She must have been sunbathing in her swimming costume; her body was completely white, while her limbs and face were brown; she appeared to be lifting a torso up to me, or at least, I remember thinking of armour, that this, the white section of her body was an impenetrable carapace, something of which I knew nothing, even though I was well into my twenties. She spread her legs. I had the impression of something swollen and inflamed, as though she had applied lipstick there too. I had never done this before, she helped me by putting her hands at the back of my neck and drawing my head down to her fragrant and moistly glistening vulva. I licked those lips, poked my tongue inside, the rain poured down, drummed on the roof, a stray branch hit the bonnet with a bang, she hardly noticed, I too was in a daze, only half aware of what was going on. But when the lightning began to fork across the sky and the thunder made the ground shake — the car was basically sent flying, it hovered in mid-air — I started to worry, as though I were half expecting us to collide, partly because at that moment her body began to writhe uncontrollably. She came — she came to the accompaniment of a rending bolt of lightning and a piercing scream which passed over into a stream of incomprehensible babble, then she burst into floods of tears, all while we were on the point of being engulfed by water and shaken to bits by thunderclaps. ‘Where are you?’ she sobbed, grabbing at me, trying to pull me down, pull me inside her. And just as I was thinking: I’ve waited long enough, I’ve waited a damn sight more than long enough — which is to say, just before I gave in, lifted her up onto my lap, slid her down over me — I realised, with another part of myself that we would be wiped out by a natural disaster if I were to fulfil my intent, that only restraint on my part could prevent the cyclone from sweeping full force across the island, and I pulled away from her with a grunt of disappointment, coupled with a sense of truly having saved our lives.
Why did I hesitate back then? It certainly was not because — to use a Freudian cliché — I wished to sublimate my lust. I think I may have had some inkling, in the grip of desire though I was, that it was really supposed to be different. That even sex, for all the indescribable pleasure it gave, ought to be different. Better. Even better. I was about to say: higher. In the same way as I wrestled with thoughts concerning suppressed sides of my nature, so I knew, or suspected, that not even in the sexual sphere could we realise our true potential, stand upright, as it were. What if human sexuality was still at the reptile stage? Because there was no denying: despite five thousand years of civilisation, sex did not seem to have moved on at all. Of all the arts, the sexual act was the least evolved. While painting had had its Rembrandt, its Monet, the art of love was still stuck in the Stone Age. For a long time I did not know what to think about it, this restraint I displayed in the final instance with women. I do not believe it did me any harm, though. Not until I met Margrete when I was a grown man, did I see everything — including this — with fresh eyes.
Only seconds later the rain stopped, leaving behind it the same sense of release as when a drum roll, like a crescendo in the subconscious, suddenly ceases. The wind subsided. We — she also — came to our senses with the same air of bewilderment as people woken by a hypnotist. We stared at one another, or quickly looked away from one another, shyly almost, before opening the doors and clambering, all but tumbling, out of the car, out into the sunlight which streamed unexpectedly and with added intensity down over a strangely sodden landscape, anyone would have thought the whole countryside had had an orgasm. The air was searingly fresh, it reminded me of my childhood and the smell of Granny’s tube of Mentholatum.
I never did find out what had actually happened. Nor could the newspapers provide any explanation for the sudden storm. That was sex with a woman for you, I told myself. A tropical island in a foreign ocean. A clip round the ear from a cyclone. Forces over which we had no control, would never have control. I glanced round about, feeling as though I ought to be happy to have survived. Not the cyclone, but the amatory eruption.
I eyed her up and down. Her face seemed distorted, her mascara had run, her lipstick was smeared. I was glad I could not see myself. I was sure that more powerful forces had been at work inside the car than out — and that despite the fact that I could see the devastation all around me, the sturdy broken branches strewn on the ground, as if a giant had wandered past.
On the plane home, perhaps because I was seeing the topography of the island from high above, I could not help wondering about the energy I had discerned in her orgasm. That glimpse of something exceedingly powerful. And somehow circular, like a cyclone. Since then I have come to the conclusion that my own very best orgasms could also be described in terms of a circle, if not quite in the same way. I think of Granny’s crystal chandelier, that starry firmament in miniature; I think of the times when I stood almost right inside it. For me this is the only experience that comes anywhere close to reflecting the shattering beauty and luminescence, not to mention the wealth of imagery, inherent in an orgasm. Although this could also have something to do with the fact that I was surrounded on all sides by those glittering crystals the first time I saw Margrete. Saw her properly.
As a child, standing on the stepladder in Granny’s flat, with my head stuck inside the chandelier, I often had a sense of being strangely powerful, invincible. That I was what I sometimes suspected myself to be: a wonder. I sensed that the rays of light issuing from all those crystals had a focal point of sorts at the very spot from which my thoughts sprang. This had an effect on my brain. Associations shot out in all directions. The prisms appeared to refract my thoughts in the same way that they refracted the light. A thought would occur to me and in next to no time it would have split into seven, and each of these seven would be split by another crystal, and so on. I wished that I could take the chandelier to school, that I could stick my head inside it every time I had to answer a difficult question. ‘Jonas, what do we mean by democracy?’ ‘Wait a minute, miss. Let me just slip on my crystal crown.’ It would turn me into a wise man. I wondered whether people, scientists or whoever, were aware of this: that they might find answers to all their problems if they stuck their heads inside just such a chandelier.
The August day when I saw my love, really saw Margrete for the first time, I was standing on the stepladder under the crystal tree. We had finished giving it its annual clean. The sitting room smelled of soft soap and the walls were patterned with light. I only had a couple of the nethermost rings on the spiked base left to fill. And Granny had found one crystal droplet which we had forgotten, it was cut like a precious gem. I was too busy figuring out where to hang it to hear anyone knocking or ringing the bell. I was standing with my head stuck way up inside the chandelier, searching for the eyelet through which to thread the hook. I did not notice her going into the hall to answer the door. I gave a start when I became aware of the sitting-room door opening and heard someone say: ‘Jonas?’