The Conqueror Page 17

  Buddha stroked Jonas’s damp cheek with his finger. ‘Milk,’ he said. ‘Milk.’

  It is no exaggeration to say that, not counting his parents and Kristin, in all his life Jonas Wergeland loved only person, and by that I mean with all his heart and without any ulterior motive: Buddha. Possibly because he had never hated anyone as fiercely either.

  Buddha was a genius. A genius at love.

  And I think I know why: Buddha was the product of a broken heart.

  The Erogenous Battle Zone

  Now we have to tread warily, Professor, because this – the fateful consequences of that broken heart, I mean – constitutes a story that belongs elsewhere, though an imprudent narrator might have told it here, not realizing that such an artificial splicing would put the whole account of Jonas Wergeland’s life at risk. One tiny alteration can make all the difference; Buddha is living proof of this.

  At this juncture, however, another tale impinges, so strongly that I can positively feel how it – physically – grabs hold of the last sentences above. Ergo, the following story is also about love, or about what, for a long time, Jonas mistook for love.

  In the latter half of the seventies, during the years when he was studying architecture, Jonas often visited the Museum of Cultural History on the island of Bygdøy, to sketch the historic buildings on exhibit there. He had a peculiar weakness for this place, always felt, as he passed through the tunnel-like entranceway with its ticket windows, that he was entering another zone, a zone in which several ages existed simultaneously – rather like the three levels of the human brain. And what he felt most in touch with, as he strolled among old buildings reeking of creosote, sketching a cog joint from Numedal here, a corner post from Hallingdal there, was his reptile self, the oldest level of his consciousness. Given the choice he would have said he liked the Setesdal farmstead best, possibly because it was situated close to the entrance, or because it had the look of a street, with a row of buildings on either side of the path – either that or it could have had something to do with the notion of Setesdal as somewhere so totally cut off, the thought that here he had found the perfect picture of Norway and the nation’s history.

  That afternoon, a weekday in early summer with sunshine and scudding clouds, he happened to wander into the Åmlid farmhouse, into a room that was surprisingly cool. There were no windows in the house; the only light fell through the smoke hole in the ceiling. He stood with his feet on hard-packed earth, studying the open hearth in the centre of the room, trying to imagine all the smoke that must collect in the room when a fire was burning. The ceiling beams were completely blackened. This was how people had lived in the Middle Ages – although in Setesdal, because it was such an out-of-the way spot, people had lived liked this until well into the nineteenth century. Jonas could not rid himself of the thought that, in their minds, many Norwegians were still as cut off from the rest of the world.

  An elderly couple, Danish pensioners, climbed over the high threshold and a guide, a girl whom Jonas had not noticed, stepped out of the shadows clad in folk costume. Jonas stayed where he was and listened to the way in which she explained to the Danes about the gjøya, a thick pole suspended over the hearth on which to hang pots. ‘As you can see,’ she said, pointing, ‘the pole is shaped like a horse, because on the farm the horse was regarded as a fertility symbol.’ Jonas saw how she glanced in his direction, giving him the once-over even as she went on talking, showing the Danish tourists how the pole pivoted on a huge wooden hinge. One of her eyebrows sat higher than the other, as if in constant surprise.

  Once they were alone she walked over to him: ‘I know you,’ she said. To begin with, due to the respectful look in her eye, he thought she had mistaken him for someone else, that this was a variant on the Samoan incident. ‘We went to the same school,’ she said. Her voice was commanding but pleasant. Jonas fixed his eyes on a corner, thought of cog joints, thought of the perfect way of fitting wooden logs together. As if she felt it was time to switch from defence to attack, she reminded him of something he had apparently said once, during a discussion with the Young Socialists in the schoolyard, something to the effect that war could be limited because it was merely the continuation of politics, albeit by other means. She was not to know that this was based on a quotation, the only brief passage from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War that he had read and memorized. ‘I’ve thought a lot about that and decided that I don’t agree,’ she said.

