Cultural City Bergen 2000, Bergen Public Library

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Novels and
other prose

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by Kjartan Fløgstad

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Dollar Road

The Ultimate Questions

Heads or Tails

Fire and Water

Cockcrow

Translations

Of Kjartan Fløgstad

By Kjartan Fløgstad

Miscellaneous

About Kjartan Fløgstad

Excerpt from
Kron og mynt
(Heads or Tails)

One day a few weeks later Johann Michelsen Neocorus comes for a visit. Indian Summer continues. It's evening, but still light outside. Neocorus comes over to where they sit eating, but Lydia doesn't invite him to join them at the table.
"Well," says Eliseus Seland, and continues chewing.
"How are things going?"
"Plodding along."
Then Johann Michelsen Neocorus blesses the food and sits down near the door to wait. One by one they leave the room, first Pål, then his brothers. Neocorus greets them. They nod. Lydia clears the table. She bustles about in the kitchen. Eliseus Seland sits at the end of the table. Mons is still lying on the table. He purrs. Mons is a huge male cat with thick, lion-colored fur.
"Come and sit at the table," Eliseus says to Johann Michelsen Neocorus.
"Now there's going to be trouble," thinks Lydia, who is in the next room and overhears what he says. And this time she's right. There's trouble.
The wind flutters the lace curtain. The window hasps creak. At the end of the table Eliseus strokes Mons' fur, again and again, making it more and more electric. Holding his other hand behind his good ear, he listens to what Johann Michelsen Neocorus has to say.
And Johann Michelsen Neocorus talks, as best he knows from his theological training, and as best he can from what he has learned in the school of life. It's not bad. He says he's sorry and feels remorse. He has God in heaven on his side, plus the bishop in Kristiansand, plus a prayer for forgiveness, as he puts it.
Eliseus Seland does not reply. He strokes and strokes the cat's electrified fur. Mons, fully charged, licks the saucer, arches his back, sticks his tail in the air.
And Johann Michelsen Neocorus talks. Talks and talks. About repentance and remorse. About a stony heart, about motes and beams in the eye. About wheat and tares, about the fox and sheep, and about God's will.
Eliseus has stroked Mons so many times that his fur is as luminous as a cat's eye. Mons stretches himself, purrs loudly. His tail stands straight up.
Dusk falls. They have to light the lamp. The air is hot and muggy. "Indian Summer," says Johann Michelsen Neocorus.
Eliseus does not reply, just clears his throat like a distant roll of thunder.
"God's will. And mercy."
As Johan Michelsen Neocorus says these words, Eliseus Seland lifts the hand stroking the cat's fur.
With his other hand, the one he's had in plain view, Eliseus flicks the cat's hind end. He flicks his hand at the cat's behind. The cat is electric. Sparks flash from him. When Eliseus flicks the cat's behind Mons lets out a shriek, like a child's scream, shoots across the table, hits the paraffin lamp which sets fire to his electrified fur, collides with Johann Michelsen Neocorus' face before the man can blink an eye, and dashes out into the warm autumn evening like a flaming wheel as the shriek intensifies and people on the neighboring farm and beyond think the sun has veered completely off course and is rising for the second time that day. Unless it's a comet, with the cat's tail a shining comet tail.
But it isn't a comet. It's Eliseus Seland's flaming cat. And it falls to the ground, horribly burned.
Eliseus Seland went to see how things had gone with Mons. They had not gone well. Then he helped severely-burned Johann Michelsen Neocorus to his feet, showed him the door and pointed him toward home.
They found him there on the road, completely bewildered, late the next morning. For many years afterwards Johann Michelsen Neocorus had to preach with his back turned to the congregation. He still goes about wearing a high white collar and his face is badly scarred.
"Yes, scum like that get what they deserve," Eliseus Seland said philosophically.
But from then on, Pastor Neocorus shone. That's what people say. A light surrounded him - something Eliseus hadn't considered. He was aflame. His words blazed. He spoke with tongues of fire. He was a holy comet. His path led upward. In all the disputes about theological dogma he was a cat with nine lives. When you fry the cat, imagine it's a pig.
As the days go by at Seland they realize the sun did not veer from its course. It was a comet with a shining tail, which came close to Earth at the small Sækjå farm and is now heading out into the solar system again, toward a position near the constellation Cassiopeia.

Translated by Nadia Christensen