The Discoverer (19 page)

Jonas Wergeland presented the progression of these four main thought processes by showing Svend Foyn sitting in more and more deckchairs until at last – just before all of his thoughts intertwined to give one solution – there were four Svend Foyns, or Foyn quadruplets, sitting side by side on the beach looking out to sea and the waves rolling to shore. Foyn, or the Foyn quads, thought of the whale’s progress through the sea, the whale’s speed and power, the whale’s need to breathe, considered how long the whale stayed on the surface each time it came up; Foyn wrestled with financial forecasts,
pondered
the question of whale oil and all the uses to be found for whalebone, from corset stays to fishing rods, contemplated the matter of oil residue, and wondered whether the guano could be used as fertiliser; Foyn thought about the boat, about the size of the boat, its manoeuvrability, its crew; and above all Foyn applied his mind to the subject of the whaling tackle: what the line should be like, how many barbs the harpoon should have, how the bomb tip should be constructed, whether it ought to explode when it hit the target or seconds later; he considered the blending of the gunpowder, the fuse, his work with Esmark, the country parson and gifted chemist and the lessons he had learned from previous, unsuccessful, attempts by others: all of them had come up with a piece of the puzzle, but only he, Foyn, would succeed in fitting all the pieces together in his head.

The invention of the bomb harpoon, the absolute
sine qua non
of the modern whaling industry and cornerstone of Norway’s first oil age,
represented
the culmination of all these thoughts on the whale as raw material, on the vessel’s construction, on the animal’s behaviour in the sea, on the
properties
of the harpoon; the result of these thoughts being considered at one and the same time, in concord, inside Svend Foyn’s head. In the last scene but one, at the moment when the solution dawned on Foyn, actually in the form of a
series of inventions springing to mind at the same moment, Jonas Wergeland showed him – which is to say all four Foyn quads – jumping up and
shouting
in unison: ‘I have it!’ From there Wergeland cut quickly to the final scene in which, like an echo of that cry, the harpoon hit the whale and exploded inside its body with a muffled, yet mighty boom – a fanfare, almost; and that this strike should have been regarded by viewers as a great victory, a
climactic
shout of triumph, at a time when whaling was so unpopular, proves just what a masterpiece this programme was. The viewers did not see the whale’s death as something bad or traumatic, but as something symbolic: it was not a whale that had been caught, but a difficult and complex concept, a leviathan of the imagination. The passage of the harpoon through the air represented the flight of thought, and the impact with the whale signified the explosive moment of insight.

With a little good will Jonas Wergeland could be said to have laid the foundations of this programme when he was just a boy, in a basement – in the darkness of the deep, you might even say – at the time when his
skipping
fever was at its height. Before too long, however – he could not have said exactly when, but possibly during the transition from boy to youth – he discovered that he could make his thoughts branch out even
without
skipping
, although it still worked best – and would, in fact do so for the rest of his life – when he had a rope whirling through the air around him, as if this gave him a particularly good charge. Whatever the case: by dint of thought Jonas was forever trying – with or without a rope – to become like a tree, to branch out. Most people strive to become pure and upright, to become pillars, poles, the sort of thing from which to fly a flag. Jonas wanted to be a tree. He often wandered around inspecting the different trees of Norway. When he was at the height of his fame he considered, not altogether in jest, writing his autobiography and calling it
My Life As An Oak.

Although Jonas believed that he was really on to something, there came a point in his teens when he put his skipping, or rather: his thought
experiments
, on ice. He was, if the truth be told, a little alarmed by what he had discovered. On the one hand he felt his gift was a problem. He was afraid that he would never have the chance to use it. That he possessed abilities which would never do anything but confuse him. On the other hand, he hoped that it was only a matter of becoming more mature, gaining more experience. Then he would be able to resume his experiments. In any case, one thing was slowly borne in upon him, the longer he lived: there were possibilities, powers, within the realms of thought greater than anyone could imagine. Sometimes when he was contemplating, ruminating, he was conscious of a kind of mental ‘lift off’, a feeling of acceleration not unlike the ‘boost’ you get
in the small of your back in a plane just before it takes off, as it approaches the end of the runway and suddenly picks up speed. In the long process of mankind’s evolution, Jonas knew, we had not got beyond the very beginning. So far, man had only raised his body upright, not his mind. We had no right to our species name. We were
Homo erectus
and
Homo sapiens
on the outside, but not on the inside. It was one thing to walk upright, quite another to think upright. To be upstanding in one’s mental life. When it came to awareness, man was still crawling ignorantly around on all fours.

