The Discoverer (81 page)

The story of how Melankton had become something of an attraction had been told to him by his father. The way people saw it, Melankton had conducted a successful rebellion against the islanders’ limited options – and, what is more, given some intimation of certain hereditary traits in the
otherwise
unexceptional Hansen family. When just a young lad Melankton had vowed to do something that no one before him had ever done, and instead of becoming a fisherman or a sailor, or something in trade, he had, against all the odds, taken the university entrance exam over at Fredrikstad then gone on to Oslo to study. After that the trail went dead. No one knew what he had read at university, or how he had lived, but one day there he was, back on the steamship wharf, wearing the same – albeit odd-looking – clothes he had had on when he left twenty years earlier. The only luggage he had with him was a big wooden crate and a remarkably battered suitcase.

Melankton Hansen did not say much. He took a job on the pilot boat as if nothing had happened. During the holidays he kept his lip buttoned even tighter than usual, not to shatter the idyll for the summer visitors from the capital, or holidaymakers as the locals, and in due course Jonas too – his father had been born on the island, after all – called them somewhat
condescendingly
. Because there was nothing the city folks liked better than to be on speaking terms with one of the locals. This carried as much prestige as, later, Norwegian aid workers derived from saying that they knew a Negro. One could, for example, be forgiven for thinking that Mr Wilhelmsen the
shipping
magnate flew over in his seaplane every Friday evening, then exchanged his suit for an old sweater and jeans with holes in the knees, purely in order to pass the time of day with Melankton Hansen down by the harbour and
listen, in the lags in the conversation, to the clip-clip of an oystercatcher
skimming
the waves at their feet. The holidaymakers loved to be able to come back from the shop in the morning and tell the rest of the family: ‘I ran into

Melankton. He had a pail full of flat fish, heaped up like pancakes. He netted twenty-odd plaice out at Ekholmsflua.’ It was all part of the joys of summer: you wrote postcards to friends in the city about the Simple Life and Getting Back to Basics. Melankton could not only show the city folk a freshwater spring on a tiny islet, or take them out to a stretch of water where porpoises often popped up like spluttering wheels, he could also teach them the
words
, the essential words, the ones which, when the holidaymakers repeated them, sent shivers of pleasure running down their spines, as if they were not on a small island in the Norwegian skerries, but on a foreign continent where they had managed the prodigious feat of learning the native language. They rocked back and forth on their heels, bursting with pride, when they used the correct terms for different types of boat or reeled off the names of islets or reefs – or better still, a fishing ground, or a skerry which was good for torching crabs. ‘Hue,’ they repeated to themselves after a conversation with Melankton about the
headland
across from the steamship wharf. ‘Rokka,’ they would murmur, almost reverently, with reference to the narrow strait leading to the open sea.

But Melankton was not always able to contain himself, and less and less as the years passed. Occasionally he would let fall a remark which – and on this all the islanders were agreed – betrayed his vast knowledge and experience of life. Stories started to circulate about weird conversations he had had with holidaymakers, of words and phrases such as ‘the Pre-Raphaelites’, ‘Ernest Hemingway’ or ‘Cartesian philosophy’. One summer visitor, a teacher from Oslo, told the island postmaster that for the first time he now understood the theory of relativity, after having had it explained to him by Melankton Hansen. Some people said that the crate Melankton had brought back to the island with him contained a complete set of the
Encyclopedia Brittanica
, a massive work of reference, and that he had worked his way through this in much the same way as other people read
Gone with the Wind
. Secretly they called him ‘the walking encyclopedia’. The islanders were proud of
Melankton
Hansen. But he was also something of a mystery to them. He looked like someone who had miraculously managed to escape from East Germany to Western Europe and then, having seen all the delights of its countries, had inexplicably and quite voluntarily, returned to the East as if nothing had happened.

