by Sjón
Leo hurries out of the café.
* * *
The official had concluded his conversation about the diet of werewolves by hissing at the person on the other end of the line:
— Go to hell! They’ve got their heads up their arses and from what I can hear so have you!
He continued the interview as if nothing had happened.
— You have a clean record, I see, and here is a statement from the Czechoslovakian Embassy that you did nothing unlawful while you were domiciled there. What, I thought you were German?
The official glared at Leo.
— I’m from Prague.
— I hope you’re not a Communist?
— No, I’m apolitical. I’m an alchemist.
— Oh, is that to the left or right, politically speaking?
— You could categorise it as an occult science.
— I know that, I was just testing you. An alchemist, that means someone who makes gold, doesn’t it?
— Yes, but it’s primarily a system of spiritual exercises.
The official assumed a blank expression.
— Where do you stand on the Chrysostom theory of Iceland’s settlement? Was there a sect of “Krýsar” or Irish mystics here when the Norsemen arrived? Are we all “golden mouths”, hmm? Did Egyptian shades hold court in Krýsuvík a thousand years ago?
— I find it highly unlikely …
The official livened up.
— Pah, it’s all a load of codswallop anyway. What about the Heruli? That’s not such a mad idea, is it?
— Er, I don’t know that one …
— Good for you, it’s a disgrace to the Icelandic nation to claim that they’re descended from a race who worshipped pigs. Don’t bother mugging up on all that stuff.
A long pause.
— Right, here’s the reference from Reykjavík’s Chief of Police. You appear to have a spotless character.
The official put down the papers.
— But if there’s anything we ought to know, if there’s anything you want to tell me, it would be better if you did so now. Better for all concerned …
* * *
When Leo had first arrived in the country he had picked up an application form for prospective citizens. But as it ran out before he got round to filling it in, he had given up on the idea. It was only when the stamp dealer Hrafn W. Karlsson explained to him why it was impossible for him to stay any longer in the country without becoming a full citizen that he realised the sooner he got on with applying, the better.
— Say you’re arrested with some of these stamps – that you had a fire at your house, for example, and the firemen found them – you would be deported from the country, you know, without so much as a by-your-leave. But Icelandic citizens aren’t treated like that. They’re simply sentenced to a spell in jail at Litla-Hraun and can go home again once the case has been forgotten about.
— They are above board, aren’t they?
Leo ran his hand over the files that lay on the counter of the Reykjavík Stamp Shop: red thirty-five-aurar stamps featuring an erupting Hekla and a black “five-aurar” overprint. The printing was clumsy, the overprint tilted at every angle: upside down, over to one side, in some places double. It was late in the evening because Hrafn wouldn’t do business with him until after closing time.
Leo didn’t care; he knew it was because he was a Jew, while Hrafn was a former member of the Association of Icelandic Nationalists. All their dealings were marked by Hrafn’s embarrassment at associating with Leo. If they met in the street he could never be sure from one day to the next whether Hrafn would greet him. Sometimes he looked at Leo as if he had never seen him before, though if he was in the mood he would acknowledge him like anyone else. Understandably Leo did not like associating with Hrafn, but he had no choice.
Hrafn tapped a thick finger on the envelope.
— So, you don’t actually know what you’re selling me?
— Are they stolen goods?
— You’re asking the wrong person. You won’t tell me where you get the stamps from …
— I was asked not to.
— And you won’t say who buys them from you either?
— I wouldn’t dream of it.
— Good.
Leo had no idea what he was mixed up in. All he knew was that in Iceland stamps are somehow more than just sticky labels indicating postage paid. Indeed, there are whole families in the city who make their entire livelihood from dealing in these goods, as they have done for three generations. The stamps he sells Hrafn come from a different source, however. He received them from a man whom he suspects of working at the Gutenberg State Printing Press.
Their encounter took place at night. Leo couldn’t sleep as was often the case when they were busy at the town’s fish-meal plant and a miasma of guano lay over the city. Locals call this stench “the smell of money” and sleep like millionaires, while men like Leo suffer from insomnia. Even though the reek of rendering flesh and fat was stronger outside in the open air than in his little basement flat, he preferred to be somewhere he could go for a run to shake off the horror stories that the smell evoked.
* * *
FROM THE STORY OF THE ZEBRA PEOPLE
Turning a man into a zebra is not as far-fetched a process as it may at first sound. All the Germans needed for the task was an old or new prison, a dedicated workforce and a group of people who had been selected for the transformation. There were old prisons available in every occupied territory but in some places they embarked on new constructions and whole prison villages were erected. If the prisons were in use, some of the existing prisoners were pardoned, their sentence was reduced, they were given the choice of working on the conversion of the place as community service, and so on.
The choice, where possible, of the oldest and most inhumane prisons illustrates the ingenuity of those responsible for operation Zebrastreifen. Those of us who found ourselves in the black hole on the outskirts of P— had been transported there for a variety of crimes. I met men of every nationality, race, creed, political belief and sexual orientation. They ran the gamut from adolescents to geriatrics. What we all had in common was that by the end of our stay we had been transformed into zebras.
