Johannes fell silent. The stone was still lying in my hand, resting palm upward on the table, and he placed a finger on the stone and caressed it with his fingertip in my cupped hand as he continued talking:

“It was lying there at the water’s edge glowing at me, or so it seemed. So I stopped and squatted, and at the very moment when I touched the stone, everything became clear. All the pieces fell into place. It was as if a ravine had opened up in front of me, and in the widening gap I could see the resolution to my novel-with absolute clarity. I put the stone in my pocket and drove home, and finished the novel in a couple of days. Since then I haven’t wanted to part from that stone.”

After dinner I went to sit in an armchair, Johannes on the sofa. We were drinking tea.

“Tell me about your dog,” said Johannes.

I hesitated, feeling the tears weighing heavy and twisting in my throat at the mere thought. I presume he could tell, because he added quietly:

“Only if you want to, of course, Dorrit.”

But I did want to, and so I told him; I told him about Jock and my love for him. Johannes didn’t seem to find it at all amusing that I was talking about love in connection with a dog, not even when I talked about the fact that the dog loved me; he listened with understanding and respect. And I went on talking, about my house, my garden, and a little bit about Nils too, once I’d got going.

Then Johannes told me about a woman he had loved when he was my age. They had lived together, and he had been very happy with her. But as soon as she got pregnant by him, she left him.

“One evening she told me we were expecting a baby, and I was so happy. I was so proud that I was going to be a father. But a couple of days later, when I got home from jogging, her shoes and coats were gone from the hallway, and her closet was empty, and her shelf in the bathroom, and her books, her photographs, her laptop, everything that belonged to her was gone. After that I became cold. I was incapable of loving. I couldn’t even have sex. Couldn’t get close to anyone. And time just passed. Suddenly I was sixty and ended up in here, on the glass mountain. Or rather in the glass mountain.”

“So how are things now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked, although I could see from his eyes and from the softening of his mouth that he understood what I meant.

“Would you be able to now?” I said.

“Be able to do what?” he said, and now there was something teasing in his expression.

It made me embarrassed.

“Oh, you know…” I mumbled.

My cheeks felt hot, and I realized I was blushing. I looked away.

There was silence for a little while. Then he said:

“Dorrit. Come and sit here.”

His voice was soft, not at all peremptory. But it was also firm and determined, like the voice of someone who knows exactly what he wants, and it made something tremble inside me, shooting and throbbing. This was just the way things had been with Nils; he also used to sound as if he knew what he wanted, and he could also make me tremble just by expressing a simple wish in a gentle but firm voice.

I have always had a tendency-far too much of a tendency-to be turned on by people who know what they want and are able to express themselves without yelling and shouting and blustering. I have always been turned on by people who sound as if they are in control of a situation. So I sat there in Johannes’s armchair, trembling and throbbing like a heart that has just been cut out of one body and is about to be inserted and stitched into another, and I could feel myself pulsating down below, the sensation spreading along the inside of my thighs, and my cheeks were burning and my eyes felt hot and shiny, as if I had a temperature. But I said nothing and did nothing, I just sat there in the armchair being all those physical reactions and feelings.

“I want you to come and sit here on the sofa next to me,” said Johannes in that same gentle, firm voice, and I didn’t look at him, but I could feel him looking at me, my whole face could feel his eyes searching for mine.

“And I want you to do it now,” he added.

“Why?” I croaked.

“You know the answer to that,” he said. “Come over here.”

And I tried. I tried to get my legs and arms to work and heave myself out of the armchair to walk the two or possibly three steps over to the sofa, but I had become a helpless simpleton with no will of her own-no, that’s not true, I did have a will of my own, because I wanted to move, I wanted to move so much it hurt-and couldn’t control my limbs, let alone make them move. I gave up.

“I think you’ll have to come and get me,” I whispered.

And he did. Without a word he got up from the sofa, came over to the armchair, lifted me in his arms, and carried me over to the sofa. And I did nothing. I just lay there limp in his embrace, allowed myself to be laid down on the cushions. I did nothing when he kissed me, I just kissed him back, hungrily eating my way in between his lips, sucking on his tongue as if it were a teat and I were a starving lamb. I did nothing when he unbuttoned my shirt and my pants and undressed me, one item of clothing at a time; nothing when he looked at me as I lay there undressed in front of him, just parted my legs a fraction before his gaze. I did nothing when he took hold of me, when he caressed my skin with his hands-everywhere, searching, as if he were looking for scars and other traces of incursions, attacks, accidents-nothing when he caressed my hands, my arms, my neck, face, breasts, stomach, thighs, bottom, vagina. I did nothing, I didn’t move a muscle when he bent down between my thighs and pressed his tongue against me, nor did I do anything when he tensed the muscles in his tongue and began to stimulate my clitoris with it; I did nothing but let myself come in warm waves, flooding and flooding through me. After I had come, the second after, before I had even managed to catch my breath, he plowed into me, from the front, from above, supporting himself on his arms, his thrusts sometimes slow and teasing, sometimes hard and deep. He screwed me-this really was being screwed. He took me, he took me the way a veritable male chauvinist and oppressor of women, a caveman, a Neanderthal, a male animal with a reptilian brain would have taken a woman. And I did nothing, absolutely nothing, just allowed myself to be taken, and it was… no, there are no words to describe how it was.

12

I hadn’t thought it would be possible to have sex in the reserve bank unit. I didn’t think anyone would want to or would be able to, partly because of anxiety and stress, partly because of the surveillance, which made any kind of private life impossible in the true sense of the word. But I didn’t feel as if I lacked a private life. We were all monitored everywhere all the time, whatever we were doing, but by this stage I had stopped attaching any importance to it. I never really managed to ignore or forget the cameras, but they just became a part of life, almost something natural. It was presumably similar to the old days, when religion had a clear place within daily life, and people were convinced that God was keeping a constant, watchful eye on them, that he saw and heard everything they did and said and thought and felt, and that there was no point in trying to hide anything.

So we made love, Johannes and I, we made love with no modesty, physically, quite openly. We made love for the rest of that evening after the saffron fish, and more or less all night. And the next evening and night, and the next, and the next-and so on. We simply became a couple. We became a loving couple. And we made love in the old-fashioned way without the least trace of embarrassment. He was the seducer, the one who took the initiative, the active one. He took what he wanted from me, and I accepted, allowed myself to be passive. It was like making love with Nils again, but better, freer. Johannes and I were living our lives locked away, outside the community, and therefore had nothing and no one to be ashamed of.