Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

A fresh breeze was blowing, but it was not cold. She settled herself with her back against his legs, sat quietly for a long time, just watching the waves that came rolling in to break on the shingle at the water’s edge, seemed mesmerized by this, the sea spray falling just short of them. All at once she began to tell him about the Gulf Stream, about a theory she had come up with, a crazy notion as to how Norway had been populated. What if people had drifted here with the Gulf Stream? From England, Scotland, Ireland. They might have done, if they had had seagoing vessels earlier than we thought. She launched into a long discourse on the possible Celtic influence on Norwegian culture, but Jonas lost the thread of it, was too preoccupied with other forces, stronger than any ocean drift: the current that flows from a boy to a girl.

She found a hollow among the pebbles, like a sort of large deckchair still warm from the sun: smooth globes patterned with lichen, like maps of unknown worlds. He lay down, she remained sitting: or rather, she put a finger to her lips, silently shushing him, before unbuttoning his trousers and pulling them down to his knees. She stroked him tentatively with her fingers, making his penis rise up, studied it for a long time, as if she were surprised, as if his member was an obelisk covered in hieroglyphics, a unique archaeological discovery. And as if intent on examining it more closely she proceeded to lick him, all over, lingeringly, paying particular attention to his testicles, sucking his stones into her mouth one after the other, as if to shift them, to uncover a treasure.

He lay back in the hollow, lapping it up: the tang of seaweed and salt, the warm fingers on the thin skin of his penis, her lips, the tip of her tongue endeavouring to trace figures on his genitals, the wind brushing over the damp patches, all while he listened to the waves breaking on the shore, a slow, steady rhythm which matched the way she was kissing him, long kisses, until — as if wishing to assure herself of a share in that organ’s potency — she whipped off her shorts and climbed on top of him with her back to him, and guided his penis inside her, beginning, as she did so to roll away from him, then back towards him, heaving up and down until he began to hear gurgling sounds, or the waves made him think he heard gurgling sounds.

He looked at her naked bottom below the hem of her anorak, eyed the back of her neck, the thick plait swinging back and forth on her back. His senses were so alive, so receptive, that he was sure he could feel her clitoris rubbing against his glans as she all but rolled away from him, he remembered that the Romans had had another name for the clitoris — naviculus , little boat, which seemed most apt, since he had the feeling that she was taking him on a voyage, across a great ocean.

Jonas experienced an indescribable pleasure from being made love to like this, amid sea pinks and driftwood, sea spray and round, warm stones which by now seemed quite soft. She rocked and heaved before his eyes, and each time she sank down he felt as though warm water were washing over him. Jonas had never made love to anyone who moved like this, sailing off with him, you might say, riding him over the rolling waves, an image which was enhanced by the fact that the wind buffeted her anorak, so that she appeared to be sitting on a little raft, using her own body as the sail. And then it came, as it always did; she must have activated him, he thought, just as the puck was activated when he laid the brooch on top of it; something rose to the surface, suddenly, and with utter clarity. It may have been the sight of his penis that made him think of a post he had once seen. And something about a ship. Because when he made love like this he truly did feel that he was drifting along, travelling, going beyond himself. Or shortened the distance between what he was and what he could become. He sailed on until he felt that he was floating, that with her body she had lifted him into the air, that they were flying, like swans, yes, that was it, swans, into the realms of the imagination, to find a connection, the actual story, between his self and his self. For within his own stones too a tale lay buried.

In a flicker of delight he saw how she raised her hands, as if she too wanted to rise upwards; she was a boat, half-flying, half-drifting along, in a way that might have prompted her to say, as another girl did say in a similar situation: ‘It’s like your cock has wings.’ Because not even in the midst of the most passionate lovemaking did any woman see Jonas Wergeland’s penis as an organ built for striking or stabbing. None of his women would ever have thought of crying, as they do in the fantasy world of porno movies: ‘Fuck me harder!’ They were more likely to say: ‘Love me lighter, softer.’ Or, as they frequently said: ‘Lift me higher!’

The way she sat, with her back to him, made Jonas think that he was being made love to backwards, and as the semen left his body, he did not feel as though he were spurting something out uncontrollably, but rather as if he were brushing something onto a background, that this was a process akin to tracing, summoning up, something: figures, patterns that lay hidden inside him.

For so it is: even though life is lived forward, it is always understood backward. You turn around and behold — in awe or fear — a pattern that you are not aware of having made. Not until Jonas Wergeland killed a dragon did he understand that the following chapter was part of that story.

Jonas developed an interest in design and ornamentation at an early age, thanks to an aunt who was a goldsmith. There were periods when he spent more time in her flat in Tøyen than he did at home. And when Aunt Laura was sitting in the workshop corner of her living room, wearing her elk-skin apron and hammering silver or gold into original and much sought-after pieces of jewellery, in a light so mystical that it made Jonas think of the smiths in Norse mythology, he sat at the big table, working with charcoal — until his patience ran out, and for the hundredth time he asked her if she wouldn’t tell him a tale of Samarkand. His aunt was always happy to tell him stories of her travels in the Middle East and Central Asia but never about Samarkand. She steadfastly refused. ‘You’ll have to go there yourself,’ was all she said. ‘The day you reach Samarkand, your life will be turned upside down.’

In this, arguably the most important of all the rooms of his childhood, with walls covered in copper and brass and Oriental rugs, and with a scent found nowhere else in the whole of Norway but here, since his aunt prided herself on never owning a perfume that any other Norwegian woman might own, Jonas would often sit covering large, white sheets of paper with charcoal drawings or sketches for which he used soft pencils — always with the certainty at the back of his mind that it was but a short step from graphite to diamond, since both were forms of carbon, consisting of different crystalline patterns. Aunt Laura kept pulling out more books containing reproductions of works by famous artists and laying them in front of him: ‘Try copying these, Jonas, now there’s something to strive for.’ Jonas liked the feeling of the stick of charcoal on the slightly rough paper, the sight of the black particles spreading finely over the fibres of the paper — strokes which, when magnified, were revealed to be tiny, unexpected works of art in themselves; and he always felt proud if his aunt was pleased with his drawings, which is to say: if she took them into another room and fixed them. He was good at copying, much better at that than at drawing free-hand, and — apropos a certain debate in Norwegian art circles — I can tell you that Jonas Wergeland actually could draw a hand — thanks to the many attempts he had made to copy Dürer’s hands. Because when it came to drawing, Dürer was his favourite — along with Rembrandt and Ruskin. Nonetheless, and however unlikely it may sound, Jonas was soon to discover lines which he found even more entrancing, and in Norway at that.