The seducer, p.60
The Seducer, page 60
When Sigrid A. had walked into the fire-lit lounge the previous evening, tall and fair, with piercing blue eyes and a distinctive nose, Jonas had immediately been aware of that soft feather, which made its presence felt in his life only occasionally, being run up his spine by an invisible hand before coming to rest in the form of a prolonged tickling sensation between his shoulder-blades. But she – it must be said – had noticed him right away, too, and in a manner quite at odds with her normally shy nature she had, without a moment’s hesitation, walked straight over and sat down in the chair opposite him.
Sigrid A. was that pretty rare animal, a glaciologist. She had started out by studying medicine, it’s true, but had soon switched courses, recognizing the great outdoors to be her natural element. No doubt there are also some who know of her as a mountaineer; Sigrid A. was, in fact, to be the driving force behind countless daring exploits in one wilderness and another, in widely diverging parts of the world, as the leader of sponsored expeditions that generated banner headlines in the Norwegian press and led, in time, to her being called upon to fulfil other tasks, as a so-called PR ambassador for Norway, a somewhat obscure, but nonetheless lucrative diplomatic post. Sigrid A. not only felt a deep need always to be the first, but also to do things which allowed her to push her body to the limits of its capabilities as if this were a goal in itself; more than once she had been almost shocked by what her own flesh and blood could actually stand. During her conversation with Jonas in the lounge she did not, however, mention this at all. What she did say was that she liked going for long ski trips in the moonlight, and when Jonas confessed that skiing was rather a sore point with him, she saw her chance and invited him to go skiing with her the following day.
So there Jonas Wergeland was, against all the odds – and what was a great deal more foolhardy and irresponsible, without having told anyone – heading up the hill towards Gaustatoppen in dangerously bad weather, led by a woman who could cope with three times as much as he in terms of physical endurance.
The slope was so steep that he had to take it sideways on; the gap between them grew. She stopped, turned. ‘Come on!’ she called, a note of anger in her voice. Jonas pushed himself even harder, not so much because he wanted to show that he was a man, as because he felt like a dog, he had to obey. His arms ached, and in the grey light the snow seemed even whiter, dazzling. He was not happy, either, about this blend of hot and cold, with half of his body, the back side, soaked with sweat, while the snow and the wind threatened to turn his front to ice. She had stopped to wait for him. His nose was running; he felt thoroughly pissed off. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go any further,’ he said, swallowing his pride. ‘You can do it!’ she said harshly, almost contemptuously. ‘Come on!’ She gave him a little rap on the backside with her pole.
Up on the ridge itself, the wind came at them from the northwest like a bat out of hell, crystals of ice dug in to their faces like crampons. Evening was drawing on. Jonas could not see the point in this: why they could not turn back, why they were out here defying the forces of nature when they could sitting in front of the fire back at Kvitåvatn Mountain Lodge drinking hot cocoa and playing Scrabble, or some other dumb game. It was as if she had to finish whatever she had set out to do; every inch of her radiated a determination unlike anything he had ever come across before.
Jonas plodded on, his chin lowered onto his chest. Everything was white – white, white – all the contours of the landscape had been obliterated by the swirling snow. He was growing bitterly cold, particularly around his groin. Amateur that he was, he had dressed as if for a quick run across Lillomarka. He floundered on, like a dog, he thought again and again, concentrating: right pole, left ski, he thought, left pole, right ski; he saw her turn, not to look at him – it was as if she instinctively knew he was there anyway – but at the invisible sun, with a look on her face that seemed to say she was aiming not for the top of Gausta but for something much higher, much greater. He felt afraid.
Then, when they could not have been far from the top, the blast grew even fiercer or perhaps the weather simply was that much wilder up there. They trekked through a sea of whiplashes, everything was white, the earth, the sky, Jonas had slid into a sort of physical second gear; his engine was on automatic, right pole, left ski, left ski, right pole, thoughts churning around in his head willy-nilly. He looked down at the strange, windswept patterns in the driving snow and was struck by a feeling of being on an unknown planet or of suddenly having uncovered Norway’s innermost secret: that Norway was another planet. Jesus Christ, why couldn’t they turn back, she was out of her mind, this girl; he glanced back, that’s life for you, he thought, giving in to the banality, the macabre humour of the situation; you left a track on a cold and inhospitable planet, which promptly swept it away behind you.
