The Seducer

Opera of the Waters

So, how do the pieces of a life fit together?

Jonas Wergeland was shooting down seething rapids on a rubber raft, terrified out of his wits and staring at rock-faces, so ominously close, and waves that shot straight up into the air around them, as if someone were setting off dynamite down below: a situation so unnerving that he despised himself deeply and fervently, for, although he loved to travel, he hated putting himself at risk, hated the idea of being an adventurer, a daredevil. A lion, for example, was something he preferred to observe from a tall, four-wheel drive safari truck in the company of a bunch of camera-clicking Germans and most certainly not while creeping through the bush with a rifle in his hand.

In any case, the trip had been planned and this destination chosen largely because this was one of the few places on the map of the world on which he had not stuck a red pin to denote some sort of personal conquest, and also because he believed the majesty of the place would lend him inspiration in the final stages of preparations for his new project. And right from the start Jonas felt good there, liked being there, in the middle of what had, more than a century before, been a white patch on the map, which is to say the European map, in a place named after a white explorer which will — as everyone knows — at some point acquire a new name. It was Nefertiti’s great-aunt who first told them about Livingstone — Livingstone with his Bible and his bag of medicines, Livingstone with his left arm scarred from an encounter with a lion, Livingstone, the living stone, proof that everything does move about, even stones, Livingstone who ventured into deepest, darkest Africa, just took a run at it and jumped right in and found those smoking, thundering Falls, which were not of course called the Victoria Falls back then; a waterfall on an almost inconceivable scale, lying at the heart of one of the whitest patches on the map. Which only goes to show that one will always discover something, and not only that but something magnificent, if only the goal and the drive are great enough.

The visit had begun well, too, and Jonas had really taken to the place: the hotel with the odd-sounding Kololo name, the countryside, the climate and, not least, the sight of that mighty waterfall; all of these conspired to provide exactly the right setting, the boost he needed, as he sat there on the terrace, with the roar of the falls in his ears, a sun-downer in his hand and a notebook on his lap, putting the finishing touches to his ambitious project, Thinking Big.

It was at just such a twilight hour, as Jonas sat deep in thought on the hotel terrace, that Veronika Røed, daughter of Sir William, walked in as if it were the most natural thing in the world, wearing the most exquisitely eye-catching little number, dazzlingly beautiful, too beautiful, and greeted him as if they had just bumped into one another on Karl Johans gate in Oslo. It was all such a coincidence and was to have such fateful consequences that it could have been one of those melodramatic chance encounters resorted to in operas. Because this was, of course, Veronika Røed, the journalist, already famed for her daring, cutting-edge features from foreign parts, who, after the standard opening gambits as to why and how come, peppered with the latest news of the family, had asked whether Jonas would like to come on the rafting trip down the Zambezi which they — that is to say Veronika Røed and her photographer, a nondescript character in aviator shades and a sort of paramilitary uniform with loads of pockets — had planned for the following morning. And in a fit of curiosity and bravado, and possibly cowardice, he had said yes.

And now there he sat, wishing — too late — that he had never come and realizing that she was going to be the death of him after all, Veronika Røed; that in the end she would succeed in doing what she had tried to do time and again: kill him off. Jonas thought fleetingly of a wife and a small child, but the thought was swept away, caught by the current, the foaming eddies, along with all thoughts to do with the purpose of the trip, recharging his batteries and getting things into perspective before facing the biggest test of his whole life. And now there he was, soaking wet, hanging on to a rope, trapped in a totally confined space, in a claustrophobically narrow corridor of black basalt with not a single fork, no chance to do what he had been so intent on doing all his life — choose another direction, make a detour, cut across — because here he was being hurled straight ahead, taken from A to Z by the fastest means possible, and he knew he was going to die, a notion as absurd and ironic as the possibility of Fridtjof Nansen dying in the midst of preparations for his journey across Greenland.

