And every time, on the day after these clandestine but dignified nocturnal visits by the great at this side of the street, it came about that other visits, public but rather less dignified, were paid at the other end of the street, whatever connection there might be between them: it was the populace paying a call on the Prime Minister. These people’s mission was always the same: to deliver addresses and present petitions to him not to sell the country; not to hand over their sovereignty; not to let foreigners build themselves an atom station here for use in an atomic war; Youth Fellowships, schools, the University Citizens’ Association, the Road-Sweepers’ Association, the Women’s Guilds, the Office-Workers’ Association, the Artists’ Association, the Equestrian Association: “In the name of God our Creator, who has given us a country and who wants us to own it, and which was not taken from anyone, do not sell from us this country which God wants us to own, our country; we beg you, Sir.”
There was unrest in the town; people ran from their work in the middle of the day and gathered fearfully in groups or sang Our fjord-riven fatherland; the most unlikely people hoisted themselves up and made speeches about this one thing:
You can impose on us limitless taxes; you can have companies that add many thousand per cent to the prices of the foreign goods we buy off you; you can buy two pliers and ten anvils a head, and buy Portuguese sardines for all the nation’s currency; you can devalue the krona as much as you like when you have managed to make it worthless; you can make us starve; you can make us stop living in houses—our forefathers did not live in houses, only turf hovels, and they were yet men; everything, everything, everything, except only this, this, this: do not hand over the sovereignty which we have battled for seven hundred years to regain, we charge you, Sir, in the name of everything which is sacred to this nation, do not make our young republic the mere appendage to a foreign atom station; only that, only that; and nothing but that.
When such visits were being made at the other end of the street, all the doors in our house were carefully locked and Madam said, “Draw the blinds in the south windows.”
One night in the darkest part of winter there was a new development for this house: both foreign and Icelandic guests were asked to a party together. It was not a dinner party but a supper party. The guests arrived about nine, all in evening dress, all men, and were given cocktails while they were making their greetings. As for food, there were tables covered with American sandwiches, tongue, chicken, and salads, with all the appropriate wines, followed by delicious desserts. People ate standing. Finally a punch was heated in a bowl, and whisky and gin were served. Hired waitresses did the serving, and expert cooks stood by in the kitchen. The Yanks left early: and shortly after they had gone the aristocracy of Iceland began to sing Fellows were in fettle and O’er the icy sandy wastes. Around midnight, the waitresses brought word to the kitchen that the guests were beginning to fondle them as they poured out drinks for them. A little later the girls went home and the guests poured their own drinks. As the night wore on people became drunk, and Pliers helped the host to support those who could not shift for themselves, or carry them out into taxis. At the end of the party I was told to clear the tableware and leftovers, dry the spillings, empty the ashtrays, and open the windows. The only people left by then were the Prime Minister, very drunk in a huddle deep in a chair, and Snorredda’s jack-of-all-trades, Pliers, very sober, filling up his glass for him. The host had seated himself in his study with the connecting door open, and was leafing through a foreign magazine.
“Communists!” said the Prime Minister. “Bloody Communists. I love them. I shall kill them.”
“Listen, friend,” said his brother-in-law from behind the magazine. “You remember we have to get up early and go to a committee meeting tomorrow morning?”
“And we mustn’t forget that the nation’s independence now depends on Iceland knowing her bones,” said Two Hundred Thousand Pliers.
“Cowards! Come on if you dare!” said the Prime Minister.
“All the newspapers must combine over the bones question,” said Pliers. “The Communists too. But above all the clergy.”
“Why do I want to sell the country?” said the Prime Minister. “Because my conscience tells me to.” he said, and here he lifted three fingers of his right hand. “What is Iceland for the Icelanders? Nothing. Only the West matters for the North. We live for the West; we die for the West; one West. Small nation?—dirt. The East shall be wiped out. The dollar shall stand.”
“Friend, we mustn’t think aloud,” said Doctor Bui Arland. “There are people about. If we speak, what we are thinking could be misunderstood; or even understood, which God forbid.”
“I want to sell my country!” roared the Prime Minister. “Everything for only this. They can drag me by the hair all through the town …”
“Friend,” said the Doctor.
