Am I Cold

by Martin Kongstad

  ‘It’s a matter of principle,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what they all say!’

  ‘I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘I won’t.’

  Levinsen came scurrying over.

  ‘Ladies! We’ve the most amazing guest star in our midst. He’s putting his couch up over in the corner by the pear tree and after dinner he’ll be open for consultation! By day a chimney sweep, but in his spare time utterly devoted to his unique talent. Allow me to present: the Master Licker of Ørby!’

  A stocky guy in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans presented himself with a folding seat under his arm. His hair was thick and cut in front of the mirror at home, and he was so ordinary in appearance you could sail across the Atlantic in his company without ever learning his name. The women applauded and whistled, and Master Licker bowed. Clara picked up her Tupperware.

  ‘I’m going home. I’ve got weeding to do!’

  Kathrine forced her back down on to her chair. ‘You can’t keep going home.’

  Clara looked into Kathrine’s brow and smiled.

  ‘We need to start creating some new narratives for ourselves, Clara. It’s yes or never! Say yes!’

  ‘No, I bloody won’t!’

  ‘Say yes!’

  Clara narrowed her eyes and frowned.

  ‘Say yes!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Shout!’

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Brilliant! Now let’s drive to Helsinge and buy a tent.’

  I had wilfully ignored the questions any other fool would have asked a long time ago, but on the Friday it all came crashing down around me. I can’t find any other reason for it than weakness, and there is no doubt that the damage done was irreparable. I broke the spell. It was as simple as that.

  It had all been going so well. The night before, Diana had slept with me for the first time in ages, and we had made love through all fourteen movements of Music for 18 Musicians – if, that is, the difference between making love and fucking is eye contact. The thing to do is to stick to your own course, and I was proud of not having attempted to compete with Mille. Her being in bed with me again was not a victory for my vanity, but a more spiritual kind of satisfaction, and for this reason my imminent fall would be all the more decisive.

  After Clara and Kathrine left, I went back to the cabin to take a nap with Diana, and when I opened the door she was sitting on the bed with Levinsen, and while they may have been fully dressed, a room cannot lie. The intimacy was striking.

  ‘I’ve just proposed to Diana,’ said Levinsen.

  I scratched my back so hard I drew blood.

  ‘I want her! As a gallerist, Vallin.’

  Diana asked him about his business philosophy and that sort of piddle, and he played the important man in the art world, until eventually they were both so exhausted from lying that Levinsen exploited a text message as a pretext to extract himself from the situation. She began to sort through her clothes.

  ‘We need to clear the air,’ I said.

  ‘Is it dirty?’ she said.

  ‘How come you’re on the phone so often all of a sudden?’

  ‘What is it you want, Mikkel?’

  ‘Did Levinsen come round while I was on Bornholm?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Let me put it differently: has he ever been round on his own?’

  ‘Stop it, will you, Mikkel?’

  ‘He drinks Launois, a very particular kind of champagne, Diana, and there were two bottles of it next to your sink. You’d also had caviar. Surely you’d remember that?’

  She stopped what she was doing.

  ‘So what if he did come round?’

  ‘Have you got a thing going on with Levinsen, Diana? Answer me!’

  I had never seen her cry before. She sat on the bed with her face in her hands, and only then did I realise how terribly I had gone wrong. She held my head and kissed my cheeks and nose while the tears streamed from her eyes. I apologised repeatedly and cried just as much, and she caressed me and was small and fragile underneath her shirt.

  That night we had dinner with Clara and Kathrine without letting go of each other’s hands.

  Levinsen stepped out of the dusk on to the tree stump in the middle of the camp and spread out his arms.

  ‘The Master Licker of Ørby is now ready to receive his first client,’ Levinsen pronounced. ‘Number one, please approach the couch!’

  Mille sprang to her feet and curtsied.

  Diana’s phone thrummed in her pocket and she stepped away.

