The Conqueror

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I — the Professor — had long suspected that there was something odd about the confession Jonas Wergeland made in court. That he should have killed his wife in a fit of uncontrolled aggression brought on purely by her unexpected request for a divorce did not fit, or fitted only in part, with the red — or rather, green — thread of jealousy that wound its way through so many of the stories, a thread which was bound, in the end, to be drawn tight, like the noose on a gallows.

Modern physics is right: observation alters the thing being observed. I was confused. On the one hand, I had — there was no denying it — a bundle of exceedingly unpleasant stories; on the other hand, I had all the positive things I myself had experienced — learned, in fact — thanks to Jonas Wergeland. Could I–I mean during that year when I, like most Norwegians, let everything else go hang in order to catch every single programme in the Thinking Big series — really have been wrong about Jonas Wergeland’s talent for television? Would his programmes too have evinced other, very different, qualities, maybe even fallen completely flat, if viewed in the light of what I now knew? I unearthed the folder containing comments on Jonas Wergeland’s television work, flicked through the bundles of cuttings and copies of articles. Superlatives all the way: ‘He has created a new National Portrait Gallery inside our head,’ wrote one critic. Despite the controversies that were sure to be sparked off by such programmes, there was no doubt that, prior to his arrest at any rate, Jonas Wergeland was regarded by expert media researchers as a television genius — not because he had gathered an entire nation around the TV, but because he had produced original programmes, films which broke with the usual, tired old fare. ‘A born natural,’ as several commentators put it. He was proclaimed television’s Copernicus because he upset prevailing ideas of what should lie at the centre of a programme. ‘Jonas Wergeland did not just transform the media,’ one writer concluded, ‘he reinvented it.’

But still I was not sure. I got out one of his programmes — I have them all on video, ranged on the shelf next to my own biographies; picked one at random: ‘The Dipper’, the programme on Sam Eyde, and slotted it into the video machine. I felt tense, afraid almost, as I sat in my Stressless chair, eyes riveted on the opening sequence, the close-up of a stylised form, a Viking ship, a logo on a plastic bag, before the camera pulled back to reveal a factory and then, from above, the surrounding countryside, a foreign landscape — the viewer would automatically place it in the Middle East — and right enough, it was Qatar, a fertilizer plant in Umm Said, part-owned by Norsk Hydro: a Viking ship in the desert, a strange conquest, like a fantasy, not to say a mirage. One could not help asking what was the connection here? And as if in reply the camera homed in once more on the drawing of the Viking ship, which gradually began to change, clearly working backwards through various graphic incarnations until it ended up at the original, far more figurative Viking ship logo, now on a barrel containing Hydro’s first major product: what was known as Norwegian saltpetre.

I had been thinking of getting myself a cup of coffee, but I couldn’t get out of my chair nor stop the video; I went on watching, had to see the next scene and the next and the next, felt almost as though I had become Sam Eyde in those last years before the turn of the century, first as a student and then working as an engineer in Germany, in metropolises such as Berlin and Hamburg, Dortmund and Lübeck. I meant to get myself a cup of coffee, but I went on watching, losing myself in the shots of the massive constructions which Eyde tackled: stations, docks, bridges — I even took his great idea about communication for my own. Without knowing how I got there, I found myself standing, so it seemed, beside Sam Eyde in Germany, in a highly developed society with lots of heavy industry. I identified with Eyde, living and working in a country experiencing explosive growth and thinking of Norway, a dirt-poor, underdeveloped country. But, Eyde thought — or we thought, Eyde and I — Norway had one enormous resource: its waterfalls. The question was: how to use all this potential? One would have to create a major industry — founded on what, though? And this is where Eyde mobilizes his powers of imagination, his bridge-building skills, by connecting two separate ideas. In Lübeck, two years before the start of the twentieth century, he reads a lecture on the catastrophic shortage in nitrogen with which the world will soon be faced. This is just the spark that is needed; a bridge is formed between two synapses in the brain. What, besides water, does Norway have in abundance? Answer: air. Eyde — or rather, we: Eyde and I — see a way of generating wealth in Norway from two things as elementary as air and water. He — we — will quite simply pluck assets out of thin air! An electrochemical industry! I sat there watching, staring, oblivious to all else, I was there, in the scenes depicting his collaboration with Kristian Birkeland, the development of the electric reverberatory furnace which drew nitrogen from the air; an invention which, once they had secured the capital and formed the company which would one day become Norsk Hydro, paved the way for the quite incredible development — by Norwegian standards — of the hydroelectric stations and factories at Skienvassdraget and Rjukan, while the people of Norway shook their heads: until, that, is, they were presented with the aforementioned Norwegian saltpetre — Norwegian air packed into barrels, nitrogen fertilizer for the soil — and what a success it was, a Viking ship which conquered the world. Thus the whole programme revolved, in an almost imperceptible but exceedingly elegant fashion, around the four elements: air, fire, water and earth.

