by Sjón
No one says good morning. No one says good night.
* * *
The cathedral bell doesn’t toll the quarter hour, or even the hours themselves. Though the hands stand at eight minutes past three, it’s hard to guess whether this refers to day or night. A gloomy pall of cloud shrouds both sun and moon. A deathly quiet reigns in the afternoon as if it were the darkest hour before dawn. Or not quite …
From the long, low shed by the harbor the sounds of banging and planing can be heard, though each hammer blow and bout of sawing is so muffled and muted to the ear that it seems almost to apologize for disturbing the silence. It is here that the coffins are being made.
Four more have died of the influenza: a thirty-five-year-old grocer, a girl in her teens, a woman of twenty-eight and the child she was carrying. And a third of the townspeople have taken to their beds, gravely ill.
By the end of the working day the undertaker has received five new orders for coffins—and two more will await him at home.
* * *
The streets yawn, empty of people, except for glimpses here and there of the odd shadowy figure out and about. These are the old women, bundled up in black clothes, wearing shawl upon shawl to keep out the chill. They have given room to so many ailments in their day that the scourge now making a meal of their descendants can find no morsel worth having on their worn-out old bones.
If word gets around that someone has a drop of lamp oil, cough syrup, or vinegar to spare; if it is rumored that oats, rice, soap, or dried stewing vegetables will be sold at the Thomsen’s Magasin warehouse door for half an hour at eleven; if news spreads that a packet of salt fish failed to make it onto the ship or a sack containing a handful of sprouting potatoes has been left sitting around open and unattended, an old biddy will layer up in skirt upon skirt and two pairs of mittens, and hobble off into town for the sake of posterity.
They come face-to-face in courtyards, side streets, alleyways, and gardens—stooping figures—acknowledging one another with sidelong glances and twitching lips.
* * *
The boy is also on the prowl in the deserted center of town.
He’d had no inkling that when the pestilence took hold Reykjavík would empty and convey the impression that nothing was happening at all; that the town would become an abandoned set that he, Máni Steinn, could envisage as the backdrop for whatever sensational plot he cared to devise, or, more accurately, for the kind of sinister events that in a film would be staged in this sort of village of the damned—for these days the real stories are being acted out behind closed doors. And they are darker than a youthful mind can begin to imagine.
The boy pauses.
A cry is heard from the undertaker’s house.
xii
The old lady’s attic has little in the way of heating. Owing to the shortage of coal, she’s fallen back on two paraffin stoves that she doesn’t dare to leave burning at night for fear of fire. A faint warmth filters up from the floors below, but it’s much feebler than the heat she’s used to receiving secondhand from the landlord and his household over the winter months—for the socialist and other important folk are feeling the pinch too—no one can be found to stoke their boiler any longer.
To combat the cold the old lady spends her days in bed, kitted out in balaclava and mittens, under a heap of eiderdowns, blankets, and overcoats that she gets the boy to pile over her before he leaves the house. There she lies right around the clock, reading the papers by day, dozing by night, rising only to cook the boy his porridge in the mornings and his fish tail and potatoes at night, to wring out his clothes and her own, to iron and darn, mop the damp from the floors and walls, and puff her way through thirty cigarettes.
And since the young mistress and her elder daughter fell ill, the old lady has been popping downstairs to cook for the landlord and his younger children; to nurse the patients, wash their clothes, and boil their compresses and rags.
Never in all her born days can the old lady recall spending so much time lounging around in bed.
* * *
There’s the boy now, climbing the ladder to the attic.
A sequence that he has been trying to shake off for the last hour keeps repeating itself over and over in his mind:
A horse-drawn carriage careers at breakneck speed down the slope of Bakarabrekka, over the bridge, and into Lækjartorg Square. The dwarfish driver is bound to the box with a broad leather strap. His head is encased in a black turban, the long end muffling his face; his gleaming black eyes flick to and fro beneath immensely bushy brows. He brandishes his whip like a madman, raining down the lash on the horses’ flanks, and they stretch out their necks at a gallop, snorting till they foam at the bits.
On the roof of the carriage stands a female figure in a long cloak that flaps in the wind like a huge bat spreading its wings. With the razor-sharp, nine-inch claws on her half-human hands, the creature rips open the carriage roof, sending splinters of wood flying like hail into the louring black night.
Two men are sitting inside, one young, the other older. Overcome with terror, the older man cowers against the younger.
The boy appears in the opening at the top of the ladder.
Only once he has emerged onto the landing does he mentally pause the footage, freezing it on a tight frame of the older man’s fleshy hand clutching at the younger man’s thigh. The thick fingers dig into the pale-colored trouser material, the middle one sporting a gold ring embellished with a large gem.
The boy looks across the attic.
A candle is burning on the stool beside the old lady’s bed: she’s awake, then.
Becoming aware of him, she sits up.
