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. 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.
There was an explanation for my elation: several times in the course of the past year Margrete had criticised me. Tactfully, it’s true. I had brooded more on this than I cared to admit. I also knew what it was that she found hardest to forgive: I had succumbed to the temptation to become a TV host. I had been seduced by empty flattery. I had presented two of the light entertainment department’s main offerings, on Friday evenings one autumn and on Saturdays in another. A huge hit. Pages and pages about me in every weekly and weekend supplement going. But Margrete was right, it was mindless. And, what was worse, pointless. She reminded me of the Thinking Big series. One evening she pretty much forced me to watch the programme on Kirsten Flagstad again. By the end she was in tears. I asked her why. ‘Can’t you see how good it is?’ she said. ‘So why are you crying?’ I asked. ‘I’m crying because it lifts me up,’ she said.
I had thought a lot about this. Which is why I felt such eagerness now, as I tramped up the gravel driveway to the house, drinking in air suffused with spring. Margrete had asked me not to go. She had seemed somehow listless when I left. ‘I need you to hold me,’ she had said. But I had to go. She would forget, forgive me, when I came home inspired — inspirited — my head full of great plans. I had not, as she said, degenerated as a programme-maker. In this buoyant frame of mind, with a sense of being on the threshold of something totally new, I opened the living-room door and found her dead. And the world turned upside down.
I sit on deck, writing, as the Voyager glides along the peaceful green fjord. We pass few other craft. Mainly ferries and shuttle boats, the odd cruise ship, its loudspeakers blaring tinny facts across the water in three languages. Carl is sitting across from me. Just at this minute he is showing his brass figure of Ganesh to Kamala. It’s such a comical sight: this crop-headed, broad-shouldered bodyguard type holding out, tenderly almost, an object which is all but lost in his huge hand. It is shiny where his fingers have been rubbing at it in his pocket. I cannot hear what they are saying, but I think Kamala is telling him a story about the elephant-headed god, possibly something from The Mahabharata. Carl is all ears. Captivated. Everyone is captivated by Kamala. At one planning session the OAK Quartet were discussing the possibility of setting up ‘sites’ for users to visit like so-called ‘avatars’. With a little smile, and almost as a digression, Kamala treated them to a brief lecture on avatars in Hindu philosophy. That gave them food for thought.
Rakel is up aft with skipper Hanna. Benjamin is in the well, manning the tiller. He is wearing Kristin’s black beret and an expression worthy of Ghengis Khan himself.
A little while ago I experienced again that sensation of everything being turned upside down. We had just cast off, Fjærland was slipping away to stern. I was lying on the foredeck, peering over the bow. The smooth surface of the water reflected the surrounding scenery as perfectly as a mirror: the steep mountainsides bounding the narrow fjord, the snow on their tops, the sky and the clouds. I had an uncannily strong sense of being on an interface, of balancing on a knife-edge between two worlds, one real and one reversed. I thought: this feeling is the perfect encapsulation of my view of life. An existence characterised as much by artificiality as by reality. Then, all of a sudden, everything spun around. I had an utterly lifelike sensation of the world revolving. The next moment I had no idea where I was, in the real or in the reflected world. I had to shut my eyes, lay there just listening to the rush of the bow cutting through the water. When I opened my eyes I was once more lying safely in between, right on the interface.
Through the skylight I can see Kristin and Martin, still hard at work in the saloon. Their project keeps putting out new shoots. I have to smile at their almost ferocious zeal. And at the contrast in their appearances: it is like seeing a guerrilla leader deep in conversation with a Silicon Valley hacker disguised as a thief from Marrakesh. I can tell that she is in love with him.