‘Just for a laugh,’ said Sgt Petter. ‘We’re just going to give her a bit of a fright.’ More laughter. The other three laughed too.
Jonas wasn’t sure. He utterly despised Sgt Petter, but the older boy did possess certain talents Jonas wished that he too possessed: Sgt Petter had a creative streak. He could create things. All Grorud knew, for example, that he was the originator of the following joke, which at one point was being told all over Norway and beyond: ‘What did the Beatles say when they were caught in an avalanche? Watch out for those Rolling Stones!’ Sgt Petter was, in short, a trendsetter; he was, among other things, the first person back then to sport a pair of the fabulous new Romika football boots, which looked just like proper football boots and hence easily outclassed the more old-fashioned Vikings. All in all, Professor, I think that the difference between Romika and Viking football boots would prove a worthwhile peg on which to hang a local cultural analysis – the difference, as it were, between the elegant and the clodhopperish: a comparison elevated to a global scale by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss when he writes about the raw and the cooked. Boys who favoured the Romika boot tended to be fleet-footed forwards who quite often went on to play for top clubs like Frigg or Lyn, while the heavier and more robust Viking boots with their red laces were the preferred choice of backs who walloped or dunted the ball, characters like Frankenstein who usually wound up playing for deadly company teams. That Sgt Petter was the first person in Grorud with Romika boots basically says all there is to say about him.
‘Okay,’ Jonas said. He had defied Petter once, years before, and he was still smarting from that encounter. And yet: why did he do it? Because he knew what would happen. Or was that why: that he wanted to see whether what he knew would happen really would happen? As if he wanted to tempt fate. Press a strange, new button.
‘Great stuff,’ said Sgt Petter. ‘You’re a right tough nut, Jonas you’ve proved that before.’
Laila was glad to have someone to walk through the wood with – they’d get home faster that way, she said. Jonas felt his testicles constrict as they entered the path between the trees. It was dark, but Laila did not appear to be at all frightened, in fact she seemed very cheerful, was more chatty than usual, wanted to know what Jonas thought about some of the scenes in the film as they were walking past sheds with a graveyard air about them, blocks of stone just waiting to be turned into gravestones.
When she took his hand, halfway through Transylvania, he had second thoughts and was about to turn back. Too late. Just level with the quarry’s gaping amphitheatre they ran into the wolf pack, Sgt Petter and the other three crashing out of the bushes, not with a ‘Boo!’ but with dangerously set faces. They grabbed Laila by the arms. ‘You keep watch here,’ they ordered Jonas. ‘Give a howl if anyone comes.’
They disappeared, dragging Laila between them. Jonas knew no one would come. He heard Laila say something, the boys laughing. ‘Take it easy, we know you want to.’ Sgt Petter’s voice. Then that laugh. An innocent laugh and yet steely. Out of place. Beyond creepy.
Jonas heard what it sounded like. Dragon laughter. The sound they had created in their radio play.
He stood there, in the middle of Transylvania, a prince of darkness, staring at the ground, heard Laila moaning. She liked it. Well, why not? With his own eyes he had seen her slipping out of Charlie’s Chariot with her hair all mussed up. Alf Layla wa-Layla.
He stands there, in the middle of Transylvania, in the amphitheatre of the quarry as it were, staring at the ground, hears fabric being ripped, a stifled cry of ecstasy, or was it a muffled scream, a scream for… He can’t help it, has to look up, spies them in among the trees, sees them clearly even in the dark, sees how three hold her down while the fourth lies on top of her. He looks up just as two of them swap places. And seeing it with his own eyes it is impossible to misinterpret those sounds: it is not moaning, it is sobbing, a human being wailing in pain.
He knows what he ought to do now. Hold up a cross. Be a Saint George. Anything. But he is paralysed. Stands in the middle of Transylvania, in the amphitheatre, and just watches. A spectator.
