Nobody knew what to make of it. Little Eagle’s act of rebellion was so awesome, not to say so totally loony, that even the older boys left him alone, as if they understood that this was not the old sparrow, the punch-ball, but a walking hand grenade with a dangerously loose pin. Little Eagle paraded through the streets of Grorud in May with his head held high, wearing his blazer and his Mohican hairdo, to the consternation of all and sundry, leaving people whispering in horror on the pavement. He had stopped talking, wouldn’t even speak to Jonas. So Jonas was surprised when, some weeks later, Ørn asked him to come with him up to the woods — Ørn had something he wanted to show him. It was Midsummer’s Eve, no less, in the morning; and Jonas was nervous because he was performing in a sketch later that day.
They had struck off into the woods at Hukenveien, at the spot where Little Eagle had once been tied to a tree and Petter had shot at him with a bow and arrow. It was only by luck that Eagle wasn’t blinded. They stand there on the grassy slope beside the stream that flows down from the swimming hole. Jonas waits, hasn’t the foggiest notion of what’s going on, what Eagle wants to show him. Then, out of the blue, Eagle starts laying into Jonas. Goes totally berserk. Punches and punches him, even though it’s no use, Jonas is bigger than him, brings him down without any trouble. But Eagle will not give in, wriggles like a worm on a hook. Jonas can see that he is mad, blazing mad, so mad that he’s in tears, although Jonas knows he’s not hurting him, he’s just holding him down, and maybe that is why he’s in tears, because Jonas is just holding him down, doesn’t punch him in the face like the others would, just keeps a firm grip on him, a vice-like grip, with his knees and hands. Eagle writhes about for some time, struggling and struggling, while the tears rain down. Jonas thinks Eagle looks ridiculous, mainly because of the Mohican, which gives him the illusion of fighting with a real Red Indian, or a being not of this world. Jonas feels his contempt subsiding and in the midst of all this he suddenly has the idea of altering a couple of lines in the sketch he’s going to do, a little twist that will turn a rotten skit into a pretty good one.
At long last Ørn lies still. His eyes are closed. There’s snot on his upper lip. He’s a sorry sight. They lie quietly for a long while, Jonas on top of Ørn.
Little Eagle opens his eyes, looks straight up into Jonas’s eyes. His gaze does not waver. He never used to do that. He stares long and hard at Jonas. Jonas looks down at Ørn. He knows what he is seeing. Never in his life has he seen it before, but he knows what it is: hate.
‘You bastard,’ Ørn says.
Just the once. And not all that loudly.
They go on lying there. Ørn gazes into Jonas’s eyes. For ages they lie there. Jonas thinks it’s funny, but he doesn’t laugh. Something about the situation stops him from laughing.
Then he gets up. Little Eagle clambers to his feet, turns and walks off. Jonas waits for a few minutes before following him down the road towards Solhaug, catches a glimpse of Ørn’s back as he turns in between the blocks of flats. Jonas went home to change his clothes, shut his eyes to go over the new lines for the sketch that he was going to be presenting outside of Number One, in front of all the grownups.
Ørn didn’t come to see it. Jonas did not see Ørn that evening — not even then, on Midsummer’s Eve, the longest, lightest day of the year.
Soon afterwards Ørn moved away. Little Eagle, it transpired, was gone forever.
Cain and Abel
Stamps illustrate the uniformity of an era. For months, years maybe, everyone, millions of letter-writers, stick identical images on their envelopes. Stamps were the forerunners of the mass media: there too, for weeks on end, one sees the same face, the same picture, everywhere. It was against just such a background that Jonas Wergeland’s programmes stood out; he produced a stream of images unlike anything ever seen before, on NRK or any other channel.
After the scandal broke, Jonas Wergeland’s television programmes were pretty much put under the microscope, as if people were searching for clues, some warning of what was to come. The programme on Niels Henrik Abel, in particular, with its unforgettable opening shot of the Pont Arts in a grey, December-chill Paris — the eyes fixed longingly, almost pleadingly on the façade of the Institut de France — was subjected to a lot of scrutiny. Initially, its pointed visual statements were construed as a sign of admirable commitment — something singularly lacking in most TV programmes — but the prevailing, hypocritical consensus later was that here Jonas Wergeland had gone over the score, that this out-and-out caricature of Frenchmen and all things French was far too spiteful by half. ‘Behind the virtuosity of this programme one discerns something dark, hateful even,’ one famous opportunist would later write. However that may be, the story of Niels Henrik Abel formed the basis for the most subjective and aggressive of Jonas Wergeland’s programmes.
I can now reveal, Professor, that there were personal reasons for this. And here I am thinking not of stamps, although I’m sure you have already spotted the connection, you may even own one of the stamps issued on 6 April 1929 to mark the centenary of Niels Henrik Abel’s death. No, I am referring to one of Jonas Wergeland’s first and little-known trips abroad, to that same city of Paris. He was feeling nervous even before he had got through passport control, as if he was prepared for anything to happen at an airport named after Charles de Gaulle. This insecurity, which he thought must spring from some sort of national inferiority complex, grew even more palpable as he was passing through Customs, where a man in uniform eyed him sternly. And it was at this point that Jonas, as he saw it, made his big mistake: he smiled. The customs officer promptly called him over and asked to see his luggage. Jonas had the feeling that the man was doing this purely out of resentment — he wasn’t going to have any stupid Norwegian smiling at him. He didn’t conduct a neat search of Jonas’s suitcase either but rummaged around in it as if sure of turning up something, and when he found nothing, Jonas was led into another room where the first man and another officer proceeded to interview, or virtually cross-examine him — that, at least, is how it seemed to Jonas. ‘Here in Paris I’m not a Norwegian, I’m a nigger,’ Jonas said to himself. I would like to emphasize that I’m sure such things did not happen very often, that this was in all likelihood a cosmic exception to the usual hospitality of the French passport and customs authorities. Nonetheless, it did happen. Jonas spoke to the two officers in his best French, but they acted as if they did not understand, interrupted him with curt, antagonistic orders, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, Jonas kept thinking; and this they did even though they knew he hadn’t done anything, this they did because they had every right to do so, Jonas could be a dangerous character, a big-time smuggler. Jonas had smiled: now who would smile at a strange Frenchman if they had nothing to hide? They asked to see his tickets, inquired as to where he would be staying, how much money he had with him, he understood what they said, they did not understand what he said, although they should have been able to; several times Jonas heard the word ‘zéro’ — not ‘rien’, but ‘zéro’ — and automatically assumed that this referred to him; I’m not sure, Professor, but it isn’t altogether inconceivable that they also asked him to undress, that they also searched his person in the most thorough and humiliating way and still with every right to do so, I say again, even though he had done nothing wrong, ‘il est nul’, but he had smiled, he was suspicious, a pathetic Norwegian, a nigger in Paris, they had sussed out that he was a nothing trying to make out that he wasn’t just a nothing, they simply would not have a nothing in their country, in France, a land of ones, the cradle of European civilization; Jonas felt that they were laughing at him the whole time: at his clothes, his sad excuse for a suitcase and not least his halting French, which had been good enough at school but a joke here. ‘C’est un zéro en chiffre.’ They let him out of the room with a little laugh, and even though they did not find anything, Jonas felt that they had exposed him, that they had stripped him bare, in more than one sense. ‘They raped me mentally,’ he said later. Even if he was not a nothing, they made him feel like a nothing.