Prost Gotvins Geometri – Part 5

This is Prost Gotvins geometri by Gert Nygårdshaug. The translation was done by Roy Johansen. Nygårdshaug is a Norwegian author and the text has not yet been published in English. Roy is a friend of mine who recently moved back to his native Norway. He has translated a good part of the novel and I'm trying to convince him to finish it.

Here’s Part 4.

Father Gotvin's First Journey (continued)

Over the next weeks I read, with increasing amazement, everything available about the strange incident in Spain and, as a theologian, I ought not to doubt that the mother of Jesus had indeed appeared. Unfortunately, there was no one to discuss it with in my area. The Vanndal Church Council was loath to make a statement and, although I attempted to solicit my Christian brethren in the valley individually for their opinions, they tend to react by pursing their lips and lowering their eyes. They became older than they already were when questions about Catholic miracles were brought up and, frankly, my church council consisted of pretty long teeth as it was. I had calculated the average age to be sixty-three. The more I read about and pondered this miracle, the more worried I became. How could it be that the Catholics were the ones who throughout history had been honored with divine wonders? Why didn’t the Holy Virgin ever pay us Protestants an occasional visit? I know, Lord, that these are heretical thoughts. Only You in Your omnipotence can possibly understand, but these were the thoughts that made their way into my mind.

I had to go.
I had to go in person to the scene of a genuine miracle.
With this decision, the unease also started.
The almost imperceptible shivering.

What would I do here? This I still didn’t know as I sat there satisfied and mildly intoxicated after the meal. Would I see the cathedral? Most certainly, the architectonic masterpiece erected almost a thousand years ago on the gravesite of an apostle, James the Elder – what business had taken him to this part of the world? Very important business. James the Elder was the most devout one of the disciples. James viewed the story of Jesus’ sufferings, Jesus’ passivity as they bound, flogged, suspended, and pierced him as an expression of active devotion. He wished to imitate this. He knew that such dedication, as in the Eucharistic sharing of himself, exceeded the limits of human finiteness, was the courage from which grew pure love, and, with the message of pure love, James the Elder found himself here almost two thousand years ago. Thus was the cathedral a symbol of James’ devotion. Thusly I would interpret it when I finally would behold the steeples reaching towards Heaven, but what existed above the steeples? The heaven of light, the miracle descended from the blue sky, “If you decipher this drawing, you shall learn what truly is concealed in Heaven.” the woman on the train, her departing words struck me as a thunderbolt. I jerked back my hair.

The geometrical figures.
Were they in some way connected to the miracle?
Had she in fact drawn the miracle itself?
Had she been on the cathedral square last year?
In September?
In the company of Danes?
But “Trelleborg” was a place in Denmark, wasn’t it?
Who was Lucienne Lopez?

Then and there, in the precise instant, I realized I must find this girl. Somehow I had to trace her, agree to meet her somewhere. Meet? I would as her, had she seen the miracle? In this restaurant, El toro, in the middle of Compostela’s busiest street, I made a decision. I would do everything in my power to find this girl again. This was a very courageous thought. Never had I, Gotvin Soleng, had thoughts this powerful about any woman ever. Then again, and the Lord my God knows I mean no malice. Vanndal wasn’t exactly brimming with twenty-five year-old women who inspired powerful thoughts, but this gnawing unrest – did it hold the possibility of such an encounter? Was that the sign God was giving me, “Now the time has come, Father Gotvin”? Possibly.

I did not understand what I was supposed to do in this town.
Other than admire the cathedral.
Pray at St. James’ grave.

I signaled the waiter discreetly. A cup of coffee, white, then I would go to bed. Coffee had the opposite effect on me compared to most people. It made me sleepy, especially after having had wine. I drank my coffee in small, quick sips. This wasn’t cream, it was milk. Half coffee, half milk while checking my inventory of cash. My traveling budget was rather meager. I realistically could not afford this trip at all. My father’s debt was still not paid off. Poor dad, he had not been able to manage his farm or his purse very well and now, in his old age, was suffering from nasty calcifications in his brain, creating a world of his own. An eccentric, inaccessible world. Just before I left for Spain, he persuaded me to purchase a metal detector for him. My father, Kastor Soleng, had directed his old-man obstinacy toward making me buy, of all bizarre contraptions our modern technology has produced, a metal detector. What he intended to use it for he never told me.

Funds were meager.
I had to live inexpensively.

In my hotel room I undressed and took a shower, stood at the window for a while, peered down into the rear court filled with cats, then knelt by the bed and said a silent prayer. A prayer mentioning most of those dear to me: my brother Violon who was working as a wood sculptor in Olso, my other brother, Ludens, from whom no one had heard for fifteen years, but who was probably somewhere in South America (where are you, Ludens? Why don’t you at least let us know you’re alive?!) and then my father who wasn’t well at all. God had already taken my mother. She was only thirty when she died, two years after I was born. I then crept under the comforter, closed my eyes, but opened them again, lit the lamp on my nightstand and reached fro the drawing. I held it upside-down, turned it sideways, studied it from all possible angles, but was none the wiser. Danish names, there was no doubt about that. Was she trying to tell me something about Denmark? Ludicrous. Absurd. But she had appeared to be very serious when she drew the figures. She had made great efforts to get the proportions of the figures just right, I remembered. The more I thought about it, the messier the inside of my head felt, so I resolutely put the drawing away and the lights out. What I obviously did not know that the time was that this drawing was to become Document Number 1 in the secret drawer of my escritoire.