The method the Germans used for this task is a testament to their sharp sense of pragmatism. The cells were packed; instead of putting two men in a two-man cell they would put in five, and this alone was enough to transform our physical attributes. The transformation could occur rapidly or over a long period. I suppose I was there for some seven months, which was the time it generally took to bring out the main characteristics of the animals: a stripy body, swollen belly, matchstick legs with knobbly knees, sticking-out ears on a bony head and alienated eyes.
During the very first weeks of the transformation I felt a growing stiffness in my body, my back grew bent from the simple fact that in a crowd one makes oneself small. Since nothing was done by the prison management to improve conditions in the cells, although they now held three people more than they were designed to, apart from our being given a thin blanket to cover ourselves or fold under our backsides on the stone floor, we had to take it in turns to sleep on the bunks, walk the three paces that separated them and stretch our bodies by hanging from the sill of the tiny, deep-set window that provided our world light during our stay there.
At first relations in the cell were good; we agreed that we would not let them break us down. My cellmates, of whom there were to be quite a number during my months in P—, had in some cases been imprisoned before and knew something of the art of preserving one’s sanity in circumstances like these. The first commandment was never to talk of our families or other loved ones outside the walls. The second was not to discuss our reason for being there. The third was to share all food parcels, tobacco and other items we might be sent.
To cut a long story short, all these commandments were broken. The third least often, however, because all our communication with the outside world was swiftly cut off. And
soon the atmosphere in the cell grew thick with worries about sweethearts, wives and children, or else flared up in quarrels about politics, religion and sport, or, as time went on, types of beer and the appearance of matchboxes.
What illustrates our ignorance better than anything else is that we devoted our greatest efforts to clinging on to the tatters of our souls, to our mental health, instead of to caring for our physical bodies. We didn’t know that these were what the Germans were principally interested in; they couldn’t care less whether the soul in the zebra’s body was whole or splintered.
About three months after my arrival in P— I saw my first zebra. We had been let out of our cells for the weekly fifteen-minute circuit of the prison yard. The yard was segregated so we couldn’t communicate with prisoners from other blocks, and there we were made to circle at regular intervals and speeds. If prisoners were caught quickening their pace in order to stretch themselves they were instantly punished with a truncheon blow to the thigh.
It was an unbearable exercise which succeeded neither in strengthening the body nor clearing the head. It seemed principally designed to remind us that we were not only prisoners of the Germans but also of our own bodies. I was obsessed by the longing to run around like a madman, crowing and gambolling, back and forth, from wall to wall. During these weekly sessions we didn’t care whether the sky was blue or black, it lay over us like a millstone carrying us round and round like worthless chaff. It was probably this caricature of physical exercise that led to our being so careless of our bodies when we returned to the cells.
Anyway, it was during this circling that we saw the first man in our prison who had metamorphosed into a zebra. (I write “our”. You don’t have to stay long in hell before you begin to regard it as home.) What happened was that several of the guards suddenly came running out of the prison, firing their rifles in the air. We immediately flung ourselves on the ground, clasping our hands behind our necks as we had been taught the first time we were led out into the yard. The guards often amused themselves by checking our reactions and obedience in this way. They would make us lie prone on our stomachs until some newcomer couldn’t resist the temptation of raising his head to see what was going on. The man would be punished with a beating while the rest of us were made to repeat the exercise until the fifteen minutes were up.
This time, however, there was evidently something serious afoot. We hadn’t been lying with our faces in the dirt for long when another group of prison guards came out leading an unrecognisable creature between them. It was the size of a man but looked so grotesque that I couldn’t believe my eyes. Yes, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, for we had become adept at surveying our surroundings from this position. One turned one’s eyes as far as they would go in their sockets, and by avoiding focusing on anything in particular one could take in a surprisingly large area.
Following on the heels of the prison guards leading the creature were black-uniformed SS officers and two men in civilian clothes who obviously belonged to the Gestapo. They trooped past us with the moaning creature and vanished through a massive door in the wall of the yard furthest from me.
It wasn’t until we had been given the signal to rise to our feet and ordered to return to our cells that I realised what it was I had seen. At first I had thought it was a close-shorn sheep that the prison guards were amusing themselves by dragging around the prison on its hind legs before slaughtering it. Many of my fellow prisoners had interpreted the sight in similar terms, for we had all experienced the guards’ sense of humour in one way or another.
But the presence of the ravens and vultures excluded the possibility that this was any sort of joke; the guards were always on edge when these crack troops of the Third Reich visited the prison to interrogate those imprisoned for their political views or acts of resistance. No, once we cellmates had compared notes and every possibility had been considered, it became clear to us that what we had seen was, yes, incredible though it may seem, a zebra.