But this line of reasoning was a thing of the future. For many years of his childhood skipping was one of Jonas’s favourite pastimes. He skipped and skipped, as if unconsciously reaching out for something more, reaching upwards. He built shell after shell, layer upon layer around himself with the rope, and one day when he was skipping in the dark in the basement, in the midst of a heart-stopping, minutes-long stint of doubles, just as he felt that something was about to rip wide open, a veil be swept aside, as four or five thoughts which he was pursuing simultaneously began to converge, like the numbers in a combination lock which would suddenly click together to open a set of great, heavy doors – when he was just about there, only an arm’s length away, he passed out.

Jonas came round when his sister switched on the light – having come down to fetch a jar of blueberry jam for pancakes. His forehead hurt, and when he put his fingers up to it they came away with blood on them. He must have struck the brick jamb of the storeroom door as he fell. He would be left with a scar, a pale line intersecting that other scar, his souvenir from the playground skipping game. I’m a marked man, he would think from then on, whenever he looked in the mirror. Although he did not know whether this meant he was damned or that he was to be saved. ‘If you ask me, I think you should do a bit less skipping and eat a few more pancakes,’ Rakel said when she saw her brother’s ashen face and the blood trickling over his brow.

On the way up the stairs, with the aroma of freshly made pancakes making his stomach rumble, Jonas could not help wondering whether there might not be some connection between the two ventures to which he had so far dedicated his life; that there could, in fact, be a link between his ability to hold his breath and his talent for thinking parallel thoughts. Might it be
possible
to think so well that one could save lives.

Is there anybody going to listen to my story … I sing to myself. Humming it as an intro to what may prove to be my own story. Or an attempt at it, at any rate. I have been inspired by the unlikely fact that once more I find myself here, on board the
Voyager
, surrounded by stories, layer upon layer of scents, the switches to huge mechanisms in my memory. I kept my mouth shut when Hanna said that the boat had once belonged to ‘a legendary actor’. She was well aware, of course, that I had known Gabriel Sand. Much has changed, though. For one thing, they have installed a four-cylinder Volvo Penta diesel engine. A wise move. Here, among such high mountains, the winds can be everything from insidiously capricious to absolutely non-existent.
Voyager
is also a grander name than the old one, the
Norge
. It befits a boat which, by their way of it, is going on a voyage of discovery. Into a new millennium. The
Norge
was more apt for a vessel which lies safe in harbour and never sets sail.

I had a strange experience out at the point north of Mannheller. I was on deck, sitting on the hatch of the forepeak, taking in the view all around me. I felt a surge of excitement. I could see into three or four fjords at the same time: into Lustrafjord, into Årdalsfjord, into the mouth of Lærdalsfjord and down Sognefjord itself. It was an awesome sight. And yet strangely familiar. I came to the conclusion that I must have come here as a small boy, on the ferry that used to run between Revsnes and Naddvik. That time when we drove all the way to Årdal, a real safari. I realised that this sight must have stayed with me, left its imprint on me. Like the belief that it was possible to look down several channels of possibility at once. I have been to Tokyo, I have visited Timbuktu, I have – speaking of safaris – scratched the backs of rhinos and held crocodiles in my hands, and yet – this short trip up a Norwegian fjord must have made a greater impression. Deeper. It had branched out into me.

While we were moored at Skjolden I had the chance to take a run down to Urnes with Carl. We drove along the narrow road past Feigumfossen and Kroken, out to the bare green hilltop on which the stave church sits. It was morning and the light slanted down from the sun hanging over Tausasva. The wooden walls of the church had recently been oiled, it smelled of boats. We strolled round to the north wall and studied the most famous wood
carvings
in Norway, one of the reasons why Urnes church is on the
UNESCO
list of those buildings in the world most worthy of protection and preservation.
‘That is pretty much what we have in mind,’ Carl said. ‘
That
is what I call
software
.’ I stared for some time at the sinuous figures. ‘
That
,’ I said, ‘is what I call a fjord.’ Carl eyed me quizzically: ‘So what’s the difference?’

