Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

At least, Jonas thought he had been kissed because they were still only in the first phase of kissing, the very nature of the kiss being prolonged, like a menu with lots and lots of courses until they reached what is termed ‘French kissing’, a form which, I venture to point out, is by no means regarded as the supreme kissing experience, or main course, in all parts of the world but which certainly in Grorud, at that age represented the ultimate thrill, regarded almost as a status symbol; everyone knew that the record was held by Hansie and Randy Ruth who had French-kissed non-stop for forty minutes and then some. In other words, what Jonas discovered — at a time when he was still unbeatable, a wizard, so much so that if he came by some lads throwing snowballs at the ridge of a relatively high gable-end, he needed only to make one single snowball because he knew that it would hit the apex of the gable dead-on and not only that: he would strike it slantwise, effectively blocking it off and leaving no loophole for the others — what he, or they, discovered was the tongue’s place in the mouth and that it could be used for more than talking: an avenue which they spent months exploring, even when they lay entwined and laughing in a snowdrift after being forced off the track by others in the gang during some pretty foolhardy sledge rides from Lilloseter down to the barrier at Ammerud, where the lethal iced-over snow of late winter sent sparks flying from the runners. Not only did they discover the tongue they discovered the ears and the throat and the back of the neck, and every time was like the first.

Then spring came to Grorud, with melting snow and kids building dams in the streets, the slap of skipping ropes and hopscotch squares chalked out on dry patches of tarmac; snotty toddlers in wellingtons parked in the sandpits with diggers and bulldozers and the air smelling as only spring air can. Jonas was riding a wave of success, winning fabulous sums of money at pitch-and-toss, five øre coins or sometimes one kroner, zooming through the air like remote-controlled flying saucers, gluing themselves to the line or sticking to the penknife, coming up heads time and time again. He was a wizard; he was unbeatable. He sat in a wicker chair in Grorud cinema, and it was here, during a film entitled Home From the Hill starring Robert Mitchum, that Jonas gently, very, very gently, laid his hand on Margrete’s thigh for the first time, and when she did not react, negatively I mean; when she did not turn a hair but just sat there with her eyes fixed on a nonchalant Robert Mitchum, Jonas stroked her thigh gently, but anything but nonchalantly, back and forth, and when she did not make any objection to this either Jonas had to let his hand lie still to save her from hearing the pounding of his heart.

For a couple of warm weeks at the beginning of June they spent their time by the pool at Badedammen with Margrete’s new portable Bambino record-player, listening to Beatles for Sale , and it was here, in a spot that they had all to themselves, towards the end of the day when they are lying stretched out, replete with sunshine, swimming, custard creams and orangeade, that a girl who just happens to be wearing the most gorgeous yellow bikini in the whole world runs her hand for the first time over Jonas Wergeland’s body, and he is struck by something he has never noticed: that the skin of the human body is made up of about a million erogenous zones, that the skin is one vast and quivering sexual organ which all but bursts at the touch of her hand.

The Sunday before Midsummer’s Eve, a summer gala day, organized by the Grorud School boys’ brass band, is held in Sangerparken on the banks of Badedammen: cheering crowds and a procession of lorries decorated with flowers and lilac and birch leaves and packed with kids in fancy-dress, transformed into a crowd of cowboys and indians, gypsies and pirates — a proper carnival with a real community spirit and, above all, a truly festive spirit which leaves the slightly hysterical and forced Norwegian attempts in the early eighties to imitate the Latin Americans totally in the shade — with the band playing and the choir singing among the trunks of the pine trees and Jonas sweeping the board on the shooting range, raising the rifle and planting each of the five red-flighted little darts smack in the middle of their respective targets, making Margrete, standing at his side in a white summer frock, laugh: laugh at her boyfriend who is a sharpshooter and he didn’t even know it, he is a wizard, he is unbeatable, scoring a bull’s-eye so many times that the man in charge of the booth has to call a halt because Jonas has the aim of a Zen master or is just so happy that he could hit a target in the dark. Then, with their arms laden with daft prizes, they wander across to the dance-floor where, some years previously, Jonas’s sister Rakel had danced to the music of Big Chief’s jazz band with none other than Roald Aas on the day she was crowned Grorud’s gala queen: Roald Aas, who won the gold medal in the 1500 metres at the Olympics in Squaw Valley and who, more to the point as far as Jonas’s sister was concerned, was as dashing as a prince from the Arabian Nights . But right now it is Five-Times Nilsen and Tango-Thorvaldsen who are strutting their stuff up on the bandstand, the latter regarding this as the highlight of the year since it not only gives him the chance to show off the latest fashion in gents shoes but he also gets to dance with every lady from Hukenveien all the way down to Grorud station, a route followed roughly now by Jonas and Margrete before they stop at the top of Teppabakken. And it is here, on a bright summer evening, while they are kissing behind the church after the local gala day celebrations, that Jonas Wergeland ventures to slip his hand down inside her pants; and at this point, when it comes to this occurrence behind the church, up against those solid blocks of Grorud granite, with Jonas’s light and fleeting brush of Margrete’s vulva — and I deliberately use such a high-flown word as vulva — that I opt out because there are no words and no metaphors to cover this: every boy’s first fingertip contact with a girl’s vulva. There is a limit to my omniscience and this is it, so I will have to leave them to drift onwards, Jonas and Margrete, hand in hand, towards the last days of school and the green report cards, in which Jonas is given nothing but M’s for merit without having lifted a finger as if this were a comment on the whole of that one, long delicious experience: mmmmmmmmmm .

There was, of course, a great temptation to build the programme on Gustav Vigeland around the series of sculptures depicting love in all of its widely differing phases found in Vigelandsparken in the Frogner district of Oslo; and in particular around the Monolith itself, in the pale-grey granite of which both the first tentative advance and copulation’s greedy embrace find form. Just how tempting this was for Jonas Wergeland can be appreciated only by one privy to a certain occurrence — a boy leaning against the granite wall of a church with his hand on the most intimate part of a girl’s anatomy — in other words, one who can see the connection, as it were, between stone and stone.

Wergeland did, however, retain the notion of something sacred by basing the whole programme on Vigeland’s visit to Lincoln Cathedral in England. Around the turn of the century Vigeland was involved in the restoration of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, creating sculptures in the Gothic style, and it was largely on account of this work that he set off on an extensive tour of France and England to study the great cathedrals and, more especially, their decoration. The interesting thing about this spell abroad is that it encompasses some of the most productive months in Vigeland’s life as is indeed evident from the sketches, around 1500 of them, which he made during the course of the trip. To Jonas it seemed that the Gothic architecture not only fired Vigeland’s imagination, sparking off a whole host of ideas and schemes, but in fact provided the key to an understanding of the man and his most significant work: Vigeland Park. In his programme Jonas took this angle to the extreme by implying that all of Vigeland’s subsequent work might conceivably have first seen the light of day in Lincoln.