The Journey Home: A Novel

by Olaf Olafsson

  There was no question that Father was proud of his son, though reading between the lines, I could sense the regret when he wrote that now they would be alone in the house, “the old couple,” as he put it.

  Kari sends me a Christmas card every year with photographs of the family, along with a duplicated report in English about what they have been up to during the past year. I find this American custom rather odd, but always keep his cards all the same. I’m glad he’s doing well for himself.

  My thoughts wandered to and fro in this way while I nestled under the covers and it was only when I reached for a pen and paper that I realized that I had forgotten a significant detail in my account of my evening with Marilyn. It had completely slipped my mind until now. I couldn’t help smiling, the oversight was so extraordinary, but I was suddenly overcome with a sense of vulnerability. Was my memory no longer to be trusted? Was I going prematurely senile? I lay back and recalled the evening again.

  As the meal went on, I couldn’t help feeling that little Marilyn wanted to tell me something. Unable to sit still, she fidgeted in her chair and kept a close watch to see whether the girl who was waiting on us was within earshot. Finally, when the girl had gone to wash up and we could hear the constant sound of running water and the clattering of cutlery, she composed herself in her chair and said quietly:

  “You’ll probably have noticed that Bill and I don’t have any children.”

  This question—or, rather, statement—took me by surprise. When I answered, prompted by my conscience, that I hadn’t given it a thought, I could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe me.

  “I can’t have children,” she said. “We’ve been trying for years.”

  I have never been comfortable with this sort of conversation and avoid it if I possibly can, either by changing the subject or retreating if there are more than two people present. Yesterday evening, however, there was no escape, either through word or action. So I said something to the effect that they seemed to me to have a lot in common, which mattered more. Children were lovely, I said, but no guarantee of a happy marriage.

  She listened to me in silence, but it didn’t escape me that her revelation contained more than just a plea for sympathy. As soon as I had finished speaking she leaned over to me and whispered: “We’ve been thinking about adopting a child, but I’m of two minds, Disa. I don’t know whether it’s right. Bill says it’s up to me to decide, but I simply can’t make up my mind. Oh, Disa, I don’t think I’ve ever been so confused.”

  I felt uncomfortable, but asked her all the same what it was that worried her.

  At first she said she had mainly been worried that the child would sense that they weren’t its parents—“you know what I mean,” she added, “biological parents or whatever it’s called”—but lately she had been plagued by the suspicion that the children available for people in her position were mostly from problem families and could therefore themselves turn out to be difficult.

  “Of course, I don’t know anything about heredity,” she said, “but I can’t help having these worries.”

  She fell silent and we listened to the wind stirring the odd leaf in the trees, as if it were looking for something it couldn’t find. Then I cleared my throat and admitted that it was difficult to give advice in these matters.

  “But I suppose there are many different reasons why mothers have to give up their children,” I said. “And I don’t feel qualified to judge them.”

  At that moment her cat came out on to the veranda, jumped in her lap and mewed plaintively. Having spoken her piece, she changed the subject, but I had begun to think of tomorrow with trepidation. The trip to Scotland made me anxious, the thought of leaving behind the calm, rolling fields for the ice-scoured Border hills, the rocky streams in the gullies, the sight of sheep trying to cross them. It made me think of Iceland and again I questioned whether I was ready for this trip.

  A white canvas had been hung over the street where it ended in a square, and tents in every color of the rainbow clustered near the park. When we left the train and headed for Earl’s Court, I could see nothing but the tallest tents above the milling crowd of people, which was hardly surprising since this was the circus’s last evening in London. It was past nine o’clock and I was taken aback at first by how many people had brought along their children, some of them very young, but told myself that the weather was lovely and unusually warm for the middle of September.

  “An Indian summer,” Boulestin had said that morning when he popped his head into the kitchen. “I even slept with the window open last night.”

  Mrs. Brown couldn’t resist teasing him a little, as we both knew how easily he caught chills.

