The Conqueror

Little Eagle

Jonas Wergeland did have his disturbing sides, no two ways about it. We have now worked our way forward — please note: not back, but forward — to his tenth year, so I could, in other words, tell the story of the accident on the ski-jump slope or the trip in the rowing boat with Veronika or the illicit climb up the tower on Robber Hill — many people would find this last one particularly appealing. There is, however, no doubt in my mind that I must opt for Jonas’s friendship with Ørn and in that connection not, as you might expect, the breathtaking dive in Grorud Pond or their fateful spying on Ørn’s mother — not even the terrible forest fire. The right approach, and not just because of the link with the banknote bearing Ibsen’s portrait, is to focus on Ørn’s interest in the javelin thrower Egil Danielsen.

In Norwegian the word ‘ørn’ means ‘eagle’, so Jonas Wergeland’s best friend when he was a boy was, in fact, called Eagle, though he was no Red Indian. His full name was Ørn-Henrik, but he was known simply as Ørn — which is to say, Eagle — and hence, Little Eagle. And let it be said at the outset: no one could have been less suited to bear that imposing name, so redolent of history and Viking times. In Norway, you can get away with being called a bear — Bjørn — or even an elk — Elg. But an eagle — that’s a tough one. Sparrow would have been a better name for him. Not only was Ørn small for his age and scrawny for his age — he was also what can only be described as scruffy. And yet in certain situations, not unlike a lemming, he had an incongruously belligerent air about him that tended to have a provocative effect, especially on the bigger boys. To be called Eagle — and look the way Ørn did — was an insult, it was like asking to get beaten up. And beaten up he was.

As his nickname suggests, Ørn was doomed to play the Red Indian in all of the fierce battles fought by the children of Solhaug. Times without number he had hidden himself in some hopelessly obvious spot, with two crow feathers in his hair, only to receive a hard and ruthless knock on the back of the head with the butt of a revolver — absolute realism was the order of the day. For Little Eagle, it was an everyday occurrence to be thrown into patches of nettles or enormous anthills, or to be tied to trees and subjected to the cruellest torture, not least by Petter — later Sgt Petter — and his gang. On one occasion they even lit a fire at his feet — only the keen noses of a couple of vigilant parents averted a tragedy. Little Eagle didn’t do the scalping; he got scalped. Never did an eagle have its wings so well and truly clipped.

In the playground, too, Ørn was the communal punch-ball. At least once a week he would get into a fight, find himself — always undermost — in the middle of a ring of boys which rapidly degenerated into a cheering, chanting mob until the teacher on playground duty finally broke the enchanted circle, and the two boys in the middle were grabbed by the scruff of the neck and marched off to the headmaster’s office, as if Little Eagle, he, the sparrow was as much to blame as the firebrand by his side. There would be a little smile on Ørn’s face, of defiance or possibly satisfaction. Such a character was hard to fathom because, despite that maddening aggressive streak, he had a fawning, almost servile, air about him. This may have been why he liked being with Jonas; they spent every day together — until the accident, the major collision, occurred.

Why on earth did Jonas choose Ørn as his best friend? To say that Jonas wanted someone he could boss about, someone he could tell what to do, would surely be an oversimplification. Nor could it be compared to the phenomenon sometimes found among young girls, where a pretty girl will choose a plain friend, thus making her own good looks that much more apparent. Maybe — it’s a point worth considering — it all had to do with the chance of getting his hands on the treasures to be found in Eagle’s living room.

Thanks to a well-placed relative, Eagle owned every Donald Duck comic issued from 1948 onwards, in bound volumes at that. These magnificent albums were ranged on the bookcase in the living room alongside Aschehoug’s splendid encyclopaedia and took up nearly as much space. Later in life, Jonas would regard this arrangement as a natural upgrading of the worth of these comics. One which was well-deserved, since they were in many ways Jonas’s main work of reference, a source of information which came in handy in all sorts of situations, not least as an aid to the art of conversation. At the same time it gave Jonas an inkling that even an encyclopaedia is nothing but a pure fabrication. Not only that — if, for example, he looked up ‘The Flying Dutchman’ or ‘The Incan Empire’, he found the relevant entries dull and heavy-handed compared to the Uncle Scrooge stories concerning these same subjects.