The driving snow reached into every nook and cranny. Jonas had visions of precipices. Wasn’t there supposed to be a sharp drop on either side of the actual peak, the west side especially? Right ski, left ski, right ski, left ski, he could no longer feel his arms, his face was nothing but a cold, stiff mask, numb. Sigrid A. was looking round about, she seemed quite unperturbed, as if everything were going exactly according to plan or as if she were going on instinct, steering by some in-built compass; he was struck by her strong profile, a heroic profile, tailor-made for the heads of coins, he thought, and then once again he caught a glimpse of that look on her face, as if she relished this ordeal, this self-torment, this sub-human struggle. Suddenly she pulled up next to a high snowdrift. ‘We made it!’ she called down to him. ‘Congratulations, young man! The Tourist Board hut!’
Jonas refused to believe that they were saved, giggled with mild hysteria at the very idea. A snowdrift. A heap of snow. She motioned to him to follow her round to the eastern side of the bank of snow, and through the snow Jonas made out some rough stones. Had it not been for the corner of a window peeking out, he would have taken it for a cairn. But this was, in fact, the Gaustatoppen tourist hut, built of granite: huge blocks hacked out of the mountain itself, now totally buried in snow. ‘Now all we have to do is hoist the flag,’ she said, her face glowing as if she really loved such ordeals and was almost sorry to have reached the top.
After shovelling away another snowdrift piled up against the entrance, which was hung with a mocking sign offering ‘light snacks’, they found that the heavy blue, metal door was open. ‘Did you know about this?’ Jonas said.
She did not reply. Just flashed that happy smile.
Another surprise awaited them. Inside, the little room was warm, it actually felt warm after the icy wind. There was a switch; the light came on. ‘The extension’s new,’ she said. ‘It was added when the army were building up here. They laid heating cables under the cement floor, as you know.’
The door to the hut itself was locked. But Jonas was more than content, ran an eye gratefully round the wood-panelled room; there was a narrow oblong window high up in the eastern wall. Some blankets were piled on a bench along with some old sleeping bags. ‘People sometimes spend the night here,’ Sigrid A. said, unpacking her little rucksack, which proved to contain a little of this and a little of that. Soon they were sitting on the bench, each with a cup of tea and sharing a bar of chocolate and an orange. Thus, as a reward almost, for all that he had gone through, for the first time ever Jonas Wergeland was treated to the experience of a typical Norwegian Easter ritual.
As the light outside the window began to wane, Sigrid A. made up a bed on the warm floor with the blankets and sleeping bags. ‘Well, now we’ve just got to find some way of passing the time,’ she said, giving him a look that was as much an order as a request.
They got undressed. She swore at him when she saw how few clothes he had on, not even woollen underwear; but this anger turned to pity when she caught sight of his tiny penis, which had drawn as far into itself as it could, like a collapsed telescope. She tucked him up under the blankets, stroking it with her hand as she did so, warming it, putting her face down to it and blowing on it, taking it in her mouth, keeping it there for a long time, so long that she gradually made it rise and before too long she had climbed on top of him and guided it inside her, and Jonas felt a glorious, red-hot glow concentrating in one spot, felt his frozen body being thawed, as it were, by the warmth that flowed from this one spot. They lay still, that is to say, she crouched on top of him, bent over in such a way that her breasts just grazed his chest, two hot spots, a triangle of heat; and as she clenched him tightly with the muscles of her vagina, he had a marvellously tactile sensation of something tight, soft and miraculously warm, such a wonderfully delightful warmth flowing into his limbs, and it crossed his mind that this, the sum of this heat, must be what held the world together. And it was at that moment, if anyone should be in any doubt, that Jonas Wergeland truly understood what it was that he had always sought from these women: warmth. And as she slowly began to move, he could not help thinking how this sweet friction resembled two sticks being rubbed together to make fire; he vaguely remembered something about how, during their sacrificial rituals, the ancient Aryans had done just that, kindled a fire by grinding one stick in a hole made in another stick – symbolizing, of course, the lingam inside the yoni – and there was also something about this quite unbelievably delicious warmth of Sigrid A.’s vagina that made Jonas feel it was no ordinary warmth, the sort that could thaw ice, but a warmth that could actually kindle a fire, a creative flame within him, make it flare up inside him, enabling him to see things, experience something akin to visions or revelations, a warmth that would extend him, lighting up new chambers within him.