“Eat it yourself!” said the Prime Minister. “Though they flog me publicly at Austurvoll and kick me to Hell out of the Government I shall still sell my country. Even though I have to give my country away for nothing, the dollar shall conquer. I know Stalin’s a clever man, but he shall not be a match for the Prime Minister of Iceland.”
“And even though the whole nation betrays the Darling he shall still have me for a friend,” said Pliers.
“Where’s everybody?” said the Prime Minister, suddenly realizing that the guests were gone. A little later he overturned the glasses, stood up, and braced himself, and it was amazing what he managed; bracing himself was obviously something innate in this little fat man’s blood, the last thing that deserted him in this life; in actual truth he was so drunk that there was nothing left of him except his innermost instincts. Pliers supported him out and put his hat on his head and the man went on echoing himself on the way out through the hall and outside door: “I’m the Prime Minister. Stalin’s not so clever as I am. The dollar shall stand.”
The Doctor, his brother-in-law and colleague in the Snorredda enterprise, accompanied him and Pliers to the door. The party was over. They drove away, and the master looked at me with a smile.
“My brother-in-law is a delightful man,” he said, “and likes to make jokes sometimes when he is tipsy. Fortunately we do not have to commit them to memory; nor repeat them if we happen to drop in to a cell meeting.”
He leaned against a door-jamb and looked at me wearily, while his cigarette smoked itself between his fingers; and he had mentioned a cell meeting—did he then know everything, even that?
“He is really a very honest man,” said the Doctor. “At least when he is tipsy. In actual fact, no man is honest when sober; in actual fact, you cannot believe a single word that a sober man says. I wish I were drunk myself.”
He took off his spectacles and polished them carefully, put them on again, and glanced at his watch. “Bedtime, and long past it,” he said.
But he turned on his heel in the middle of the hall on his way up and continued his monologue: “As I was saying, you can always depend on him absolutely. If he swears something to you in confidence when he is sober, and pledges it on his honor, you can be quite sure that he is lying. If he swears it thrice in public on his mother’s name, then, quite simply, he means exactly the opposite of what he is swearing. But what he says when he is tipsy he really means, even though he swears it.”
I straightened up and asked, “Is he going to sell the country?”
“Are you not indifferent to politics?”
“Yes,” I said. “But all of a sudden I thought of my father; and the church. A-And the stream.”
“What stream?” he asked in surprise.
“The stream …” I was going to say more, but could not. I said no more. I turned away.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, and I felt him looking at me even though I had my back turned to him.
“Hm,” he said. “Good night.”
THE OATH
The crowds pressed closer and closer to Parliament House, the speeches get
ting more and more vehement, Our fjord-riven fatherland being sung ad nauseam, the shouts and catcalls everywhere: “Does Parliament not dare to answer?”
The Members of Parliament sat in secret session to discuss whether they should hand over Reykjavik or some other bay equally suitable for an atom station for use in an atomic war; and since the matter had not been anything like fully enough discussed, they were at a loss to know what answer to give to the singing parliament out there in the square. Occasional M.P.s could be seen peeping out of the balcony window with a smile that was meant to appear nonchalant but turned out to be a forced grimace. Eventually the front doors of the Parliament building were burst open by the pressure of the throng, and people began to stream inside. Then at last the balcony of Parliament House opened and on it appeared a little fat perky man who began to strike an attitude. He waited until the people below had finished singing Our fjord-riven fatherland, and settled his shoulders, fingered the knot of his tie, patted the nape of his neck with his palm, lifted two fingers to his lips, and cleared his throat.
Then he began to speak: “Icelanders,” he said, in a deep, calm, national-father voice; and the people fell silent, acknowledging the drama. “Icelanders,” he said, repeating this word that is so little in the world and yet so large, and now he lifted three fingers on high over the crowd; then he uttered his oath slowly and firmly, with long pauses between the words:
“I swear—swear—swear: by everything which is and has been sacred to this nation from the beginning: Iceland shall not be sold.”
* An Icelandic periodical first published in Copenhagen in 1835; Jonas Hallgrimsson (the Nation’s Darling) was one of the founders. It was the rallying point of the nationalist and literary renaissance.
