The memory of this gave Jonas an idea. He called the producer of Jeopardy!, a former colleague at NRK who now worked for the company responsible for the quiz show. Jonas knew that this man could pull a few strings with the compilers of the questions for the Jeopardy! Grand Champions Final with no one being any the wiser. Despite the impropriety of the request, Jonas’s former colleague had immediately agreed to help. ‘Remember, we’re dealing with a sick man here,’ Jonas stressed. ‘We have to try everything.’
And so it came about that in this extraordinary final between the Grand Champions, in front of a million viewers, in the ‘Final Jeopardy!’ round in which the answer also had to be written down, Viktor suddenly heard the quizmaster announcing that the subject was Napoleon and the clue was: ‘The marshal in command of Napoleon I’s Corps at the Battle of Austerlitz.’
Even though Jonas knew the outcome, since the programme was recorded, he sat on the edge of his seat, his eyes glued to the screen, much the way we sometimes watch a suspenseful film again, even though we know how it ends. In his cell, Jonas held his breath as Viktor, in a studio in Nydalen in Oslo, stiffened when this tricky ‘answer’ was read out, as though, despite its name, only now did he understand that the programme was all about taking risks. For the viewers this was a dramatic moment. They saw Viktor Harlem put his hands to his large, babyish head, as if in pained confusion. This reaction lasted, however, only a matter of seconds and did not prevent him from writing down the question and reading it out, when his turn came, in a soft, tremulous voice: ‘Who was Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte, who later took the name Karl Johan?’ Strictly speaking this last part was not necessary, but Viktor had obviously wished to include it. Jonas never did find out whether this was just another fact which he had gleaned from watching the box, or whether it was a memory so traumatic and so powerful that it had broken through the wall from a past which he had forgotten.
Whatever the case, Viktor had outclassed his rivals, and now boasted the title of Supreme Grand Champion. There is also a little coda to the story. Afterwards, at an emotional press conference, Viktor recounted his traumatic childhood experience with his father and Double Your Money so movingly that the journalists presented him in their fulsome reports as a hero twice over. His father’s bitter defeat had finally been turned to victory.
In due course, Jonas also got to hear what had happened in the contestants’ room after the show. Viktor had sat down and started asking questions, delving and probing as if his whole life were suddenly a gigantic game of Jeopardy!, the only difference being that now the subject was anything but trivial. Because he had remembered who he was. He had come to his senses in two stages. After the arrowshot in the programme on Harald Hardråde he could only remember what he had seen on TV, which is to say over the past twenty-odd years. But after the Napoleon question he could remember everything about his life from his childhood up to the March day in 1972 when he had been strolling through the streets of Lillehammer with his two chums, Axel Stranger and Jonas W. Hansen; that was why he had put his hands to his head: in some way he had been feeling the pain of the blow from that block of ice, over twenty years delayed. Where were his two chums now? was the first thing he asked. And after that the questions came pouring out. What had happened to poor Krystle in the last episode of Dynasty. Why did he look so young? And why had no one given him the latest model of the Stressless Royal, with additional lumbar support and a neck rest that adjusted automatically? Thanks to all his television viewing, Viktor did not suffer from any sort of Rip van Winkle syndrome, he knew what a computer was and how the new Volvo looked. People, including the doctors, still did not know what to think. And they never would.
As far as Viktor’s physical condition was concerned time appeared to have stood still. When he woke up he was not pushing forty, he was nineteen. He not only looked nineteen, he also seemed to have the mind of a nineteen-year-old. When Jonas met Viktor in the visiting room at the prison shortly after the Easter holidays he felt as though he was shaking hands with, hugging, Viktor’s son. ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Viktor said, with that hundred-watt bulb back in his head. ‘I know it was you who arranged for that question to come up, who else could it have been?’ And then, puzzled: ‘But what are you doing here, Jonas? You’re no murderer? And it’s not like a chunk of ice struck you on the head.’
‘That’s my business,’ Jonas said, making it clear that he did not wish to talk about it. Although he almost said: ‘A block of ice struck at my heart.’
