The Conqueror

The Ark of the Covenant

I still do not know, Professor, whether I shall succeed in this ambitious undertaking of mine, because when Jonas Wergeland stood with his finger on the trigger, aiming at Margrete Bøeck’s heart, so excited he could hardly breathe, just as he had felt as a boy that time when he found a pearl oyster, he thought of what had taken place only minutes earlier, when he was in the bedroom, trying to collect himself, determined that everything was going to be fine; and yet, even while he was struggling to calm down, he could not help himself: he picked up the novel lying on her bedside table, and he opened it, and he saw the handwriting, and he read the owner’s name, and he saw that the book belonged to the very person he least wanted it to belong to, and this provided him with a kind of final proof, proof which he did not need, because it was true, it had always been true, only he, in his hopeless naivety had not realized that it was true; and it must have been then that he conceived the idea which propelled his feet from the bedroom to the little workshop where he dug out the pistol tucked well away in the cupboard, behind all the gouges, a pistol which Jonas’s father, Haakon Hansen, had found among Omar Hansen’s possessions when they were going through the house on Hvaler after his grandfather’s death and which Jonas and Daniel had, in their turn, found hidden away, still in its thick wrappings, in the Villa Wergeland, when their father, Haakon, died and which, that day, with trembling fingers they unwound from the oilcloth, to at long last lay eyes on the weapon, a Luger P-08, the unequivocal proof of their grandfather’s, their family’s, crime, long hidden in a safe, and this they immediately wrapped up again, almost shaking in their shoes, a pistol which they obviously should have handed over to the authorities but which Jonas, with Daniel’s blessing, kept safe for many years, like a shameful relic, and which, in an overreaction to some threatening letters only a few weeks before he went to Seville, he had taken out and wiped the grease off, a skill he had learned while doing his national service, from a gunsmith who could never have known why Jonas was so keen to see a Luger, never mind learn how to take it apart and clean it; and this was before he actually saw his grandfather’s pistol at a time when all of his curiosity and interest — not to say, anxiety — was founded on intelligence supplied by Veronika; but Jonas had learned everything there was to know about this gun, applied himself so single-mindedly to it, you would have thought that by taking that pistol apart and cleaning it he was also dismantling an act of treachery, in order, if possible, to understand some inner logic, and as if that weren’t enough: he had also committed these skills to memory so well that later, even ten years after completing his stint with N Brigade, at any given time he was not only able to clean the old grease off a similar weapon but could also coat all of the Luger’s movable parts with a thin, thin layer of oil, and slot seven bullets, from an ammunition box which had also been kept perfectly dry all those years, into the magazine and push it into place, so that suddenly the gun was ready for use again, a fact which makes it possible for him now, newly returned from Seville, to walk into the workshop and slip the pistol into the pocket of his roomy trouser pocket, before trying once again to stop everything, stop time, stop the green pictures in his head, pull himself together and ride it out; he looks at a half-finished dragon head sitting on the bench, and he looks at the ornamentation on which he has barely begun, the dragon not yet come to life, and he shuts his eyes, and breathes in the powerful odours in the room, wood and beeswax, not unlike the smell on board a boat; and he asks himself, as I have asked myself, whether there was a safe in his own life too, or rather: a secret that was locked away? In other words: what could possess a boy to cut down the mast of an old lifeboat?

The following incident took place during one of the first years after Jonas started hanging out with Gabriel Sand, and please note, Professor, that I am still not sure whether this is a dark story or a light one. Whatever the case, the evening had begun as usual. It was autumn and the miserable weather outside only made it seem all the more cosy on board the Norge, where they were sitting in the saloon, amid the rumblings of the stove, talking about everything under the sun. There were few places where Jonas felt freer than on that ancient vessel, a place as crammed with oddities as Strömstad market and the attic on Hvaler put together. ‘This is my ark,’ Gabriel often said. ‘Here I’ve got everything I need to survive the deluge.’ After a game of chess, which Jonas won with the help of his knights, Gabriel had gone through to the galley and cut some thick slices of bacon, which he fried and served up, with the grease, on slabs of bread — with tomatoes and diverse obscure relishes on the side. They had a good laugh, while they were eating, at a picture that Jonas had found of Gabriel standing at a microphone next to Frank Roberts during a recording of Dickie Dick Dickens, a photograph which prompted Gabriel to trot out some of the most outrageous stories from his time with Radio Theatre. Jonas had had his first taste of whisky that evening, and although he didn’t drink much, he could feel his head getting fuzzy. From somewhere far off he heard Gabriel say: ‘We even had one guy there who could imitate any kind of animal — right down to different breeds of dog!’