She began by making love to him long and lingeringly, with a dreamy look in her eyes, as if she were planning great exploits, or as if he were a great exploit, a wide-open space in himself. Outside, darkness had fallen, the wind howled around the walls of the hut, crystals of ice spattered against the window; he lay there, warm from head to toe, while she made love to him with greater and greater intensity, her whole body eventually working furiously as she rode him, purposefully, tirelessly, as if this too were a wilderness that she had to conquer, a peak she had to climb. She made love to him all night long, so many times that Jonas could not believe that they – or at any rate he – could go on, but she would make him rise up again, whipping him on as relentlessly as when she dragged him to the top of the mountain, making love to him so fiercely and so divinely that his whole body seemed to glow. And it was during this exhausting coupling with Sigrid A. that Jonas not only learned how much his body could stand, that he could hold out for far longer than he had imagined and that the volume of semen in his glands had not run out, even though he was crying out that it had; during the course of that pleasurable and demanding night a new determination was also born in Jonas Wergeland, making him realize that it was time he put his experiences into some sort of order, set himself some big goal, select, as it were, a peak. And, what with the fiery glow in his body, the great, bright light of creativity in his head and the thought of the transmitter standing at the top of Gausta, right outside the window, he had the feeling that their lovemaking was being broadcast, that the image of their coupling was being beamed into all those thousands of homes.
The next morning they stepped out into the most beautiful weather. Everything, the whole, wide world, was shimmering blue and white – sparkling white – and charged with a breathtaking silence. The television mast a hundred metres above their heads glinted like one of Carl Nesjar’s year-round fountains, a sculpture of ice. Jonas was sure that Le Corbusier would have appreciated this sight, that Le Corbusier, like Jonas, would have been filled with awe at the thought of such a heroic project: a wild, elongated and sparsely populated country linked together by a telecommunications network. An epic undertaking, Jonas thought. And beautiful, Jonas thought, as beautiful as nature itself.
It was said that you could see a seventh part of Southern Norway from the top, and it certainly seemed so. As Jonas spun round and round on his own axis, like a little kid, wide-eyed and speechless, he discovered – and this he automatically put down to the events of the previous night – that suddenly this landscape meant a great deal to him, he actually felt a kind of love for these vast open spaces, these mountains. And the snow, even the snow. He bent down and scooped it up, having to screw up his eyes against the light, and as he crouched there, hunkered down on Gaustatoppen, clutching a handful of snow, it dawned on him why so many people migrated to the mountains at Easter time: on account of the light, the dazzling light. And from that day forth, Jonas Wergeland was always to regard this as being his countrymen’s finest trait: their longing for light which, not unreasonably, manifested itself at Easter time, during a religious festival; and in days to come this insight was to form the basis for his optimistic estimation of television’s potential, inasmuch as television was a form of light, dazzling light.
The trip down was something of an anticlimax. Even though he took the slopes diagonally, crisscrossing his way down, it went so fast that his eyes were tearing behind his sunglasses; his leg muscles ached and he fell God knows how many times, slithering and bouncing. Sigrid A. was way ahead of him, executing elegant practised Telemark swings as though she were taking part in a display and only lacked the felt hat, the homespun breeches and the traditional sweater. When he finally caught up with her at the foot of Longefonn she was standing talking to the rescue team that had been about to institute a search for them.
