I was standing inside a circle of light when it happened. Sometimes, in order to hang a crystal on another part of the chandelier I turned it round. All at once I found myself at the centre of a carousel of tinkling diamonds. I saw everything so clearly. Correlations, associations. The only right thing was, of course, to play, not Strauss, but Johann Sebastian Bach. Again, as always: Bach.
So there I was, with my head inside a shimmering wheel, when it happened. Suddenly, beyond the light, I discerned a figure in the doorway. It was Margrete. Or maybe I could tell from her voice: ‘Jonas?’ I did not see her, saw only the reflections, scintillating light. Often, since then, I have found myself wondering: was that why I fell so madly in love. Was it those prisms, that golden glow, which bound me to her for always?
How does a man meet his wife? I met mine several times. I met her for the first time — was quite literally bowled over by her in sixth grade, just before the summer holidays. We crashed into one another on our bikes right outside the school gate. I remember nothing from that collision except her eyes, her eyes staring at me. And not so much her eyes, as her pupils: it was the first time I had ever remarked on only the pupils of a pair of eyes; I had never seen anything so black, so — what’s the word — bottomless. That collision was like hearing that abrupt, resounding G7sus4th chord at the very beginning of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’: a false start, if you like, before things really got under way. Like a build-up of tension waiting for release.
It did not really come to anything, though, until later in the year, just after we started in seventh grade. One day after school I went swimming with Leo. A lot had happened over the summer holidays, we were older and maybe that is why we did not bike out to Badedammen, where we had always frolicked in the past — beginning our swimming careers there under the careful eyes of anxious mothers — but to Svarttjern, the Black Tarn, a very different class of swimming hole, and more of a challenge in terms of location, lying as it did right out in the wilds, as it were. Badedammen was for little kids. Svarttjern was for strong, experienced swimmers. We had to park our bikes at the foot of Ravnkollen and walk quite a way into the forest to get to the bewitching little tarn ringed by fir trees. Strange to think that today this isolated lake, or what is left of it, is hemmed in by the tower blocks of Romsås, one of the biggest satellite towns in Norway. Although maybe this was simply bound to happen: this was a tarn which had to be civilised, tamed. Rumour had it that many people had drowned there, and that it was the perfect pool for suicides who did not wish to be found. Let me put it this way: Svartjern was not a lake you swam in alone at night. Sometimes, on the way there, I would find myself thinking that anything could happen at Svarttjern.
I spotted her right away. How could anyone not notice her? She was gold among silver. She was much browner than the other girls. I did not know whether this was because she already had a good base tan from Thailand where she had been living before, owing to her father’s work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or whether she was just blessed with such fabulous skin. And yet it was possibly not her looks that impressed me so much as her bearing, her movements. The way she dried herself, the way she walked, almost danced over to the rock when she was going in for a swim. There are no words to describe the unique quality of Margrete’s beauty, but in my mind I called it ‘Persian’. She wore an orange bikini which accentuated the golden effect. And her figure, I might add, because she had the body of an eighth grader, a body which had just begun to reveal something of how it was going to look in four or five years’ time. I had to force myself not to stare, not to be caught with my eyes glued to that sexy bikini top.
Even when she was lying still, apparently deep in thought, Margrete was the centre of attraction. Everything revolved around her. I observed her out of the corner of my eye. I caught the flash of a bracelet. She took something from her rucksack and handed it round, it obviously was not a pack of Marie biscuits; judging by the exclamations from the others it had to be something fantastic — Chinese fortune cookies or suchlike.
Breakfasts with Margrete. Every one an occasion. Her face. The things she could come out with. Her body language. Her way of being quiet. Her expression when she was thinking. Her habits from an itinerant life abroad. Always linen napkins. Always fresh flowers on the table. Always toast. Always a particular brand of English marmalade. Always freshly ground coffee beans, her own blend. Always orange juice which she pressed herself.
We lay not far from one another. There was really only one spot where you could lie at Svarttjern, a couple of hillocks on the west side. It was also a good place to dive from, or rather: try to impress the girls with your latest, well-rehearsed dives. Margrete was not impressed by that sort of thing though, she never so much as glanced in the direction of the daredevil divers and their antics. I peeped at her on the sly. Peeped is the word. I felt like a Peeping Tom. It got to the point where I was staring quite blatantly. I couldn’t help it. I felt my heart swell with love. It had possibly been lying dormant during the summer holidays, but now it flared up. I thought of my grandfather lighting the primus stove in the outhouse, the moment when the flame turned blue. I knew it, I was a goner. This may sound a mite high-flown, but I lay there thinking of one of the words which Karen Mohr often used: fate. I am quite certain that the thought of marrying Margrete Boeck crossed my mind there, on the banks of Svarttjern, on an August day when we were in seventh grade. But how was I to catch her attention? Catch her? Or, more correctly: how was I to get her to discover me?
Why are salmon more given to biting at certain flies? Or is it only that we think they have a greater tendency to bite at certain patterns? It is a mystery. The salmon is not looking for food when it swims up river. As the spawning season approaches it reduces its food intake. In theory, it should not bite at a fly. And yet it does. Is it that it feels annoyed? Is it trying to defend its preserves? Might it simply be that the fly, this elaborately tied lure, is so irresistibly beautiful? Why do we fall in love? You are faced with three girls. Triplets. As good as identical. And yet you choose one of them. The one with the yellow scarf. You bump into a girl at the school gates and you lose your temper, you snap at her. Only afterwards do you realise that you are hooked. Why did I ‘bite’ at Margrete — like a salmon going for a Blue Charm?
There were many obstacles in the way. To begin with the most obvious one: she was lying next to Georg. It was so bloody predictable. You only had to say that there was a new girl starting at the school, from Bangkok, that she was like this and or like that and everybody would stick their hands in the air and say she was sure to end up going out with Georg. He was in the year above us and had always been the first at everything: the first to own a Phantom ring, the first with speedway handlebars and cross-country tyres, the first to wear a reefer jacket, the one whose voice broke first. He always had a match clenched between his lips, as if he were terrified that somebody might ruin his perfect teeth, his flawless looks.
I hated it. Looking at Georg was like staring at a poster that said ‘Forget it!’ I tried to tell myself that I was not in love. It was one thing to wrest Margrete out of another boy’s embrace. It was quite another to try to compete with Georg — Georg, who could blow three smoke-rings and get them to hang in the air while he stuck a finger through them, Georg who documented every new conquest with pictures of him French kissing the girl in question in the photo booth at Eastern station. They might not be going out together yet, but there were depressing rumours to the effect that Margrete ‘fancied’ him. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, in agony, noticing the way they were giggling together, suffering even greater agonies when Georg — all solicitude, so it seemed — straightened one of her straps at the back.