  Master Licker addressed the gathering with cheerful authority:

  ‘This will require very little: you must take off all your clothes, you must breathe deeply, and you must relax and allow yourself to drift with the flow. It will take approximately twenty minutes, though some of you may have difficulty concentrating in front of an audience. How are we feeling?’

  ‘I’d like them all to be here,’ said Mille.

  The entire camp had gathered.

  ‘Right, now I want you to take off your clothes and lie down on the couch.’

  Mille undressed quickly and made herself comfortable, and Master Licker of Ørby began to massage her face, his hands moving in delicate little circles as she breathed deeply.

  After a couple of minutes he proceeded to her shoulders, collarbones and upper chest, making only the lightest of contact with her skin, gentle, sweeping strokes of his hands, while avoiding erogenous zones such as the breasts and abdomen.

  After five minutes he took hold of her legs and began to massage the back of her thighs with both hands.

  A couple of spliffs were passed round and a blackbird sang in the pear tree.

  Master Licker now moved in between Mille’s thighs and started licking from below: long, full strokes of the tongue, approaching the clitoris millimetre by millimetre. At the termination of each stroke he paused very briefly, as though to create suspense, before his tongue once more embarked upon its meticulous ascent. Kathrine watched every movement with baited breath. Clara stared the way a devout Muslim might stare at a suckling pig on a spit.

  After some seven or eight minutes, Master Licker’s procedure entered a new phase.

  Placing one hand on her cunt, he moistened two fingers in his mouth and inserted them cautiously between her labia with his palm facing down. His fingers inside, he turned his hand a hundred and eighty degrees and caused it to gently vibrate in a series of small, circular movements, his tongue now proceeding towards the clitoris with rather more urgency.

  She was wide open for him, her breathing guttural and imploring. Master Licker then abruptly stopped his licking and positioned himself at the side of the couch. The gathered fingers of his left hand drew small circles around her clitoris, his right hand exerting pressure inside her. Mille’s breathing intensified as though she was about to climax, but Master Licker did not hasten as would the amateur. Instead, he maintained the steadiness of his pace, until Mille’s arms suddenly began to twitch as though in spasm and she raised her legs off the couch.

  A clear jet of fluid then spurted from her, and the grunt-like moan she expelled was so loud and protracted we almost feared for her health.

  Master Licker slowly withdrew his wet fingers and allowed Mille to regain her composure. After a couple of minutes of recovery she climbed down, gave Master Licker a big hug and with glistening eyes rejoined the throng to spontaneous applause.

  Master Licker of Ørby had a beer and a fag.

  ‘Was that a squirting orgasm we saw there?’ Clara asked.

  I sat with a single malt at the bar.

  ‘That’s the most awesome thing I’ve seen since Caravaggio,’ said Kathrine.

  ‘I always turn the bedside lamp off during sex,’ said Clara.

  ‘I hope that’s a metaphor,’ said Kathrine.

  ‘It makes me embarrassed. Have you ever noticed how sex noises are the same as when you hurt yourself?’<
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  Kathrine grabbed my arm when Clara went off to the loo.

  ‘I’ve put Clara’s name on the list, but it’s not her turn for another two hours. We’ve got to do something, otherwise she’ll just crawl into the tent and sleep through.’

  We agreed we’d head into town with Clara and get her drunk and we started at Le Petit Fer à Cheval. Like me, Clara was brought up to believe that rich people are bastards, and normally she upheld the prejudice as strictly as possible, but as soon as ‘Africa’ by Toto came on she dragged Kathrine on to the tiny dance floor, rediscovered her feet from her acid-jazz days and even looked like she was enjoying herself, dancing with a pair of stuffed dummies and sinking to her knees to ‘Shackles’ by Mary Mary. Eventually, Kathrine took me aside.

  ‘Clara’s appointment is in fifteen minutes.’

  We made it back to Master Licker in the nick of time.

  ‘Number eight,’ he said, looking out over the gathered throng.

  Kathrine found her little ticket.

  ‘Is it you, Kath?’ said Clara.

