‘I think you should make that building in the background look more like Victoria Terrasse,’ she said.
It was during these years, on those mid-morning breaks and meanderings among zinc buckets and stepladders, bowls and dishes in these huge studios, that Jørgine Wergeland became an art connoisseur. She was not afraid to put in her own three ha’pence worth now and again either – not only to Rolfson, for whom she felt a particular responsibility, but even to a gentleman as strong-minded as Henrik Sørensen. ‘There’s something wrong with that figure,’ she was liable to shout, motioning with her cigar as she passed underneath the high scaffolding on which he perched like a skyscraper construction worker, working on an oil painting which at that time was reckoned to be the biggest in the world. And sure enough, Sørensen altered that figure.
Jonas’s grandmother was proud of the Town Hall and the works of art it contained, even though they were not, of course, perfect and had, in some cases, an inevitable air of national self-congratulation about them. To her, the Town Hall was not only the city’s indisputable defining symbol, but also a monument to freedom. Just as the Statue of Liberty was the first thing to greet you when you sailed into New York so, at the head of Oslo fjord, you were greeted by the Town Hall. The building and its decorations marked the culmination of an era. The Town Hall in Oslo contained Norway up until the middle of the twentieth century. The very best of the country was reflected in this building, both inside and out, in terms of materials, art and symbols. If the whole of Norway were to be destroyed, bombed, but this building were miraculously to be left standing, it would be possible to reconstruct much of the land’s history right up to the post-war years. Not for nothing did Jonas, influenced as he was by his grandmother, compare the Town Hall, on one occasion, to the information disc about the Earth carried on board the Voyager space probes.
As a way of repaying her, but also because he liked her, Alf Rolfsen used Jørgine Wergeland as the model for a figure in his occupation frieze. She is one of the four women at the pump in the far left of the picture. This was his tribute to her. And no greater tribute could anyone receive: to figure in, for one’s life to be made a part of, a fresco in the country’s most magnificent building. Visitors to the Town Hall today should possibly take a second look at that picture and spare a thought for Jørgine Wergeland. There are, sadly, too few people of her cast.
‘How did you come by all that money?’ Alf Rolfsen once asked her.
‘It’s a secret,’ said Jørgine.
And even to Jonas, her grandchild, this was for a long time a well-kept mystery. He sat alone with his eyes closed, under a blue and white parasol in Montevideo and let the memories wash over him as he listened to the waves breaking on the shore. His thoughts stayed with his grandmother. She might be a vital clue in his search for material, for a kind of television which no one before had dared to imagine. And now and again, perhaps precisely because of the memory of his grandmother’s resolute actions, he was seized by such an acute need to soak up life that he got out of his deckchair and took the bus that ran past the six other white beaches and all the way into the centre of the city, there to stroll, hands behind his back, down the long main street, the Avenida 18 de Julio; taking in the long string of pavement stalls, taking in the countless squares, taking in curious buildings and bombastic statues of dead generals, taking in the people with maté cups and metal straws in their hands and thermoses of hot water under their arms. Montevideo soothed his nerves. In other capitals he constantly felt guilty about all the things he ought to be doing. Montevideo had no famous sights. And what few museums it had were quite liable to be closed, without any explanation. That was fine by Jonas. This city tuned him into a rare, unknown channel. He sauntered along under the indigo veil formed by flowering jacaranda trees, surveying the life on the street, listening, smelling, waiting. An idea, he would give anything for an idea that would provide outlet for the talent he knew he possessed, a flash of inspiration which would also cure this ache in his chest. Later, Jonas would laugh at his own lack of imagination. He kept waiting for a thought to strike him. Instead he met someone.
