Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

Jonas took his departure in the long peacetime, stated that the nigh-on unnatural, 125-year long period of peace up to the outbreak of the Second World War had left Norwegians pampered and blind. And even during the war — in the minds of most people the greatest national catastrophe of the twentieth century — the number of Norwegians killed was no greater than the number killed on Norwegian roads in a couple of decades. This had given birth to a kind of collective illusion, Jonas wrote, that it was possible to stay out of the turmoil of international affairs. The Norwegian people were used to having bounty flowing into their laps, despite the fact that they kept themselves apart from the world. The Gulf Stream factor, Jonas called it, came up with the name then and there, was all at once a fount of inspiration and ideas. The way he saw it, the Norwegian people seemed to have been in a prolonged state of shock ever since gaining their freedom and independence in 1905; they were absolutely terrified to open their mouths at all in case something went wrong and they found themselves entangled in a web of ties and obligations. They seemed to be hanging on to the notion of themselves as a nation of free peasants and had closed their minds to the fact that Norway was an industrial nation, dependent on a global market. Jonas’s heart sang in his breast, he felt as though the graphite of his pencil was being transformed into diamond. In conclusion he unabashedly wrote that joining NATO represented the most crucial change of the post-war years, namely the internationalisation of Norway. This was also Gerhardsen’s greatest claim to fame. He had recognized — albeit reluctantly — that it was international politics, rather than the labour movement, which had shaped and would go on shaping the development of Norwegian society in our century. Gerhardsen understood, in short, that the prosperity of Norway — and indeed the potential for creating a welfare state — depended on conditions existing beyond the borders of Norway. ‘Einar Gerhardsen saw,’ the Norwegian teacher read in Jonas Wergeland’s essay, ‘that what we today call “autonomy” had in fact been lost long before.’

What Jonas did not realize then, although he did later, was that Gerhardsen, by taking Norway into NATO, also laid the foundations for a ‘No’ to the EU. In reality, the two Norwegian referendums on whether to join the European Union were decided back then, in 1949, by Einar Gerhardsen alone, because, no matter how you look at it, he was the key player, both in the government and in the party. Had it not been for Gerhardsen’s stance on a Western defence treaty, the famous national congress in February 1949 would never have passed a resolution supporting negotiations on membership of such an alliance. And had Norway not become a member of NATO, it would, due to the uncertainties surrounding national security, in all probability have gone on to join the EEC or, later, the EU. To Jonas’s mind, there was no one to whom the Norwegian anti-EU movement owed a greater debt than Einar Gerhardsen.

Jonas sat in that gym hall, tired but happy, as if he had just finished a hard training session: feeling, for once, that he had written something with a bit of bite, a dash of originality.

And I ask you, Professor: can this person — can this faltering, naïve, vulnerable individual really be a murderer?

Axel got good marks, as always, for a gift of an essay question. He wrote about Henrik Ibsen — a glib, sycophantic, coolly calculated essay, totally at odds with everything he believed. Viktor, for his part, got top marks, a six, for an essay which ‘assessed the role played by heroes in the lives of ordinary people’ — top marks in melancholy, alcoholic afterglow. He wrote about Napoleon, he tore Napoleon to shreds. Four Løiten aquavits, two Gammel Oplands and Five Gilde Taffels. His words were hammered in like nails in a coffin. Napoleon didn’t stand a chance.

Jonas, on the other hand, got a two for his essay, subtitled ‘From Spectator to Player’. He didn’t know what to think. His Norwegian teacher made some remark about it being all very well to show a bit of involvement, but God knows there were limits. It should probably be borne in mind that this was at a time, during the build-up to the EU referendum, when feelings ran high, among schoolteachers too. Nevertheless, Jonas Wergeland’s first attempt to realize his dream of becoming the Father of his Country — if, that is, it was not a covert experiment aimed at bringing him immortality — was almost a total failure.

Now we are taking a leap — or rather, this is not a leap, it is a continuation — to Jonas sitting in the lavishly appointed kitchen of Ambassador Boeck’s residence in Ullevål Garden City; it is less than a year since Margrete moved back to Norway and Jonas was reunited with the great love of his boyhood. He has just finished a late breakfast when she arrives home from Stavanger and dumps her bag down in the hall. ‘How did it go?’ he asks, without looking up from his newspaper. ‘Fine,’ she says, no more than that, only that it went fine. ‘I need to lie down for a bit,’ she says and disappears into the bedroom.

It may be — I would not rule out the possibility — that after this brief exchange Jonas Wergeland packed his few belongings into a suitcase and left the solid brick house among the apple trees in Ullevål Garden City, because there were people who swore that they had run into Jonas Wergeland in the transit lounge at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport that same afternoon — and the date is easy to remember, because it was the very day on which banner headlines were proclaiming the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a political and religious event that was to have historical consequences — on his way, by all accounts, to California, to Los Angeles ‘to make a fresh start, to live in the light’. He was even supposed to have said something about resuming a former course of study and was therefore planning to visit the Hale observatory with the express purpose of seeing the new solar telescope at Big Bear Lake. Or as he said, or was purported to have said: ‘It’s high time I put my pointless, eclipsed life in perspective.’

But according to my information, Jonas followed Margrete into the bedroom where, despite the fact she was tired, she embraced him passionately, hungrily, then made love to him with a tenderness and an ardour, not to say impatience, that surprised him, almost wore him out; so he lay and dozed for a long time with Margrete snuggled up against him fast asleep, pondering her erotic mystery, what it could be, because it wasn’t really as if sex with her was any different from sex with women he had known before her, and yet with her it felt unique, because the pleasure she gave him was of a totally different order — even when performing the same actions. Jonas lay in his future in-laws’ bed, staring at the golden statuette from Thailand which stood against the end wall and thinking to himself that her secret must lie in a kind of orchestration, the ability to coax something fresh and new out of a tired old tune. And he could not stop his mind from running on, starting to mull over the newly accomplished act, because there had been something about it, an almost diversionary intensity which worried him, which caused, yes, a suspicion to well up inside him; and no matter how much he told himself that what he feared couldn’t be true, he knew that it was true, or if not true, then perfectly possible. And however much he tried to fight it, these little stabs at his heart made his temper rise and forced him in the end, against his will, to tug at her, not gently, but roughly; and when she woke up, appearing more bewildered than surprised, he looked, or gazed, searchingly into her eyes, remembering as he did so, for a split-second, the sense of awe he had felt the first time he looked through a telescope, and then he said: ‘You didn’t?’ He heard himself all but begging. ‘Did you?’