  Kathrine handed the ticket to Clara, and I know for a fact that at any other second in her life she would have crumpled it up, but at that moment she accepted it and made her way to the front.

  Self-consciousness did not kick in until she found herself hopping about on one leg with her knickers round her ankles, but Master Licker embraced her like a carport Buddha and directed her kindly yet firmly on to the couch.

  Clara was ticklish, but Master Licker did not flinch, continuing to smooth his hands all down the pale fullness of her naked body. Kathrine squeezed my arm as he put his broad tongue to her cunt, and it was not exactly a sight I had been yearning to see.

  ‘Breathe deeply, Clara,’ said Master Licker of Ørby. ‘You are surrounded by trees. Breathe with them.’

  Five long strokes of his tongue towards the clitoris and she allowed her upper body to drop heavily back to the couch. When he moistened the fingers of his right hand, I cursed the fact that our old school photographs remained more vividly etched in my mind than Beethoven’s violin concerto: Clara with a bowl cut and a woolly jumper with horizontal stripes.

  And here she was now, stranded naked on a couch in Tisvilde. But her breathing had become heavy and regular.

  Master Licker had proceeded through the round-tongued phase and had now positioned himself at the side of the couch ready to perform the decisive action.

  It didn’t take long before Clara was arching her voluminous frame and expelling a fountain of fluid.

  It was another gorgeous morning and I’d got about ten metres from my cabin when the first buzz about Kreuzmann and the flea market reached me. I was waylaid by one of the single acid-jazz mothers:

  ‘He’s gone postal.’

  ‘What’s he doing exactly?’ I said.

  ‘There’s enough gossip about us as it is,’ she said.

  ‘Is he running riot, or what?’

  ‘He’s sat down in the middle of the flea market. You’ll have to go and see.’

  ‘Let me get some breakfast first, all right?’

  Clara and I had breakfast in front of the tent, and those who passed by stroked her on the head. She had neither sausages nor fried potatoes from the buffet and made do with a bit of fruit and muesli instead. She sat up straight and had a look of impenetrable serenity in her eyes.

  ‘Welcome to the first day of your new life,’ said Kathrine.

  I went over to get some more mozzarella and ran into Miriam. She was wearing a bathrobe over her knocked-up boobs, and her make-up was almost offensive, given the time of day.

  ‘Is that Clara?’ she said with a nod towards the tent.

  ‘Erik Brinch hasn’t told her yet,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  I went back and sat down and tried to get as much of the green olive oil as possible to stick to the mozzarella.

  ‘Who was that stripper you were talking to?’ said Clara.

  ‘You can ask her yourself,’ said Kathrine.

  Miriam came striding up.

  ‘Hi, I’m Miriam,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, Miriam,’ said Clara. ‘You look like you want to say something.’

  ‘I want your man,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Do you want your own hair colour too?’ said Clara.

  ‘He wants me as well, he just hasn’t the courage to tell you himself!’

  ‘Do you know her, Mikkel?’ said Clara.

  ‘Mikkel lent us a cabin,’ said Miriam.

  ‘What is this?’ said Clara.

  ‘And I slept in his summer house last night,’ said Miriam.

  ‘It’s Clara’s summer house,’ said Kathrine.

  ‘Have you been fucking in my bed?’ said Clara.

  ‘Sorry, Clara,’ said Miriam. ‘Facts of life.’

  Kathrine leapt to her feet and gave Miriam a shove backwards.

  ‘Get lost, before I smash your slaggy face in!’

  Clara and Kathrine stormed off and I went back to Skotte Olsen to get a towel, then went for a shower in the Portakabin.

  A single acid-jazz mother was in there with a skater boy, the water splashing from their tanned bodies. She had soaped his cock and was gently masturbating him, while he had his hands firmly around her buttocks. They were tongue-kissing as if they were never going to run short of variations.

  I changed into a clean polo and a clean pair of shorts and went off to the flea market, Nordhusvej’s dust kicking up under my feet as I went.

