Mysteries of the Milky Way
Jonas, too, once had a nightmare. But he was not dreaming. Someone presented him with a dragon, an unnatural creature, and said it was his brother. No talk here of the wrong sound, though, this was a total misconception, a minor addition at the most elementary level of life: one ‘x’ too many so to speak.
Where are the dark holes in Jonas Wergeland’s life?
More than one person has been prepared to state that Jonas Wergeland was incapable of loving anyone. I don’t know what to say to that, Professor — there were undoubtedly a lot of people whom he truly, deeply loathed. But there was no one whom he hated more bitterly than Buddha.
When Buddha was born Jonas was devastated. Buddha might have been a meteorite from above which, small though it is, can inflict mysteriously large wounds on a landscape. Usually it is the parents who suffer from shock in the wake of such a birth, who are left stunned by the doctor’s announcement that their new baby is not like other babies, but in the Hansen family no one was harder hit by this news than Jonas. He was so stricken that he took to his bed. It was he, not his mother, who had trouble with the ‘afterbirth’.
For weeks Jonas lay in bed, tossing and turning in anguish. Why? Because he felt responsible for this child. In his own eyes, Jonas was the boy’s father.
And yet — this sense of responsibility was soon overshadowed by hate. Pure, unadulterated hate. The kind of hate he had once seen in Little Eagle’s eyes. For days and days Jonas sat on his own, wondering, quite seriously, how he could do away with his brother. You often hear about the jealousy felt by the older children in a family when a new baby arrives and steals all the attention. But this was different: Jonas was fourteen years old.
Time and again he stood over Buddha’s crib, looking down on that unsuspecting face and despising himself because he could not bring himself to put his hands around the infant’s throat and squeeze or place a pillow over that awful visage, hideous in its innocence. Alternatively, he considered taking his mother’s brooch from the black lacquer casket and poking out his own eyes with the pin: that way he would at least be spared having to see that apparition, the head whose tiny ears were already starting to take on the protuberant form that prompted thoughts of other planets, but he couldn’t do that either. The only thing he was capable of was hating, subjecting this little toad to black, bottomless hate.
Over the years that followed, Jonas noticed how his whole body would contract at the slightest glimpse of his brother — that moon face, those ghastly ears, the slanted, slightly skelly eyes, the tongue that flicked in and out like that of some long extinct lizard. The others accepted the drooling creature right from the word go, they were perfectly happy with Buddha. ‘A baroque gem,’ Rakel said. The new member of the family had even winkled his parents out of their TV chairs. ‘He’s saved us from the magic mountain,’ his mother said one evening when she and his father were sitting chatting the way they used to do, with their armchairs facing one another. It was actually Daniel who started calling their little brother Buddha, because of the brat’s fondness for rice. And even though there were times when Daniel might be embarrassed by Buddha, Jonas was alone in his murderous antipathy.
In terms of natural gifts, Buddha was very well endowed, but as one might expect he did develop more slowly than other children. At the age of three he was only just starting to toddle about on little bandy legs, and he said nothing, apart from some sounds or cryptic onomatopoeics that could have been interpreted as ‘Mamma’. Something did, however, happen to his concentration when he played with the sugar tongs or chess pieces, particularly the knights. Little mirrors and bells also elicited an animation, accompanied by loud crows of delight.
Mainly as a means of humiliating his brother, Jonas decided to try to teach Buddha to say just one word. In order to prove that it could not be done, that — as an act of pure compassion — the poor soul ought to be done away with as soon as possible, either that or be consigned to some distant solitary cell. In a flash of spite Jonas decided that he would get the boy to say ‘milk’, the most basic element in any child’s life. ‘Milk,’ said Jonas each time he handed Buddha his feeder cup. ‘Milk, milk, milk, milk. Can you say it? Milk. M-i-l-k.’
Buddha merely broke into his usual happy grin. Like a dog about to be fed. This was something else Jonas hated: that Buddha could not sense his hate.
‘Milk. It’s milk. Say it, stupid.’
Buddha just smiled.
For six months they went on like this. Jonas must have said that word to Buddha a thousand times, and each time Buddha responded by smiling blankly, when even a dog, out of sheer exhaustion almost, would have been moved to utter the word ‘milk’. Jonas should have been satisfied — he had proved beyond a doubt that his brother could not be taught — and yet Jonas was not happy. It became an obsession with him, to get his brother to say at least one word. Then they could get rid of him.
One Saturday morning Jonas was at home alone with Buddha. It was raining outside, rain bucketing down, the windows seemed to be covered in transparent, wet plastic. As usual when they were eating, Jonas placed the cup next to Buddha’s stubby fingers and said, almost without thinking — as if he had long since given up: ‘Milk. Look. Milk. This is milk. Say milk, blast you. Milk, milk, milk. It’s not that hard. Look at my lips. Milk. Mmmm-iiii-lk. MILK. Milk, you rotten little sod, you moon-faced little git!’ He felt like smashing the cup into the face of the creature sitting across from him.
Rain streamed down the windowpanes, soundlessly. Buddha looked at him. He looked at Jonas in a new way. For a long time Buddha looked at his brother, deep into his face, right through his face.
Then he said it. So banal and yet so obvious: ‘Jonas,’ he said. Not all that clearly. His tongue rather in the way but clear enough all the same: ‘Jonas.’
Jonas tried later to describe what happened next. It was as if a landslide swept through him, he said, backwards, upwards, slowly. It was as if a dozen different emotions flowed through him, all shooting off in different directions, or were dispersed, leaving a huge hollow space in the centre, and then it all flowed back again, only this time as one feeling: warmth. An abundance of warmth.
All that hate, all that cursing, and Buddha’s first word was a name. A declaration of love.
Buddha was on his feet, stood with his arms wrapped around his big brother. Said it again, his name. The rain streamed down the windowpanes. The landscape outside was little more than a blur, glimpsed as if through a plastic bag full of water. Jonas cupped his hands around Buddha’s face. Had the whole world in his hands. He realized that he was crying. He could have been crying for some time, he didn’t know, he cried his eyes out, soundlessly. Filled with a sudden, all-pervading emotion he had not known that he owned, a quite inconceivable love that would surely endure everything, hope everything, move mountains and things still bigger. And the object of this incomprehensible love was the figure before him. The defenceless bundle that he hated so much.
Buddha stroked Jonas’s damp cheek with his finger. ‘Milk,’ he said. ‘Milk.’
It is no exaggeration to say that, not counting his parents and Kristin, in all his life Jonas Wergeland loved only person, and by that I mean with all his heart and without any ulterior motive: Buddha. Possibly because he had never hated anyone as fiercely either.
Buddha was a genius. A genius at love.
And I think I know why: Buddha was the product of a broken heart.
The Erogenous Battle Zone
Now we have to tread warily, Professor, because this — the fateful consequences of that broken heart, I mean — constitutes a story that belongs elsewhere, though an imprudent narrator might have told it here, not realizing that such an artificial splicing would put the whole account of Jonas Wergeland’s life at risk. One tiny alteration can make all the difference; Buddha is living proof of this.