Late in the afternoon, after several stops at places and buildings which struck me as being nothing so much as a series of contrasts, reflections of the country’s numerous ethnic groups and cultures, we came to a lake in the south of the island, Grand Bassin, a mirror-image of the sky amid all the greenery, a sacred lake, site of one of the annual Hindu festivals. Someone was in the process of planting fruit trees. Gradually, possibly due to the look in her eye, her eagerness, it dawned on me that it was not the country, the island, she was showing off to me, but herself. With everything she pointed out to me — boys selling ice cream from big cool boxes on the backs of bicycles, the falling blossom from the flame trees which in many places carpeted the road with red — and all the things she raved about, she was saying: just so, just as diverse, as multi-faceted, am I. And you never knew. She too, Anna Ulrika Eyde, the Iron Woman, was a tropical island in a foreign ocean, one which I had to dive after, discover. In taking me around the island she was also inviting me to uncover the unsuspected mountain formations and impenetrable plantations within her — her temples, her beaches, her reefs.
I stood wreathed in incense fumes, scanning the mirrored surface of the lake while, heedless of my presence, she took out a lipstick and ran it over those enticing lips, laying it on extra thick, as if inspired by the gaudy idols in the little, open-sided temples perched on stilts in the rolling countryside around the lake.
We drove on through fields full of sugar beet. She had suddenly gone quiet. I felt as though we were making our way through something sweet. On our way to something sweet. The green beet plants grew shoulder to shoulder, soon they would be as tall as the drifts at the sides of the roads on the mountain passes in Norway in the winter. But then the countryside opened out and the road wound uphill, into wild country. We pulled in at a lookout point, a lay-by with benches and tables.
From a paper bag she produced small, deep-fried chilli balls and a pineapple which, to my surprise, she proceeded to pare, cleanly and proficiently, slicing away the skin in a neat spiral with a knife that was almost as big as a machete. Before I could take in how she did it the fruit lay before me like a finely carved work of art, fresh and tangy, ready to eat. ‘I learned that from an old man on the beach,’ she informed me solemnly. I liked it: the contrast between the spicy bite of the little meatballs and the luscious fruit. I liked the way she handled that big knife. I liked the pressure she exerted. I liked the jolts of excitement that were running through me.
I admit it: there are few things I know less of than love. Sometimes I think about my sister, who went out with loads of boys. One of them was called Hans Christian. Rakel liked him a lot. But he wasn’t the only boy she fancied. Hans Christian was a truck driver; he had just bought a magnificent new trailer of which he was very proud. One evening he learned that Rakel was at the home of one of her other admirers — she had not yet decided which one to choose. He was so mad that he drove his new sixteen-ton trailer-truck into the garden of his rival and straight through the wall of the extension containing the bedroom. Although it has to be said that he had first checked that Rakel and the others were in the living room, watching TV. The bedroom extension and the double bed were completely wrecked, as was the truck. Rakel was so impressed by such red-hot determination that she married Hans Christian. ‘Believe it or not, but he has eyes as kind as Albert Schweitzer’s,’ she said. To me, however, his conduct in this matter was clear proof of the folly of love. Or its unfathomability.
What is love? Due to an unexpected letter I found myself, as if by magic, among rugged, sculptural mountains on a tropical island with Anna Ulrika Eyde. I savoured the taste of chilli and pineapple, my eyes fixed on her red lips. We were standing by the railing on the edge of a sheer drop into a deep gorge. We were so high up that we could look down on a kestrel swooping over the chasm. To our right a waterfall plunged into a narrow crevasse. ‘There’s nothing lovelier than falling water,’ she said. At the bottom, far below, a river meandered through billowing green jungle, on its way to the ocean. The sky was a clear blue. Again my eyes went to those red lips of hers, the half open blouse, the cleavage between her breasts, every bit as wild and precipitous as the chasm at our feet. Without warning, my body underwent a chemical change; it was as if a powerful pill had suddenly begun to take effect. At that same moment she turned and met my gaze. Her face was unrecognisable, swollen somehow. The next minute we were kissing. I had no chance to register what happened between the look and the kiss, it was explosive. We kissed, almost doing battle with our tongues. It tasted strong and sweet. We kissed as if our lives depended on it, body hard against body. I felt a tremendous pressure in my chest. I could have driven a truck through a wall. She smelled faintly, arousingly, of sweat, tasted of salt water, chilli and pineapple. I do not know how long we stood there kissing. It may have been a good while. I looked up and noticed dark clouds building up, as if the attraction we felt for one another had given echo in the weather. As if a storm had been lying out at sea and we, with our bodies, had drawn it towards land. If, that is, it was not simply a projection of the charged atmosphere between us. The palm leaves scraped against one another in the wind, emitting a hollow, plastic rustle. We had only just emerged from something akin to a maelstrom, gasping for breath, when the first raindrops fell, slowly, far apart: large, glittering, like a crystalline net. For a split-second I had the impression that I could see the whole island, the whole world, including her and me, in every drop.
She took me by the hand and ran laughing towards the car, opened the door to the back seat. We fell upon one another, groping blindly, found each other’s mouths again, kissed, licked, bit, kissed, literally took leave of our senses. I pawed at her breasts like a teenager while her hand felt hungrily for my crotch. It was a bit like what as boys we had called petting, heavy petting. I have ridden in similar old Peugeots since then, mainly in a number of Third World countries, and I have never been able to sit there on those rather lumpy, plastic-covered seats, or look at the rickety chrome door-handles — those that aren’t actually missing — the ashtrays, the distinctive dashboard, without thinking of Ulla and petting.
Something was happening outside, in line, as it were, with what we were up to in the car, or rather: the weather appeared always to be one step behind us, mimicking our ardour. In between all the kissing and feeling up I managed to take in the fact that the wind had risen dangerously and the palms were taking on the form of inside-out umbrellas. She tore off her blouse and bra, amid much loud and impatient moaning, wriggled out of her skirt, then her panties, tossed these garments into the air as large leaves began to swirl past outside; she arched her back with excitement, thrusting her pelvis into my face, offering herself like a piece of peeled fruit, the flesh glistening. The rain outside increased to a torrential downpour. Through the window I caught an occasional glimpse of the surrounding countryside, which now had the look of an underwater scene, as if we were inside a bubble that had been lowered into the ocean — I almost expected to see fish swimming past; and what I saw between her legs had also acquired something of a marine cast, reminiscent of sea anemones, coral reefs. I felt — there, inside the car — the same heavy pressure as when I went diving. I had the weird notion that this must have summoned up a depression, that all of this was my fault. It was the very end of the cyclone season, no warnings had been issued, and yet this, the tumult outside, had all the makings of a cyclone, the sort of cyclone which, at its height, could cut the sugar harvest in half. Rain streamed down the windows, making it impossible for us to see out, it was like being in a car-wash. Side by side with, or underlying, her desire, Ulla seemed to have a fascination with the power of the rainstorm, as if she drew energy, an even greater sexual charge, from the water pelting down, striking the car roof with a sound like the drumming of small, galloping hooves. I am not certain, but it may even have been here that she had the crucial flash of inspiration which, some years later, would find artistic expression. Ulla turned to making fountains, monumental works; she became an internationally renowned and much sought-after fountain designer, an artist who married the soft with the hard, moisture with steel, water with stone, the softly purling with the rigidly erect. She was intrigued with the possibilities of building such fountains in deserts and received commissions to do just that, primarily from wealthy Arabs, people with a reverence for water. Ulla made a fortune from water, from her ability to work on the borderline between engineering and art, her knowledge of the power and the beauty of falling water.