The Seducer

The Battle of Hafrsfjord

Remember, I say, remember that time with the sound check, when the ‘mic’s, those tiny lapel microphones, had already been attached, and they were all asked to say something. He listened to the others mouthing inane phrases, and because he had the idea that these said a lot about their subconscious minds, on impulse, when his turn came, he quoted Charles Darwin: ‘The mind cannot grasp,’ he said, as if plucking the words out of thin air, ‘the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years.’ No reaction, no laughter, just a ‘thank you, that’s fine’. A bad sign, he thought.

There were five minutes to go before they went out live on the air. Jonas studied the set décor, the flimsy studio walls which would give the viewers the impression of a relatively cosy room, but which to him represented something quite different, namely, the scene of a battle. Nor could the viewers tell that the light was disturbingly bright, as glaringly bright as the light in Eastern Greenland, he thought, peering round about him at these familiar surroundings which had suddenly become so alien, unreal, and as he did so he became aware of that ominous feeling of nausea that had dogged him throughout his life, the feeling that had hit him whenever he was too high up, or too far away, when contours were obliterated and details lost; a detector of sorts that picks up grandiose lies. One of the three cameramen nodded to him, Jonas could not tell whether it was a nod of encouragement or of malicious glee, he tried to catch the eye of Gunnhild, the floor manager, who was bustling about with a sheet of paper in each hand and a headset on, but she avoided looking his way, treating him with professional detachment, close to condescension, as if he were any ordinary guest. These people used to be his colleagues, now suddenly they were potential antagonists. He tried to breath deeply, slowly, he could tell he was nervous, and he had reason to be nervous; he had reached a critical juncture in his life, an event which could turn everything on its head, leave his brilliant career in ruins. That was the media circus for you. Riding high one day: consigned to oblivion the next. Like Timbuktu. A city of gold one year, a heap of sand the next. Jonas sat in that studio, bathed in an unpleasant light, and suddenly found himself wondering whether his prism was still out there somewhere, among the Tuaregs in the desert around Timbuktu, or whether perhaps it lay buried in the sand, one crystal among other crystals. Whatever the case, he could have done with it now, something to hold in his hand, something with which to break up that disturbingly bright light.

He looked at the two seated next to him, two people who would be vying with one another to tear him to pieces before the very eyes of the Norwegian people; he turned his eyes up to the control room, high above the studio floor, could not make out anyone behind the walls of glass but knew they were there, seven of them at least, including the Colonel, the producer, an old adversary; Jonas knew that the Colonel was girding his loins for the transmission of his life, a golden opportunity; that at that very moment the Colonel was scrutinizing his face on several of the monitors in the bank in front of him, Jonas could almost feel it physically, this dissection, as if he had been carved up, ready for distribution to all those thousands of homes.

Four minutes to go until they went on the air. The cameras were gliding back and forth a bit. Up in the control room, they were checking the scene coverage, whether the lighting was okay, the colours, whether the cameras were matched up. Jonas knew the routine, he looked at the welter of cables on the floor, at the maze of spotlights on the grid above their heads, some of which could even be raised and lowered hydraulically, he stared up at this galaxy, letting himself be dazzled while he thought of how simple television actually was: light, an outward light, no more than that, even a white shirt could cause problems. Jonas was momentarily hypnotized, completely and utterly, by all that light, remembering, too, that this debate had been advertised as a meeting of stars — or, with the medium’s gift for exaggeration, as a collision of supernovae.

There is, as most Norwegians could tell you, some doubt as to whether Norway was actually united into one nation after the battle of Hafrsfjord, as generations of Norwegians were taught in school, which only serves to illustrate a fact which those same Norwegians find hard to swallow: that our knowledge of the world changes, old theories are adjusted, new theories are hatched. What is certain, however, is that Norway was united into one nation on that September evening in 1990, in the sense that a record number of Norwegians, close to two million — even the blind, so they said — had settled themselves in front of the television to see this programme, one which had been awaited with the sort of interest and excitement usually reserved for the live coverage of certain events at the winter Olympics, the sort that tend to occasion statements such as ‘the whole of Norway came to a standstill’.

