The Discoverer by Jan Kjærstad

The Discoverer by Jan Kjærstad

Author:Jan Kjærstad [Kjærstad, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary, Norwegian Literature
ISBN: 9781908129543
Publisher: Open Letter
Published: 1999-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Miranda

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.



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