The Seducer

The Bomber Man Cometh

The summer holidays came and went, they moved up into seventh grade, and still Jonas Wergeland went around hand in hand with Margrete Boeck, so aglow with something that went beyond mere happiness that even the teachers on playground duty had to smile and give their bunches of keys an extra rattle behind their backs. So Jonas’s sense of being a wizard, of being unbeatable, was every bit as strong, a fact which he proved, not least, by doubling every single record set on the pinball machine in Gro Snack Bar, again together with Margrete, one button each. Jonas wondered whether it was the attraction between him and her that produced the reversed magnetic field which was responsible for the fact that the gleaming ball-bearing simply would not drop through the hole at the bottom and looked set to go on dancing between the rubber bands of the targets for ever, while the machine pinged and flashed, and the digit counters whirled round so fast that the machine seemed on the point of breaking down or exploding. They celebrated their pinball wizardry by treating themselves to ice cream cones or small bottles of Coke with straws and putting more coins in the jukebox so they could listen to ‘Rock‘n’roll Music’ or ‘Eight Days a Week’ ringing out over the Formica-topped tables of the little snack bar on Trondheimsveien yet again, with that wonderful, slightly fuzzy sound that only a jukebox can make, while they laughed up their sleeves at the bigger lads showing off outside, revving up their Tempo motorbikes for the benefit of a bunch of girls with beehive hair-dos and about a pound of chewing gum all-told between their teeth.

The autumn sped past, as always, with election day and — to the extent that they took any note of it — an epoch-making victory for the Conservatives; with scrumping for apples, in which Jonas’s daring reached new heights when he actually managed to pinch two beautiful green apples from the garden of the ever-vigilant and not exactly mild-mannered ‘Hawkeye’ Larsen; and dark evenings with a nip in the air, ideal for long goodbyes, closely entwined with your back against the granite blocks of Grorud Church.

Jonas Wergeland and Margrete Boeck were the most loving couple in the Grorud Valley, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing to suggest that the sand was running out of the hourglass of their bliss or, perhaps I ought to say, the last ball-bearing would soon drop down the hole between the two bottom flippers. Then came the fateful day at the skating rink. Suddenly it was over, and in all probability it was the abrupt, almost explosive, way that it ended that led Jonas to pin the blame on the Oslo bomber.

For those who have forgotten, or did not experience it, I feel I ought to say something about this phantom or whatever one wants to call him, who terrorized the citizens of Oslo during the year in which Jonas and Margrete drifted about, almost weightless with love; an individual, soon known simply by the thriller-style name of ‘the bomber’, who shook Norway’s capital to its foundations from February right through the spring by setting cunning and lethal booby-traps in various parts of Oslo so that no one felt safe, not even in Grorud, and an entire populace went around in fear, keeping their eyes peeled for strings tied to gates, stretched across footpaths or between cars and lifting their feet good and high in dark alleyways. I believe that this period represents a milestone in the consciousness of many Oslo folk inasmuch as the bomber unwittingly induced in them a peculiarly existential state of mind in which each step they took was a leap in the dark that might bring them down on his deadly spider’s web. The one thing that we all know, deep down, was suddenly a concrete reality: one false step, and life would never be the same again.

But this possibility — the chance of getting a shower of shrapnel in your back at any minute — did not scare Jonas and Margrete; on the contrary, it only enhanced their happiness as if their romance were flourishing during wartime or under a state of emergency. And then, just as unexpectedly, Oslo was rid of wires and explosives. The police thought the man must be dead.

Winter set in brutally early — this alone should perhaps have served as a warning to Jonas, but at the end of November, with the temperature at an all-time low of minus sixteen degrees, he presented Margrete with a rolled-gold locket on which Aunt Laura had engraved an exquisitely lettered ‘Jonas’ as if this piece of jewellery could shield them from the cold or exert some sort of white magic that would make her his forever. One evening when they were propped up against the church wall, their arms wrapped tightly around one another to keep warm, he hung it around her neck like a medal and said: ‘Gold in love’.

And then what happens? The bomber returns, that’s what — the bomber strikes again. Just when Jonas is thinking that he could not be any happier, he trips over an invisible cord, one of the bomber’s tripwires; except that this particular wire is not reported in any newspaper, and neither is the shattering explosion. But for years afterwards Jonas Wergeland was to be haunted by the memory of the bomber and the thought of that day.