As I say, I went on sitting there, had thought of getting up to fetch something to drink but went on sitting there, delighting in the way my senses became so involved; I spotted delectable details which I had not noticed before, even though I must have seen this programme at least four times. And it was not only the actual substance of it, those uplifting trains of thought, which enthralled me. I saw, or felt inside myself, with the whole of my subconscious, how important the sound was; I understood this better now, of course, after the story of Jonas Wergeland’s love of the radio and radio plays. Like its theme, the soundtrack to the programme on Sam Eyde was inspired by the four elements; the camerawork almost took second place to the sighing of the wind, the crackling of fire and electricity, the scrunch of shovels delving into earth — this last alluding both to the groundbreaking work done by the company’s founders and the relevance of the fertilizer. But the predominant sound — the essence of the programme — was that of water: waterfalls, of course, but also rain and murmuring brooks, conjuring up associations of something close to paradise, of Norway as an oasis of opportunity.

As I pressed the stop button on the remote control, I realized — as if this were a criterion of excellence — that not for one moment had I sat back in my Stressless chair, I had remained bolt upright through the whole thing, my wits somehow sharpened. There was no doubt: this programme, this grand conception, this bubbling, sparkling programme, would surely act as a counterweight to some of the dark tales my guest had told me.

Seeing that portrait of Sam Eyde again helped me to get over the worst of my frustration. It also reinforced my suspicion that this woman was not out to discredit Jonas Wergeland, a feeling which — to my relief — she confirmed the following evening by making what might almost be called a heartfelt plea. I could tell that I was ready for just such a clarification. For some time she had slowly and imperceptibly been turning what, to begin with, I had felt to be a negative picture of the man, into what I would call a defence of Jonas Wergeland. ‘Nothing, Professor, nothing is easier these days than to expose someone,’ she said, holding my gaze with eyes that seemed even more penetrating because of the black eyeliner. ‘You think, perhaps, that I am going to show you — and others — Jonas Wergeland’s treachery,’ she said. ‘Strip him bare and make fun of him for being a despicable charlatan,’ she said. ‘Not at all.’ She looked as if she was about to grasp my hands in her vehemence. ‘In my eyes, Jonas Wergeland is the embodiment of a heroic project, a project of the type that will always be in danger of coming to a tragic end.’

‘And what does this project involve?’ I was afraid I might offend her, but I was too curious not to ask.

‘Jonas Wergeland’s aim was nothing less than to do the impossible, even though he really did not have what it took. And he almost succeeded.’ She said all of this, embarking upon an argument from which I am only quoting fragments, while gazing out at the planes taking off from Fornebu, as if they could take her to a place that did not exist.

Jonas Wergeland’s story, she said, was the story of a man who refused to accept his lot in life. Unlike a character in a classic epic, she said, Jonas Wergeland had rebelled against his fate. He managed, she said, to become someone other than who he was destined to be. Instead of being a single-cell creature, she said, he became a two-celled creature. And thus, she said, he played a part in mankind’s development into something better. Her face glowed as she talked — and not merely with the reflection of the flames in the hearth. There was something about her eyes too, a look of entreaty that stripped her words of any pomposity; they were not so much statements as expressions of an almost traumatic, personal concern. Because this was not the story of a man who hoodwinked a nation, she said, but that of an individual who succeeded, with the help of others, in discovering the best in himself, she said, or begged me to believe. Jonas Wergeland was — could just as easily have been — a hero for our times, she said, or implored, me to consider, as if she knew I was just about to think something else, something damning.