  “You did sleep in a scarf and hat, though, didn’t you?” she asked, shaking with suppressed mirth.

  He took the joke well, then said to me: “Well, Miss Jonsdottir from Iceland, aren’t you going to allow yourself any fun before autumn comes? I’m beginning to feel like a slave driver.”

  It was quite right that I hadn’t gone out much during the three months since my arrival in England, but then I didn’t have much free time at the restaurant on Leicester Square. Sometimes the pressure was almost too much for me but I never saw any reason to complain. The Restaurant Boulestin was unsurpassed by any other restaurant in London in those days. Among the people who flocked there were actors, politicians, aristocracy and prominent businessmen, mingling with guests from the finest hotels in the city, particularly the Ritz and Savoy. It wasn’t unusual for the staff of one of these hotels to have to beg for a table at the last minute, so busy was the restaurant almost every day, and we generally tried to squeeze them in, though sometimes we couldn’t do anything to help.

  “But it’s for Sir James Hetherington,” they would cry. “He’ll be accompanied by . . . You must be able to fit them in.”

  “Sorry.”

  But I had that evening off and had decided to go to the circus with Julie Smith, one of the girls I worked with. We told Boulestin and Mrs. Brown of our plan.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Yes, but do be careful of the monkeys,” she added.

  They roared with laughter, but I was a bit slow on the uptake and didn’t immediately realize that she must have been referring to men.

  In one tent clowns stood on their heads, while next door a man swallowed fire, tossed a dagger up into the air and caught it again, sticking out his tongue to embellish his act. We lingered in front of the clowns’ tent, then watched the strongest man in the world offer to arm-wrestle members of the audience. When we had taken a look at what was happening in every tent, we bought ice creams and sat on a bench in the park. Julie was easygoing and we didn’t talk much as we ate the ices, though of course we laughed at the clowns and the lion tamer, who pretended to have lost his lion, and wondered aloud whether it was going to rain. No doubt we could have hit upon a more worthy topic of conversation but the absurdity of the circus charmed us with its farcical illusions and shameless behavior, with all its public grotesquerie, which doesn’t really take anyone in but nevertheless manages to win most people over.

  When we finally stood up, Julie looked at her watch and saw that it was time for her to head off home as she had farther to go than I did. Before we said good-bye, she asked if I was absolutely sure about going home alone by underground. I told her not to worry about me. She hurried across the park and out of the northern gate, but I decided to walk back past the circus tents on my way to the station.

  No sooner had I entered the sea of humanity again than I sensed that something had changed from earlier in the evening. People seemed jittery as they thronged down the alley toward the white canvas over the square or hurried away to take refuge amid the clowns and other freaks. I was curious and let myself be carried along with the flow, all the way to the benches which had been lined up before a low stage under the canvas. People fought for the seats closest to the stage, some elbowing their way through as if they had forgotten all their ma
nners. I took a seat on the second row from the back, near the middle.

  “Bring on the freak!” I heard people calling as I sat down and at that moment I caught sight of a sign to the right of the stage. “A fabulous creature from the African jungle,” said the sign. “Man or beast? Dr. Kivan will reveal the truth to you.”

  Draped in front of the stage was a purple curtain which might once have graced a cinema but was now a mere rag, ripped right through in one place. A little boy crept up to the stage to peep through the tear but his father caught him at the last minute and jerked him back to his seat. There was a distant thunder and everyone looked at the sky; somewhere there must be a downpour, but not a drop fell where we sat.