It was a strange, and emotional, reunion. Jonas could not help feeling, possibly because of Viktor’s disconcertingly youthful appearance, that it was only a day or so since they had parted in Seilduksgata and that they could simply pick up the threads of a conversation they had broken off twenty-five years earlier. ‘Over the past few days I’ve been reading The Cantos,’ Viktor said as he was leaving, with his old, familiar hundred-watt enthusiasm. ‘And do you know what? I understand it all now. Do you remember Venice? Ezra Pound was so wrong. I’ve waded through the whole thing again. It is a masterpiece. I actually think I have Pound to thank for the fact that I could answer so many questions on Jeopardy!’
‘I thought the TV might have had something to do with it,’ Jonas said cautiously, almost afraid that Viktor might have a relapse.
‘Oh, that too of course, but I’m sure I picked up a lot of those nonsensical facts from The Cantos,’ Viktor answered with a laugh. And added, serious now: ‘Pound really has written a work of genius. I think that when you started to read it aloud to me, somewhere in my subconscious I must have connected those extracts with all the books I studied in order to understand Pound’s verses – the books I built so many shelves for.’ Viktor’s baby face was shining, almost as if he felt this longed-for insight into The Cantos was worth the price he had paid: twenty years in hibernation – or perhaps one should say of education.
What became of Viktor after that Easter? He received masses of tempting offers, and one of these he accepted. In many ways the most logical one. Viktor did not only wake up, he also began to think big. He decided to help sell the Norwegian Encyclopedia. He took a job with its publishers, Kunnskapsforlaget, one of the country’s foremost promoters of knowledge – a post in their marketing department created just for him – and was involved in the launching of a new edition of a work which was to reference books what the Stressless Royal was to armchairs. Viktor also signed a lucrative contract in which he gave the publishing house permission to use him in their advertising campaign. He became, quite simply, the public face of Kunnskapsforlaget. ‘Learning keeps you young,’ Viktor announced from huge posters on walls all over the city where scantily clad models for H&M normally reigned supreme. For some time Viktor Harlem’s smiling and indecently youthful Einstein countenance was to be seen everywhere: ‘You too can be a champion!’ he declared. The campaign was, of course, a stroke of genius. Sales of the encyclopedia broke all records. Seeing Viktor, the Jeopardy! king, the Supreme Grand Champion, associated in this way with the Norwegian Encyclopedia, people automatically assumed that this was why he was so good at answering questions. Or asking them. The majority of Norwegians regarded Viktor as living proof that it paid to own a sixteen-volume encyclopedia. It appeared to be conducive both to a healthy body and a healthy bank balance. So it was in large part thanks to Viktor Harlem that Norway in the nineties had no trouble defending its ranking as one of the top countries in the world when it came to the number of encyclopedias per head of population.
Viktor started visiting Jonas as Jonas had visited him and one day at the prison, when they were chatting about television, Viktor said that he had recently watched the Thinking Big series again. He understood now what an impact it must have had on him, how much of it he could remember, even though at the institution he had watched the programmes, regularly, in a very different, abstracted frame of mind. ‘I hope you won’t be annoyed if I say I like the programme on Harald Hardråde best,’ he said to Jonas. ‘That
arrow didn’t just kill Harald Hardråde, it saved my life.’
I could not help thinking of both Viktor Harlem and the aforementioned programme when we were in Eivindvik, in Viking country, where there are traces dating back even further than Harald Hardråde. Outside the churchyard gate stood an ancient stone cross, and on a green hillside nearby we found a similar cross, carved in a slightly different style. Both could have been erected around the time when Christianity came to Norway, by kings such as Håkon the Good, Olav I or Olav II. The ground on which the Gulatinget, the first regional moot, was held had also lain somewhere in these parts, possibly in Eivindvik first, then at Flolid, where a stone now marked the site of the moot ground.
