Prost Gotvin - Part 20

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 19.

Father Gotvin's First Journey (continued)

Finding a local bus to Korsør was easy and the airstrip was only a couple of kilometers outside of town, a nice walk. All I had done this Sunday was walk around the fortress. There was something there about the ruins I couldn't quite grasp. It had to do with the geometrical outline. I was whistling and walking out toward the airstrip, looking forward with some apprehension to meeting Mr. Hansson, the author of a possibly obscene book. Its storyline probably centered around four Viking fortresses. I was going on a plane? Why had Mr. Hansson invited me to fly? Was he a pilot as well as a glazier? It was close to fiveo'clock and I could see the airstrip with a windsock swinging in the wind. A car pulled up beside me and stopped. The window was lowered and a man, around sixty, with a rotund, smiling face addressed me.

"Would you be the Norwegian?"
I nodded.
"Hop in!"

It was Preben Hansson and we shook hands. He laughed, I did not understand at what, but I laughed too and gave min a pretty incoherent story about a riddle I had been given by a Spanish woman; a riddle involving his name on a sheet of paper along with the names of these fortresses. I would be delighted if he could throw some light on this. I showed him the crumpled drawing Lucienne had made and Mr. Hansson laughed even more.

"Well, let's visit the sky and see if we can find some answers," he said cheerfully and parked his car by a hangar.

This sentence made me a trifle uneasy as it was very close to what Lucienne had stated and it also indicated a certain imprudent attitude to the word "Heaven". However, I would soon have other things to think about as we were going flying. I had never before been in a small private plane, but flying turned out to be Mr. Hansson's great passion. He spent several hours a week on his hobby and often together with his wife Bodil. But today she couldn't get away, so he thought he might as well invite me to come along since I had traveled all this way just to find the answer to a riddle. We entered his small one-engine plane, a Mourane Solnier 880, he told me. It was French and very reliable, ensured Mr. Hansson as we fastened our seatbelts and put on helmets. I couldn't conceal the fact that I felt pretty wound-up, so to speak. There was no parachute. What was it he wanted to show me? This man had written a book as well? This wasn't the time to ask about the book as we taxied over to the runway and I closed my eyes and felt a churning in my stomach as we ascended. But then I relaxed and looked out and down. The view was breathtaking – fields of grain, roads, and houses. A few minutes later, Mr. Hansson pointed and we could see the Trelleborg below us. The geometry was even more distinct now, from the air. A fine piece of filigreed jewelry, a satellite dish, perfect circles and crosses, and then the strange boat-like stones. We flew across the area several times until Mr. Hansson told me we would set a course determined by the axes of the central cross and the rowboats, precisely 325 degrees toward the northwest. He pointed ot the compass. I noticed 325 degrees and then he engaged the autopilot and leaned back.

The plane was humming.
I was sitting with my hands folded.
The course was set.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky.