The video shows a very broad expanse in the low-ceilinged concourse of an underground station. The distant walls are covered with large, shiny, dark red tiles. Here and there a sign in Norwegian. In the background, far from the camera, people walk briskly in different directions, heading for a train or for an exit. Some of them glance toward the camera, but none pause.

This is remarkable.

In the foreground, only a couple of meters from the camera, a slender naked barefoot woman, her arms bound behind her back, opens her mouth. The erect penis of a man, otherwise fully clothed, is only a few centimeters from her lips. The woman’s head is covered with a brown leather hood that comes down to mask the upper half of her face. There are holes in the mask for her eyes. Her nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, and her earlobes are free.

She licks the turgid shaft and glans and then takes the erection into her mouth, tightening her lips around it. The man, wearing old jeans and a black t-shirt, has scruffy blond hair. He has the stubble of a beard not shaved for several days. It would be easy to think that he might be a homeless person, someone who hangs out near the underground, drinking and asking for hand-outs. He moves his hips so that his glistening, moist member slides in and out of the woman’s mouth. The camera moves from side to side to record the scene from different angles, then it zooms to capture the woman’s delicate features from up close.

Her eyes are light brown. She wears small pearls in her earlobes. She has high cheekbones and a dimpled chin. She must be in her mid-thirties. Her eye shadow is light grey and a very thin line of black surrounds her eyes. She glances briefly at the camera before returning to her activity.

With her arms bound behind her, she is off-balance and it would be difficult for her to rise to her feet and stand. The man pulls his cock out, grabs her by the shoulders, and pulls her to her feet before spinning her around and positioning her so that she leans forward awkwardly facing downward toward the cement floor of the concourse.

He spreads her buttocks, holding them apart while the camera approaches for a close-up of her anus and her vagina. Taking his right hand away from her buttock, he probes her labia, spreading them apart so that her inner lips appear, darkish brown in contrast to her otherwise light pink complexion. These inner lips are swollen and wet. He pushes first one, then two, and finally three fingers between them, moving the fingers in and out. They shine wet in the florescent light from the ceiling. Then he slowly presses the purple head of his penis between the lips.

The camera pulls back to frame the pair, the woman bent forward, the man stooping slightly so that he can slide into her from behind, bracing himself with his hands on her hips.

A large group of people, mostly women, with shopping bags, passes in the background, about four meters from the pair. Several of the women glance at the man and the woman and at the camera, then turn rapidly away, apparently embarrassed. Perhaps it bothers them that their faces will be recorded. No one stops but no one picks up the pace to run forward or backward away from this performance.

Why do they not stop? Why has no one by now called for the transportation police to come and interrupt what is happening: a bound woman having sexual intercourse with a man.

Perhaps they think simply that is a film being made. Nothing is amiss, surely. The naked woman does not protest. The young woman operating the video camera is dressed neatly in dark blue jeans, a pink sweater, and a blue blazer. There is a man nearby in a black leather jacket, wool dress pants, and polished black dress shoes overseeing the activity. Under his left arm he is holding a light blue raincoat, a woman’s raincoat.

Who, among those passing by, knows that the woman is visiting Oslo from the United States? Who notices the gold wedding band on her left hand? Who knows that she has a four-year-old son? And who knows that she has a master’s degree from Cornell in psychology?

I know.

It is my task to watch the scene and to alert the woman who holds the video camera if some security agents approach to stop this filming. I am jet-lagged but also jittery from all the coffee I drank at the airport. I would probably feel hungry if it were not for the nausea.

The naked woman in the hood is my wife.

I gave her the pearl earrings only three weeks before. They now stand out pale against her ears and face because she is now flushed. Her small breasts, also reddened, now jiggle as the man uses her. Her nipples are distended, her mouth is open, her eyes now closed.

Who is the man with my wife? The camerawoman, Beate, says she thinks his name is Pavel, but she is not sure. He is hard to understand, she says, because he is missing several teeth. He is also high or drunk or both.

As the man, as Pavel, let’s say, pushes gradually deeper into Isabelle’s vagina, she moans slightly. Is it from pain? That seems unlikely. Given his apparently impaired condition, his movements are surprisingly careful and gradual.

Why is he not using a condom?

I stand there, holding Isabelle’s blue raincoat, ready to cover her as soon as possible. Her words in the taxi coming from the airport hardly comfort me.