And at the same time, appalled, he realizes that what he is feeling, what he thinks is horror, is not horror. It is a breathless awareness, a tremendous opening up, a receptivity, to impressions. The scene before him, everything around him, seems to become a lever, dislodging a rock inside him, uncovering a dark hole, a treasure, a ball of snakes, he doesn’t know. He stands there and feels himself almost being torn apart with despair, even while wishing that this moment would last. For everything, even the smell of damp granite, permeates him and he is transformed into one enormous overview, an explosion of ideas, a kind of chord which sums up everything, which is both grating and divine, as is the rhythm – ‘That I’ll have to try out on the piano,’ was the thought that flashed through his mind – a beat, a whole lot of beats at once, thudding, pounding, right through him, a wild, primitive, compelling pulse.
The four boys staggered out. Sgt Petter had an ugly scratch on his cheek, he was bleeding. ‘Great stuff, Dickie. I knew you were a tough nut.’ He gave Jonas a quick thump on the back before they all ran off toward Solhaug. On their own: innocent lads. Together: a mob. The mystery of the mass. Four swans forming a dragon.
Jonas followed the sounds of weeping. Laila was sitting on the ground, her trousers still round her ankles, her sweater rucked up above her waist. There were scratches under one breast, blood on the back of her hand. Jonas noticed some pine needles on her white thigh, wanted to brush them off, but didn’t. ‘Laila?’ he said.
No answer. Nothing but heartrending sobs.
‘Was it horrible?’ he asks.
She looked at him. Despite the darkness he saw it. Despite the tears. A hate he had only seen once before. In Ørn’s eyes that time when they fought and Jonas held him down.
She got up, clearly in pain. Crying soundlessly. He tried to help her, but she turned away, it took her a while to straighten her clothes, then she started making her way back through the trees, so unsteady on her feet that she had to stop every so often and prop herself up against a tree trunk. He heard her throw up. He followed slowly after her. Only once did she turn round, and though she didn’t say anything, from the look in her eyes he knew what she was thinking. The most horrible thing about it, those eyes said, was him.
Jonas stayed right behind her the rest of the way home, benumbed by conflicting emotions. Guilt turned his legs to lead. A rhythm galloped around in his head. He could not rid himself of it. Then: Dickie, he thought. Why did Sgt Petter call me Dickie?
He knew it. It was bound to happen. He had known it all along.
From the Annals of the Potato Monarchy
‘What was the name of the marshal in command of Napoleon’s I Corps at the battle of Austerlitz?’
The idea, usually, was to come up with the best strategy for life in general: or rather, to achieve immortality, but on this particular evening the matter in hand was the more prosaic one – in both senses of the word – of the tactics for getting the best possible mark for the mock Norwegian exam held just before Christmas, a rehearsal for the actual university Prelim, an essay which tested not only one’s command of the finer points of the Norwegian language, but the whole of one’s shaky way of thinking. The Prelim essay was simply one of those trials that had to be undergone, like the BCG vaccination or the army’s long-distance endurance march.
Viktor and Axel had just finished playing a duet: ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’, meant as a kind of time-out. Viktor played the piano – no one played the piano like Viktor Harlem, the king of melancholy; he could elevate the blandest tune into a melodic heaven or make any tired old standard sound like you’d never heard it before – set free somehow, brand new. His left hand in particular spoke of a true gift, playing around with triads and switching about the notes in the chords as though the possibilities were endless. Axel’s double-bass playing was not up to the same standard, but it was impressive enoug
h. Axel had always sought out the bass line in life anyway – Jonas regarded his fervent interest in the DNA molecule as a variation on this same theme.
Speaking of bass lines in life, I ought perhaps to intimate my doubts regarding the previous story. Because, knowing you, Professor, you will automatically assume that such an apparently shocking incident must have a decisive effect on a person’s development. But what if that were wishful thinking? The episode can, of course, provide some clue as to how Jonas Wergeland sowed the seeds of an acknowledgement that the spectator is the guiltiest of all criminals, but such an insight could also spring from other experiences. At this juncture I am tempted to ask you to forget all about the story from the wood, for the moment at least. I am afraid that it may distract your attention. For what if the really dark holes in Jonas Wergeland’s life lay in the bright stories, or in perfectly ordinary days, or in an incident akin to the one I am about to describe, one that revolves, not around Laila but around the love of Beate?
