Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

In all fairness, it ought to be said, by way of excusing the majority of the Norwegian people, that there was something quite unique about Jonas Wergeland’s career with NRK. And moreover, people could tell one face from another. It was not every day that you were confronted with a face which suddenly raised a mouth organ to its lips and launched into a virtuoso performance of Duke Ellington’s ‘Take the “A” Train’ before going on to announce one of Children’s Hour ’s long series of films about a group of little locomotives; and even without the mouth organ, Jonas Wergeland had such exceptional presence that people almost had the feeling that he was sitting there, in person, in their own living rooms. In other words, Jonas Wergeland’s face possessed such an uncommon luminescence that he rapidly came to overshadow everyone else; he was quite simply NRK’s supernova. For years Rudeng never referred to him as anything but ‘the Duke’, completely off his own bat, not merely on account of Jonas’s marvellous English pronunciation of the names of the Duke and the members of the orchestra. There were even those who would recall Jonas Wergeland’s first appearance on the television screen as a milestone on a par with the live transmission of the lunar landing. There seemed almost to be a certain prestige attached to having seen him and discovered him when he was still filling the morning slot. ‘I knew it,’ people would say years later when Jonas Wergeland was one of the country’s most famous, most written-about figures. ‘The minute I laid eyes on him I knew there was something special about that guy.’

And now here you are in your own office, surrounded by video recorders and cassettes, cassettes containing film of yourself, old programmes, black tape testifying to your fabulous success, welcome to this evening’s programmes, and you look at the map of Venus, a highly provisional map, you think, a planet populated by lobsters, you think, boiled lobsters, you think and your eye moves to the map of Antarctica, that too provisional, you think, with the lines of latitude running out from it in circles, like a target, you think, like a lens, you think, and you look at those circles, circles within circles, and you try to see the connection between all of those cassettes and Venus and Antarctica, and you look at the circles and see that they are spinning, like a wheel, you think, and you are growing dizzy, everything is moving too fast, round and round, and you realize that you are shaking; if only you knew how I wish I could be there, how I wish I could comfort you, hold your hand, help you to pick up the thread of the story, the thread you have lost, show you that all things are spokes in the same wheel, stroke your beautiful face, warm you, because you are shivering and it comes to you that you ought to put on some clothes.

So you walk out of the office, naked, and you step back into the living room, and you look at the picture of Buddha, you look at the figure on the floor, and for one second, for one split-second, the living room is a place where everything eases up, comes to a standstill, clear, transparent, and you are struck by a synchronicity of space and time that suddenly affords an insight into all the inner mysteries of causality, and then it is gone, and once again all is chaos, an unbelievable scene, and you can only sneak past, on tiptoe, and you glance at the polar-bear skin, Ursa Major, you think, stars fallen to earth, a betrayal, you think, a nomad, a wanderer, laid low, stretched out, an object of derision, on a living-room floor, you think. Margrete wanted to chuck it, you remember, called it tasteless, perverted, but you could not chuck such a memento of a precious victory, you said, although what good does that do now, you think, and you look at the blood, red against white, strawberry jam on ice cream, you think, like in the old Studenten ice cream parlour, you think.

You walk through to the bedroom, you, Jonas Wergeland, Mao Tse Tung’s equal, hater of planes, discoverer of the ice cream factory, and you open the closet door, put on underpants, selecting your best pair, slip into a thick, white cotton shirt, slip into a pair of khaki trousers, pick out a dark jacket, a jacket you like, a jacket just right for discussing things with Axel, you think, and you pick your favourite shoes, the ones you wear for taking long walks, because you have the idea that you are going to take a walk, discuss things, rock the Milky Way on its axis, and you have to dress with care, you have to hold chaos at arm’s length; you open the door of Margrete’s closet, see her clothes, every garment a considered purchase: Margrete had very distinctive taste, you think, sophisticated, you think, and you remember how the looks on men’s faces would alter when she walked into a room, at a party, you think, how the tone of their conversation would unconsciously change, how the mood would become heightened, how they tried to excel themselves, as if they had decided to eschew all that stupid flirting and win her with intellect, you think, and you look at her clothes, the row of clothes-hangers and you wonder whether you knew anything at all about her, or whether you actually know as little about her as you know about Nefertiti, and you realize that they are two sides of the same coin, Nefertiti and Margrete, and your eye falls on the book on her bedside table, and you walk across, flick through it; you see that it is called Largo , and you see that it is written by Agnar Mykle, and you see that it belongs to Axel Stranger, and it strikes you that you have never liked this, Axel and Margrete, this common interest, this love of reading that you never could fathom, all that talk, that bullshit, about DNA, and what do they end up with, novels, you think, and you can tell that you don’t like it, this book, nor the fact that it is lying here, next to the bed, and you wonder if it could have been Axel, but that is just too far-fetched, just too crazy, you think, you hope.

And you walk back into the living room, and you look at the polar-bear skin, you look out of the window, you half-expect to see snow, soft flakes, falling thick and fast, but it is night, and it is spring, the air smells of spring right to the marrow, and you stand there, staring out of the window at the blocks of flats at Ammerud, those hulking great mastodons, Le Corbusier, you think, quasi-Le Corbusier, you think, and you think of Norway, think of that lack of originality, of how they can’t even manage to copy anything, how they copy what are already botched copies, and too late, you think, when everyone else has got it taped, you think, and suddenly you remember that you are an architect, even this house, your parents’ house, was originally your idea, it was you who found the plot of ground, you who succeeded in persuading the old lady, succeeded in doing what hundreds of others had tried to do, you, with your face, not only that but you have extended it, turned the house, too, into an angle, the Villa Wergeland, a new wing in Grorud granite, like the church, you think, right here, you think, where Margrete lies, you think, and you look at Margrete, and you think of Palladio, Palladio of all people, and you look at Margrete’s body, and think about architecture, and behind all of this again you are thinking of something else, wondering how long it takes for a corpse to decay.

And you look at the murder weapon, a puzzling weapon, you think, because Margrete has been laid low by a ball, hit by a serve, you think, that shot a hole in life itself, and you notice that it is a pistol, a Luger, of all the ridiculous things, an old Luger, and you remember the toy guns of your childhood, your brother, gun-mad he was, always the revolutionary, the romantic, you think, and you think of Daniel, could it have been him, had there been something, some hostility, between Margrete and Daniel, but you find that hard to believe; he’s a simple man, you think, and you wish you were as simple a man as Daniel, because then you would not be standing here, now, and you look out of the window, onto Bergensveien, the street of your childhood, and it occurs to you that you are not rootless after all, because your roots are here, in Grorud, in that patch of ground just across the road, between those low blocks of flats, and you contemplate the road that led from childhood to here, from what you can see through the window to what you can see on the floor, a dead woman, a dead story, a tale cut short, or a tale run wild, and you think of the chain of cause and effect, you think of Axel who would rather discover a causal relationship than be the King of Persia, and you think of another friend, a girl with the longest eyelashes in the world, who left you on the road you can see right outside the window.