A long silence followed this discovery; we sat quietly, lost in our own thoughts. The creature appeared vividly before our minds’ eye: the protruding mouth, black hooves like clenched fists, stiff limbs indicating that it was unnatural for it to walk upright, and the dark stripes on its flesh, yes, what were they?
For my part, it was the swollen abdomen and sleepless eyes that I noticed we shared with the animal.
We stole glances at one another and at parts of our own bodies. You see, we were beginning to realise what the Germans were plotting. We were all in one way or another marked by their plan to turn us into zebras; we all showed signs that the transformation had begun.
* * *
So, in other words, Leo was returning home after going for a run to shake off the memory of some such tale of prison-camp life, and had just rounded the corner of Ingólfsstræti when he walked straight into a short man in blue overalls. As they collided, the man in blue handed him a brown envelope, then continued on his way without paying the slightest heed to his shouts and calls. Leo understood why when he saw the policemen who now came racing in pursuit of the man.
What did he do with the envelope? Nothing. He put it on the kitchen counter and it was still there when he came home from work the next day. What’s more, he had received an addition to his collection of unasked-for packages.
In the sink lay an unstamped envelope that had been slipped through the kitchen window:
Mate,
you’ve got something of mine.
Keep it safe. More later.
V—
A week later another letter lay in the sink:
Mate,
take it to Hrafn the Nazi.
Sell it for a good price. 10% commission.
V—
Leo hadn’t a clue who had or hadn’t been a Nazi in Iceland. To tell the truth, he hadn’t realised there were any Nazis here, only nationalists belonging to every party and a few boys who played at dressing up. He had learned this from the shower attendant at the swimming pool. But now he had to look up a man described as a Nazi, just like that, as if it were a job title. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he was supposed to do some sort of business with him, though what he didn’t know.
The envelope from the mysterious V— lay on the kitchen counter. Though it didn’t look in any way remarkable, he handled it warily. Weighing it in his hand he discovered that it was about as heavy as your average accounts book. He put the envelope down on the kitchen table, took a seat and carefully lifted the flap. Tilting his head, he peered inside; it contained some papers, he thought. Secret documents, perhaps?
— Do you know someone called Hrafn the, er, nationalist?
Leo addressed the shower attendant in a low voice. He was standing by the lockers, drying himself. The shower attendant wiped the white tiles with a large mop and muttered into his chest:
— There are lots of Hrafns.
Leo slipped the elastic band from his wrist – it had the key to his locker attached – and in so doing revealed the tattoo of his prisoner number from the death camp. The attendant stole a look at it as he flicked the mop under a radiator:
— And there are lots of nationalists.
— Well, I just thought I’d ask.
Leo opened his locker and began to get dressed. The shower attendant disappeared round the corner of the row of lockers. Leo was fully dressed and on his way to reception when the attendant intercepted him.
— When I was a boy I used to collect stamps. They say it’s healthy for little children to handle delicate things. You learned to snip them off the envelopes and soak them, unless of course the envelope itself was likely to become a treasure of postal history, in which case you put it in a folder. Then you put the stamps on a piece of paper and pressed them dry. Then you could begin the classification by type and date – and by watermark when you were older and trusted with chemicals. Yes, you could amuse yourself with this for days on end, right through the night …
The shower attendant fel
l silent and allowed a swimmer to pass. When the swimmer was out of sight he continued:
— You sought out rare stamps, running errands to the shops for the old ladies in the neighbourhood in return for being allowed to poke about among their papers. That’s how I found, for instance, an envelope with a combination of coarsely perforated two-shilling stamps and finely perforated four-shilling franks, posted in Djúpivogur but postmarked Hamburg!
He lowered his voice:
— The old woman hadn’t a clue what she was giving me in return for fetching her a bottle of milk and some rye bread. Hah, she died last Christmas; don’t you think her heirs would go nuts if they found out about this? There would be hell to pay.
The shower attendant laughed quietly into the back of his hand.
— Bloody hell, I’m going to have a comfortable retirement.
Leo held out his hand, intending to congratulate him on his booty, but instead of accepting his handshake, the attendant gripped him by the collar, pulled him into a cubicle and hissed:
— You’re not to tell a living soul about this! I’ll kill you …
Leo swore blind that he would never mention the fact that the shower attendant at the swimming pool had as a child acquired by dubious means an envelope with coarsely perforated two-shilling stamps and finely perforated four-shilling franks, posted in Djúpivogur but postmarked Hamburg. The attendant released his grip on Leo and patted the front of his shirt.
— You’ve never considered going in for stamp collecting yourself?
— No.
Leo said, bored, glancing over the attendant’s shoulder. He had to escape from this ludicrous situation.
— Why not?
Leo held out his twisted hands.
— I don’t find it so easy …
The attendant held out his own: he was missing two fingers on his left hand and the tip of the middle finger on his right.
— One manages.
He scratched his head with the end of the mop handle.
— All the same, you should drop by the Reykjavík Stamp Shop.
He winked.
— They’ve got very good tweezers; you only need two fingers to use them. Still, no need to mention that I sent you there.
