The sun went behind a cloud. Henny F. wrapped the ends of the plaid around them and snuggled up close to him. Two ordinary people, Jonas thought, two nothings who, when curled up against one another, formed a recumbent figure eight, symbol of infinity: who, together, became something else, a bigger figure. He liked that. He felt a rush of tenderness towards her, could not imagine how upset she would be when he ‘broke it off’ some months later, rather brutally perhaps and for no real reason, that she would be completely beside herself with grief, that there would be rumours that she had tried to kill herself, some mention of her mother’s sleeping pills; Jonas could not foresee all that now, was far too preoccupied with what she was doing to his ear, because she was kissing it, but at the same time seeming to sing into it, knocking him right off-centre and into a mind-reeling, almost vibrant state, despite the fact that he was lying safe and sound on the ground, so much so that when he tried to say something, it came out in a husky, unfamiliar voice, as if even his vocal chords were involved in this process. Jonas could not help thinking of the Japanese prints which Aunt Laura had shown him, of men with penises as big as gnarled tree-trunks; that was how he felt: pumped up, blown out of proportion, ridden by a lust that left him gasping for breath. All in all, this overpowering passion, exaggerated and yet undeniably genuine, was not unlike what he would later discover in opera.
Heart pounding, he rolled over onto his back and felt, with alarm almost — the alarm of anticipation, alarm at his own arousal — how her hand groped its way into his pants: how, with her eyes averted, she wrapped her fingers around his straining member and held it, gently, as if she didn’t know what to do with it, she just held it, softly but firmly, that was all, just held it, felt it. Jonas lifted his eyes to the treetops, the network of branches, felt his thoughts running along similar lines, spreading out and criss-crossing. For the first time he was conscious of his mental processes taking a particular turn when a woman touched him, as if his penis were a lever, flipping his whole intellect over into another dimension, one full of unsuspected connections. They, the women, moved him to fantasize in a different way by opening, with their touch, hidden doors in his memory, by quite simply setting in train the strangest stories. Suddenly he spied links between things that were far removed from one another, or the distance between things that lay close together; his thoughts darted here and there in explosive leaps — like those jumping-jacks — up and down between different levels of the brain, thus forming chains, ever longer chains of thought, forged by recollections, half clear, half blurred, which were tucked away in his memory and whose compass he did not comprehend until such moments; and that must have been why, perhaps because of the rug wrapped around them, he recalled the tent, while the sounds from her larynx made him think of songs, joyous songs, and the quaking inside him put him in mind of madness, or no, not madness, but the sense of being on the brink of something incomprehensible and yet so important that one burst into a language beyond all languages, trying if possible to fathom it, become another, others, someone. All these things that were racing around in his head were a result of the heady thrill she induced in him simply by clasping her fingers around his penis. Thanks to Henny F., he was not just lying there on some unknown hill in Lillomarka, he was also on the verge of transcending a crucial new barrier; he was, in short, on the trail of a story, pursuing the certainty that there was more to him, potential he had yet to realize.
Possessed
For a child, there was any amount of things to do at Hvaler in the summer, from teasing the terns — those little dive-bombers — to going out in the pilot-boat in a stiff breeze. But if Jonas had to pick a favourite, it would either have to be Strömstad or the attic. At least once during the summer they would sail over to Strömstad in Sweden, the main attraction being the market in the town square: a kind of Scandinavian Marrakech with seedy stalls selling all sorts of cheap rubbish from packs of magic playing cards comprised of nothing but Jacks of Diamonds and Phantom rings with red glass eyes to disgusting stink bombs and the very latest in toy cars with flashing lights, and speedboats with real, battery-driven outboard motors, treasures beyond compare, even though most of them fell apart in the boat on the way home.
The attic, mysterious and fascinating as the props cupboard of a theatre, was a place where Daniel and Jonas were only allowed to play when it rained. They were forever finding different stuff up there, boxes within boxes, old sea charts, photograph albums, a broken accordion, bottles of medicine with illegible labels and stupefying smells. One summer Daniel stumbled upon the little safe deep in a corner, like an overgrown temple amid the attic’s jungle of nets and mildewed old clothes; they immediately fell to wondering what fabulous treasures it might contain. Their grandfather merely laughed when they told him of their find and got them even more steamed up by telling them one of his tallest tales: ‘In that safe, lads, I put a diamond given to me by the German Kaiser. Bigger than the Cullinan diamond it is! As big as a seagull’s egg!’
One day, when the rain was coming down in buckets outside, something unexpected happened: Daniel managed to open the safe. Although he had been lying with his ear right up against it, listening intently, the way he had seen in films, it was only by pure luck that he happened to turn the dial to the correct three numbers — much in the same way, perhaps, as one could sometimes be jammy enough to crack the combination lock on a chum’s bike just by turning the discs this way and that, without really thinking about it. Inside the safe they found a pretty, black lacquer casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But just as they lift the lid of the casket to reveal a grubby canvas bag, which prompts Daniel to form the word ‘pearls!’ with his lips, their grandfather, prompted by sheer intuition so it seems, comes bounding into the attic, and before they can draw breath he has snatched the bag out of the casket. ‘I’ll take that,’ is all he says, oddly agitated, panic-stricken even, then disappears again.
Daniel was seriously put out by this, which is probably why he did not object to Jonas taking the casket. Their grandfather, too, said that Jonas could keep it. ‘I bought that in Japan,’ he said. ‘See this glossy surface? It was once the sap inside a Japanese lacquer tree.’ For Jonas, the casket was, in itself, a treasure and not just because of the mother-of-pearl dragon on the lid; if there was one thing he never tired of, it was gazing at the layer upon layer of black lacquer, as if peering into a deep gloom: transparent, endless, an opening onto an unknown universe. When Jonas returned home at the end of this summer holiday he knew straightaway that he had to find something of value to put in the casket. He considered the clock workings, that enigmatic skeleton of cogs that sat ticking away on top of the chest of drawers, but dismissed that idea. What he really wanted was a pearl. After lengthy deliberation he came to the conclusion that only one object was worthy of this place of honour: his mother’s silver brooch. With her blessing, he placed the round brooch with its intriguing tracery of ribbons in the casket, as if consigning it to a black, bottomless pit.