Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

Jonas had no idea what Gabriel was on about, he had never taken much interest in television. Granted, his family had, like so many others in Norway, bought a television for the sake of watching the 1964 Winter Olympics, and his father in particular had felt that it had been well worth the money, and then some, just to see the three Norwegian speed-skaters step up onto the podium after the 5,000 metres. Other than that, though, his parents didn’t watch much television. Jonas had only vague memories of the programmes from his childhood: one of the Falcon Club programmes with Rolf Riktor, a couple of episodes of The Saint , the odd evening with Gunnar Haarberg and Double Your Money and of course the fish during the interval, which were possibly the most interesting part of the whole thing, inasmuch as the television was suddenly transformed into an aquarium. To be honest, he found it boring. Before they acquired a television of their own, he used to watch Robin Hood on a neighbour’s television which had a sheet of plastic in front of the screen. This plastic sheet was split up into three horizontal panels, blue at the top, reddish-brown then green, supposedly to give the illusion of colour television, and everybody would clap enthusiastically when the three colours actually matched the picture, more or less, which is to say for the five seconds each evening when a shot of some scenery appeared on the screen. Years later, this would still be Jonas’s impression: that television only matched reality for a handful of seconds every night.

Nonetheless, Jonas understood that television represented something important, though he could not have put it into words, something tremendous that had an effect on people’s daily lives. There was one time when he had been visiting a friend who lived in a villa on a hill facing one of the new twelve-storey tower blocks in Ammerud, which meant that they could see into something like 250 living rooms. It was a Saturday evening, dark outside, and Jonas could not figure out what the blue light was that he kept seeing. To begin with he had thought it must be some sort of mass psychosis: that all these people had suddenly felt the urge to sit under a sunlamp. This sight was to stay with him, this image of a modern Norwegian society in which almost all of its inhabitants were stuck in front of a television screen, as if they believed that it gave off some life-giving, or at any rate, vital radiation.

Gabriel stood up and came over to him: ‘So to put it simply, Jonas, what I want to say to you, as a reward for your heroic action with that torch this evening is: start with television. You could do the trendy thing and start with computers or something along those lines. Forget it. Television is the future.’

Gabriel then proceeded to deliver a lengthy lecture, astonishingly lucid considering the amount of alcohol he had taken on board, or maybe because of that, on all the possibilities presented by television, from which I will confine myself, here, to quoting his assertion that television broadcasting and the products it could create, all of which had to do with symbols or information — remember that word, Jonas: information! — would have as much of an impact on the society of the future as the steam engine had had in the past, and not only that, but that these days, it was as much a matter of mental as of material resources, knowledge-based enterprises, a fact which filled Gabriel with optimism since it offered everybody an equal chance and, hence, the opportunity for Norway, this tuppenny-ha’penny country to make its mark on the world. ‘It’s no longer a matter of luck, m’lad, of who just happens to have the waterfalls or the oil, oh, no, what’s in demand these days is creativity, whatever country has the people with the greatest imagination.’

Gabriel walked through to the forecabin and came back with the empty shell of the television with the skull inside it and set it on the table. ‘Shell within shell,’ he said, picking up the death’s-head. ‘Layer within layer.’ Jonas was almost expecting: ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ or, at the very least ‘To be or not to be’, but Gabriel’s face grew grave, and he said very softly: ‘Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unus’d.’ And with that he crossed over to the ladder, tossed the skull out of the hatch with a basketball player’s flick of the wrist, an act which was followed by a faint splash.

‘If you want to direct the course of events, this is the new stage,’ said Gabriel, pointing to the empty box of the television, which truly did resemble a miniature stage. ‘Being an actor is, after all, a particle option. Remember what I said? About my friend Niels Bohr? That people, like all matter, can take the form of either particles or waves? Okay. Now listen: to start with television, that would be something different, something new, a wave option. A chance to explore all the different inexplicable ways in which people can be influenced. A chance to make some totally new discoveries about cause and effect.’

With one firm blow, Gabriel loosened and removed the base of the television then slid the box over Jonas’s head, bringing it to rest on his shoulders. ‘There. I hereby crown you. Jonas, it’s time to reinvent yourself. Be a duke, be a king!’ Gabriel eyed his handiwork with satisfaction: Jonas’s face looking out of a television set. ‘Set your sights on television, lad. Dare to take that giant leap!’

Thus Jonas Wergeland made his first appearance on television.

The area championships’ meet was being held, for once, at the Grorud sports ground and not at Jordal Stadium, and Jonas Wergeland was getting ready for his last shot at the high jump. The bar was set at a utopian 1.60 metres. Clear that, and he was area champion — against all the odds.

Jonas was far from being the best in his age group, but sometimes luck was with him. Like today. From the minute he stepped out onto the field to warm up he had been feeling in incredibly good form, as if he were on pep pills. This was confirmed in the 100 metres when he beat his personal best by half a second to take third place; it was almost unbelievable. His trainer, surprised and disconcerted, came over to congratulate him, gabbling something about new training programmes and a free place on the tour to Finland.

The event at which Jonas really excelled, though, was the high jump, as he had discovered while still a small boy, when he and Nefertiti used to play on the sports field that the big boys had made all by themselves down by the stream that ran below the Solhaug estate — a pitch which was as legendary among all the local children as any Olympic arena. This sports field was a wonder to behold, with proper goals and nets, albeit handball size, and both a long-jump pit — boards and all — and a high-jump set-up. In one corner of the field was a shed where they kept such lethal pieces of equipment as javelins, discuses and shot, and which also acted, it has to be said, as a good hiding place for more suspect items: condoms in circular yellow packs, for instance, and a girlie mag, its pages gradually yellowed by wind and weather. When it came to the high jump, there was no talk here of simply scissor-jumping ingenuously over the bar; they also used a pole and even though many a suicidal attempt at a dive-straddle jump was made none of these could compare to the breathtaking flights made by the odd few with the aid of the bamboo pole — this last exotic enough in itself to lend the field an air of being part international arena, part South Sea island. Then again, there was nothing quite like being seven or eight years old and slinging oneself six feet into the air, sky-high so it seemed, on the end of a pliant bamboo pole, to land on a not very big and not exactly soft mound, sending the sawdust flying.