It was an evening just before Christmas, and they were at the ice rink. Jonas cherished, as I said earlier, something approaching a hatred of winter, the only part of it he could stand was the skating and not only because Roald Aas had danced with his sister. There was something about the sheen of the ice, particularly under the floodlights in the evening, which fascinated him; and something about going round the turns, feeling the centrifugal force. He also liked the atmosphere in the cloakroom of the clubhouse, where you could buy beef broth, hot and strong, from the guy who spent the rest of his time swanning about, collecting entrance money in a bag like the ones used by the bus conductors, leaving you with the impression that you were going on a journey. I ought also to mention that all of this took place during what was a golden era in Norwegian skating history, a time when Norwegian skaters had to fight over the three places on the winners’ podium, and boys — incredible as it may seem today — wanted racing skates for Christmas.

They had just finished playing a game of tag on the inner rink, the girls with white covers over their figure-skates with most of them wearing those helmet-shaped crocheted hats which were all the rage that year and never again, when Jonas — in a fit of hubris or, more correctly, in his eagerness to show Margrete that there is at least one winter sport that he is good at — hits on the idea of doing the 5,000 metres, and, as if that weren’t enough, he challenges a guy from the Labour Skating Club, who happens to glide by at that moment, using an ostentatious catlike technique.

The guy from the LSC is only too pleased to take Jonas on, is happy to get a bit of practice; he grins at Jonas’s presumption; grins at Margrete, who doesn’t seem too wild about the idea of this race, as they get off their marks in the 5,000 metres, a bit of an improvised start, since they are both skating in the same lane. After setting a pretty stiff pace in the first lap, the boy from LSC glances over his shoulder, to find to his surprise that Jonas is still on his tail; he does not know that Jonas is a wizard, unbeatable, and that Jonas really can skate, that he even likes to skate, practises a gently swaying style and has long since become so fast that he can skate right round a turn without taking any ordinary strokes in between; he remembers the first time he got the stride right all the way round, the feeling of breaking the sound barrier. The rink staff have started playing music over the loudspeakers, they have put on the autumn’s new release, the Beatles’ Help album, and it will take the boys almost as long to do the twelve and a half laps of the 5,000 metres as it takes to play the first side of the album. They skim on across the ice, Jonas ten metres behind the LSC guy. Jonas knows he has to take it easy, make each move with the minimum of effort — And now my life is changed in oh, so many ways, my independence seems to vanish in the haze — they are skating almost in step, gliding smoothly, swinging round the turns, the other guy in his smart green and black club colours, the letters on his back, close-fitting ‘devil’ cap and skin-tight top, Jonas in a weird, amateurish — but nonetheless lucky — outfit: knickerbockers like those worn by cross-country skier Harald Grønningen, a jersey knitted by Rakel in a pattern similar to the one in which alpine skier Stein Eriksen was often photographed and a dark-blue woollen hat with a little white bobble of the sort worn by ski-jumpers, most notably by Toralf Engan. Even Jonas’s clothing testifies to the fact that he is unbeatable, a wizard, as he glides round and round, staying loose to prevent stiffening up, both hands behind his back, he glances towards the gang of girls standing in a cluster on the inner rink — Were you telling lies? Ah, the night before — knows that they are watching, sees Margrete — Was I so unwise? Ah, the night before — Jonas Wergeland is doing the 5,000 metres on the Grorud circuit, he cannot put a foot wrong, although he really isn’t in the right form for this, but he finds his form nonetheless, has no trouble maintaining his speed, he’s a wizard, unbeatable, he hardly needs to try, it’s as if the glare of the floodlights were propelling him round; he swings his right arm out towards the entrance, relishes the sense of physical control, tilts his weight over to take full advantage of the curve, feels the centrifugal force helping him round and into the next long stretch, skates lap after lap under the floodlights, gliding from side to side, perfectly balanced — Gather round all you clowns, let me hear you say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away’ — shaves the verge of snow on the turns, glides on and on, as one of the girls takes a few dance steps towards them on her figure-skates and shouts ‘Come on, Jonas!’; he revels in the feel of the skate blade on the smooth ice, freshly sprayed, the crisp crackle; he makes the most of each glide, knows that he must not push it, endeavours to keep his push-off soft but springy, is starting to feel the air tearing at his lungs, can tell it won’t be long before his back is begging to be allowed to straighten up — oh, yes, you told me, you don’t want my lovin’ any more, that’s when it hurt me, and feeling like this I just can’t go on any more — skates on and on, pushing off, catching sight of his own tracks in the ice, it’s like something is wrong, he has lost his way, gone round in circles, but he is still ten metres behind, lap after lap, knows that the other guy ought to be in better form, but Jonas is skating on willpower, dredging up strength from way down in the basement, as the jargon has it, catches a whiff of beef broth, glances at Margrete in the midst of the cluster of girls, locks onto the heels of the LSC guy, notes that his opponent’s stride is shortening, he is looking down at the tips of his skates, a bad sign according to radio commentator Knut Bjørnsen; one more lap and Jonas is breathing down his neck — I don’t wanna say that I’ve been unhappy with you, but as from today, well, I’ve seen somebody that’s new — it’s all very well to say that Jonas ought to have realized that the songs which are ringing out across the ice, especially when taken as whole, could never bode well. Then, just as he passes his opponent in the crossover lane, exhausted, but happy and proud, only half a lap from the finish, with the Beatles chanting out the message, loud and clear — you’re gonna lose that girl, yes, yes, you’re gonna lose that girl, you’re gonna loooooooooooose that girl — some sixth sense tells Jonas Wergeland that this is going to go wrong, even though he is going to win, beating the LSC guy — who cannot believe his eyes — by ten metres. Jonas is coming out of the final turn, which he skims round beautifully, one arm swinging loose, picturing himself in the Classic Norwegian Position. And what, you may ask, exactly is the Classic Norwegian Position? Well, the Classic Norwegian Position is that assumed by Knut Johannesen, pictured on the turn in the 10,000 metres at the Olympics in Squaw Valley in 1960, when he took the gold and set a new world record, wearing that timeless white jersey with the Norwegian flag over the heart, and with his body — thanks mainly to the line of his right leg — extending upwards from the ice to form a perfect diagonal, an image which is to many Norwegians what the statue of a discus thrower is to the Greeks: it doesn’t get any more beautiful or more aesthetically pleasing than that — and just as Jonas is picturing himself being photographed in the Classic Norwegian Position, he catches a glimpse of Margrete walking off through the gate, and then she is gone.

