Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

What I am trying to say is that the Biafra disaster occupied a nigh-on traumatic place in Jonas’s consciousness, which is why he reacted so strongly when Viktor announced that autumn, that Norwegian missiles were being used in the war down there in tropical Africa. And do please pay attention here, Professor, because if there is one thing I know a little bit about it is the evil acts of which mankind is capable. Viktor read everything and anything and had contacts everywhere. Viktor was the sort of character who walked around with Le Monde ’s weekly digest sticking out of his jacket pocket. He had an acquaintance in England who worked for a publication entitled Peace News , and in this paper, in the forthcoming November issue, it was reported that arms manufactured in Norway were being used in Biafra. Viktor had a copy of the article. He was outraged. It had, of course, been rumoured that NATO ammunition was being employed down there, but this had elicited no great outcry. Any suggestion that these weapons might in some way be connected to Norway had nonetheless been denied. But now. In England they had a photograph, proof that the name of Norway was branded on the Biafra conflict for all time. In other words, that for once Norway was not a mere spectator but also, in fact, a participant of sorts. The picture showed the casing of a 40mm shell, stamped with the legend USN (NORWAY) — Norway, typically, only as a parenthesis but there all the same. ‘They ought to make miniature copies of this shell-casing,’ Viktor felt, ‘for Norwegians to sit on top of their television sets.’

The Three Wise Men were never in any doubt: this news had to be made public. But how? Not surprisingly it was Viktor himself, with his mysterious network of contacts, who came up with the solution and set the stage for the triumphant evening when the three friends came walking — arm in arm then too — along Karl Johans gate, like three gunslingers in a western striding down the main street of some lawless town. They had come across Egertorget, passing underneath the splendid neon sign for Freia Chocolate, at which Jonas had so often gazed in wonder as a child, and were making their way over to the Eastern Station. And there — dead ahead of them — as if inscribed across the dark evening sky — was the message, sweeping past the eyes of everyone who was watching, like the Northern Lights: NORWEGIAN SHELLS USED IN BIAFRA. How Viktor, undoubtedly with the help of some reporter, had succeeded in keying the headline into the telex machine at the Aftenposten offices on Akersgata, onto the tape which, by transmitting the data down a telephone wire, converted it into glowing letters running round the top of the Eastern Railway Station façade, remained a mystery — not least to the owners of the newspaper. There it was, however, the writing on the wall, as clear as it was inexplicable, presented as it was on the largest electric headlines sign in Norway. Every bit as impressive as the Freia Chocolate sign. A whole twenty-six yards of panels, nine thousand light bulbs, revolving round and round. The Three Wise Men stood at the bottom of Karl Johans gate along with a good many other people, gazing up at the building across from them, as if mesmerized by the incomprehensible, impossible, outrageous, insolent legend that swept past their eyes at regular intervals, picked out in blazing light bulbs: NORWEGIAN SHELLS USED IN BIAFRA, again and again, between an advert for Adelsten Ladies and Menswear and a subscription special offer.

Several members of the press had also seen it. To be on the safe side, Viktor had tipped off one of the city papers and sent them a copy of the article in Peace News . A few days later it made front-page headlines. People refused to believe it, of course. They simply could not credit it. To begin with, the Ministry of Defence also denied the assertions but later issued a statement confirming them: the arms had been produced by the Norwegian company Raufoss for an American client. A long and involved explanation was given for how this could have happened, together with an assurance that Norway had not, of course, sold these shells to Nigeria.

Not that anyone believed that either. The Three Wise Men did not mean to moralize; they simply wanted to show that Norway was involved with the outside world. As long as the wealth was filtering into the country — not to say pouring in, or rather, being sucked into Norway — you could be sure that, in global terms, we were on the side of the lawbreakers, not to say the vultures. It was this fact which, incredible though it may seem, the people of Norway succeeded in suppressing and go on suppressing, as they sit there deeply ensconced in their comfy Stressless armchairs. Hence the reason that they are regularly taken so completely by surprise when arms fabricated in Norway, some small component, shows up where it shouldn’t — be it, as past history has shown, in Cuba, in Israel, in the Soviet Union or Turkey. Or when it is discovered that some nice, respectable Norwegian concern has set up shop in a bloody dictatorship. Norway cannot stay an innocent bystander, sheltered from events forever. One of the things that was shot to pieces in Biafra, in that blessedly far-off conflict, was Norway’s innocence. Thanks to Viktor Harlem, this blot on the virtuous face of Norway was placed, as it were, on record, to endure for all time.

And now, nearly three years after this exploit, the Three Wise Men are walking the streets of Lillehammer after a glorious skiing expedition in Gudbrandsdalen, another exploit which I should like, if I may, to describe in detail later. Now though, as I say, they are walking side-by-side, arm in arm, gleefully firing off suggestions — each one crazier than the one before — for new and momentous demonstrations, fresh disclosures concerning woeful situations in what they call the Potato Monarchy. In later years, both Axel and Jonas would recall that Viktor — it may have been the Taoist in him — had had his misgivings about that day, that he had anxiously consulted his diary — otherwise known as his seventh sense — wherein the date was circled in bright red, and shaken his head. So now he was treading rather warily, as a superstitious person will avoid stepping on the cracks in the pavement, and all of a sudden, on a side street, he swaps places with Jonas, takes Jonas’s place in the middle, playing ‘all change’, like when they were boys, and then it happens, what so seldom happens, and yet now and again does: a chunk of ice slides off one of the roofs, a large, hard chunk of ice comes hurtling through the air, inexorably, and hits Viktor — of all people Viktor, who is walking in the middle — on the head.

Viktor instantly fell to the ground, unconscious, and lay still. Axel, quick-witted as always, sprinted into a shop and called an ambulance. When it arrived he got in along with Viktor.

Jonas stayed behind. Picked up, of all things, the block of ice. Thought for a second, perhaps, of the old party game, Spin the Bottle. The whim of chance. Thought, perhaps, incensed by his own impotence, of smashing a window, all the windows in the street. He felt a burning urge to climb up onto the roof, to see that spot where the chunk of ice had broken off, from which it had fallen, the cause of the accident. Instead he stood where he was, regarding it as if it were a crystal ball, offering the prospect of an answer, and he did, in fact, glimpse something inside the ice. He took it back to the guesthouse in which they were staying and put it in the washbasin. Only then, with the bathroom light shining on it, did he spy the earring inside, one of those big pearl earrings, fake, cheap. Or maybe it was genuine, he thought. Jonas had no idea how it could have got there. How do things ever find their place? By a process that was possibly just as inexplicable or as logical as Norwegian shells winding up in Biafra.