The Conqueror Page 14

  He slid into a rapturous haze, he was someone else, experienced for the first time the thrill of flipping up the cup of a brassiere, so surprisingly easy, as if the impulse were stored in the genetic makeup of his fingers, in the same way as a newborn baby instinctively knows how to suck. And Jonas Wergeland was finally treated to the delicious tactile sensation of a soft girlish breast filling the palm of his hand, and he didn’t even try, he knew he could never describe the feeling of that little nipple against the spot where the heart-line almost meets the life-line. Nonetheless, he understood – even in the somewhat cooler light of hindsight – that he was experiencing one of life’s high points, that that invisible cup-shaped imprint, every bit as unique as a fingerprint, had been branded upon the palm of his hand: that the spot which the nipple had touched, between his heart line and his indistinct life line would bear the mark like a tattoo forever.

  And now, still with his hand inside the cup surrounding the soft stupa of her breast, as if conducting a religious act, receiving something, a gift, he let his eye flicker down over her crotch to the enticing mound beneath the cotton, where he could even make out the frizz of hair, a sight which left him breathless, although he knew more about Olympus Mons on Mars than about this bulge and could have told you more about the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean than about the cleft that opened up underneath it. And as he tentatively slipped his hand inside her panties and she did not protest, and as he then slid it further down through the rather sparse bush of hair towards that dome, he could not help thinking of Daniel reading aloud, thought to himself that now he was fondling ‘her secret recesses’ – an expression which, in fact, perfectly suited this intimate moment’s blend of solemnity and modesty, the very fine line between crippling shyness and wild hysteria. In any case, when at long last, after years of speculation, his finger closed in on that mysterious little organ, equivalent to the point at the very top of a Gothic arch, the ‘clitoris’, a word he had never dared to utter out loud, he had the feeling that he had merely grazed the surface of something greater, something mighty, which lay hidden inside her body, as if it were the top of a pyramid buried in sand, and this was, for Jonas, confirmed by the sounds she made, issuing from her larynx, as if from an incredibly complex instrument: noises which, as far as Jonas could tell, sounded like songs coming from deep down in the secret vaults of the body or, indeed, from the depths of the soul.

  The sun went behind a cloud. Henny F. wrapped the ends of the plaid around them and snuggled up close to him. Two ordinary people, Jonas thought, two nothings who, when curled up against one another, formed a recumbent figure eight, symbol of infinity: who, together, became something else, a bigger figure. He liked that. He felt a rush of tenderness towards her, could not imagine how upset she would be when he ‘broke it off’ some months later, rather brutally perhaps and for no real reason, that she would be completely beside herself with grief, that there would be rumours that she had tried to kill herself, some mention of her mother’s sleeping pills; Jonas could not foresee all that now, was far too preoccupied with what she was doing to his ear, because she was kissing it, but at the same time seeming to sing into it, knocking him right off-centre and into a mind-reeling, almost vibrant state, despite the fact that he was lying safe and sound on the ground, so much so that when he tried to say something, it came out in a husky, unfamiliar voice, as if even his vocal chords were involved in this process. Jonas could not help thinking of the Japanese prints which Aunt Laura had shown him, of men with penises as big as gnarled tree-trunks; that was how he felt: pumped up, blown out of proportion, ridden by a lust that left him gasping for breath. All in all, this overpowering passion, exaggerated and yet undeniably genuine, was not unlike what he would later discover in opera.