9. Bad news of the gods
The organist and the self-conscious policeman were sitting at the battered old harmonium with some barely legible scrawled notation in front of them, so engrossed that they neither saw nor heard me when I came in; and for half an hour they were unaware that I was sitting behind them. For a long time they struggled their way through some sort of tunelessness, full of weird sounds that recalled the light over the countryside early in the morning before anyone is afoot. In the end, however, I seemed to perceive a melody emerging, but it came from such a distant place, in addition to which its wonders revealed themselves to me in so sudden a flash, that perception struck rather than touched me. And just as I was beginning to get palpitations over a new world, a fantastic and undiscovered world, on the other side of usual form, the two had stopped and were on their feet, animated and exalted, with a light in their eyes as if they had composed the music themselves, and they greeted me.
When I began to ask questions, the organist said he did not know if it was safe to trust me with one of the more important secrets in the world, the name of a new genius: was I stupid enough to come face to face with such a problem without missing my foothold in life? And if I were not stupid, was I then intelligent enough to obey this new maestro’s call to each individual to deny the world in which we live and take part in creating a new one for the unborn? But when my organist saw how grieved I was at not having his confidence he was sorry for me, patted me on the cheek and kissed me on the forehead: “It was a violin concerto by Roberto Gerhard,” he said, and asked me not to be angry, saying that he had just been joking. “He is a Spanish boy in Cambridge, who does not even know music; if there were any vigor left in the Esterhazy family they would beat him. Let us hope he does not get a bigger funeral than Mozart.”
He went into the kitchen to see to the coffee, and the self-conscious policeman looked at me searchingly, to see if I had understood anything.
“It’s always becoming more and more difficult to live,” he said. “Now I’ve heard this on top of all the rest.”
At that moment the gods arrived, Brilliantine with those hot piercing murderer’s eyes, and Benjamin drifting through the ether in a trance of pessimism. The organist welcomed them with his usual kindliness, asked them for news of the godhead and the upper regions, and offered them coffee.
They were agitated and brought bad news of themselves: Pliers had thrown them out. “He has taken up with Oli Figure. Figure says, Dig up bones. It’s been in all the papers that they are in communication with the Darling.”
“By all means let them go digging,” said the organist. But the self-conscious policeman asked, “Where is the Cadillac?”
“He has stolen our Cadillac,” said the atom poet. “And I revenged myself by smashing with a sledgehammer all the keys on the piano he gave me. I’m going to bellow like a cow. Then I’m going to kill myself.”
“I am quite sure you will not commit any such lechery, my friend,” said the organist. “Suicide—masturbation multiplied by itself! You who are a god! No now you must be joking.”
“I have seen all the pictures from Buchenwald,” said Benjamin. “It is impossible to be a poet any longer. The emotions stand still and will not heed the helm after you have studied the pictures of these emaciated bodies; and these dead gaping mouths. The love-life of the trout, the rose glowing on the heath, dichterliebe, it’s all over. Fini. Slutt. Tristram and Isolde are dead. They died in Buchenwald. And the nightingale has lost its voice because we have lost our ears, our ears are dead, our ears died in Buchenwald. And now nothing less than suicide will do any more, the square of onanism.”
“But it is always possible to kill someone,” said the god Brilliantine.
The other replied, “Yes, if one had an atom bomb. It is both intolerable and unseemly that a divine being like me, Benjamin, should not have an atom bomb while Du Pont has an atom bomb.”
“I shall now tell you what you ought to do,” said the organist, and placed before him a plate containing a few curled-up pastries and some broken biscuits. “You should compose a ballad about Du Pont and his atom bomb.”
“I know what I’m going to do,” said the god Brilliantine. “I’m going to divorce my wife and become a success. I’m going to be a political figure. I’m going to become a Minister and swear on oath; and get a decoration.”
“You two are slipping,” said the organist. “When I first knew you, you were satisfied just to be God; gods.”
“Why may we not achieve a little success?” said the god. “Why may we not get a decoration?”
