The Conqueror

The Interpreters’ Kaiser

This leads me on quite naturally to the next tale — because I have not yet spoken of the most important person in Jonas Wergeland’s life. Not that I have unconsciously been wishing to put it off, since it is so dark, overshadowing all else, but simply because only now does this part slot into place, even though everything is in fact interwoven with everything else, just as in the Academic’s carvings. Each story can only really be told by telling the lot.

It was night, and Jonas Wergeland was standing with a power saw in his hands. With one part of his mind he could see the inordinacy of the situation, saw himself from the outside, like a character in a low-budget melodrama. And one that dealt with the most primitive of all impulses: revenge. An eye for an eye. So bloody theatrical, he thought. Gabriel was asleep in a bunk down below, helped along by a half-bottle of whisky. Jonas could hear him snoring all the way up here on the deck. He was on board the lifeboat Norge, a weather-beaten circumnavigator riding at anchor in Vindfanger Bay, just north of Drøbak, at the head of Oslo fjord. And he was not standing just anywhere; he was standing at the boat’s heart, before the mainmast.

He almost jumped out of his skin when the power saw started up. It sounded hellish in the darkness, as if the ghost of the Blücher itself had risen again from the deep. Jonas has already cut the lanyards of the shroud on the one side, and it won’t take him long to fell the mast, he knows what to do, cuts into the wood between the mast step and the fife rail; stands there in a cloud of exhaust fumes, watching the saw blade slice through the mast. No sign of Gabriel, although by the racket you would have thought someone was driving a motorbike around the deck. Jonas watched the mast slowly topple over. Not the tearing apocalyptic crash he had expected, had possibly been hoping for, something akin to a lightning strike, ropes flying in all directions with furious whiplash cracks; instead it was all very quiet, like an echo from that time when a pine tree fell somewhere deep in a Norwegian forest, in a snow-covered landscape perhaps. The boat didn’t even tilt as the mast hit the manrope and the rail; it was more like a great soft bump. What cracked so loud? Jonas thought, nevertheless, as he stared at the damage he had wrought. Norway from your hand, a voice sniggered somewhere inside him.

Jonas was in the dinghy and some distance away from the boat by the time he saw a white figure come stumbling through the hatchway and heard this person grunting into the darkness, asking whether Hell’s Angels were on the go or what. It was Gabriel — Gabriel in anachronistic long johns and long-sleeved undershirt, eccentric to the bone, you might say.

‘You bastard,’ Jonas hisses. ‘You fucking bastard. I should have sunk her, but you don’t get off that easy.’

Jonas didn’t know if the elderly man on the deck could see him, knew what was going on, or whether he was too drunk. As he became more and more mired in the rigging now lying on the deck Gabriel began to declaim, as if he were on a stage, as if this too was a drama, though one more rooted in reality. ‘A knife! I am blunt,’ he ranted in a voice hoarse with sleep and booze, ‘mend me and slit me! The world will go to ruin if they don’t mend my point for me.’

Jonas realized that Gabriel had some idea of what was going on, because he remembered where he had heard those words for the first time, the ones which were now being roared out into the night.

It had all begun, as so often before, with a conversation down below in the saloon on board the Norge, not — according to Gabriel — a decommissioned lifeboat, but a true-blue royal yacht. From the minute Jonas first met Gabriel the two had been firm friends, but back then he had known nothing about this man’s profession. In his manner Gabriel was rather like a distinguished old major-domo. It was only when Jonas came aboard the boat, Gabriel’s domicile, that he discovered the man had been an actor. On one of the bulkheads, next to a sea chart of Western Samoa, he noticed some photographs which made him smile: stills from an earlier era showing Gabriel in the oddest rig-outs, wearing crowns and ridiculous-looking tights, pictures in which the faces looked like masks and the figures cast sinister shadows.

Also in the saloon was a bookshelf containing nothing but plays; Gabriel called it ‘Nemo’s library’. It held no more than about twenty volumes. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘And I could probably chuck ten of them.’

Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, Gabriel would treat Jonas to a one-man show on board the Norge, in a crossfire of unfamiliar odours — tar and paraffin, birch logs and whisky — which lulled Jonas into lounging back contentedly on the bench seat. Amid the creaking of the rigging and the gaff, in a floating proscenium of fir, pine, oak and teak and with the minimum of props — possibly no more than a walking stick and a handkerchief — Gabriel acted out, and played all the parts in, scenes from some of the world’s great dramatic works, from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and Phaedra by Racine to Pirandello’s Henry IV and Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape — masterpieces in which he had also performed, so Jonas was given to understand, in his formerly so renowned, now legendary, one-man theatre, ‘The Tower Company’, in its mouldering premises on Storgata. Jonas sat in the dimly lit saloon, as enthralled as a child at a pantomime, all but falling off its tip-up seat. He could well believe the story that stated Gabriel had once played an Iago so vicious that he had been beaten up after the show by an incensed member of the audience.

Every time he was on the boat Jonas would also hear Gabriel reciting a brief monologue — it might be while he was in the galley, spreading marmalade on toast, or stoking the stove, while he was winding up his fine gold pocket watch or rowing Jonas ashore; he hollered it, sang it, whispered it. ‘I recite it every day, for practice,’ he said. It was, moreover, a woman’s monologue, Ophelia’s speech after Hamlet has humiliated and tricked her, making her believe that he is mad: ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown,’ and so on: lines which Jonas eventually knew by heart and hence was even more impressed by the fact that Gabriel was forever bringing out fresh nuances in them, thus presenting a different picture of Ophelia, or of Hamlet, each time — perhaps simply by dint of a pause, a cheery grin at the wrong moment, or with those hands of his, a tiny gesture which suddenly made everything clear, words redundant. But Gabriel was never satisfied, he altered the tone of every word, the set of the head, every aspect that was open to variation, year after year, as if it was of the utmost importance to come up with the perfect rendering of these particular lines. ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here…o’erthrown.’

On several occasions it was evident that Gabriel found Jonas’s open admiration irksome. One day when they were each sitting with a somewhat tardy ploughman’s lunch in front of them in the penumbra of the saloon, Gabriel broached this subject: ‘I am not — and you’ll never hear me admit this again — a great actor.’ He pointed to an ugly scar under one eyebrow, as if this were proof of his statement. ‘Why am I good? Because of you. It’s your generosity that turns my acting into more than empty gestures, cheap effects created by the contrast between words and expression. The roles lie within you, I merely bring them to life. Do you want some pickle? More whisky? Help yourself. Now listen: how much stuff do you have to put onto a stage in order to create a forest?’ His gold tooth gleamed. ‘One stick is enough. The audience’ll see to the rest. The audience is the real creative element in a play.’ He got to his feet, picked up a log, opened the stove door: ‘And this, my friend, is all it takes to give a glimpse of hell.’ He tossed the log into the stove. ‘Thanks to the audiences, people like you, I learned early on to what heights even a second-rate actor can rise.’ He crossed the room and tapped the barometer, which did not budge, however, from its perpetual ‘Fair Weather’. Then he added: ‘I’m telling you: it’s a temptation worthy of Lucifer himself.’

As the daylight waned and Gabriel lit the paraffin lamp — lending the place the air of an English pub, he turned — and Jonas saw this as a natural progression of their conversation — to the subject of Hitler, no less a person than Adolf Hitler. Gabriel maintained, and I will confine myself to a potted version of what was a lengthy discourse, that it was not in fact Hitler’s uncommon gifts which had dazzled people, but his fabulous ordinariness. Hitler had hardly any talent to speak of, but he had spied the potential of the theatre, succeeded in employing these dramatic devices on a larger scale, on society itself; he had understood how easy it was to hold a mass spellbound, that simplicity was the key, that in the depths of their souls people, everyone, especially those who felt confused — and who, in our day and age, did not feel confused? — longed for drama and ritual. ‘You have no idea how very, very easily people allow themselves to be seduced,’ Gabriel said. ‘Christ, boy, you’re not drinking anything.’

Maybe it was his very sobriety that brought out the sceptic in Jonas: ‘If you’ll excuse me for saying so, that is the biggest load of codswallop I’ve ever heard.’