She said that she could secure the release of five girls held in captivity by a vicious pimp. Her earlier plan to pay the man cash in exchange for their freedom blew up, totally. He spat on her, told her she could use the money to wipe her ass.

She is usually so composed. But in the taxi she teared up as she told this to me. Then she started giggling, hysterically, as she said that he had offered her the girls for free. It would be very simple, they could do it soon, all would be over in twenty-four hours. It would take only an hour of her time, maybe less.

Now the man has pulled out of her vagina, and he pulls her upright. I’m afraid that she’s going to topple over and hit her head on the cement floor, but Beate catches me with her left hand as she continues to film. I am not to intervene, she reminds me.

Isabelle is now up against the wall. It must be uncomfortable, with her arms and hands behind her. Pavel is now fucking her standing up. It is difficult for Beate to find a good angle. She tries first on Isabelle’s left, then goes around to her right and stays there, filming.

Why is Isabelle kissing him?

I was concentrating on watching his thick, dark red cock pushing in, between her very engorged lips, so I did not see the beginning of the kiss. He must have initiated it, shoving his tongue into her mouth. What does it feel like to kiss someone who is missing teeth? Isabelle shows no sign of reluctance, she is pushing her mouth against his in a kind of frenzy. With his right hand he is kneading her left breast.

I hear Beate encouraging them, in English. Does Pavel understand English?

In the taxi, Isabelle told me that it would only take a few minutes, in a subway station. As soon as the awful man had the video in his hands, the girls would be out. They were in a hotel room somewhere in Oslo. When he received the video, he would phone her to let her know where. There would be an envelope, addressed to her, at the hotel reception. In it would be the key to the room.

What if he was lying?

Isabelle said that it was the risk she had to take. Maybe he was lying, she said, but she said that she could never forgive herself if she didn’t try. It was so little to give, she said. Only an hour, maybe less, out of her comfortable, privileged life, and then she would be flying home, looking forward to being a mommy again.

If she didn’t try, she would never forgive herself.

Now their movements have become frenzied. Not just the man. Both of them are in a wild, close, dirty dance, rhythmically rippling against each other. Her whole body gleams with sweat in the fluorescent light. They continue to kiss. While he braces her body with his left hand, he moves his right hand down to her crotch and begins to finger her clitoris.

Now she has pulled her mouth away from his because she is moaning, crying, and coming in a massive orgasm, her eyes squinted shut, her forehead furrowed.

Beate says something in Norwegian, she is smiling, she is very enthusiastic.

I realize that there is a growing wetness in my pants. The nausea and the arousal make me dizzy. And still the jet lag.

The man pulls out of Isabelle and her body slumps back against the red tile wall. Beate hands me the camera and digs in the right pocket of her blazer. She extracts some cash and gives it to Pavel, who disappears quickly around a corner toward an exit.

I start toward Isabelle, but Beate once again stops me. She takes the camera from my hands and squats in front of Isabelle, who is still slumped, eyes closed, against the wall. Now, between Isabelle’s legs, I can see rivulets of thick white semen begin to seep out through the stretched lips. Some of it soon starts down the inside of her thighs.

The camera is very close, recording the progress of the white streaks as they progress downward. Isabelle’s eyes are still closed, she is murmuring something too soft for me to hear. I see her put her fingers between her labia, spreading them so that the pink inside is visible and so the white stream gushes out more copiously.

Finally, Beate stops shooting. She puts down the camera. She turns Isabelle around so that she is facing the wall, and Beate removes the rope. Then she tells me that I can take off the mask. I turn my wife around and pull the mask off. Isabelle opens her eyes, still dazed. I suddenly realize that Beate has resumed filming, capturing Isabelle’s face. I turn and shout at her, NO! and she runs away. I start after her, but Isabelle grabs my arm. They need to get the video. Stay!

Isabelle and I are alone now in the vast concourse. Alone except for about twenty people walking here and there, glancing at us as they go by. I wrap the raincoat around Isabelle’s shoulders. She turns slowly around and pulls the coat over her front.

In the hotel, Isabelle sleeps with the cell phone next to her. She is exhausted, traumatised. The phone does not ring. After three days, we take a taxi to the airport. No phone call, no keys, no girls. On the plane, just before we land in New York, Isabelle wakes up. I did what I could. I have no regrets.

A copy of the video comes in the mail. The return address in Finland is a fake. We watch this scene obsessively.