Maybe it was his own fault, for collapsing into the starboard bunk, the skipper’s bunk, as leading seaman Jonas’s place was, according to Gabriel, in the port bunk. But Jonas had been so worn out that he had had no idea where his feet were taking him. He was already drifting into a dream when he became aware, even though half-asleep, even in his drunken stupor, that Gabriel was climbing into his bunk; something bristly, a mouth that reeked of spicy relish was breathing on the back of his neck. All at once the bunk seemed claustrophobically small, he felt himself being pressed up against the wall, against the inner shell of the hull. It was pitch-black too, and Jonas didn’t like the dark, he was scared of disappearing, falling into a black hole. The amazing thing, he managed to think to himself, was that it hadn’t happened before, because he had known it all along, really: that it would come to this, to Gabriel’s groping paws. I’m dead, he thought. I’m in a coffin, I’ve been buried alive.

Jonas was conscious of Gabriel pulling down his trousers. He half expected a hand to close over his balls and squeeze, but instead felt the touch of lips on him; even in his befuddled state he could tell that his penis was in somebody’s mouth, that he was being sucked off and that, in the state he was in, it was not as horrible as it might have been. He felt relieved, hoped it would stop there, things could maybe go on as before if it would just stop there, but it didn’t stop there; a remarkably muscular, hairy arm flipped him over onto his stomach. ‘Like an elephant’s trunk,’ Jonas thought wildly, not knowing what made him think of that.

He wanted to scream, but no sound came out. He tried to roll out of the bunk, or shove Gabriel off him, but the old man was strong, gripped him tight. Jonas felt totally helpless. Or was that how he wanted to be? And did he, nonetheless, hear a cry for help? Did it escape his lips, or did it only sound inside his head, like an echo of the scream he had heard in a grove of trees only a few months earlier, a scream that still resounded inside him? He relaxed. Let it happen. Knew, as Gabriel penetrated him from behind, that he would never fathom that sensation, say whether it hurt like hell or felt like heaven, whether he was being punctured or pumped full of something, whether he would die or live when it was over. For a moment it felt as if something long and thick was being pushed inside him, a baseball bat, a beer bottle, any one of the things with which, in their fantasies, Laila, Mamma Banana, had pleasured herself, something which made him think his body was going to rip apart, be pulverized. It was not just a feeling in his bowels; it was like having something stabbing into his brain. Like being given a lobotomy, the thought shot through his mind.

Say it did hurt — how did he endure it? Jonas Wergeland endured it because in a split-second of clarity he saw what this was: it was something he had to go through. It was a sacrifice. It was something he had to do because of Laila, in order to live down the shame, the fact that he had watched her suffer in Transylvania and had not intervened. And yet that was only half the truth, because he also knew that his lack of resistance now would be to his advantage later. It was part of a tacit agreement. If I had managed to get out of there before it happened, I’d have been Mr Average, nothing but a dilettante, for the rest of my life, he thought later.

Earlier that evening, in a moment of weakness possibly induced by his first glass of whisky, Jonas expressed a certain doubt as to his abilities. He really wanted to make his mark in some field or other, he had to, he told Gabriel — rather bumptiously perhaps — but he wasn’t sure whether he had what it took. I feel it’s worth pausing here for a moment, because Jonas Wergeland made this admission even though he was actually in the midst of composing his ‘Dragon Sacrifice’, the musical work which, with remarkable self-confidence, he assumed would cause a sensation or at least a scandal. As I say, it may have been said in a moment of weakness, but it does indicate that behind the cocky façade, Jonas Wergeland was not blind to the fact that he tended to overestimate himself.

It was then that Gabriel pointed out to him that he had a rare gift. He straightened his bowtie as he was speaking — in addition to his usual, outmoded, chalk-striped suit he was wearing a bowtie, perhaps to mark the fact that this was a big day. Gabriel reminded him of the first time they had met, at the Torggata Baths. Did Jonas know why Gabriel became interested in him?

‘Because I didn’t dare to dive off the five-metre platform?’

‘No, because I peeked into your cubicle and saw the pictures you had drawn on your schoolbag. They were fantastic. Where did you get the idea for them?’

‘From a dragon head I saw once.’ Jonas had drawn the Academic’s designs on the flap of his leather satchel with a black Magic Marker.