Jonas would always remember those hours spent lying on the carpet of the Larsen family living room as special moments, hours when his eyes were drawn unresistingly from picture to picture through the wondrous world of the cartoon strips, most of all in the fantastic stories by the aforementioned Carl Barks. This heady pleasure was, moreover, often accompanied by a sound that enhanced the sense of having embarked on a fabulous journey into the realms of fantasy. Because it so happened that Ørn’s dad, when he had time off from his pots and pans at the Grand Hotel, would often sit in the living room, listening to one of his numerous Linguaphone records. Every winter Ørn’s dad — Three-Star Larsen — dreamed of setting out an extended tour of Europe in the summer holidays, though he never went any further than the southern tip of the Royal Wharf, never got beyond these courses, the patient repetition of crackling recorded phrases in Italian, Spanish or Greek. Mr Larsen could say ‘What time is it?’ and ‘Can you recommend a restaurant?’ in eight languages, though he never got the chance to put his skills into practice. Nonetheless, like the sound effects in a radio play, he helped to expand the space around the reading boys.

One day when they were ten years old, a spring day with a gentle rain washing away the last patches of snow outside, Ørn had done something unexpected. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Looking back on it, it occurred to Jonas that he had known it all along. That this was why he was friends with Eagle: that this was his reward, so to speak, for long and faithful service. Eagle had pulled a heavy book from the shelf, a volume that proved to be a fine, tooled leather album with gilded pages. A Bible, thought Jonas, a holy scripture. For is it not the case, Professor, that every person has a story, does something which shows that he is an Ankenaton, a unique human being; the sudden revelation, coming as a shock to everyone around them, that a person worships the sun, is a monotheist, when everyone else is praying to a whole host of gods — that he holds one idea above all others, one which he pursues faithfully and single-mindedly and for which he would willingly wipe out everything else?

Eagle opened the book, or album. It was not filled with photographs or scraps, football or automobile cards, as Jonas had expected, but with stamps: with transparent sheets of paper overlaying tiny, bright-hued miniatures. Jonas looked at Eagle, saw how all at once his face was glowing, as if illumined by a light — not to say a sun — shining out of the album itself, from beneath, like something out of a painting by Rembrandt. Jonas suddenly felt that he was being granted a glimpse of Eagle’s inner being, of a hidden majesty, a unifying vision.

Stamps. The English word is so flat and square, smacking of repression. Not so the Norwegian word: ‘frimærke’ — ‘free marks’, marks that make one free. This must be why nothing could daunt Ørn, even when nothing else was going right for him: when he got inkblots all over his handwriting jotter or scored an own goal at football. Jonas looked more closely at the stamps, understanding and yet not. Because the surprising thing was not that Eagle collected stamps, pored over them with tweezers and magnifying glass. Most boys have collected stamps at some time in their lives, for a week or so, or a couple of years. But Jonas realized that Eagle was the type who would go on collecting stamps all his life, and what was more: that there was a system, a concept of some sort, behind what he was seeing.

Jonas had himself taken a couple of tentative steps into the labyrinth of philately. For a while he had zealously cut up envelopes, filled the bath with water and scattered the corners with the stamps into it, so that the bath looked like a huge pot full of steeped slivers of flat bread, like the dish they ate on Christmas Eve before going to church, ‘mush’ they called it — and that was what this was, a mush. Jonas soon came to the conclusion that such a muddle was more trouble than it was worth: an ocean of stamps and only a bath to put them in. Besides which, there seemed to be no way of getting to grips with such a multiplicity of stamps, not to mention all the duplication: what does one do with two hundred stamps bearing the king’s head; or shoeboxes full of 35-øre stamps depicting whooper swans, all commemorating Nordic Day?

