The Conqueror

by Jan Kjaerstad

  What fascinated Jonas most was the sum of opinions formed, those leaps from topic to topic, or the points that flew thick and fast – as, for instance, in the poems by Ezra Pound which Viktor sometimes recited while standing by the ever-expanding bookcases. Something new seemed to come into being, not out of the substance of their arguments, but in the gaps between Pet Sounds and Kierkegaard, Eddie Merckx and Hideki Tojo.

  Then it was time to eat. All three harboured the same fondness for Beate, a yen which, as the evening wore on could also set the mouth watering. Because the Three Wise Men ate just one thing in the Bamboo Grove: potatoes, and Beate – a relatively new variety – numbered among their absolute favourites, for its appearance too: the delicate contrast between red skin and white flesh. The Three Wise Men were ‘enologists’ on the potato front. Not since the so-called ‘potato preachers’ of the eighteenth century has anyone taken so much interest in the potato – especially in combination with its liquid by-product: ‘We have to use Mr Potato Head!’ was Viktor’s constant refrain.

  It was not the first strawberries that the Three Wise Men looked forward to but the first potatoes; they knew when all the different varieties were due in the shops, that Ostara was an early, Kerr’s Pink a late crop; they sampled every sort, from the Dutch Bintje with its rather mild flavour to the powerful potato taste of the floury, yellow Pimpernels. They would go to any lengths to get hold of Saturna, a much underrated potato, and stuffed themselves silly when an extra tasty almond potato came on the market, a potato normally only grown in the mountains. ‘And I’d pay anything for those little Ringerike potatoes,’ Axel told his greengrocer.

  Although they tried cooking potatoes in all manner of ways, from mashed to au gratin, for the most part they stuck to baked potatoes – not least because they were so wonderfully easy. The only other ingredient they added was garlic, in the form of garlic butter. Because it so happens that around 1970 Norway was invaded by an armada – a fleet of garlic boats, and despite the fact that these met with fierce resistance, as did everything from the outside world, and despite the fact that most people reacted with disgust and would even change their seat in the bus if someone smelled of garlic, in the end they succumbed. For the Three Wise Men, baked potatoes with garlic butter, presented in their silver-foil wrappings like some precious gift, represented the perfect blend of the Norwegian and the international. ‘To Wilhelmsen’s ships and garlic boats!’ they cried.

  From time to time they would raise their glasses to the icon, to the portrait of Viktor’s illustrious patron, the notorious picture of the then prime minister, Per Borten, clad in nothing but his underpants, with what looked like a potato stuck down them. ‘The premier, deep in thought,’ the marvellous caption proclaimed. Jonas took much the same pride in this photograph of Per Borten, clipped from the newspaper Dagbladet, as Daniel did in the picture of Ingeborg Sørensen in Playboy. Per Borten was a true Taoist, so ambiguous in his replies that no one knew what he meant, and he saw things from so many sides that he would later be described as a poor prime minister. ‘Every Norwegian is at heart a member of the Farming Party!’ Viktor whooped at the picture. This icon always filled them with a profound gratitude that, in a country where such a person had been the head of government for six years, nothing bad could possibly happen. If anyone asked ‘What is Norway?’, one only had to bring out this photograph and say: ‘This man was our Prime Minister’ – and that said it all.

  But by now the discussion had risen onto a higher plane. Axel put forward the theory, based on Dr Christian Barnard’s recent magnificent achievement, that one could in all likelihood fix a broken heart simply by having a heart transplant – a typical five-aquavit argument. Jonas considered the time was right to insist that the Norwegian film Vagabond really deserved to rate as highly as The Battleship Potemkin and Citizen Kane, after which Viktor proceeded to enlarge upon the reckless notion that human thought was possibly just one of Mother Nature’s many whims, much like the spiral-shaped horns with which she had equipped certain long-extinct creatures, excrescences which were, in fact, of more harm than good to the creature – an assertion which I think can safely be counted as a seven-aquavit argument.