  I looked at my watch. The show was supposed to have started ten minutes ago but there was no sign of either Dr. Kivan or the so-called fabulous creature from Africa. A muttering rose from the crowd, children were getting restless and whimpering with tiredness. I couldn’t understand why their parents hadn’t taken them home to bed hours ago. I’d only become aware of my own weariness when I sat down, and so decided to leave and make my way home. But at that moment the curtain was raised and Dr. Kivan appeared before us in all his glory. He stood, legs apart, at the front of the stage in white breeches, high black leather boots, and a shiny serge jacket with a belt around his waist, a whip hanging from one side and a copper-green key from the other. In spite of the costume, the doctor looked flabby, with rounded shoulders and greasy skin, his eyes small and weak beneath his white cap, like the eyes of a pig. They peered searchingly around the tent, and some people found his gaze so uncomfortable that they dropped their own eyes. A few stared stubbornly back. Then Dr. Kivan smirked and slowly twisted up the ends of his waxed mustache.

  “Dangers lurk everywhere,” he began at last in a harsh, artificially deepened voice. “In the most unlikely places. When least expected. Without the slightest warning, they will dig their claws into us like savage beasts, mercilessly— even on a warm, pleasant evening like tonight . . .”

  A buzz of anticipation went through the tent, as intended.

  “I am not talking about lions or tigers, or poisonous snakes or crocodiles, not even the black savages who chased me for days through the Gobi desert. All these dangers were foreseeable.”

  He had begun to pace up and down on the stage as he spoke, and I noticed that he had a limp. The crowd’s eyes followed him like a slow-swinging pendulum, their attention glued to him in silent unison. Finally he stopped again, hooked his thumbs in his belt and said with false nonchalance, as if he were commenting on a minor change in the weather:

  “Nothing took me by surprise but the monsters, deformed creatures which I hadn’t known existed. Beasts which are not beasts, men which are not human.” He had gradually lowered his voice, but now he almost shouted: “Monstrosities, I tell you, monstrosities!”

  Naturally the audience was startled by his yell. Some gripped their neighbors, then began to laugh and whisper together to ease the tension.

  “You laugh. You think it’s amusing. Let’s see whether you are still as carefree when you yourselves have looked into the eyes of deformity.”

  He walked with slow, deliberate steps toward the back of the stage where a cage could be dimly discerned in the dark shadows. At first I wasn’t aware of any movement inside, but when Dr. Kivan raised his whip and cracked the lash, a little creature barely three feet high sprang up and gave a hair-raising shriek. The doctor stumbled back, as if he hadn’t expected this reception; the audience gasped.

  “You threaten me!” he cried. “Will you restrain yourself if I let you out?”

  The only answer he received was a pitiful wail like a dog that has been kicked.

  “Very well, since you promise to be good. But don’t think I’m going to undo the chain.”

  He strutted over to the cage, brandishing the key which had been hanging from his belt, leaned forward and half-opened the door. Then he walked cautiously to the front of the stage.

  “Come here!” he ordered.

  Dead silence.

  “Come here!”

  There was a rattle of chains and a dwarfish creature staggered out of the cage and came to a halt in the middle of the stage, a couple of yards from the showman.

  Dwarfish creature, I say, but should of course have said straightaway that it was just an ordinary dwarf. Admittedly, he was dressed in an outlandish costume, a skirt made from bones—thigh bones, I guessed—and a green cloak, which hung down from his shoulders. On his head perched a colorful crown of feathers. His face was also painted, red, yellow and black; it was large with an oddly high forehead, round bulging eyes and ears so tiny they could hardly be seen, like shriveled prunes.

  The doctor looked out solemnly over the audience and made a long speech about how he had captured “the monster” in the African jungle and brought it back to England. Then he told of his attempts to train the creature (I remember quite clearly that he used the word “train” and not “teach”) and finally offered to show the audience what progress he had made. The whip whined and the dwarf was made to stand on one foot, jump up in the air, poke out his tongue, grimace and stick his backside out at the audience. They laughed, their children wide awake now, kept going by the excitement. The whiplash sang ever higher and Dr. Kivan’s orders grew louder and louder until without warning he folded his arms and said contemptuously:

  “Well, it’s clear that the beast has at least the intelligence of a dog.”

  Most people roared with laughter at his scorn but I noticed that some were uneasy, as if they felt the fun was turning sour.