Gabriel looked at him with his mismatched eyes, the one with a weary cast to it because of the scar, the other gimlet-sharp: ‘Listen here, my young friend: I’ll bet you that I, the simplest person in the world, a failed artist, could seduce folk anywhere, anytime — on Karl Johan tomorrow, if you like; I’ll prove to you that I can draw a crowd the like of which you’ve never seen, and single-handed at that.’ Then, after a pause during which they both sat listening to the roar of the stove, he added in a quieter voice: ‘Only to help you understand the forces which are contained within every human being. But which we repress. And that includes you.’

‘I bet you can’t,’ Jonas said.

‘What d’you bet?’ retorted Gabriel, quick as a flash.

‘My soul!’ said Jonas, quite carried away, as if he were on a stage.

The following day after school Jonas was walking along Universitetsgata. He was just passing the point where the Studenten ice cream parlour cast its tantalizingly aromatic Banana Split lasso across the street, when he caught sight of Gabriel outside the National Theatre, standing between the statues of Ibsen and Bjørnson, as if the old thespian had no qualms about setting himself up against these verdigris-coated intellectual giants. With all the finesse of a major-domo he had rigged up a small puppet theatre, not much more than a board with a square hole cut in it, no bigger than a television screen, and this he had placed on a folding table with a little Oriental rug draped over it, behind which he could sit on his suitcase, invisible to people directly in front of the stage. He’s mad, Jonas thought. They’ll laugh in his face. But no one laughed when Gabriel Sand took up his stand in that heavily symbolic corner of the city — between parliament and palace, university and theatre. He was ready for combat; a failed actor in his ancient, dark, chalk-striped suit, with waistcoat and watch-chain and all, and on his head a bowler hat which endowed him with a look of bygone nobility. Or Charlie Chaplin.

To begin with Gabriel did nothing. He stood stock-still beside the tiny stage, and still he attracted attention. There was something about his stance, his face, his eyes that made passers-by stop and stare expectantly at the man standing to attention there between Ibsen and Bjørnson.

Jonas reaches the square just as Gabriel begins upon a scene from the fourth Act of Peer Gynt, the high point of the play, in which Peer arrives in Egypt. Gabriel, or Gabriel’s hand, makes the puppet playing Peer look up at the statue of Ibsen as if it were the Sphinx outside of Cairo: ‘Now where in the world have I met before something half-forgotten that’s like this hobgoblin? Because met it I have — in the north or the south. Was it a person? And if so who?’ And immediately thereafter: ‘Ho! I remember the fellow! Why of course it’s the Bøyg that I smote on the skull.’ From that moment on Gabriel had the audience in the palm of his hand.

Unlike the people who crowded around the little stage, Jonas stood back a little, in order to keep an eye on Gabriel where he sat on a suitcase plastered with scuffed labels, with a puppet on each hand, acting out the meeting between Peer Gynt and Begriffenfeldt, which ended with Begriffenfeldt saying that the interpreters’ kaiser had been found, before leading Peer into the madhouse.

It was as with all great theatre: something invisible was made real. By some magical means Gabriel transformed Oslo, the surrounding streets and buildings into Cairo, and the spectators — Bjørnson and Ibsen included — into the inmates of an insane asylum. More and more people stopped to watch, even though they really didn’t have the time; they were caught and held by Begriffenfeldt, which is to say the puppet on Gabriel’s hand proclaiming to the insane, which is to say the audience: ‘Come forth all! The time that shall be is proclaimed! Reason is dead and gone. Long live Peer Gynt!’ For a moment, because of the two hands inside the puppets, Jonas was reminded of another drama: the spectacle of two snakes twining themselves around one another.

A small crowd now filled the square in front of the National Theatre, forming a semicircle that spread far out onto the street, all eyes fixed on a puppet theatre no bigger than a television screen; people jostled one another to get a better look, as if the oriental rug underneath the stage was a magic carpet that could carry them anywhere. Gabriel would later say again: ‘It wasn’t me, it was them. Everyone has this longing inside them for something that’s a bit different.’

Jonas stood there thinking. Above all he was struck by how simple it seemed, with what uncanny ease Gabriel had hypnotized this host. Jonas found himself despising the general public, the folk round about him, not only because they had caused him to lose the bet — or rather, make a mistake — but because they could fall for something so transparently false: puppets with hands stuck inside them. Then he remembered how quickly he had allowed himself to be taken in by Gabriel. If I’m honest with myself, I’d probably be the first to stop in front of something like this, he thought, incredulously witnessing the way in which Gabriel Sand held more and more passers-by spellbound, it was quite a crowd for a normal weekday.

