Authors: Jan Kjaerstad
So what did we do? That’s right, we cut ourselves off. Suddenly we had become so stinking rich that we could afford to shut out the rest of the world. For although the Harastølen story is not all black and white – things
had
had to be organised at very short notice and so many people had arrived at one time – Jonas Wergeland found it a disgraceful and highly symbolic tale. ‘Think about it,’ he said to me. ‘It took over fifty years for Norway to take in as many refugees as we ourselves produced – Norwegians who fled to Sweden – during the five years of the Second World War. What’s happened to our memories? What’s happened to our capacity for fellow-feeling? Why didn’t we so much as blush when the UN’s high commissioner felt obliged to point out that it was more difficult to gain asylum in Norway, the birthplace of Fridtjof Nansen, than in most other countries in Europe.’
Jonas scanned the deserted hillsides on the other side of Lustrafjord as he pointed to the most paradoxical thing about Norway: such wide-open spaces and such closed hearts. We could, it is true – had they been Europeans, and had their sufferings been given enough television exposure – have taken in thousands in almost no time at all. It was the least we could do. If we were to divide the country up among us every Norwegian would have 70,000 square metres of land all to himself. And yet deep down inside we wanted to keep ourselves to ourselves. Stay a rich man’s reserve. The accumulated value of our national costumes alone, complete with all their silver ornaments, would exceed the gross national product of many a Third World country. The way Jonas Wergeland saw it, modern Norway was suffering from the King Midas syndrome. Everything we touched turned to gold. But we could no
longer embrace our fellow men. We kept our mouths shut and walled
ourselves
in, applauding the government’s efforts to build a Great Wall around our borders, constructed out of what were – by its lights – unassailable legal niceties. To Jonas it was a sad fact: what Adolf Hitler could not do, we had managed for ourselves. We had built our own
Festung Norwegen.
Bearing in mind what happened at the tail end of the millennium, when the Norwegian people were given the chance to respond spontaneously and unselfishly to the new stream of refugees from the devastation of the Balkans at least, I have thought a lot about the impassioned monologue which Jonas Wergeland delivered at Luster. Because even though he was right in what he said about Norwegians and their long-standing mistrust of asylum seekers, I have the suspicion that in talking about this he was, in fact, talking about something else. The Norwegian government’s unfortunate consignment of Bosnian refugees to Harastølen was effected during Jonas’s first months in prison, which is to say at a time when he was taking a harder look at his own life than ever before. Although I cannot express this very clearly, I am convinced that in his monologue at Harastølen – his condemnation of such isolationism – Jonas Wergeland was actually talking about himself.
I started walking towards the car and when he did not follow, I looked back. I turned just in time to see him kneeling on the steps leading up to the building, outside what he had described as a monument to our brutish
attitude
towards everything that was not Norwegian. I was instantly reminded of the German chancellor, Willy Brandt, going down on his knees on behalf of the German people before the monument to those who died in the Warsaw ghetto in the Jewish uprising of 1943. I believe Jonas Wergeland felt the need to do something similar here, albeit on a smaller scale: to beg forgiveness for his nation’s foolishness, for its eagerness to turn Norway into an impregnable fortress. Although, when you get right down to it, it could be that this, too, was done for personal reasons.
Jonas had first encountered this mistrust of strangers when just a little boy. In elementary school he had had a very strict, very proper, headmaster who, due to the fact that his initials were HRH, was simply referred to as His Royal Highness. He was a distinguished-looking gentleman with an aquiline nose and eyebrows like canopies, who walked with chest out and chin up. He was notorious for reciting never-ending poems at the drop of a hat, poems that no one could understand a word of, or at least none of the pupils on whom he kept such a strict eye and whom he punished so zealously for the slightest misdemeanour.
One Friday evening, not all that late on, it so happened that Jonas was making his way from the Grønland district of Oslo to Tøyen with his aunt
– his aunt Laura. And who should he see come staggering out of the Olympus restaurant – something of a drinking den and not exactly known as the haunt of deities – but his dear headmaster, His Royal Highness himself. And not only that, but the headmaster was merrily carolling a popular hit of the day. It was not a pretty sight, or at least: it may have been pretty, but it was hardly designed to induce respect – to see one’s school’s moral guardian, an elderly man with eyebrows like canopies, rolling down the road burbling: ‘Let me be young, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah yeah!’ He did not notice Jonas, he did not look as if he was aware of his surroundings at all. He probably thought he was safe, so far away from his realm.
