Although they tried cooking potatoes in all manner of ways, from mashed to au gratin, for the most part they stuck to baked potatoes — not least because they were so wonderfully easy. The only other ingredient they added was garlic, in the form of garlic butter. Because it so happens that around 1970 Norway was invaded by an armada — a fleet of garlic boats, and despite the fact that these met with fierce resistance, as did everything from the outside world, and despite the fact that most people reacted with disgust and would even change their seat in the bus if someone smelled of garlic, in the end they succumbed. For the Three Wise Men, baked potatoes with garlic butter, presented in their silver-foil wrappings like some precious gift, represented the perfect blend of the Norwegian and the international. ‘To Wilhelmsen’s ships and garlic boats!’ they cried.
From time to time they would raise their glasses to the icon, to the portrait of Viktor’s illustrious patron, the notorious picture of the then prime minister, Per Borten, clad in nothing but his underpants, with what looked like a potato stuck down them. ‘The premier, deep in thought,’ the marvellous caption proclaimed. Jonas took much the same pride in this photograph of Per Borten, clipped from the newspaper Dagbladet, as Daniel did in the picture of Ingeborg Sørensen in Playboy. Per Borten was a true Taoist, so ambiguous in his replies that no one knew what he meant, and he saw things from so many sides that he would later be described as a poor prime minister. ‘Every Norwegian is at heart a member of the Farming Party!’ Viktor whooped at the picture. This icon always filled them with a profound gratitude that, in a country where such a person had been the head of government for six years, nothing bad could possibly happen. If anyone asked ‘What is Norway?’, one only had to bring out this photograph and say: ‘This man was our Prime Minister’ — and that said it all.
But by now the discussion had risen onto a higher plane. Axel put forward the theory, based on Dr Christian Barnard’s recent magnificent achievement, that one could in all likelihood fix a broken heart simply by having a heart transplant — a typical five-aquavit argument. Jonas considered the time was right to insist that the Norwegian film Vagabond really deserved to rate as highly as The Battleship Potemkin and Citizen Kane, after which Viktor proceeded to enlarge upon the reckless notion that human thought was possibly just one of Mother Nature’s many whims, much like the spiral-shaped horns with which she had equipped certain long-extinct creatures, excrescences which were, in fact, of more harm than good to the creature — an assertion which I think can safely be counted as a seven-aquavit argument.
As the evening drew towards its close, with the table strewn with potato skins wrapped in crumpled silver foil and Axel revealing that he had at long last deciphered the meaning of the lyrics of Procol Harum’s celebrated hit ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and, just to make sure they got the point, bawling out the words ‘We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ’cross the floor…’, Jonas, who was still at the lowest aquavit level, began once again to give loud vent to his worries about their Norwegian mock, the essay, which was only a week away. Viktor had no fears, he had worked out a strategy ages ago — a strategy which he would go on fine-tuning until the Prelim. He swore by the creativity of the afterglow of alcohol — or as he put it: its te, an inner force — particularly in evidence during the couple of hours when the brain came to life and lay there, razor-sharp, like a sparkling, freshly polished optical instrument. The only problem was how to get this limbo-like state between death and new life to coincide with the first hours of essay writing. Viktor planned to turn up for the mock exam suffused with a perfectly calculated afterglow, arrived at by drinking a variety of aquavits in a particular order, thus assuring himself of a dazzling overview of the subject matter. But it was risky — just one shot too many the night before could take him from the heights of the afterglow’s Capitol to the Tarpeian cliffs of the hangover the morning after.
‘So what’s your problem?’ Axel asks.
‘I could do with a dose of originality,’ Jonas says. And well he might. Up to this point, mediocrity had paid off; Jonas received his best marks ever for bland essays consisting of material copied from one source or another and totally devoid of individuality. ‘So how,’ he asked, ‘am I supposed to write an essay containing any trace of independent reasoning and still get a good mark?’
This question remained unresolved. Jonas left Seilduksgata as Viktor was getting to his feet, glass in hand: ‘I’ve finally discovered the deeper reason for why you and I are friends, Axel,’ he said. ‘It’s because I’m a Taoist and you’re a biochemist. There’s a parallel, you see, between the sixty-four possible hexagrams in the I Ching and the sixty-four possible combinations of base triplets in the genetic code!’ The last Jonas heard before he closed the door of the cinnabar-red room was Axel embarking on a long harangue on which of Ibsen’s totally crazy and unlikely endings was the most totally crazy and unlikely and announcing that he was going to call Agnar Mykle to ask what he thought — by this stage he was always ready to call Agnar Mykle — while Viktor had sat down at the piano and put everything he had into a rendering of ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird’ featuring some hitherto unheard-of harmonies — a ten-aquavit argument if ever there was one.
Jonas really did take this Norwegian mock exam seriously: so seriously that he took himself off to the extensive archives of The Worker, which were housed high up in the People’s Theatre building on Youngstorget; he had sought refuge here before when he had a tricky subject to write on for homework, lying as it did on the way from school to the subway. Here he sat, working his way systematically through folders containing cuttings on subjects which he thought might come up, so that he would be able, within a couple of hours, to resolve international questions presented to him under such ghastly, imperative headings as ‘Give an account of…’ or ‘Describe and discuss…’ But he was afraid that it was no use: that the result would still depend on how he felt on the day and on the sheer luck of the draw.
It was at that point that Einar Gerhardsen — I almost said God — walked through the room. And bear in mind — this came to pass in the days when only the King was more popular than the old prime minister, or ‘Man of our Times’ as he was dubbed a few years later. He had an office on the ninth floor, he was writing his memoirs, writing, you might say the essay of his life.
Gerhardsen gives Jonas a friendly nod, possibly remembers meeting him on the stairs with Aunt Laura at home in Sofienberggata, although he may of course nod and smile at all goggle-eyed high-school students. It is a big moment all the same: Gerhardsen standing there tall and straight in a chequered shirt and knitted waistcoat: a road worker who truly had paved the Way. A symbol of security on a par with Mount Dovre, large as life in front of him. And actually talking to him, making Jonas feel he has to tell him how nervous he is about the essay, whereupon Gerhardsen smiles, and this in turn encourages Jonas to ask about NATO. ‘Because the fact is,’ says Jonas, ‘that a lot of the radical pupils at the school keep agitating for Norway to pull out.’
Maybe it was the complexity of the question that prompted Gerhardsen to invite Jonas into his office where, once they were settled on a sofa, he told Jonas in simple — I almost said ‘folksy’ — terms his opinion on this subject. Jonas listened intently, with his eyes on the long, wiry hands before him, which were constantly in motion, seeming to conduct the old premier’s words about what a difficult process it had been, a thumbnail sketch, and yet detailed, surprisingly detailed, so much so that Jonas almost felt guilty for taking up this man’s doubtless very valuable time. ‘The Norwegian ideal was of course impossible,’ Gerhardsen said in a slightly tremulous voice. ‘The idea of wanting to feel secure, but without being under any obligation.’ Initially, Gerhardsen told him, he had been in favour of a joint Nordic defence programme, and then, when this proved impossible to implement, of a Western alliance, although he was sceptical of American foreign policy. ‘That was a very hard time for me,’ he said, wringing his hands in mild embarrassment. ‘You could say that I doubted my way to saying yes.’ Jonas gazed with something approaching adoration at the monumental features across from him; the thought of the enigmatic stone figures on Easter Island flashed through his mind. Before he left, Jonas was given the second volume of Gerhardsen’s memoirs, the one which appeared in the bookshops that autumn and in which he had actually described Norway’s path to membership of NATO.