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CHAPTER 1

The Big Bang

Let me tell you another story. Although I do not know whether that is possible, not after all that has been written and said, but at any rate let me try. I have balked at it for long enough, I admit. I have put it off and put it off. But I have to do it. Knowing full well that this will sound unutterably provocative and appallingly high-flown, I will be straight about it: I do it not only for myself but for the whole of Norway.

I realize there are many people who believe they know everything there is to know about Jonas Wergeland, inasmuch as he has risen to heights of fame which very few, if any, Norwegians have ever come close to attaining and been subjected to so much media exposure that his person, his soul as it were, has been laid open as strikingly and in as much detail as those ingenious fold-out illustrations of the human body presented for our delectation in today's encyclopaedias. But it is for that very reason, precisely because so many people have formed such hard-and-fast opinions about Jonas Wergeland, or Jonas Hansen Wergeland as his critics liked to call him, that it is tempting, even at this point, to say something about those sides of his character which have never come to public attention and which should serve to shed considerable new light on the man: Jonas Wergeland as the Norwegian Tuareg, Jonas Wergeland as a disciple of the Kama Sutra, as champion of the Comoro Islands and, not least, as lifesaver.

But to begin in medias res, as they say, or in what I prefer to call 'the big white patch', representing as it does a stretch of terrain of which Jonas Wergeland – all of his fantastic journeys notwithstanding – was totally ignorant, and which he would spend the remainder of his life endeavouring to chart.

It all started with Wergeland asking the taxi driver, who had been stealing curious, almost incredulous, glances at him in his rear-view mirror all the way into town, to stop at the shopping centre, just where Trondheimsveien crosses Bergensveien, a spot where Jonas had stood on countless occasions, contemplating the way in which all roads in the world are connected. Although he could not have said exactly why, Jonas wanted to walk the last bit of the way to the house, possibly because the light that evening was so enchanting; or because it was spring, the air smelled of spring, spring to the very marrow; or because he was glad that the plane journey was over, filled with a sense of relief at having cheated Fate yet again. Which brings me to another fact known to very few: how much Jonas Wergeland, globetrotter, hates flying.

Wergeland was returning home from the World's Fair in Seville, but he was now making his way across ground which, for him, had every bit as much to offer as any World's Fair, representing as it did that spot on the Earth's crust which was closest to his heart. He strolled along, wheeling his lightweight suitcase behind him; breathing in the spring air as he let his eye wander over the climbing frame in his old kindergarten and beyond that to the stream down in the dip: the Alna, a stream up the banks of which he and Nefertiti had made countless expeditions, with Colonel Eriksen on a leash and an airgun over the shoulder, in search of its beginnings, which had long posed a mystery as great as the sources of the Nile once did. He walked past the old Tango-Thorvaldsen shoe shop, to which annual visits had had to be made: a sore trial to Jonas these, both because his mother could never make up her mind and because the shoes were always too big, agonizingly so, even after they were long worn out. It was spring, the air smelled of spring to the very marrow, and Jonas passed Wolfgang Michaelsen's villa where he could almost hear the swooshing of the Märklin trains over the tracks of what must have been the biggest model railway in Northern Europe. Jonas strolled along, trailing his suitcase, smelling, listening, drawing the air deep down into his lungs; seeing in the twilight the coltsfoot, like tiny sparks of yellow growing along the side of the road and up the slope towards Rosenborg Woods, which they had used to call 'Transylvania', because they had had to cut across this bit of ground after the spine-chilling Dracula films they saw, far too young, at film shows in the People's Palace. It was spring, the air smelled of spring, and Jonas was feeling extraordinarily fit and well, free, thanks to the air, thanks to the fact that the plane journey was over, or perhaps because straight ahead of him he had the low blocks of flats where he had grown up, or because on the other side of the road he could see his own house, popularly referred to as Villa Wergeland, sitting under the imposing granite face of Ravnkollen, in such a way that he sometimes felt protected, sometimes threatened by the very bedrock of Norway.

Jonas Wergeland turned in through the gate, trailing his suitcase. It was spring, the hillside smelled of spring, as did the air. It had that edge to it, Jonas noted: chill but bordering on the mild. He felt light, full of anticipation; he was happy, genuinely glad at heart to be home. The only thing causing him a twinge of unease was a touch of incipient nausea as if he might have eaten something dodgy on the plane.

He rang the bell, just in case anyone was home. No one came to the door. He let himself in, left his bag of duty-free and his suitcase in the hall before wandering into his office and sifting through the considerable pile of mail that had accumulated. Many of the letters were from people he did not know. Fan mail. He picked up the bundle of letters to read in the living room, to enjoy them, have a good laugh and roll his eyes at the weird notions that people had, their clumsy questions, then it occurred to him that he had better play back the messages on his answering machine. The first was from Axel Stranger: 'If your Grace would be so good as to call me. Concerning a trivial matter which cannot wait: namely the future of mankind.'