  As the evening drew towards its close, with the table strewn with potato skins wrapped in crumpled silver foil and Axel revealing that he had at long last deciphered the meaning of the lyrics of Procol Harum’s celebrated hit ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and, just to make sure they got the point, bawling out the words ‘We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ’cross the floor…’, Jonas, who was still at the lowest aquavit level, began once again to give loud vent to his worries about their Norwegian mock, the essay, which was only a week away. Viktor had no fears, he had worked out a strategy ages ago – a strategy which he would go on fine-tuning until the Prelim. He swore by the creativity of the afterglow of alcohol – or as he put it: its te, an inner force – particularly in evidence during the couple of hours when the brain came to life and lay there, razor-sharp, like a sparkling, freshly polished optical instrument. The only problem was how to get this limbo-like state between death and new life to coincide with the first hours of essay writing. Viktor planned to turn up for the mock exam suffused with a perfectly calculated afterglow, arrived at by drinking a variety of aquavits in a particular order, thus assuring himself of a dazzling overview of the subject matter. But it was risky – just one shot too many the night before could take him from the heights of the afterglow’s Capitol to the Tarpeian cliffs of the hangover the morning after.

  ‘So what’s your problem?’ Axel asks.

  ‘I could do with a dose of originality,’ Jonas says. And well he might. Up to this point, mediocrity had paid off; Jonas received his best marks ever for bland essays consisting of material copied from one source or another and totally devoid of individuality. ‘So how,’ he asked, ‘am I supposed to write an essay containing any trace of independent reasoning and still get a good mark?’

  This question remained unresolved. Jonas left Seilduksgata as Viktor was getting to his feet, glass in hand: ‘I’ve finally discovered the deeper reason for why you and I are friends, Axel,’ he said. ‘It’s because I’m a Taoist and you’re a biochemist. There’s a parallel, you see, between the sixty-four possible hexagrams in the I Ching and the sixty-four possible combinations of base triplets in the genetic code!’ The last Jonas heard before he closed the door of the cinnabar-red room was Axel embarking on a long harangue on which of Ibsen’s totally crazy and unlikely endings was the most totally crazy and unlikely and announcing that he was going to call Agnar Mykle to ask what he thought – by this stage he was always ready to call Agnar Mykle – while Viktor had sat down at the piano and put everything he had into a rendering of ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird’ featuring some hitherto unheard-of harmonies – a ten-aquavit argument if ever there was one.

  Jonas really did take this Norwegian mock exam seriously: so seriously that he took himself off to the extensive archives of The Worker, which were housed high up in the People’s Theatre building on Youngstorget; he had sought refuge here before when he had a tricky subject to write on for homework, lying as it did on the way from school to the subway. Here he sat, working his way systematically through folders containing cuttings on subjects which he thought might come up, so that he would be able, within a couple of hours, to resolve international questions presented to him under such ghastly, imperative headings as ‘Give an account of…’ or ‘Describe and discuss…’ But he was afraid that it was no use: that the result would still depend on how he felt on the day and on the sheer luck of the draw.

  It was at that point that Einar Gerhardsen – I almost said God – walked through the room. And bear in mind – this came to pass in the days when only the King was more popular than the old prime minister, or ‘Man of our Times’ as he was dubbed a few years later. He had an office on the ninth floor, he was writing his memoirs, writing, you might say the essay of his life.

  Gerhardsen gives Jonas a
friendly nod, possibly remembers meeting him on the stairs with Aunt Laura at home in Sofienberggata, although he may of course nod and smile at all goggle-eyed high-school students. It is a big moment all the same: Gerhardsen standing there tall and straight in a chequered shirt and knitted waistcoat: a road worker who truly had paved the Way. A symbol of security on a par with Mount Dovre, large as life in front of him. And actually talking to him, making Jonas feel he has to tell him how nervous he is about the essay, whereupon Gerhardsen smiles, and this in turn encourages Jonas to ask about NATO. ‘Because the fact is,’ says Jonas, ‘that a lot of the radical pupils at the school keep agitating for Norway to pull out.’

