The Seducer

All Roads Lead to …

Jonas Wergeland took a relaxed attitude to sex, thanks to his family. No talk here of rather strained or diffident conversations about the birds and bees. Not a bit of it, there was no beating about the bush in that house. All boys have some older girl whom they idolize like a goddess; their own local Brigitte Bardot or whomever the times may have elevated to that position. Jonas and Daniel had their own sister, Rakel, and you didn’t get many of her to the pound, that was for sure. With her six years head start on them Rakel was of invaluable help to the two brothers, rather like an icebreaker clearing a passage through which they could sail.

While Jonas and Daniel had their noses buried in comic strips depicting the Wild West, the Second World War or Walt Disney’s more or less amazing world, Rakel had already delved deep into the Arabia of the Middle Ages as she was introduced to it in the Arabian Nights, in a splendid edition given to her, of course, by Aunt Laura. No Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew for Rakel; nothing but the Arabian Nights would do, and it may have been for this reason that Jonas acquired such an early distrust of any and all forms of reading, seeing that he was soon to discover what an alarming effect books can have on a person.

After only the first couple of volumes something happened to Rakel’s eyes, her eyelids drooped slightly, giving her a characteristic veiled look, and she viewed the world as if constantly intent on seducing everything and everyone in it. From then on, the brothers did not remember their sister as Rakel, but by turns as Emerald or Princess Full Moon or the Serpent Queen; when, that is, she was not being some far more complex character such as Tauaddud or Kutt-el-Kulub or Menar es-Sena. Their sister switched identities, taking on the parts of the various and pretty complex characters in a way that was quite awe-inspiring; to the point where she not only took to wearing a bewildering variety of imaginative costumes, but demanded to be addressed by the correct name: ‘I beg your pardon,’ she was liable to say indignantly if someone happened to forget. ‘My name is Sobeida,’ referring to the caliph’s favourite wife, assuming that Sobeida was the role model of the moment. Jonas never did figure out whether these changes of character had some bearing on the way his sister saw the world: whether she lived her life, as it were, according to the stories she was reading — breaking into song after reading about Maimoune, for example — or whether it was the things that happened to her in real life that sent her in search of new role models from the tales, so that she might, for instance, only come across the doughty Princess Abrisa after having had a fight with some boy. This was Jonas’s earliest encounter with the question of cause and effect, and he had a suspicion that there was no easy answer. The point I am trying to make, however, is that Rakel’s sense for the erotic and its significance can be traced to the Arabian Nights.

One of the most unforgettable lessons in life, that concerning the turtle of existence itself, Jonas and Daniel learned when their sister was fifteen years old and they were eight and nine respectively. ‘Today boys, I’m going to teach you about the centre of the world. Okay, trousers down!’

I think it might be as well to express, once and for all, my wonder at how touchy Norwegians are when it comes to sex, not least as a reminder of the background against which this little scenario of ours is played out. I think one can safely say that Norway is not one of those countries where sexuality has been most openly discussed, hence the tendency in this land to resort, at the drop of a hat, to antiquated pornography laws. Around this time, a couple of years later, that is, the censor took the step of cutting out thirty-two metres of Ingmar Bergman’s not exactly insignificant film The Silence, and it made no difference that these scenes happened to be crucial to the film as a whole, because they were of a sexual nature. As far as I know, Norway must also have been the only country in the world in which people seriously debated whether the miniskirt could have a detrimental effect on efficiency in the workplace and even today, posters depicting young ladies modelling underwear can provoke front-page headlines in the newspapers and so much debate you’d think the security of the nation was at stake. As for what Norway did to the writer Agnar Mykle, I would rather not go into that at all.

Rakel, on the other hand, had an unorthodox, one might say an un-Norwegian, approach to sexuality. She was very advanced for her years. She knew that the body was an instrument, and one which had to be mastered as quickly as possible; her matter-of-fact approach went hand in hand with an experimental, not to say humorous, view of the whole thing. Jonas found it hard to forget the time when she got the new vicar at Grorud, the one they had for bible study, into such a state that he was all set to give up his calling, or at any rate to move to another diocese. It happened one Sunday during church service and, as usual, there were only a handful of people in the church. Jonas and Rakel were sitting upstairs in the gallery, Rakel because she liked to observe the vicars from above, Jonas because he liked to watch his father playing. Their mother, if anyone is wondering, never accompanied them to church, she much preferred to lie in the bathtub at home with one of her seven lovers.

In the middle of the sermon, while their father was relaxing with a copy of the National Geographic in his office, and Jonas was sitting on the organ bench pretending to be driving the biggest racing car in the world and keeping half an eye on what was going on in the rest of the church through the nifty mirror fixed to the side of the organ, he noticed that his sister was unbuttoning her blouse and then, suddenly, there she was, sitting naked from the waist up; her breasts, which were already well-developed for her age, pointing straight down at the young vicar who, as he raised his eyes — possibly looking for inspiration, quite clearly lost the thread of his sermon; at best, his thoughts may have turned to ‘The Song of Solomon’ and the verses in which two breasts are compared to two young roe-deer feeding among the lilies. After this incident, the young vicar gave Rakel a wide berth whenever they happened to meet.

The order to her brothers to drop their trousers stemmed, on Rakel’s side, from pure compassion. She was, after all, related to these two kids and felt, at any rate now and again, a certain responsibility for their upbringing. ‘Okay Mutt and Jeff, now the fact is that I don’t want you to be caught with your pants down later,’ she said. ‘So allow me to give you a basic introduction to anatomy.’