  Heart pounding, he rolled over onto his back and felt, with alarm almost – the alarm of anticipation, alarm at his own arousal – how her hand groped its way into his pants: how, with her eyes averted, she wrapped her fingers around his straining member and held it, gently, as if she didn’t know what to do with it, she just held it, softly but firmly, that was all, just held it, felt it. Jonas lifted his eyes to the treetops, the network of branches, felt his thoughts running along similar lines, spreading out and criss-crossing. For the first time he was conscious of his mental processes taking a particular turn when a woman touched him, as if his penis were a lever, flipping his whole intellect over into another dimension, one full of unsuspected connections. They, the women, moved him to fantasize in a different way by opening, with their touch, hidden doors in his memory, by quite simply setting in train the strangest stories. Suddenly he spied links between things that were far removed from one another, or the distance between things that lay close together; his thoughts darted here and there in explosive leaps – like those jumping-jacks – up and down between different levels of the brain, thus forming chains, ever longer chains of thought, forged by recollections, half clear, half blurred, which were tucked away in his memory and whose compass he did not comprehend until such moments; and that must have been why, perhaps because of the rug wrapped around them, he recalled the tent, while the sounds from her larynx made him think of songs, joyous songs, and the quaking inside him put him in mind of madness, or no, not madness, but the sense of being on the brink of something incomprehensible and yet so important that one burst into a language beyond all languages, trying if possible to fathom it, become another, others, someone. All these things that were racing around in his head were a result of the heady thrill she induced in him simply by clasping her fingers around his penis. Thanks to Henny F., he was not just lying there on some unknown hill in Lillomarka, he was also on the verge of transcending a crucial new barrier; he was, in short, on the trail of a story, pursuing the certainty that there was more to him, potential he had yet to realize.

  Possessed

  For a child, there was any amount of things to do at Hvaler in the summer, from teasing the terns – those little dive-bombers – to going out in the pilot-boat in a stiff breeze. But if Jonas had to pick a favourite, it would either have to be Strömstad or the attic. At least once during the summer they would sail over to Strömstad in Sweden, the main attraction being the market in the town square: a kind of Scandinavian Marrakech with seedy stalls selling all sorts of cheap rubbish from packs of magic playing cards comprised of nothing but Jacks of Diamonds and Phantom rings with red glass eyes to disgusting stink bombs and the very latest in toy cars with flashing lights, and speedboats with real, battery-driven outboard motors, treasures beyond compare, even though most of them fell apart in the boat on the way home.

  The attic, mysterious and fascinating as the props cupboard of a theatre, was a place where Daniel and Jonas were only allowed to play when it rained. They were forever finding different stuff up there, boxes within boxes, old sea charts, photograph albums, a broken accordion, bottles of medicine with illegible labels and stupefying smells. One summer Daniel stumbled upon the little safe deep in a corner, like an overgrown temple amid the attic’s jungle of nets and mildewed old clothes; they immediately fell to wondering what fabulous treasures it might contain. Their grandfather merely laughed when they told him of their find and got them even more steamed up by telling them one of his tallest tales: ‘In that safe, lads, I put a diamond given to me by the German Kaiser. Bigger than the Cullinan diamond it is! As big as a seagull’s egg!’

  One day, when the rain was coming down in buckets outside, something unexpected happened: Daniel managed to open the safe. Although he had been lying with his ear right up against it, listening intently, the way he had seen in films, it was only by pure luck that he happened to turn the dial to the correct three numbers – much in the same way, perhaps, as one could sometimes be jammy enough to crack the combination lock on a chum’s bike just by turning the discs this way and that, without really thinking about it. Inside the safe they found a pretty, black lacquer casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But just as they lift the lid of the casket to reve
al a grubby canvas bag, which prompts Daniel to form the word ‘pearls!’ with his lips, their grandfather, prompted by sheer intuition so it seems, comes bounding into the attic, and before they can draw breath he has snatched the bag out of the casket. ‘I’ll take that,’ is all he says, oddly agitated, panic-stricken even, then disappears again.