  Maybe it was the complexity of the question that prompted Gerhardsen to invite Jonas into his office where, once they were settled on a sofa, he told Jonas in simple – I almost said ‘folksy’ – terms his opinion on this subject. Jonas listened intently, with his eyes on the long, wiry hands before him, which were constantly in motion, seeming to conduct the old premier’s words about what a difficult process it had been, a thumbnail sketch, and yet detailed, surprisingly detailed, so much so that Jonas almost felt guilty for taking up this man’s doubtless very valuable time. ‘The Norwegian ideal was of course impossible,’ Gerhardsen said in a slightly tremulous voice. ‘The idea of wanting to feel secure, but without being under any obligation.’ Initially, Gerhardsen told him, he had been in favour of a joint Nordic defence programme, and then, when this proved impossible to implement, of a Western alliance, although he was sceptical of American foreign policy. ‘That was a very hard time for me,’ he said, wringing his hands in mild embarrassment. ‘You could say that I doubted my way to saying yes.’ Jonas gazed with something approaching adoration at the monumental features across from him; the thought of the enigmatic stone figures on Easter Island flashed through his mind. Before he left, Jonas was given the second volume of Gerhardsen’s memoirs, the one which appeared in the bookshops that autumn and in which he had actually described Norway’s path to membership of NATO.

  Came the day of the exam. Viktor showed up looking deathly pale and with a thumping headache. No cause for concern, he assured them; he was in perfect form, felt sharp as a razor. Jonas had been more strung-out than usual as he sat there waiting, freshly sharpened pencil at the ready, in the gym hall – normally a place for physical exercises, but now dedicated to mental gymnastics. He was not really surprised when he was handed the exam paper; it all had to do, as Viktor would have said, with alchemy: ‘Assess the importance of Einar Gerhardsen in Norwegian post-war politics’ read one option.

  Jonas dashed off a rough draft, scribbling like mad, wrote down all he had read, all the conclusions he had reached, so pleased that he almost wept after he had made his fair copy and handed it in. He knew he could simply have presented the generally accepted view, that of a man who had spearheaded the rebuilding of the country and worked for social levelling and equality, of an era epitomized by unprecedented economic growth and a rise in prosperity which, perhaps more than in any other country, benefited all the people – he could have written about all of that and got good marks for it. As a reward for delivering exactly what was expected, the conventional response. But Jonas wanted, for once, to think for himself, to be provocative, and so instead he wrote – wrote so hard that his pencil snapped several times while he was still on the rough draft: the most important factor was that of international solidarity, he wrote, Gerhardsen understood that if there was one country in the world that could no longer act as if it were living in splendid isolation, that country was Norway, he wrote. Only through painful collaboration could one hope to contribute to détente and have a positive influence, he wrote. ‘Gerhardsen – possibly because he was a socialist first, last and always – embodied the will to see beyond the bounds of his own country,’ Jonas wrote. ‘Gerhardsen simply took up the fight for a political agenda which led Norway from being a spectator to being an active participant.’

  Jonas took his departure in the long peacetime, stated that the nigh-on unnatural, 125-year long period of peace up to the outbreak of the Second World War had left Norwegians pampered and blind. And even during the war – in the minds of most people the greatest national catastrophe of the twentieth century – the number of Norwegians killed was no greater than the number killed on Norwegian roads in a couple of decades. This had given birth to a kind of collective illusion, Jonas wrote, that it was possible to stay out of the turmoil of international affairs. The Norwegian people were used to having bounty flowing into their laps, despite the fact that they kept themselves apart from the world. The Gulf Stream factor, Jonas called it, came up with the name then and there, was all at once a fount of inspiration and ideas. The way he saw it, the Norwegian people seemed to have been in a prolonged state of shock ever since gaining their freedom and independence in 1905; they were absolutely terrified to open their mouths at all in case something went wrong and they found themselves entangled in a web of ties and obligations. They seemed to be hanging on to the notion of themselves as a nation of free peasants and had closed their minds to the fact that Norway was an industrial nation, dependent on a global market. Jonas’s heart sang in his breast, he felt as though the graphite of his pencil was being transformed into diamond. In conclusion he unabashedly wrote that joining NATO represented the most crucial change of the post-war years, namely the internationalisation of Norway. This was also Gerhardsen’s greatest claim to fame. He had recognized – albeit reluctantly – that it was international politics, rather than the labour movement, which had shaped and would go on shaping the development of Norwegian society in our century. Gerhardsen understood, in short, that the prosperity of Norway – and indeed the potential for creating a welfare state – depended on conditions existing beyond the borders of Norway. ‘Einar Gerhardsen saw,’ the Norwegian teacher read in Jonas Wergeland’s essay, ‘that what we today call “autonomy” had in fact been lost long before.’