Behind all this lay, of course, Jonas Wergeland’s stupendous series Thinking Big, which had put everything else on television in the shade the year before. Later, people were to talk of 1989 as being ‘Wergeland year’ in the history of NRK. Not only did people find themselves with a new Europe that year but also with a new NRK, twenty-odd programmes which, in keeping with the turbulent changes taking place on the international front, created, for a brief spell at any rate, a whole new awareness of Norway’s place in the world. But where, the year before, people had been on the alert, sitting there with pen and notebook in hand, or their fingers on the video record button, or at any rate with a cup of coffee to clear their brains, they now lounged back with their potato chips and mineral water, happily anticipating that this was going to be fun, and, it has to be said, harbouring a sneaking hope of a juicy bit of scandal.

So what had happened? A year before the focus had been on a provocative television project. Now the focus was all on Jonas Wergeland’s person. First it had been a matter of thinking big, then of thinking small. Within a matter of weeks an entire country had shrunk to one snide, narrow-minded small town.

In other words, on that evening, one of the most bizarre countries in the world had mustered its inhabitants in front of their television screens; an entire nation appeared to have discovered that it had been taken for a ride, and had now put itself, of its own free will, in the doghouse. They had heaped applause and acclaim and regard on a man of Norwegian birth, they had forgotten to run him down, they had neglected to draw attention to the hopelessly ambitious, pathetically misguided and, not least, brazenly speculative aspects of this project. But now — even if they were in the doghouse — it was time to break out the potato chips and peanuts, now all they had to do was to tip their Stress-Less chairs well back — the Stress-Less, that unique and oh-so-typical Norwegian invention, that TV chair par excellence — now it was high bloody time that they plucked the feathers off this cock-of-the-walk; now it was time to laugh at him, see him sweat, see him writhe on the spit as he was grilled by Audun Tangen himself, the Grand Inquisitor of Marienlyst, also known as ‘Audun the Tongs’ on account of his fearsome interviewing technique, in the early days of Norwegian television, at least. And this in itself, that it should be Tangen, was a salient factor, rendering the confrontation that much more piquant and diverting, when one considered that for a whole decade Tangen had been well and truly supplanted by Jonas Wergeland, so the Tongs had good cause to whet his instruments. Small wonder then that people lay well back in their Stress-Less chairs, stuffing their gobs with potato chips and looking forward to a demonstration of the subtle art of torture, or better still, all-out war masquerading as entertainment, or entertainment masquerading as a battle, depending on your point of view, not that there would be anything new in that, in a television age in which war had long since shown itself to be the best show in town — one only has to point to the war, the real battle, in the Persian Gulf, the first phase of which was already under way as Jonas Wergeland sat there next to Audun Tangen in the studio, and whose next phase, the allied air and ground attack on Iraq, would be one of the biggest and best stage-managed TV shows ever, a thrilling extravaganza that could be followed round-the-clock on CNN and the Norwegian news network.

Three minutes to go, and a lady came down from the control room, where she had been inspecting them on the monitor. ‘Your forehead hasn’t been done,’ she said, fixing his makeup, while Gunnhild set their glasses on the table. Jonas had asked for apple juice, the other two for water, as if to indicate that they were in this together, two white against one tawny, two clear against one golden. And who was in the chair next to Audun Tangen? Will it surprise anyone to know that it was Veronika Roed, Jonas Wergeland’s fateful cousin, the ace reporter — that it should be her, of all people, who had set her mind on slating the Thinking Big television series, on really tearing it to shreds? Jonas eyed her as she sat there, so attractive that she was almost too attractive, but he knew that she would look quite fabulous to the viewers; with her long, glossy black hair, her perfectly made-up face and a neat little suit in neutral tones, she looked both sexy and serious, a combination which would be a sure-fire winner, with the male viewers anyway. She looked calm and collected, she was calm and collected; she was looking forward to doing away with the expression ‘Wergeland’s genius’ once and for all. She had her arguments off pat, knew them inside and out; she had it all worked out, she had teamed up with a bunch of top experts, she had it all down on tape, ready to roll, up in the control room. As far as she was concerned her cousin did not stand a chance.