The Three Wise Men were at Viktor’s place, in Seilduksgata in Grünerløkka, in a cinnabar-red room known as ‘The Bamboo Grove’. Every Friday evening they gathered here – and often stayed all night – to talk and toast his illustrious patron, in the form of an icon on the wall. It was actually Viktor’s mother’s flat, but she had moved in with a new man, so he had the place to himself. At the end of the street stood a proud, old building that had once been a sailcloth factory. Appropriately enough, since they often felt that they were setting sail up there in Viktor’s flat, that they were weaving the fabric for great intellectual voyages.
The living room resembled a combination of bar, travel agency and joiner’s workshop. On the only wall not painted cinnabar red – but instead covered in wallpaper with a bamboo design – hung an enormous map of the world marked with a distinctly meandering line which looked as if it were following the round-the-world voyage of another Captain Cook, and the floor was covered in tools, off-cuts of timber and wood shavings. Aside from the table – two still pungent halves of an old oak sherry cask – Viktor had made all his own furniture, not least the bookshelves he was constantly having to extend to accommodate new books bought to provide more insight into Ezra Pound’s The Cantos. Viktor claimed that everything, absolutely everything, he had ever learned – right down to the fact that he could, at the drop of hat, sum up the ins and outs of phenomenological, hermeneutic and analytical philosophy – derived from his tussles with Ezra Pound’s poetic conglomerate. It is also worth noting here that there was no television in the room. ‘The salvation of the world is bound to come from a corner other than the one in which the TV stands,’ said Viktor.
There was also another, less philosophical, explanation for the absence of a television. Having first entered the gates of the Cathedral School and instantly homed in on one another – rather like ants, by dint of chemical secretions – Viktor and Axel eventually discovered that they had a common bond in their fathers. It was hard for Jonas to see how a director with the Akers Mek shipyard in Oslo and a manager at the Løiten Distillery in Hedemarken could have anything in common, but the key here was the Wilhelmsen shipping line. ‘If it weren’t for our fathers,’ the two said, arms wrapped round one another, ‘Norway would never have had its most famous product: Line Aquavit.’
Furthermore, both Axel and Viktor loathed television – again because of their sires. Axel’s father had had a brief, but hectic political career and in connection with this had once had to take part in an edition of Open to Question, in its day an extremely popular discussion programme on NRK. On this he was given such a lambasting by the programme’s aggressive chairman that he never got over it.
Viktor’s father worked, as I say, at the Løiten Distillery but cherished a distilled passion for another subject – Napoleon. In the very early sixties he took part in the quiz show Double Your Money, answering questions on this multifaceted topic. It went like a dream until they got to the 10,000-kroner question – a hairsbreadth away from winning a fortune, and he gave the wrong answer, or rather his mind went a complete blank when it came to one part of a multiple question, namely: ‘What was the name of the marshal in command of Napoleon’s I Corps at the battle of Austerlitz?’ He could remember both Soult and Davout and even Lannes but not the last one. And of course it was Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte, no less, the future Karl Johan, with a street in the centre of Oslo named after him and all. Viktor’s father lapsed into such a deep fit of depression after this that eventually his mother could not take it any more; she divorced him and moved to the capital, leaving her husband on his St Helena. Viktor soon followed his mother: in the long run it wore you down to be reminded every other day that you were the son of ‘the man who got the 10,000-kroner question wrong’ and on Karl Johan of all people. He developed a complex about it. If you said one word about Napoleon to Viktor, if you so much as hummed the Double Your Money theme tune or that old favourite, ‘Do You Still Care for Me, Karl Johan?’, you risked being strangled on the spot. They never went anywhere near the royal palace and the equestrian statue of the marshal, and walked down the street named after him only if absolutely necessary. Jonas had a suspicion that Viktor had sworn to avenge his father some day, and that it was Napoleon who would be on the receiving end.