They were heading for a so-called ‘a-b-c’ run, a long stretch of rapids in three stages. The oarsman yelled at Jonas and Veronika and the photographer that they were going to have to be better at shifting their weight when he gave the word. Things started to move dangerously fast; the raft pitched and juddered. Jonas felt as if he were in the middle of a hurricane surrounded by an incessant roaring. He fiddled with his life-jacket, which did not look all that reliable, a fact which one nervous individual had pointed out repeatedly back on the river bank. Jonas was conscious of his own adrenalin surging as fiercely as the waters around him. There was a smell of water, of moisture, water against warm hillsides, the smell of sweat from the man at the oars, from all of them, or from the rock-face itself. Spray was constantly flying up, everyone was sopping wet, the air around them resounded, white foam against black rock, a deafening thunder, applause from hell.

And then something happened which, oddly enough, in spite of the risk and the foolhardiness and, if I might add, the stupidity of such ventures, almost never happens on these expeditions: someone fell into the water, right at the top of the second of the three almost continuous falls, and it took a moment for it to register with an incredulous Jonas Wergeland that it was not, in fact, him. The accident occurred as they took a wave the wrong way, and the raft was flipped aside as if by a giant hand.

For one perverse, protracted second, as he clung to the rope and saw, nay, studied this person being flung overboard, how in midair the face of the individual in question went rigid with shock, how the limbs spread-eagled, Jonas contemplated the vast and quite incredible power contained within water.

The previous day he had been up by the Victoria Falls, overlooking the sheer drop into the long, narrow gorge at Knife Edge Point, a rocky outcrop every bit as grim as its name suggests, admiring the mile-wide mass of water plummeting down into the depths and feeling, of all things, as if he were confronted with a gigantic organ, possibly because of the mighty roar and the almost palpable pressure on his chest from the wall of water.

He was making a quick sketch in his notebook, concentrating mainly on capturing the sweep of the cascade — not an easy task with the paper continually being spattered by spray — when an African man approached him and inquired politely as to whether Jonas was Norwegian, pointing as he did so at the plastic bag in which Jonas was carrying his shirt and a camera and which — quite coincidentally and yet most aptly, considering that they were standing next to a rock-face curtained by water — happened to come from the Steen & Strøm, literally ‘Stone & Stream’, department store in Oslo. In all probability it was the ‘ø’ which had aroused the African gentleman’s suspicions.

The man, who was there with his family, all of them eminently well-dressed, the wife in high-heels, formally introduced himself and informed Jonas that he was a manager with Zesco, the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation, and, after they had exchanged a few preliminary remarks from which Jonas gathered that he was here faced with a highly educated man, the Zambian asked, with not a little pride, whether Jonas had visited Kafue. As it transpired that Jonas had not visited Kafue and, to the man’s astonishment, knew nothing about the place, he went on to describe in some detail the six turbines supplied to the power station there by the Norwegian company Kværner Brug.

‘I have been to Norway,’ the man said, as if anxious to change the subject for Jonas’s sake, and again he pointed to the carrier bag. ‘I attended a festival of the sun. And I thought the Norwegians were a Christian people,’ he laughed.

Jonas had no idea what he was talking about.

‘This man told me about Odin,’ said the man.

‘That was a long time ago,’ said Jonas.

‘But it’s a locomotive,’ said the other.

Jonas still did not know what he was talking about.

‘I’ve visited the Opera at Rjukan,’ said the man.

‘I think you must be mistaken,’ said Jonas. ‘There’s no opera at Rjukan.’

The Zambian was starting to bridle, thinking Jonas was making fun of him, but as he went on to explain, Jonas began to get the picture. The man had been to Oslo in the mid-seventies, on a visit to Kværner with a Swedish consultant to check on orders for Kafue and Zambia, and while he was there a hospitable, cosmopolitan Norwegian engineer had invited him to his cottage at Rjukan in Telemark. In the course of this memorable trip to the mountains, in March no less, the Zambian had the opportunity, among other things, to look over the Såheim power station, popularly known as the Opera House, with its old towers built out of blocks of granite. It was this same exceptionally kindly Norwegian engineer who had told his visitor from abroad about Odin, one of the little steam engines used on the steep branch-line from Rjukan to the Vemork plant. ‘But of all the things I saw in Norway, nothing impressed me as much as Samuel Eyde,’ the Zambian exclaimed with real warmth as he stood there next to Jonas at Knife Edge Point in the spray from the mighty Victoria Falls. In Rjukan, he said, he had seen a statue of Sam Eyde, and the Norwegian engineer had told him about this far-sighted Norwegian who had been astute enough to recognize the potential of the power inherent in waterfalls for the growth of Norwegian trade and industry and who, in years to come, was also to establish that cornerstone of the nation’s business sector, Norsk Hydro.

