The Seducer

The Strangest Thing

I could, with some justification, say that it was the connoisseur in Jonas Wergeland who first discovered Margrete Boeck since here too — although he had no notion why it should happen when he looked at a girl, and one with a sliver of glass stuck in her nostril at that — he was conscious of a quite indisputable tingle between his shoulder-blades. A few days later there could be no doubt about it: Jonas was in love, and this was the great love, that ‘once in a lifetime’ when the nerves are given an extra turn of the screw, and you are knocked almost senseless by emotion, wandering the face of the Earth like one great feeling encased in skin.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to touch that first real falling in love. Take the most glorified romantic experiences of adult life — and none of them bears the remotest resemblance to the incandescent quality, not to say supernatural dimensions, that are the mark of that first breathtaking love. And the thing I like most about this phenomenon is that, at this stage of their lives, boys, even the most ruthless careerists in the making, actually take time and exercise patience so that the innocent path from a girl’s fingertips to those indescribable square centimetres between her thighs can take, say, a whole year. This is due not only to a becoming shyness and lack of self-assurance, it owes as much to an awareness, stemming from a God-given natural instinct, of the unique and never-to-be-repeated nature of this experience, which leads them to do all they can to prolong the delight. Incredible as it may sound, even boys of this age realize that love is more than just a physical thing, that above all else it has to do with longing.

After the fatal — or felicitous, depending on how you look at it — bicycle crash of the spring, Jonas gradually became more and more infatuated with Margrete, the new girl who established herself in record time as the kingpin of her class, not least after they finished reading a tear-jerker of a story from their school reader, written by Dikken Zwilgmeyer, about a poor girl whom everybody teased and who finally died, whereupon Margrete thumped her desk with her fist and declared that nobody had any bloody right to go writing such a load of sentimental rubbish. And so, following the accepted procedure, a few weeks after the beginning of sixth grade, and following a summer break during which Jonas had done little else but lie flat on his back on Hvaler, just thinking and thinking and thinking about her — while the Beatles’ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ played on the transistor radio and not even a heated summer debate regarding topless bathing suits could take his mind off her — he dispatched a chum to speak to one of Margrete’s girlfriends, a middleman, not unlike the sort employed in matters of diplomacy, and let it be known that he was ‘nuts about her’, as the parlance of the day had it, as if it were generally recognized that love and madness are adjoining rooms with extremely porous walls. And then it was merely a matter of waiting, with his blood racing through his veins at twice its normal speed, until Margrete’s friend came back, after the obligatory and fairly protracted pause for thought to announce that, okay, Margrete wouldn’t mind going out with Jonas.

With that, Jonas Wergeland was swept off into the most intoxicating months of his life, days and weeks which would later come to seem like a unique blend of intensity, hyped-up emotions and, above all, magic because, from the day and hour that Margrete said yes, the whole world simply stretched out at his feet like a red carpet, or perhaps I should say a Persian carpet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could go wrong.

So there they are, on an autumn day in Grorud, Jonas Wergeland and Margrete Boeck, strolling through a wood like golden amber on their way up to Lilloseter, where Jonas treats them both to, of all things, beef stew and root beer as if to mark the end of childhood. It is on the way down, when they are just about level with Aurevann Lake, its smooth waters mirroring the golden-yellow woods, that Margrete, with a deliberately casual swing of her arm, finds his hand for the first time and they hold hands, the concrete proof that a boy and a girl are actually going steady, and she continues to hold his hand, triumphantly, boldly, all the way past Steinbruvannet and down past the blocks of flats on Bergensveien, where they are observed by quite a few of their classmates, and the word is out once and for all: it’s official, they are going steady, they are a couple, they are sweethearts.

I know it is banal and that I am repeating myself, but it is nonetheless necessary to restate the fact: you can take the most sublime act of love — and the list, as I am sure most people would admit, is extremely short — and compare it with the first time you felt the fingers of a person of the opposite sex curl round your own fingers and, not least, the thrill of those seconds, and we all know which one would come out the winner. I think I am safe in saying that many people would give a great deal to be able to relive that moment, the first time one holds hands with a childhood sweetheart, making contact not only with the palm of a small hand but with an ocean of strange warm feelings.

