slit in a diaphragm. I was to blame for his birth. Sometimes it occurs to me that Benjamin is my deepest motivation. Once, when he visited me in prison he left behind a note. It said: ‘Thank you because I’m alive.’ It could be read in several different ways. Today that note forms the core of my being.
A group of Japanese tourists were taking pictures of Kristin. Someone at the hotel had told them she was a celebrity in Norway. No one recognises me any more. I am merely a secretary. And a name, a minor name on the title page of a love story.
When the Japanese caught sight of Kamala there was almost a riot. They were all shouting and screaming and pointing. They could not believe that it really was Kamala Varma, a world-famous personality, right here in their midst.
I am sitting on the balcony. Benjamin, a restless specimen of the species Homo Ludens, is out swimming, jumping off the diving board on Lausholmen even though it is drizzling with rain. The view is even more spectacular in grey weather. Low shreds of cloud melt into one another or drift apart in fits and starts, like stage curtains opening or closing. Suddenly one of the mountains will heave into sight, mighty and distinct, almost like a separate planet, before its peak is enveloped again; or Vik, on the other side of the fjord, lies bathed in sunlight for a few minutes, while the countryside round about is dark and rain-drenched. I feel as though I am beholding several landscapes, like an increasingly hazy succession of veils. Suddenly Sognefjord has a Chinese look about it. I like it better this way. In fine weather all of the National Romantic aspects stand out so starkly, so unequivocally.
Some places have an impact that cannot be put into words. Margrete did right to take me to Xi’an. I am sure that certain spots spark off specific thoughts better than others. Were anyone to ask me, I would say that
Sognefjord
was the best place to start for anyone wishing to understand Norway. Our nation’s mentality. It is said that the sense of recognition engendered by a tree is so powerful because it is a reflection of ‘the inner tree’. Might not the same apply to a fjord. Do not all Norwegians have a fjord inside them?
Is it strange, I wonder, that I think so little about my years in prison? In many ways I found prison life as such, both the physical surroundings and the practicalities, the least difficult part of it all. I had no problem with the locked doors, the interrogations; with having to strip to my skin, with the knowledge of being under surveillance. I did not need to resign myself to my new life. I was already resigned to it. The other inmates very soon dubbed me The Monk. An apt nickname. I never spoke and wished only to be alone. The way I saw it I had entered a monastery. There were days when I did nothing in my free time except sit and repeat a mantra to myself, a word which encompassed everything I did not understand: ‘Purusasukta.’ I had finally found the perfect hiding place. I felt like the man in the print Margrete bought for me in Xi’an, a picture which I had hung up and often contemplated: a tiny, solitary figure in a vast and rugged vertical landscape full of blank patches.
After some years I began to think of my cell as the first cell, to imagine that I was back at the start, that everything was beginning anew,
could
begin anew. It was up to me to fertilise this cell, to generate life again.
For the first time since Project X I was reading – the first time, that is, not counting my readings to Viktor from
The Cantos
by Ezra Pound. I read a
tattered
copy of
Victoria
twenty times and more. I also read a bundle of books which I had come across as a teenager, books my mother had inherited and which I secretly sold off to antiquarian bookshops, having first noted down a quote from each one. From the library I borrowed the standard classics of the nineteenth century, books by Alexander von Humboldt, Søren Kierkegaard, William Morris. I didn’t understand it all. I understood a little. But I read them all resolutely, from cover to cover: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde. It was a kind of penance, an act of contrition. As if I wished to atone for my ignorance. I waded my way through the whole of
The History of Philosophy
by G.W.F. Hegel from which, prior to this, I could cite only one sentence – taken from the introduction, at that: ‘We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.’
Despite the efforts made to shield me, I did of course get to hear of a lot of the vicious, spiteful things that were written about me. That was tough. Then Kamala’s book appeared, and after it the strange biography for which Rakel was responsible. These marked a turning point. And were of invaluable help. To listen to, to read, my story as it was told by these two, by people who wished me well. I might not be alive today were it not for their accounts. And Kristin. Her visits. Her hands holding me. I was encouraged to survive by the knowledge that I was loved.
I am also quite certain that I began to write as a direct consequence of the two aforementioned books. And even though my manuscript was an
embarrassingly
cack-handed affair, circling evasively around a dark centre, it did serve a purpose. In the evenings, before I got rid of those sheaves of paper, I would run my eye over all the lines of letters. I was reminded of a long thread. For many years I had believed that I could not possibly have any more
unfolding
to do. This was not true. All the writing had helped me to evolve even further. I was not the person I had been when I started writing.
I had borrowed an old IBM typewriter with a golf ball. At the time when I was writing, I was forever taking the golf ball off and placing it on the desk in front of me. It looked like a miniature globe, its surface covered in letters. Maybe that is how the Earth looks from space, I thought: like a
symbol-bedecked
sphere.
It is a relief to be on board the
Voyager,
not only because of the crew’s optimism, their young minds, but because they are working on a project with which I have such a lot of sympathy – a combination, no less, of the world’s two greatest industries: travel and entertainment. Life on board is not exactly
as I had imagined it. Granted, they do play computer games on laptops, but they are just as likely to be found playing chess on an actual board. They know as much about the Nimzo-Indian opening as they do about Myst. They are comfortable with everything from an old Commodore 64 computer to antiquarian books, from rococo balls and foxtrots to rave parties and trip hop music. They visit Net cafés, swathed in Palestinian
keffiyehs
.
I can see, of course, that they also have their problems to contend with, individually and as a group – oh yes, there can be friction on board! – but right now, at the stage I am at, I am much more interested in their positive than their negative sides. Hanna, for example – who, with her Korean
features
, sometimes reminds me of Bo Wang Lee – is also a qualified architect. She has worked on what was, at that time, the busiest building site in Europe, Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, and is still liable to refer to things she learned there, theories on town planning, when discussing the OAK Quartet’s own ideas. The other evening the four of them suddenly got onto the subject of the world’s biggest dam-building project, the Three Gorges Dam in China. Carl had actually been there and seen the work in progress. I cannot believe how much they have managed to do in such a short space of time.