  “You’ve behaved well enough this evening,” said the showman. “I think you deserve to be let loose.”

  The audience gasped, stuck their heads together and giggled—behaving, in short, just as they were supposed to. The dwarf shook himself, but didn’t move from his place.

  “Do you suppose it can speak?” asked Dr. Kivan. “Would you believe I have managed to teach it to speak? Wouldn’t that be a miracle?”

  He glared at the dwarf.

  “Thirteen!”

  No doubt he chose this number deliberately.

  “Repeat after me,” he ordered: “Thirteen!”

  The dwarf screeched.

  Dr. Kivan stepped menacingly toward him, raised his whip in the air and repeated: “Thirteen!”

  It was then that the little creature suddenly began to screech in Icelandic.

  “Argara thargara!” he wailed. “Kettir, kettir . . .”

  The audience gasped, but I was stunned. I suddenly felt as if I were part of someone else’s nightmare.

  “You can hear it’s a wild beast,” said Dr. Kivan. “Thirteen! I said, thirteen!”

  “Fir . . . Fir . . .”

  “Good, good. Thirteen!”

  “Firt . . .”

  “Thirteen!”

  The whip cracked over the dwarf’s head, touching the feathers, which fluttered in the draft.

  “Thirteen! I said, thirteen!”

  “Firteen . . .”

  “Firteen,” he imitated the wretched creature mockingly. “Firteen . . .”

  Then he bellowed as if his life depended on it: “I said thirteen! Thirteen, I said!”

  At the same moment he hurled the lash at the dwarf, who wailed with pain and with a great bound ran at the doctor, who fell flat on his face. The dwarf rushed to the front of the stage, scowling and hissing and finally spitting out a streak of flame at the audience.

  When he braced himself to leap down among them with the fire streaming from his mouth, many people were terrified, jumping out of their seats and stampeding in panic, frantic parents grabbing their children, everyone barging past one another with no thought of consideration. I allowed myself to be borne out into the street with the throng, as otherwise I would have been trampled. Some people did lose their footing in the pandemonium and when I tried to help a middle-aged woman to her feet I was knocked down too. I landed heavily as I had barely room
to put out a protective hand, and couldn’t immediately get up. It was then that he reached out his hand to me. He had been pushed over as well. I looked up into his face. It was calm amidst all the madness and there was a smile in his eyes. I had seen him somewhere before but couldn’t place him.

  “Jakob Himmelfarb,” he introduced himself when we had regained our feet. His accent was German.

  I was slow to reply.

  “I sometimes eat at the Restaurant Boulestin,” he said with a humorous glint in his eye. “Could it be that I’ve seen you there?”

  I don’t remember how I answered, but suspected he might have noticed me when Boulestin had asked me to help out with the waitressing. Though I didn’t mention that I regarded this job as beneath me.

  He had taken my arm and I made no objection, even though I was perfectly capable of walking without help.

  “Would some refreshment help?”

  “He was Icelandic,” I stammered.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The dwarf. He spoke Icelandic. Cats, he wailed. Cats in Icelandic.”

  He laughed.

  “So that was what it was. Icelandic.”

  There was a clap of thunder above our heads.

  Then it began to rain.

  “Would you like to come to a concert with me on Saturday?” he had asked just before we parted.

  I was over eager to answer.

  “Yes,” I blurted out, without asking any questions. Neither of us could help smiling. I blushed.

  He said he thought the concert began at one o’clock.

  “I don’t have to work until the evening,” I added awkwardly.

  “I’ll ring you tomorrow to confirm.”

  I didn’t walk home from the station, I floated. Mrs. Brown was still awake. She couldn’t help noticing the metamorphosis.

  “What on earth has happened? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  The following day was wet and dreary but I didn’t notice. Not until Mrs. Brown announced that she had decided to sell her old Vactrix vacuum cleaner and had paid for an advertisement in the Saturday paper.