Jonas was a star for a day or two, and people talked about it for weeks; shook their heads as they described how this crazy guy had jumped ‘backwards’; shook their heads, that is, until they saw the American Dick Fosbury on television during the Olympic Games in Mexico City that same summer, taking the gold in the high jump with the selfsame technique which Jonas, albeit by accident, had demonstrated on the Grorud sports ground. That Jonas Wergeland would later be described as a pioneer will come as no surprise to anyone who saw him do the Fosbury flop long before anyone else in Norway.
Jonas did not know it yet, but he was now on the track of his unique penis.
And now you are making another leap, an impossible leap in which everything gets twisted and you land involuntarily, with a stab of pain, as if you had landed wrongly, here, here in this room, thirty square metres of it and it might as well be a galaxy, in which someone is playing Johann Sebastian Bach’s celestial music on the organ, and I understand why you do not make that call, why the thought of picking up the phone simply does not enter your head, why you stand stock-still in that room with a dead wife and let the seconds pass, you even cast the occasional glance at your wristwatch, an exclusive make, a present, you think, it must have been a present, you think, and you remember, wondering as you do so from what corner of your mind the memory has surfaced, the stopwatch you were in the habit of using on the skating rink, that blissful sense of being in control, the significance of every second magnified, tenths of a second and, most important of alclass="underline" the ability to stop the hand, stop time, break the circle, and you look down at your wrist-watch to find, to your surprise almost, that time continues to pass, regardless of the sight before you; you see the second hand moving forward in tiny jerks as if every second were a minuscule impossible leap, and you think that surely one of these small leaps ought also to be capable of flicking things back to the way they were, much like yanking a dislocated joint back into place, you think, or sending things off in another direction, the way the bow of the Skipper Clement abruptly altered course, you think, knowing all the time that this thing here, this body on the floor, springs from something else entirely, that time has nothing to do with cause and effect.
So there you stand, Jonas Wergeland, connoisseur of art, the bomber’s last victim, son of a mother who had seven lovers, and you notice the fireplace, notice that someone has had a fire going, Margrete often lit a fire, you think, she liked having a blaze as big as a bonfire in the grate when she was reading a book, because bonfires and stories went hand-in-hand she said, and you see that she must have been reading not that long ago, because there is a book on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and you sniff the air in the room as if the smells might actually reveal something, give you a clue, and you catch a whiff from the fireplace, a suggestion of smoke and dead embers and you detect the vaguely stuffy odour of synthetic materials, of dust on electronic equipment in use, warm plastic, and you feel so hopeless, as if this mélange of scents is telling you that you are looking here at something, a constellation of old and new, which you will never understand.
But just as you are about to resign yourself to the inevitable, it comes to you, as pain turns to perception, that it has something to do with burglars, a break-in, you think, and Margrete has surprised them, you think, how stupid can you get, you think, why couldn’t you just let them take whatever they wanted, you suddenly find yourself shouting at the dead woman, and for a few seconds you even expect an answer, an explanation, because you know how gullible Margrete is, how ingenuous, you never could fathom that naïve, trusting side of her, bordering on stupidity, you think and you picture the scene: Margrete, standing in the doorway and asking, politely no doubt, what they were up to, as if she could make the burglars see reason, you think, and you picture what happens next, aching inside, and now there she is, stone dead, on the floor in a pool of congealing blood.
You look round the room, notice the picture of Buddha, and you have to strain your eyes in the gloom simply to ascertain that nothing is missing, everything is where it should be, including the more valuable pieces, you think, the silver, stuff that would be easy to sell, so what in hell were they after, you think, what’s the most valuable thing in the house, you wonder, and in a flash you see it alclass="underline" the pictures, you think, the paintings in the dining-room, four perfect gems, these days one was forever reading about such cases, stealing to order, some unknown collector, you think, some madman, with a few pieces of his own personal jigsaw puzzle missing, some loony who didn’t want to sell them, only to keep them locked away in some room, so the thieves knew what to go for, you think, your rare early paintings by famous artists and you start towards the dining-room, to confirm what you already know, feeling grief momentarily replaced by anger, but the sight on the floor pulls you up short, as if you were about to trip over a huge turtle.
Now you remember, a ripple across the smooth surface of your mind, you are an artist, you were born with a silver thread running up your spine and you have been an artist all your days; you are glad to have rediscovered your identity and you are struck by the distinctive light in the room, as dark as a Rembrandt, you think, even as you take in, afresh, the magical Nordic spring evening outside the windows, the deep-blue sky and the yellow band on the horizon which will soon be gone and you look at the little jar of coltsfoot on the table and you look at Margrete and you notice the way the light from the lone lamp lends an odd, yellowish sheen to her skin, and you see how the two small, gold earrings positively glow in the semi-darkness, and you see the red, you don’t want to see it, but you see it, the red patch, carmine red, you think, like blood, you think, and you are struck by a sensation which surprises you, shocks you almost, and yet you cannot deny it: a feeling of standing in the middle of a work of art which fills you with a sneaking sense of pleasure, one might almost say glee, in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the agony, and you recognize this as a unique and precious moment in your life, endowing you with clear-sightedness and awareness as only great art can.