Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

His father was still playing the same swaying pitching music; a piece which somehow broke all the rules, a musical prism, a rhythm which put Jonas in mind of a caravan, of campfires in the darkness, of people sitting in a circle telling stories, a low, rhythmic murmur. Jonas thought of the human memory, of people who could carry thousands of pieces of organ music in their heads. Or entire epics. Like his grandfather. Suddenly it struck Jonas that his grandfather’s death was like a huge organ being dismantled, or an organ sinking beneath the waves.

When do we become the person we are? When do we open the door onto all of our inherent potential?

He lay on his back, feeling heavy, heavy as lead from head to toe. And yet there was something about his shoulders, his shoulder-blades: an incipient thrill, a promise, a longing to be raised up. Who’s going to tell me now, he thought, who’s going to make me someone special?

Is this the most crucial story in Jonas Wergeland’s life?

He gazed up at the apse of the church, the fresco, at the angels playing their instruments in the air above the Great White Flock, the sea of people. The organ music, the surge of it, conjured up a picture of water in his mind. He remembered how he had used to sit among the pebbles on the shore while his grandfather told stories. ‘Just imagine, Jonas, if you were …’ How, while hearing his grandfather weaving him into grand epic tales, he had run his eyes, run his hands, over the pebbles, large eggs that harboured secrets of time, water. And now here he was again: by a sea, among stones, surrounded by a swirl of music, in a church of granite, and it was as if the music, that music which was not like anything else, suggested the possibility of another story, was another story.

Jonas lay in the choir of the church, the music had encased him in a cocoon; he lay perfectly still, torpid and yet restless, aware of a twinge, an ache in his body, primed for something or other. Outside it was snowing, a silent shower of soft specks, the sort of lovely snowstorm that is followed by sunshine and which leaves behind it a brilliant white landscape, totally altered, dazzling.

Can a person suddenly become something completely different from what they appear to be?

His father reset the stops, began to play another meditation, ‘Les enfants de Dieu’ from Messiaen’s organ cycle La nativité du Seigneur , opening with a cascade of harmonies, a fanfare almost, that made Jonas start; a fantastic rising progression of chords and notes working up to a climax that never came because the music merely went on, turning into a tremendous upsurge, a mighty crescendo, music in continual metamorphosis, a leap from key to key, a musical sweep that made the stomach sink. Jonas listened, entranced, the whole church shook as if the music had found a crowbar with which to prise apart the crystal bars of the stones and was about to blow the building apart.

And here I will have to stop for a moment, because I am now coming to an extremely difficult part and, to be honest, I am not sure whether I can count on the goodwill, or tolerance, this story calls for. You see, during the next few minutes Jonas Wergeland had what, for want of a better expression, I will have to call a mystical experience, with all the potential for misunderstanding and misconstruction this entails, not least in a country which gets so touchy, so up-tight about anything metaphysical as Norway. Let me just say, briefly, that if Jonas Wergeland were, at some point in his life, to touch the bedrock of existence, to have anything approaching a mystical experience, a meeting with the angel of light, then it would not be unreasonable for it to occur here, with his father at the organ and Jonas himself stretched out all alone in a church built from the very rock from which he had, so to speak, sprung.

This is what happened: while his father’s organ playing was making the whole church oscillate, while the snow was falling soundlessly over the surrounding countryside and while the light was cascading through the stained-glass windows like coloured dust, Jonas Wergeland realized that he would have to tell himself, that he would have to create his own story.

There comes a time when a person changes his identity, when he jumps, as it were, from one story to another, and in Jonas Wergeland’s case it happened here, in a church filled with strange music. Up to then he had been told. Up to then he had been reliant on other people’s stories. His grandfather’s. Aunt Laura’s. Nefertiti’s. He had been a listener. Now he was going to have to take over — and it would not be a matter of being who he was, but of choosing who he wanted to be.

So if anyone has been wondering when Jonas Wergeland became the person he was, it was there, in the nave of a church in Grorud. Because it was there, lying on a red carpet under a large fresco depicting the Great White Flock, a sea of humanity, that Jonas made up his mind to break out of the crowd, to stand out for all to see. Then and there, with Messiaen’s extraordinary music ringing in his ears he made up his mind to tell the story of the Duke. He was no longer Jonas Hansen, he was Jonas Wergeland, right then and there he took his mother’s maiden name, christened himself, so to speak, on the spot — appropriately enough, with the font — that, too, of granite — standing only a few yards away from him. From then on he would be Jonas Wergeland, the Duke, an individual with many people inside him and, consequently, so big that no one would be able to miss him. He would seek out the Golden Fleece, bask in its golden sheen, stand in the light, visible to all. And this last says more than anything else about what actually happened there in a church vibrating with the deep tones of an organ, with music that seemed forever to be tearing itself free of its own development and context; aspiration and ambition were aroused. Jonas wanted to be an organist, too: setting life’s stops, entrancing people, shaking them up, making their molecules oscillate, tugging at their heartstrings. And even though he had no idea how he was going to do this, and despite the fact that he only had the vaguest notion of his own gifts, he had an idea that he might now have chosen a life which would involve encounters with extraordinary women, long journeys and an exhausting struggle to make the people of Norway think big. Jonas Wergeland lay on the floor and felt an ache in his shoulders, his whole body aching, as if he were growing, as if he were growing too fast.

Like a forewarning of the sphere in which he would become visible to all, the entire apse of the choir, the large fresco, started to vibrate, to emit a radiant light — Jonas saw how it suddenly came to life , like a gigantic television picture. And as the organ music altered character yet again, to something reminiscent of a feverish dance, with high, swirling notes, Jonas heard a ripping sound as one of the life-size angels stepped out of the fresco and swooped down to the floor where he lay, whereupon Jonas was lifted up and they, the angel with Jonas in its arms, flew up to the roof and straight through one of the windows, the stained-glass picture shattering into a million pieces round about them.

I should just say here that I am giving you Jonas Wergeland’s own version of the incident, for one thing because this best describes what actually happened — a word like ‘truth’ is of no relevance in this case — namely, a choice in favour of the unpredictable and the improbable.

Jonas came to his senses lying in the fresh snow outside the church, on the side facing Grorud school, the school of his childhood; came round to find his father standing over him.

‘What was that you were playing?’ was his first thought.

‘But what happened ?’ said his father, more worried than angry, his hands fluttering anxiously and helplessly in midair. ‘What on Earth happened?’