Jonas could not help but laugh, switched it off, he could listen to his messages later, now he just wanted to relax, open some of the precious booty from his duty-free bag, stretch out on the sofa, listen to music, look at a couple of letters, let his mind wander. He glanced towards the door of Kristin's room. The bed was neatly made, cuddly toys and dolls all in a row; he concluded that she must still be with her grandmother, down at Hvaler.

Jonas headed for the living room with a smile on his lips, flicking through the bundle of letters in his hand, inspecting the handwriting on one while wondering what sort of music he should play. He was relieved to be back home, he was filled with a great sense of contentment: a feeling that might be described, to use a rather lofty word, as peace.

So there he stood, with one hand on the handle of the living-room door, Jonas Wergeland, the first artist of note in his field in Norway, the man with a silver thread running down his spine, balls of gold and, as someone put it in a newspaper article, a brain as sharp and polished as a great diamond; Jonas Wergeland stood there, feeling well pleased. Behind him lay a successful trip, one which had, what is more, given rise to a number of original ideas of which the people of Norway would reap the benefit in the not-too-distant future. And he had every reason to feel pleased with himself, no one could blame him for that; anyone in his shoes would have been pleased with themselves. Jonas Wergeland did not only have everything, he was everything, one might even go so far as to say that he ranked second only to the king. No wonder then that for many years he had referred to himself, in his head, as the Duke.

Jonas Wergeland stood with his hand on the handle of the living-room door in his own home and was instantly conscious of the metal itself, its coldness; he contemplated the brass, the little scratches on the surface. Again he was aware of that vague but distinct nausea, a surge of nausea. Suddenly he remembered the three loaves lying on the kitchen worktop, the fact that there had been no smell of new-baked bread when he walked in.

Jonas Wergeland stood with his hand on the door-handle and was filled all at once with a desire to stay just there for a long, long while, had no wish to enter the room, stood there knowing, like someone who has stepped on a mine, that he would be blown sky-high the moment he raised his foot. But he had to. He took stock as it were, recapitulating the whole of his remarkable career in the blink of an eye as if he knew he was about to suffer a dreadful loss of memory, before turning the handle, opening the door and pulling up short on the threshold. The first thing he noticed was a distinct smell, the sort that hangs in a room where the television has been left on for days on end. Then his eye fell on the picture of Buddha, before alighting on the figure lying on the living-room floor, a woman. She looked as though she was asleep, but Jonas knew she was not sleeping.

So there he stood, Jonas Wergeland, as so often before, at the end of a long, hard journey, a wave of nausea building up inside him, on the threshold of his own living room, in the most famous villa in Grorud. And I might as well reveal right here and now that here lies the heart of my story: Jonas Wergeland, standing in a room with a dead woman, caught in the colossal psychological big bang that gave birth to the universe which, in the following account, I intend to explore.

For those who do not know, I ought perhaps to add that the woman on the floor was none other than his wife.

Everything Flows

Once more he was thrown into the vortex, as they picked up speed and were drawn relentlessly onwards into the next stretch of rapids to suddenly find themselves caught up in an inferno of white water and whirlpools as if they were riding a tidal wave or had been swept away by an avalanche, and it was all happening too fast, Jonas felt, far too fast, he had no time to latch onto the details and already had that feeling of nausea, that ghastly nausea that always hit him when he had flown too high, when everything was reduced to the grotesque. Jonas Wergeland sat, soaked to the skin, in a frail rubber dinghy with more or less sheer walls of rock flying past on either side: concentrating, amid all the thoughts whirling around in his head, solely on keeping a tight grip on the rope running around the rim, while flattening himself against the bottom like a terrified bird in the nest. Everybody has to die sometime, he thought to himself, and now it's my turn.

Jonas cursed himself for being there, crouched on his knees as if in prayer, hanging on for dear life on this ride with death, at the bottom of a narrow gorge with only a thin layer of rubber between him and the rapids' seething embrace, when he could have been lounging on the hotel terrace, sipping a highball and contemplating the weird assortment of hotel guests from every corner of the globe, maybe picking out an Ellington number on the piano, drawing applause from lethargic Swedish aid workers in desperate need of a bit of R and R. Or he could have done something sensible and, above all, perfectly safe, and taken a walk up to the dusty, neglected museum to gen up on the geology and history of the region, in a room right next door to Livingstone's letters and measuring instruments and his partially mauled coat.