  Recognition was slowly dawning on Jonas; he remembered that her father was in some top post in the government. He also recalled something about a conspicuous scar on her neck, looked for and found it even in the gloom. She had been in a parallel class to his; they had met at a few parties – he even remembered seeing her in folk costume at a May 17 breakfast.

  He had wondered at this, a city girl with a fondness for wearing the traditional bunad. And here, in the gloomy Åmlid farmhouse he noticed what a difference the folk costume made to her, all at once she was a girl from old Setesdal. She told him that she was at university, writing a dissertation on the Soviet Union. He never took his eyes off her. Although he had seen her before he had never really taken any notice of her. But now – the folk costume, this room seemed to present her in a strange new light or endowed her with a shadowiness she had not previously possessed.

  He went outside, had to duck his head to get through the low doorways. He strolled on, looked into rooms on other farmsteads, peered through ancient leaded windowpanes, buckled glass that made the world look different, distorted it, turned it into the setting for a drama about buried instincts. He sauntered about, made a few sketches in his book, of details, the design on the door of a storehouse, the lines of a bowl, the rose painting on a cabinet, but found it impossible to concentrate; snakes writhed in his stomach, he could think of only one thing, contemplated the planks, the boards, staves and logs, the traditional Norwegian building style; wherever he turned, staves and logs and the landscape outside the ridged windowpanes taking little leaps when he moved his head, just for the fun of it, he thought, out of sheer, giddy wantonness.

  Late in the afternoon he found himself back at the Setesdal farmstead. He could not help himself, stepped inside the Åmlid farmhouse, thought at first that it was empty, then realized that she was sitting on a bench between the bed and the cabinet. Light filtered down through the opening in the roof and spread around the room that remained, however, shadowy. There was no doubt: he felt that pressure on his spine, as if a switch had been turned on, his whole body put into a state of receptivity. He said nothing, his thoughts went to Louis Kahn, darkness and light; he took out his sketchbook and proceeded to sketch a simple shelf holding some wooden vessels. He could not see well in the semi-darkness, gave up, turned his eye to the gjøya, shaped like a horse, the fertility symbol. The place smelled of ancient wood. The logs were enormous. Everything in here was thick, even his fingers felt thick.

  She spoke, he answered, had no idea what he answered, felt thick all over, thought only that she was a perfect guide: her figure, the costume, her eyebrows, her voice, a perfect guide to Norway, everything Norwegian, these thick logs, massive corners, the cogging, the idea of raping her occurred to him, yes, rape, an uncontrollable sense of having no choice, of not being in control, this dim room, too dim, almost dark, especially now, with the sun disappearing behind a cloud, as if someone had turned off the light; he felt afraid, for a second, afraid of he knew not what, turned around and saw that she was glowing, she stood in the shadows radiating light, then she walked towards him with the same resolve that she would later display in her chosen career, although it could be that she became possessed of it at that very moment, because Ellisiv H. surprised everyone at university, including herself perhaps, by making an abrupt about-turn and entering the Officers Training School, which had only just opened its doors to women; and she would raise even more eyebrows when, after her obligatory year as a sergeant in the Signal Corps of N Brigade, she went on to Military Academy, thus
laying the foundations for a notable military career which not only made her a trailblazer for other women in the Norwegian armed forces – it was thanks to her, for example, that girls were finally allowed to join the Royal Lifeguards – but eventually also led her to an unprecedented high rank in the army and a top post with NATO in Brussels, so in a way you could say that she conquered Europe; but first there was Jonas Wergeland, whom she quite simply overcame by putting her arms around him and squeezing him, with a physical strength that would also surprise her future fellow officers when she beat them in competitions and exercises; Jonas just let his sketchbook fall to the earth floor, overwhelmed by a pounding at his temples which made everything go black while at the same time turning his member into a log, shaped like a horse; she locked both doors, it was closing time anyway, they were alone, them and the gloom, which sparked with tension; she kissed him, tugging at his clothing as she did so, tore them off, tore off her apron, and everything she was wearing underneath, including the thick stockings, kept on the black headscarf, rolled him around the floor of the cool room, as if it were a wrestling match, she was raging with desire, her eyes clouded, she said something in a husky voice, was trying to climb on top of him, coiled herself around him, knocked over an ancient log chair, clambered up, dragged him up onto the solitary bed in the corner, hauled off the coverlet and lay back on a fur pelt, a sheepskin which was spread across the straw mattress; Jonas felt raw, raw and primitive, and he loved it, loved every bit of it, was almost aching with throbbing desire when he saw how the light fell down from the roof and glinted off a thick gold chain around her neck and, further down, off her fair pubic hair, a rich, luxuriant tuft; a sight which drove him wild, drove him to grope around in that triangle with his hand, poke a finger through the ring of damp fur, let it sink in until it began to drip with gold, as from Odin’s own ring, Draupner, itself.

