Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

The aim was not, of course, to become spirit. The aim was to become more of a person. I often thought of that incident when I saved a little child from drowning and how, afterwards, completely disillusioned, I had felt that my mission in life had been accomplished, that my life had, as it were, been fulfilled. It took a while for me to realise that this, all the practising, had simply been a preparation, training for a more difficult task: that of being filled with spirit. In order to expand and grow. All of the diving, those many minutes under water, had simply been an excuse for learning to control my respiration. My diving was a testimony to my powerful lust for life.

I had this same feeling as I swam down into the depths of Svarttjern, frantically diving after Margrete’s gold bracelet. My ability to hold my breath was finally to come into its own. This was what I had been training for. I had been training to win Margrete. I had been training to save my own life.

Every time I surfaced her eyes met mine, questioningly. Even from a distance I saw those eyes only as pupils — like deep, black pools. I had the feeling that I was as much diving in them, after the gold in them; that this was also my first attempt to get to the bottom of her. Of Margrete’s ‘Persian beauty’. She sat perfectly still, said not a word, and yet, with her eyes she was saying: How long can you hold your breath for me?

I took a rest then dived again, determined to beat every record going. I slipped down into the darkness, pinched my nose and blew through my mouth, equalising the pressure. Five metres down the water was noticeably cooler. I could not see a thing. But it was as if I was being given a warning: this is what life with her will be like, a long dive into the darkness, hunting for gold.

I noticed that my thoughts ran along different lines when I was underwater. It may have had something to do with the pressure, the buoyancy, the lack of oxygen. I acquired second sight. Down in the darkness I saw images from a whole future drift past my eyes, as if the water was developing fluid. I saw a golden elephant, a long-playing record, a dangerous swim, two adults in soft spring rain, a doctor’s white coat, a flat full of things from all over the world, a woman banging her head against a wall, a child, a television studio. And finally I saw a gun.

I had to hunt for the bracelet with the hand that was not holding my nose. I felt about in the most likely spot, directly below the knoll she had jumped off several times. Despite the darkness I swam with my eyes open, as if I thought it must be possible to discern a smouldering glimmer of gold. A glimmer of love, I thought feverishly. I could not see a thing. I was reduced to groping with my fingers. My lungs were starting to ache. My ears hurt. I thought of van Gogh. I thought I saw tropical fish glide by, like the ones in the television Interlude. I would not be able to take it much longer. A shiver ran through me. What if she had taken off the bracelet on purpose? What if she had wanted to test the boys, find out which of them was most deserving of her. Which one was worthy . Was she liable to do something like that? Would she be willing to sacrifice her mother’s expensive bracelet even if she received no answer.

I ran my hands over the bottom, centimetre by centimetre. I thought of the tales from the Arabian Nights which Rakel had read aloud to Daniel and I when we were small, particularly of those stories in which a character came across a ring embedded in the ground; and when he lifted the ring he raised a trapdoor, revealing stairs leading down into another world. Was it something like this I was searching for, without knowing it?

I have asked myself: what is the greatest driving force in my life? I think I know. It is the desire to work in depth. To invent something simple which would, nevertheless, have major consequences. Something along the lines of the wheel, the rudder, the stirrup. A new alphabet. To work at the most fundamental level. Like a power station deep inside a mountain. Lighting up cities far away. Being a spring which suddenly wells up and renders a desert fertile. Or being someone who shakes things up. Shakes up the classifications. Shakes the foundations. Like Samson toppling those pillars and bringing a whole heathen temple tumbling down. Being someone who splits open the shell we have built up around mankind.

I think that was why I loved diving. Diving down into the depths as I was doing now. I understood, somewhere in my subconscious, that this was not merely a search for a piece of jewellery, this was an undertaking which could lead to my making a fundamental discovery.

Even so, when I rose to the surface after one particularly gruelling dive, I was ready to give up. I ached all over. But as I gasped for breath I seemed to take in something else, something more: spirit. One more dive, I told myself. And as soon as my hand reached the bottom my fingers lighted on the circlet. I did not touch gold. I felt I was touching the future.

Later she presented me with a book. We were at her place, alone, in the villa down the road from the school. She wanted to give me something, the finest thing she could think of, as a thank-you for finding her bracelet. It was Victoria by Knut Hamsun. ‘It’s a love story,’ she said with a look which implied that that said it all. She gave me her own dog-eared copy. I liked the title, liked the association with victory. Too late I discovered that I ought to have perused more than the title of that novel. A lot of people have had their own personal experience of Victoria by Knut Hamsun, I’m sure, but none has been anything like mine.

She had pressed fresh orange juice and this she poured into two elegant wine glasses. We drank as one. I felt strange, as if she had stirred a magic powder into the drink. Then she kissed me for the first time. I felt even stranger. Filled with light. Filled . I could have drawn this conclusion at that moment, but I did not: it might be that what I called spirit was just another word for love.

Afterwards we sat in the garden, on a green lawn. I was feeling so lightheaded that I had to lie with my head in her lap. There was a sprinkler on the go. Opera music drifted from the house next door. I lay with my head in her lap. I could have lain there for the rest of my life. I looked down on myself from high in the air, saw myself lying there in a luxuriant garden with my head in a girl’s lap; I saw how lovely and how right it was, saw that this might even be what was known as working in depth.

Few triumphs in my life can compare with the moment when, with swelling heart, I clambered ashore and handed her the bracelet. We were alone at Svarttjern. We stood on the only rock still in the sun. Neither of us said anything. First she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. The metal glowed against her skin. She gazed into my eyes and then she wrapped her arms around me. I stood there inside a circlet of gold. I looked up at the sky. I noticed that the clouds were moving faster, that something was happening to the weather, the whole atmosphere. The water was perfectly still, reflecting the dense, shadowy forest all around. For me Svarttjern would always be a sacred lake. She held me for a long time. No more than that. Just held me. I experienced some of the same pressure that I felt underwater, when I dived. She held me and I unfolded; I stood still, inside a circle of skin, and I was transformed. Being held by Margrete. If God gave me the chance to relive one thing in my life I would choose this: to be held by Margrete. Held, tight, long.

I was to make the acquaintance of this pressure in an embrace again, on a later occasion. That too began with a dive, but into a different body of water, a lagoon just off a small private beach on a tropical island. I was fraught with presentiment, fraught with expectancy; I had been staying at the home of a certain woman for three days and so far nothing had happened, I had hardly seen her. I whiled away the time by swimming, diving, holding my breath under water, still pursuing that old hobby. On the morning of the fourth day — I thought she had gone to work — I went snorkelling out on the coral reef. I was following a dense shoal of small fish along the reef when she suddenly came gliding towards me through the mint-green water, she too wearing a mask, as if I were a fish she wished to take a closer look at. Her hair streamed out behind her as she swam straight towards me, her breasts, barely contained by her low-cut bathing suit, looking heavy and commanding. I became rather shamefully aware of the way my eyes were being drawn to the cleft between them, while at the same time conscious of an unbearable pressure building up in my body, even though I was only a metre below the surface.