Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

He heard the waves breaking against the bank behind the tower, heard seagulls crying. He saw himself from the outside, saw himself standing there like a panting rhino, a primeval, galloping beast. He stared at the shining sea. Discovered nothing. Only that intense light. I was dazzled, he told himself, as if memorising something to use later in his defence, an answer to the question as to why he did it. And all the time she just stood there, seemingly unfazed, gazing out across the Tagus and the countryside on either side of the river, and perhaps it was the fact that he could not see the look on her face, had no way of knowing what she was thinking, which worked him up to such pitch that he knew he was going to come at any minute, that for once he would not be able to control himself and that this was the aim: not to control oneself, but simply to succumb to a fateful moment of ecstasy in which all else was forgotten; surrender to the madness, a madness much worse than banging one’s head off a wall, because there can be seconds when your life is turned upside down, when you do something that can never be altered, something which will have the greatest conceivable consequences. And behind this thought again he knew that he would never be able to blame it on a fit of madness, because underneath the frenzied, and to some extent, false excitement, lay a cynical, crystal-clear and quite deliberate plan.

He climaxed, so violently that it seemed to come all the way from his toes, but as he came, in a complete daze and yet one hundred per cent aware of what he was doing, she pulled away from him, held onto his penis with one hand and let his semen spill into the other. Afterwards his thoughts would keep returning to this action; he could not help marvelling at how, by some instinct, she had had the presence of mind, or sensitivity of muscle to detect the final engorgement preceding his first convulsions, and had managed to draw away in time. And he never forgot how, in full view of him, she slung the semen she had caught in the palm of her hand out over the river, in a sowing action, and how, still bent over her, he was sure he saw the drops of sperm fall through the air, glittering, truly sparkling in the light before striking the water far below, like a shower of pearls. He thought: that’s a life being tossed out there, the life I really ought to have chosen.

Afterwards — he did not remember much of what happened afterwards — she had turned and looked at him. She put a semen-drenched finger to the scar on his forehead, the wound from that time when he had been thinking too much during a skipping game, as if wondering what it was, or as if she were saying: Now you’re marked for life. And he could not help thinking that what he considered the badge of his nobility, the proof that it was possible to think parallel thoughts, was now smeared with semen. Then she had quickly tidied herself up, opened the door of the tower and smiled — a smile that was neither accusing nor rueful; a smile which said that she would neither belittle nor make too much of what had happened. And, whether because of that smile or what, he saw that this, this act, even though it was not all that immoral, and even though it was the sort of thing that millions of people did every day without blinking and without it having any serious repercussions — that in his, Jonas Wergeland’s, case this was the one thing in life he should not have done. He knew that from the instant his semen touched the palm of her hand, or from the second the drops of sperm hit the water below, his life was spilt, ruined, as strangely and inexorably as tearing a tendon — only a tiny tendon but still enough to make one collapse in absolute agony. I’m going to fertilise the whole world, he thought, but I am dead.

They walked down the stairs and took a taxi into town, drove past the vast Comércio Square down on the waterfront, before ending up at a small restaurant, a tasca , in Alfama, not far from the cathedral. He remembered very little of that meal. The food was probably excellent. The wine too. He stared at a building on the other side of the street, faced with glazed tiles so begrimed that the pattern on them could only just be made out, like another world, behind the dirt. He sat as if in a trance. Remembered only that she appeared to be having a nice time, that she revealed a charming — surprisingly charming — side of herself, that there was a smell of grilled sardines, that darkness fell outside, that the tile-covered building front took on a deeper and deeper glow; lots of small, identical tiles combining to produce a mesmerising effect, rather the way kiss upon kiss can do. He had a vague idea that they had talked about many things, that someone had sung, possibly the proprietrix, and that she, Marie, had suddenly got up and said she had to go. But before she left, this he remembered quite clearly, she had leaned over him and whispered in his ear, as if it were a big secret, that he shouldn’t worry any more about his series, it would be okay. ‘We’ll figure something out,’ she whispered, as if she really cared. ‘We might be able to dip into the DG’s kitty.’ Then she made her way out, waving to their hosts, flashing him a smile, one of those rare smiles that sticks in the memory. ‘See you in Oslo,’ she said from the door. ‘And go easy on those Brazilian soap operas. Take a ride on a tram-car instead.’

He completed his television series. And it was good — some said brilliant. A substantial additional injection of funds made it possible for the remaining programmes to be made. He would be hailed as an artist who did not prostitute himself — this was the very word used in several reviews. He had read them and hung his head. But still he could not rid himself of the thought that Marie H. had done it out of genuine sympathy for his project. That the incident at the Belém Tower was neither here nor there as far she was concerned.

He was left sitting dejectedly in a tasca in Alfama, staring at the fish bones on his plate with no memory of having eaten fish. There was just one thought racing around his head: of Margrete. Daniel had been right. The soul did lie in the seed. To anyone else this would have been a mere bagatelle. Only he perceived the true gravity of it. Because he was married to an extraordinary woman, there was no telling how she would react to a ‘bagatelle’. At some point she would ask him what he had done in Lisbon. She would spot right away, however well he washed himself, that he had come back with a smear of semen on his forehead. He knew even then, as he sat in that tasca in Alfama, that one day he would stand over Margrete’s dead body and ask himself why she had done it. And he knew that he would be forced to answer: Because I didn’t think about her here in Lisbon. Or rather: for the first time, with this act, he had given open expression to his lack of empathy, his unforgivable blindness. He knew what Margrete was like, that he ought to have considered the labyrinthine turnings of her mind, but he pretended not to know.

He had been confronted with his exceptional blindness back in the summer he spent with Bo Wang Lee. He was never quite sure when he discovered it — the truth about Bo, that is. Or whether he had actually known right from the start, but had simply chosen to ignore it. Bo was more than he seemed. More than a Chinese even.

It may have started with the little electronic organ in one of the rooms in Bo’s aunt’s flat. Bo said his aunt was keeping it for her boyfriend, who also worked with the Norwegian American Line. Bo had been given strict instructions not to touch it, but he thought he could at least demonstrate the hypnotically pulsating rhythm box. Simply by pressing a few buttons Bo conjured up the sensuous rhythms of the rumba, the samba, the cha-cha-cha. Jonas thought it was pretty smart. But it was more than smart to Bo, he turned up the sound and began to dance, and Jonas saw, to his amazement, horror almost, that Bo knew the basic steps, and not only that: something weird had happened to his body, there was something a little too graceful and supple — voluptuous — about it as he swayed around the floor with an invisible Latin American partner, sending Jonas a strangely enigmatic, zig-zag smile, as if he were feeling both proud and a bit sheepish.