The Discoverer (69 page)

He had seen her in a Garden of Eden once before. While in elementary school she had helped out at the nursery up on Bergensveien on Saturdays, wrapping flowers in old newspapers. He had always liked going there with his mother, it was like entering another climatic zone, a lush, humid,
jungle-like
atmosphere. One winter’s day he and a couple of other lads had gone up there to spy on her. The greenhouse was in itself a sight to see, an ice palace – particularly when a milder spell was followed by a cold snap. As small boys they had broken off the long icicles that hung from the eaves and fenced their way right up to the round table in King Arthur’s Camelot. But they were older now, with different interests, lay there with their eyes just peeking over the top of a snowbank, peering through the glass to where, when there were no customers, Pernille danced ballet in the greenhouse: she had one of the little new, portable Tandberg tape recorders in there, the kind in which the reels lay on top of one another – how sexy was that! She played classical music, practised graceful positions and steps amid the tulips which the
gardeners
managed, by some miracle, to cultivate even in winter: row upon row of budding tulips, like serried ranks of hard-ons. It was a real culture shock to see a girl like Pernille doing
ballet
. Shortly after this they heard that she had actually had a walk-on part in a production of
Swan Lake
at the Royal Norwegian Opera with Rudolf Nureyev as guest soloist. They lay there with their eyes peeping over the bank of snow, not feeling the cold; lay there so long that they almost froze their undercarriages off.

And now here she was, in Paradise again, sitting on a park bench with her ballerina neck inclined towards him as they talked, on and on, as if intent on making up for all the wordless scenes in Leonard’s films. When he asked to see what she had been drawing it was only with reluctance that she handed him the pad. Inside were sketches. Of people caught in passing. Rendered in just a few strokes, except for their clothes, which were more carefully drawn, or suggested by a detail here and there, as if she were trying to capture the essence of a person through what they were wearing. Or as if a belt, the cut of a jacket, the pattern of a shirt, could say all there was to be said. ‘I’m going to apply to the College of Art and Design,’ she said. ‘I’m practising.’ And Jonas thought: I don’t practise enough. I’m not practising anything at all. I’m going to be one of those Norwegians who simply squanders their abundant talent. ‘It’s kind of strange,’ she said with a shy smile. ‘I got the urge to work in fashion, with fabric, after Mr Dehli told us about
māyā
. Do you remember? Do you remember Mr Dehli?’ He remembered Mr Dehli. Who could forget
Mr Dehli? She was wearing a long, cotton summer frock which she had made herself, the fabric had a pattern of alternating open and closed tulips. Even though she was sitting down he could tell how unusual it was, how it
accentuated
– not her figure, but her personality, her innate elegance. It was as if she had succeeded in transferring the lines of her irresistible neck to the garment. Jonas had always counted himself among those men who believe a woman is infinitely more interesting clothed than unclothed, and he had noticed right away, from a hundred metres off, how sexy, how attractive she looked, in that dress.

They sat for hours on that bench in the heat of the day, until she suggested that they go back to her place, she was living in the city now. He did not know whether it was something to do with the red lenses of her sunglasses, but he felt that she was eyeing him differently, with more interest than before.

They strolled slowly across the grass in the lovely light under the great, green treetops. He found himself admiring her slender, leggy figure, the grace with which she moved, accentuated by the fact that she was barefoot. She had done a bit of modelling work in Paris, but most of the time she had studied, learned, visited people in the fashion business. He had been right about the frock. Even without a low-cut neckline, without long slits up the sides, it made her look sexy, even more attractive. There was something about the way the fabric fell over her form. The tulips, the pattern of the fabric prompted him to wonder again about his future, whether he was going to open up or close in. Some people never opened up. She strode barefoot across the grass towards Kunstnernes Hus and her scooter. She had kept the red Vespa.
Pernille’s
style might not have been altogether in accord with the dawning
feminist
movement, but in her own way she was as much of a rebel as anyone.