I have to laugh – they are so keen. They hare about, talking to all and sundry, trying to track down people with access to archives, hunt up local contacts. Not surprisingly, here in Lærdal they are mainly regaled with stories about salmon, tales of the English salmon lords of the nineteenth century, the best ‘pools’, the fierce competition for fishing rights, the problem of parasites and the poison tipped into the river to combat them, thus putting the river out of action for years. None of them know much about salmon – apart from Martin possibly – but a visit to the Wild Salmon Centre has left them a lot wiser. They have already decided that fly fishing has to form one of the
cornerstones
in their presentation of the place. They buy books, collect brochures, take photographs, shoot video film. They delve and probe. They look, to me, as though they are investigating a serious crime, trying to unravel the threads of a massive conspiracy. They inspect the houses that have been preserved in the old part of Lærdal. They drive up to Borgund Stave Church. I go with them. I spend most of my time on the boat, but occasionally I go with them. I am, by profession, a secretary, I am used to tagging along. We walk the age-old,
overgrown
paths: Sverrestigen, Vindhellavegen. They are constantly discussing things. Making notes. Doing sketches. Drawing up charts, diagrams of which I cannot make head nor tail: they look like trees. Or fjords with lots of arms. They hear rumours of a French painter who is a regular visitor to Lærdal and usually stays at the home of a wealthy Norwegian family. Someone shows them reproductions of his work, abstract paintings inspired by the fjord, the mountains. Or by the colours and the patterns of salmon flies. They are
familiar
with the much-loved piece of music said to have been conceived at Lærdal. They pore over the plaque fixed to the rock face next to the jetty where we are moored, on it the first four bars of ‘The Ballad of Giants’ and the
composer
’s
signature: Harald Sæverud. They have a tape with them, play the first bars of this protest against the occupation as they take in their surroundings. On the hillside on the other side of the lake they can just make out the ruins of a German bunker. They listen, they think. It seems so comical and yet so serious. But I have to admire their get-up-and-go. It is not enough for them simply to collect facts, catalogue information. They also need to come up with an outer framework, a story to bind the whole lot together.

She has chosen her team carefully. Hanna was born in Korea. Carl has an American mother, a Norwegian father. Between them, like two wings, they 
extend Norway to east and west. Martin provides the local credibility: he hails from Nordkjosbotn – ‘a crossroads in Troms,’ as he said. With pride. I remember what Kamala, who was seriously discriminated against until she became famous, said in one television debate: ‘Civilised society consists not of fortresses, but of crossroads.’ Martin is cook, ruling over the galley down below according to the principles of ‘enlightened absolutism’, dishing up
everything
from couscous to sushi. I have no idea how he came by such skills. He is the type to have long since drunk snake’s blood, with the snake’s beating heart and all. Himself, he claims to have picked it all up in Nordkjosbotn: ‘What did I tell you – it’s a crossroads.’

She has called her company the OAK Quartet. The OAK stands for Oslo Art Kitchen. They have shown me their website, laid out like an
inviting
kitchen – an appetising work of art in itself. I can see why people would spend time there, avail themselves of their services. This tempting cyberspace reminds me, of all things, of Aunt Laura’s seductive, limitless flat.

They often play string quartets on the CD player in the saloon, as if wishing to learn, to be stimulated. The music is pure and powerful, it is easy to hear how everything has been pared to the bone. The four young people on board truly
are
like a quartet. They each have their own strength, their own ‘instrument’. They are like one of those pop groups in which no individual member stands out, but where the combined effect is mind-blowing.

I sit on deck, scanning the sheer cliff face on the opposite side of the fjord. At its foot, where the land begins, is a little beach. It is growing chilly. Martin came up just a moment ago with some piping hot soup, a bowl of
soba
,
Japanese
noodles, and some chopsticks. ‘You slurp it down,’ he told me. The clouds are hanging low today. Rays of sunlight break through here and there, dancing like spotlight beams over the landscape. I cannot get enough of this sight, the play of light and shade on the mountainsides. I was in China once, in Xi’an, with Margrete, and simply by showing me a few sights she made me well, cured me of my all-consuming jealousy. I have sometimes thought that she stuck tiny, imperceptible needles into me, treated me to a sort of mental acupuncture. In the watchtower at the north gate in the old city wall we found a shop selling prints, those long, rectangular pictures that can be rolled up. I was particularly taken with these paintings, with their depictions of tiny, solitary individuals in the wilds of the countryside, and their
complete
lack of any fixed focal point – the perspective altering every time you moved your eye. These were living, breathing pictures, in which the
emptiness
, the unpainted areas, formed an indispensable part of the composition. Margrete bought one for me. ‘Every time you look at it, think of me,’ she said. 
I misunderstood. Did not see what she meant until it was too late. I had it hanging in my cell. I looked at it often. I travelled around in that picture often, a little person in a vast, rugged landscape containing any number of focal points. I have something of the same feeling here, in a narrow fjord running between plunging cliffs. When I see Sognefjord on the map, it looks to me like a dragon winding its way into the country. A dragon as they are drawn in China, long and sinuous. This too is a journey through a dragon.