The Mystery
And remember, promise me you will remember, in the midst of all this, how Jonas Wergeland dwelt on the Norwegian landscape in his programme on Knut Hamsun, a programme which also provided him with a golden opportunity for shots of the country’s natural wonders, although a lot of people were surprised at the way in which he did this. Jonas was never in any doubt as to what constituted Knut Hamsun’s key story, the one story which in its own special way shed a revealing light on his life: his meeting with Adolf Hitler. Because Hamsun would never have met Hitler had he not been a great writer. Nor would he have met him had he not sympathized with the Nazis. His meeting with Hitler was an extreme situation which highlighted most clearly the extremes of Hamsun’s own character, the breadth of this most vexatious of all Norwegian authors.
Jonas Wergeland focussed, therefore, on the writer during his last and possibly his most amazing journey to foreign parts, into the heart of darkness, so to speak. Hamsun was eighty-three years old – that in itself is astonishing – and had been attending the German minister of propaganda’s press congress in Vienna. Hamsun had then been invited to meet with Adolf Hitler and duly found himself at Berghof, the Führer’s renowned headquarters in Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden in Austria. It was Saturday June 26th 1943, the time 2.00 p.m.. The two shook hands, author and dictator, and Wergeland showed this handshake in slow motion, over and over again, the close-up of their hands, as if to emphasize the irrefutability, the irrevocability of this event which shocked so many Norwegians to the roots of their being.
Jonas cheated a little with the setting. There were eight people in the drawing-room at Berghof, but he showed only three: the two protagonists plus assistant secretary Holmbo, who had acted as interpreter, and to save having to reconstruct that remarkable room with all its paintings and tapestries, its oak beams and heavy furniture, he seated the three of them with their teacups right up against the ten metre long panorama window in the gable end, overlooking the valley, and he replaced the view from this window, which should in fact have shown Unterberg and Berchtesgaden, with a glimpse of Salzburg in the distance, with long, almost dreamlike panning shots of the Norwegian landscape, an effect achieved by allowing the camera to almost drift off through the window occasionally, while Hamsun and Hitler were conversing, to present shots of the scenery of north Norway, from Kjerringøy with its beautifully preserved trading post, Kråkmotinden, snub-nosed and majestic – it was at the foot of this mountain that Hamsun had written The Fruits of the Soil, spellbinding, sweeping shots of Lofotveggen, and from Hamarøy, of Hamarøyskaftet in particular, rearing high into the air like a brazen old codpiece, as refractory as Hamsun himself. These sequences were run to the accompaniment of readings from Pan, descriptions of nature, and even though Jonas was well aware of the high cliché factor in this, he could not stop himself, the temptation was simply too great. This was also the only occasion in the Thinking Big series when he consciously set out to woo the public. And it did not fail, could not fail, what with the almost unbelievable landscape of northern Norway and Hamsun’s magical words from Pan. These passages went down particularly well abroad, quite taking the viewers’ breath away, they made the whole programme – in fact they paved the way for all the later programmes in the series. What saved these scenic interludes, however, from being run-of-the-mill, was the ‘impossible’ aspect, the fact that they were viewed from a balcony near Berchtesgaden in Austria. It was as if Jonas wished to hint at the connection between an extreme landscape and an extreme situation. Either that or the paradox of it: the contrast.
In order to underline this paradoxical aspect still further, Jonas did not reconstruct any of the extraordinary dialogue, forty-five minutes of it, during which Hamsun, instead of chatting about the art of writing, spoke out provocatively on such subjects as Norwegian shipping and the political future of Norway in general, in many ways an attack on Reich Commissar Terboven and an attempt to have him removed, while Hitler persisted in beating about the bush and evading the issues. In the programme all one heard in the background was a low murmur on two different levels: Hamsun’s high-pitched voice – he was all but deaf – and Hitler’s droning attempt to hog the conversation. Thus, in spite of everything, one was given the clear impression of a conflict: an old man, despairing and deeply moved, continually interrupting to insist on a point, and a dictator who was being contradicted and not getting his own way, growing more and more annoyed, raging inwardly – an outstanding scene in itself, worth dwelling on for that alone. According to Dr Dietrich, Hitler’s press secretary for twelve years, who was present in the room, only one man had ever gainsaid Hitler, the most powerful man in the world: the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun.
