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.