Book Read Free

The Discoverer

Page 9

by Jan Kjaerstad


  One Friday evening, not all that late on, it so happened that Jonas was making his way from the Grønland district of Oslo to Tøyen with his aunt – his aunt Laura. And who should he see come staggering out of the Olympus restaurant – something of a drinking den and not exactly known as the haunt of deities – but his dear headmaster, His Royal Highness himself. And not only that, but the headmaster was merrily carolling a popular hit of the day. It was not a pretty sight, or at least: it may have been pretty, but it was hardly designed to induce respect – to see one’s school’s moral guardian, an elderly man with eyebrows like canopies, rolling down the road burbling: ‘Let me be young, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah yeah!’ He did not notice Jonas, he did not look as if he was aware of his surroundings at all. He probably thought he was safe, so far away from his realm.

  Such ‘revelations’, or whatever you want to call them, never made any impression on Jonas. In the case of his headmaster, it seemed that only after this did Jonas begin to feel some sympathy for him and actually acknowledge him as an authority. There was something about this phenomenon, perhaps the very negativity of this way of thinking, this conviction that behind every beautiful façade there lay something rotten, that left him cold. Because that was the rule. Slash through a rich tapestry and you would find a rat’s nest. All through his life, Jonas Wergeland was more interested in the exceptions, in the other side of the coin.

  Solhaug, the housing estate where Jonas grew up and which, in all essentials, contained a genuine cross-section of the Norwegian population, also had its share of eccentric individuals. Take, for example, Mr Iversen, a timid, nigh on invisible father of four who lived for just one thing: to fire off thousands of krones’ worth of rockets every New Year’s Eve. Once a year he would appear, out of nowhere almost, with a cigar between his teeth and his arms full of fireworks, and for a few moments he was everybody’s hero. Then it was as if he went back to earth, not to be seen again until the following New Year. Another was Myhren at number 17, who would not have hurt a fly, but who, when he heard that Jonny Nilsson had beaten Knut Johannesen to set a new world record in the 5,000 metres at the World Speedskating Championships in Japan, had chucked every Swedish product the family owned out of the window: an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, a Stiga ice-hockey game and the collected works of Selma Lagerlöf. When Jonas was growing up, the test of one’s manhood was to creep up to Myhren’s door and yell ‘Jonny Nilsson!’ through the letterbox.

  But this is the story of a certain lady. She had lived at Solhaug for years, but not even Mrs Five-Times Nilsen knew much about her. Usually you could form quite a good picture of people’s characters, gain a peek into the deepest recesses of their souls by keeping the removal van under observation – ‘Did you see that wall lamp? Talk about hideous!’ – but this woman must have moved in one evening, all unnoticed; no one could remember seeing so much as a rag rug. Her skin had a dusky tint to it which gave her an alarmingly exotic appearance, the look of someone of foreign origin. ‘She may have nice skin,’ declared Mrs Agdestein, the first person in Grorud to own a sun lamp, which she used twice a day, sitting in front of the mirror, in order to look like Jacqueline Kennedy, ‘but I’ve never seen such a frumpy little mouse. She might at least treat herself to a visit to the hairdresser.’

  Naturally, all sorts of rumours circulated about what lay hidden within this white patch on the housing estate’s carefully mapped-out world. Nilla, who actually lived in the same building, firmly maintained that her flat was full of snakes and lizards and that she got food for them from an acquaintance who worked as a rat catcher. Others swore they had seen a blue light shimmering behind her curtains at night, and took this as a sign that she held seances in there. She also smelled funny. Of spices. Or alcohol. ‘Poor little soul, she’s a secret drinker,’ Mrs Agdestein whispered at the sewing bee. But most people simply thought she could not be very well off – judging, at least, by the drab, grey outfits she always wore, and the glimpses she occasionally vouchsafed of an exceptionally spartan hallway. Her sunbronzed skin notwithstanding, she was nicknamed the Grey Eminence. Jonas had always felt that the greyness was necessary camouflage, that this woman dealt in something secret and dangerous. He knew what it was too: precious gems. ‘It’s the sparkle from all those jewels that gives her skin that healthy glow,’ he whispered to Daniel.

