Jan Kjærstad: The Conqueror

‘I thought he was going to rape me,’ the woman said, reporting the incident later. No point beating about the bush: we might as well begin at the end, or the beginning of the end. So, before the bout of erotic vertigo in the chemist’s shop, even before the story of the stinking monster in the basement, we have to start with this man, as he sits in the back of a taxi driving through a summery Oslo night; on the surface of it a perfectly ordinary situation, a situation this man has been in thousands of times before, the rule more than the exception: he is on his way home, late at night in a taxi.

Initially the driver, a woman, an attractive woman, an English undergraduate who did the odd shift, had only caught a glimpse of the man who flagged down her cab in the city centre, not far from a bar, and muttered something about Bergen, leading her to think, to begin with, that she had picked up a fare to the west coast — what a fantastic piece of luck — until she realized that of course he meant Bergensveien, in Grorud, because at that same moment she recognized him. The person in the back seat was one of those few Norwegians who did not need to give his address: who could, if they wished, simply say: ‘Take me home.’

She was thrilled, and not a little proud of the fact that, of all the possible cabs for hire on the streets, he should have chosen hers; she sneaked a peek at him in the mirror, noted that he had not bothered to fasten his seatbelt, as if seatbelts were, in his case, unnecessary; he sat there with a happy, almost beatific, smile on his face like he was on a high, had just been presented with a grand award or something. She couldn’t wait to tell her friends, her fellow taxi drivers: guess who I drove home the other night, no, honestly, it was him . She kept peeking in the mirror, racking her brains for something to say, something about one of his programmes, a compliment that wouldn’t sound as glib as all the other words of praise that were no doubt heaped on him every day. For, at a time when television turned everything of any importance into entertainment, when television, even Norwegian television, was dominated by mindless game shows and quiz programmes, gushing chat shows and primitive debates: confirming, in other words, every misanthrope’s assertions that all the people want is bread and circuses — he, her passenger, had restored her faith in television as an art form in its own right. She had something on the tip of her tongue, something she felt was pretty original, something about his programme on Sonja Henie, about how suggestive they were, those pirouettes and the ice flying up, how erotic, she had the urge to add, although she didn’t know if she dared. It would be like addressing His Majesty the King. Because the man in the back seat was none other than Jonas Wergeland.

They drove along Trondheimsveien, across Carl Berners plass. She hoped he had noticed the paperback copy of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow lying between the two front seats, a book which she read when she was sitting on the rank. The scent of a restaurant filled the cab: spices, wine, cigars, he had obviously just risen from an excellent dinner. She glanced in the mirror, could no longer make out his features, his face lay in shadow, it looked blank. She remembered with what interest and delight — yes, delight — she had watched This Is Your Life not that long ago, on the evening when Jonas Wergeland was the star guest, the youngest ever; what a show that was, a glittering tribute for which everybody had turned out, from an unwontedly animated Minister for the Arts to the legendary writer Axel Stranger; what a life, she had thought, what a man. As if to heighten the thrill she looked in the mirror again, but there was something about the look in his eyes, his whole expression, which did not fit with the face she knew from the television screen, from This Is Your Life , the face that had so often held her mesmerized, a face she had even fantasized about, dreamed of, had rude thoughts about.

And just as they are approaching the Sinsen junction, the largest intersection in Norway, it happens. At first all she, the driver, hears are some odd sounds, a kind of gurgling, then she realizes what is happening and pulls to an abrupt halt on the hard shoulder. But it is too late. Jonas Wergeland throws up, a jet of vomit shoots from his mouth, hitting her on the back of the head at the point where the headrest doesn’t block the spray, and even then, even as she feels this slimy, foul-smelling substance on her own skin and sees, out of the corner of her eye, how the cover of The Rainbow too, has been splattered with sick, she thinks that he must have been taken ill; she has only one thought in her head, she must help him, she is full of concern, tenderness, because she is in his debt, in debt to a man who has caused her to change her views on many things, on the nature of Norway, possibly even on the nature of life itself; she pictures to herself how this dramatic turn of events will only make the story that much better. Just then she catches sight of his face again, two eyes staring at her in the mirror, and she realizes that he is not ill, but drunk, as pissed out of his skull as anybody can be, and not just with alcohol but with hate.

Before she could do a thing, it happened again. Slumped in the back seat, Jonas Wergeland spewed out the contents of his stomach, the stream broken only by short pauses to gasp for breath. He didn’t even seem to be aware that he was throwing up. He was like an out-of-hand fire hose, writhing and spraying in all directions. Before she could get out and open the door for him, he had filled the inside of the Mercedes with an unappetizing swill — she could already hear the dressing-down she was going to get from the owner: ‘Miss Kielland, do you realize that I have just had the inside of this car thoroughly cleaned by Økern Auto Cosmetic?’

But at that moment she was more concerned about Jonas Wergeland, as he fell out of the cab, mumbling and laughing to himself. ‘My television programmes are just as useless as the pyramids,’ he snorted. ‘They stay in the desert, jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeoisie climb up on them.’ Then he raised his head: ‘Gustav Flaubert,’ he bawled. ‘I pinched that from Flaubert, so I bloody did.’ As if to show that his wits weren’t totally befuddled, that there was still something going on up there, he pointed to a sign hanging over the entrance to a restaurant across the street. ‘Rendezvous’ it said. ‘I met a girl there once,’ he said, even as he was racked by another violent and painful bout of retching, as if he had toadstools in his stomach and was trying to bring them up. And then, in an unfamiliar, dark, rasping tone: ‘To hell with all girls.’

What was he thinking? What was going on inside Jonas Wergeland’s head? I know. I know everything, almost everything. It is a bright summer’s night in June. There lies Jonas Wergeland, just down the road from Aker Hospital where he was born, just down the road from the Sinsen junction, Norway’s largest interchange, an enormous loop of concrete and tarmac. As a child his heart had always sung when he had driven across here, this point where Oslo spread out beneath him, presented the illusion of itself as a glittering metropolis, rich in possibilities. And now he lay sprawled on that very spot, on high and yet laid low, and felt as if he were spewing over Oslo, over the whole of Norway, in fact.

The taxi driver didn’t know which way to turn. She noticed that his jacket was spattered with damp stains, bits of food. It was a slightly old-fashioned jacket and one she recognized: one that, on numerous television chat shows, had lent him the air of an English gentleman. She felt like a witness to an act of blasphemy. ‘I would honestly never have thought this of you, Mr Wergeland,’ she said, for want of anything better, and with a hint of sharpness. ‘I really did not expect this of you.’