On the way up to Majorstuen they stopped at a café and stayed there so long that by the time they got to her place it was late in the evening. There was no one else home. She got them something to drink. They talked, played music: the Mamas and the Papas, the Lovin’ Spoonful. She showed him her new sewing machine, some heavily embroidered fabrics and a portfolio of drawings in which she had copied patterns from paintings by Gustav Klimt. None of this could have told him, though, that ten years later she would be Norway’s answer to Laura Ashley, designing both clothes and furnishings in a romantic, floral style which was, nonetheless, surprisingly modern, urban. At that particular moment, though, he was just a bit puzzled by the searching looks she was giving him; so he asked, more to distract her really, whether they might not have some supper. ‘Wait right here,’ she said, put on Jefferson
Airplane
and left the room. A good fifteen minutes later she reappeared carrying a small case. ‘We’re going out,’ was all she said, and gave him another funny look.

‘Isn’t it a bit late for this,’ he yelled, when he was seated once more on the pillion of the red scooter with his nose buried in her hair and her neck. ‘It’s summer,’ she yelled back. ‘It’s never too late in the summer,’ she said as she parked the Vespa outside Kunstnernes Hus and handed him the case. The sky was still light. The air tropically warm. The Oslo night smelled of lilac. She was still barefoot. He took off his shoes too, left them under the scooter seat. They strolled across the warm tarmac. She took his hand. Why had they never gone out together in junior high? She did not lead him through the Palace Gardens, headed instead down Parkveien towards Drammensveien. The air was so heavily scented it was like being in some foreign city. Opposite the prime minister’s official residence she stopped and glanced round about. ‘Give me a hand,’ she said and proceeded to climb over the fence into the Queen’s Gardens. The park was closed at night. ‘This is against the law, we’ll get caught,’ he said. She turned and gave him a long, hard look, as if trying to get inside his head, discover what could have possessed him to make such a stupid remark. Again he was thrown into confusion. ‘Only if someone sees us,’ she said. ‘And why should anyone see us?’ He shot a glance at the Palace,
jokingly
muttered something about offences against the Crown as he helped her over, making sure that her dress did not snag on the lance-tipped railings of the cast-iron fence. He passed the case to her before hopping over himself. I’ve finally made it into the Queen’s Chambers, he thought. They stole between the trunks of tall hardwood trees, over grass that felt cool and soft under their feet. Here and there they caught the yellow glimmer of creeping buttercups. She made a beeline for a pond with a fountain splashing in it rather forlornly and pointlessly. Or for them alone. She led the way to the end nearest the Palace, bundled up her skirts and waded into the water, across the narrow channel. He followed, feeling the little round pebbles on the bottom. There was an island in the middle of the pond. An island overgrown with trees and dense vegetation, grass as high as a meadow, a miniature jungle, a place in which to play the guerrilla. They settled themselves under the dominant weeping ash. Its branches hung all the way to the ground, hiding them like a parasol from the guardsmen on sentry duty outside the Palace and down by the stables. Jonas was reminded of the deliciously prickly hidey-holes of his childhood. She spread a travelling rug out on the grass. ‘Welcome to the Garden of Eden,’ she whispered.

She arranged the contents of the case on the rug: cured ham and melon, a highly seasoned pâté, slices of tomato over which she had sprinkled freshly chopped basil. ‘Dig in then,’ she said, pouring white wine into two simple kitchen tumblers. ‘You said you were hungry, didn’t you?’ She handed him bread and a bowl of black olives. He ate, drank, noticed that she helped
herself to some soft, white cheese and a stick of celery. Never, not even in the Red Room, in Leonard’s basement, had food tasted so good. So erotic. He lay there enveloped in the scent of earth and growing things, surrounded by lilies and Solomon’s seal, munching honeydew melon, and watched as this girl draped in a fabric decorated with open and closed tulips poured a few drops of Tabasco sauce onto a piece of chicken, as if to demonstrate her
singularity
, her audacious taste. Her boldness in general. Directly across from them, on the top of a small hill they could make out a gazebo. The Palace rose up behind large, flowering shrubs; they might have been in another country, another time, at the Versailles of the Sun King. He felt – he groped for the word – reckless. As if, merely by lying there, enjoying all of this, he was defying the run-of-the-mill. Committing an act of sabotage even.