“Petty criminals never get decorations,” said the organist. “Only the lackeys of the big ones get that sort of thing. To become a political success a man needs to have a millionaire. And you two have lost your millionaire. A petty thief does not become a Minister; to be a petty thief is the sort of humiliation that can only happen to gods, such as being born in a manger: people pity them, so that their names do not even get into the papers. Go to Sweden for the millionaires and offer your territorial waters, go to America and sell the country; then you will become a Minister, then you will get a decoration.”
“I’m ready at any time to offer the Swedes the territorial waters and sell the country to the Yanks,” said the god Brilliantine.
“Yes, but it does you not the least bit of good if you have lost your millionaire,” said the organist.
“So you think I shouldn’t bother to divorce my wife?” asked the god.
“Is there any reason for divorcing wives unless they themselves wish it?” asked the organist.
“But at least it will be all right for us to shorten Oli Figure by a head?” said the god.
“It all depends,” said the organist. “Have a biscuit.”
“He’s down south,” said the god. “And goes into trances. But we, we have direct contact with the Godhead itself. For instance, if I open the Bible I can understand it. Listen, could I stick a couple of half pastries into my pocket for the twins? They love having a lick at a pastry.”
“Yes, you are one of the greatest Lutherans of modern times,” said the organist. “And a true paterfamilias, like Luther himself.”
“And I don’t need to do anything but wait until the spirit over
takes me,” said the atom poet. “I have never needed to work on my poems. And if I commit suicide, which is perhaps the most beautiful poem in the world, then I shall do it from divine inspiration, because the spirit moves me to.”
“Yes, you are the greatest romantic poet of modern times.” said the organist.
“But Oli Figure! His nose runs with snot,” said the atom poet. “He says, what’s more, that he has an immortal soul. But the worst thing of all is that this disgusting jellyfish from down south should now be in the Cadillac.”
“So the Figure does not have an immortal soul at all, perhaps?” asked the organist.
They rejected this completely.
“Then I think you should not shorten him by a head,” said the organist. “At least, I should think twice before I murdered a man who had no soul. On the other hand it is quite impossible to murder a man who has a soul, for the simple reason that immortality is the essence of the soul: you kill him, but he lives. And now I must ask you to forgive me for having no time to discuss theology with you any more at present; I need to cull a few flowers for my friend, this lovely young country girl here.”
THE KEY
In Njal’s Saga there is no mention of the soul, nor in Grettir’s Saga either, still less in Egil’s Saga, and these three are the greatest of the Sagas; and least of all in the Edda.* My father was never angrier than when he heard talk of the soul; his doctrine was that we should live as if the soul did not exist.
When we children were little we were forbidden to laugh—out loud; that was wicked. It was of course our duty always to be in a good temper, but all cheerfulness that went beyond moderation was of the devil; there were many maxims in verse on this subject: “Walk gently through the doors of joy.” My father was always in a good temper, and no one had a sweeter smile—unless he happened to hear a joke; then his face would stiffen, as if he heard cutting tools being rasped on each other’s edges, and he would fall silent and become distant. No one ever saw on his face an expression of anxiety or grief, not even if the wild ponies themselves froze to death. My mother loved everything, hoped everything, endured everything; even if misfortune struck the cow, she was silent. If we hurt ourselves, we were forbidden to cry; I never saw weeping until I went to the girls’ college: one girl cried because one of her puddings got burned, another cried over poetry, and a third because she saw a mouse. I thought at first they were play-acting but they were not, and then I felt ashamed in the way one feels ashamed for someone whose trousers have fallen down. There was never an occasion on which my father and mother told us children what they were thinking or feeling. Such idle chatter would have been unseemly in our house. One could talk about life in general, and of one’s own life so far as it concerned others, at least on the surface. One could talk endlessly about the weather, about the livestock, or about Nature so far as weather conditions were concerned; for instance, one could talk about dry spells, but not about sunshine. Likewise, one could talk about the Sagas, but not criticize them; one could trace ancestries, but never one’s own mind: only the mind knows what is next the heart, says the Edda. If the story was no longer a story, but began to concern oneself alone, one’s own self in the deepest sense, then it was wicked to talk; and even more wicked to write. That is the way I was brought up, this is me; no one can get outside of himself.
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