Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

Veronika eyed them accusingly, especially Jonas — a look he remembered well, expressing as it did such unequivocal sorrow over the fact that Jonas was still alive. It was a look he had seen at least twice before in his life and was to see again at least once more.

Buddha was the only one who had not risen, he sat and observed the whole performance with a smile on his face.

Sir William yelled from the bathroom, where he knelt in a pool of his own mucilaginous vomit, whipped into a panic by the power of psychosomatic suggestion. He roared for someone to ring for an ambulance, or no, that there wasn’t time and at that, he came out, spattered with vomit and yelling that one of his sons would have to drive him to casualty, drive like blazes, it wasn’t all that far away, thank heavens, bloody family, rotten sods, c’mon Preben, here’s the key, step on it, lad. They barged their way out.

What Jonas Wergeland liked best about the whole evening was a little detail that caught his eye as his uncle tottered past him: a speck of vomit smack in the middle of the badge on the breast-pocket of his expensive blazer.

Jonas stood on the front steps as his uncle and his three children threw themselves into the Mercedes with one of the Brothers Grimm at the wheel. The last they heard was a ‘Perfect, Preben’, so even on this occasion Sir William did in fact have the last word.

Jonas shook his head before going back to the bathroom and pulling the plug, watching the vomit partially disappearing in a swirl of water.

Jonas was convinced that he was going to be dragged under and drowned in the swirling water right at the very outset of his reckless rescue attempt but instead found himself being pushed back to the surface as if in an elevator, gasping for breath, his first, totally disoriented thought being that he was being swept towards the rapids into which he could see the stern of the raft disappearing, before he eventually managed, by dint of a few powerful, instinctive strokes to get himself out of the mainstream and in to the bank, if you could call it a bank since it was no more than the foot of a slide covered in boulders and scree offering little or no purchase.

Both Jonas’s knees were grazed, but he scrambled and scrabbled his way across the rocks, clawing his way back upriver until he came level with the whirlpool in which Veronika Røed was being spun round and round, at which point, as if playing for time, he dredged up an observation on the literally cliff-hanging scenery, this gigantic zigzagging cleft in the rock, a geologist’s El Dorado, until his eyes were once more drawn, mesmerized, to the whirlpool with a woman in its embrace, and he thought fleetingly of everything from maelstroms seething round a reversing boat to how as a small boy he was so fascinated by washing machines.

So what now? Jonas stood at the water’s edge gazing at the whirlpool, which seemed somehow to form a little counter-current; he caught himself delighting in this phenomenon, the sight of a circle in the middle of the line, unnatural almost. He had to do something, but he was paralysed, standing at the bottom of a gloomy ravine listening to the interminable rush of water, the same sound as that of a television when there’s nothing on and the volume is turned up, a smell like that of explosive gases. He stood on the bank, black basalt cliffs to front and back of him, the sky like a blue band high above, but he did not look up, he looked down, held spellbound by the whirlpool at his feet, the circle of water and the face at the outer edge of the circle, a woman’s face, a cousin’s face, he had to jump in, pull her ashore, revive her; but if he jumped in he, too, might become stuck in that circle, be swept round and round along with her, his lifelong, detested foe; but still a face, an individual who would be done for if he, Jonas, did not jump in, take the risk, and still he stood there, staring at that face, that pale phizog being spun round and round by the current and he was struck by how white it was, almost as white as the water, a white speck among other white specks, a face, an entire undiscovered continent, and it was for this face that he was obliged to jump in, even though it belonged to someone whom he despised.

Jonas Wergeland hesitated, for one second, two seconds, on the banks of the Zambezi; this was a question of values, it all came down to faith, a leap, to being out of one’s depth, with those fabled 70,000 fathoms of water beneath you, and those rapids truly were immensely deep; deep beyond imagining almost, inasmuch as those impatient waters had for thousands of years been forced to go into depth rather than take the broader approach.

He had to leap into the depths, but he held back, held back even when he saw that she was gasping for breath and was not, in fact, unconscious, as he had thought. She was struggling to keep her head above water, he saw this and still he wavered, in a quandary, because here he was at the very zenith of his career, about to embark on his life’s work, presented with a tremendous opportunity to rouse his fellow-countrymen, to teach them how to think big, so why on Earth should he die trying to save his worst enemy?

Jonas stood wavering on the banks of the Zambezi, suddenly conscious of a Duke Ellington melody pounding away at the back of his mind, one which might have been there all along, like an accompaniment that was only now getting through to him, much the way that you rarely notice the soundtrack of an action movie. Jonas considered the face being swept round and round by the water while a snatch of Duke Ellington’s ‘Cotton Tail’ came and went in his mind. He stood there with Ben Webster’s swirling saxophone and Jimmi Blanton’s pulsating bass riffs in his head, stood there while the melody played over and over again, such an incredible driving beat, that too a whirlpool; he stood on the bank, soaked by spray and shivering, because the sun did not penetrate to the bottom of the ravine, remembering, out of nowhere, a snow cave, the cold; remembering a propeller, again all-awhirl, the pain in his legs and, even so, her face, because she was lying in the water in such a way that her face was all he could see, as if it were just a face floating there, a white speck which seemed in a way to be beaming upon him like an icon, something sacred, and when he did finally jump in it was primarily in order to save that face.

Jonas was in the water, struck once more by the mighty forces at work here, buffeted about as if caught on the fringes of an avalanche; he worked his way towards the whirlpool, musn’t get too close, barely touch it, like a tangent; as in a nightmare he pictured how he could be caught up in it, how he could get stuck there, to die along with her, Veronika, two bodies going round and round for ever.

He was very close, saw her face drift past, more yellow than white now, felt those forces, watery muscles, tiny hands clutching at him; maybe, the thought flashed through his mind, this is the hub for which he had always been searching, these tremendous forces, a hub completely hidden away at the bottom of a ravine between black basalt walls, an utterly desolate spot, a counter-current with a face caught in a whirlpool. Veronika glided past again, Jonas gathered himself, swam as close as he dared, conscious of a propeller slicing lethally right next to him, reached out a hand and managed to catch hold of an arm, heaved, swam backwards for all he was worth, and he actually managed it: pulled Veronika Røed out of the whirlpool, took her in tow and floundered towards the bank then hauled her up onto it.

She was breathing, she was conscious, retching, spluttering, her eyes were open, she looked at Jonas as if she could not believe what those same eyes were telling her, that this man, her cousin, had saved her life; she said not a word, did not have the breath to say anything, anyway. Jonas was just relieved that he did not have to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, was aware of a terrible pain in one knee, an old injury acting up, an injury sustained in the greatest collision of his life, and even at that moment his mind was elsewhere. He had seen something, could not remember what, only that it was important, absolutely crucial, he must have caught sight of it just as he jumped into the water, remembered only that it was important, looked around, looked down, looked up, up the length of the cliff on the other side of the river and then he spotted it: a little fir tree growing straight out of the rock-face, a tiny green tuft amid all the black, it was a wonder it could grow there at all, and he realized that this was what he had been on the lookout for throughout the trip, this one detail that could transform a life, something even more important than the fact of having saved someone’s life, and right then and there he knew with absolute certainty that he could do it, he could win through and realize his grand vision.