  He could feel that she wanted him, that her whole body wanted him. When he hesitated she muttered something about a coil, that she wore a coil, and that was how it seemed to him too, as she dug her fingers into his shoulders and dragged him down on top of her, that it was not a case of moving in and out but of being led round the round the turns of a coil, upwards or downwards, outwards or inwards. And again he had the impression of a light, as if in touching her clitoris he had flicked a switch. This was not lovemaking, this was illumination; she twined herself around him, made love to him passionately, as if grateful for the pleasure welling up inside her, accentuated perhaps by the unusual way in which Jonas Wergeland penetrated her, from another angle so it seemed, something which Jonas, when asked once, ascribed to the dragon-horn button which he had swallowed as a little boy and which he thought might have wedged itself in his spine, as an extra vertebra: a phenomenon which not only enabled him to pick up signals from certain women but also forced him to hold himself at a slightly different angle during sex; however that may be, he made love to her in such a unique way that she endeavoured to do likewise to him, pressed him so tightly to her that Jonas felt as though he was being transformed, acquiring a different, finer calibre, that something was happening to him, to his way of thinking, that the spittle in her kisses was an elixir which affected his memory more than his body, causing him to recall something, something very special, in a new way.

  She grew wilder and wilder, clawed at him, leaving bloody welts down his back; this in turn drove him, unwittingly, to pull her hair as he rode her, pitching in to her, seized with an urge to be violent, in the grip of unbridled forces which simply surged up out of nowhere. ‘You’re killing me,’ she moaned, licking his throat compliantly and holding him in a muscular, vice-like grip; he plunged in, far in, again and again, not knowing whether they were fighting or making love, ramming into her so hard that the room rang with what sounded like the slapping of a wet floor mop. Suddenly she began to pull back every time he drove into her, as if taking evasive action, a strategy which goaded him into making a massive attempt to outwit her, to pursue her, hard, at different tempi, but to no avail, not until she did another about-turn, as it were, and went into the attack, threw herself at him with such ferocity that she screamed out loud. He made to respond, but all that came out was a snarl. He was incensed, or no, not incensed, he was aflame: filled with a frantic ardour, he was on the track of a cause, or in the act of inventing a cause, actually creating himself, re-creating himself, becoming someone different from the person he had been at the start of their lovemaking.

  She was working in a daze, making love to him as if intent on sucking him up, laid bare her throat in such a way that he caught the gleam of her scar, a long gash running crosswise to the gold chain; she dug her nails into his shoulders. ‘I think I’m going to die,’ she whispered just before her body went taut, as if with a pleasure bordering on the unbearable, then caught her breath as her back arched and stiffened convulsively into a bridge which conducted him across to another world, far beyond that dark room, and yet composed of inexplicably similar elements. For, just as the sound of a cork rubbed against a bottle could, thanks to the imagination’s ability to make leaps, become the chirping of birds in a radio play, the friction caused by his penis moving inside her vagina made him think of a clearing in the forest; there was something about the smell of earth, the hearth, the charcoal, not least the way she coiled herself around him, which had long since conjured up the threads of a memory, a significant story, a narrative he might almost have been said to weave into being, using his member as the shuttle. Jonas Wergeland was not quite like other men. Ejaculation never came to him as a release, a feeling of something being loosed. To him it was more like a knot – a knot in which lots of threads were gathered together – drawn tight.