Eagle had understood something that Jonas had not: you had to set limits for yourself. As he leafed through the album Jonas realized that Eagle had discerned a pattern in the chaos, for here the first sheets were covered with stamps depicting the Norwegian landscape, then came stamps featuring flowers, birds and animals, after which Jonas could run his eye over the history of Norway: from miniature images of rock carvings and ancient gods to tiny illustrations of Viking ships and stave churches which, in turn, were followed by stamps dedicated to kings, celebrities, buildings, all meticulously arranged in chronological order right up to the Second World War — a splendid geography-cum-history book, an alternative social history told through stamps. A bit like a comic strip, Jonas thought.

But it was a separate collection at the back of the album that came as the greatest surprise. Jonas stared and stared, but he couldn’t figure it out. ‘A collection of Norvegiana,’ Ørn said. It sounded alien and mysterious, as if he were talking about a dreamland.

‘What’s this?’

‘Stamps from other countries featuring images with some sort of Norwegian connection.’

It had never occurred to Jonas that people in foreign countries might have any interest in Norway. He examined the stamps more closely and found Sigrid Undset on a Turkish stamp issued in 1935. On another page he spied Roald Amundsen’s profile on a stamp from Hungary issued in 1948. And there, on a Cuban stamp, a picture of Armauer Hansen. Henrik Ibsen graced stamps from Bulgaria and Rumania, and Grieg was portrayed on one from the Soviet Union. The most baffling subject of all, though, was Egil Danielsen, honoured for his gold-medal win in the javelin event at the Melbourne Olympics — on a stamp from the Dominican Republic! Who would believe it! What did the peasants in the Dominican Republic think when they stuck this on their letters: Egil Danielsen captured at the very moment that the javelin left his hand? Jonas was dumbstruck. These stamps, all this foreign interest, left him quite bemused; trains of thought wove in and out of one another inside his head. I need hardly stress, Professor, that this was a decisive moment in Jonas Wergeland’s life.

Ørn began to tell him about the postal system and the stamps, about how amazing it all was. This worldwide network. Proof of the possibility of peaceful coexistence. Ørn was all lit up, Jonas hardly recognized his friend. Ørn stumbled over his words, sounding old beyond his years as he breathlessly explained: ‘You see, stamps reflect the soul of a country.’

‘Great,’ Jonas said, slamming the album shut. ‘That’s great, Eagle, but can’t we do something else now? What about going down to the corner shop? I’ve got a couple of empty bottles.’

He could tell that Eagle was disappointed, saw the light in his friend’s face fade. ‘Okay, we could pop down and get some chewing-gum,’ Eagle said, putting the album back on the shelf. Jonas noted its position, between The World of Music and Gone with the Wind.

Although they had many another reading session on Ørn’s living-room floor that spring, Ørn never showed him his stamps again. And Jonas never mentioned them.

Where are the dark holes in Jonas Wergeland’s life?

One day Little Eagle didn’t come to school. He wasn’t there the next day either. Jonas called at the house to ask after him. Ørn-Henrik was ill, his mother said. He was off school for a whole week. When at last he returned everyone could see that he must have been really sick: his eyes were a nasty red colour, as if he had spent a long day in the chlorinated water of the Frogner Baths. And he had changed. Not that he was any less scrawny, but there was something else there too now.

Jonas noticed it too. Ørn was moody, withdrawn, he seemed both utterly crushed and mad as hell, turned away huffily when Jonas spoke to him.

One afternoon on the way home from school Eagle finally opened his mouth: ‘My stamp album’s gone,’ he said. ‘Completely disappeared.’

It was springtime, he kicked some sand, stopped, spun round to face Jonas: ‘I can’t understand it. I can’t find it.’

‘Burglars?’ Jonas said.

‘No, that can’t be it,’ Eagle said. ‘I just don’t get it.’

They walked on, said no more about it. Some girls were skipping, smack, smack, a heavy rope, a line lashing the ground.

