Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

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.’