The boy freezes in his tracks.
Before his eyes, sixty years fall away from the old lady. Her features are softened by the yellow glow of the guttering flame and the rust-brown balaclava frames them like a loose fall of hair.
She takes on the appearance of a woman the boy has not seen for many a long year, becoming the living image of her youngest sister’s granddaughter.
The boy sinks to the floor with a groan.
—Mother …
V
(November 6–11, 1918)
xiii
The stairway up to the projectionist’s booth is like a shaft supplying oxygen to a blazing furnace.
The boy clings to the rail, struggling to resist the force that is sucking him inexorably closer. He leans back until he is almost horizontal, bracing his feet against the steps as if the world is standing on end and he is fighting to climb backward up the stairs that lead straight down into the fiery mouth of the oven.
It crosses his mind that it would be easier to crawl away than to reverse, but when he turns he is hit head-on by the blast, loses his grip on the rail, and is flung with colossal force up the steps and in through the door of the projectionist’s booth.
The booth is filled with an ear-splitting noise and a searing inferno.
The projector is as big as a horse, its reels like wagon wheels, the car engine that drives it glowing red with the strain. The lamp is as dazzling as the sun; blinding light shines out of every chink in the machine.
The projectionist is pacing around the booth, striking his clenched fist into his palm. He is drenched with sweat, which sprays from him at every turn he takes. From where the boy is lying in a huddle by the door, he can see the drops sizzling on the scalding metal, evaporating and leaving behind tiny rings of salt.
The boy himself is burning up. He opens his mouth in the hope that some of the sweat will find its way inside.
The man stops dead when he notices the gaping boy. He points at the wall in front of the projector. The wall is intact where the opening for the light-beam should be. The picture projected onto it is no bigger than a postcard.
When the boy doesn’t react, the man raises him to his feet, leads him in front of the thundering machine, and stations him so the film is projected onto his chest.
The heat close to the machin
e is even more suffocating than over by the door, and the boy chokes as he breathes in the blistering air.
He begins to cough.
* * *
The film on his chest shows a close-up of gas blowing out of a heating vent in an opulently papered wall. Cut to smartly dressed guests in a ballroom. Close-up of the gas smoking out of the vent on his breastbone. Cut to men and women running around in confusion. Close-up of the smoking gas. Cut to the guests beating on the locked doors. Close-up of the gas. Cut to the guests trying to break into the boy’s lungs. Close-up of the gas. Cut to the guests lying comatose. Cut to black-clad criminals in gas masks, who steal into the ballroom, out from between the boy’s ribs.
* * *
The more the boy coughs, the hotter he becomes.
The projectionist shouts to him over the thundering of the engine, then begins to strip off his clothes. When he has removed every last stitch apart from a green woolen kneesock on his right leg, the lights go on in the gymnasium adjoining the booth. A rock the height of a man, made of moon-pale stone, stands in the middle of the floor.
The projectionist waves to the boy and bounds into the gym. Giving the rock a measuring look, he limbers up, stretches, flexes his biceps, sizes up the rock again, then heaves it over his head and tosses it some ten yards with ease. Then, strolling after it, he repeats the trick again and again.
This is accompanied by tremendous crashes.
The coughing boy gets a hard-on.
xiv
The boy is standing in the doorway of a storeroom.
A human figure, swathed in black from head to foot, is leaning against a large wooden box. Around its waist is a black chain that falls heavily over its loins. The box comes up to the figure’s middle. Beneath the hem of its skirt the toe of a shoe peeps out.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The tinny voice emanating from inside the box sounds like a scratched gramophone record.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The floorboards glisten. Ropes of gray slime stretch out like the filaments of a net from the toe under the skirt across the room to the boy’s bare feet.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
* * *
The black garment billows—something is moving inside, from the hips up the body to the head and back down the same way—until the figure thrusts two clenched, gloved fists out through the slits in the middle.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The gloved fists open. Each contains a handful of flesh: cheeks, firm and ruddy, with smooth skin and a hint of dimples. It seems to the boy as if they have been ripped from his own face.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The cheeks are slapped down, side by side, on the lid of the box.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The hands disappear inside the slits. The garment billows.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
* * *
The toe of the shoe is thrust out from beneath the skirt and stamped down with such force that the floor creaks. Gray slime wells up between the boards. The air grows thick with the stench of rotting fish.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The hands reappear. The figure flings a pair of eyebrows onto the lid. Pain lacerates the boy. He raises a hand to his forehead, but it is shaking too much for him to feel whether his own brows are still there.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The figure withdraws its hands inside its clothes.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The gramophone voice buzzes inside the wooden box.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
The veiled figure bangs down a nose between the cheeks and a moving mouth below it. The floorboards creak. The slime flows over the boy’s feet.
Green eyes are cast onto the lid of the box. And a chin.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
A handful of teeth.
