Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

At some point I came to the bookcases in the living room, bookcases which held Margrete’s novels, bookcases I never looked at; to me they were just so much wallpaper, a pattern I was used to. It was a paradox, of course, a thought which sometimes gave me pause, but which I would promptly dismiss: that I, who had almost driven myself crazy, battling with classification systems, with the question of how to organise all the world’s books and knowledge, had read so little.

Was this my real sin? That I did not read?

I do not know what had brought me there, but I must have had an intuition that somewhere in this particular wall there was a secret door, and as I stood there pondering, muttering the occasional title under my breath, like a mantra, I spied a narrow spine, right in front of me, at eye level and when I stepped up and pulled out this book I saw that it was the little novel which Margrete had given me in sixth grade, as a thank-you for diving down and finding her mother’s gold bracelet: Victoria by Knut Hamsun. I vaguely remembered having packed it with the rest of my belongings each time I moved, it being one of the few books I owned. I also remembered putting it on this shelf when we moved into Villa Wergeland. And I had duly forgotten it, never so much as noticed it among the spines of all Margrete’s other novels, whose numbers grew steadily over the years, as if the shelves caused the books to multiply of their own accord. This, I thought; this is the pearl I never found.

And then, when I opened the book for the first time since receiving it, I discovered a number of flimsy sheets of paper tucked in between the pages. And discovered truly is the word — I should perhaps call this the great discovery of my life. Because, on the first of these tissue-thin sheets, which I recognised right away as the same writing paper that Margrete used for letters to friends abroad, I read my own name; it was a letter, a letter from Margrete, written in her uncommonly beautiful hand, a string of words which I would come to know by heart. I glanced at the other sheets of paper. More letters. All to me. Twenty-odd epistles. And when I read that first letter, after only the first few lines — that was when I cracked. I collapsed, quite literally, in a heap, clutching that little love story, as if it was the one tiny twig which could save me, and I felt the pressure behind my eyes, the ache in my throat, and I burst into tears, I wept as I had never wept before, wept for the first time since arriving home, as if this discovery was actually more shocking than the discovery of her dead body; I wept for so long that I lost all track of time. I did not deserve to live. Of all the blind men walking the Earth, I was the blindest.

’15.10.87. How well I remember your heart-rending “Why?” outside the Golden Elephant, and time and again since then you have asked me why I broke up with you so abruptly and so heartlessly that winter when we were in seventh grade. To answer you: it was not, of course, because I was leaving the country. I broke it off because I realised that you had never opened the book I gave you. I decided that you were not worthy. Even back then I loved to read, probably more than other kids of my age, and this story, Victoria , had made an indelible impression on me. I wanted to give you my most prized possession. I knew that not many boys read fiction, but I thought you would give it a try. For my sake. I also believed that this book might tell you something about me, and maybe also about the love we felt for one another — if one can talk in terms of love at such a young age. It might even, I thought, give you some warning of the obstacles that might lie in our path. I took it for granted that you would at least look at it, and at the notes I had written in the margins, partly for your benefit, your eyes. I was sure you were that curious. About me. I cannot tell you how shocked I was when I asked you a question at the ice rink — and knew from your reply that not once, in over a year, had you so much as opened that book. I simply could not understand it. A girl gives a novel, a love story, the best thing she can think of, to a boy and he does not even open it. Such an insult — such insensitivity — I couldn’t bear it. I asked myself: Can I possibly go out with a boy like that? You know what the answer was. Just at that moment I was positive that I would never speak to you or see you again.’

On the first page of the novel was a dedication: ‘To Jonas’. I also came upon the little notes in the margins, written in a legible, girlish hand. This book had been there all along. Right under my nose. I noticed that all of the letters dated from the last few years and that the first had been written shortly after my fateful decision in Lisbon. I had been so annoyed by the fact that she had not answered the questions I asked her, but she had answered them. And it was so like her not to be able to say it, or not to want to say it, but to put it in writing. The answers were here, in blue and white, right in front of me. In a place so obvious that I had not seen them. I remembered this same phenomenon from Hunt the Thimble. Things were always hardest to find when they were staring you in the face.

A week later, when the police were finished examining the scene and I was able to move back into the house, the first thing I did was to go to the bookcase and take out Victoria . I could tell that nothing here had been touched. Even the forensic team, for all their thoroughness, had not found the letters. It was meagre comfort.

My self-loathing has never been greater than during the months following these discoveries. Why had I not been able to persuade Margrete that life was worth living? Why did she not tell me she was in torment? Because she knew I would not understand? Did not want to understand? What made her stop taking the pills? I ate my heart out; ate my heart out, day after day.

And yet: I knew. I had always had some inkling of it. But she had really seemed to be in good form, especially just after the Thinking Big series was screened, and so I lulled myself into the illusion that I had closed a circle, succeeded in becoming a lifesaver, realised my childhood dream through my work in television. When she died I knew that I had failed in everything, even my television series.

The guilt was almost too much to bear. When at long last, towards the end of the court case, I felt that the time was right to confess, I meant it with all of my heart when I said: ‘Then I aimed the gun at my wife and executed her.’ That evening, that night, in the living room, bending over Margrete, with a slim volume in my hands, I knew that only one thing could save me. A word was running around inside my head, a word which had haunted me for a long time and which I had first encountered, or actually felt on my person, as if the word were actually physical, once when I was kneeling on a soft hassock at the altar rail in Grorud Church. I was in the same position as I had assumed during my confirmation the year before. Dad had gone, had asked me to latch the door behind me. I was alone. I was — what? I was devastated.

Then that word crossed my mind. A word I remembered. A word I had contemplated more than once, but had never dared to utter. I spoke this word. Kneeling at the altar in Grorud Church I said it out loud. For the first time in my life. And instantly … I do not know whether I heard the rush of wings. I do not know whether I sensed the presence of some divine being. I do not know whether I really saw one of the angels depicted on the fresco behind the altar. I only know that a sighing filled my head and my body. I only know that a breeze blew inside me. I only know that I thought of wings. And that something embraced me. Held me.