  There was one thing, however, on which several of Solhaug’s mothers had remarked. On one Saturday in the month, the Grey Eminence left the block dressed up and made up beyond all recognition and took the bus into town. More than one had, from behind their curtains, seen her come home at an indecently late hour. This behaviour gave rise to the categorical assertion that she had ‘a bit on the side’, an expression which to Jonas’s ears sounded as mysterious as ‘hocus-pocus’, with the same magical associations.

  There came a day in early December when Jonas found himself standing outside her front door. He was out selling raffle tickets, having lost a bet with Daniel. Jonas could usually guess how generous people were likely to be just by doing a quick scan of their nameplates – what they were made of, the lettering – before ringing the doorbell. As he eyed up the Grey Eminence’s anonymous sign: clear plastic with ‘Karen Mohr’ in a blue script, he suddenly realised that he was less interested in whether she would buy a raffle ticket than in whether he would get a peek inside her flat. He stood at the entrance to King Solomon’s Mines. Inside – he could feel it in his bones – lay mounds of glittering sapphires and rubies.

  Jonas barely heard the doorbell ring, it might almost have been muffled, or waking from age-long slumber. But she immediately answered the door, opened it a little way. He glimpsed the corner of a small, grey-carpeted hall. Proper grey. With not a single thing on the walls, not even a three-year-old calendar. But he could smell something. Something unusual, something good. ‘Will you support Grorud scout troop by buying a ticket for the Christmas raffle? First prize is a side of pork.’

  She frowned, possibly at the thought of having to carve up a side of pork on her kitchen table, all the mess, all the packing, the bother of having to rent a freezer down at the Centre. Then the unexpected happened. Instead of saying yes or no, she invited him in. The thought of Hansel and Gretel flashed through Jonas’s mind, but he did not hesitate for a moment, he understood that he was being shown a rare trust. Once he was inside the grey hallway she smiled. ‘I like your eyes,’ she said. ‘They’re so big. And so brown. You remind me of someone. Are you a good observer? Do you draw?’ She stood for a while simply considering him, even ran a finger over the scar on his forehead, as if trying to guess at the story behind it.

  This close to her Jonas could see that she was good-looking, very good-looking. Not only her skin, but her face as well. Her features. She had a face which – what was it about it, he wondered – yes, in that face were many faces. He should perhaps have been on his guard, but it was a pleasure to be admired by Karen Mohr. To be the object of her regard. He liked the fact that she saw something which no one else could see.

  All people are special, but Jonas knew that he was more than special. He was unique. He was an exception. From the day when he had learned to tie his shoelaces – not that there is necessarily any connection – every now and again he had been aware of a hidden power welling up inside him. He could not have said what it was. Only that something, something of sterling worth lay pulsating in there. Some rare gift. When the American Marvel comics appeared on newsstands in Norway, Jonas instantly identified with several of their superhero characters, although obviously he did not possess any of their powers. No, it was the certainty that there was more to him. Jonas had no trouble believing that a person could walk up walls, have X-ray vision or fly fast as lightning: all of these were really just variations on, or a slight exaggeration of, this thing he felt slumbering inside him. What it was he was soon to discover.

  Years later, when he was working on his programme on Svend Foyn, a colleague happened to notice Jonas Wergeland late one night alone i
n a conference room at Television House in Marienlyst. There was nothing so surprising about that, apart from the fact that Wergeland was skipping, and that he was doing it in the dark. ‘It was actually quite spooky,’ his colleague had said. ‘He wasn’t jumping so much as flying. Anyone would have thought he had supernatural powers.’

