When We Dead Awaken
Speaking of death, that reminds me that I ought to tell you something known only to a handful of people.
At one point, Jonas Wergeland was told that he was going to die — the big death this time.
It happened while he was attending the College of Architecture, at a time, what is more, when he had just stumbled on an angle that really whetted his appetite for his studies on Louis Kahn and his stimulating ideas on the significance for a building of light and shade. Jonas had discovered something suspicious — one might almost say a shadow — in his body. He went to see a doctor. The doctor frowned and wasted no time in sending him for tests, X-rays; the pictures came back, the diagnosis was plain. I won’t mention the word, everyone knows how rapidly such things progress, especially in the form that had struck Jonas. Jonas Wergeland was going to die; it was that simple, that inconceivable. You will have to excuse me. This entire episode invites so much sentimentality and pathos that I will have to keep this as short as possible. The main thing, surprisingly enough when one considers the terrible emotional upheaval experienced by Jonas Wergeland when other people died, is that he took the news calmly, with dignity, just as people are capable of altering their pattern of behaviour when the situation demands it, in time of war for example. Or, more radically: it might have seemed as if Jonas suddenly felt that he belonged to an alien civilization: one which took a very different view of death.
However, what is more interesting — cynical as that word may sound in such a context — for anyone wishing to gain some insight into Jonas Wergeland’s life are the consequences which this news was to have. Jonas Wergeland was not the sort to just lie down and die. The doctor had given him a rough idea of how long he had, and Jonas was left wondering: What now? Meaning: How far can I get on whatever fuel I have left?
From time to time in newspaper profiles and interviews, one finds people coyly professing that even if they were told they were going to die soon, they would go on living their lives as normal. When, after saying the necessary farewells to the necessary people — not least after a long talk with Buddha — Jonas set out for the Sinai peninsula and Jebel Musa; he really was going on living as if nothing had happened, seeing that he had already had the trip half planned. There was no thought in Jonas’s mind of legends of elephants dragging themselves off to their secret graveyard, nor of choosing a particularly spectacular setting in which to draw his last breath. And one thing is for sure: there was no religious motive behind it.
Shortly afterwards, by virtue of his usual efficiency and a last bit of help from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Jonas touched down in Israel, and without so much as a glance at Jerusalem, without stopping to stick his own little slip of paper into the Wailing Wall, he took the quickest route, a military one, that is, by way of the Gulf of Aqaba, to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The skeletons of trucks and a tank left him in no doubt that he was now traversing borders that were taut as a bowstring. And yet nothing could have worried him less than the thought that a major war might break out, right under his nose so to speak.
As I say, there is no subtle way of telling this. And I admit that this is one point in the story when I am tempted to reveal who I am, since certain things would then be easier to understand. I apologize for the fact that, under the circumstances, I have to make such a demonstrative secret of my identity.
Be that as it may: Jonas reached his destination in the afternoon. For some time they had been driving through a rugged landscape, barren, hot, its mountains like earthenware that has cracked after firing. That was fine by Jonas. It occurred to him that the wheel had come full circle; that this was the rock-face of his childhood, Ravnkollen, taken back to its origins: to rock, to light, to shade, to silence. They rounded a headland to finally find themselves at the entrance to Wadi Shuaib, and down in the dip, surrounded by torn and craggy massifs, lay St Catherine’s Monastery, a cluster of buildings encircled by a stout wall like a little vessel, a lifeboat, a miraculous sign of human life, survivors in a sea of gigantic petrified waves.
Jonas approached the monastery alone. Outside the walls lay a garden, its cypress trees breaking the monotony of the rock. He listened to the distinctive sound of the surrounding countryside, a faint sough in the air. Some Bedouins from the Gebeliyah tribe came into view then disappeared through the wall, although Jonas could not see how. Moments later, however, a monk appeared and let Jonas in, after pointing inquiringly at the mountain and receiving a nod from Jonas in return. Beyond the gate, on the way to the guest wing, Jonas found a warren of buildings and narrow alleyways reminiscent of a Greek village. He noted that the church was constructed out of massive blocks of granite, exactly like that back home in Grorud. Again he was struck by a sense of homecoming, or of finding some part of himself, a vital part, perhaps his heart. Jonas followed close on the heels of the monk with no intention whatsoever of seeing the exceptional collection of icons or the priceless manuscripts in the library or the glittering church containing the relics of St Catherine, the most unbelievable richness and splendour in the heart of a scorched, dun-coloured wilderness; he barely knew of their existence, he had but one thought in his head: to reach the top of Jebel Musa. He could tell his strength was failing, was afraid he would not be up to it.
Is this the most crucial story in Jonas Wergeland’s life?
He was shown into what looked like a monk’s cell. White walls. A narrow slit of a window. Light and shade. He lay down on the simple bed. Needed to rest. Closed his eyes. Here, too, he was aware of a gentle, soughing sound. Father Makarios, who looked after the monastery’s guests, came in; rotund, black hat and a coarse blue robe; a beard with an incipient tinge of grey. He set a bowl of olives on the table, some bread, a jug of wine. He walked over to the bed, looked down at Jonas, kindly, compassionately, stroked his brow. ‘Rest,’ he said in several languages. ‘Just rest.’
At that war-fraught time, few people journeyed to the Sinai Peninsula and the spot which was traditionally considered to be the world’s spiritual pole — from a Western point of view, that is — but it so happened that there was one other person lodged in the guest wing, a German social anthropologist, actually based at the Feirân oasis, who was making a study of the nomadic way of life and who promptly invited himself into Jonas’s room — not because he was sick but because he was sickening for company — and sat down on the only chair. Jonas was feeling weak and wanted to rest, but the German wanted to talk. Primarily about Henrik Ibsen. Jonas had long since ceased to be amazed by total strangers, encountered in the most desolate spots on Earth, who, the minute he said where he came from, would suddenly reveal a passionate interest in something Norwegian. In a way it was, therefore, not so surprising that in the middle of the Sinai desert, standing at death’s door, Jonas should be confronted with his most famous countryman.