Such ‘revelations’, or whatever you want to call them, never made any impression on Jonas. In the case of his headmaster, it seemed that only after this did Jonas begin to feel some sympathy for him and actually acknowledge him as an authority. There was something about this phenomenon, perhaps the very negativity of this way of thinking, this conviction that behind every beautiful façade there lay something rotten, that left him cold. Because that was the rule. Slash through a rich tapestry and you would find a rat’s nest. All through his life, Jonas Wergeland was more interested in the exceptions, in the other side of the coin.
Solhaug, the housing estate where Jonas grew up and which, in all
essentials
, contained a genuine cross-section of the Norwegian population, also had its share of eccentric individuals. Take, for example, Mr Iversen, a timid, nigh on invisible father of four who lived for just one thing: to fire off
thousands
of
krones’
worth of rockets every New Year’s Eve. Once a year he would appear, out of nowhere almost, with a cigar between his teeth and his arms full of fireworks, and for a few moments he was everybody’s hero. Then it was as if he went back to earth, not to be seen again until the following New Year. Another was Myhren at number 17, who would not have hurt a fly, but who, when he heard that Jonny Nilsson had beaten Knut Johannesen to set a new world record in the 5,000 metres at the World Speedskating Championships in Japan, had chucked every Swedish product the family owned out of the window: an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, a Stiga ice-hockey game and the
collected
works of Selma Lagerlöf. When Jonas was growing up, the test of one’s manhood was to creep up to Myhren’s door and yell ‘Jonny Nilsson!’ through the letterbox.
But this is the story of a certain lady. She had lived at Solhaug for years, but not even Mrs Five-Times Nilsen knew much about her. Usually you could form quite a good picture of people’s characters, gain a peek into the deepest recesses of their souls by keeping the removal van under observation – ‘Did you
see
that wall lamp? Talk about hideous!’ – but this woman must
have moved in one evening, all unnoticed; no one could remember seeing so much as a rag rug. Her skin had a dusky tint to it which gave her an
alarmingly
exotic appearance, the look of someone of foreign origin. ‘She may have nice skin,’ declared Mrs Agdestein, the first person in Grorud to own a sun lamp, which she used twice a day, sitting in front of the mirror, in order to look like Jacqueline Kennedy, ‘but I’ve never seen such a frumpy little mouse. She might at least treat herself to a visit to the hairdresser.’
Naturally, all sorts of rumours circulated about what lay hidden within this white patch on the housing estate’s carefully mapped-out world. Nilla, who actually lived in the same building, firmly maintained that her flat was full of snakes and lizards and that she got food for them from an
acquaintance
who worked as a rat catcher. Others swore they had seen a blue light shimmering behind her curtains at night, and took this as a sign that she held seances in there. She also smelled funny. Of spices. Or alcohol. ‘Poor little soul, she’s a secret drinker,’ Mrs Agdestein whispered at the sewing bee. But most people simply thought she could not be very well off – judging, at least, by the drab, grey outfits she always wore, and the glimpses she occasionally vouchsafed of an exceptionally spartan hallway. Her sunbronzed skin
notwithstanding
, she was nicknamed the Grey Eminence. Jonas had always felt that the greyness was necessary camouflage, that this woman dealt in
something
secret and dangerous. He knew what it was too: precious gems. ‘It’s the sparkle from all those jewels that gives her skin that healthy glow,’ he whispered to Daniel.
There was one thing, however, on which several of Solhaug’s mothers had remarked. On one Saturday in the month, the Grey Eminence left the block dressed up and made up beyond all recognition and took the bus into town. More than one had, from behind their curtains, seen her come home at an indecently late hour. This behaviour gave rise to the categorical assertion that she had ‘a bit on the side’, an expression which to Jonas’s ears sounded as
mysterious
as ‘hocus-pocus’, with the same magical associations.
