Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

Jonas liked these single-minded studies, the emphasis on a solitary detail: the attempt to reflect the nature of sexuality from such a strange, such a bizarre angle. But there is no getting away from the fact that he also became much more aware of the organ between his own legs, at the very time when, to stick to Aunt Laura’s analogy, he was in the process of changing from a planteater into a beast of prey.

Those sketches which Jonas found most fascinating bore no resemblance to anything; they were utterly original figments of the imagination. Just as with the rugs, Jonas saw that you could depict reality any way you liked. Occasionally these sketches formed a series of metamorphoses, progressing from a recognizable penis to a piece of jewellery.

Did Jonas want some more tea? His aunt filled his cup before getting up and going over to her workbench at the far end of the room where she began to tidy away her soldering iron, files and emery paper, the grinding paste and buffs. It was high time men started to take their member seriously, learned to control it, his aunt said as she hung tongs and scissors in their places among the multitude of tools, a whole ironmongery on the wall. Had Jonas heard of those women who can smoke a cigarette with their vagina and pick up coins with their labia? Why shouldn’t boys be able to do something equally accomplished? Aunt Laura then proceeded to tell Jonas about men she had met who, by controlling their muscles, could make their penises point in different directions. And take them from erect state and back to limp, quick as you like, by sheer willpower. She had met men who could beat a drum with their penises, without using their hands. ‘Just imagine what such a man could do to you!’ she said, and her bracelets were given an extra jingle, although Jonas found it hard to picture this. On Bali she had come upon a group who could masturbate and hit a coin five metres away with their semen, just the way Jonas’s grandfather could hit the spittoon from a good way off, she added. And then there were the Tibetans who were able to hold onto their semen. All Norwegians could learn something from that, said Aunt Laura as she switched off the light, giving the room over once more to the dim light that Jonas loved so well.

For a long time silence reigned. Jonas ran his eye along the walls, from rug to rug, and he had the idea that the patterns were moving, alive. ‘Tell me more of the story about Princess Li Lai,’ he asked.

‘In Xanadu,’ said Aunt Laura after first pouring herself another cup of tea, ‘Princess Li Lai received another suitor in her cool palace, in the innermost room in which she had shut herself away for many years, for she had yet to find one who could make love to her as she desired, one who would make love to her until she saw a turtle with the image of a face on its shell. The one who had come to woo her on this occasion was the celebrated jade-carver Taw Maw and he did not waste any time, but carried her to the bed and immediately proceeded to make love to her. Taw Maw concentrated solely on her clitoris, as if it were a rare stone which he had resolved to shape into an ornament. The princess felt his stiff member begin to rub against her clitoris, felt as if he were gently drilling and sawing, rubbing and rubbing. And as he made love to her, more and more urgently and passionately, Princess Li Lai felt this rubbing filling her with a warm glow as if she had stepped out into the sunshine and were walking through a landscape that Taw Maw the jade carver was slowly filing in her path, with vaguely transparent trees and fold upon fold of mountains that seemed to go on forever, and as she came to a river it suddenly overflowed its banks and swept her away, and she floated off as if caught up in a tidal wave, floated and floated in a warm stream that flowed faster and faster, more and more powerfully, until the princess was thrown onto the bank and she noticed a bridge nearby. This she walked across and it brought her to a plateau at the foot of a mountain, and while Taw Maw the jade carver made love to her ever more vigorously with his hard member, boring and filing, rubbing and rubbing, making fine movements born of long experience, she felt her legs carrying her towards the mountain, faster and faster, until she was raised up, climbed and climbed, drifted upwards and when she reached the top of the mountain she felt a stab of pain and she realized that a dragon had lifted her in its claws, and this discovery filled her with such a raging fury that she flew at the creature, punching, kicking, biting, yelling, quite beside herself, until she managed to claw a hole in its skin, and it blew apart with an explosion, a bang that caused her to open her eyes. And there she saw the face of the jade carver Taw Maw which, just for an instant, bore the features of a dragon. And she thanked him but asked him to leave, because she had not yet seen a turtle with a shell that resembled a face, and she was sure that there must be a better way to be made love to.’

Jonas lay back among the soft cushions, gazing at one of the rugs on the wall, trying to remember what the different figures represented. For a long time he lay there, feeling a little mesmerized, partly by the glow of all the metals round about him. He shut his eyes, heard the jingling as his aunt moved about the room.

‘Tell me what you found in Samarkand,’ he said at last, just before he left. He always had to try.

‘As for Samarkand and what I found there, that I can never tell you,’ she said. ‘You will have to go there yourself.’

Now and again, when he was lying among the soft, silken cushions in Aunt Laura’s flat, Jonas had the feeling that there were stories inside him, all packed up tightly in some way, like parachutes just waiting to be released, to unfold; and sometimes he tried to take a peek inside or work loose a corner of these prospective stories, in advance as it were. So it was that later Jonas found on several occasions that he was already familiar with a situation when it occurred, as if somehow he were simply living out a story, a script that he had rehearsed. This was the feeling he had about his acquaintanceship with Anne B.

Jonas Wergeland always maintained — almost as if excusing himself — that he had enrolled in Oslo Cathedral School because Grorud Valley High had become so overcrowded that classes had to be staggered. In actual fact, he changed schools to save having to see his brother Daniel, with whom he had been on less than friendly terms for some time, and in hopes of meeting people from other backgrounds. This latter wish was fulfilled with a vengeance. For Jonas, his years at the Cathedral School amounted more to an encounter with the secret face of Norway than to learning such things as the periodic table or Old Norwegian.

To take one example: one evening Jonas Wergeland attended a party given by one of the girls in his class, Anne B., who lived in an elegant town house in one of the most exclusive streets on the west side, only a stone’s throw from spots Jonas knew well, Majorstua and the streets around Frogner swimming pool, and yet it was another world. In fact the whole experience was vaguely reminiscent of the main attraction at the overcrowded Frogner pool when Jonas was a boy: the windows in the big pool through which the swimmers and divers could be viewed from an unexpected angle — something which, as one might expect, appealed greatly to Jonas. Nor is there any hiding the fact that it was something of a turn-on to see the girls from below, spreading their legs and kicking out, with no idea that they were being watched, even if some of the most audacious did swim down and make faces through the glass, their hair swirling Medusa-like around their heads.