Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

Late in the afternoon he found himself back at the Setesdal farmstead. He could not help himself, stepped inside the Åmlid farmhouse, thought at first that it was empty, then realized that she was sitting on a bench between the bed and the cabinet. Light filtered down through the opening in the roof and spread around the room that remained, however, shadowy. There was no doubt: he felt that pressure on his spine, as if a switch had been turned on, his whole body put into a state of receptivity. He said nothing, his thoughts went to Louis Kahn, darkness and light; he took out his sketchbook and proceeded to sketch a simple shelf holding some wooden vessels. He could not see well in the semi-darkness, gave up, turned his eye to the gjøya , shaped like a horse, the fertility symbol. The place smelled of ancient wood. The logs were enormous. Everything in here was thick, even his fingers felt thick.

She spoke, he answered, had no idea what he answered, felt thick all over, thought only that she was a perfect guide: her figure, the costume, her eyebrows, her voice, a perfect guide to Norway, everything Norwegian, these thick logs, massive corners, the cogging, the idea of raping her occurred to him, yes, rape, an uncontrollable sense of having no choice, of not being in control, this dim room, too dim, almost dark, especially now, with the sun disappearing behind a cloud, as if someone had turned off the light; he felt afraid, for a second, afraid of he knew not what, turned around and saw that she was glowing, she stood in the shadows radiating light, then she walked towards him with the same resolve that she would later display in her chosen career, although it could be that she became possessed of it at that very moment, because Ellisiv H. surprised everyone at university, including herself perhaps, by making an abrupt about-turn and entering the Officers Training School, which had only just opened its doors to women; and she would raise even more eyebrows when, after her obligatory year as a sergeant in the Signal Corps of N Brigade, she went on to Military Academy, thus laying the foundations for a notable military career which not only made her a trailblazer for other women in the Norwegian armed forces — it was thanks to her, for example, that girls were finally allowed to join the Royal Lifeguards — but eventually also led her to an unprecedented high rank in the army and a top post with NATO in Brussels, so in a way you could say that she conquered Europe; but first there was Jonas Wergeland, whom she quite simply overcame by putting her arms around him and squeezing him, with a physical strength that would also surprise her future fellow officers when she beat them in competitions and exercises; Jonas just let his sketchbook fall to the earth floor, overwhelmed by a pounding at his temples which made everything go black while at the same time turning his member into a log, shaped like a horse; she locked both doors, it was closing time anyway, they were alone, them and the gloom, which sparked with tension; she kissed him, tugging at his clothing as she did so, tore them off, tore off her apron, and everything she was wearing underneath, including the thick stockings, kept on the black headscarf, rolled him around the floor of the cool room, as if it were a wrestling match, she was raging with desire, her eyes clouded, she said something in a husky voice, was trying to climb on top of him, coiled herself around him, knocked over an ancient log chair, clambered up, dragged him up onto the solitary bed in the corner, hauled off the coverlet and lay back on a fur pelt, a sheepskin which was spread across the straw mattress; Jonas felt raw, raw and primitive, and he loved it, loved every bit of it, was almost aching with throbbing desire when he saw how the light fell down from the roof and glinted off a thick gold chain around her neck and, further down, off her fair pubic hair, a rich, luxuriant tuft; a sight which drove him wild, drove him to grope around in that triangle with his hand, poke a finger through the ring of damp fur, let it sink in until it began to drip with gold, as from Odin’s own ring, Draupner, itself.

He could feel that she wanted him, that her whole body wanted him. When he hesitated she muttered something about a coil, that she wore a coil, and that was how it seemed to him too, as she dug her fingers into his shoulders and dragged him down on top of her, that it was not a case of moving in and out but of being led round the round the turns of a coil, upwards or downwards, outwards or inwards. And again he had the impression of a light, as if in touching her clitoris he had flicked a switch. This was not lovemaking, this was illumination; she twined herself around him, made love to him passionately, as if grateful for the pleasure welling up inside her, accentuated perhaps by the unusual way in which Jonas Wergeland penetrated her, from another angle so it seemed, something which Jonas, when asked once, ascribed to the dragon-horn button which he had swallowed as a little boy and which he thought might have wedged itself in his spine, as an extra vertebra: a phenomenon which not only enabled him to pick up signals from certain women but also forced him to hold himself at a slightly different angle during sex; however that may be, he made love to her in such a unique way that she endeavoured to do likewise to him, pressed him so tightly to her that Jonas felt as though he was being transformed, acquiring a different, finer calibre, that something was happening to him, to his way of thinking, that the spittle in her kisses was an elixir which affected his memory more than his body, causing him to recall something, something very special, in a new way.

She grew wilder and wilder, clawed at him, leaving bloody welts down his back; this in turn drove him, unwittingly, to pull her hair as he rode her, pitching in to her, seized with an urge to be violent, in the grip of unbridled forces which simply surged up out of nowhere. ‘You’re killing me,’ she moaned, licking his throat compliantly and holding him in a muscular, vice-like grip; he plunged in, far in, again and again, not knowing whether they were fighting or making love, ramming into her so hard that the room rang with what sounded like the slapping of a wet floor mop. Suddenly she began to pull back every time he drove into her, as if taking evasive action, a strategy which goaded him into making a massive attempt to outwit her, to pursue her, hard, at different tempi, but to no avail, not until she did another about-turn, as it were, and went into the attack, threw herself at him with such ferocity that she screamed out loud. He made to respond, but all that came out was a snarl. He was incensed, or no, not incensed, he was aflame: filled with a frantic ardour, he was on the track of a cause, or in the act of inventing a cause, actually creating himself, re-creating himself, becoming someone different from the person he had been at the start of their lovemaking.

She was working in a daze, making love to him as if intent on sucking him up, laid bare her throat in such a way that he caught the gleam of her scar, a long gash running crosswise to the gold chain; she dug her nails into his shoulders. ‘I think I’m going to die,’ she whispered just before her body went taut, as if with a pleasure bordering on the unbearable, then caught her breath as her back arched and stiffened convulsively into a bridge which conducted him across to another world, far beyond that dark room, and yet composed of inexplicably similar elements. For, just as the sound of a cork rubbed against a bottle could, thanks to the imagination’s ability to make leaps, become the chirping of birds in a radio play, the friction caused by his penis moving inside her vagina made him think of a clearing in the forest; there was something about the smell of earth, the hearth, the charcoal, not least the way she coiled herself around him, which had long since conjured up the threads of a memory, a significant story, a narrative he might almost have been said to weave into being, using his member as the shuttle. Jonas Wergeland was not quite like other men. Ejaculation never came to him as a release, a feeling of something being loosed. To him it was more like a knot — a knot in which lots of threads were gathered together — drawn tight.