Later, Jonas himself would enjoy the goodwill of the public at large. Right at the start of his television career, when he was working as a television announcer, he discovered how the public could credit him with qualities he did not have. Just before he was due to announce a harrowing programme produced by the NRK foreign affairs department, he had got something in his eye and had to blink more often than normal. Viewers thought the programme had moved him to tears. Which meant he must be a sensible, soft-hearted person. Big splash in newspapers and magazines: ‘The announcer who dared to show his feelings.’ People showered him with sympathy. It was brought home to him then: you don’t win your uncommonness, you have it bestowed on you as a gift.

As he watched, Gabriel showed Peer meeting and listening in turn to Huhu the language reformer, the fellah with the royal mummy on his back and the Minister Hussein — Gabriel swiftly slipping one puppet after another onto his one hand; really beautiful puppets which Jonas realized he must have made himself — with Peer’s words of advice having increasingly bloody consequences, though in the end he is, nevertheless, wreathed by Begriffenfeldt with the words: ‘Long life to Self-hood’s Kaiser!’ Just at that moment the police appeared, as if they were guards in a madhouse, an asylum in total uproar.

It was a memorable sight. The little theatre and the crowd of people. That was all it took: a piece of wood with a square hole cut in it, two arms and a voice. And to top it all off: the police. As if a dangerous crime were being committed.

The policemen ask Gabriel — very politely, it must be said — to pack up and leave because he is causing an obstruction. Gabriel, for his part, starts winding them up, making fun of them, doing a sort of Charlie Chaplin turn, imitating the way the policemen are standing, crawling between their legs, miming a plea for help to the statues of Bjørnson and Ibsen. When, as the police see it, he refuses to comply with their request, he is driven off in the patrol car to Møllergata police station — amid a chorus of booing from the crowd. People have forgotten that they ought to be getting home, that they have to catch the bus or the train or the Nesodden ferry. They want to see more playacting.

Jonas sat in a dinghy in a bay just north of Drøbak, rowing slowly towards the shore. Without its mainmast, the old lifeboat looked like a floating chest, or a bin, a real loony bin. He saw how Gabriel, this man who had once stood on Karl Johan’s gate and seduced a crowd of people with nothing but his voice and a bit of hand-waving, had been caught in his own net, become entangled in the ropes of the sabotaged rigging. Jonas remembered his grandfather’s lovely model of the Colin Archer lifeboat, and with that thought came the realization that this too resembled a puppet theatre. And Gabriel’s sleep-sodden cries reinforced this illusion: ‘I am all that you will, — a Turk, a sinner, — a hill-troll —; but help; there was something that burst! I cannot just hit on your name at the moment; — help me, oh you — all madmen’s protector!’

Jonas knew he would never see him again. ‘You bastard,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll never forget you. More’s the pity.’

Gabriel was standing stock-still on the deck now, looking like the ghost from Hamlet in his white underwear. What a noble mind is here o’erthrown, Jonas thought. Gabriel Sand. An impostor. And yet: how long had it taken for Jonas to see through him? A man who ate his meals on board a boat every day, at a table fitted with a fiddle rail, with a bookshelf constructed in such a way that the books would not fall off in heavy weather — and who had never put to sea in his boat. Who kept a logbook for the lifeboat Norge, even though he had never tethered up to a buoy, had never been south of Drøbak, had never been to any of the places or done any of the things he had described so vividly: killer whales off the Canadian coast, Princess Aroari of the Marquesa Islands, the plums of the Azores, storms around Cape Horn. It was all a bluff. The stupid idiot couldn’t even swim. Jonas rowed away, still annoyed with himself. How could he have been fooled, and for so long, by such a character?

Gabriel’s white form grew smaller and smaller. This was the final scene. Jonas had the impression that he was acting now, too. That he wasn’t really hopping mad. That Gabriel appreciated this stunt, this act of rebellion, this parting. That he had actually been waiting for something like this to happen for three years. That he was pleased, regarded this as a worthy ending, a test-piece that proved that Jonas had completed his apprenticeship.

For Jonas it was, nonetheless, a relief to see the boat’s rigging destroyed. He felt as if a net had ripped apart and he was, at long last, free.