  The woman who uttered these words was working with Jonas on the Thinking Big series. She knew that as far as Svend Foyn was concerned he was stuck, well and truly stuck. After all, how were they supposed to produce a programme, a heroic epic, saluting a man who so strongly personified a whaling industry which by then had almost virtually destroyed Norway’s international reputation. Whaling had once given rise to the first oil age, an industrial adventure which had filled the Norwegian people with confidence; now it was an extremely embarrassing business altogether. For various reasons, some more logical than others, many people felt that killing a whale was somehow different from killing a pig or a cow – or a cod, come to that. It was like shooting a brother, a distant relative. Some regarded the whale as the one creature on earth best able to communicate with possible extra-terrestrial beings. Svend Foyn had long since been demoted from national hero to national villain. No one wanted to be confronted with all that gory documentary footage of the flaying and cutting up of a whale carcase, no one wanted to be told that the growing prosperity experienced by Norway at the end of the nineteenth century was founded on a mindless slaughter which almost wiped out an entire species. No one wished to be reminded that their Stressless armchairs were covered, so to speak, in whaleskin.

  Jonas Wergeland refused, however, to duck the issue; he wanted, he said, to make a programme in which the killing of a whale formed the key scene. But how to do it?

  Much has been said and written about the television series Thinking Big. Younger generations may find it difficult to imagine that anyone could have taken a television programme so seriously, that it could have gained such control over people’s minds, taken up so many column inches in the press. And yet all those articles and critiques went only a small way towards explaining the exceptional nature of the phenomenon that was Jonas Wergeland. Take, for example, the reasons for his remarkable viewing appeal – Jonas Wergeland himself was a standard feature, the presenter, of every programme. Not one expert had wit enough to see that his inimitable, charismatic screen presence was actually born of shyness. Simply by always appearing so wary and diffident, Wergeland excited as much attention and interest as a stranger in a place where everybody knows everybody else.

  And despite all that was said about Wergeland’s innovative style, no one saw fit to mention the most amazing thing of all: here was a television series that came close to transcending its own boundaries. The best thing Jonas Wergeland ever did was to realise, very early on, what an inadequate medium television was, that its days were numbered, that he was working with an outmoded and hopelessly limited art form. In his programmes he clearly endeavoured to discover or to anticipate new – possibly even hybrid – forms. There was, for instance, something about the camera-work in the Foyn programme, the filming, the composition of the shots, the different, but evenly balanced aspects which prompted people to use the term ‘virtual reality’ in connection with television for the first time – even though anybody could turn round and say that the screen itself was still only two-dimensional. In juggling so radically with opposing elements, Jonas Wergeland was working towards another medium. And in point of fact this had nothing to do with technique, it had to do with a new way of looking at things, or better: of thinking about things, a different form of awareness.

  The woman who accidentally witnessed Jonas Wergeland’s weird skipping session became so intrigued, or so worried rather, that she returned to the conference room almost an hour later and through the open door saw Jonas still skipping in the dark, barely visible in the faint light falling through the windows from the street outside, skipping at breakneck speed, this woman reported. ‘I’m almost sure he was hovering in mid-air,’ she declared. ‘And there was a kind of aura about him.’

  Then he had suddenly stopped and raced out of the room. His colleague had observed him later, in his office, engrossed in a mass of papers, with different coloured felt-tips in either hand. It was on this night that the programme on Svend Foyn was conceived, a programme in which apparently unrelated elements were united within the framework of an explosive and deadly cannon shot.

  Skipping was a method which Jonas Wergeland had sworn by for years, although what really mattered was not the skipping itself, but what it sparked off. You see, at a certain point in his boyhood, Jonas had discovered what his hidden talent was: a much more important gift than that of being able to hold one’s breath: the ability to think. And again one has to ask: how could anyone have failed to see it? Hundreds of individuals have commented on Jonas Wergeland’s story, but not one of them has ever mentioned his attitude towards the most elementary of all things: the relationship of one thought to the next. And to a third. And a fourth.