Two minutes to go, and Jonas sat there, feeling slightly sick, shivers running through his body, wondering yet again just why, why in heaven’s name Veronika was doing this, what possible motive could she have? The only answer he could come up with was ‘pure spite’. She saw it, quite simply, as her mission in life to destroy him by any and all means. Oddly enough, he had never regretted rescuing her from the Zambezi rapids. And now she was using him, her cousin, to further her own career. In other words, she was a parasite, exactly like her father, Sir William, a member of the Rattus Norvegicus clan, someone who was constantly dependent on eating from the plates of others in order to survive, to get ahead. But did that make it right for Jonas to take part in what was in many ways such a primitive programme? To wage war against his own cousin, possibly drag her name through the mud, drag his own family’s name through the mud? For quite some time he had actually been all set to pull out, until Axel Stranger told him that it was his plain duty to show his face. ‘And I’m appealing not to your courage,’ he said, ‘but to your wisdom.’

Gunnhild gave them the word: one minute to go. Jonas knew that small-town Norway was out there at the other end of the camera lens, and he knew it was having second thoughts about its enthusiasm for his television series, that the battle was already half-won for Veronika Røed, and yet: nothing is for certain. That was television for you. Jonas knew that he could turn it around, turn a whole nation around in five minutes. That was television for you. So banal, so powerful. And Jonas also knew that despite the more or less dispassionate nature of the duel in which they were about to engage, the people’s verdict would be made on the basis of just one thing: their faces. So Jonas knew what it would come down to: whose face was the stronger, his or his cousin’s. The utter paradox of this was not lost on Jonas. He had made a television series unlike anything ever seen in Norway before, one which had reached far beyond the bounds of that country, and now, thanks to a woman who had made an entire nation doubt its own initial assessment, everything was to be decided in the course of one hour, and on just one thing: two faces.

The programme was off and running. After the vignette, the Colonel ran an opening sequence showing highlights from Thinking Big, and Jonas could not help but watch the monitor with pride while at the same time, out of the corner of his eye, following Gunnhild, standing next to the middle camera, as she cued Audun Tangen, and then they were on the air, at prime viewing time, on Friday evening, going out to almost one and half million Norwegian homes, in which people were lying back, comfortably ensconced on their sofas and Stress-Less chairs, with crisps and cola within easy reach. Audun Tangen, looking, in his conservative dark suit, as severe and impartial as any judge, bade them all welcome, and after a brief and witty introduction which made it quite clear that he was in exceptionally good form, almost like his old self, he handed over to Veronika Røed, who promptly fired off a broadside, as they say, a pithy, demagogically brilliant — and, not least, populist — résumé of all the criticism levelled at Jonas Wergeland and his much-vaunted television series.

Jonas felt the pit of his stomach contract with nausea, he felt as though he were being shut up in an icy cold snow cave — no, more, that the whole of Norway was one cold snow cave, enclosing him within walls of ice — and he knew that the Colonel was up there in the control room, rubbing his hands with glee, and that he had long since caught all of his, Jonas’s little twitches, not to mention his shivers, in an all-revealing close-up. Veronika talked on and on, but Jonas knew that for the most part the Colonel kept the camera on him, the listener, the butt of this searing, and worse, persuasive, critique.

Then it was his turn. With an ironic little comment, Audun Tangen gave the floor to Jonas, it was up to him to respond. Out of habit he fixed his eye on the camera with the red light showing, but caught himself in the act and turned instead to Veronika, conscious, as he did so, of the Colonel’s voice in the headset of one of the cameramen, giving instructions for one of the cameras not in use to move in closer, with the result that off to one side he had a vision of a Scania-Vabis coming at him and was gripped by panic at the thought of being run over just as he was about to start talking — an ambush, sneaky — and perhaps that was why he suddenly had a mental block, could not remember even the half of what Veronika had said, but he knew that over a million TV screens throughout Norway were showing him in close-up, and that at that very moment millions of Norwegians had caught a whiff of a sensation, the chance that one of the biggest celebrities in Norway was about to break down, live on TV, and Jonas Wergeland did indeed feel rather weak, he knew that he had to find the angle that would crack this paralysis, break this strain, but he felt totally frozen, numb from head to toe, as if he were battling against a headwind, a headwind so stiff and chill that all he wanted to do was to lie down. ‘What do you have to say to these not exactly flattering words of criticism, Jonas Wergeland?’ Audun Tangen repeated in the same importunate, arrogant manner that had once won him such fame as Audun the Tongs, accompanying his words with a malicious smirk that said he knew Jonas Wergeland would never be able to parry this onslaught.