Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

For a child, there was any amount of things to do at Hvaler in the summer, from teasing the terns — those little dive-bombers — to going out in the pilot-boat in a stiff breeze. But if Jonas had to pick a favourite, it would either have to be Strömstad or the attic. At least once during the summer they would sail over to Strömstad in Sweden, the main attraction being the market in the town square: a kind of Scandinavian Marrakech with seedy stalls selling all sorts of cheap rubbish from packs of magic playing cards comprised of nothing but Jacks of Diamonds and Phantom rings with red glass eyes to disgusting stink bombs and the very latest in toy cars with flashing lights, and speedboats with real, battery-driven outboard motors, treasures beyond compare, even though most of them fell apart in the boat on the way home.

The attic, mysterious and fascinating as the props cupboard of a theatre, was a place where Daniel and Jonas were only allowed to play when it rained. They were forever finding different stuff up there, boxes within boxes, old sea charts, photograph albums, a broken accordion, bottles of medicine with illegible labels and stupefying smells. One summer Daniel stumbled upon the little safe deep in a corner, like an overgrown temple amid the attic’s jungle of nets and mildewed old clothes; they immediately fell to wondering what fabulous treasures it might contain. Their grandfather merely laughed when they told him of their find and got them even more steamed up by telling them one of his tallest tales: ‘In that safe, lads, I put a diamond given to me by the German Kaiser. Bigger than the Cullinan diamond it is! As big as a seagull’s egg!’

One day, when the rain was coming down in buckets outside, something unexpected happened: Daniel managed to open the safe. Although he had been lying with his ear right up against it, listening intently, the way he had seen in films, it was only by pure luck that he happened to turn the dial to the correct three numbers — much in the same way, perhaps, as one could sometimes be jammy enough to crack the combination lock on a chum’s bike just by turning the discs this way and that, without really thinking about it. Inside the safe they found a pretty, black lacquer casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But just as they lift the lid of the casket to reveal a grubby canvas bag, which prompts Daniel to form the word ‘pearls!’ with his lips, their grandfather, prompted by sheer intuition so it seems, comes bounding into the attic, and before they can draw breath he has snatched the bag out of the casket. ‘I’ll take that,’ is all he says, oddly agitated, panic-stricken even, then disappears again.

Daniel was seriously put out by this, which is probably why he did not object to Jonas taking the casket. Their grandfather, too, said that Jonas could keep it. ‘I bought that in Japan,’ he said. ‘See this glossy surface? It was once the sap inside a Japanese lacquer tree.’ For Jonas, the casket was, in itself, a treasure and not just because of the mother-of-pearl dragon on the lid; if there was one thing he never tired of, it was gazing at the layer upon layer of black lacquer, as if peering into a deep gloom: transparent, endless, an opening onto an unknown universe. When Jonas returned home at the end of this summer holiday he knew straightaway that he had to find something of value to put in the casket. He considered the clock workings, that enigmatic skeleton of cogs that sat ticking away on top of the chest of drawers, but dismissed that idea. What he really wanted was a pearl. After lengthy deliberation he came to the conclusion that only one object was worthy of this place of honour: his mother’s silver brooch. With her blessing, he placed the round brooch with its intriguing tracery of ribbons in the casket, as if consigning it to a black, bottomless pit.

How does one become a conqueror?

There was no doubt as to the Brothers Grimm’s favourite form of relaxation during the holidays. To Jonas’s cousins — as ugly as their younger sister was pretty, hence the name — no stay on Hvaler was complete without a visit to one of the clamorous tent meetings on the neighbouring island of Nedgården. One of the first things they did when they came to stay just after the incident with the safe was, therefore, to fill the rowboat with friends and set off across the sound. Jonas, too, was among the party when it reached its objective, after a walk though the pine forest. For here, on a flat stretch of ground not far from the steamship wharf on Nedgården, stood the big tent. ‘We’re off to the circus,’ the Brothers Grimm said. And what a circus it was.