  This may sound surprising, but there are not many people who can really think, who are conscious of the process of thinking, and certainly not in the way that Jonas Wergeland could. He wasn’t all that good at it at first either, he had a particularly poor mastery of the mental discipline which involved imagining what lay behind closed doors. When, for example, he was invited into Karen Mohr’s flat, he felt sure – since he had already been there lots of times in his thoughts – that he was soon to behold her well-guarded and brilliantly camouflaged secret: her diamond-cutting workshop. But when she opened the living-room door he realised how wrong he had been. He stepped into another world. A world within the world, he was later to think. Although it was snowing outside and quite dark, he felt as if suddenly it was summer, in fact he almost caught a distant whiff of salt water, the sound of waves washing the shore. It was as if he had been looking at a map of the Sahara and someone had pulled it up to reveal a map of the French Riviera underneath. Here, in the middle of Grorud, deep in the suburban desert of Grorud, he had stepped into Provence.

  The living room had a warm, an intimate, a – yes, that was it – a French feel to it. The floor was tiled in black and white, like a café. On the white walls hung a couple of plants with bright red blossoms, some photographs in woven raffia frames and an unusual and very striking picture. All along one wall, under the window, grew tall, green plants, miniature palm trees. After a while he thought he heard sounds coming from this jungle and when he looked more closely – wonder of wonders – what did he find but a little fountain. On the stippled glass top of the coffee table stood a vase of fresh flowers and, next to it: an elegant glass containing a milky-white liquid. On either side of the French windows onto the veranda hung blue, slatted wooden shutters which – Jonas later learned – could be pulled across the windows to shut out the realities of Norway. There was a faint odour of what might have been liquorice in the room. For this he soon received an explanation: ‘Every evening, after work and before dinner, I have a glass of Pernod,’ Karen Mohr told him. ‘Here, have a sniff, doesn’t it smell wonderful?’

  Who would ever have guessed that in the heart of the estate, in the midst of all those square, solid blocks of flats through whose doors filtered the smells of stewed lamb with cabbage and fish balls in white sauce, there was a room like this – Pernod-scented, and with shutters on the insides of the windows? If I look out of the window, Jonas thought, in the distance I will see, not Trondheimsveien, but the Mediterranean.

  Considered from a broader perspective, however, maybe all of this was not so strange after all. You have to remember that this was in the days when lots of flats were being radically transformed: fashions were changing, people were better off. Suddenly they were chucking out all their old junk and opting instead for living rooms decorated with Japanese minimalism; either that or they were turning doorways into white Spanish arches and converting spare corners into Costa del Sol-type bars with seating for ten. Especially where wallpaper
was concerned, your average Norwegian lost all inhibition; some covered their walls with designs that gave you the impression of being surrounded on all sides by rough-hewn logs, others went the whole hog and transformed their walls into gigantic landscape scenes which made you feel as if you were living in a tent, right out in the wilds.

  ‘Would you like a bite to eat,’ Karen Mohr asked. ‘I was just about to make an omelette, it won’t take a minute.’

  Jonas took a seat. The living-room furniture was of light, bright rattan with floral cushions. In one corner was a large cage containing two white doves. Jonas never told anyone about this visit or his subsequent visits. As far as he could tell, no one else knew what the inside of Karen Mohr’s flat looked like. He came to think of this as a secret discovery; he had found a source – not of the Nile, but of a spate of rumours. But it was also something of a mystery: after all, how could this woman have such a living room without anyone in the sixty other flats knowing a thing about it? Or, to put it another way: how could so many people be so wrong?

  The plate on which his omelette came was a memorable experience in itself, with a pattern of vine leaves running round the rim. This was the first time Jonas had ever tasted an omelette, eggs folded into a surprise package. It was also softer and creamier than any omelette he would be served later in life. If the truth be told, Karen Mohr set a standard for omelettes to which no future omelette could hope to aspire. ‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked, raising her wine glass. ‘Could you tell that I had added a dash of nutmeg and cardamom?’ Along with it they had a baguette: a long, thin loaf of bread which she had baked herself. She took a chunk from the basket: ‘You simply break off a piece, like this,’ she said brightly.

 

‹ Prev