Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

As a boy I had rescued a child. It had been easy — light work, you might say, in more ways than one. I had been almost annoyed by how easy it was to save a life. Sitting in that living room in Ullevål Garden City, surrounded by cast-iron Japanese lanterns and silver crosses from Ethiopia, as Margrete’s fingers felt for mine again, clutching at my hand, as it were, I felt an icy pang of fear: I would not be capable of dealing with the real weightiness of life.

Although I do not see the connection I am suddenly reminded of how I met Leo, my best friend when I was in my early teens, my sparring partner in the Red Room. We had actually been in the same class for four years, but this was the first time I had really noticed him, felt like getting to know him. It happened one spring day when two of the bigger boys, a pair of notorious hooligans, had tricked some little kids into setting light to a huge stretch of tinder-dry grass at the bottom end of the estate. When the fire got out of control and began to spread towards the wood the big lads made themselves scarce and the little kids were left standing with their shoe soles scorched, watching and blubbering. Some of the mothers alerted the fire brigade. The fire was put out. One of the firemen — I can still recall those commanding bass tones — asked: ‘Who started the fire?’ Everybody pointed to a little lad who was still standing numbly with the matchbox clenched in his fist. I could tell just by looking at him that this boy would go under if the grown-ups believed that he was to blame, that this was the event which would change his life for ever. Then up stepped Leonard Knutzen, or maybe he had been there among the group of bystanders for some time; Leo in a spanking new pair of black Beatles boots with pointed toes — murder on the feet, but they won you bags of prestige. ‘I did,’ he said. One of the mothers was so angry — she had also laddered her stockings — that she promptly gave him a searing clout round the ear. Leo merely shot her a forbearing glance before he was led away by the grown-ups. It had all happened so fast and been so unexpected that none of us who knew what had really happened managed to get a word in. In any case, there was something about Leo, the black boots, his manner, the ghost of a smile on his lips, which prevented anyone from objecting. You could tell that he was tough enough to take it.

I was right in the midst of my life-saving career and felt obliged therefore to give a lot of thought to this incident. This, too, was a form of life-saving. How far would someone go in order to save a life? I found such an idea shocking. To save a life — not by some heroic deed, but by playing the bad guy almost. Or to be made to suffer even when you were innocent.

Once when we were flopped in bed after a strenuous sexual workout, between gasps for breath I told Margrete about my fear that my heart might give out. As my father’s and my grandfather’s had. ‘I need to be careful, I’ve got a weak heart,’ I joked. I thought she would laugh, but instead she said: ‘Yes, that’s what’s wrong with you.’

Maybe she would be alive today if I had not had such a weak heart.

I am on board an old lifeboat once called the Norway , now renamed Voyager . I have long had the feeling that I am on a journey, making my way out of something. I say this because for so many years I was motionless, shut off. I cannot shake off the memory of Harastølen at Luster, that ludicrous one-time refugee centre halfway up a mountainside. For some days I have had the suspicion that this may also say something about me personally. That this problem: Festung Norwegen , the fear, and my own problem, the one which has dogged me all my life, are one and the same: an unwillingness to open oneself to one’s full potential. I sometimes think of myself as a fertile egg which has put up an effective barrier against all the spermatozoa that have sought me out, that I have, metaphorically speaking, inserted a coil into the womb of my thoughts. I have been aware of my exceptional gifts, known that I might even be a wonder, but I have baulked at using these gifts. So too with love: I never dared to accept it. Like Norway I suffered from the Midas syndrome. I was a gold-plated celebrity, but I could not embrace other people, I could not return the affections of the woman who loved me.

We are out sailing again. I find myself far up the longest fjord in the world. Dead ahead looms Haukåsen, covered with a white cape of snow. Gulls hover motionless on the wind, level with the boat, almost as if they were tame.

I feel a bit like an apprentice with the OAK Quartet. I am particularly interested in the way they communicate. Initially I was surprised to find how little of their work involved computers. The boat is of course packed to the gunnels with the latest digital aids — it is like a Noah’s Ark for our technological society — but they seem to prefer large notepads and coloured pencils. Either that or they just talk and jot down key words. Dialogue, that is the key. Occasionally, through the skylight, I can observe them down in the saloon, deep in discussion, making obscure squiggles on whiteboards. And yet — much of what they do and say reminds me of my own efforts to simulate, to make believe when I was small. Is this what it all comes down to: rediscovering the realms of imagination, the childhood belief in the impossible?

The smell of chicken korma drifts from the galley. A gimballed Primus stove with two burners is no hindrance to Martin. My thoughts turn to Kamala. She will be joining us at Fjærland. I miss her. My meeting Kamala was — how can I put it — an undeserved gift. Kamala saved me. She saved my life, it is as simple as that.

Sometimes I have the notion that I must have acquired a new identity in prison. No one recognises me. I have been forgotten. Not my name, but my appearance. I ought to be pleased, look upon this as cover of a sort. Because in people’s minds my name is linked as much with a crime as with my television celebrity. Everyone believes that I killed my wife. It was on the front page of every newspaper, it was proclaimed on the television and radio, and it was established by judge and jury in a court of law.

Why did she do it? I need to write more.

While there could, of course, be several explanations for Jonas Wergeland’s fantastic flair for picture-making, his success in television should come as no surprise to any of those who know that in his youth he associated with such greats as Leonardo and Michelangelo. Many people can boast of having attended the French school in Oslo, but very few have, like Jonas Wergeland, belonged to the Italian school.

Jonas and Leo became chums towards the end of their time at elementary school, but did not become really close friends until both started at the local junior high school, Groruddalen Realskole, only a couple of stone throws from the railway station. Jonas’s new road to school took him past the church and down the steep slope of Teppaveien, and in one of the old villas on this road lived Leonard Knutzen. Leonard always stood and waited for Jonas, or rather: sat waiting on the satchel which they used in those days instead of a rucksack and which, in the winter, they would send skimming down the hill like a curling stone. At one point during the eighties, after Leonardo’s sensational activities became public knowledge, Jonas received a number of tempting offers from the tabloids to speak out on the subject of their boyhood friendship. He turned them all down. But he could just see the headlines, what a story, full of details which no one could have guessed at.

Leonard’s family belonged to the bastion of the district’s working-class; for generations they had walked at the head of the local 1st of May parade. Aptly enough, their house rested on a solid granite plinth, as if in tribute to the valley’s proud stonemason tradition. Not only that, but they also overlooked the area where the first mills had been built, beside the falls at Alna. Olav Knutzen, Leonard’s father was a big, burly, majestic-looking man with a backswept mane not unlike that of the writer and Nobel prize-winner Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. It was quite obvious to Jonas that Leonard adored him. In the summer, father and son would go off on long walks in the hills together, and in the winter they would sleep out in snow holes. Leonard, too, was tall and well-built, and he had his father’s flashing eyes. Leonard liked to joke that he and Jonas were of royal blood, since both their fathers — Haakon and Olav — were called after kings. ‘We’re both princes,’ he declared, thumping Jonas on the back.