There came a day in early December when Jonas found himself standing outside her front door. He was out selling raffle tickets, having lost a bet with Daniel. Jonas could usually guess how generous people were likely to be just by doing a quick scan of their nameplates – what they were made of, the lettering – before ringing the doorbell. As he eyed up the Grey Eminence’s anonymous sign: clear plastic with ‘Karen Mohr’ in a blue script, he suddenly realised that he was less interested in whether she would buy a raffle ticket than in whether he would get a peek inside her flat. He stood at the entrance to King Solomon’s Mines. Inside – he could feel it in his bones – lay mounds of glittering sapphires and rubies.
Jonas barely heard the doorbell ring, it might almost have been muffled, or waking from age-long slumber. But she immediately answered the door, opened it a little way. He glimpsed the corner of a small, grey-carpeted hall. Proper grey. With not a single thing on the walls, not even a three-year-old calendar. But he could smell something. Something unusual, something good. ‘Will you support Grorud scout troop by buying a ticket for the Christmas raffle? First prize is a side of pork.’
She frowned, possibly at the thought of having to carve up a side of pork on her kitchen table, all the mess, all the packing, the bother of having to rent a freezer down at the Centre. Then the unexpected happened. Instead of saying yes or no, she invited him in. The thought of Hansel and Gretel flashed through Jonas’s mind, but he did not hesitate for a moment, he understood that he was being shown a rare trust. Once he was inside the grey hallway she smiled. ‘I like your eyes,’ she said. ‘They’re so big. And so brown. You remind me of someone. Are you a good observer? Do you draw?’ She stood for a while simply considering him, even ran a finger over the scar on his forehead, as if trying to guess at the story behind it.
This close to her Jonas could see that she was good-looking, very
good-looking
. Not only her skin, but her face as well. Her features. She had a face which – what was it about it, he wondered – yes, in that face were many faces. He should perhaps have been on his guard, but it was a pleasure to be admired by Karen Mohr. To be the object of her regard. He liked the fact that she saw something which no one else could see.
All people are special, but Jonas knew that he was more than special. He was unique. He was an exception. From the day when he had learned to tie his shoelaces – not that there is necessarily any connection – every now and again he had been aware of a hidden power welling up inside him. He could not have said what it was. Only that something, something of sterling worth lay pulsating in there. Some rare gift. When the American Marvel comics appeared on newsstands in Norway, Jonas instantly identified with several of their superhero characters, although obviously he did not possess any of their powers. No, it was the certainty that there was more to him. Jonas had no trouble believing that a person could walk up walls, have X-ray vision or fly fast as lightning: all of these were really just variations on, or a slight
exaggeration
of, this thing he felt slumbering inside him. What it was he was soon to discover.
Years later, when he was working on his programme on Svend Foyn, a colleague happened to notice Jonas Wergeland late one night alone in a
conference
room at Television House in Marienlyst. There was nothing so
surprising
about that, apart from the fact that Wergeland was skipping, and that
he was doing it in the dark. ‘It was actually quite spooky,’ his colleague had said. ‘He wasn’t jumping so much as flying. Anyone would have thought he had supernatural powers.’
The woman who uttered these words was working with Jonas on the
Thinking Big
series. She knew that as far as Svend Foyn was concerned he was stuck, well and truly stuck. After all, how were they supposed to produce a programme, a heroic epic, saluting a man who so strongly personified a whaling industry which by then had almost virtually destroyed Norway’s international reputation. Whaling had once given rise to the first oil age, an industrial adventure which had filled the Norwegian people with
confidence
; now it was an extremely embarrassing business altogether. For various reasons, some more logical than others, many people felt that killing a whale was somehow different from killing a pig or a cow – or a cod, come to that. It was like shooting a brother, a distant relative. Some regarded the whale as the one creature on earth best able to communicate with possible
extra-terrestrial
beings. Svend Foyn had long since been demoted from national hero to national villain. No one wanted to be confronted with all that gory documentary footage of the flaying and cutting up of a whale carcase, no one wanted to be told that the growing prosperity experienced by Norway at the end of the nineteenth century was founded on a mindless slaughter which almost wiped out an entire species. No one wished to be reminded that their Stressless armchairs were covered, so to speak, in whaleskin.