  Daniel was seriously put out by this, which is probably why he did not object to Jonas taking the casket. Their grandfather, too, said that Jonas could keep it. ‘I bought that in Japan,’ he said. ‘See this glossy surface? It was once the sap inside a Japanese lacquer tree.’ For Jonas, the casket was, in itself, a treasure and not just because of the mother-of-pearl dragon on the lid; if there was one thing he never tired of, it was gazing at the layer upon layer of black lacquer, as if peering into a deep gloom: transparent, endless, an opening onto an unknown universe. When Jonas returned home at the end of this summer holiday he knew straightaway that he had to find something of value to put in the casket. He considered the clock workings, that enigmatic skeleton of cogs that sat ticking away on top of the chest of drawers, but dismissed that idea. What he really wanted was a pearl. After lengthy deliberation he came to the conclusion that only one object was worthy of this place of honour: his mother’s silver brooch. With her blessing, he placed the round brooch with its intriguing tracery of ribbons in the casket, as if consigning it to a black, bottomless pit.

  How does one become a conqueror?

  There was no doubt as to the Brothers Grimm’s favourite form of relaxation during the holidays. To Jonas’s cousins – as ugly as their younger sister was pretty, hence the name – no stay on Hvaler was complete without a visit to one of the clamorous tent meetings on the neighbouring island of Nedgården. One of the first things they did when they came to stay just after the incident with the safe was, therefore, to fill the rowboat with friends and set off across the sound. Jonas, too, was among the party when it reached its objective, after a walk though the pine forest. For here, on a flat stretch of ground not far from the steamship wharf on Nedgården, stood the big tent. ‘We’re off to the circus,’ the Brothers Grimm said. And what a circus it was.

  Jonas never did discover what manner of people they were, the spiritual nomads – I almost said Mongols – who arranged these meetings: whether they were Pentecostalists or what. They certainly didn’t look much like the dry and dusty congregation in Grorud Church on a Sunday morning. These people really swung, Jonas could not think of a better word; the atmosphere was electric, the noise level high as they slipped through the tent opening to find themselves standing under the dome of white fabric, the air heavy with the odours of damp grass, earth and sweat – the sweat of ecstasy, that is. For there before them, in the ring or whatever you want to call it, were both musicians and people who were in some way performing, and it was this ‘entertainment’ that the Brothers Grimm had come to see. Because the faithful did not sit mouthing hymns the way they did in church: they sang, or no – they didn’t sing, they exulted. You got the feeling that the canvas of the tent was all puffed up by the pressure of their voices and the rhythmical guitar accompaniment. And in the front rows you could see girls of whom it was said that they were so freshly redeemed, so flushed with redemption, that when asked at school to name the capital of Hawaii, they were quite liable to cry out ‘Hallelujah’ instead of ‘Honolulu’.

  As usual the Brothers Grimm slid down onto the bench at the very back, where they could hunch down out of sight. To tell the truth, they didn’t just hunch down, sometimes they had to lie flat-out on the grass; they lay there on the ground, bent double and racked by laughter at what they saw and heard. For this was the best kind of fun, it beat any television programme or any other show for that matter, even the films of Old Rubber-Face himself, Jerry Lewis.

  I may not be the right person to recount stories from this side of life, Professor, nonetheless I must make an attempt, if the pieces of Jonas Wergeland’s life are to fall into place: because you see, on this bright evening, with the sun still hovering on the horizon and the sea perfectly calm outside, but with a spiritual storm raging inside the tent, a missionary was making a guest appearance. This was probably not such a common occurrence at the summer revival meetings, where the proceedings generally tended to follow a very simple, tried and tested format, with the clear aim of getting as many people as possible to ‘cast themselves into the Saviour’s arms’, but this must be how it happened: it may be that the missionary just happened to be home on leave and was asked to speak at the meeting that evening. And the missionary, who might even have been sponsored by the brethren on the island, probably thought it only natural to weave stories of his experiences in the missionary field into his speech, because when Jonas and the Brothers Grimm sidled into the tent, he was in the midst of describing an exorcism which he had attended down there, in a country full of heathens: a pretty colourful story, a glowing and, in parts, extremely vociferous testimony to the inimitable power of the Lord.

