So here we have Jonas and Nefertiti standing between the Central Hotel and The Corner, gazing down Storgata like two cowboys coming to a lawless town and wondering whether they dare take the chance of riding through it. Which was perhaps not all that surprising, since Rakkestad, like so many small villages the world over, does give the impression of being the sort of place one instinctively suspects to be populated by an assortment of weirdoes — people who lie in their sickbeds keeping a precise tally of their whooping-cough fits and severity of same — and the sort of half-witted, hillbilly characters who are just itching to blow you away, sitting at their windows with loaded shotguns, dribbling tobacco juice and leering and muttering under their breath all the while. In those days, before you came to Grandgården and on the same side, there was a kiosk known simply as ‘Langeland’ and right outside this Jonas and Nefertiti ran into three pretty hefty boys of their own age. One of them was bouncing a football, a rather battered lace-up football, while another, who was missing his front teeth, was fiddling with a formidable-looking catapult. Despite a warning nudge in the arm from Jonas, Nefertiti boldly asked them the way to Haugli General Store. The boys laughed. Did they know her aunt? ‘Sh’isnæ hame,’ laughed the boys, thereby erecting a language barrier that felt no less great than the one experienced by Jonas at a later date, when he heard the Bedouins talking among themselves at the foot of Jebel Musa. A sly grin spread across the face of the boy with the catapult, as he picked up a rather sharp-looking stone from the pavement and fitted it into the leather sling.
Jonas, who had had his doubts about the trip from the very start, had plagued Nefertiti to at least let him bring his new gun, which could take several strips of caps at once, thus making a bigger bang, but Nefertiti had laughed at him: ‘Why don’t you take some glass beads and copper wire and be done with it?’ she said. ‘Or the Bible?’
The boy with no front teeth had raised the catapult into what could only be called a menacing position when Nefertiti did something unexpected: she pulled out a yo-yo which Jonas had never seen before. She shot the yo-yo out into the air in such a way that it knocked the catapult out of the boy’s hand, caught it on the rebound, much like catching a boomerang, and then, before they had time to collect themselves, she proceeded to do the most amazing tricks with that yo-yo, leaving the boys standing there open-mouthed like kids at a circus — and, may I add, this performance of Nefertiti’s really was quite unique, this being long before the days of Coca-Cola yo-yos, when almost every self-respecting kid could do ‘Around the World’, ‘Rock the Baby’ and ‘Walkin’ the Dog’.
As soon as she was done, Nefertiti invited the boys into the kiosk and stood them a small cola each and a pack of a new brand of chewing gum that came with a transfer inside the wrapper. Then she put a coin in the jukebox and played ‘Apache’ by the Shadows as if wishing to show, through the natives’ own music as it were, that she came in peace. Thus, yet another well-known scene was enacted: that in which travellers in a foreign land find themselves surrounded by hostile individuals and someone, usually a professor, saves the situation by suddenly breaking into the tribe’s own language. Because Nefertiti actually did start to talk like them. Jonas could not believe his ears as he stood there watching her waving her arms about and hearing her use words and expressions such as ‘bags ‘n’ bags’ and ‘right guid’ as well as even more obscure phrases such as ‘ah dinnae think sae’ and ‘disnae maitter a doaken’, while the Shadows provided a dramatic backdrop of sound.
‘Haugli General Store’s a bit further down Storgata,’ said Nefertiti when she came over to him afterwards.
The last stage of the journey went without a hitch, the boys even accompanied them a bit of the way, they were on their way down to Mjørud Grove in any case. Before they said goodbye, Nefertiti juggled the football about a bit, rounding off by bringing it to rest at the base of her neck, while the boys muttered something about ‘Jinker’ Jensen, star of Brann FC. And I would say that it was here, at this point, on Storgata in Rakkestad, while the boys were saying something to Nefertiti about ‘awfie nice’ and ‘nae bother attaw’, that Jonas Wergeland lost his fear of the unknown and acquired the fundamental belief that most people are to be trusted. And also, almost as important, he realized that Norway was an infinitely mysterious land, a land full of white patches.
This last, this sensation of having entered unknown territory, was only reinforced by his meeting with Nefertiti’s great-aunt, who was overjoyed to receive the letter and invited them into her little cottage on the banks of the River Rakkestad, also an ideal spot for punting or fishing for bream, perch and pike. And it was here, on a terrace in Rakkestad, surrounded by birdsong and the humming of insects, while they drank squash and ate fresh-baked raisin buns which Nefertiti had had the foresight to purchase in Dahl’s pastry shop, that her aunt produced a stereoscope, a marvellous instrument new to Jonas, and showed them pictures from all over the world, pictures in black and white which were a wonder of depth and inviting landscapes. Jonas Wergeland would never forget that afternoon when he sat on the terrace in inner Østfold and, instead of seeing the embankment on the other side of the River Rakkestad, saw the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt and Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro.
‘From Rakkestad I could see the whole world,’ Jonas Wergeland was later to say.
Nefertiti’s aunt had been a missionary, most recently in Madagascar, and when they were finished looking at the pictures she told them not only about Tananrive but also about the even more distant country of China, where she herself had been, and the mighty rivers that run through it. She did not say much about the missionary work as such because she knew that children do not really see the point in that, but she took them into the house and showed them a map hanging on the living-room wall. Of all that Jonas saw and experienced that day, this map was the one thing which branded itself most indelibly on his memory; it was a map of the world, with lines running from Norway to all of those parts of the globe where Norwegian missionary organizations were active, their stations indicated by red pins, and in truth there were no small number of lines radiating from Norway and ending in a red pin. To Jonas, those lines seemed to extend to nigh on every country in the world, and he stood for ages just gaping at this evidence of the area encompassed by Norwegian missionaries, the host of rays and red pins, as if Norway were the centre of a red sun enlightening the whole world. Now and again a train rumbled past on the embankment outside, on the other side of the River Rakkestad, as if to show that here, too, they were linked to every part of the world.
At Rakkestad, Jonas learned that there was a Norway outside of Norway, and thus he could be said to have broken the space barrier twice that day — not only did he break free of the world of his childhood, he also broke free of Norway. And standing there in that living room gazing at the map of the world covered in all those red pins, he struggled to grasp an idea which obviously, at the age he then was, he did not manage to formulate clearly in his mind, but which he would spend much of his life endeavouring to confirm: that every country contains the whole world. And that the whole world contains something of Norway.
Opera of the Waters
So, how do the pieces of a life fit together?