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.