‘What a pity Sam Eyde wasn’t African, and that he didn’t start up here a hundred years ago,’ said the Zambian with a little smile and went on to deliver one of the most crucial lines Jonas Wergeland was to hear in his adult life. ‘The course of history might have been quite different if he had.’

The man walked over to his family, but Jonas stayed where he was, thinking about what the African had said. Not the part about the Kværner turbines at Kafue — he had known nothing about these, an example of Norwegian engineering know-how in the middle of Africa — or about the power station in Norway so beautiful that it had been dubbed ‘the Opera’, a name which could perhaps be justified by the fact that the song of the turbines sounded so operatic. No, Jonas Wergeland was considering the name of Sam Eyde. He knew the name, of course, but had never really understood its import. For a moment, this name seemed so full of meaning that it was as if Jonas had come across a severed limb, something belonging to him, something he had lost, a finger, a hand. Eyde. Water. Eyde and water. Water as opera. Water as work, an entire industrial plant.

And now here he was, in the thick of those rushing waters himself, surrounded by all that ineffable power, power capable of lighting up a whole country; or, he thought, in the middle of an opera, because this is a truly Valkyrian ride, not to mention pure soap opera. All of the geographical features around them, the rocky gorge, the glimpses of trees two hundred metres above them, were reminiscent of a stage set, seeming almost too theatrical, too extravagant to have anything to do with reality.

It was Veronika Røed who had been tipped into the water, who had forgotten to hang on when they collided with that wave at the top of the middle stretch. She was probably pondering how best to describe this hazardous ride in her piece for the newspaper; looking for a metaphor, something along the lines of ‘a lifeboat down a bobsleigh run’.

Despite the ceasefire of sorts that had been in force, Veronika Røed was a lifelong enemy, and so, terrified as he was, Jonas could not help but feel a frisson of malicious glee at the sight of this woman and the wide-eyed expression on her face as she was hurled up and out, in an arc, arms and legs outstretched, as if this were an act of revenge devised by him personally: a horrid and involved plot which entailed him getting roped into something from which he would normally run a mile. But even while, in some malevolent corner of his mind, he was crowing with delight, he could not help but see how she was instantly dragged under by the roaring waters and stayed under for so long that she was gasping for breath and evidently in a bad way when, thanks to her life-jacket, she bobbed into view now and again amidst the foam, heading down the rapids.

At this point events took yet another dramatic turn: at the foot of the rapids, at a slight bend in the river, with everyone screaming at once and no one hearing a word, just as their own boat, which was the last in the convoy, was drawn relentlessly towards the next set of falls, Veronika Røed was sucked into a whirlpool; and even though the man at the oars — also filled with disbelief and furious with this bloody tourist who wasn’t even capable of holding on — struggled frantically to manoeuvre the boat against the current towards her, or at any rate towards the shore, it was clear to all of them that they were going to be swept away and no one could say what then would become of Veronika Røed, who was caught in this whirlpool and, what is more, looked likely to lose consciousness at any minute.

Six people remained on board, and Jonas knew that someone was going to have to jump in soon, and he wondered who it would be even while searching, out of the corner of his eye as it were, for something, a sign, although he had no idea what, knowing only that someone was going to have to jump in, and he knew it would have to be him, he was going to be forced to jump in and save his worst enemy, a woman for whom, in his heart of hearts, he felt the most profound contempt; for her and her family and all they stood for. Jonas could not think straight, he felt sick, sick to the very core of his being, sick with fear, sick with indecision, sick with indignation at having allowed himself to become mixed up in this singularly tricky situation; a murderous form of blackmail offering only one alternative.

Jonas Wergeland jumped into the water, felt how he was promptly dragged under, thinking deep inside himself, in some corner of his mind, that this is too bloody much. So she managed it after all, he thought: by sacrificing herself, by dying in order to trick him into jumping in, he too would die in the heart of darkest Africa.