Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

I was at my wit’s end. I sat in a room packed with information. Around me loomed all sorts of fancy equipment: fax machines, photocopiers, video players, printers and, not least, computers, providing access to diverse networks — what I lacked, though, was the mental software necessary in order for the combination of data and hardware to produce some result. What should I include and what should I leave out? I could write a score of pages simply on Jonas Wergeland’s penchant for tweed jackets. At one point I felt tempted to do more research, take a trip to Tokyo, for example, see whether I could discover any clues to what had actually happened there — maybe that would break the block, endow me with a flash of crystal-clear insight — but I knew I would only be running away, putting things off. I could not afford to shilly-shally like this. The publishers were on my back. The press had got wind of the project, and the biography was already being described as a really juicy exposé. Everyone was waiting.

I had been suffering for some weeks from this attack of writer’s block when help arrived. It was a Sunday evening, with a thick fog outside. I had just lit a fire, wondering, as I did so, at an unusual and fierce burst of dog barking, when the doorbell rang. This marked the start of the strangest week of my life. On the doorstep, seeming almost to have materialized out of the fog, stood an enigmatic individual swathed in a black cloak, a figure that conveyed an instant sense of authority and dignity. ‘I have come to your rescue, Professor,’ this person announced bluntly and walked straight in before I could say a word. ‘I assume your study is up in the turret.’ The figure proceeded resolutely up the spiral staircase. I had no choice but to follow.

After removing the cloak with a flourish that put me in mind of a bullfighter, the stranger promptly sat down in the best chair in the study and ran an eye over all the clutter, all of that ridiculous, and so far useless, equipment. ‘Could I ask you, please, to dim the lights?’ this person said, almost as if disgusted by the shambolic scene, by the desk buried under papers and books — this sea of details, so impenetrable that I referred to it as ‘my dark sources’. I could see that the stranger was impatient, that this person, no matter how odd it may sound, gave the impression of having eaten too much, of being full to bursting. ‘I know you are working on a biography of Jonas Wergeland,’ the stranger said. ‘I also know that you have got bogged down. So I am going to help you. I am used to chaos.’ This person pulled the chair closer to the fire. ‘I am not blessed with omniscience — but I know a great deal. I hold, among other things, the key to the riddle of Jonas Wergeland. Or, not to beat about the bush, I carry, if I may make so bold as to say, the whole of his story in my head.’ It may have been because I was confused, but I thought I detected a slight accent, as if Norwegian was not my visitor’s mother tongue.

‘That is why I have come to you, Professor. You see, I cannot write, only recount.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ was the first thing I managed to say.

‘Out of pity,’ my visitor said. ‘Sheer pity.’

I was not sure whether the stranger was thinking of me or of Jonas Wergeland. ‘And your purpose?’ I asked, putting the same question in another way.

‘To save a life. Otherwise there would be no point.’

I still couldn’t tell whether the stranger was referring to Jonas Wergeland or myself. And it took some time for it to dawn on me that this person was actually offering me a job as chronicler of Jonas Wergeland’s story — on two conditions: that I undertook not to deviate from the order in which the story was recounted and that I wrote it by hand.

‘Can’t I use a tape recorder?’ I said.

‘No,’ the visitor replied. ‘I’m old-fashioned. I belong, so to speak, to another age. I do not wish to talk into a machine. I wish to talk to a face, I must have a person — call it a scribe if you like — to whom I can tell the story. I don’t trust machines.’

‘I just thought it might be handy to have the tape as backup,’ I said. ‘In case I missed anything.’

‘You don’t understand,’ the stranger said. ‘That’s the very possibility I mean to deny you. I said I would help you, not write the book for you. I don’t expect you to quote me word for word. I’m not looking for a copy. I want you to interpret what I say as you write. The stories will not be as I tell them but as you perceive them. If you do not get it exactly right, if you have to rely on your memory, then all to the good. And you are, of course, free to add things gleaned from your own material to improve upon it.’

I accepted. I had to accept if the publishers were ever to get their biography. At the back of my mind I thanked my stars for the fact that I had once, in a previous career, been ambitious enough to learn shorthand, had attended a course run by the Norwegian parliament, no less. Although for a long time I could not be sure, I have come to the conclusion that my visitor must have been aware that I was proficient — or at any rate moderately proficient — in this rare skill.

‘Well, we might as well get started right away,’ the stranger said, as if in the habit of giving orders. ‘Hurry up, I have the entire sequence worked out in my head, and mark my words, Professor, in this case the sequence is crucial; only by following it can you hope to understand anything at all. So please do not distract me; just one story out of place and it all falls apart.’

These words, the way they were uttered — with a kind of, how shall I put it, pent-up aggression — gave me the feeling that the stranger had something against Jonas Wergeland, almost hated him, in fact. The figure kept a close eye on me from the chair by the fire as I fetched my spiral-bound notebook and a pen, staring at me as intently as a juggler with twenty balls in the air. Then the stream of stories began, and though during the course of their telling I still felt an urge to cry out, to protest, to pose questions, to ask their narrator to stop, I managed to refrain, to confine myself to taking notes, tried to get down as much as possible. I’m sure I hardly need add that this was the longest and most arduous single bout of writing I had ever undertaken.

Nonetheless, it was a relief to sit there with a blank sheet of paper in front of me, to have the chance, in a way, to start from scratch again. The results of that first evening, of our joint efforts, can be read on the preceding pages. And I believe the stranger was right: there was something about being forced to write, almost without thinking, as my visitor talked, that had a fruitful effect, so much so that I even managed, during short pauses, to jot down brief notes that I could enlarge upon later, points I suddenly recalled from my own research. The stranger created the necessary distance, enabling me to discern things from fresh angles, in a new light. Besides which, I liked the constant use of my title: ‘Professor’ — no one has called me that in fifteen years — as if my unknown visitor was, above all, well aware of my past. This gave me the confidence, at a later stage when I was transcribing my notes, to rework the text, sometimes quite drastically, on the basis of data from my own sources. Sometimes, when I read through the stories I found myself wondering whether this was what my visitor had said. Or whether, in the writing, even in those passages where I believe I have copied down the stranger’s exact words, somehow or other the story has gone from being half-true to being half-false.

The second evening on which the stranger sat down in the chair by the fireplace, rather like a general commandeering my house, this enigmatic character started without any preamble — and with eyes riveted, so it seemed, on the darkness, if not, that is, on the tall pine tree outside the window overlooking the fjord — on a story that was totally new to me.