They had just finished playing a game of tag on the inner rink, the girls with white covers over their figure-skates with most of them wearing those helmet-shaped crocheted hats which were all the rage that year and never again, when Jonas — in a fit of hubris or, more correctly, in his eagerness to show Margrete that there is at least one winter sport that he is good at — hits on the idea of doing the 5,000 metres, and, as if that weren’t enough, he challenges a guy from the Labour Skating Club, who happens to glide by at that moment, using an ostentatious catlike technique.
The guy from the LSC is only too pleased to take Jonas on, is happy to get a bit of practice; he grins at Jonas’s presumption; grins at Margrete, who doesn’t seem too wild about the idea of this race, as they get off their marks in the 5,000 metres, a bit of an improvised start, since they are both skating in the same lane. After setting a pretty stiff pace in the first lap, the boy from LSC glances over his shoulder, to find to his surprise that Jonas is still on his tail; he does not know that Jonas is a wizard, unbeatable, and that Jonas really can skate, that he even likes to skate, practises a gently swaying style and has long since become so fast that he can skate right round a turn without taking any ordinary strokes in between; he remembers the first time he got the stride right all the way round, the feeling of breaking the sound barrier. The rink staff have started playing music over the loudspeakers, they have put on the autumn’s new release, the Beatles’ Help album, and it will take the boys almost as long to do the twelve and a half laps of the 5,000 metres as it takes to play the first side of the album. They skim on across the ice, Jonas ten metres behind the LSC guy. Jonas knows he has to take it easy, make each move with the minimum of effort — And now my life is changed in oh, so many ways, my independence seems to vanish in the haze — they are skating almost in step, gliding smoothly, swinging round the turns, the other guy in his smart green and black club colours, the letters on his back, close-fitting ‘devil’ cap and skin-tight top, Jonas in a weird, amateurish — but nonetheless lucky — outfit: knickerbockers like those worn by cross-country skier Harald Grønningen, a jersey knitted by Rakel in a pattern similar to the one in which alpine skier Stein Eriksen was often photographed and a dark-blue woollen hat with a little white bobble of the sort worn by ski-jumpers, most notably by Toralf Engan. Even Jonas’s clothing testifies to the fact that he is unbeatable, a wizard, as he glides round and round, staying loose to prevent stiffening up, both hands behind his back, he glances towards the gang of girls standing in a cluster on the inner rink — Were you telling lies? Ah, the night before — knows that they are watching, sees Margrete — Was I so unwise? Ah, the night before — Jonas Wergeland is doing the 5,000 metres on the Grorud circuit, he cannot put a foot wrong, although he really isn’t in the right form for this, but he finds his form nonetheless, has no trouble maintaining his speed, he’s a wizard, unbeatable, he hardly needs to try, it’s as if the glare of the floodlights were propelling him round; he swings his right arm out towards the entrance, relishes the sense of physical control, tilts his weight over to take full advantage of the curve, feels the centrifugal force helping him round and into the next long stretch, skates lap after lap under the floodlights, gliding from side to side, perfectly balanced — Gather round all you clowns, let me hear you say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away’ — shaves the verge of snow on the turns, glides on and on, as one of the girls takes a few dance steps towards them on her figure-skates and shouts ‘Come on, Jonas!’; he revels in the feel of the skate blade on the smooth ice, freshly sprayed, the crisp crackle; he makes the most of each glide, knows that he must not push it, endeavours to keep his push-off soft but springy, is starting to feel the air tearing at his lungs, can tell it won’t be long before his back is begging to be allowed to straighten up — oh, yes, you told me, you don’t want my lovin’ any more, that’s when it hurt me, and feeling like this I just can’t go on any more — skates on and on, pushing off, catching sight of his own tracks in the ice, it’s like something is wrong, he has lost his way, gone round in circles, but he is still ten metres behind, lap after lap, knows that the other guy ought to be in better form, but Jonas is skating on willpower, dredging up strength from way down in the basement, as the jargon has it, catches a whiff of beef broth, glances at Margrete in the midst of the cluster of girls, locks onto the heels of the LSC guy, notes that his opponent’s stride is shortening, he is looking down at the tips of his skates, a bad sign according to radio commentator Knut Bjørnsen; one more lap and Jonas is breathing down his neck — I don’t wanna say that I’ve been unhappy with you, but as from today, well, I’ve seen somebody that’s new — it’s all very well to say that Jonas ought to have realized that the songs which are ringing out across the ice, especially when taken as whole, could never bode well. Then, just as he passes his opponent in the crossover lane, exhausted, but happy and proud, only half a lap from the finish, with the Beatles chanting out the message, loud and clear — you’re gonna lose that girl, yes, yes, you’re gonna lose that girl, you’re gonna loooooooooooose that girl — some sixth sense tells Jonas Wergeland that this is going to go wrong, even though he is going to win, beating the LSC guy — who cannot believe his eyes — by ten metres. Jonas is coming out of the final turn, which he skims round beautifully, one arm swinging loose, picturing himself in the Classic Norwegian Position. And what, you may ask, exactly is the Classic Norwegian Position? Well, the Classic Norwegian Position is that assumed by Knut Johannesen, pictured on the turn in the 10,000 metres at the Olympics in Squaw Valley in 1960, when he took the gold and set a new world record, wearing that timeless white jersey with the Norwegian flag over the heart, and with his body — thanks mainly to the line of his right leg — extending upwards from the ice to form a perfect diagonal, an image which is to many Norwegians what the statue of a discus thrower is to the Greeks: it doesn’t get any more beautiful or more aesthetically pleasing than that — and just as Jonas is picturing himself being photographed in the Classic Norwegian Position, he catches a glimpse of Margrete walking off through the gate, and then she is gone.
Yes, Margrete was gone. Later, Jonas felt sure that it was all the fault of the circle. The repetition. That this repetition was a kind of death. As if by letting himself be manipulated into whirling round and round like that he had unscrewed something
Margrete is gone, and while Jonas is standing by the gate, trying to regain his breath, Margrete’s chum comes over — like an angel of death, he thinks to himself, even before she gets to him — picking her way because of her skate guards: ‘Margrete’s breaking it off,’ she says.
Jonas stands there, watching the steam from his own breath. Then he says, the way one does, amazingly, manage to say at such moments: ‘What do I care?’ For years he was to wonder how he could have come up with such an inane choice of words. ‘What do I care?’
What do you do when you are desperate?
Jonas’s mind is a complete blank. All he can do is to skate gracefully backwards, concentrate solely on skating gracefully backwards, perhaps unconsciously wishing to turn back the clock. But so intent is he on displaying the utmost grace in the art of skating backwards that he does not see the chunk of ice on the surface of the rink, just as Per Ivar Moe did not see the sliver of soap some weeks later in Deventer: a booby trap of ice which causes him to come crashing down, as badly as it is possible to crash on skates. Charlie Chaplin could not have done it better: first the frantic skittering, faster and faster, in a futile attempt to regain his balance, and then the finale, the dreadful fall, where you just manage to adopt a perfectly horizontal position in midair before coming down on the rock-hard ice, and every single part of the back side of your body seems to take a battering as your head and heels both hit the ice at once.