Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

The following morning he sat at the breakfast table deep in thought, reviewing his night. He had dreamed that he was a hairsbreadth from being run down by a white Ford. The grapefruit he was eating reinforced a sour-sweet sensation inside him; he also noted how the halved fruit resembled a wheel. He was possibly overreacting, but he decided to tread warily, took care when crossing the road that same morning when looking around the Bokaap district of the city, the old Malay quarter where the city’s Muslims had made their homes. Having first visited the Auwal Mosque on Dorp Street he then attacked the steep, narrow streets climbing up the slope to Signal Hill.

He was about to cross the street just next to one of the little mosques in Chiappini Street when his attention was caught by a spicy aroma. This moment’s distraction was all it took for him almost to be hit by a white Ford that came racing down the hill. The driver banged on his horn, and Jonas jumped back onto the pavement. And as he was standing there gasping for breath, with people staring at him and his heart pounding, he realized that he liked this, these sudden tie-ups between dreams and reality. He was actually more exhilarated than shaken, as if he had just come alarmingly close to an irascible rhino on a safari where everything, even those things which seemed dangerous, was safe and stage-managed.

But he did not know what to think when he was jolted out of sleep at dawn the next morning in his bed at the Mount Nelson; his testicles felt has if they had been caught in a nutcracker. He had dreamed of falling, of riding on a cable railway, dreamed that the car he was in fell down, fell and fell until it smashed to pieces on the ground.

Jonas had not been planning to do it, to take the trip up Table Mountain, he was afraid of heights. Now he had to. His whole body craved it, his throat constricted with excitement. Why did Jonas Wergeland travel? To say that he wanted to expose himself to risk, to rebel against his innate penchant — not least as a Norwegian — for security, is only half the truth. There were some moments when Jonas Wergeland actually believed that travel was training for death. Training in cutting all ties. As a boy, when they played ‘knifey’ he was never as interested in winning a bigger slice of territory as he was in the knife itself, everything which the knife, the sharp steel, represented in terms of danger and fateful possibilities; one quick slash through normality and all at once you found yourself in the complete unknown.

While still in the taxi on the way up to the lower cableway station on Taffelberg Road he noticed how his senses were stimulated by the forthcoming feat of daring, how he was seeing in a new way, spotting the oddest details in his surroundings. He also registered a flutter of impatience, as if he were keen to get this over as quickly as possible, as if he were longing to die. Once he was actually inside the gondola he forced himself to look down into the void while he thought about his dream, all the way up, for six or seven minutes, even thought he hated it, felt sick with fear. Or no, not fear. The whole experience was more like being on a high: being hauled through the air by a cable while the seconds tick away, a question of will it, won’t it, will it, won’t it; but nothing happened. Naturally nothing happened. And yet: it could have happened.

He alighted at the upper station, wandered around for half an hour on the top of the vast landmark, over three and a half thousand feet above sea level, a mountain so flat that from the sea it looked like a table covered with a tablecloth. His grandfather had raved about it. Jonas walked about, reading posters but not taking in anything of what he was reading, surveyed the view without seeing what he was surveying, looked into the restaurant and the souvenir shop without really being there, without buying anything. His feet were on solid ground, but he felt as if he were balancing on a knife’s edge. A narrow promontory that could split his life in two.

It happened on the way down. He was alone in the gondola with an elderly man who stood with one hand tucked inside his jacket, like another Napoleon. Few tourists visited the country in those days, even fewer at that time of year. The wind had risen a little, but the weather was fine; the sea sparkled brilliantly in the south, as a reminder, almost, of how rich in diamonds the country was. The man immediately struck up a conversation, he was from Cape Town himself, brightened up when Jonas mentioned Norway, showed him his stick: ‘See what that is?’ he said eagerly, nodding at the handle. And then, triumphantly: ‘Whalebone.’

It might have been because of his grandfather, but Jonas could almost foresee what happened next. The man pointed down at Table Bay and the harbour and began to tell him about all the Norwegian whale fishermen who had passed through the city. ‘Some of the harpooners lived here all year round, you know.’ The man knew something of the whaler’s life, he had delivered food to the ships when they were bunkering. ‘Canned fruit was popular,’ he said. ‘Peaches especially.’ Within a couple of minutes he had told a great deal about Norwegians and Cape Town. ‘And it’s no secret,’ he chuckled, ‘that a fair number of babies with Norwegian blood in their veins have been born here.’

They were a third of the way down. Jonas observed that the wind had freshened; the gondola was rocking noticeably. He felt afraid, and yet was conscious of how concentrated everything was, even what the man was saying. A life crumpled up into a few seconds. Usually Jonas preferred to maintain a discreet silence on the subject of Norway and whales. The images from South Georgia were still fresh in his mind: the ghost towns at Husvik and Grytviken, the rusty storage tanks, half-sunken whaling ships, a deserted flensing plan forming a slanting dance floor for the penguins. The whale population around South Georgia is still as little as ten per cent of what it once was. In some seasons nigh-on 8,000 whales could be caught in those waters. A total massacre.

‘Great city,’ the man said, peering out. ‘Shame about all the blacks, ruin everything so they do. Fucking and fighting’s all they know. Animals. Bloody animals.’ The man’s knuckles whitened around the handle of his stick.

Jonas did not feel like getting into a discussion with this character, he merely shook his head, unconsciously almost, and went on gazing at the view.

This only goaded the other man: ‘And please don’t talk to me about racism. I happen to be one of those people who rate the whale very highly among God’s creatures. I think it really is as intelligent as we are. But I’d never dream of criticizing you lot for hunting it. So you can’t bloody well blame us for doing to the kaffirs — inferior beings that they are — what you’ve done to the whale. In fact, we ought to take a leaf out of you Norwegians’ book. Do a really radical cull.’

Just as Jonas was about to protest at this comparison, out of common decency, if nothing else, the gondola stopped. A twang. Like a pizzicato note from a violin string. Something was wrong.

He tried not to look down and instead gazed out at the water, a carpet of diamonds; he had never seen an ocean sparkle like that, so bright, so dazzling. But the man was not to be sidetracked; he was visibly incensed. ‘Don’t you come here acting all holier-than-thou,’ he said. ‘We’re the same, you and I. Your lot got rich on whaling. We got rich through the blacks. You should be downright proud of Svend Foyn. Inventing the grenade harpoon puts him in the same league as Hiram Stevens Maxim, the man behind the machine-gun.’

They hung quietly between heaven and earth. Jonas was waiting for the jerk, a twang, as from Einar Tambarskjelve’s bowstring, and then the fall, one fleeting second and it would all be over. To win a new land: death. ‘But you’re forgetting one thing,’ he said stubbornly, or as a way of escaping his fear. ‘We don’t really hunt whales any more.’