He also roamed the higgledy-piggledy maze of narrow lanes and alleys in the old town, behind the cathedral, stopping here and there, and more than once outside the same second-hand bookshop near the Plaza Zabala, possibly because of the Spanish edition of Kristin Lavransdatter in the window: a fat, worn and yet somehow distinguished book spine. Jonas found it odd – coming across a fellow countrywoman in such a way. Like spying the back of someone you knew through the window of a restaurant in a strange city. Or, yes: it smacked of the Middle Ages. That was Montevideo, modern, but at the same time old-fashioned in a unique, almost wistful way. In Montevideo he could still come upon horses and carts in the streets, and there were mothballs on sale everywhere – Montevideo reeked of mothballs. On his strolls, Jonas spotted just about every make of car he had grown up with and the sight of the trolleybuses made him almost sob with nostalgia. It was the gently rusting boats in the harbour, however, which brought back the strongest memories of the fifties. He was back in his childhood. He was in a sort of forgotten, or better still: hidden backwater. Anything could happen here, he thought to himself. Here I can start afresh.
Time. He was conscious, as he sat there day after day in his deckchair in the shade of a blue-striped parasol, with a gentle breeze caressing his face while he gazed out across the water – grey, but with the silvery sheen from which the river took its name, La Plata – of how little he knew about time. Time could stand still, or it could fly by. It could also disappear completely, as if through a hole. As Jonas dozed in the deckchair a memory from 1970 drifted into his mind. He had been paying a quick visit to his grandmother, just dropping off something from home, when she had asked him to do her a favour, or rather, she ordered him to nip down to her regular supplier of cigars. ‘Proper Suez Crisis,’ she said with her most mournful Churchill expression. ‘Stock’s run out.’ He was commissioned to purchase a box of Karel I – she had been forced to switch to Dutch cigars when the Cuban brands were no longer to be had.
Jonas enjoyed running errands like this, especially to Sol Cigar on Drammensveien, where the air was pervaded with the scent of tobacco and the after-shave lotion of distinguished clients. It was a warm Saturday morning in June. As usual he took the path through the Palace Gardens since a stroll through that soft, rolling landscape, under a green veil of maple and lime, elm and chestnut always seemed to affect his way of thinking. He told himself it was the excess of chlorophyll that rendered him even more reflective. It made him curse his shilly-shallying, his indecisiveness when it came to finding a sphere in which to utilise his baffling gifts. He glowered at the black silhouette, a dwarf running at his heels along the path, an illustration of the fate he dreaded more than any other: to end up as a shadow of himself. Never to have used what he had within him. Maybe it was because he was surrounded by such luxuriant vegetation or because he was on his way to buy cigars, that the thought of Che Guevara suddenly came into his mind. A guerrilla. He was filled with a longing to rebel.
As if his frustration had sharpened his eye, he spotted Pernille S., a girl from his class in junior high. He had not seen her in a year. She was sitting on one of the benches next to the pond. It may also have been something about the way she was dressed, her frock, that had caught his eye. Her clothes were always rather unusual, not the sort of things the other girls wore. She was sitting with a large pad on her lap, sketching, totally absorbed. Her rectangular hippie-style glasses with their red lenses made him feel that she must see the world in a charmed light. As he drew closer, he noticed that irresistible neck of hers, which Leonard had always let the camera linger on when they were filming. ‘That is the neck of a woman who can go to great lengths,’ he always said.
Jonas sat down next to her, whereupon she closed her sketch pad without a word and laid her head on his shoulder as if in greeting, an affectionate way of saying she was pleased to see him a
gain. She was like that. Subtle and yet spontaneous. He drank in the scent of her long, dark hair. They chatted, caught up on each other’s lives. She had not gone to high school, had chosen instead to go to Paris for a while, she had only been back a few weeks. Jonas listened to her soft voice while he watched the ducks swimming on the quiet pond, or rested his eyes on the green cascade of the willow on the island in the middle of the pond. ‘It’s nice here,’ she said, ‘almost like paradise.’ He thought at first that she was referring to Norway in general, but soon realised that she was talking about the Palace Gardens.
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, h
iding 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.
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