Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

Despite being so afraid he could not rid himself of the thought that there was something epic, something mythic, about this voyage. He had the feeling that he was on a quest, that there was something he had to do, something he had to bring back: a golden fleece, a vital ice sample from one of the rings of Saturn. Or that this odyssey was a kind of training, a tempering process. And when he was most terrified, just when he had told himself: that’s it, we’re sunk, she would lean forward and kiss him, a hard, wet, salty kiss, more of a suck than a kiss, while at the same time, outwith the kiss, as it were, keeping an eye on the waves. And always with a sly grin hovering around her lips, as if this gruelling crossing was no more than a harebrained bit of teasing.

It should be said, though, that even Julie’s face eventually began to show signs of worry. The wind must have grown even stronger. ‘We’ll have to shorten sail!’ she suddenly yelled, as if their lives depended on it. She bent down to Jonas, put her lips close to his ear and told him what to do, so clearly and precisely that he realised this was a very risky manoeuvre. ‘Slacken the main sail halyard when I turn into the eye of the wind,’ she shrieked, giving him a nudge which bordered on being a kick. He was scared out of his wits, more or less crawled across the deck to the mast, praying to God. The water churned around his feet. She turned into the wind. ‘Move it, dummy! Loosen the line round the starboard cleat! And watch out for the corner of the jib!’ she yelled as he fumbled about. The sails were flapping wildly, cracking like whips, frightening him so badly that he was almost shitting himself. At last, though, he managed to carry out her order. ‘Make fast the luff cringle. Christ, you’re slow!’ He could hardly hear what she was saying. He spotted the eyelets on the sail, grasped what she wanted him to do, slipped the eyelet over the hook. Even this simple action sent his mind off down another track entirely, so much so that, terrified though he was, he could not help wondering what might happen later, if they survived. She would make him flap and crack just like those sails. Or no: she would sail him until his timbers rent. ‘Come here!’ she bellowed as she tightened the reef line on the after end of the boom. He managed to scramble back down into the well, totally done in, ripe for a rest home. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. ‘You look as though you’d seen Old Neptune himself.’

The sail was well set, she bore onto the right course. ‘Good boy,’ she said with affected heartiness, slapping his thigh, blatantly, only a hair’s-breadth from his groin. ‘No reason to spoil the stars with a flare,’ she said. ‘But take a quick turn on the pump just to be on the safe side.’

The reefing did not seem to have slowed them down at all. He was trembling as badly as ever. What worried him most of all was the sight of the mountainous waves which came from behind, you could see them a long way off: black walls of water barrelling relentlessly closer. He tried to keep his eyes front, but was constantly having to glance over his shoulder at the giant rollers steaming down on them, the surging foam, the sea trying to lap him up like a thousand-mouthed beast of prey. That swelling roar reminded him — of all things — of organ music. ‘Right Jonas, time to set full sail,’ his father always said when he played organo pleno . But this roar had a sorrowful note to it, like the music for a funeral. Still Julie never faltered. Her set face shone with concentration and what might have been pleasure. More and more, Jonas was wondering what was going to happen when — if — they reached harbour, he fell to day-dreaming about this, he did not know why, but he sat there, terrified out of his wits, like a condemned man with a hard-on, fantasising about how she would rip off his clothes, demand that he take her from behind, like a mountainous billow, wash over and under her, lift her up, again and again. ‘If you don’t sit still I’ll have to put a safety harness on you,’ she yelled, again with that knowing smirk on her face, as he dodged the spray from a huge rogue wave.

It was getting late. She was taking her bearings from the lighthouses. For a long time he had kept his eye fixed on the Tresteinene light. It was so beautiful, quite unearthly. Mawkishly he thought to himself that his life had begun to flicker, like a light bulb just before it goes out, but the light did not go out, it went on flashing at its set intervals as they sailed passed it and Julie cut across the white sector towards Homlungen light, her eyes darting from side to side. She was keeping a sharp look out for spar buoys, barely visible in the gloom. Jonas held his breath until they had slipped past the lighthouse on its headland and he could see the lights of Skjærhalden.

