He heard her. Heard her all too well. For a second he saw himself from the outside, or felt it with every bit of his being: how the pupils and irises of his eyes were replaced by dollar signs, like Uncle Scrooge’s in the American comic books. And although he did not know it, in this he was embodying the spirit of the times. Because the people of Norway were standing on the threshold of an era marked by market liberalism and a swing to the right, by free play in so many areas. In parenthesis I must be permitted to say that at this point they were also in the process of letting an historic opportunity go to waste, since the existence of a welfare state presupposed two things: national solidarity and economic know-how. In the fifties they had had the first, but not the second. Now, on the other hand, they had at long last acquired the latter, only suddenly to throw the former overboard. As Denmark had its Legoland, so Norway was transformed into an Egoland.
‘What about you?’ Jonas said.
‘I’m buying 100,000 kroners’ worth,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been so sure of making a real killing.’ As she spoke she had unwittingly tied a knot in her scarf, one of the fine knots that their grandfather had taught them.
I ought perhaps to point out that in those days buying shares in Tandberg could be a somewhat hazardous business. Things were not going well for Tandberg Radios Ltd. Veronika certainly did her bit to persuade him, but there was something else which did just as much to sway him: the name of Tandberg was rich in nostalgia. For Jonas, to buy shares in Tandberg was to invest in a beautiful dream, something he believed in, a grand vision. To put money into Tandberg was to put money into the motherland. Jonas knew that for far too long Norwegian exports had consisted solely of raw materials and semi-fabricated products, as was the norm for an industrially underdeveloped country. If, however, one wished to build a modern industrial society — and this was one of Vebjørn Tandberg’s big dreams — one had to be properly geared up for the production of finished goods; the electronics industry in Norway, not least, was in need of a boost. The more Jonas thought about it, the more confident he felt. Absolutely nothing bad could happen to a cornerstone company like Tandberg. Everybody, a whole nation, would come to its aid.
There was only one snag: ‘I don’t have any money,’ he said, feeling perhaps slightly relieved.
‘That’s the trouble with you,’ she said. ‘You don’t dare take chances. You don’t dare to risk more than you’ve got.’ And then, quick as a flash: ‘You could borrow the money.’ Then: ‘You could borrow it from someone who won’t charge any interest.’ And then, as if it were the final phase of a three-stage rocket launch: ‘I’m sure my Dad would lend you the money.’
The mere thought of borrowing money from Sir William tied Jonas’s stomach in knots. And yet. This could be his big chance, maybe his only chance, to make a staggering amount of money very quickly, salt away funds for many a worry-free year.
The next day he plucked up the courage to call his uncle, Sir William, who was now working for Statoil and had long since forsaken Gråkammen in Oslo for Stokka in Stavanger, where he had 4,000 gilt-edged square feet all to himself. When the family moved to Africa in the sixties as part of a development aid programme, Sir William’s wife had taken leave from her job with Norges Bank. In Kenya, however, she met an American working with the World Bank and allowed him to break into her vault on numerous occasions while she was lying around, bored stiff in Nairobi; it ended, you might say, with a merger between Norges Bank and the World Bank — in other words, she left Sir William. Jonas had always had the feeling that his uncle’s fantastic commitment to Statoil sprang from bitter thoughts of revenge: fewer Norwegians should be dependent on American oil companies.
It was easier to speak to Sir William on the phone than to meet him face to face, although Jonas shuddered at the thought of his uncle’s appearance: he looked not unlike Count Dracula with his hair brushed back and canines that spoke of a man who, after his spell in Africa at any rate, had acquired the taste for sucking up commodities. Jonas outlined the situation, more or less in Veronika’s inviting terms, and his uncle sounded very positive, in fact he almost seemed pleasantly surprised that his ne’er-do-well nephew was finally beginning to take things seriously. Jonas was promptly granted a short-term loan. ‘Of course I’ll help you, you’re family, after all!’ There was only one condition: his uncle wanted it in writing. Jonas agreed; he’d be able to pay the money back as soon as the share price rose and he had sold his shares at a massive profit. He had made up his mind that this would be a short-lived adventure, a one-off.
The contract came by post. Jonas signed it, and the agreed sum was duly credited to an account in Jonas’s name with a well-known brokerage firm in Oslo. Jonas called the stockbrokers and asked them to put all of the money forthwith into Tandberg shares. Later, when he received the share certificate and regarded this visual proof that he owned 3,000 shares in Tandberg Radios he felt much the same pleasure as when they had played Monopoly as kids and he had picked up the title deed to see what astronomical sum the person who had landed on his street now owed him. The thought of possibly losing money may well have crossed Jonas’s mind, but the prospect of making a fabulous profit eclipsed all else. Only a few years earlier Tandberg shares had been worth over two hundred kroner. Jonas was doing sums in his sleep and dreaming of becoming a rich man. Behind his eyelids, irises and pupils had once more been supplanted by dollar signs.
His dream of a big killing was short-lived. The shares did not rise in value. At the end of August trading on them was suspended, and in December Tandberg was removed from the Oslo stock exchange. Still Jonas did not give up hope. But then, in March of the following year, the shares were written down to nil. Everything was lost. Vebjørn Tandberg, the company’s idealistic founder, committed suicide. Later that same year Tandberg Radios was declared bankrupt.
With hindsight it is, as always, easy to see what went wrong. Tandberg was a victim of over-expansion, lack of capital and poor long-term planning. Above all else they underestimated how vulnerable the company was to competition from commercial electronics products from Asia. It was right what I wrote in that mock Norwegian essay, Jonas thought. ‘Autonomy’ is a bloody illusion.
Nevertheless, Jonas — typical Norwegian that he was — had fallen prey to nostalgia and unrealistic notions about the world: which is to say, the state of the market. But for Jonas there was also another side to this tragedy: an entire childhood had gone bankrupt, all those radio plays, all those happy radio days, an infatuation with wood nymphs. He felt that he had lost, and lost big-time, because — like a naïve child — he had had too much faith in Norway.
As for Veronika, in case anyone was wondering, she did not buy one single share in Tandberg.
The bitterest pill of all was that he was now in debt to a detested uncle. Jonas managed, nonetheless, to push the problem to the back of his mind, almost blocked it out completely, until the cold January day when he was sitting in his own flat in Hegdehaugveien, and Sir William called from Stokka in Stavanger, from the desolate reaches of his 4,000 square-foot stronghold, and said that he wanted his money back, now: made this demand with a curt brutality that wounded Jonas deeply, as if his uncle were some monstrous Shylock, calling for a pound of his actual flesh. For Jonas, this was a matter of pride. He muttered something about taking out a bank loan to free himself from Sir William’s contemptuous clutches.