We sat for a long time saying nothing, with only the crackling of the fire disturbing the silence, but she kept her eyes fixed on me. She did not wish, her eyes said, to do as so many others had been working very hard to do lately: reduce the genius to a banal, ordinary person. She wished, her eyes said, to lift the ordinary person up to the level of the genius, show that a man who considered himself talentless might in fact be in possession of tremendous riches, a wealth of possibilities. ‘We are all Sauls,’ she finished by saying. ‘Ordinary people who might at any minute be anointed king.’

I did not want to disagree with her, despite the inescapable reality which cast a disquieting shadow over this beautiful monument of a rationale, I almost said testimony: Jonas Wergeland was a murderer. I could not bring myself to repeat this painful fact — not because I was unwilling to, but because there was an insistence bordering on desperation in her argument which made me think she had some other explanation, that she had a card up her sleeve which could still make this impossible game of patience come out right. Or as she had said during our first session together: ‘There is only one reason for telling stories: to save someone who has already been condemned. Tell the story against all odds.’

This, our last evening, was Easter Saturday, and again her arrival was heralded by a distant rumble and the feeling that the whole house was shaking. I knew this would be our last meeting. I could tell it also by the way she glided slowly around the room, as if taking her leave of everything, before sinking into her chair and closing her eyes, as though gathering herself for a final, mighty push. It was with some sadness that I scribbled down notes in shorthand as she spoke, telling stories in a sequence, and with a conclusion, that made me gasp at the thought of a hitherto unimagined possibility.

No sooner was she done than she got to her feet, clearly exhausted. ‘I have to go now,’ she said, stopping by the window. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, but I have a long journey ahead of me.’ She looked out across the fjord, where it lay shimmering in the darkness, as if wishing to brand that view into her memory. Or — this occurred to me later — as if she were weighing up something important, something she was about to say, but didn’t.

Before she left I signed the contract she had drawn up. She waived her claim to any royalties — she didn’t want the publicity, she said — but I undertook to transfer part of my fee to a certain person. I was both surprised and not surprised when I saw the name. A girl.

I had known it all along, really, I thought to myself. She swathed herself in her black cloak, like a magician about to make his exit, and moved towards the spiral staircase, then turned, with almost surprising abruptness, and clasped my hand — as if she knew that I guessed who she was and with this gesture was begging me never to divulge it. But I think she also took my hand in order to thank me. She confirmed my sense of having been her muse, as much as she had been mine. That for some reason she needed me in order to tell this story. ‘Several times you’ve asked me why I was doing this,’ she said at the last. ‘And I could just as easily have said: out of love. And sheer desperation. Because I do not understand it. I have also told it for my own sake. Not just for yours, or Jonas Wergeland’s.’

For the first time I remained standing by the window, watching her leave, the black figure walking down the driveway and through the gate. I could sense that I was more than fascinated: I was close to falling in love. Amazed and yet not so, I saw her climb into the cab of a semi-trailer, the biggest I’d ever seen: or rather, it was just the truck part, without the trailer. I couldn’t see what colour it was, but I would bet anything that it was black. The enormous cab, and the naked, little rear section made the vehicle look very alien, oddly empty. At first I thought someone was collecting her, but then I saw her slide behind the wheel herself, heard the mighty roar as the engine started up, and a sea of lights came on. She must have spotted me, because she beeped the horn, loud as the siren on a massive boat, and drove off. I watched the truck fade from view, gleaming and formidable, as though she were lifting off in a spaceship. I stood there, feeling that a great obligation had been placed on me, feeling as though she had uncoupled her trailer and dumped a heavy load in the garden: in my study, as it were.

And while all this was going on, or had gone on, late on an Easter Saturday, my thoughts went to the central character, a man sitting in his cell a couple of miles away — once the emperor of Norway, now emperor of a hundred square feet, whose final, curt comment to the press had been: ‘I got off too lightly.’ But if he really did have the creative powers which I had discerned in his programmes — and plenty of breathing space — it could be that a few square feet was enough. I stood in my ‘control tower’ wondering who he was. Could be. I gazed at a plane, possibly the last one of the evening, coming in to land; a plane which Jonas Wergeland might also have followed with his eyes if his window was facing in the right direction, and I reflected upon another possibility which my visitor had chanced to mention: that the real Jonas Wergeland was to be found somewhere in between all these stories. Maybe — in reality — he wasn’t even in a cell at all.

Or, as she said when she began upon the last story of the evening: ‘There has to be another way.’ And after a long pause: ‘There is another way.’