Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

Jonas runs the tape back, though, wanting to hear the recording anyway, to be on the safe side. And it is then, when they come to the fatal point, that it dawns on him: It’s perfect! The clicks sound sinister, you would never guess it was a lighter, it sounds as if the dragon is doing something venomous, working up to something, with its forked tongue. And Ørn’s laughter heightens the tension, not least because it is unintentional, and preceded by a hair-raising pffffft — Ørn’s involuntary reaction actually gave the impression of an honest-to-goodness dragon, a rather menacing, utterly surprising sound, from inside the pail in particular it bordered on something beyond their understanding, a kind of smiling malice, something even more dangerous than a roaring, fire-breathing dragon. Brilliant. And the din produced when Little Eagle knocked everything over provided the cataclysmic soundtrack to a swift but fierce battle in which — no one could be in any doubt — the dragon was killed.

What sort of sound does a dragon make?

An apologetic little laugh?

This was the day on which Jonas learned that creativity can lie in the unexpected, in things one hadn’t thought of, and above all else: in simplicity. Not only that but it might even be that a dragon was killed — for real. He felt proud when he stood with that tape in his hands. To some extent he understood that this spool of tape, this discus of invisible tracks, was more important, that in the long run it also stood for something more valuable than the actual machinery, the tape recorder. At the back of his mind he was also haunted by the thought that these background noises, when isolated, would form the basis for a very different story.

They ran the play for some of the little kids as planned — against their mothers’ will, no doubt — and scared the living daylights out of them. No one could understand why a number of younger children at Solhaug suddenly started waking up in the night, crying and muttering about dragons and not letting them get them. ‘There, there,’ their mothers said. ‘There’s no such thing as dragons.’ And having thought about it for a moment they might have added: ‘Not in Norway anyway.’

Jonas, too, once had a nightmare. But he was not dreaming. Someone presented him with a dragon, an unnatural creature, and said it was his brother. No talk here of the wrong sound, though, this was a total misconception, a minor addition at the most elementary level of life: one ‘x’ too many so to speak.

Where are the dark holes in Jonas Wergeland’s life?

More than one person has been prepared to state that Jonas Wergeland was incapable of loving anyone. I don’t know what to say to that, Professor — there were undoubtedly a lot of people whom he truly, deeply loathed. But there was no one whom he hated more bitterly than Buddha.

When Buddha was born Jonas was devastated. Buddha might have been a meteorite from above which, small though it is, can inflict mysteriously large wounds on a landscape. Usually it is the parents who suffer from shock in the wake of such a birth, who are left stunned by the doctor’s announcement that their new baby is not like other babies, but in the Hansen family no one was harder hit by this news than Jonas. He was so stricken that he took to his bed. It was he, not his mother, who had trouble with the ‘afterbirth’.

For weeks Jonas lay in bed, tossing and turning in anguish. Why? Because he felt responsible for this child. In his own eyes, Jonas was the boy’s father.

And yet — this sense of responsibility was soon overshadowed by hate. Pure, unadulterated hate. The kind of hate he had once seen in Little Eagle’s eyes. For days and days Jonas sat on his own, wondering, quite seriously, how he could do away with his brother. You often hear about the jealousy felt by the older children in a family when a new baby arrives and steals all the attention. But this was different: Jonas was fourteen years old.

Time and again he stood over Buddha’s crib, looking down on that unsuspecting face and despising himself because he could not bring himself to put his hands around the infant’s throat and squeeze or place a pillow over that awful visage, hideous in its innocence. Alternatively, he considered taking his mother’s brooch from the black lacquer casket and poking out his own eyes with the pin: that way he would at least be spared having to see that apparition, the head whose tiny ears were already starting to take on the protuberant form that prompted thoughts of other planets, but he couldn’t do that either. The only thing he was capable of was hating, subjecting this little toad to black, bottomless hate.

Over the years that followed, Jonas noticed how his whole body would contract at the slightest glimpse of his brother — that moon face, those ghastly ears, the slanted, slightly skelly eyes, the tongue that flicked in and out like that of some long extinct lizard. The others accepted the drooling creature right from the word go, they were perfectly happy with Buddha. ‘A baroque gem,’ Rakel said. The new member of the family had even winkled his parents out of their TV chairs. ‘He’s saved us from the magic mountain,’ his mother said one evening when she and his father were sitting chatting the way they used to do, with their armchairs facing one another. It was actually Daniel who started calling their little brother Buddha, because of the brat’s fondness for rice. And even though there were times when Daniel might be embarrassed by Buddha, Jonas was alone in his murderous antipathy.

In terms of natural gifts, Buddha was very well endowed, but as one might expect he did develop more slowly than other children. At the age of three he was only just starting to toddle about on little bandy legs, and he said nothing, apart from some sounds or cryptic onomatopoeics that could have been interpreted as ‘Mamma’. Something did, however, happen to his concentration when he played with the sugar tongs or chess pieces, particularly the knights. Little mirrors and bells also elicited an animation, accompanied by loud crows of delight.

Mainly as a means of humiliating his brother, Jonas decided to try to teach Buddha to say just one word. In order to prove that it could not be done, that — as an act of pure compassion — the poor soul ought to be done away with as soon as possible, either that or be consigned to some distant solitary cell. In a flash of spite Jonas decided that he would get the boy to say ‘milk’, the most basic element in any child’s life. ‘Milk,’ said Jonas each time he handed Buddha his feeder cup. ‘Milk, milk, milk, milk. Can you say it? Milk. M-i-l-k.’

Buddha merely broke into his usual happy grin. Like a dog about to be fed. This was something else Jonas hated: that Buddha could not sense his hate.

‘Milk. It’s milk. Say it, stupid.’

Buddha just smiled.

For six months they went on like this. Jonas must have said that word to Buddha a thousand times, and each time Buddha responded by smiling blankly, when even a dog, out of sheer exhaustion almost, would have been moved to utter the word ‘milk’. Jonas should have been satisfied — he had proved beyond a doubt that his brother could not be taught — and yet Jonas was not happy. It became an obsession with him, to get his brother to say at least one word. Then they could get rid of him.

One Saturday morning Jonas was at home alone with Buddha. It was raining outside, rain bucketing down, the windows seemed to be covered in transparent, wet plastic. As usual when they were eating, Jonas placed the cup next to Buddha’s stubby fingers and said, almost without thinking — as if he had long since given up: ‘Milk. Look. Milk. This is milk. Say milk, blast you. Milk, milk, milk. It’s not that hard. Look at my lips. Milk. Mmmm-iiii-lk. MILK. Milk, you rotten little sod, you moon-faced little git!’ He felt like smashing the cup into the face of the creature sitting across from him.