  What Jonas did not realize then, although he did later, was that Gerhardsen, by taking Norway into NATO, also laid the foundations for a ‘No’ to the EU. In reality, the two Norwegian referendums on whether to join the European Union were decided back then, in 1949, by Einar Gerhardsen alone, because, no matter how you look at it, he was the key player, both in the government and in the party. Had it not been for Gerhardsen’s stance on a Western defence treaty, the famous national congress in February 1949 would never have passed a resolution supporting negotiations on membership of such an alliance. And had Norway not become a member of NATO, it would, due to the uncertainties surrounding national security, in all probability have gone on to join the EEC or, later, the EU. To Jonas’s mind, there was no one to whom the Norwegian anti-EU movement owed a greater debt than Einar Gerhardsen.

  Jonas sat in that gym hall, tired but happy, as if he had just finished a hard training session: feeling, for once, that he had written something with a bit of bite, a dash of originality.

  And I ask you, Professor: can this person – can this faltering, naïve, vulnerable individual really be a murderer?

  Axel got good marks, as always, for a gift of an essay question. He wrote about Henrik Ibsen – a glib, sycophantic, coolly calculated essay, totally at odds with everything he believed. Viktor, for his part, got top marks, a six, for an essay which ‘assessed the role played by heroes in the lives of ordinary people’ – top marks in melancholy, alcoholic afterglow. He wrote about Napoleon, he tore Napoleon to shreds. Four Løiten aquavits, two Gammel Oplands and Five Gilde Taffels. His words were hammered in like nails in a coffin. Napoleon didn’t stand a chance.

  Jonas, on the other hand, got a two for his essay, subtitled ‘From Spectator to Player’. He didn’t know what to think. His Norwegian teacher made some remark about it being all very well to show a bit of involvement, but God knows there were limits. It should probably be borne in mind that this was at a time, during the build-up to the EU referendum, when feelings ran high, among schoolteachers too. Neverthe
less, Jonas Wergeland’s first attempt to realize his dream of becoming the Father of his Country – if, that is, it was not a covert experiment aimed at bringing him immortality – was almost a total failure.

  $$

  Now we are taking a leap – or rather, this is not a leap, it is a continuation – to Jonas sitting in the lavishly appointed kitchen of Ambassador Boeck’s residence in Ullevål Garden City; it is less than a year since Margrete moved back to Norway and Jonas was reunited with the great love of his boyhood. He has just finished a late breakfast when she arrives home from Stavanger and dumps her bag down in the hall. ‘How did it go?’ he asks, without looking up from his newspaper. ‘Fine,’ she says, no more than that, only that it went fine. ‘I need to lie down for a bit,’ she says and disappears into the bedroom.

  It may be – I would not rule out the possibility – that after this brief exchange Jonas Wergeland packed his few belongings into a suitcase and left the solid brick house among the apple trees in Ullevål Garden City, because there were people who swore that they had run into Jonas Wergeland in the transit lounge at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport that same afternoon – and the date is easy to remember, because it was the very day on which banner headlines were proclaiming the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a political and religious event that was to have historical consequences – on his way, by all accounts, to California, to Los Angeles ‘to make a fresh start, to live in the light’. He was even supposed to have said something about resuming a former course of study and was therefore planning to visit the Hale observatory with the express purpose of seeing the new solar telescope at Big Bear Lake. Or as he said, or was purported to have said: ‘It’s high time I put my pointless, eclipsed life in perspective.’