Over the days that followed, Eagle grew more and more antagonistic, even towards Jonas. Any approach met with a surly, almost abusive, response, as if he wanted to pick a fight.

Then something even more mystifying happened. Just before May 17, that combination of spring rite and gala day, Little Eagle turned up at school with his head shaved, which is to say: with a strip of hair running from the middle of his forehead to the nape of his neck. Like a real Red Indian, a Mohawk or whatever tribe it was that wore their hair like that — a hairstyle which the punks of a later generation would copy and dye orange or bright green. It is no exaggeration to say that this hairstyle, Little Eagle’s hairstyle that is, seemed even more provocative — shocking, in fact — back then. You have to remember that this was before the Beatles grew their hair long. You could say that Little Eagle was one of the first punk rockers in Oslo.

Nobody knew what to make of it. Little Eagle’s act of rebellion was so awesome, not to say so totally loony, that even the older boys left him alone, as if they understood that this was not the old sparrow, the punch-ball, but a walking hand grenade with a dangerously loose pin. Little Eagle paraded through the streets of Grorud in May with his head held high, wearing his blazer and his Mohican hairdo, to the consternation of all and sundry, leaving people whispering in horror on the pavement. He had stopped talking, wouldn’t even speak to Jonas. So Jonas was surprised when, some weeks later, Ørn asked him to come with him up to the woods — Ørn had something he wanted to show him. It was Midsummer’s Eve, no less, in the morning; and Jonas was nervous because he was performing in a sketch later that day.

They had struck off into the woods at Hukenveien, at the spot where Little Eagle had once been tied to a tree and Petter had shot at him with a bow and arrow. It was only by luck that Eagle wasn’t blinded. They stand there on the grassy slope beside the stream that flows down from the swimming hole. Jonas waits, hasn’t the foggiest notion of what’s going on, what Eagle wants to show him. Then, out of the blue, Eagle starts laying into Jonas. Goes totally berserk. Punches and punches him, even though it’s no use, Jonas is bigger than him, brings him down without any trouble. But Eagle will not give in, wriggles like a worm on a hook. Jonas can see that he is mad, blazing mad, so mad that he’s in tears, although Jonas knows he’s not hurting him, he’s just holding him down, and maybe that is why he’s in tears, because Jonas is just holding him down, doesn’t punch him in the face like the others would, just keeps a firm grip on him, a vice-like grip, with his knees and hands. Eagle writhes about for some time, struggling and struggling, while the tears rain down. Jonas thinks Eagle looks ridiculous, mainly because of the Mohican, which gives him the illusion of fighting with a real Red Indian, or a being not of this world. Jonas feels his contempt subsiding and in the midst of all this he suddenly has the idea of altering a couple of lines in the sketch he’s going to do, a little twist that will turn a rotten skit into a pretty good one.

At long last Ørn lies still. His eyes are closed. There’s snot on his upper lip. He’s a sorry sight. They lie quietly for a long while, Jonas on top of Ørn.

Little Eagle opens his eyes, looks straight up into Jonas’s eyes. His gaze does not waver. He never used to do that. He stares long and hard at Jonas. Jonas looks down at Ørn. He knows what he is seeing. Never in his life has he seen it before, but he knows what it is: hate.

‘You bastard,’ Ørn says.

Just the once. And not all that loudly.

They go on lying there. Ørn gazes into Jonas’s eyes. For ages they lie there. Jonas thinks it’s funny, but he doesn’t laugh. Something about the situation stops him from laughing.

Then he gets up. Little Eagle clambers to his feet, turns and walks off. Jonas waits for a few minutes before following him down the road towards Solhaug, catches a glimpse of Ørn’s back as he turns in between the blocks of flats. Jonas went home to change his clothes, shut his eyes to go over the new lines for the sketch that he was going to be presenting outside of Number One, in front of all the grownups.

Ørn didn’t come to see it. Jonas did not see Ørn that evening — not even then, on Midsummer’s Eve, the longest, lightest day of the year.

Soon afterwards Ørn moved away. Little Eagle, it transpired, was gone forever.