Not surprisingly, the Three Wise Men’s favourite tipple was aquavit, procured through Viktor’s incredible network of contacts. To them, aquavit was a sacred beverage, primarily because, according to Viktor, they ought to follow the example of The Seven Wise Men, seven famed Taoists of Ancient China – a group of poets and rebels who represented the very essence of Taoism’s ‘action through non-action’, who did indeed spend all day in a bamboo grove, where they drank and saluted everything that was against the establishment. Viktor believed that this wu-wei, non-action, was an excellent ideal, since it was exactly the Norwegian way. Do things without doing anything. Everything would sort itself out anyway. Norwegians had been living like that for centuries. The Three Wise Men were simply trying to perfect, to refine, this mentality. So, while other pupils at the Cath became Maoists, the three friends became Taoists; they sat in the Bamboo Grove and paid tribute to China in their own way – they had even been known to write poems, quite spontaneously and in their finest calligraphy, which they pinned up next to the wall newspaper in the schoolyard.
Viktor drank for another reason too: he had a fanatical obsession with immortality and believed that aquavit – perhaps because of its name – could help him. Inspired by the old Taoists who had used alchemy in order to achieve immortality, Viktor tried first of all to get his hands on the secret recipes for aquavit which were kept in the Wine Monopoly safe and, when he had no luck here, experimented with combinations of different Norwegian aquavits, in much the same way as whisky is blended in Scotland, and with drinking various brands in the perfect sequence. ‘The Taoists concentrated on the minerals cinnabar and gold,’ said Viktor. ‘I’m going for cumin and alcohol.’
They enjoyed the aquavit for its own sake too, naturally, and had many a heated argument as to which one was the best. While Jonas was a fan of Gammel Opland and was wont to launch into lengthy panegyrics to a flavour so full and rich, and at the same time so smooth and complex, that one had a sense of two forces colliding, or as he put it: coiling towards one another, and rising onto a higher plane – Axel and Viktor were almost programmed to give pride of place to Løiten Line Aquavit. Hence the reason for the map on the opposite wall – a world suspended between bamboo canes – showing the route taken by the ships of the Wilhelmsen line. ‘Like all good Norwegians, the aquavit has to leave the country in order to become refined,’ said Axel, raising his glass to the meandering line denoting the aquavit’s 135-day voyage across the seven seas, a mandala upon which they could meditate while they drank, to truly see the miracle of the passage from potato to golden liquor: a metamorphosis which began with cooling coils and ended with the ocean waves. ‘Cheers,’ said Viktor. ‘Here’s to the potato, grape of the North!’
The room was filled with a glorious aroma – of new wood and alcohol, combined with the promising smells emanating from the oven in the kitchen – as in an exotic forest or, why not, a bamboo grove. Other than that it was the need to discuss things, ‘a yen for upsetting the universe’ – Viktor’s words – which brought the Three Wise Men together in Seilduksgata, and there’s no getting away from it: seldom, if ever, has so much absolute tripe been served up in a Norwegian living room. As if they were well aware of this themselves, the three had developed an ironic method for classifying their arguments, a sort of Richter scale designed to measure their greater or lesser shock effect: by the number of glasses drunk. And if the truth be told, their discussions were usually at their best, and certainly their most entertaining, towards the end of the evening, when they had reached the ‘ten-aquavit arguments’.
On this particular evening, since the main topic of discussion was the strategy for the mock exam in Norwegian, Viktor began with a pretty well considered theory to the effect that Pet Sounds by the American group the Beach Boys was a far more important album, in terms of musical history, than Sergeant Pepper by the British group the Beatles. ‘It was here, with Brian Wilson’s bass harmonica playing, that it all began,’ said Viktor. ‘The rest was easy.’ This, particularly because of the comparison with Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon was a typical two-aquavit argument. The same could be said of Jonas’s later assertion, based on outrageously tenuous grounds, that Kierkegaard’s engagement to Regine Olsen was broken off because he had syphilis. Whereupon Viktor introduced a three-aquavit argument for a new ideology: Merckxism – inspired by the racing cyclist Eddie Merckx – which involved keeping the masses down by showing sport on television, before Axel launched into a tirade about Tojo: ‘How come we know so flaming little about Tojo, when we know such a helluvalot about Hitler and Mussolini? That crook Tojo was the Second World War’s real éminence grise!’
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