Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

Even before he started playing football — possibly in consequence of his life-saving fiasco — Jonas knew that he was not destined to imitate any of the standard, archetypal success stories: winning an Olympic gold for skiing, becoming a company director, opening the finest restaurant in Norway. Others might lock themselves away in their rooms with guitars for years, to then emerge as stars. Somehow Jonas felt that this was too simple. He was cut out for other things. He wanted to be thinking’s answer to soccer-great Roald Jensen. His talent lay in his grey matter. Which made it the perfect endowment for a rather reserved young man. He would be free to perform his deeds, break new ground, without being surrounded by crowds of people.

Jonas grew more and more inclined to regard the mental raids he carried out and the networks he formed inside his head as being real. It occurred to him that the most dramatic, the most significant event in his life could be a thought. As a small boy he had often dreamt of making a name for himself by discovering something — an unknown mineral, an unknown flower or, best of all, an unknown land — and having it called after him. It made him sad to hear the grown-ups say that there were no white patches left on the map of the world. Now, however, he realised that he could discover a new continent, but that it would lie within him.

His visits to Karen Mohr in her herb-scented Provençal flat confirmed this belief. You could actually live inside a thought. For quite some time Jonas had had the notion that she had taken an idea and furnished it, turned it into a home, a suspicion which was only reinforced when she eventually got round to telling him, in her quiet way, the story behind her extraordinary living room.

At the age of twenty, after completing her schooling, Karen Mohr had set out to travel around Europe. This was in the years just before the Second World War. One summer day in the south of France she came to a small place called Mougins, a few kilometres outside of Cannes, that town later to become so famous for its film festival. And it was here, while sitting all unsuspecting in a café, that the incident occurred which would change — Jonas did not know whether to say open up or lock down — her life.

She had been eating an ice-cream cone when she sensed that she was being watched, keenly observed, although she could not have explained what gave her this impression — not until a striking looking man approached her table. He must have been about fifty, balding and short of stature. He asked most politely if he might sit down. She was not sure, but after looking into the big, dark eyes fixed on her own, she nodded. ‘I’ll never forget those eyes,’ she told Jonas. ‘I know what they spoke of. You see it in children’s eyes. The light of imagination. Irrepressible curiosity and irrepressible creativity.’

He was a painter, he said. She had an extremely distinctive face. Would she allow him to paint her? Would she come back to his studio with him? Karen Mohr found this quite funny: artists like him probably said the same thing to all the ladies. And yet — she was tempted. There was something about this man which told her he was not just another artist. That he was more than that. That what she was being offered here was not the chance to visit his studio, to pose as a model, but a turning point in her life. She sat for a while, thinking it over as she licked her ice cream. He played with a couple of croissants from a basket on the table, stuck them on either side of his head, pretended he was a bull about to ravish her. He made a lovely sailboat out of a fork and a napkin; he looked as if he had trouble sitting still, always had to be doing something. But from time to time he would stop and just look at her with the blackest pupils into which she had ever gazed.

She indicated that she was in a quandary. He asked where she was from, asked if she was enjoying her visit to this part of France, asked if she had been to any art exhibitions, whether she was fond of animals, whether — this was important — she had tasted lavender honey. She was filled with a sense of tranquillity. Of gravity. Of light. Felt that she was being lit from within. Suffused with life. ‘I grew as he watched me. I felt as though I was being lifted up, that I sprouted wings,’ she told Jonas. ‘My head was perfectly clear. All of a sudden I could see through everything. See how everything was connected.’

That’s how it should be, Jonas was ever afterwards to believe. But just at that moment he was growing impatient: ‘What did you say?’

She had paused, deliberately taking her time, because she wanted the moment to last, wished she could sit there, under that probing gaze, and be discovered, be beheld with this same intensity, for all eternity. She felt as though, with those eyes, those senses, he discerned a multiplicity, saw things in her that no other man had ever perceived. He saw, she felt, her hidden beauty, all her potential for love. ‘The feeling of it was stronger than any kiss, if you know what I mean,’ she told Jonas. ‘I’m sure that not even … you know what, could compare with it.’

Jonas felt his heart pounding, though he could not have said why. ‘So what did you do?’ he asked.

‘I thanked him, but declined. Politely.’

She could tell that the man was disappointed, genuinely disappointed. Sad, even. He asked if it would be alright for him to draw her portrait as she sat there in the café. She nodded. He pulled out pencils and some sheets of paper, sat facing her, totally absorbed; covered a couple of blank sheets with black strokes. ‘I drew you before you were born,’ he murmured. She stayed perfectly still. Again she wished that time could be suspended. That she could sit like this and be studied, drawn, by this enigmatic, this dynamic man, for ever. ‘I felt as though he was unveiling me,’ she told Jonas, ‘really unveiling me, stripping away veil after veil.’

‘Until you were naked?’ Jonas flinched at the boldness of his own remark.

‘More than naked.’

When the stranger was finished, he stood up and handed her one of the sheets of paper. ‘Would you like me to sign it?’ he asked. She instinctively knew that this was more than the offer of an autograph; that it was meant as a gift, something which she could possibly trade in for a lot of money. ‘No, you don’t need to do that,’ she said, not even glancing at the sketch. He made ready to leave. ‘Would you come to the beach with me tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘If it is too hot for you, I can hold a parasol over your head while we walk along the shore.’ She shook her head. Although she was not really there, her body shook her head without her being aware of it. He walked away, stopped in the doorway and sent her one last searching, almost mirthful look.

Not until later, in her room, did she take out the sketch and examine it. She saw her own face. It definitely looked like her, that she could see, but it was a likeness that went far deeper than any photograph, although it was a very simple drawing, more like something a child would do. And he seemed to have drawn her face three times, as if he had been viewing her from three different angles at once. She sensed that, simply by being in his company for those minutes — and perhaps by being drawn by him — she had been given fresh eyes. He had transfigured her purely by observing her. She had been blind and his regard had been like a healing hand. She walked over to the window and opened the shutters. The countryside, the light, the people — everything had looked different. She had met a man, and the world was as new.

Jonas thought, but did not say out loud: that place, Mougins, was Karen Mohr’s Samarkand.

‘That’s it there,’ she said to Jonas, pointing to a framed drawing on the wall, next to one of the plants with the scarlet blossoms. Jonas went over to have a look at it. He had never seen anything like it. It was the sort of picture which, once seen, is never forgotten. A drawing that gave off sparks. Jonas remembered every line of it for the rest of his life. It could easily have been Egyptian, he thought to himself. Face on and side on at the same time. Although maybe he had seen something similar before, in real life: triplets.