Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

I stood for a long time staring in disbelief at the more mature, but just as unmistakeable face, there, right in front of me, in a web of water. I was overcome by a sense of touching wonderful depths. Meeting Margrete again, being faced with that rather diffident smile, was like seeing a whole lot of tangled threads gather themselves into one solid, conclusive knot, like receiving a sign that everything had a purpose. I remembered the stories of people who lost gold rings only to find them twelve years later, inside a potato, or a fish.

It’s hard to describe the sort of first impression Margrete could make. Once, for example, when she was eighteen, she was on a plane: as the daughter of a diplomat she travelled a lot and usually first class. Someone came over and placed a hand on her shoulder — a young man, the heir to the throne of a small but wealthy country in the East. He asked her to marry him. Right out of the blue, but most formally. She knew right away that he was not just flirting with her, he was offering her the life of a princess. Such was the effect the sight of Margrete had on some people.

Including me. I stood in the soft spring rain, trying to take it in. The unusual orange coat. Her ‘Persian’ beauty. Her eyes. Those black pupils in irises shot with gold. She stood there glowing, shining, at me. I remembered what my old neighbour, Karen Mohr, had once said: ‘Someone looks at you — and everything changes.’ When Margrete fixed her eyes on me, it felt as though I had not been seen in a very long time. As if I had been invisible for years. I stood there before her and I was discovered.

I had, of course, always cherished a hope of meeting her again, quite by accident like this, at a tram stop. I had dreamt of this scene a thousand times. And even though, deep down, I knew the chances of it happening were very slim, one thought was always there: I swore that I would not fall in love. And not only that — as if it were the twin of the hope of seeing her again, I toyed with the notion of revenge. Even when I ran into her again on that spring day and could hardly believe it, my luck, this merciful turn of events, for a fleeting moment I did also consider paying her back for the pain she had caused me in seventh grade.

The spring after the break-up outside the Golden Elephant restaurant was the most miserable of my life. It’s easy to joke about it today, but when you’re in seventh grade and you’re unhappy, there is no end to how miserable you can be. When summer came I went into hiding on Hvaler, I camped out at Smalsund, in the very south of the island, could not face being at the house with everybody else; they left me alone, understood that I was upset, merely made sure that I had everything I needed, some food and, most important of all: batteries. I was a castaway. I lay out on the rocks, just me and a couple of mink which soon got used to me; I simply lay there, flat out, stupefied by sunshine and the sparkling sea, listening to the waves, the water lapping and splashing right at my feet, for all the world as if the elements shared my grief, were sobbing with me. I was a real ‘nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land’. The holidays were almost over and I had worn Rubber Soul thin, playing it on a battery-driven Bambino record player. That LP had spun round and round all summer long, like a black sun next to my head, and was now as bent out of shape as I felt in my mind. I had long since memorised every song on it, but still listened intently for something in the background hiss, behind the music, like one of those indefatigable, ever-hopeful scientists who listens out for radio signals from outer space. I lay there and I knew: I had to do something.

It was August, the nights were already starting to draw in. I was sitting by the Pilot Lookout on its hilltop, gazing at the lights out at sea. I often sat by this little shed. Maybe because I too was in sore need of a pilot. Maybe because it contained an advanced short-wave radio. Through the wall I could hear calls in lots of different languages. This put me in touch, in a way, with the wide world, with that place far overseas where she was. One day in the spring I had even taken the bus out to Fornebu Airport, just to be able to hear the flights being called over the tannoy.

I scanned the sea, gazed at the Koster Islands on the horizon. How was I going to get her back? Because that was obviously what I wanted. I wished that somehow, possibly by means of telepathy, she would be overcome with remorse, with love for me. Or — a common thought, this, at such self-pitying moments — that she would see me, on a monitor, sitting here next to a pilot lookout, next to a radio, benumbed, yearning. What I wanted was for her, wherever she was, to get on a plane and fly to Norway, move back, live with relatives or whatever. Just as long as she came back. ‘Do something,’ I told myself. ‘You have to do something.’

I grasped the iron railing and pulled myself to my feet. And then it hit me, as such thoughts have a way of hitting an adolescent, that I could get her back, on one condition: I would have to swim across the strait I saw before me, an ocean in miniature; I would have to swim across Sekken, one of the most exposed and daunting stretches of open sea along the whole coastline. Only by doing this could I, in some mysterious — but in my mind completely logical — way, win her love again. Awaken her. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing.

I had never swum such a long distance at one go. It was a risky venture. But I was in no doubt. I ran back to the tent, cast a glance at the battered cover of Rubber Soul , from which the four members of the Beatles gazed up at me approvingly. I changed into swimming trunks, strode down to the beach, slipped through the seaweed and out into the dark, almost lukewarm water. I swam with quick, impatient strokes across to Gyltholmen, walked up to the cairn and stood there for a moment considering the broad band of sea at my feet. The nearest, dark islets on the Swedish side were a long way off. In another continent so it seemed. The continent of hope. During the war this last stretch had spelled life or death for many refugees. I clambered down to the rocks and did something close to a racing dive, shallow and flat, as if I were in a hurry. The weather was with me. A few clouds. A light breeze. A gentle swell. No current to speak of. I swam. I swam without thinking. Or at least, I thought in the way that leaves no trace. I tried to conserve energy, to simply drift across. Soon I was level with Sekkefluene, those insidious skerries. A light flashed on a post to starboard. Many a boat had gone down just here. Wrecks lurked in the darkness below me.

I swam on, and as I began to flag my thoughts became clearer. Each stroke was like throwing myself at her, into her arms. I bobbed up and down in the swell and my thoughts seemed to me to rise and fall in the same way. I tried not to think about it, but thought about it anyway, behind my other thoughts: the deeps underneath me. The unknown. There was a reason why Margrete had left me, one which I had never known. Which I ought to have known. I had disappointed her in some way. I was swimming more slowly. I was exhausted. My arms were aching. My legs were turning numb. I was more than halfway there. For a channel swimmer this stretch of water would probably be a piece of cake. For me, a thirteen-year-old, it was far too long. But only the impossible could bring Margrete back. These tiny currents, I thought, generated by the action of my limbs, will be transmitted through the water, rather like whale song, and come to a sea where she is swimming at this very moment, at another hour, and she will instantly comprehend the message, my desperate plea. The thought struck me: in swimming here I was doing what I had always wanted to do: work in depth. Seen from far enough away, I might have been a spermatozoon on my way to impregnate someone.