Jonas’s father had told him how proud he had been of his uncle – his father who, as a boy, would willingly give up anything to go trolling for mackerel with
Melankton. There was nothing to beat sitting in a motor-boat as it chugged gently across a sea which in Haakon Hansen’s memory was always calm and shimmering, with half an eye on your lines. Once every fifteen minutes or so his uncle might come out with a word, or a sentence, or a whole little story – about the names of the clouds, about life in the rainforests, about the Hindu belief in
karma
or the big earthquake in Lisbon; fragments which to Haakon – the way he told it to Jonas – went far beyond what any one person could pick up in the way of learning. Not even the mackerel’s rainbow-hued sheen could match his uncle’s sparse utterances; not even the thought of dinner: crisp, fried mackerel and rhubarb soup.

And yet. There were things which Melankton had seen and done which he never spoke of to anyone – that much even Haakon gathered. ‘Something bad happened to Melankton,’ people on the island whispered. One of the lads on the pilot boat claimed to have heard Melankton mumbling something about ‘a lost ruby’. He had been hurt, folk said. It must have been something to do with a woman. And Jonas’s father realised that there might be a grain of truth in these rumours because sometimes Melankton would take a deep breath and let it out again in an eloquent sigh, shaking his head, as if Haakon were not there. Then he would come to himself, fix his eyes on the boy and declare: ‘When you get right down to it, lad, there’s only one thing to say: “Watch out for Venus!”’

As he bounced up and down on the seat of the old bus in his freshly ironed shirt, on his way to meet Uncle Melankton, Jonas was thinking to himself that now at long last he was going to learn what had happened to this man, the pride of the family and, even more exciting, the story behind a lost ruby.

The thought of Venus, a warning to watch out, may also have crossed his hopeful and mildly inebriated mind as Marie led him into the Belém Tower in Lisbon. But at that particular moment he had no will of his own, and he was curious; it was like waiting for a verdict which he could do nothing to change. She paid for their tickets and led the way to the first floor, an open platform from which they could admire – of all things – a statue of the Virgin Mary. They were alone. It was just before closing time, they had seen people leaving. Again Jonas was conscious of the way her eyes kept flickering across him, as if she were seeing him in a new light, as another person almost. She grabbed his hand and drew him through a narrow doorway, then up the stairs to the bottommost room in the tower itself. She located another opening, a door leading to a dim, tight spiral staircase. She had to let go of his hand and precede him up the stairs. The thin stuff of her dress fluttered like bait in front of his eyes. The smell of her filled his nostrils and reinforced the sense of intoxication. On the steep stairway he could see right up her legs to the
edging of her underwear. She wants me to see that, he thought. She climbed quickly, all but running up the smooth, worn stone steps. He followed on her heels, his head spinning, had to put one hand on the rough wall for support, stared at the play of muscle in her legs, at her ankles; he was surprised to
discover
how lovely and sexy an ankle could be, thought what an underrated part of the female anatomy it was, or perhaps he was thinking about the Achilles tendon, his own Achilles tendon, his weak spot, that he was about to tear it, that something bad was about to happen, which is to say something good, but at the same time bad. They passed through several rooms, met no one, carried on up the stairs until they reached the top; stood there, dazzled by the strong, late-afternoon light. Jonas lifted his face to the refreshing breeze, but his head felt no clearer for it. Again he had the impression, although he could never be sure, that she had been here before. If she had a plan then it had to have been a spur-of-the moment thing, a combination of common sense and madness.

