Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

The truth is almost as simple as that; Jonas Wergeland enrolled in the astrophysics course because he could not stand the thought of having to study any subject that was full of bombastic systems, and within the field of astronomy there were refreshingly vast areas about which absolutely nothing could be said for certain. Not only that, but the body of information was changing and expanding faster here than in any other subject. In other words, astrophysics was the perfect branch of learning for Jonas Wergeland, being a field in which any universal theory was doomed to look ridiculous — there were few turtles to be found in the study of astrophysics.

Once the booster rockets of the Prelims had been jettisoned, Jonas found himself in the rarefied realms of astronomy, i.e. the foundation course. He even spent time, a little at least, leafing through books in the reading room on the top floor of the physics building as well as attending lectures in the auditorium at the institute, a building with decorative celestial globes in the corridors and a functionalist vestibule worth a whole course of study in itself. For a long time he almost enjoyed being a student, took part in field trips to the solar observatory at Harestua and was drawn into discussions with other astrophysics majors, or the lecturers, who had their rooms in the former apartments, since converted, of old Professor Rosseland, who watched over them from Alf Rolfsen’s portrait in the seminar room, the old drawing-room. It was not until Jonas made a start on ‘Galactic and extra-galactic astronomy’, which involved, among other things, the mind-boggling subject of cosmology, that he began to have cold feet. There was something about these colossal forces, vast distances and inconceivable time-scales, billions of miles and years; and, not least, the eerie notion of a universe constantly expanding towards a state of total darkness, that scared him, that almost caused the scales to tip the other way; the theories became so vague, so top-heavy and woolly that it was all rather too much of a good thing — Jonas caught himself longing for a turtle. In fact he had already made up his mind to quit the course when one day, at the foot of the stairs, he passed a poster depicting the ‘outer planet’. He had walked past it countless times before without stopping, but this time his eye immediately homed in on Pluto, and there was something about the tiny planet on the very edge of the solar system — some sense of kinship with this outsider — that captured Jonas’s interest anew. He immediately enrolled in another course, one in which he could make a specific study of Pluto. From then on Pluto became Jonas Wergeland’s pet project, or turtle; after one term he knew just about all there was to know about the planet, more in fact than the professor who taught them, and here I am not merely thinking of such things as how many days it takes to revolve, how wide the angle of its orbital plane or how elongated its ellipse — I am thinking of the acquisition of information so advanced that Jonas Wergeland was in a position to speculate, in a highly scientific manner, on Pluto’s probable size and mass and its possible origins, a feat which was all the more impressive when one considers that this was even before the discovery of Pluto’s moon. I am not exaggerating when I say that for some years, Jonas Wergeland was Norway’s leading expert on the planet Pluto.

One can, of course, ask oneself what use — I almost said earthly use — so much knowledge of such a minor detail, a distant planet, can be put to in real life. Jonas Wergeland’s had not yet come this far in his scrupling when he left the Magnet all-night café with the other Nomads and set out on another stroll through the deserted streets of Oslo, picking up the threads of their previous discussion as they went along, or raising some fresh and inflammable topic, some issue on which they would most certainly disagree strongly. But it could also be, as that night, that they came walking up Ullevålsveien, past Jonas’s and Axel’s old haven, Our Saviour’s cemetery — at that time of night a shadowy, mysterious landscape beyond the railings — and were startled by a dog that barked at them from behind the gates, although no one could figure out what the animal was doing there.

They were still walking along the side of the graveyard when Axel said: ‘Shit, what’s it called again, that dog that guards the entrance to Hades, the Greek kingdom of the dead?’

‘Anubis,’ said Trine like a shot.

‘No, no, no,’ Thomas protested. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s … Garm.’

‘That’s Norse mythology, you twit.’ Axel was furious with himself for not being able to remember the name.

‘What about the two-headed Orthrus?’ Alva suggested.

‘Take it easy, guys, the name’s Cerberus,’ said Jonas.

The others nodded, now they remembered. They looked at Jonas. Jonas had a habit of surprising them.

‘By the way, does anyone know why it’s called Hades?’ said Alva.

‘Comes from the Greek “ aides ”, the unseen,’ said Jonas. ‘The God Hades had a helmet which made him invisible.’

Alva laughed and thumped him on the back. ‘Trust you to know such a totally useless piece of information.’

How did Jonas Wergeland know this? Because he was Norway’s leading expert on the planet Pluto, that’s how. Because Pluto is only another name for Hades, god of the underworld, and the planet Pluto derived its name in part from the fact that it was so difficult to detect, it was almost invisible, like Hades. This gave Jonas a desire to know more about the Hades of mythology, and that, in turn, is how he stumbled upon the dog Cerberus. From the stars to Hell — but still only a short hop.

‘You can say what you like about the uses of astronomy,’ Jonas said, as the Nomads reached Sankt Hanshaugen in a body at four in the morning, ‘but it’s one way of learning your Greek mythology.’

And so some reviewers felt that Thinking Big was actually a series of programmes on modern Norse mythology; and, certainly as far as Trygve Lie is concerned, they might have had something there, considering that, from boyhood onwards, Trygve Lie, first Secretary-General of the United Nations, had stood as an almost mythical figure in Jonas Wergeland’s life, inasmuch as Lie’s spirit seemed, as it were, to hover over the lakes around Grorud. Not only was the statesman buried just a stone’s throw from the church — every time Jonas visited his mother at the Ironmongery he also had to pass the house in Grorudveien, right opposite the woollen mill and a short walk from the station, that had been the UN Secretary-General’s home from the age of six. And naturally there hung a picture of him in Grorud School, in the dining hall — a ‘Big Brother is watching you’ sort of thing. The dining hall was a place Jonas normally associated with the constant din of yelling and screaming, with bottle tops shooting past like flying saucers and jet-propelled carrots forever whizzing through the air. The only time when things quietened down was when the deputy head suddenly yanked the door open and pointed to the picture of Trygve Lie, as if this was somehow supposed to make them feel ashamed of themselves, or bring it home to them that they would never manage to become Secretary-General of the UN by throwing food about like that. So from an early age Jonas had the idea that in global terms this was actually Trygve Lie’s role: to make sure that a crowd of hooting lads did not go around chucking bits of carrot at one another.

It very quickly became clear to Jonas Wergeland, while they were putting together the programme, that many people, Norwegians too, had rather mixed feelings about Trygve Lie, or regarded him, for some reason, as a second-rater whose appointment to the UN amounted to little more than a poor compromise. So there was no shortage of material for the regular spot in each programme which Jonas Wergeland called ‘the whisperers’: two individuals, pictured in silhouette, whispering to one another, exchanging snide remarks about the programme’s hero — a pretty common Norwegian phenomenon when you come right down to it, and one that can be studied every time, i.e. every few years or so, that a Norwegian citizen wins acclaim on the international scene. Quick as a wink, up pops some other zealous Norwegian with a green-eyed look about him, who feels it incumbent on him to tell all those who have allowed themselves to be taken in just how ludicrously undeserving of success this fellow-countryman is. If he is really lucky, there will be scores of neighbours and relations ready to provide plenty of spicy details with which to elaborate upon this assertion.