Jonas soon becomes aware that he is unbeatable. He plays what they call ‘pigeon rings’, more rightly known as ‘s’s and c’s’, the classic game being ‘ten plus ten’, so called because of the way the rings can be neatly linked together to form a ‘tenner’ bunch in which the finely-tuned shooter bunch stands out, sprawled across the tarmac like a streamlined sports car, but Jonas also plays ‘fifty-fifty’ with huge bunches that fly across the playground; he never misses, can hit anything, the trick being to sight along the left foot; corridors full of schoolchildren looking on, the first-graders in particular in open-mouthed awe of daredevils who would risk staking five rings on one game, one shot; gasping every time his chain slams with hair-raising precision into the other guy’s bunch from the most impossible distances; he wins tons of these multi-coloured plastic rings that were all the rage, collectors’ items back then, tosses them to the first-graders like small change to beggars, he can afford it, because he is unbeatable, he is a wizard, jumps the triple, hovering in mid-air as if Mercury himself had loaned him his winged shoes; becomes the first man to cover the distance between the two white marker lines in the playground in six strides, an amazing feat, and in rounders he comes this close to doing what no one in the whole history of the school has yet managed to do, the unattainable mythical dream, to break a window in the pavilion at the far end, striking the ball in a way that would have drawn an approving nod from Babe Ruth himself.

Meanwhile, he goes around holding hands with Margrete, it is enough just to hold hands, a joy that transcends all else, simply to hold hands, hold her unique hand, a lucky rabbit’s foot, during recess, or to walk hand-in-hand with her across Trondheimsveien to Tallaksen’s, where they alternate between buying such exotic delights as peanuts in their shells, two nuts in one shell, just like them, and Sweet Mint chewing gum, its wrapper printed with hearts, which they blow up into enormous pink balloons that will never burst, that are in danger of carrying them heavenwards. Even in a situation where the odds are stacked against him, Jonas manages to turn it to his advantage: a dinner at the home of Mr and Mrs Gjermund Boeck when Margrete’s mother appears dressed in what is, to Jonas’s mind, a hideous Mary Quant outfit, black and white with an ultra-short skirt, and otherwise blends into the background, thus making her father seem that much more predominant, red in the face and sporting a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. Having instantly sized Jonas up as a potentially subversive element within the family’s well-ordered dictatorship, he makes a point of delivering a long and, Jonas has to admit, impassioned speech on the necessity of bombing Vietnam — bloody Communist swine — back to the Stone Age and then some before — and this is where, by sheer coincidence, Jonas’s luck turns — putting on a record by Duke Ellington, thereby giving Jonas the opportunity to make a few tentative remarks on Jimmy Blanton’s all too early demise and deliver a brief panegyric on alto-sax player Johnny Hodges’s solo on ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’, with the result that the urbane Gjermund Boeck settles back on the sofa, somewhat impressed, thinking damned if he isn’t starting to take to the boy.

This is followed by the slow progression of a drama wrapped in the great political dramas — both domestic and international — all of which are, of course, totally irrelevant as far as our young players are concerned: namely, the physical drama being played out between Jonas and Margrete. It is New Year’s Eve, under the relatively close supervision of a friend’s parents, and as the corks on the champagne-soda bottles pop, she embraces him; she, Margrete, opens wide her foreign-made beige cape like a gate and pulls him to her, hugs him tight against her lovely blue dress for several seconds, so tightly that he can feel her body, her curves, her bone-structure, that combination of hard and soft, against his own body and wishes that they could stand like this forever, wrapped inside a beige cape, on a New Year’s Eve, on a veranda, breast to breast, in a close embrace that would never be broken, until at last he lifts her into the air while, in a fit of pagan ecstasy, the people of Norway blow millions of kroner on painting the skies around them red and green and yellow.