  They lay quietly, still intertwined. Jonas strove to memorize this moment, to fix these images in his mind. He became aware that she was crying softly. He took this to be a sign of happiness, a reaction to overwhelming contentment. Like something bursting, but in a good way. Looking back on it, though, he was not so sure. He was never quite certain that he construed such situations correctly.

  My Dear Fellow Countrymen

  The threads he was tying together had to do with having ambition, with the mystery inherent in that a person can be moseying along one day, perfectly content with life, only the next to be seized by an unquenchable urge to do something, be someone, make a name for himself. Where does this impulse come from? Could there be a little steel coil inside the body that can suddenly be wound up like the spring inside the workings of a clock? And furthermore: is it possible to determine the precise moment when a person chooses his main path in life? In Jonas Wergeland’s case, it is. And, I hasten to add, to avoid any misunderstandings: it was not me who talked him into it.

  To questions from well-meaning relatives as to what he wanted to be when he grew up, throughout his childhood Jonas always answered without hesitation: ‘A pilot!’ or ‘A chef!’ – thanks to Uncle Lauritz and Three Star Larsen, Ørn’s father, respectively. In time, however, he came up with a more original occupation, one that invariably made those selfsame relatives smile: ‘I’m going to be the Father of my Country,’ he would say. Now this idea had not been plucked completely out of thin air: Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen lived in the same building as Aunt Laura on Sofienberggata in the Tøyen district of Oslo. To be the Father of one’s Country, to lead the people, seemed to Jonas a promising – and by no means unattainable – future calling, to stand before a sea of people and say, as Gerhardsen had done, with a slight catch in his voice: ‘My dear fellow countrymen.’ And though this may have been a childish notion, yet it speaks of an exceptionally high level of ambition, a dream of achieving something great, which cannot be put down to his aunt’s Tøyen address. The explanation must have lain to as great an extent in his mother’s stirring stories – have patience, Professor, I’m getting there – not to mention his grandfather’s incessant stream of yarns, in which Jonas was always the hero, a fabulously well-equipped dragon slayer.

  Jonas was sit
ting on his own, up in the little quarry in the forest hard by the People’s Palace, which doubled as the local cinema. According to the calendar, it was the end of April; the snow had melted, and the sun was getting stronger. All around him buds were bursting open; he almost thought he could hear the sound of popcorn hissing in oil just before the popping starts. He pulled off his jersey, sat there in just his shirt, a Davy Crockett T-shirt that would soon be too small for him. Jonas had spent most of his time alone since Little Eagle went away. He was considered to be a bit of a lone wolf, and the sort of unpredictable, aggressive wolf you didn’t dare tease. Jonas sat on a ledge in the middle of the quarry, sat there drowsing in the hot sun with granite crystals glittering all around him. The slope of the mountain formed a natural amphitheatre; Jonas sat there, peering down at an empty stage. In fact, had he been in the mood for it, he could well have pretended that he was standing among the market stalls on Youngstorget in Oslo, about to make a speech, as practised as another Demosthenes with pebbles in his mouth: ‘My dear fellow countrymen.’

  The particular attributes of this spot made it something of a holy place for the local community. The stone for Grorud Church had come from quarries in this area. Jonas might well have been sitting in a matrix for the church where he had been christened, the spire of which he could just make out above the treetops. The scouts often used the granite amphitheatre on ceremonial occasions, for rites that could bring a lump to many a young lad’s throat, on St George’s day for instance, or for the swearing-in of new scouts, when the place was decorated with flags and banners and candles, and the stone sides resounded with the murmurings of ‘Isolemnlysweartodomybest…’