Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

With his middle finger he explored the folds of her vagina, as if she were clothed here, too, and he needed to undress her in order to discover her true nature. She writhed about, moaned so uninhibitedly that he was afraid one of the guards might hear. As his finger opened up a path for itself, working from the back forwards, he had the sensation of leafing through a book, so much so that that he could actually read, on page after page, of what the future might hold for them; and when his finger at last glided further up and lighted on the clitoris — a scaled down reflection, a tiny island in a queen’s garden — and he concentrated on this branching of the ways, he could tell — also from her reaction, the sudden gasp at the very moment that a light went on in one of the Palace windows — that he had found an answer of sorts, something which seemed to be confirmed by the abrupt and violent shudders that were now running through her, radiating as it were from her vagina to every part of her body. Her balletic pose had to give way to the uncontrolled twitching of her fingers and toes, and her writhing limbs set the plates and glasses tinkling; but these convulsions also seemed to cause a veil, or a last item of clothing to fall away from her, enabling him to see quite plainly that she was not the one — to perceive this as clearly, and with as great a shock, as if, at his wedding, he had lifted up his bride’s veil to find that she was not who he expected. With a touch of sadness he was forced to conclude that this girl, Pernille, too was a red herring, designed to distract him from a woman as yet unknown to him.

And so he hesitated. And so he refrained from pulling up her skirt and throwing himself on top of her, even when he felt the gentle press of her hands on his back, like an invitation. He tried to excuse himself to her; he wasn’t ready, he said, whispered breathlessly. Used just such a high-flown, rather archaic expression. And for this very reason — because she was a romantic, because she was a different sort of feminist — Pernille understood. Still, though, he was afraid — afraid of this lust, afraid that one day, instead of life, a desire to do the right thing, he would make do with a sex life. It was always there, just under the surface: the fear of suffering the same fate as Melankton. Precisely by not falling upon her he would prove his exceptional character, his rebellious will.

Later Jonas would contemplate the choice he had made in this and in similar situations. Because what if sex was life? And what if the life in which he might attain the ‘lofty’ goals towards which he strove was the life of the nether regions?

They slept, closely entwined. And they did not wake until late in the morning. If anyone had seen them they certainly had not reported it. They were hardly visible anyway, surrounded as they were by the tall vegetation and screened by the weeping ash’s tracery of low branches. Jonas woke up brimful of energy, woke up with a feeling of having been recreating on that tiny island for a year. They waded back across to the Queen’s Gardens and carried on out of the gate, which was now open. Jonas said goodbye and ran all the way up to Oscars gate, partly in order to burn off some of his excess energy, but also because he thought his grandmother must be worried sick about him. And annoyed, since it was now Sunday and he would not be able to pick up the desired supply of cigars.

She looked up from her newspaper when he walked in and asked what had taken him so long. ‘You’ve been away more than half an hour,’ she said.

‘Half an hour?’ he repeated.

‘Yes. And where are my cigars, young man?’

‘What day is it?’ Jonas asked.

‘Saturday,’ his grandmother replied. ‘Have you lost your wits completely? Now hurry up and get back down there before the shop closes.’

Time. He lay all alone on a broad expanse of beach in Montevideo. Seen from above, the deckchair and parasol must have looked like a small, stranded vessel. Or a target in the middle of a white desert. He merely lay there staring into space while the days passed; after a while he could not have said whether he had been sitting in that deckchair and hanging around the run-down hotel with the sleepy ballrooms for two years or two weeks. Late one afternoon he got up, however, and took the bus into the city centre where he proceeded to wander aimlessly around the old town. Again he had that strong sense of being on the trail of things past, an age of spurs and stirrups, gaucho knives and ancient pistols. He came to a grimy church, or a chapel more like, sandwiched in between some other buildings. Outside it a couple of bent old women in black shawls were standing talking. Although he could not have said why, he went inside. The church was totally empty. Hushed. Candles burned here and there. He sank down onto a pew, soaked up the atmosphere, savoured the pleasant coolness which eased the pressure he still felt in his chest. A murmuring sound reached his ears, only a murmur, but still it echoed faintly around the cavelike room. He became aware that something was going on behind a curtain in one of the neat, dark little stalls — cabinets of a sort — along one wall. Someone was acknowledging their sins in a confessional. Jonas thought he caught a vague whiff of mothballs. On their knees, confessing. He thought about this. Unconsciously shaking his head because he found it so bafflingly antiquated. Baffling altogether, in fact.

A woman pulled back the black curtain and stepped out. His eyes almost started out of his head. She wore jeans and a college sweatshirt, trainers on her feet. Attractive. Dark, the way women here were. Twenty-ish. Jonas’s eyes lingered on her. She stood for a moment, hunting for something in a small leather bag before making for the door. He had been struck by her face. He did not get it: a young woman, on her knees in this dusty church. What had she confessed? He felt like following her, but did not. An old priest emerged from the confessional. Jonas caught a glimpse of the grille through which you spoke, noticed that it showed signs of wear at lip level. All of a sudden he had a powerful urge to call out to the old priest, confess, bend the knee inside that stall, at that grille, divulge everything that was in his heart, pour it all out. ‘Father, I’m hiding my light under a bushel.’

He left the church and went back to roaming around, restlessly, aimlessly, and yet on the alert. He wandered along lost in thought, though with no idea what he was thinking about. When he looked up, he found himself in front of the antiquarian bookshop outside which he had stopped several times before, the one with Kristin Lavransdatter in the window. Inside he saw the girl from the church. Without stopping to think he opened the door and entered premises which summoned up once more the feeling he had had in the church. He found himself in a blessedly peaceful room. Of another order. A place in which an age-old, almost Ptolemaic view of things prevailed.

With the young woman was an elderly man. Both of them stared blankly at him. By way of explanation, or apology, Jonas pointed to the bulky novel by Sigrid Undset in the window, went so far as to pick it up, flick through it — an edition printed in Barcelona, part of a series of Nobel prize-winners. ‘Undset,’ he said. And then, in halting Spanish ‘I am from the same country.’ For some reason it sounded to him as if he was confessing. As if a whole story were contained within those few words. Something happened. The faces of the two others broke, as one, into big smiles. They both started talking, very fast. When they realised that he did not understand they switched to English, or rather: the young woman did the talking. He had to answer a great many eager questions — he could not help but smile at such avid curiosity — and in return he learned that the old man was the owner of the bookshop and the woman, Ana, was his granddaughter. Close to, she was even more attractive, or appealing. She wore amethysts in her ears, bluish-violet like the flowers on the jacaranda trees. Her name sounded like a vow. A sort of prefix. He did not know that she also embodied a golden opportunity — that she could be what Mr Dehli had called a catalyst. She had only popped in to pick up a book, was just leaving. In the doorway she paused, thought for a moment. Had Jonas eaten? Would he like to have lunch with her? Jonas glanced uncertainly at her grandfather, thinking to himself that the people here were a bit old-fashioned, Catholics, such a thing might be frowned upon, but the old man merely nodded, waved his arms at them: Go, go!