  Kreuzmann was sitting about ten metres from the popcorn machine, and behind him two eleven-year-old girls were selling off their Bratz dolls. He had shorts on and a shirt that had once been white. He was seated with his legs out to the side, like a child who had only just learned to sit properly, and he wasn’t wearing underpants.

  His big hairy bollocks spilled out on to the sparse grass.

  I sat down in front of him and tried to screen off his balls.

  ‘You’re losing it, Vallin!’ he said.

  ‘That’s a rather categorical statement.’

  ‘It’s all right with those old herons from the acid-jazz days filling their fannies with young cock, but what the fuck are the church services in aid of? Are you starting a sect?’

  A lady in her early seventies wearing braided-leather shoes smiled down at me.

  ‘Good morning, Mikkel Vallin. I’d like to inform you that a large number of residents here have joined together and will be taking measures to put a stop to your filth.’

  She was still smiling.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Exposing oneself in the presence of children, indeed!’

  She gestured towards Kreuzmann’s bollocks. He looked down at them.

  ‘Sorry, my fault entirely,’ he said. ‘No balls without a cock!’

  He pulled down his shorts, took his dick out and let it rest, fat and sweaty, against his thigh.

  ‘Is that any better for you?’

  ‘Measures will be taken!’ she said. ‘We’re watching you, Vallin!’

  People continued to arrive at the camp in their droves on the Saturday, and before long the front garden too was taken up by tents.

  Levinsen had organised a big bash that night and some of the newcomers were his personal guests. Levinsen Open Presents Love-In, said the e-mail invite he’d sent round to his clients, and they were neither shaggy-bearded trumpetists nor mathematicians with an arty side, but people who read books about blue ocean strategy, divided their fellow humans into coloured categories and abbreviated ‘return on investment’ to ROI.

  My editor, Bernhard, called before lunch to check on the progress of my manuscript, and I told him I was researching my subject historically and writing about the Ranters, an anarchist proletarian sect in seventeenth-century England who had gone in for drinking binges, partner swaps and public exposure.

  ‘Sounds like you’re on the right tack,’ he said, and I agreed, though flinched at the nautical metaphor.

 
During lunch, an advertising photographer, well known for his arrogance, blew up in the face of one of the girls we had tending bar because we weren’t accepting credit cards. I was concerned about the spiritual balance and direction of the camp and tried to speak to Nikolaj Krogh about it, but he was immersed in matters of a more practical nature: change for the till, the ice machine, power cables, and did we need to open another bar?

  In truth, I was feeling rather done in and was missing the quiet moments with Diana on Lyrskovgade. She was either on the phone or else politely distant, and my mood was made no better by Mille constantly traipsing around in her wake.

  Andreas and I went for an afternoon walk and sat down on the rock at Seksvejen.

  ‘The sex is taking over,’ I said.

  ‘Wasn’t that the idea?’ he said.

  ‘There’s the idea, and then there’s the sex,’ I said.

  ‘What does Diana have to say?’ said Andreas.

  ‘She’s not saying much at all.’

  ‘Are you afraid of losing her in all this?’

  ‘You can’t really talk about our relationship like that,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve now met the woman you’d be most suited to make a couple with?’

  ‘Yes, if that’s what this was all about.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘You’re sticking to your guns. I admire you for it. It’s very generous.’

  ‘Thank Diana.’

  ‘I will, once I get the chance.’

  When we got back, Diana was sitting in front of the cabin, drawing. She put down her charcoal.

  ‘Lift me up,’ she said, and I danced her out into the camp and twirled her under the trees, and sang the first thing that came into my head.

  Levinsen had a whole deployment putting a marquee up.

  ‘What’s that for?’ I asked him.

  ‘You’re going to love it, Vallin. We’ve got acid rock, we’ve got joss sticks, we’ve got a light show! I’ve got two hundred spliffs of Svaneke pot coming in at seven o’clock. I’ve hitched ten thousand miles and my speech is awesome, like the blowing of trumpets. Total “Itsi-Bitsi”, I promise you!’