Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

The tarn lay black below them. The air was rather close. Oppressive. The sun still hung in a large patch of blue sky, but big clouds were building up in the west. Bo unwrapped the prisms from their handkerchiefs and set them out in a square, roughly in the centre of the hilltop, then he arranged the four jars containing the insects in such a way that they formed a larger square around the crystals. At a sign, Bo and Jonas each took off one lid then raced to the other two jars and did the same with them. And more or less as one the four butterflies fluttered upwards. Jonas was held utterly spellbound. The four butterflies, all so different in colour and pattern, hovered almost motionless above the heather, forming a square with an area of something like five metres. Jonas was able to take in the four movements and the four crystals at one glance, like eight simultaneous thoughts. It was weird. And beautiful. Four sets of sensitively fluttering butterfly wings — so distinct that he thought he could even make out their tiny, colourful scales — and four smooth, sparkling prisms, like mysterious civilisations nestling in the heather. Jonas realised that this could be a gateway. And then, he could hardly believe it, the brimstone and the peacock, the admiral and the small tortoiseshell began to gravitate towards one another. The insects’ square grew smaller, looked set to merge with the square formed by the light-refracting prisms. Because that was the whole idea: all four butterflies had to enter the square defined by the crystals.

Again they held still, or flew in spirals, up and down in the same spot. Jonas was more or less expecting something to manifest itself. He did not know how. Only that something might be revealed, or be opened up . Bo, standing there so proud, a prince, a Chinaman, had convinced him of this. In a way it seem quite natural that the insect which represented the divine process of metamorphosis, from larvae to butterfly, should also be capable of transfiguring this ordinary patch of countryside. Jonas was already starting to feel in his rucksack for the slide rule, the object which would persuade the Vegans that he was a worthy envoy.

But just as it looked as though the butterflies were going to flutter into the centre of the square; just as Jonas was thinking that the landscape was starting to vibrate ever so slightly and emit a faint purplish glow, there came a roar; they turned their heads and saw a small plane flying towards them, or under them. Jonas thought it was a model airplane, he was positive that it was a model airplane, it must have shot out of an invisible slit in the weir of life, until it dawned on him that the plane was actually some distance away, skimming over the trees on the other side of Lusevasaen, that it was, in other words, a real aircraft, and even at that distance Jonas knew which type it was: a Piper Cub, white with red trim — a big butterfly — identical to the one that Uncle Lauritz had had, but it could not possibly be his uncle, because he had been dead for years. Nevertheless, the plane came wobbling over the tops of the trees, as if it was in trouble; it was flying low, far too low, heading straight for the cliff, the rock face underneath them; then, just as Jonas thought they were about to witness a terrible calamity, the aircraft’s nose lifted sharply, bringing it clear of the precipice, it came swooping over the hilltop on which they stood, passed right over their heads, and then it was gone, a sight which would normally have filled them with awe and wonder, but which now only left them panic-stricken, realising as they did that the roar of the plane, the vibrations in the air, could have had an adverse effect on the ‘gateway’. And sure enough: the butterflies had come to a halt. As Bo and Jonas looked on helplessly the insects flitted up and down, then darted away from one another, all flying off in different directions. ‘Shit!’ Bo cried. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

Later, after a long walk home in silence, Bo said. ‘Did you see what I saw?’

Jonas nodded, he knew what his friend was referring to. There had been no one at the controls. The cockpit had been empty.

But Bo had observed something else: ‘What was an SAS pilot doing in that plane? And a captain, at that. I saw the four gold bands on the sleeve of his uniform jacket quite clearly when he waved.’

Nonetheless, Jonas was disappointed. The experiment with the crystals and the butterflies had failed. Not until they turned the corner into Solhaug, did he begin to suspect that something might, nonetheless, have occurred. The estate seemed unfamiliar, different somehow. When Five-Times Nielsen stepped out of his entry with a carpet beater in his hand, Jonas felt a burning desire to run up to him and present him with the slide rule, as if the Vegans actually dwelt here, in that place in the world which he knew best of all. Jonas shot a glance at Bo. He too seemed different. And at last it dawned on Jonas: it was not the world that had opened up, but him, Jonas. He had changed.

Why did she do it? I need to write more. About the middle part. About the longest seconds in my life. Evening. Late April. Returning home from a World’s Fair. I ask the driver to drop me off at the shopping centre. I want to walk the last bit of the way, I want to savour the smell of spring, I want to pass through pockets of air of varying temperatures. I breathe deep, fill my lungs as after a long dive. I think, I am sure, that I have never been so full of drive, of ideas, of a sheer desire to embrace life. So present in spirit — yes, that’s it.

I delighted in the fresh coolness on my brow after the heat in Spain; I savoured every sound, every millimetre of the scene, those familiar surroundings, trees with branches on which the leaves were already discernible. Greedily I inhaled the powerful odour of the soil. I walked along with my senses wide open. I caught the scent of bonfires. I heard the smack of a skipping rope. I knew it could not be right, but I had rediscovered my powers of thought, the sparkling exuberance of my childhood. A belief in the impossible. I had the urge to stop by the stream, sink my teeth into the bark of a pussy willow tree from which we used to make flutes. At one spot I actually left my suitcase standing in order to experience again the feel of a coltsfoot stalk against the skin of my finger, came very close, in fact, to prostrating myself — the way people do in ultra-romantic film scenes — and kissing the earth on which, by some cosmic will, I had been allowed to walk. And more than anything: I could not wait to see Margrete again, the mere thought of her face, her eyes, the gold glints in those eyes, sent warm jolts running through me. I was aching to tell her all about Seville, about my new plans; I was longing to hear her tell me what she had been up to, what Kristin had been up to; I was looking forward to sitting on the sofa, nuzzling her neck, listening to her talk, maybe while she peeled an orange in that ingenious way of hers, popping a wedge into my mouth and making some wry comment in response to my breathless description of a World’s Fair on the theme of ‘The Age of Discovery’, featuring life-size replicas of everything from Columbus’s ships to space shuttles. For Margrete, the woman I loved, the great discoveries began much closer to home, for example with an orange wedge in the mouth. ‘And feel this,’ she might say, guiding my hand roguishly to her shoulder. ‘This isn’t a collar-bone, it’s a clavicle — a “key-bone”. Go on, feel it.’

The spring was in my blood, I was all set to unfold. My head was full of colossal, and possibly dangerous, notions, Wagnerian ideas. I had regained my faith in a Project X. Once again I was going to be a mover in the deep, someone who could make people all over the country snap their chairs into the upright position before swivelling them round, as one, like tiny cogs in a gigantic mechanism, to face a screen which gave them, the whole national machine, a fresh injection of energy. For a few giddy seconds on the plane, with impressions of a hectic World’s Fair buzzing around in my head, I had had the feeling that I could make something no one had ever seen before; a television production which would represent a new synthesis of all knowledge and all art forms.