Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

A tale told by a drunken man. I think of what I wrote in my cell, the lengthy manuscript which I destroyed. I know a lot about my childhood and youth and I know a lot about the time since I went to prison. But what happened in between? What is the midpoint of my life?

Margrete.

And at the centre of this story?

Margrete on her knees on the bed, banging her head against the wall. Margrete in a white bedroom, in the light streaming through gauzy curtains. And me looking at her, standing there paralyzed, watching.

In retrospect it is alarming — and vexing — to think how clear it was to me that this would be the most significant moment of my life. In personal terms, as moments go this was the equivalent of the Big Bang, the mystery of what happened during those first seconds in the history of the universe. If I could understand what was going on here I would understand everything. I stood at a crucial fork in the road.

So why hang back so?

It was Margrete who made me see that I was not only a wonder. I was also a fool.

At first I did not believe it possible; no one could be engulfed by darkness in such a bright room, certainly not after such incandescent lovemaking. It was as if she had drawn down a black blind inside herself. And a blind between us. It crossed my mind that she must have remembered something terribly sad. This was, as I say, at the time when she was doing her specialist training in skin disorders, including venereal diseases. She came across enough distressing cases, heard lots of disillusioning stories. For one crazy, almost grimly comic, moment I wondered whether she might be trying to test how much her skin could withstand. Or how thick-skinned she was.

One night, in the dark, she told me what had made her decide to become a doctor. She had actually had her heart set on becoming an actress. While living in Paris she was part of a travelling theatre group which staged dramatisations of episodes from The Mahabharata — Margrete often entertained me in bed with little stories from the Indian epic; I really enjoyed them, particularly the adventures of the hero Arjuna who was conceived through the offices of the god Indra. Then one of her girlfriends suddenly became seriously ill and died in terrible pain. The helplessness she had felt then, at her friend’s sickbed, made her decide to study medicine. To help people. Ease suffering. Margrete had a tendency to take things upon herself.

I did not know her. I had a suspicion that her past had been one long search for the next adrenalin rush. My lack of ardour was a constant source of annoyance to her. As was the fact that I was so reserved. ‘You’re not shy, you’re spineless,’ she said. I had been the baffled witness to her occasional need to scream from a mountaintop — quite literally, I mean: she would actually climb to the top of a mountain and scream for all she was worth. That was why I did not react right away to the head-banging. I was prepared to regard it as some necessary, harmless exercise.

She was a tireless advocate of the wisdom of feelings. ‘I feel sorry for you; you’re not in touch with your feelings,’ she often said to me. One evening I found her lying blubbering for no apparent reason, when I came to bed. I asked what was wrong, but received no answer. ‘Get a grip!’ I cried when she kept on sobbing. ‘Why should I?’ she asked, suddenly angry.

At such moments it was as if words failed her. ‘If something’s worrying you, won’t you please tell me what it is?’ I said on one of the few occasions when I found her like this. ‘There are no words to describe it,’ she had said. She had had this helpless, sorrowful look on her face. ‘It’s like it goes deeper than thought,’ she said. I could not understand it — this intelligent woman, a brilliant doctor in the making, all that reading — that she should be lost for words. But when I looked into her eyes, nor could my own thought penetrate the black depths of her pupils.

I stood there naked, holding a mug, watching her bang her head against the brick wall. I had the desire to translate this sight into something rational. But behind it all I knew: this was a scream. A scream for help disguised as a senseless action.

It is easy to say that I should have stopped her, that I should have done something, slipped a pillow, a fender, between the wall and her forehead, grabbed hold of her and pulled her away from there by force. But just at that moment that monotonous, destructive action seemed to have a paralyzing effect on me. Something about the unexpectedness of it — we had made love, I had only gone out to fetch a mug of iced tea — made me feel as though I had fallen into an ambush. I got it into my head that I had to stay perfectly still, to save anything even more awful from happening.

Or at least, that is not the whole truth. I know, I remember, that I had the rather cruel, almost delirious, thought that if I stopped her right now, if I threw myself between her and the wall, I would miss this chance of seeing her reveal a side of herself of which, until now I had known absolutely nothing. Just a few minutes ago I had asked her whether she was content. ‘Content?’ she had replied. ‘Not just content — happy.’ What if there was no contradiction between the fact of being happy and the act of beating one’s head against the wall as I had at first thought. What if, in her world, this was an expression of a deeper, logical deduction. As if she were saying: ‘I am happy and I slam my head against the wall.’ Or: ‘We all have our ways of generating ideas. You skip. I beat my head off the wall.’

Egoism disguised as impotence. I felt my thoughts shooting off in lots of directions at once, as if the sight of her had provoked an amazing shift in consciousness, so powerful that for a while I forgot about her and instead stood there with all of my attention focused inwards as I attempted to pursue as many as possible of the countless lines of thought which were branching outwards at breathtaking speed and which might, if I could only mobilise all of my powers, lead me to some unique flash of insight which would justify the fact that I did not intervene. She went on beating her brow against the white wall, as if trying to break through a barrier, using her head as a battering ram. I stayed where I was, mug in hand, staring at her and pursuing my own thoughts while, with another part of my brain — in a third corner of my mind I could not help admiring this facility — every now and again, mainly to salve my own conscience perhaps, saying her name: ‘Margrete’. It came out almost as a question, as if I was afraid of waking her. Something about the golden statuette in the room moved me to imagine, just for a second, that this might be some sort of religious ritual, much like making one’s devotions to a god in a temple. One which, in this case, would have to be akin to Kali, the goddess of destruction.

Oh yes, she knew how to destroy. I was only twelve years old when she all but broke me. I have always felt that that was why I was afraid of love. That that was why I did not dare to try again for such a long time. Or never dared. After all, how was it possible? How could anyone be so broken up inside, so miserable, simply for the want of a slender hand to hold, a mouth to which to press one’s lips, a body to put one’s arms around? The most powerful force on earth, so they say, is that created between two particles in an atom. I would venture to suggest, however, that no force on earth is greater than the love between an adolescent boy and girl.

Is there anything I remember more clearly than that day in seventh grade, the day she told me it was over? There had been an incident the week before when we were out skating. Since then she had acted differently towards me, seemed to be seeing me with fresh eyes. I hoped. I hoped, while waiting only for those awful words to fall.