Gabriel looked as though he was turning something over in his head, an impression reinforced by the creaking of the rigging. He took a hefty swig of his whisky before saying: ‘Now listen carefully, Jonas, because what I’m going to say now you have to write down on a piece of paper and put it in a casket and guard it well because it is worth more than pearls. Write: “You have to put a twist on everything you do.”’ Gabriel took another mighty swig from his ship’s tumbler. ‘D’you follow me?’ he asked urgently. ‘You have to let yourself be inspired by those crisscross patterns of yours.’

‘Carvings,’ Jonas said.

‘I don’t give a bugger what they are, as long as you put your money on those lines. Metaphorically speaking, if you know what I mean. You’ve no idea how much difference a little twist can make. You’re a Napoleon, lad. Wake up!’

Beyond the skylight it was pitch black, but the paraffin lamp cast a warm, if dim, light on the table. Jonas noticed how Gabriel’s gold tooth glinted as he talked; it seemed to him that it was glinting more than usual, as if to underline the importance of his words.

These figures, Gabriel went on, these figures which Jonas had mastered, were more than enough. Jonas had to get it into his head that he could be ordinary and brilliant at one and the same time. It was like good, old Bohr’s theory of complimentarity: there were two explanations which, while they might well be mutually exclusive, were both essential in order to arrive at a full description of him. Most ‘great’ individuals were also perfectly ordinary people in many ways, exceptional only in a few, crucial areas. That was what it came down to: excelling within a narrow field.

Jonas sat there shaking his head, shaking his head in an effort to ward of this temptation or offer; but this only added fuel to Gabriel’s fire. Had Jonas forgotten what country he was living in, dammit? The most egalitarian society on earth, a land with an almost pathological bent for equality. And what did that mean? It meant that any talent that was the slightest bit above the average stood out like a red fox among a pack of grey lemmings. Had Jonas truly never noticed that? Norway was a paradise for charlatans. In no other country in the world did it take so little to catch the attention of a whole nation.

‘In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king,’ Jonas said, repeating a saying that Gabriel was fond of quoting.

‘Exactly,’ Gabriel said, gratified. ‘Everybody makes the same mistake. They think they have to be Leonardo da Vinci in order to do great things. But you don’t need to strive for brilliance; an ounce of originality will do the trick. At the moment, anyway. Because you should think yourself lucky: we’re living in an era when the most heroic thing you can do is to appear on the telly! Here, take the bottle — it’s time you grew up. That’s it: fill it up. You have to have an eye for the main chance, Jonas, see how far you can get even with very limited resources. A nose for how to weave a few commonplace elements into something greater is all it takes.’

‘But wouldn’t it still be commonplace?’ Jonas asked, sitting back on the bench, his head growing more and more befuddled, from the whisky, from the smells of the boat: smoke, tar, paraffin — and from Gabriel’s words.

‘Wrong again. Put a number of ordinary things together and you can get something pretty phenomenal. Not to say, terrifying. Take a dragon, for instance. What is it, except a dog with a twist? A dog with wings. Or four or five animals put together to form something extraordinary.’

His gold tooth glinted, flashed. Jonas liked what he was hearing, liked it a lot. But he felt scared too.

‘It doesn’t take much,’ Gabriel said. ‘Look at me.’ He stood up, pulled out a key and wound up the ship’s clock before going out to slice more bacon. ‘I’m an actor, remember,’ he called from the galley. ‘I know what I’m talking about.’

Jonas could not know that he was, at that moment, living proof of this statement. Because although Gabriel could not, in fact, tell a foresail from a mainsail, for a year and a half he had led Jonas to believe that he was an old salt, simply by learning the jargon — ‘after leech’ and ‘gaff end’ and ‘barber hauler’ — in the same way that an actor memorizes his lines. And Jonas had allowed himself to be taken in. ‘Are you mad!’ Gabriel had roared, looking genuinely appalled, once when Jonas was trying to coil a rope. ‘Don’t you know that all ropes have to be wound sun-wise, you landlubber.’ And this from a man who had never been to sea.

And now, only a couple of hours after listening to Gabriel’s urgings, Jonas was lying with his nose pressed into the mattress of one of the bunks, with Gabriel on top of him, puffing and panting. He was drunk but lucid enough to feel like a puppet, with a big hand stuck up inside him.

