Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

So there you stand, Jonas Wergeland, brother to the polar bear, champion of the Perfume Islands, darling of the Norwegian people, in front of a television set, and you vaguely remember that you actually have cashed in on your collection of paintings, no, not paintings, you think, something else, you cannot remember what, only that you have exchanged it for something that has to do with this screen in front of you, these images, without sound, the chance to be behind these images, or to be these images, you think, and now you realize, as things become clearer, that it is the evening news flashing across the screen, and you recognize the newsreader, you are sure you have spoken to him sometime, you think, and there is something about these images, dramatic items from different countries that fills you with a desperate need to learn everything that has been happening in the world that day, and you think to yourself that if you can do that, you will also find the one detail which will explain everything, why you are standing here, looking at a dead body, you think, and from then on you will actually be enormously keen to know what went on in the world on that particular day, during those minutes when you wandered about in a daze or stood riveted in front of the evening news on TV, events at home and abroad, soundless, and there is something about these images, from society, as it were, from the world outside these windows, you think, which triggers a memory of who you are, one of the other people you are, because you are many people, you think, you are also a politician, you think, once you even climbed a flagpole for a cause, you think, and you were, no, you are still, deeply concerned with how you, an insignificant little individual, could step in and have some effect on the big decisions taken by a community in which almost no one shows their face and almost everyone is faceless, and you stand there, in a living room with a dead body lying next to you, and you gaze at a silent television screen showing a report of the more scandalous sort, some exposé or other, some outraged face speaking into a microphone held obligingly to his lips by a disembodied hand, and you remember that you too have made television programmes, a lot of programmes, you think, presenting Norwegian society from unusual angles, and you know that people were hit, hard, when they least expected it, struck by a ball that shot off at an angle, often more than one angle, like a billiard ball, you think, and you know you have shocked people, no more, aroused hate, you think, and you turn from the television screen to Margrete, dead on the floor, and you realize that any Norwegian citizen could be behind this, it could be anyone, even the Oslo bomber, you think, someone who’s sick in the head, or simply someone who hates being provoked, hates these all too revealing, all too unforeseen angles.

Always this: to find a different angle from anyone else. Like the time he took the stairs two at a time to come breathlessly to a halt outside the door of the corner room on the third floor and, quivering more with impatience than nerves, managed to pick the lock — he, Jonas Wergeland, the Duke, on the hunt for new angles.

He crosses to the window, shaped like the upper half of a circle. A half-moon. How apt. It is early in the morning, before first period, and Jonas is standing in the dusty flag-loft of Oslo Cathedral School with a length of fabric rolled up under his arm and his heart pounding in his chest. These are the days of student revolt and like so many others Jonas Wergeland means to hoist a flag — but not the usual flag.

The horizontal flag-pole was anchored inside the room itself, running through the wall just below the window; it put Jonas in mind of a jib-boom and made him feel as if he were standing in the bow of a lifeboat, all ready to do great deeds. But what he saw outside, or down below, was not the sea, but the cemetery.

Oslo Cathedral School was tucked away in one corner of the huge Rikshospital complex and Jonas actually felt more like a patient than a pupil: a patient who was constantly being given the wrong diagnosis. To be brutally frank, Jonas would have regarded his three years at this high school, all mentions of which were invariably punctuated by such epithets as ‘venerable’ or ‘steeped in tradition’ or ‘charming’, as seriously damaging to his mental health, had it not been for the fact that it lay just across the street from Our Saviour’s cemetery. For it was there that he had met Axel.

During the lunch-break on one of his first days at the Cathedral School, following an almost destructive impulse, Jonas had slipped through the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. Despite the beautiful August weather, he was feeling thoroughly depressed and shuddered to think what the three years ahead of him held in store in terms of tedium and, worse, unsatisfied curiosity. Jonas cursed himself and the whim that had led him to this ‘august’ school in the heart of the city.

Gloomily he made his way between the rows of graves, and it was while he was walking along, kicking up the gravel, his eyes fixed on the ground, that he heard a familiar sound, a sound so familiar that at first he could not figure out what it was. He walked faster, straightened his shoulders, headed towards the sound, some faint notes played on an instrument he ought to know better than any other. The music was coming from someone hidden behind the leafy foliage surrounding one of the graves in the Grove of Honour. And there, sitting between two striking weeping beeches, on the grave of none other than Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, was Axel Stranger.

Anyone familiar with Our Saviour’s cemetery in Oslo will know that Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s grave is marked with a flat stone of red granite. The actual concept — a flag, yes, yet another flag — is really rather grotesque, but the monument itself makes a perfect place to sit; in summer the stone is lovely and warm and, as I mentioned, well screened by thick foliage. Axel had resorted to this spot to read. Oddly enough Jonas, who rarely opened a work of fiction, tended to choose friends who were readers. Nefertiti and Margrete were also readers. Lying on the granite next to Axel was Halldor Laxness’ Veveren fra Kashmir , a battered copy from Deichman’s Library.

On seeing Jonas, Axel finished the tune he was playing, the title of which had finally come to Jonas: ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ from Duke Ellington’s inexhaustible repertoire. Without a word, Jonas put out his hand, and the mouth organ was placed in his palm like a relay baton. It was exactly the same as his own, a Hohner Chromonica, well used, with a dent in the casing. Jonas raised it to his lips and played ‘Sophisticated Lady’, not altogether satisfied with his performance, it was a long time since he had played, but he got through it. His face deadpan, Axel took back the instrument and proceeded to play — without wiping it on his trouser-leg first, which Jonas promptly took as a vote of confidence — ‘I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good’ with such virtuosity and such feeling that it sent shivers up Jonas’s spine, forcing him to swallow several times. Never had anyone brought out the aching melancholy of that tune so well, no one in Ellington’s own orchestra come to that, not even Johnny Hodges. And as Axel played, Jonas felt something loosen its grip on him. Nefertiti. Or rather, he felt as if he were letting go of one hand and clasping another, a new hand. And it is as if Nefertiti herself was there beside him, giving this new friendship her blessing.

‘Christ Almighty,’ said Axel. He slipped the mouth organ into his jacket pocket, ran a hand through his tousled locks and squinted up at the sun. ‘What a shower.’