From Brekke we had sailed out into the fjord estuary, bore south, then made our way into Eivindvik’s nice, sheltered harbour, where we were assigned a berth alongside the local shop. Eivindvik was the perfect place in which to review our findings on Sognefjord and Viking times: with the pictures we had taken and the plethora of notes regarding rune stones and burial mounds – and the battlefields, like the bay off Fimreite where King Sverre won such a decisive battle over King Magnus in 1184. And only a little to the north of here, at Solund, Harald Hardråde had assembled his fleet before the disastrous expedition to England. Carl thought we should insert clips from Jonas Wergeland’s television programme into our presentation of Solund. I saw a circle being closed, I saw my two projects being juggled together to form a whole. I saw how, simply by being there, Jonas Wergeland had moved us to take a more radical approach to the OAK Quartet’s products, to wonder whether it was possible for us to transcend our medium, as he had once expanded the television medium.
From Jonas’s own ramblings it was clear that he was more interested in Dean Niels Griis Alstrup Dahl, of whom there were traces at every turn in Eivindvik. I could see why Jonas Wergeland would identify with someone like Dahl: a Prometheus, a popular enlightener in the true sense. Dahl was an individual who wanted to think big, a man who squeezed ‘bread from stones’, who instilled culture in farmers and fishermen. Jonas said he liked the thought that his mother’s family came from around here, most likely from Verkland Farm, not far from Brekke.
Just before we were due to leave I was sitting alone in the saloon on board the Voyager, making a note of things to add to my manuscript. It was here in Eivindvik that I decided to write a frame story about the sail along Sognefjord, because I saw that the inclusion of this voyage would make a difference – all the difference – to the picture of Jonas Wergeland’s life presented in the final draft. Here, too, I realised that by observing him so closely I had come to see myself in a new light. In writing this account I had also changed my own life. I think this must have been what I had in mind all the time. That deep down this was why I had done it. I now knew, what is more, how I felt about Martin.
The previous day I had taken myself off to a bench outside the old church to read through the big notebooks which Jonas Wergeland had come up and handed to me with a smile, just like that, as we were sailing up Prestesundet towards Eivindvik. ‘I’d better add my pittance,’ he said, ‘my contribution to the collective epic.’ I sat there, reading the handwritten pages, surrounded by the scent of cherry blossom, and I make no secret of the fact that I was so moved that I frequently had to stop, as my emotions got the better of me. Here, at long last, I had the answer to my question as to why he had done it, why he chose to go to prison. I had known. But I had not known in quite this way. I realised right away that I would have to weave these stories into my own book. With his permission. I would probably have to synchronise our accounts of some events. In other cases the contradictions would be allowed to stand.
But still: even our joint efforts offered no guarantee. It struck me that I might have been writing with a confidence that was quite unwarranted. The true story about Jonas Wergeland might just as easily be the sum of all the untold stories about him. Even at that point, sitting outside the church, I began to have some doubts about his own version of events. What bothered me most were the passages in which he described all his ventures, even his television series, as failures. I could not agree with him. As I rested my eyes on the old vicarage, once the home of Niels Griis Alstrup Dahl himself, a memory surfaced. Things get a bit more personal here, there’s no way round it: the truth is, you see, that I not only think, I am quite positive, that Jonas Wergeland once saved me, and possibly even my life.
This incident occurred on a beautiful autumn day, the sort of day that sharpens all the senses, a day so ineluctably clear that you suddenly become sensible to the element air. It was no coincidence that I should have been inspired to conduct my experiment, or seen that it could be done, on such a day.
I was working at the time for an advertising agency, among bright, young things with hip lighters and slick business cards: a milieu in which the right sunglasses counted for more than moral backbone. It had been a hectic week: the Advertising Association’s gala dinner and awards ceremony on the Friday followed, on the Saturday, by a party to mark the fifth birthday of our distinctive little agency; a pretty riotous affair at which we fêted ourselves as if we were the very lynchpin of society. The latter do was held at one of the city’s rock clubs, one of those dingy venues which make you feel as if you’ve landed in a disused factory or the hallway to hell. The only decorative element in the vast, totally black hall were the television sets dotted around the room on little trolleys, each one hooked up to a video recorder. On these monitors we had our own ads running non-stop without the sound. I had been responsible for setting this up, it was also up to me to make sure that all the equipment was returned to the suppliers. On the Sunday, after only a few hours of fitful sleep, I went for a walk on my own, and that’s when the idea came to me. I don’t know why. It may have been the wistfulness encapsulated in such crisp, clear autumn hours, the detachment from life that they bestow. As I watched a maple leaf drifting gently to the ground, the thought settled in my mind, as crisp and clear as the air around me.
