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.