But it had to end, because it was winter and, even though Jonas has never bowed to the national imperative as regards skiing, hates snow in fact, he goes skiing with Margrete, dons that most laughable article of clothing, knickerbockers — referred to in Norwegian, even more laughably, simply as knickers — and this he endures only because she is even more hopeless on skis than him, if that were possible — Bangkok not exactly being renowned for its skiing — and, what is more, because she looks so beautiful skiing, or trudging along, past Sørskogen, in an old grey anorak, with frost on her hair and eyebrows, to sit at Sinober, with glowing cheeks and fathomless blue eyes, drinking hot blackcurrant. Jonas not only endures it; by some miracle he actually manages, for the first time ever, to stay upright going down the lethal slopes to Movatn Lake, outdoing himself in swerving elegantly around those blasted dogs that are always liable to show up when you least expect it, in the middle of the track, on the worst bends, because all of a sudden he is a wizard, unbeatable, even on skis, a fact which they celebrate by hugging one another again, right out there in the forest, surrounded by snow and ice, as if wishing to check whether it really is true, or as good as the last time, or to see if they can make the snow on the trees melt just by standing underneath them for long enough, breast to breast, arms around one another, skis and poles entangled.

It was as if Jonas’s luck transmitted itself to the nation as a whole that winter. Take, for instance, the time when he and Margrete went to watch the speed-skating at Bislett, and Per Ivar — Per Ivar Moe, that is — won the world championship: Per Ivar of Oslo Skating Club, the man with the vaguely Mongolian features whom Jonas had even seen once, putting up a neon sign at Grorud shopping centre. They stand there, Margrete leaning back against Jonas’s chest, and watch Per Ivar skimming round in a dazzlingly white track top, a white knight, with people shouting ‘Moe, Moe, Moe’ and not, as one might think, ‘Mao, Mao, Mao’ like a people on the other side of the world, although here, too, in Norway, there is talk of a revolution, a skating revolution, stage-managed by a man called Stein Johnson, and I would like to make it clear that this was an extraordinary event, inasmuch as it was the first and only occasion on which Jonas Wergeland allowed himself to be swept away by a crowd and even go so far as to roar like a man possessed. It was during the ecstatic singing of ‘Victory is Ours’ that Margrete, without warning, took his head between her hands and kissed him, right there and then, in the middle of Bislett stadium, an arena that reeks of chauvinism and Norwegian triumphs: and not only Norwegian, come to that — in the summer of that year the Australian Ron Clarke would set a new world record there, in the 10,000 metres, during an international tournament, the first man to do it in under twenty-eight minutes, so Jonas could not help but feel, when that day came around, that it was owing to their presence there, their kiss, months earlier; that they had, as it were, blessed the stadium, left it sprinkled with magic dust or something of the sort. After all, it is not every Norwegian who can say he was kissed for the first time at Bislett stadium to the strains of ‘Victory is Ours’ during a tournament in which a Norwegian athlete won the day.

At least, Jonas thought he had been kissed because they were still only in the first phase of kissing, the very nature of the kiss being prolonged, like a menu with lots and lots of courses until they reached what is termed ‘French kissing’, a form which, I venture to point out, is by no means regarded as the supreme kissing experience, or main course, in all parts of the world but which certainly in Grorud, at that age represented the ultimate thrill, regarded almost as a status symbol; everyone knew that the record was held by Hansie and Randy Ruth who had French-kissed non-stop for forty minutes and then some. In other words, what Jonas discovered — at a time when he was still unbeatable, a wizard, so much so that if he came by some lads throwing snowballs at the ridge of a relatively high gable-end, he needed only to make one single snowball because he knew that it would hit the apex of the gable dead-on and not only that: he would strike it slantwise, effectively blocking it off and leaving no loophole for the others — what he, or they, discovered was the tongue’s place in the mouth and that it could be used for more than talking: an avenue which they spent months exploring, even when they lay entwined and laughing in a snowdrift after being forced off the track by others in the gang during some pretty foolhardy sledge rides from Lilloseter down to the barrier at Ammerud, where the lethal iced-over snow of late winter sent sparks flying from the runners. Not only did they discover the tongue they discovered the ears and the throat and the back of the neck, and every time was like the first.

