Even though Jonas Wergeland’s cheeky raids on the left wing cannot be compared to the so-called ‘Flo pass’ used so much by the Norwegian national team in the 1990s — a long lob from Jostein Flo’s own half of the pitch to one of the forwards, who would then knock the ball on with his head — these two phenomena had one thing in common: both were examples of bold strategies, staggeringly simple moves which produced good results.
Jonas grew more and more daring and Leo, who had caught on quickly, spotted that Jonas was alone out there on the left wing, sent the sweetest crossballs flying straight to his toes. Jonas would charge up the touchline, all the way to the other team’s goal line, then chip the ball neatly into the box — where, not infrequently Leo ran in to put the ball in the net.
If, that is, he did not score himself. Because the other discovery he had made also had to do with the scale of things. With the goal. At home in Solhaug they had played with narrow goalmouths and no keepers: two bricks a metre apart or two jerseys for posts, possibly with one of the little kids standing between them as an excuse for a goalkeeper. But here he had a proper goal. A huge cage. Designed for giants, so it seemed. A huge expanse of sky between the ground and the bar. A barn wall between the posts. Jonas did not get it: how could you not score, at least if you were inside the sixteen metre line and not actually unconscious at the time? Later in life — and knowing what he knew — he could hardly stand to watch a football match, to see so-called professional players who were being paid millions, sending the ball flying over the bar from only five metres outside an open goal. They were obsessed with the need to impress. They couldn’t just score, they had to make the back of the net bulge. So they shot too hard, or were so intent on doing something spectacular that they miskicked completely. Jonas found it painful to watch, proof as it was of the male’s eternal problem: lack of control.
As a boy, Jonas discovered that you could get away with a remarkably soft shot, as long as it was well placed. If you were ten metres away from the goal and aimed to place the ball just inside the post it would get past most keepers. While the other boys were busy practising juggling with the ball, Jonas came up with a new training exercise for himself. Following the example of tennis player Bjørn Borg, he hit the ball up against a wall or a garage door at home. He worked on his marksmanship, shooting at the same spot again and again. And although he had a lot of different shots at his disposal he tended mainly to practise the simplest and the safest: a chip off the inside, the broad side, of the foot. Sometimes he used a tennis ball, to make it more difficult. And it paid off. Grorud’s under-15s began to move up the league. And Jonas was their top scorer. Jonas was not your typical Norwegian. He was best with a ball.
He was careful, though, not to make too big an impression. Tried not to score more than two goals in any match, preferably none at all if he could see that Grorud was going to win anyway. Because there was something else to which he had soon become alive: the hostility of the opposing team. Their rancour if humiliated more than was necessary. Jonas did not like rough play, hard tackling — especially since in those days hardly anyone wore shin guards, certainly not Jonas. He was, both on and off the pitch, an extremely peaceable character. Only once did he ever hit anyone: when some guy declared that the Beatles’ Rubber Soul was a rotten album. This unsuspecting individual was knocked flat; Jonas was so mad that it was all Leo could do to calm him down. Aside from this one incident, though, Jonas was never involved in any trouble in his teens.
But then came the day of their home game against Lyn — the Lyn under-15s team, top of the league and a team which boasted some very good players, lads who might well make it onto the Lyn first division team, maybe even the national squad. Lightning by name and lightning by nature, that was Lyn; a club from the middle-class west side of Oslo, from the Outside Right, you might say. Grorud versus Lyn — talk about a class war. Before the match, Jonas spent hours honing his dribbling technique on the green at home. Watch out, he told himself; this is going to be a helluva battle, a momentous match.
In the years prior to this Jonas had been more given to dribbling thoughts. The more intricate the contemplative pattern the better. While other people tried to put their thoughts in order, Jonas attempted to do the opposite. He did not shy away from the really big questions in life, deliberations worthy of Immanuel Kant himself: ‘What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?’, but would also throw himself, with just as great a will, into the consideration of lesser, but just as pressing questions, such as why the yellow chewing gum in the Kip pack tasted better than the pink or the pale-green. It was not unknown for him to speculate until his head spun. The way Jonas saw it, there was only one valid reason for passing out: because you had overtaxed your mind.
Even before he started playing football — possibly in consequence of his life-saving fiasco — Jonas knew that he was not destined to imitate any of the standard, archetypal success stories: winning an Olympic gold for skiing, becoming a company director, opening the finest restaurant in Norway. Others might lock themselves away in their rooms with guitars for years, to then emerge as stars. Somehow Jonas felt that this was too simple. He was cut out for other things. He wanted to be thinking’s answer to soccer-great Roald Jensen. His talent lay in his grey matter. Which made it the perfect endowment for a rather reserved young man. He would be free to perform his deeds, break new ground, without being surrounded by crowds of people.
Jonas grew more and more inclined to regard the mental raids he carried out and the networks he formed inside his head as being real. It occurred to him that the most dramatic, the most significant event in his life could be a thought. As a small boy he had often dreamt of making a name for himself by discovering something — an unknown mineral, an unknown flower or, best of all, an unknown land — and having it called after him. It made him sad to hear the grown-ups say that there were no white patches left on the map of the world. Now, however, he realised that he could discover a new continent, but that it would lie within him.
His visits to Karen Mohr in her herb-scented Provençal flat confirmed this belief. You could actually live inside a thought. For quite some time Jonas had had the notion that she had taken an idea and furnished it, turned it into a home, a suspicion which was only reinforced when she eventually got round to telling him, in her quiet way, the story behind her extraordinary living room.
At the age of twenty, after completing her schooling, Karen Mohr had set out to travel around Europe. This was in the years just before the Second World War. One summer day in the south of France she came to a small place called Mougins, a few kilometres outside of Cannes, that town later to become so famous for its film festival. And it was here, while sitting all unsuspecting in a café, that the incident occurred which would change — Jonas did not know whether to say open up or lock down — her life.
She had been eating an ice-cream cone when she sensed that she was being watched, keenly observed, although she could not have explained what gave her this impression — not until a striking looking man approached her table. He must have been about fifty, balding and short of stature. He asked most politely if he might sit down. She was not sure, but after looking into the big, dark eyes fixed on her own, she nodded. ‘I’ll never forget those eyes,’ she told Jonas. ‘I know what they spoke of. You see it in children’s eyes. The light of imagination. Irrepressible curiosity and irrepressible creativity.’