Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

They had even less idea of the more long-term effect. Not only was the series showered with awards, including the Prix Italia — for the programme on Armauer Hansen — other countries also evinced an exceptionally voracious interest with the result that a number of television networks bought all or part of the series, even some Third World countries were anxious to screen a few of the programmes. Teachers wrote candid articles in which they described how the series had given them a shot in the arm. Company directors and others spoke out in the newspapers and at seminars, claiming that the series had inspired them. From the lectern in Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, politicians announced that these programmes had boosted the self-confidence of the nation as a whole.

Again: why? And again: not one study has succeeded in solving the mystery.

Throughout Norway people like Nora Næs from the town of Bryne in Jæren watched those programmes over and over again, and not only that: Nora Næss bought records of music she had never heard, she borrowed books from the libraries, biographies, novels as if the programmes were by no means finished when she switched off the television; she visited museums and galleries, she went to see hitherto unknown films and, during a trip to Oslo, she took out her old figure-skates and went out on the ice for the first time in twenty-five years, together with her daughter; she made excursions to parts of Norway she had never seen, she even travelled abroad several times. Jonas Wergeland received hundreds of postcards, addressed to NRK, from Cairo and the Great Pyramid of Cheops, from Bihar in India, from Stamford Bridge in England. Nora Næss sent him a card showing Saint Peter’s in Rome. ‘I felt as if I was being seduced,’ she told a friend, in strictest confidence, some time later. ‘Of being taken by the hand and led somewhere I had never been.’

And in her heart of hearts Nora Næss could not deny, any more than Nanna Norheim and Nina Narum could, that she eventually became as obsessed with Jonas Wergeland as she was with those celebrated Norwegian men and women. Ultimately, she watched and interpreted the stories of the individuals featured in the television series as extracts from Jonas Wergeland’s own life, with the result that the more she learned about those other people the more she wanted to know about Jonas Wergeland. And so, in spite of this unique and in many ways historic television project, not even Jonas Wergeland was able to prevent the whole thing, in the end, from revolving around him personally.

So there you stand, watching television, amazed in a way by images following images, a soundless flickering, and you stare and you stare at this screen that has won you so much acclaim, a glittering career, you think, doubly so, you think, and one that has led you here, to this bewildered room, and you place your finger on the ‘off’ button while watching images that become more and more baffling the longer you gaze at them, and you click the button, you see the colours fade to black while the set crackles with static, and you feel as if you had switched off yourself, that your life is finished, a pointless programme, you think, and now it is over, you think.

You look at the seven blue jars on the shelf above the set as if they were another programme, a more significant programme, because they remind you of something, Margrete, you think, and you turn back round the corner, to be met by the sight of her figure on the floor, on its back, as if in total surrender, you think, betrayed, you think, and again you are struck by that uncontrollable urge just to collapse, and you look at the Persian rug over by the window between the two armchairs, a Bukhara, you think, or a Sehna, you think, you would not mind collapsing onto that, that’s for sure, onto that rug, disappearing into that pattern, that landscape, to come out in some other land, and you long for your aunt’s dimly-lit flat, for a pile of soft cushions and a time when life was one long story, and you look back at Margrete and only now do you see, or wish to see, that she is lying on a polar-bear skin, and you look and you look, and you cannot figure out what it is doing here, the polar bear, a brother, you think, it doesn’t fit, you think, it feels like a betrayal, you think, as if someone had returned evil for good, and you look at the picture of Buddha, then your eye goes back to the skin and you see only the skin, the red blood against the white skin, as if the bear had been shot, you think, or as if it had been in a fight, you think, between an animal and a human being, you think, and again you look at Margrete, and you feel like screaming a a a a a for so long that it will cover all the a’s you wrote in your copybook in first grade and all the a’s you have written since, to no good purpose, you think.

So there you stand, Jonas Wergeland, disciple of the Kama Sutra , opera lover, climber of Jebel Musa, in the centre of your own living room with an inaudible scream in your ears, and you try to listen, and you think to yourself that this is important, the sounds, that the cause may lie here, and you think that you must remember the sounds, cherish them, and you listen intently, stand stock-still in the middle of the room with your eyes fixed on Margrete’s dead body, and you listen, and you hear a car drive by further down the road, and you hear, or think you hear, a mouth organ far in the distance, if it isn’t a siren, a fire engine you think, something that could save you, you think, and you cross the room and press the remote control, filling the room once more with Johann Sebastian Bach’s fugue, and you think that you would like to crawl inside the organ chest again, you want to be healed, you want to be brought to life, you think, another life, you think, a life far from this room, you think.

You stand there looking at the body of your dead wife, looking and looking, and you don’t know why the tears always have to well up when you hear this music, and you notice how the tears distort your vision, and you fumble in your pocket for something, a prism, before you remember that you have given it away, and you think to yourself that you will never manage to find another angle here, break up the sight before you, veer out of the big picture and into the detail, impossible, you think, impossible in the face of all this blood, you think, so I can see, or at least I try to understand, more than anyone else, why you do not walk across to the telephone, why you do not call the police, why instead you go into the bathroom, why you feel a frantic need to wash yourself, or not wash, but rinse yourself, and you pull off your clothes, toss them in all directions, knock over one of the ferns before climbing into the shower cabinet, turning on the water and shutting your eyes, you let the water stream down over you, turning the hot tap further and further, as if it could never be hot enough for you, for ages you stand there, without reaching for the soap, just letting the hot water stream down over you, until at last you turn it off and step out into a bathroom now filled with steam, like the old Torggata Baths you think, and you stand at the washbasin, and you gaze into a mirror that has misted over and you gaze at all of Margrete’s things on the shelf, at the bath salts, and you remember how Margrete loved taking a bath, how she loved to have the water scalding hot, like the Japanese you think, how much she enjoyed it, how she had this unique capacity for enjoying everything, turning any ordinary day into unadulterated pleasure, you think, and you gaze at all the other strange bottles and jars that are hers, were hers, and you open a perfume bottle, and you sniff, inhale, and suddenly you remember a whole lot of things connected with this scent, and you feel as if your head is beginning to mist over, like the mirror, and you know you are close to passing out, and you hang onto the washbasin and think to yourself that you had better do something sensible, so you pick up your electric razor, the good one, better than the little one in your suitcase, and you start to shave, shaving in exactly the same way as always, doing your best to follow the same pattern as always, as if the simple force of habit, the pedantry of it, could be the saving of you at this moment, keep chaos at arm’s length, or possibly because right now it seems important to consider how you look, in case a television team should show up. ‘How did you feel when you entered the room?’ you think, the sort of question put to sports’ stars, and you go on shaving for so long that the mirror clears and you see your own face, and you pick up a bottle of aftershave to pour a few drops onto your palm, and you think of your mother’s seven lovers, and at the thought of the seven lovers you begin to have some inkling of who you are, as if all this time you had been trying to suppress the knowledge.