Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

The Brothers Grimm are not listening to any of what’s being said. They are already almost flat out on the grass, red in the face from stifled — I almost said demonic — laughter. They are having a whale of a time. And although this is, as I say, a revival meeting, something extraordinary is in the offing on this summer evening on the island at the mouth of the fjord — the congregation, the faithful, sense it too; several of them spontaneously begin to speak in tongues as the preacher, which is to say the homecoming missionary, builds up his speech, by way of a succession of Biblical quotations, to a dramatic climax; they burst into long strings of incomprehensible words which send the Brothers Grimm into paroxysms of giggling — Preben confessed later that he had actually dribbled into his pants. For the cousins, this was one of the summer’s absolute high points when it came to entertainment. ‘Oh, gawd! This is funnier than all of Einar Rose’s and Arve Opsahl’s jokes rolled into one!’ Stephan exclaimed. Jonas was equally enchanted but not for the same reasons as the Brothers Grimm. He realized that this language, this glossolalia, was not the senseless gibberish his cousins took it to be, but an attempt to stretch language as far as it would go, into a vacuum where rules and reason had to admit defeat. He also had the feeling that something big was about to happen. That something was going to lay itself open for him, just like the safe in the loft; that he would be presented with a dark casket which — who knew — might contain a precious pearl.

So he did not drift out of the tent-opening along with the Brothers Grimm and the others as the singing, a Norwegian version of gospel, and the guitars took over again, and the meeting moved towards its conclusion — after, that is, urgent appeals for people to come forward and bend the knee to the Lord or, in plain words, be saved. Jonas remained standing next to one of the rearmost benches, watching the people, quite a lot of them, who made their way towards the middle of the tent and kneeled down, a good few young people among them as it happens, and it was then, at this post-meeting as it was called, at this relatively chaotic stage of the proceedings, that something occurred which does not normally occur at these summertime tent meetings: all at once a young man cries out that he is tormented by evil spirits. Now a normal Pentecostalist, or whatever they were, might not have made any attempt to deal with this situation or only dealt with it in the most superficial manner, but here was this missionary, with his truly hair-raising experiences from the mission service and his work among ‘the savages’, far more dramatic than this, and — somewhat taken aback though he might have been — he walked purposefully up to the young man, placed his hands on his head and began to shout things, or rather, to issue orders which Jonas did not understand: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you!’ and the like, so write, Professor, write as if your life depended upon it, because it was awesome; Jonas would never forget it. The young man’s knees gave way, he keeled over and as he did so the missionary was thrown backwards as if he had received an electric shock. Jonas truly felt that powerful forces were present in the tent; there was a pressure, the sort of atmosphere that prevails immediately before a Biblical thunderstorm.

The man on the ground is grunting and writhing about, shaking. Jonas believes he sees his face change, at least seven times, as if it belongs to different people and not only people but animals too, wild beasts. The missionary bends over him and grips his head tightly, almost tearing at him. To Jonas, it looks like a battle in which one of the combatants is invisible. That said, though, it was a nice, clean fight, and for the record let me just say that it bore little similarity to the commercialised versions one is presented with in films, in which little girls speak with harsh male voices and heads spin round and round. In short, Jonas was observing an individual in obvious torment and a man who was endeavouring to do something about this torment. And did so. All at once, after a violent shudder, the young man relaxes, and a smile spreads across his lips. He stands up, raises his arms as if in thanks to heaven, before dropping onto his knees in the grass, with his elbows on a bench and his eyes shut, while the elders stand around him praising the Lord.

Jonas left the tent, filled with the same blend of exultation and sadness as when he had to leave the copious market in Strömstad. He caught up with the others among the pine trees on their way to the boat. They were still laughing, slapping their thighs, roaring their heads off, had to keep stopping to stand doubled up with laughter. Jonas walked along quietly at the tail end. He was thinking, no, not just thinking: pondering. And what he was pondering upon, more than anything else, was whether such spirits always had to be evil. To tell the truth, this evening marked a turning point for Jonas’s notion of what it means to be a human being, although this perception still lay far out on the fringes of, or possibly beyond, language, rather like speaking in tongues. Looked at in this light, Jonas Wergeland was also saved at that meeting. He sauntered down to the rowboat, feeling strangely relieved. Who’s to say there’s only one of me, he thought, knowing what this meant: that other avenues were open to him, possibly even other lives.

So Jonas did not wish, like the young man in the tent on Nedgården, to rid himself of these possible spirits; he wanted to cherish them, get to know them. He hoped he had at least seven spirits within him, like Mary Magdalene. Maybe even a wild beast. He could do with it: he whom everybody said was such a good boy. Several times that summer his mother would surprise Jonas when he was sitting talking to himself, using different voices. And this boy who, for years, had been such a fussy eater, suddenly started tucking in at mealtimes. Not only that, but he varied his diet, helped himself for the first time — oh, wonder of wonders — to boiled vegetables and didn’t even gag. So, whichever way you look at it, this was the summer when Jonas turned from a fairly puny little kid into a lad who rapidly shot up, bursting with health. And not only that: from that summer onwards Jonas Wergeland was possessed. He was on the trail of his true self. Or rather: his true selves.

I — the Professor — remarked on one word that cropped up in every newspaper article on Jonas Wergeland: demonic. This was after the whole thing blew up anew, again when no one was prepared for it, as if it were all part of a carefully planned two-stage rocket launch. It would be wrong to call it a bombshell. To the general public, despite a certain shock factor, it was more in the nature of a spectacular fireworks display.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, during the first phase of the case, to be titillated by a couple of unexplained details. Why had Margrete Boeck not put up any resistance — especially when one considers her, albeit latent, self-defence skills? It could of course be, as one theory had it, that she had been taken totally by surprise. But couldn’t the caller be someone she knew, who banged her head against the wall, knocking her senseless before she realized what said caller was up to?

Then there was the information the police eventually released regarding the murder weapon, the mysterious Luger. There were no fingerprints on the pistol, but the newspapers cited a number of theories as to its origins and ownership. This aspect gave rise to numerous in-depth reports on neo-Nazi organizations, including interviews with militant leaders and revelations concerning arms training and mail order companies. It became disturbingly apparent that even in Norway there were people who held secret meetings at which they reverently watched old documentaries about the Führer and gave the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute, while at the same time guarding items of Nazi memorabilia from the war as if they were holy relics. But everyone, even the right-wing extremists who had launched a menacingly worded attack on Jonas Wergeland’s final programme — the one on immigrants, a programme which, not surprisingly, was shown again immediately after the killing — denied having anything to do with this brutal crime.