I ought to say that this was also a special day in another respect. I had woken that Sunday morning with a feeling of listless melancholy, of body and spirit, which I had long feared was going to engulf me completely. All I wanted was to stay there in bed with the curtains drawn for days. I had just come out of a relationship, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe it was all the partying I had been doing, two bashes as vacuous and frenetic as only such gatherings can be. But even that could not explain it all. I knew my mother had suffered from depression; I had always been scared, terrified, that I might succumb to something similar. In my teens I had sometimes caught glimpses of a darkness that frightened me, but I had never felt anything like this vague numbness, this weight which was pressing down on me when I opened my eyes that Sunday. All my senses told me that I was in danger, that at any moment I could be hurled into some indefinable darkness. For the first time it occurred to me that my life might go the same way as my mother’s. The thought made my heart pound with dread.
So even as I tried to make the most of this clear autumn day, the keen, invigorating air, inside I felt gloomy and angst-ridden. It is hard to put it into words, but I walked along beneath the flaming yellow leaves on the trees with an uneasy feeling that the world was grey. Grey and flat. It must have been this that rendered me so receptive. An idea that should have occurred to me before was forced to the surface by a semi-conscious sense of desperation, a vague horror that all the colour and depth would drain out of life.
When I got home I got out the tapes of Dad’s – or no, I had better maintain, still, the distance I have tried to observe throughout: Jonas Wergeland’s – television series. I kept them on the same shelf as Knut Hamsun’s collected works, since I happen to believe that this series ranks alongside the great works of Norwegian literature. I drove into the city, back to the club. As soon as I set foot in that vast, empty space and saw the television sets scattered about like basic forms of basalt or black marble I knew I was on th
e right track.
The smell of the party still hung over the barren, black-painted hall: cigars and booze, the whiff of expensive perfumes mingled with the indeterminate, aromatic odour of the somewhat disappointing food we had had. There were still a few bottles sitting about. The floor was sticky. Purely by chance I was dressed all in black and for a moment I had the feeling that I was merging with the room, that the massive hall was going to swallow me up. I shrugged it off and began to arrange the trolleys holding the TV sets and video recorders in a big circle. I thought of Stonehenge, that enigmatic arrangement of megaliths in England. On reflection, I seem to remember a newspaper photograph from the time when the Thinking Big series was first shown on NRK TV: a pensive-looking Jonas Wergeland pictured in his office, like an inventor in his laboratory. My eye had been caught not so much by his facial expression as by the screens in the background, flat panels arranged in a semi-circle. On them one could see large sheets of paper covered in writing, squares with lines running between them. It looked as though he was standing in a many-sided room packed with ideas.
I slotted one tape, one programme from the series, into each video recorder. The machines were all of the same make and hooked up to one another in such a way that I could start them all at the same time with just one remote control. I pressed the button and there I stood, all at once, in the centre of a vast hall, in the centre of a circle of television screens, each showing a programme from Jonas Wergeland’s television series. The sets seemed almost to form an electronic membrane around me, as if I were inside a massive, life-giving organ, a breathing entity. Let me put it this way: I would not have missed it for the world. It was like being touched, caressed almost, by something, a quality, which was light-years away from the universe I ordinarily inhabited and by which I was surrounded in this room, in the shape of mementos of a meaningless party: the dregs of wine in plastic cups and the reek of stale smoke, a slip of paper scrawled with headings for a pretentious speech tramped into some sticky gunge on the floor.
The Discoverer Page 63