Yes, Margrete was gone. Later, Jonas felt sure that it was all the fault of the circle. The repetition. That this repetition was a kind of death. As if by letting himself be manipulated into whirling round and round like that he had unscrewed something

Margrete is gone, and while Jonas is standing by the gate, trying to regain his breath, Margrete’s chum comes over — like an angel of death, he thinks to himself, even before she gets to him — picking her way because of her skate guards: ‘Margrete’s breaking it off,’ she says.

Jonas stands there, watching the steam from his own breath. Then he says, the way one does, amazingly, manage to say at such moments: ‘What do I care?’ For years he was to wonder how he could have come up with such an inane choice of words. ‘What do I care?’

What do you do when you are desperate?

Jonas’s mind is a complete blank. All he can do is to skate gracefully backwards, concentrate solely on skating gracefully backwards, perhaps unconsciously wishing to turn back the clock. But so intent is he on displaying the utmost grace in the art of skating backwards that he does not see the chunk of ice on the surface of the rink, just as Per Ivar Moe did not see the sliver of soap some weeks later in Deventer: a booby trap of ice which causes him to come crashing down, as badly as it is possible to crash on skates. Charlie Chaplin could not have done it better: first the frantic skittering, faster and faster, in a futile attempt to regain his balance, and then the finale, the dreadful fall, where you just manage to adopt a perfectly horizontal position in midair before coming down on the rock-hard ice, and every single part of the back side of your body seems to take a battering as your head and heels both hit the ice at once.

And finally: the explosion. The back of Jonas’s head slams into the ice so hard that a myriad shards of light, a whole universe of starbursts, come racing towards him and through him, a bit like the effect used in a film to give the illusion of travelling faster than the speed of light. When he emerges on the other side he is convinced that his spine has been shattered and that the silver thread — although what bloody good is a silver thread to him now, anyway? — has been severed.

For a long time Jonas just lies there, as if he were dead, he is dead, his eyes closed, while the chill from the ice spreads throughout his body, a not unpleasant sensation. He only wishes that he could put himself into deep-freeze and that someone would wake him up when the world has become less crazy and bewildering.

For a long time Jonas lies there, chilled to the marrow, listening to the mawkish strains of ‘Yesterday’ pouring out of the loudspeakers right above his head with the result that he would come to hate that song, felt like crying every time heard it. And, as most of you will no doubt appreciate, he had to endure listening to that song many a time over the years. To cut a long story short: Jonas Wergeland was never a great Beatles fan.

Margrete was gone. Margrete was the first and the last. And it was on account of Margrete that Jonas Wergeland killed his mother’s seven lovers.