He was lying listening to the splashing of the fountain when, right out of the blue, she gave him a kiss, quick and hot, that left behind a taste of red pepper, salt, vinegar, a breathtakingly sharp tang on his lips. A violent
fluttering
in his breast. And an unsated hunger, replete though he was. Hunger for a body. She drew him down onto the rug, among the little dishes. It was such a relief, an almost vampiric sensation, to at long last be able to press his lips against that long neck of hers, run his tongue along the hairline at the nape of her neck, kiss the skin below her ears for so long that her toes splayed and little moans issued from her throat. One of his hands slipped underneath her skirt, worked its way up to her knees, while he went on kissing her, while she went on emitting barely audible sighs. He slid his hand further up, under the fabric of her frock, under the pattern of tulips opened and closed, with a sense of performing a kind of covert unveiling; he stroked the soft, smooth skin on the inside of her thighs, and this in turn made him feel as though he was almost suffocating with desire. No fabric in the world could compare with this texture, not even silk; if anyone ever managed to manufacture a synthetic material that came anywhere close to this they could make millions. He reached her panties, gently pulled them down, still without lifting up her skirt. He ran sensitive fingertips over the grooves left by the knicker elastic on the soft skin below her waist, as if it were a legible script, a vital prophecy. As he slid his fingers down and into her crotch, not knowing whether it was the scent of sexual juices or the aroma of flowers and Tabasco sauce that drifted past his nose, he noticed that her hand had stiffened into a stagey pose while her toes were pointed, her ankles extended as in a dance, even though she was lying on the ground.

With his middle finger he explored the folds of her vagina, as if she were clothed here, too, and he needed to undress her in order to discover her true nature. She writhed about, moaned so uninhibitedly that he was afraid one of
the guards might hear. As his finger opened up a path for itself, working from the back forwards, he had the sensation of leafing through a book, so much so that that he could actually read, on page after page, of what the future might hold for them; and when his finger at last glided further up and lighted on the clitoris – a scaled down reflection, a tiny island in a queen’s garden – and he concentrated on this branching of the ways, he could tell – also from her reaction, the sudden gasp at the very moment that a light went on in one of the Palace windows – that he had found an answer of sorts, something which seemed to be confirmed by the abrupt and violent shudders that were now running through her, radiating as it were from her vagina to every part of her body. Her balletic pose had to give way to the uncontrolled twitching of her fingers and toes, and her writhing limbs set the plates and glasses tinkling; but these convulsions also seemed to cause a veil, or a last item of clothing to fall away from her, enabling him to see quite plainly that she was not the one – to perceive this as clearly, and with as great a shock, as if, at his wedding, he had lifted up his bride’s veil to find that she was not who he expected. With a touch of sadness he was forced to conclude that this girl, Pernille, too was a red herring, designed to distract him from a woman as yet unknown to him.

And so he hesitated. And so he refrained from pulling up her skirt and throwing himself on top of her, even when he felt the gentle press of her hands on his back, like an invitation. He tried to excuse himself to her; he wasn’t ready, he said, whispered breathlessly. Used just such a high-flown, rather archaic expression. And for this very reason – because she was a romantic, because she was a different sort of feminist – Pernille understood. Still, though, he was afraid – afraid of this lust, afraid that one day, instead of life, a desire to do the right thing, he would make do with a sex life. It was always there, just under the surface: the fear of suffering the same fate as Melankton. Precisely by not falling upon her he would prove his exceptional character, his rebellious will.

Later Jonas would contemplate the choice he had made in this and in similar situations. Because what if sex was life? And what if the life in which he might attain the ‘lofty’ goals towards which he strove was the life of the nether regions?

They slept, closely entwined. And they did not wake until late in the morning. If anyone had seen them they certainly had not reported it. They were hardly visible anyway, surrounded as they were by the tall vegetation and screened by the weeping ash’s tracery of low branches. Jonas woke up brimful of energy, woke up with a feeling of having been recreating on that tiny island for a year. They waded back across to the Queen’s Gardens and carried on out of the gate, which was now open. Jonas said goodbye and ran
all the way up to Oscars gate, partly in order to burn off some of his excess energy, but also because he thought his grandmother must be worried sick about him. And annoyed, since it was now Sunday and he would not be able to pick up the desired supply of cigars.