Jonas never did discover what manner of people they were, the spiritual nomads — I almost said Mongols — who arranged these meetings: whether they were Pentecostalists or what. They certainly didn’t look much like the dry and dusty congregation in Grorud Church on a Sunday morning. These people really swung, Jonas could not think of a better word; the atmosphere was electric, the noise level high as they slipped through the tent opening to find themselves standing under the dome of white fabric, the air heavy with the odours of damp grass, earth and sweat — the sweat of ecstasy, that is. For there before them, in the ring or whatever you want to call it, were both musicians and people who were in some way performing, and it was this ‘entertainment’ that the Brothers Grimm had come to see. Because the faithful did not sit mouthing hymns the way they did in church: they sang, or no — they didn’t sing, they exulted. You got the feeling that the canvas of the tent was all puffed up by the pressure of their voices and the rhythmical guitar accompaniment. And in the front rows you could see girls of whom it was said that they were so freshly redeemed, so flushed with redemption, that when asked at school to name the capital of Hawaii, they were quite liable to cry out ‘Hallelujah’ instead of ‘Honolulu’.

As usual the Brothers Grimm slid down onto the bench at the very back, where they could hunch down out of sight. To tell the truth, they didn’t just hunch down, sometimes they had to lie flat-out on the grass; they lay there on the ground, bent double and racked by laughter at what they saw and heard. For this was the best kind of fun, it beat any television programme or any other show for that matter, even the films of Old Rubber-Face himself, Jerry Lewis.

I may not be the right person to recount stories from this side of life, Professor, nonetheless I must make an attempt, if the pieces of Jonas Wergeland’s life are to fall into place: because you see, on this bright evening, with the sun still hovering on the horizon and the sea perfectly calm outside, but with a spiritual storm raging inside the tent, a missionary was making a guest appearance. This was probably not such a common occurrence at the summer revival meetings, where the proceedings generally tended to follow a very simple, tried and tested format, with the clear aim of getting as many people as possible to ‘cast themselves into the Saviour’s arms’, but this must be how it happened: it may be that the missionary just happened to be home on leave and was asked to speak at the meeting that evening. And the missionary, who might even have been sponsored by the brethren on the island, probably thought it only natural to weave stories of his experiences in the missionary field into his speech, because when Jonas and the Brothers Grimm sidled into the tent, he was in the midst of describing an exorcism which he had attended down there, in a country full of heathens: a pretty colourful story, a glowing and, in parts, extremely vociferous testimony to the inimitable power of the Lord.

Within seconds, on principle almost, the Brothers Grimm were fighting to control their laughter, as if they thought the tent was full of laughing gas — possibly because of all the ‘Praise the Lords!’ being breathed round about them. Jonas, for his part, had been just as swiftly filled with curiosity. He had been interested in demons for a long time, ever since the first time when, half-asleep, he had heard them spoken of from the pulpit in Grorud Church, one second Sunday after Lent as it was called. He had been sitting upstairs in the balcony as usual, with a view of his father’s organ playing and the pulpit, when the vicar began to talk about a boy who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Jonas had pricked up his ears. Till then he had associated the word ‘spirits’ with the stuff grownups drank at parties, although his sister’s obsession with the spirits in The Arabian Nights had led him to suspect that ‘spirit’ might also mean something else, something dreadful. And right enough, here was the vicar describing how the unclean spirit caused this poor child to roll around on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and it was on this occasion too, or was it in RI class, that Jonas heard about Mary Magdalene, who was possessed by seven evil spirits, and, even more thrilling, the deadly spirit whose name was Legion, because he — the spirit, that is — was, in fact, many. Jonas had puzzled over this for ages, he even gave up playing with Lego, thinking as he did that Lego must have something to do with demons — and he may actually have been onto something there, since Jonas had a habit of building tall, reckless constructions with his bricks, models that could easily conjure up thoughts of a presumptuous and sinful Tower of Babel.