‘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.
Rattus Norvegicus
Uncle William, or Sir William, as everyone in Jonas’s family called him on account of an incurable weakness for expensive blazers and flamboyant silk cravats, had been in Africa, a fact that he never failed to mention as if it were an alibi for some crime about which no one had inquired. During the eventful dinner party, much talked about within the family thereafter, when Jonas and his sister Rakel went to the length of poisoning Sir William, the latter seized his chance the minute they sat down at the table, having already consumed a couple of generous predinner highballs. ‘Did I ever tell you, our kid,’ he said, ‘about the time I met Haile Selassie?’
‘Our kid’ was none other than Haakon Hansen, Jonas’s father, who had just risen from the piano where he had been improvising a lovely little prelude to dinner aimed also at tempering Sir William’s dissatisfaction with their cheap whisky. He merely smiled back, not without a trace of concern: after all, here was his brother, together with his children, honouring them with one of his very rare visits. Now he was just waiting for his brother to start up his constant refrain: ‘I never could see why a dyed-in-the-wool heathen like you didn’t become a concert pianist, that way at least you’d have made a bit of money.’