Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

He also roamed the higgledy-piggledy maze of narrow lanes and alleys in the old town, behind the cathedral, stopping here and there, and more than once outside the same second-hand bookshop near the Plaza Zabala, possibly because of the Spanish edition of Kristin Lavransdatter in the window: a fat, worn and yet somehow distinguished book spine. Jonas found it odd — coming across a fellow countrywoman in such a way. Like spying the back of someone you knew through the window of a restaurant in a strange city. Or, yes: it smacked of the Middle Ages. That was Montevideo, modern, but at the same time old-fashioned in a unique, almost wistful way. In Montevideo he could still come upon horses and carts in the streets, and there were mothballs on sale everywhere — Montevideo reeked of mothballs. On his strolls, Jonas spotted just about every make of car he had grown up with and the sight of the trolleybuses made him almost sob with nostalgia. It was the gently rusting boats in the harbour, however, which brought back the strongest memories of the fifties. He was back in his childhood. He was in a sort of forgotten, or better still: hidden backwater. Anything could happen here, he thought to himself. Here I can start afresh.

Time. He was conscious, as he sat there day after day in his deckchair in the shade of a blue-striped parasol, with a gentle breeze caressing his face while he gazed out across the water — grey, but with the silvery sheen from which the river took its name, La Plata — of how little he knew about time. Time could stand still, or it could fly by. It could also disappear completely, as if through a hole. As Jonas dozed in the deckchair a memory from 1970 drifted into his mind. He had been paying a quick visit to his grandmother, just dropping off something from home, when she had asked him to do her a favour, or rather, she ordered him to nip down to her regular supplier of cigars. ‘Proper Suez Crisis,’ she said with her most mournful Churchill expression. ‘Stock’s run out.’ He was commissioned to purchase a box of Karel I — she had been forced to switch to Dutch cigars when the Cuban brands were no longer to be had.

Jonas enjoyed running errands like this, especially to Sol Cigar on Drammensveien, where the air was pervaded with the scent of tobacco and the after-shave lotion of distinguished clients. It was a warm Saturday morning in June. As usual he took the path through the Palace Gardens since a stroll through that soft, rolling landscape, under a green veil of maple and lime, elm and chestnut always seemed to affect his way of thinking. He told himself it was the excess of chlorophyll that rendered him even more reflective. It made him curse his shilly-shallying, his indecisiveness when it came to finding a sphere in which to utilise his baffling gifts. He glowered at the black silhouette, a dwarf running at his heels along the path, an illustration of the fate he dreaded more than any other: to end up as a shadow of himself. Never to have used what he had within him. Maybe it was because he was surrounded by such luxuriant vegetation or because he was on his way to buy cigars, that the thought of Che Guevara suddenly came into his mind. A guerrilla. He was filled with a longing to rebel.

As if his frustration had sharpened his eye, he spotted Pernille S., a girl from his class in junior high. He had not seen her in a year. She was sitting on one of the benches next to the pond. It may also have been something about the way she was dressed, her frock, that had caught his eye. Her clothes were always rather unusual, not the sort of things the other girls wore. She was sitting with a large pad on her lap, sketching, totally absorbed. Her rectangular hippie-style glasses with their red lenses made him feel that she must see the world in a charmed light. As he drew closer, he noticed that irresistible neck of hers, which Leonard had always let the camera linger on when they were filming. ‘That is the neck of a woman who can go to great lengths,’ he always said.

Jonas sat down next to her, whereupon she closed her sketch pad without a word and laid her head on his shoulder as if in greeting, an affectionate way of saying she was pleased to see him again. She was like that. Subtle and yet spontaneous. He drank in the scent of her long, dark hair. They chatted, caught up on each other’s lives. She had not gone to high school, had chosen instead to go to Paris for a while, she had only been back a few weeks. Jonas listened to her soft voice while he watched the ducks swimming on the quiet pond, or rested his eyes on the green cascade of the willow on the island in the middle of the pond. ‘It’s nice here,’ she said, ‘almost like paradise.’ He thought at first that she was referring to Norway in general, but soon realised that she was talking about the Palace Gardens.

He had seen her in a Garden of Eden once before. While in elementary school she had helped out at the nursery up on Bergensveien on Saturdays, wrapping flowers in old newspapers. He had always liked going there with his mother, it was like entering another climatic zone, a lush, humid, jungle-like atmosphere. One winter’s day he and a couple of other lads had gone up there to spy on her. The greenhouse was in itself a sight to see, an ice palace — particularly when a milder spell was followed by a cold snap. As small boys they had broken off the long icicles that hung from the eaves and fenced their way right up to the round table in King Arthur’s Camelot. But they were older now, with different interests, lay there with their eyes just peeking over the top of a snowbank, peering through the glass to where, when there were no customers, Pernille danced ballet in the greenhouse: she had one of the little new, portable Tandberg tape recorders in there, the kind in which the reels lay on top of one another — how sexy was that! She played classical music, practised graceful positions and steps amid the tulips which the gardeners managed, by some miracle, to cultivate even in winter: row upon row of budding tulips, like serried ranks of hard-ons. It was a real culture shock to see a girl like Pernille doing ballet . Shortly after this they heard that she had actually had a walk-on part in a production of Swan Lake at the Royal Norwegian Opera with Rudolf Nureyev as guest soloist. They lay there with their eyes peeping over the bank of snow, not feeling the cold; lay there so long that they almost froze their undercarriages off.

And now here she was, in Paradise again, sitting on a park bench with her ballerina neck inclined towards him as they talked, on and on, as if intent on making up for all the wordless scenes in Leonard’s films. When he asked to see what she had been drawing it was only with reluctance that she handed him the pad. Inside were sketches. Of people caught in passing. Rendered in just a few strokes, except for their clothes, which were more carefully drawn, or suggested by a detail here and there, as if she were trying to capture the essence of a person through what they were wearing. Or as if a belt, the cut of a jacket, the pattern of a shirt, could say all there was to be said. ‘I’m going to apply to the College of Art and Design,’ she said. ‘I’m practising.’ And Jonas thought: I don’t practise enough. I’m not practising anything at all. I’m going to be one of those Norwegians who simply squanders their abundant talent. ‘It’s kind of strange,’ she said with a shy smile. ‘I got the urge to work in fashion, with fabric, after Mr Dehli told us about māyā . Do you remember? Do you remember Mr Dehli?’ He remembered Mr Dehli. Who could forget Mr Dehli? She was wearing a long, cotton summer frock which she had made herself, the fabric had a pattern of alternating open and closed tulips. Even though she was sitting down he could tell how unusual it was, how it accentuated — not her figure, but her personality, her innate elegance. It was as if she had succeeded in transferring the lines of her irresistible neck to the garment. Jonas had always counted himself among those men who believe a woman is infinitely more interesting clothed than unclothed, and he had noticed right away, from a hundred metres off, how sexy, how attractive she looked, in that dress.