Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

And this is worth noting, because even though Jonas had been prepared for the unique potential of lovemaking by his parents’ fine demonstration, he could not help but be affected by all the murky rumours and fantasies that did the rounds among the lads, in which the monomaniacal lust after the female genitals also gave rise to an undying myth as to how dangerous it was: that sticking your dick into a woman’s vagina was like sticking it between two millstones, not to mention into the maw of a catfish, with the result that sex was not only bound up with longing, but also with a certain dread. Nevertheless, most of them agreed, perhaps as a consolation for having had to wait so long, that it came as a disappointment to all, that sex was highly overrated.

Not so for Jonas Wergeland. There, on St Olaf’s Night, under the belly of a peter-boat, with a sail under his back, he knew that he had never experienced anything more wonderful than the feel of Marie F.’s great, white body and most especially her smooth, velvety, warm vagina. It far surpassed all of his greatest hopes and dreams. And he was given plenty of opportunity to fix this moment in his memory, his first time, because they were in no hurry, lying there under the vault of the boat surrounded by the scents of seaweed, tar, oil, grass; Marie F. bent over him and let him kiss her breasts, let him lick the coating of salt on her skin while she gyrated, growing wetter, slicker, her juices running down over his thighs; he had entered a chamber full of precious oil, fragrant oil, warm oil, gurgling sounds, little splashes, like the sound of the waves when he lay in the bottom of the rowboat; she reared over him, large, white, moving gently and slowly, massaging him with oil, again he was reminded of a ball-bearing, had the feeling of being at the hub of something, in touch with a warm, intelligent being; her movements became more intense, his cock was awash, sloshing about in a springtide of warm oil, a wildly mounting pleasure, a thrill beyond anything he could ever have imagined, such softness, such smoothness, such whiteness; he had visions of diving, sinking down into warm water, and just before he came, just before he shot his own little drop of fluid into that deep mysterious ocean of female oils, he turned his eyes up to the timbers of the peter-boat’s hull and it occurred to him that they looked like ribs, that he was inside the belly of a whale.

They lay there for ages, on the old sail, under a vaulted roof bathed in the light of the full moon, while the sea showed its muscles in the slow run of the tide. They made love three times. At no time did Jonas feel lethargic or sleepy or depressed, as some people say can happen. He felt wide-awake, felt as if their lovemaking had opened his eyes: as if, rather than squirting something out, he had been filled up.

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to learn that from that day on, Jonas Wergeland was blessed with the most amazing fisherman’s luck; and this luck was to stay with him all his life, ensuring that he could get a bite anywhere, all he had to do was put out his hook — he even caught catfish. At first he thought it was simply that the fish had at long last returned. A couple of years were to go by before he perceived the connection.

Even so, when he crawled out from under the peter-boat, he knew that something must have happened, something to do with his imagination, because when he looked at the full moon, his first thought was that it resembled the head of a white whale suddenly rising up out of the dark-blue sea of the cosmos. Until then, he had always thought the full moon looked like a fuzzy old tennis-ball.

And so Jonas Wergeland was utterly shattered to feel that twinge in his shoulder, a razor-blade turning in the joint that not only ruined his serve but also meant that he had a hard job hitting his ground strokes, with the result that the ambassador won his service game to take the lead in the final decisive set. Jonas tried to keep his face a blank, not to betray this fresh handicap, but he was serving so wildly that it was all he could do just to hold his own serve. Thanks to Jonas’s poor play, the ambassador had recovered his aristocratic demeanour, and once more he loomed on the other side of the net, so sure of himself, and wearing that smile which Jonas would, without hesitation, have described as ‘diabolical’.

Jonas had to alter his strategy, think in terms of placing rather than power. He had to fall back on the hard-won skills carefully acquired during his six months of playing with other partners, after Margrete had refused ever to play with him again. ‘Come on, Jonas,’ he muttered under his breath, standing in the Njård Sports Centre, wreathed in the smell of his own sweat. ‘The most unlikely things are forever happening.’ The main thing now was to remember what Margrete had told him about her father’s weak points, not only about his backhand but also the fact that he was not quick on his feet.

The score was even, but things were going the ambassador’s way; he won his service games easily, while Jonas had to sweat and strain for every ball. Pain shot through his body every time he swung the racket, serving was an almost unbearable agony. Gjermund Boeck, realizing that Jonas was in trouble, showed no mercy, made the most of his offensive forehand, putting a spin on the easiest of shots, peppering Jonas’s side of the court. Jonas was suffering, every shot was torment; suddenly it occurred to him that the ambassador looked like a lobster, a horrible monster from another planet, his right arm and the racket forming a flailing, menacing pincer.

The sound of the ball, that incessant thunk thunk , was starting to get on his nerves, he was doing more and more running, slipped a couple of times, the whole hall reeked of sweat, he was dead beat, his eyes swam, his shoulder and upper arm were hurting something awful, he had to fight not to screw his face up, but he would not give in, he could not give in. As I say, this was the greatest challenge of his life, a stupid tennis match, but still and all the most important battle of his life, for the most ridiculous, cringe-making prize, a polar-bear skin, which was, nonetheless, a trophy he simply had to win, because this was Jonas Wergeland’s battle to make the utterly impossible, the highly unlikely, happen; this was the Grorud lad against the entire lobster-eating corps diplomatique ; this was David against Goliath, east side against west; it truly was, as Jonas Wergeland put it — while under the influence, I grant you, and many years later — a battle to demonstrate Norway’s, or the average Norwegian’s, amazing adaptability and competitiveness. After all, if a lad from the east side who had never laid hands on a racket in his younger days could beat a keen cosmopolitan player, then surely Norway was capable of making the switch from heavy industry to computer technology.

Jonas fought on desperately, trying, through the sweat streaming down into his eyes and making them smart, through the pain in his arm which was nigh on torture, to think clearly, to think in terms of accuracy. Then all of a sudden he pulled off a couple of strokes that he seldom got right: a couple of drop-shots that the ambassador did not even try to run for, and a few not particularly hard, but wonderfully well-placed, ground shots that had the ambassador dashing from one side of the court to the other, red in the face and with his white shorts slipping farther and farther towards his knees: a beautiful sight which for a moment made Jonas forget his aching shoulder and even venture a lob which, amazingly, landed inside the line, and by adjusting his grip slightly he managed to give his serves a bit of a sidespin which more than once caught the ambassador completely on the hop. The pain in his arm was excruciating. Jonas could barely grip the racket, but even so, by some miracle, he succeeded in hitting a half-volley, at which Gjermund Boeck could only shake his head: ‘That’s not bloody well allowed!’ he gasped, hitching up his shorts and straightening the ludicrous, quasi-tropical, pseudo-colonial cap that was no longer bringing him luck. Jonas knew he was not playing by the book, the injury to his shoulder was forcing him to improvise, and by a combination of sheer luck — in line with modern Norwegian history — and a year of hard training, he succeeded in delivering a number of unorthodox, not to say acrobatic, shots: shots from weird angles, and a flick of the wrist reminiscent of tennis genius John McEnroe, who came to the fore and took everyone by storm just around that time. This match left Jonas convinced that one of his ancestors must have had an outstanding talent when it came to this particular combination of racket and ball, which he himself called a ‘tennis gene’ — if, that is, it was not something that Nina H., the hurdler, had unleashed but which had been lying dormant since the day when he cleared the 1.60 metres backwards to become area champion in the high jump.