In each corner of the square platform was a small domed watchtower. She pulled him into the one overlooking the river. From it, they could see due west, to the mouth of the Tagus and the ocean stretching out beyond it. He had to turn sideways to get through the door and into the tiny white chamber – there was just room enough for them both. She leaned through the peephole in the wall, leaned far out. Her dress slid up, exposing her thighs, the soft skin; her bottom arched towards him, the pattern on the thin fabric stretched over it making him think of a globe. ‘Look,’ she said, without turning, as if wanting Jonas to bend over her. He tried, moved in close to her. The sea air wafted past him, but did not dilute the smell of her, a heavy scent of patchouli and
perspiration
. The sun hung low in the sky straight in front of them. She pointed across the glittering sea. ‘This is where they sailed from, the great discoverers,’ she said. Her voice rang hollow in the narrow chamber. For some time nothing was said. Then: ‘Do you feel a bit … peculiar too?’ she asked. Long pause. They both stared at a container ship gliding past. The
Nuova Africa
, a black hulk heading out to sea. He heard her breathing, every sound amplified under the small domed roof. The water sparkled beneath them, before them. His heavy breathing was bound to sound, to her, like panting. Like a rhinoceros. He swallowed and was about to say something when he felt her hand curl round his buttock and draw him closer, right up against her. Aroused though he was he could not help seeing the funny side of it. To be standing inside a work of art, a building on the unesco World Heritage List; to be inside a monument to the triumph of civilisation – and to feel like a beast, so horny that the two halves of one’s brain have shrunk to two testicles. All thought of his project even, the television series he was trying to save, disappeared,
sliding as it were from his brow and down through his body, as if rather than life, rather than anything, he would take sex life. He feared – he
knew
– that he was succumbing to Melankton’s syndrome, but he didn’t bloody well care; he had long since realised, believed he had long since realised, that for far too many years he had held back in such situations because in his mind he had created a dilemma for himself, one which did not really exist.

Jonas aged seven, in the freshest of freshly ironed white shirts and on his way to meet the family’s learned treasure, was blissfully unaware of these future deliberations. Jonas’s father was a conscientious man who made a point, every summer, of visiting his surviving relatives on Hvaler. It was a couple of years, however, since he had last seen Melankton Hansen, his uncle having moved into an old folks’ home on one of the neighbouring islands. And since Jonas was now old enough he was given the honour of
accompanying
his father. He knew Haakon was looking forward to introducing him to this unique uncle who would prove to Jonas, once and for all, that they were not descended only from simple, fishy-smelling folk, rough, loose-living machinists or the keepers of general stores with paintbrushes hanging from the ceiling, outdated advertising posters on the walls and a spittoon still set discreetly in the corner. ‘In our family, son, we also have some real, live
geniuses
. Just you wait and see.’

And Jonas, bumping up and down on the bus seat in his white shirt, could hardly wait. Soon he was going to hear words he had never heard,
the
words. He might even – if he were lucky – get to hear more about ‘the lost ruby’, or about Venus. He had heard the story many times: when Melankton returned from his unknown adventures he moved into one of the little white cottages on the south side of the island, a property which he gradually turned into a star attraction. While his neighbours toiled over dry lawns covered in
molehills
, Melankton’s garden was a riot of exotic blooms and every sort of fruit tree – he was even said to have succeeded in growing apricots. It was like coming to another place, another country, visitors said.

The final proof that something bad had happened to Melankton came on the day that the steamship pulled into the wharf with a very strange object standing in the bow, rather like a figurehead. Jonas’s father had also been there that day: Haakon Hansen, soon to leave the island himself to go over to the town, later the capital, and become an organist. It was a naked woman, a divinely beautiful creature holding aloft a pitcher. Melankton stood proudly on the quayside, like a groom waiting for his bride. He told people that it was a statue of Venus, the goddess of love. He meant to put it in a fountain he was planning for his garden. No one dared to say anything, but secretly they shook their heads: Melankton had gone too far this time, this
was hubris. And they were right. Very carefully the crew began to hoist the marble statue ashore, having almost bashfully refrained from laying hands on her bare breasts – and just at the moment when she hung suspended between the bow and the wharf, as everyone was secretly admiring the lines of this divine figure, the rope gave way and the statue plunged into the deep with a white, frothing sigh.

From that day on Melankton said not one word to the locals. Whatever they did hear about him they got in dribs and drabs from the summer
visitors
. But no one forgot that story. Any time children, including those just there on holiday, swam off the wharf, the grown-ups would shout: ‘Watch out for Venus!’ They were worried that the marble goddess would be sticking out of the blue clay like a white lance, ready to spear anyone who dived too deep, or that she would drag them into the mire if they tried to swim down to her. Despite all the warnings a lot of boys did dive, trying to catch a glimpse of Venus; they may even have been excited by the thought of stroking those smooth breasts, sticking a hand into her pitcher.