He lay in the byre, all of his senses on the alert, picking up the sight of dust dancing in a band of light, the smells and sounds of ruminant creatures and, above all else, her ecstatic face, as if the sacred and the profane had been brought together in one room; and just before he came, as he felt the seed seeming to surge up from a deeper source than usual, in the midst of his thoughts regarding his own epic, or lack of his own epic, she jumped off, as if her subconscious were taking its own precautions, or perhaps feminine intuition had told her that this was her most fertile time of the month, with the result that his semen spurted over the small of her back, leaving an exclamation mark there, before she smeared it in with her hand and lifted her fingers greedily to her nose, holding them under her quivering nostrils.
Jonas Wergeland’s first clear memory was of the moment when he unlocked the door of his car outside the Fossheim Hotel. But as he bowled down the road towards Otta, even when he could clearly see her farm, or what he thought was her farm, a collection of wood, stone and turf that almost merged with the landscape, he was not sure what had occurred earlier or whether anything at all had happened, whether the whole thing belonged to another life, to another time entirely.
Juggernaut
On the other hand, there were certain days in his life that Jonas Wergeland wished he could recall with less clarity, fearing as he did that they took up too much room in his memory, that they overshadowed, or blocked out, other precious memories: days so crammed with detail that as time went on they seemed to quash and eat away at other days, while at the same time swelling and growing, to abnormal proportions, like a young cuckoo. So it was with the memory of the Midsummer’s Eve celebrations at Solhaug when he was ten years old, and more particularly from the moment when the amateur jazz band laid into their instruments once more, lustier than ever, after a couple of exceptionally strong highballs at Five-Times Nilsen’s.
This last-named gentleman’s name was, in fact, simply Nilsen — if, in line with what has gone before, I may be allowed to dwell on one small detail. Nilsen worked in one of the town’s biggest gentlemen’s outfitters, but he was such a nondescript and unassuming man that people hardly took any notice of him — he could have been mistaken for a tailor’s dummy had it not been for the tape measure around his neck — but once, when the housewives of Solhaug had been lying sunbathing on the flag green, surrounded by magazines, flasks of coffee and grizzling toddlers, and it had been hinted, more out of a spirit of sympathetic solidarity really, that it must be a bit dull being married to such a quiet man, Fru Nilsen had drawn herself up, adjusted her very demure sun-top and said that she for one certainly had nothing to complain about as long as he could take her to seventh heaven five times in one night. So there. From then on he was known only as Five-Times Nilsen. Rumour had it that he also owned highball glasses decorated with ladies who were fully clad when viewed from the outside, but naked on the inside, so it was no wonder that the band, now reinforced by an accordion, was simply raring to go, launching into one sing-along after the other: ‘Kostervalsen’, ‘Ut på Nøtterø fins’, ‘Sol ute, sol inne’, ‘Bedre og bedre dag for dag’ and all the other songs about sunshine and sea and happy days, so in keeping with the spirit of this party of theirs, songs which in those days everyone knew by heart, like Christmas carols and I mean every absolutely — every verse.
Jonas wished with all his heart that he could linger, stay there on that green so vibrant with neighbours and plates of smørbrød and sing-songs, but he had to go, he knew he had to go, because Nefertiti was missing and he had to find her.
And so he walked off, trailing his heels, looking back to see Herr Moen, the chairman of the residents’ association, wearing a velveteen jacket bought on sale at Five-Times Nilsen’s shop, doing the honours of lighting the bonfire, far too early as usual, because the children just couldn’t wait, and Jonas simply had to stop and watch, hypnotized by the flames licking up over the pyramid of old furniture, once such splendid indispensable items, now nothing but a pile of old junk, and in no time the whole lot was ablaze, the fire consuming the vestiges of thrift and harder times, while folk stood there gazing as if in a trance at a Midsummer bonfire that would never be bigger or consist of more remarkable or more historic objects, a veritable museum in flames; with the climax, greeted by loud cheers, coming when the flames reached chairman Moen’s old sofa perched on the top, a sofa so hideous that chairman Moen could not think how he had managed to put up with it for so many years, but now he had a brand spanking new sofa, a corner unit angled to face the television set: all things considered he had never had it so good, he thought to himself as he stood there, feeling quite moved, with the matchbox in his hand, two highballs inside him and his face golden in the light from the bonfire. It was Midsummer’s Eve, and all Norway was united by blazing beacons, forming a bulwark around the blessings of social democracy.
Not until the draw was about to start did Jonas collect himself. Some sort of a raffle was always held on such occasions, to raise funds for one thing or another, that year it was new street lamps, not that the old ones weren’t perfectly okay, but there’s nothing that can’t be improved upon, and tickets had been sold in advance, so all that remained was for Fru Moen to call for attention everyone, please: Fru Moen, who had once given Jonas a swingeing clout round the ear for taking part in a contest with the other lads to see who could pee farthest up a wall which just happened to be right under her balcony, but who today was sporting a Farah Diba hairdo so awesome that Jonas could have forgiven her anything as she picked a colour from one hat and a number from another, with all the children’s prizes being drawn first, since it would soon be the little ones’ bedtime.