I had been wrestling for ages with a big project. I was always wrestling with some big project. I kept having to redefine it, and almost as often had to rename it. Not until late on,
too
late on, did I see what my real project in life should have been.

One time on Hvaler – I must have been seven or eight – I found a cork bobbing about in the sea. I was out in my grandfather’s smallest rowboat, a craft which even I could handle. As the boat drifted past the cork curiosity got the better of me. I backed the oars. Pulled them in. I leaned out and fished it up. I noticed that there was a rope attached to it. This made me even more curious. I started to haul on the rope, pulling it into the boat. It turned out, of course, that I had got my hands on a net; although – it should be said in my defence – it was of an unusual make, and with an illegally fine mesh. No one could see me from the shore. Very carefully I pulled it in. Some flounders were caught in the top of the net, but I spotted something intriguing
glinting
further down. I pulled harder. I saw the pale, gleaming surface turn into something huge – and hideous, like a great maw lunging up at me. I got a fright. Dropped the lot. I do not know what it was, possibly a small
Greenland
shark or the underbelly of a giant crab. I have thought about it a lot since then. That experience reminds me of Margrete. You’re sailing through life when you spy a cork in the sea, you lift it out and there is this huge net, a skein full of things of which you could never have dreamed. You know, impossible though it is, that if you went on pulling long enough, if you put your back into it, kept at it, you would eventually haul the whole world up into the boat, including yourself and the boat.

Why did she do it?

I do not know when I first understood it. Or no, now I’m being coy – I never did understand it. But very early on in our relationship, something occurred, an incident which I made light of at the time, but which gradually came to seem important. Like a choice. It was one of those moments when I was able to look into several arms of a fjord at one time. 

It was a normal afternoon. We were still living in her parents’ museum of a flat in Ullevål Garden City. Margrete was a doctor, doing her
specialist
training in dermato-venereology at the University Hospital. I was in the process of putting my architecture studies, which is to say Project X, behind me. We were both head over heels in love, by which I mean that we were still at the stage in a love affair when you have been caught up in a warm wave and are just letting yourself be swept along. We showed face at all the timeless places, at Herregårdskroa where the service was so appalling, Frognerseteren with its overrated apple cake, Theatercafeen, where we were so wrapped up in one another that we did not even hear how badly off-key the old dinner orchestra was. We went to the cinema merely in order to sit with our eyes closed and hold hands; we went to the theatre solely so that we could smooch openly at the bar during the interval; we went to exhibitions for the sole purpose of gazing adoringly at one another amid the crowds of art-goers. We rediscovered the city: the shrimp boats, the chestnut trees, the glove shops, seeing everything for the first time, because we were together. But above all else: we made love, for hours at a time; laid each other down and sailed over and around each other’s bodies; we were Captain Cook
circumnavigating
the globe, or Bartholomeo Diaz bound for the Cape of Good Hope. We might start by exploring one another’s toes or foreheads,
eventually
to reach the middle where she always ended up running her ship aground on my lighthouse.

It was a perfectly ordinary afternoon. Margrete was lying in bed. We had made love. We had made long and glorious love. So it cannot have been that. The bedroom was white. Even the pine floorboards had a whitish sheen in the bright afternoon light which streamed through the fine veil of the
curtains
now that the blinds had been pulled up. The only objects in the room were a double bed with white bed linen and a brass headrail, and a gleaming gold statuette from the East. It was just how a bedroom, a place for
lovemaking
, should look. Love was, and always will be, a white patch, an undiscovered continent, watched over by an alien god with half-shut eyes.

This room and the kitchen were the ones I liked best in that otherwise unreal flat. The other apartments were chock-full of all manner of souvenirs from the Boeck family’s hectic diplomatic life in distant lands. Buddhas of jade and stone, Japanese garden lanterns of cast-iron, floral patterned china plates, camphor-wood chests, marble torsos, bronze temple lions. They may have been mementoes, but they did nothing for me. At times I had the feeling that I was wandering around inside other people’s memories. At others I thought: the first time I set foot in this house I knew that marriage would be the greatest journey of my life. 

Buenos Aires, the white, stucco-like façades on the Avenido de Mayo. Moscow, the dull gold of the domes on the Kremlin. The Victoria Falls, the glistening black of the snake that crossed my path. Shanghai, the noxious brown river. Samarkand, the sweet, yellow melons. Margrete, the blue veins at her temples, a tiny fjord with a multiplicity of arms.