—A little closer, dear, a little closer …
A fistful of red locks.
—A little closer, dear …
The gramophone slows its revolutions. The voice drawls.
—A little …
The black garment billows around the figure. It holds out its gloved hands, a woman’s breast resting in each.
—Closer …
The boy cries out. At last he knows what is expected of him. But he’s too late. He’s rooted to the spot.
—Closer …
He sucks up the gray slime through his bare soles.
—Closer …
Milk oozes from the nipples.
xv
Plashing waves. Summer-pink light. The tide is going out. Small, twinkling-footed birds are busy pecking for insects at the water’s edge. He is standing in a bed of tansy where the beach shelves down, taking care not to frighten them. The sunlight sparkles on the waves, which foam dark red at the crests as they roll over themselves.
* * *
The boy examines himself in a hand mirror, spreading the dark blood on his lips with the tip of his tongue. Blood spurts from the corners of both his eyes, runs along the lids, and stays there like lines drawn by a master’s hand. Ropes of blood pour from his nostrils to form a thick mustache. Drops of blood congeal on his earlobes.
* * *
Hearing someone calling his name, he looks away from the shorebirds, whose movements are hampered now by having to wade through the thickening blood. By the three-story building that stands on the spit, a big wash is under way in huge tubs. The water steams. He hurries over to the washerwomen. The blood dyes the birds up to their breast feathers.
* * *
The nails of the boy’s left hand put on a spurt of growth, becoming as long as fingers in the blink of an eye. Both fingers and hand triple in size all at once, with a cracking of the bones. He drops the mirror. His shadow is lying on the floor, stubbornly human in shape. The shadow stretches its limbs and leaps to its feet, distorting the boy.
* * *
“Tut, tut,” say the washerwomen when he reaches them. “Tut, tut, look how he’s dirtied himself!” They chivy him out of his clothes and sling him into the boiling water with the bloodied bedclothes. Push him to and fro with the laundry bats, pound him, lift him out and dunk him down again, until he’s as soft as linen.
* * *
The boy no longer has any need of blood or bone, muscle or gut. He dissolves his body, turning solid into liquid, beginning from within and rinsing it all out, until it gushes out of every orifice he can find. He is a shadow that passes from man to man, and no one is complete until he has cast him.
* * *
He is hoisted out of the tub, flung onto the wringer, and thoroughly squeezed dry; then two washerwomen take him by the arms and legs, stretch him between them, and hang him out with the rest of the laundry. “I reckon it should fit her now,” he hears the larger woman say as they walk away from the line.
* * *
In the evening, when the birds on the shore have drowned in the boy’s blood, Sóla G— comes and fetches Máni Steinn from the washing line. She takes him home and puts him on. She thinks his red lips, lined eyes, and earrings suit her, but she washes off his mustache and sheathes his nails.
VI
(November 11–17, 1918)
xvi
—This one’s not dead.
—But he isn’t breathing …
—He is breathing, faintly.
—But he hasn’t got a pulse …
—If he’s breathing, his heart must be beating.
Half-awake, the boy feels a metal object being placed against his left breast and held there.
The old lady’s voice:
—But his hands are like ice …
The unknown man’s voice shushes her brusquely.
A moment’s silence.
&nb
sp; —His heartbeat’s regular. He’s alive.
The metal object is removed from the boy’s chest. His undershirt is buttoned up. The quilt is drawn over him again.
The old lady:
—Aren’t you going to take him, then?
The man:
—There’s no need. How are you yourself keeping, ma’am?
Her:
—I’m alive too.
Him:
—So I’d noticed.
The boy manages to crack open an eye.
—I owe it all to these …
The old lady’s gnarl-veined hand intrudes into the boy’s narrow field of vision, holding a sea-green packet of Three Castles cigarettes.
—Surely not.
The man, who is sitting on the edge of the boy’s bed, shifts position. It is Dr. Garibaldi Árnason, the surgeon.
—You couldn’t spare one?
The boy half opens his eyes. The doctor reaches out a hand and extracts a cigarette from the packet. The old lady sticks a match in the paraffin stove and gives him a light.
He draws the smoke deep into his lungs. She watches him smoke the cigarette halfway down.
—How is the landlord’s family doing? They haven’t wanted me downstairs since the boy was taken poorly.
—The son’s with us at the French Hospital; he hasn’t got long to live. The daughter’s not quite as bad.
The old lady:
—Hell and damnation …
She breaks off, then adds:
—God bless the landlord and all his socialist folk.
The doctor pats the quilt.
—One’s grateful for every life that’s saved.
He rises to his feet.
—And, thanks to you, this fellow’s going to pull through.
The boy blinks. The doctor turns away from the bed and addresses someone at the other end of the attic:
—Would you get the car ready, please?
The boy raises his head from the pillow.
On the landing stands a figure with hypnotic eyes.
