$$
Now we are taking a leap — or rather, this is not a leap, it is a continuation — to Jonas sitting in the lavishly appointed kitchen of Ambassador Boeck’s residence in Ullevål Garden City; it is less than a year since Margrete moved back to Norway and Jonas was reunited with the great love of his boyhood. He has just finished a late breakfast when she arrives home from Stavanger and dumps her bag down in the hall. ‘How did it go?’ he asks, without looking up from his newspaper. ‘Fine,’ she says, no more than that, only that it went fine. ‘I need to lie down for a bit,’ she says and disappears into the bedroom.
It may be — I would not rule out the possibility — that after this brief exchange Jonas Wergeland packed his few belongings into a suitcase and left the solid brick house among the apple trees in Ullevål Garden City, because there were people who swore that they had run into Jonas Wergeland in the transit lounge at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport that same afternoon — and the date is easy to remember, because it was the very day on which banner headlines were proclaiming the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a political and religious event that was to have historical consequences — on his way, by all accounts, to California, to Los Angeles ‘to make a fresh start, to live in the light’. He was even supposed to have said something about resuming a former course of study and was therefore planning to visit the Hale observatory with the express purpose of seeing the new solar telescope at Big Bear Lake. Or as he said, or was purported to have said: ‘It’s high time I put my pointless, eclipsed life in perspective.’
But according to my information, Jonas followed Margrete into the bedroom where, despite the fact she was tired, she embraced him passionately, hungrily, then made love to him with a tenderness and an ardour, not to say impatience, that surprised him, almost wore him out; so he lay and dozed for a long time with Margrete snuggled up against him fast asleep, pondering her erotic mystery, what it could be, because it wasn’t really as if sex with her was any different from sex with women he had known before her, and yet with her it felt unique, because the pleasure she gave him was of a totally different order — even when performing the same actions. Jonas lay in his future in-laws’ bed, staring at the golden statuette from Thailand which stood against the end wall and thinking to himself that her secret must lie in a kind of orchestration, the ability to coax something fresh and new out of a tired old tune. And he could not stop his mind from running on, starting to mull over the newly accomplished act, because there had been something about it, an almost diversionary intensity which worried him, which caused, yes, a suspicion to well up inside him; and no matter how much he told himself that what he feared couldn’t be true, he knew that it was true, or if not true, then perfectly possible. And however much he tried to fight it, these little stabs at his heart made his temper rise and forced him in the end, against his will, to tug at her, not gently, but roughly; and when she woke up, appearing more bewildered than surprised, he looked, or gazed, searchingly into her eyes, remembering as he did so, for a split-second, the sense of awe he had felt the first time he looked through a telescope, and then he said: ‘You didn’t?’ He heard himself all but begging. ‘Did you?’
And yet there is still a chance that he wasn’t there at all, that instead of following her into the bedroom he wrote her a loving note to say that he would be away for a day, then walked out the door, because there was one person, Professor, one of our most famous architects no less, who doggedly maintained — I have this from a reliable source — that on that very day — the same, that is, on which Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran — he had bumped into Jonas Wergeland in Trondheim, in the afternoon that is, outside Nidaros Cathedral, where Jonas was doing some sketches for a project which, with all the hesitancy of the novice, he immediately began to describe: ideas for a new kind of church, ‘a space formed by light’, part of an assignment at the College of Architecture, while at the same time sounding out this well-established architect on the possibility of a job in his office when he had completed his studies, because as he said, or is supposed to have said, he was going all out for this and only wanted to work with the best.
But all the signs are that Jonas Wergeland spent the rest of that day indoors, in Ambassador Boeck’s museum-like flat in Ullevål Garden City, more specifically in the white bedroom where, after having asked or begged or threatened Margrete and received no reply and after having contemplated her face at length, with some of the same mind-reeling wonder, or dread, as when he had stood looking at a cathedral, he pulled back and dealt her a searing slap in the face, causing her to roll her head on the pillow in pain. ‘Tell me it’s not true,’ he said.
‘Shall I tell you the truth or the truth you want to hear?’ she said.
Jonas could tell that this was bound to end badly, that something was already starting to collapse, as relentlessly as a fragile structure of ice hit by a little puck, and at that moment, as he was lifting his hand to strike her again, even though he didn’t want to, he wished he could turn the clock back almost two years, to an early summer before he met Margrete again, but long after he had entered the College of Architecture and, at last, begun on what he believed to be the right course of study. His only problem was money; his money had run out. He feared that there would be no more travelling for him. He could have borrowed money, of course, but he hated being in debt. Then one day in late May he meets his cousin, Veronika Røed, in the street, quite by chance — to the extent that anything happens by chance — and she, being in a good mood, invites him to the nearest café where, because it’s a very long time since they last saw one another, they sit for some hours. And the odd thing is — if one can regard it as odd — that on this day of all days Veronika is bursting with excitement about a plan she has, a plan based on information she has picked up in the circles in which she is currently moving, working as she is — as the final part of her course at the Norwegian College of Journalism — on a dissertation on certain captains of the business world, a topic of her own choosing. ‘Information is the most valuable of all commodities today, Jonas!’
He could not help admiring her: dark and sultry, face framed by black hair that flowed down over a striking and doubtless very expensive silk scarf. Her suit too was exceptionally smart, her work as a financial journalist seemed to have had an unconscious effect on her choice of dress. She came to the point. Since they were related, she was going to give him a really hot tip; she placed a hand over his, as if insisting: ‘This is your big chance to make some money,’ she said. ‘A lot of money, and fast,’ she said. ‘How?’ he asked, when she paused. ‘Buy shares in Tandberg,’ she said or almost whispered, rummaging around in her briefcase and producing a chart which showed movements in the price of Tandberg shares over the past four years. ‘Look at this,’ she said, or whispered, ‘look how low the share price is now, the lowest it’s ever been, down to thirty kroner.’ The factory was in trouble, but Veronika had it from a reliable source that it would be receiving an injection of fresh capital in the very near future, which meant that the share price was soon going to rise sharply. ‘But don’t tell anyone,’ she said, in a voice which reminded Jonas of summers when they were children playing in the attic of his grandfather’s house. ‘It’ll be our secret.’
Jonas took the sheet of paper from her. It was a risky proposition, that he could see; temptation was being put in his way, but it was a serious temptation, that much he understood: the prospect of making some easy money, a lot of it — without moving a muscle. And his cousin couldn’t possibly know that he was short of cash. ‘Why bother playing about with those buildings, Jonas, all those drawings that hardly ever come to anything?’ Again the slender hand, the long fingers, the beautifully manicured nails, on his hand. ‘Why not make some money, get rich quick?’