  Within seconds, on principle almost, the Brothers Grimm were fighting to control their laughter, as if they thought the tent was full of laughing gas – possibly because of all the ‘Praise the Lords!’ being breathed round about them. Jonas, for his part, had been just as swiftly filled with curiosity. He had been interested in demons for a long time, ever since the first time when, half-asleep, he had heard them spoken of from the pulpit in Grorud Church, one second Sunday after Lent as it was called. He had been sitting upstairs in the balcony as usual, with a view of his father’s organ playing and the pulpit, when the vicar began to talk about a boy who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Jonas had pricked up his ears. Till then he had associated the word ‘spirits’ with the stuff grownups drank at parties, although his sister’s obsession with the spirits in The Arabian Nights had led him to suspect that ‘spirit’ might also mean something else, something dreadful. And right enough, here was the vicar describing how the unclean spirit caused this poor child to roll around on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and it was on this occasion too, or was it in RI class, that Jonas heard about Mary Magdalene, who was possessed by seven evil spirits, and, even more thrilling, the deadly spirit whose name was Legion, because he – the spirit, that is – was, in fact, many. Jonas had puzzled over this for ages, he even gave up playing with Lego, thinking as he did that Lego must have something to do with demons – and he may actually have been onto something there, since Jonas had a habit of building tall, reckless constructions with his bricks, models that could easily conjure up thoughts of a presumptuous and sinful Tower of Babel.

  The Brothers Grimm are not listening to any of what’s being said. They are already almost flat out on the grass, red in the face from stifled – I almost said demonic – laughter. They are having a whale of a time. And although this is, as I say, a revival meeting, something extraordinary is in the offing on this summer evening on the island at the mouth of the fjord – the congregation, the faithful, sense it too; several of them spontaneously begin to speak in tongues as the preacher, which is to say the homecoming missionary, builds up his speech, by way of a succession of Biblical quotations, to a dramatic climax; they burst into long strings of incomprehensible words which send the Brothers Grimm into paroxysms of giggling – Preben confessed later that he had actually dribbled into his pants. For the cousins, this was one of the summer’s absolute high points when it came to entertainment. ‘Oh, gawd! This is funnier than all of Einar Rose’s and Arve Opsahl’s jokes rolled into one!’ Stephan exclaimed. Jonas was equally enchanted but not for the same reasons as the Brothers Grimm. He realized that this language, this glossolalia, was not the senseless gibberish his cousins took it to be, but an attempt to stretch language as far as it would go, into a vacuum where rules and reason had to admit defeat. He also had the feeling that something big was about to happen. That something was going to lay itself open for him, just like the safe in the loft; that he would be presented with a dark casket which – who knew – might contain a precious pearl
.

  So he did not drift out of the tent-opening along with the Brothers Grimm and the others as the singing, a Norwegian version of gospel, and the guitars took over again, and the meeting moved towards its conclusion – after, that is, urgent appeals for people to come forward and bend the knee to the Lord or, in plain words, be saved. Jonas remained standing next to one of the rearmost benches, watching the people, quite a lot of them, who made their way towards the middle of the tent and kneeled down, a good few young people among them as it happens, and it was then, at this post-meeting as it was called, at this relatively chaotic stage of the proceedings, that something occurred which does not normally occur at these summertime tent meetings: all at once a young man cries out that he is tormented by evil spirits. Now a normal Pentecostalist, or whatever they were, might not have made any attempt to deal with this situation or only dealt with it in the most superficial manner, but here was this missionary, with his truly hair-raising experiences from the mission service and his work among ‘the savages’, far more dramatic than this, and – somewhat taken aback though he might have been – he walked purposefully up to the young man, placed his hands on his head and began to shout things, or rather, to issue orders which Jonas did not understand: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you!’ and the like, so write, Professor, write as if your life depended upon it, because it was awesome; Jonas would never forget it. The young man’s knees gave way, he keeled over and as he did so the missionary was thrown backwards as if he had received an electric shock. Jonas truly felt that powerful forces were present in the tent; there was a pressure, the sort of atmosphere that prevails immediately before a Biblical thunderstorm.