Most boys first learn about the nature and the secrets of the sexual organs through vague rumours and thereafter from more or less appropriate and abstract handbooks. But here, once and for all, Jonas and Daniel were given a concrete demonstration at close quarters. ‘These, boys, are called the testicles,’ she said, squeezing their balls lightly. ‘The pouch they hang in is called the scrotum. With me so far?’ She gave them that heavy-lidded, seductive look of hers which did not, in fact, betray any hint of lust, it simply was the way she looked at them. ‘Scrotum,’ the boys muttered. ‘A very delicate arrangement, guard it well. Have you heard of jock-straps?’ They were doing just fine as long as they stuck to pointing and naming, it became a bit more tricky when she rolled the foreskin back from the head of Jonas’s penis and it rose up to its, for his age, decent length, thus presenting his sister with the perfect cue for a brief lecture on the influx of blood and fungal growths. ‘D’you know what “wanking” means?’ They nodded. They weren’t that dumb.

This proved to be just the beginning. Their sister now proceeded to take off her own trousers and underpants and lie down on the bed. ‘Sit there,’ she said, pointing to the foot of the bed. They did as they were told, whereupon Rakel spread her legs to reveal the number-one talking point among boys which, for that very reason, seemed to Jonas to look rather like a keyhole, while at the same time he was surprised by how little hair there was and how much flesh. Then their sister moistened her middle finger and ran it down the length of her slit, causing the outer lips to fold back on themselves as if she were unzipping them, thus revealing the underlying substance of her genitals in all its prosaic reality, and you can take it from me that Jonas’s and Daniel’s hearts were pounding as hard as those of Howard Carter and his team the first time they shone their torches into Tutankhamun’s tomb. ‘No need to blush, boys. There’s a first time for everything.’ Their sister regarded them from under lowered lids. ‘Now listen carefully,’ she said. ‘In the years to come you’re going to hear a lot of weird things about the meaning and the purpose of life. Most of it is utter bullshit. I’m going to say this once and once only, so pay attention: for you boys, for men in general in fact, it all comes down to just one thing.’ She pointed between her thighs. Instinctively the brothers nodded as one. ‘There might be many a detour and plenty of smokescreens, but at the end of the day all roads lead to just one place,’ she said. ‘And this is it.’

After this rather philosophical preamble the lesson switched to a more practical level, with a review of all the different parts, their names and their function, all of this while a pungent odour pervaded the room. ‘And this, boys,’ she said, towards the end of the demonstration, ‘is the clitoris. Clitoris means “shut away”, because its hidden behind this fold of skin. And the significance of this vital feature seems to be pretty well hidden as far as most men are concerned. But remember: with a woman, reverse logic applies: our secrets lie on the outside, not on the inside, as men believe. So I’m telling you now: stick to the outside.’

That was the day on which Jonas realized that the female is an outsider with a feel for the marginal. Later in life he would often speculate as to what the clitoris of life might be, and it was thanks largely to women like Rakel that he always sought the essence of things on the periphery and not in the centre.

Rakel also told her brothers that they should never charge at the clitoris like a bull at a gate, but that when the time was ripe they should proceed with the greatest caution and sensitivity and, above all, take their time. ‘You’ve heard of Aladdin’s Lamp? Well it’s the same with a woman, rub her the right way and afterwards she will do the most magical things to you.’ Due to its dispassionate and scientific nature, this session never came anywhere near what is known as incest. In all respects it represented an informative lecture on the female anatomy — a demythologizing, if you like — which gave Jonas and Daniel a good head start on other boys of their age and left them forever in their sister’s debt. Jonas and Daniel did not have a great deal in common, but their sister meant more to both of them than almost anyone else.

Jonas told no one about Rakel’s lesson, with one exception. The following day he and Nefertiti set off to try out a kite which they had built to Nefertiti’s design and which Jonas had bet they would never get off the ground. While they were unravelling the cord at the top of the hill, Jonas told her what had occurred. ‘Did she also tell you about Bartholin’s lymph glands?’ said Nefertiti, fluttering her long eyelashes.

‘What’re they?’

The kite flew into the air and hung silhouetted against the sky like a spirit out of a fairy tale. Nefertiti sent it into a dive towards the hilltop before deftly levelling it out and making it loop-the-loop a couple of times. She passed the cord to Jonas. ‘A sort of irrigation system,’ she said.

It took a lot to impress Nefertiti.

In the weeks that followed, when Jonas thought of Rakel presenting her genitals to them, as it were, it was the totally fragmentary, detached aspect of it which struck him; it took such a long time to digest all the talk about the woman’s pleasure and other such advanced concepts. He had been treated to a demonstration of an object which, even though to begin with he had no idea what it was for, seemed as fascinating and alluring and complex as Wolfgang Michaelsen’s little steam engine.

Rakel was, in many ways, the most intelligent and original member of the family. There were many things in life which Jonas found it hard to understand, but possibly the greatest mystery was how Rakel should have ended up the way she did. As a housewife. Married to a long-distance lorry driver — a great guy, but still. Or maybe it was only natural: that a woman who had spent so much of her life immersed in fairy tales, so intense, so full of energy; who had eyed the world so seductively for so many years, was bound to end up being totally ordinary, like a space probe that has burned out its booster rockets getting itself out of the Earth’s atmosphere and was now drifting quietly in orbit. Because it ought to be said: Rakel may have become invisible, blended in, so to speak, with the bedrock of Norway, but Jonas could not think of many people who were happier than she, and in Rakel’s case this was no empty platitude — no matter how much Jonas tried to explain it away, what Rakel had was genuine enviable happiness, utter contentment.