He turned his head to the side, to scream, to say something, but still could not utter a sound, nor did he want to; instead his eye fell on a glass standing on a small table next to the bunk, he saw the false teeth lying in it, caught the glint of a gold tooth, but still it took a few seconds for him to connect this with Gabriel, for him to realize that even the man’s teeth were false. And as Gabriel took him harder and harder, driving into him, uncontrollably, groaning, Jonas saw the gnashers cackling at him from the glass, as if they were laughing at his naivety, at how easily he had allowed himself to be hoodwinked.

And yet, in the midst of this humiliation, or act of atonement, or pleasure, or reparation, or liberation, or whatever it was — maybe he was quite simply being put to the test — the glass reminded Jonas that Gabriel had also stressed the importance of willpower, the need for reckless defiance. Because even if you could only tie one knot, through perseverance something great could be created: by tying that same knot again and again — until at last you had a magnificent rug. ‘You’ve got the stubbornness that’s needed,’ Gabriel said. ‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

Yes, it was true. He lay with the sour smell of the mattress in his nose, proving it now. Unless it was Gabriel who was demonstrating it to him now. Showing him that he could stand it, this penetration that went beyond the tentacles of words. Jonas recalled how even as a little boy he had been capable of summoning up reserves of stubbornness from some unknown source. Like the time when they were playing down by the stream and they found a swarm of tadpoles. They caught as many as they could in a jam jar, gazed at them wide-eyed, those tiny pucks with tails. Then somebody bet Jonas that he didn’t dare drink them. Bet him a flick-knife — a novel and dangerously cool item at that time. Jonas drank the whole jar of tadpoles down without so much as blinking, he could still remember the feeling and the taste as they slipped down his throat. ‘They’re gonna turn into toads in your stomach,’ the boy who had bet him said in an attempt to save his flick-knife. ‘If you throw up, it doesn’t count.’ Jonas could veritably feel the tadpoles crawling up his gullet, but he did not throw up. He exercised his willpower.

And as if to illustrate the link between that memory of the tadpoles and the situation on board the lifeboat, Gabriel was shaken by some violent spasms and Jonas felt something running down between his legs. At that same moment, Gabriel jerked him roughly backwards, as if he were pressing, trying to squeeze the breath out of him, or doing something to his back, snapping something into place, the way a chiropractor would do, causing an agonizing stab of pain to run right through him, accompanied by a flash of light. Gabriel rolled off him, grunted and slapped his backside. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’ll never happen again. I promise.’ He got up and fell in to the other bunk.

Jonas was left lying there, feeling sure that he was going to die; but gradually he felt the pain give way to a pleasant warmth and a realization that, for some minutes, he had been bounded in a nutshell but was now a king of infinite space, to paraphrase another of Gabriel’s favourite sayings. Almost against his will he was dragged down into a deep, peaceful sleep, into a dream of sailing through a long, unnavigable passage.

Coming up through the hatchway the next morning was, nonetheless, like climbing out of the belly of a whale. Jonas felt sticky, smelly. He stood on the deck, gazing into white space. It was misty and perfectly still. Some large seabirds came gliding towards him, skimming the waves. Other than that, everything round about had disappeared, like the images on an overexposed picture.

Gabriel rowed him ashore straight away, knew there could be no talk of breakfast. The bowtie was gone, but the false teeth were in place — and on his head he wore an idiosyncratically moulded Borsalino. He sat there looking like the eternal cosmopolitan, wearing a dark coat over a chalk-striped suit, out of place in a little rowboat, sitting hunched on a thwart, handling the oars. The dinghy slid slowly through the white light. Just before they reached the beach, Gabriel broke his silence, quoted yet again from Ophelia’s monologue, whispering it, so it seemed, to the mist: ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown…’

Jonas stepped ashore and began to walk towards Drøbak. ‘Will I see you again?’ Gabriel called after him.

Jonas turned. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Three years were to go by before the reaction came: in the form of a power saw.

Back home in Grorud he went to bed. He felt sick in every cell of his body; he sank into a white mist, a luminous nothingness. He lay more or less in a daze the whole weekend, with a terrible ache in his back, an ache that gradually became more in the nature of a pressure. It was almost as if he was pregnant, carrying a foetus in the marrow of his spine. Or as if he was about to sprout wings. Jonas both knew and did not know that something was happening to the button, the button of dragon’s horn that he had swallowed as a little boy, and which he had persuaded himself had lodged in his spine like an extra vertebra.

On the Monday morning, when he got out of bed and took his first faltering steps across the room, he felt, in some strange way, ‘switched on’.