He knew what would happen next. She would ride him like she had ridden her boat across the waves, there would be no reefing where he was concerned, she would not allow him any slack. She would screw him rigid, on and on until she drained his bilges, making him gurgle from top to toe, pumping him utterly dry. And yet it was not her, the woman, he feared, but himself, the forces he felt stirring within him. As if she had set all his sails, generating a potency he had not known he possessed, a desire that rendered him willing to drown if only he could poke his tongue into that navel; an urge so strong that he would not have been surprised to discover that he was actually still on dry land, on Hvasser, staring at Julie’s belly; to find, in other words, that this whole, crazy boat trip had taken place inside her navel.

As they glided in to the docks and he noted with relief that it really was Skjærhalden, and not Hvasser, he felt compelled to make a decision. Was his objective — was she, Julie — what he thought, what he hoped, she was? Or was he suffering from another attack of Melankton’s syndrome?

They were safe in harbour, securely tied up. Just when it looked as though she was about to drag him into the cabin — she had already tossed her cap through the hatch, in what seemed like the first move in a striptease act — he said: ‘Hang on, I need to feel solid ground under my feet first.’ And as she went aft to check the anchor line, he seized the chance to grab his rucksack and climb ashore. He strode off briskly to the bus stop, where the last bus for Fredrikstad was preparing to leave.

Jonas Wergeland sat at the organ in Grorud Church, playing ‘Love divine all love excelling’. Over the years he had expended a lot of energy on eluding women. Riding out storms. Had his father experienced something similar? Who was this woman walking up the aisle, stepping out like a bride, someone said, as if hearing in her head, not ‘Love divine all love excelling’, but Purcell’s Wedding March. Someone from whom he could no longer escape? Jonas had long suspected that there was a lot he did not know about his father. As a youth, almost grown, he had stumbled upon a scrapbook on his father’s desk. To Jonas this was as unlikely a discovery in the familiar surroundings of the family flat as a mineral from another planet. All the cuttings related to one question: whether there was life elsewhere in the universe. No one had known anything about Haakon Hansen’s interest in this subject. Could it be that his father had regarded his organ music as radio transmissions of some sort? Could it be that, whenever he played, his father was wondering: is there life out there?

Later still, Jonas was to learn that something else had occurred on that day when Rakel and his father met Albert Schweitzer in Trinity Church. Perhaps it was because the celebrated guest saw the look of appreciation on Haakon Hansen’s face — or discerned something else there — that he asked Jonas’s father if he would also play something. The latter had hesitated. Haakon Hansen was not known for showing off. Whenever Jonas was with his father and people asked what he did for a living, Haakon always replied: ‘I’m an organ-grinder.’ But the others persuaded him to play. So Haakon sat down at the fine old organ. He also played Bach, a trio sonata. Albert Schweitzer was thrilled, he spent a long time talking to Jonas’s father afterwards, about their mutual passion for organ playing, the architectonics of the music and, of course, the works of the cantor of St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig. Albert Schweitzer was particularly flattered to learn that Haakon Hansen had read his book on Bach, all 800 pages of it — this seemed to please him more than having won the Peace Prize — and he laughed heartily when the Grorud organist made so bold as to say: ‘I think it’s even better than your book on the mysticism of Paul the Apostle.’ Their conversation was so lively and went on for so long that it put the rest of the day’s schedule behind time. Schweitzer’s entourage more or less had to tear him away from Haakon Hansen, in the middle of a discussion about the incomparable timbre of Cavaillé-Coll’s organ in Saint Sulpice in Paris. ‘And wouldn’t you agree,’ Albert Schweitzer called back finally over his shoulder as he was dragged away, ‘that people play Bach too fast these days?’