But instead, on an October morning in the mid-eighties, he had dutifully presented himself at the pool along with the others, to be briefed by a sun-bronzed smart-arse who took full advantage of the rather tense atmosphere, dishing out flippant bits of advice and telling macabre jokes, about the fearsome 'stoppers', for instance: a sort of vertical wave, usually occurring at the bottom of a stretch of rapids, which could drag a man under and keep him down there for ages. So it was with some misgivings that Jonas had filed along behind the others later on, as they clambered down the steep path to the bottom of the gorge through which the Zambezi continued its seething progress after the falls, zigzagging through deep and uncannily narrow canyons. The light was dazzling, the air as full of powerful odours as a chemist's shop and humming with insect life. Halfway down the native bearers made tea for them and even sang a few songs, seeing to it that the party acquired a little local colour into the bargain.

Down by the river itself, at the point where they were to board the rafts, Jonas stood for a moment listening to the roar of the falls farther up, millions of litres per second thundering downwards into an inferno of a chasm, a phenomenon so daunting and yet so fascinating that he could see why some of the natives imbued it with divine significance, believing this to be the wellspring of the world. And indeed they were surrounded by a strange almost unreal landscape which left one with the very distinct impression that man had no business here, that this was a paradise for plants and animals and the little lizards in particular.

After yet another nerve-racking pep talk, delivered in the calmer part of the basin, they slipped slowly into the mainstream. 'No way back!' some wit called out as the raft picked up speed, heading down the river, which closed in relentlessly as they approached the first stretch of rapids, and right then and there Jonas knew, as one often does in the seconds after making a fatal decision, that he should not have done this, that this trip was bound to end in disaster.

There were six rafts going down together, seven people in each one, including the man at the oars who, in theory, was supposed to be an experienced oarsman. Jonas looked at their man, a not particularly muscular-looking African wearing a sly grin, and felt far from reassured. Not only that, but the rubber raft seemed somewhat the worse for wear; and the grubby yellow lifejackets they were wearing did not exactly inspire much confidence either. Jonas had a suspicion that the whole lot dated from the Second World War and had been bought on the cheap. And here I would just like to add that the sort of modern innovations which are to be found nowadays up north, in the sheltered and strictly regulated confines of Scandinavia, helmets and wetsuits and the like, were of course quite unthinkable in these parts, and indeed would have been considered utterly ridiculous.

Jonas was sitting right at the back, along with a female journalist and a photographer with his camera in a waterproof bag. On a scale of one to six these rapids were classed as a five, and thus they attracted enthusiasts from all over the world eager to try all their hearts could take of white-water rafting and daredevil games with the elements. Jonas held on tight, seeing a wave rising up dangerously high in the air ahead of them; he even took time to wonder for a moment how this could be possible, how could a killer wave shoot right up in the air like that, like a geyser, or appear to be heading straight for them, in the middle of a deep river, but his musings were cut short when the oarsman – who, thought Jonas, must be off his head – steered straight at the wave while the three at the front threw themselves forward into the column of water, then the raft was gliding up and over as if going over a big bump, while they whooped ecstatically, thereby revealing the whole object of the tour: to have fun, to flirt with danger, to switch off from some dull office job in Amsterdam or Singapore or Cape Town. According to their instructions, the three at the back, where Jonas huddled, were supposed to keep the raft level, but Jonas had no thought for anything but to hang on tight, gripping the rope running round the rim as if it were an umbilical cord of sorts, the only thing tying him to life; then, almost instinctively, he hurled a primal scream at the precipitous cliff faces, a howl that was totally drowned out by the deafening racket, or fury, of the river waters.

Jonas knew there was no way this could ever turn out well. He had to ask himself whether this whole stupid exercise, casting himself out into the fiercest rapids in the world, might not simply be the manifestation of a covert death wish, or a means of escape, that he in fact had no desire to get under way with the venture which was to alter his whole career: that he could not face the thought of all those heated discussions, not to say arguments and hard-nosed deliberations over everything from budgets to people that would have to be gone through before he could have any hope of realizing the mammoth project he had in mind. On one quieter stretch, where the terrain also opened out, seeming to allow him a breathing space, oxygen for his brain, he thought not without some qualms of all the months of planning that lay ahead of him were he to pull it off: the colossal amount of groundwork, not forgetting all the jealousy, the backbiting and intrigue he would have to put up with. So perhaps this expedition was a final test, he thought, as everything closed in and the raft was once more caught up in foaming white waters that raced between sheer rock-faces, sweeping them along the bottom of a deep gorge, because if he made it through this, survived this ride between what looked like an endless run of rocky islets ready at any minute to close up and mash him to a pulp, as in some ancient Greek epic – except that nothing would have time to close up here, with everything moving at such a crazy speed – then he might even have some chance of overcoming the Norwegian rock-face, that massive hurdle denoted by lack of imagination and pettiness and an unwillingness to think big, all of which were so much the hallmark of the management team responsible for evaluating the project to which he was now, down here, about to put the finishing touches. That may also have been why he seemed to be constantly on the lookout for something on the dark cliffs speeding past, without really knowing what: an answer, a sign.

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Excerpted from "The Seducer"
by .
Copyright © 1993 Jan Kjærstad.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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