Then spring came to Grorud, with melting snow and kids building dams in the streets, the slap of skipping ropes and hopscotch squares chalked out on dry patches of tarmac; snotty toddlers in wellingtons parked in the sandpits with diggers and bulldozers and the air smelling as only spring air can. Jonas was riding a wave of success, winning fabulous sums of money at pitch-and-toss, five øre coins or sometimes one kroner, zooming through the air like remote-controlled flying saucers, gluing themselves to the line or sticking to the penknife, coming up heads time and time again. He was a wizard; he was unbeatable. He sat in a wicker chair in Grorud cinema, and it was here, during a film entitled Home From the Hill starring Robert Mitchum, that Jonas gently, very, very gently, laid his hand on Margrete’s thigh for the first time, and when she did not react, negatively I mean; when she did not turn a hair but just sat there with her eyes fixed on a nonchalant Robert Mitchum, Jonas stroked her thigh gently, but anything but nonchalantly, back and forth, and when she did not make any objection to this either Jonas had to let his hand lie still to save her from hearing the pounding of his heart.

For a couple of warm weeks at the beginning of June they spent their time by the pool at Badedammen with Margrete’s new portable Bambino record-player, listening to Beatles for Sale, and it was here, in a spot that they had all to themselves, towards the end of the day when they are lying stretched out, replete with sunshine, swimming, custard creams and orangeade, that a girl who just happens to be wearing the most gorgeous yellow bikini in the whole world runs her hand for the first time over Jonas Wergeland’s body, and he is struck by something he has never noticed: that the skin of the human body is made up of about a million erogenous zones, that the skin is one vast and quivering sexual organ which all but bursts at the touch of her hand.

The Sunday before Midsummer’s Eve, a summer gala day, organized by the Grorud School boys’ brass band, is held in Sangerparken on the banks of Badedammen: cheering crowds and a procession of lorries decorated with flowers and lilac and birch leaves and packed with kids in fancy-dress, transformed into a crowd of cowboys and indians, gypsies and pirates — a proper carnival with a real community spirit and, above all, a truly festive spirit which leaves the slightly hysterical and forced Norwegian attempts in the early eighties to imitate the Latin Americans totally in the shade — with the band playing and the choir singing among the trunks of the pine trees and Jonas sweeping the board on the shooting range, raising the rifle and planting each of the five red-flighted little darts smack in the middle of their respective targets, making Margrete, standing at his side in a white summer frock, laugh: laugh at her boyfriend who is a sharpshooter and he didn’t even know it, he is a wizard, he is unbeatable, scoring a bull’s-eye so many times that the man in charge of the booth has to call a halt because Jonas has the aim of a Zen master or is just so happy that he could hit a target in the dark. Then, with their arms laden with daft prizes, they wander across to the dance-floor where, some years previously, Jonas’s sister Rakel had danced to the music of Big Chief’s jazz band with none other than Roald Aas on the day she was crowned Grorud’s gala queen: Roald Aas, who won the gold medal in the 1500 metres at the Olympics in Squaw Valley and who, more to the point as far as Jonas’s sister was concerned, was as dashing as a prince from the Arabian Nights. But right now it is Five-Times Nilsen and Tango-Thorvaldsen who are strutting their stuff up on the bandstand, the latter regarding this as the highlight of the year since it not only gives him the chance to show off the latest fashion in gents shoes but he also gets to dance with every lady from Hukenveien all the way down to Grorud station, a route followed roughly now by Jonas and Margrete before they stop at the top of Teppabakken. And it is here, on a bright summer evening, while they are kissing behind the church after the local gala day celebrations, that Jonas Wergeland ventures to slip his hand down inside her pants; and at this point, when it comes to this occurrence behind the church, up against those solid blocks of Grorud granite, with Jonas’s light and fleeting brush of Margrete’s vulva — and I deliberately use such a high-flown word as vulva — that I opt out because there are no words and no metaphors to cover this: every boy’s first fingertip contact with a girl’s vulva. There is a limit to my omniscience and this is it, so I will have to leave them to drift onwards, Jonas and Margrete, hand in hand, towards the last days of school and the green report cards, in which Jonas is given nothing but M’s for merit without having lifted a finger as if this were a comment on the whole of that one, long delicious experience: mmmmmmmmmm.