According to Maria, they sometimes stopped talking when she came in, unsurprisingly, as she brought them refreshments which deserved their attention: coffee and cakes, port and brandy. They would sometimes play cards and Atli would let himself be persuaded to join, even though he described himself as a poor player. For some reason, both Maria and I thought we sensed a degree of perplexity in our employer’s demeanor when his son was present. It often seemed as if he needed to talk to him about something, something which had been on his mind, but which he hadn’t had a chance to put into words. Sometimes he would clear his throat, sometimes he’d say “well” in a way that implied a follow-up, occasionally he would begin a sentence only to have it fall apart and dry up.
Once I heard him hint that he was worried about the boy. It was Monday and Dr. Bolli came home from the office at midday, asking Maria where his son was as soon as he came through the door. Maria said he was asleep. Without even taking off his coat his father went straight down to the basement. I eavesdropped from the pantry off the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you go to the interview?” I heard Dr. Bolli ask. “He waited for you. He postponed a meeting because he was expecting you. And then you didn’t turn up . . .”
“Oh, Father. I’m tired.”
“In the middle of the day. It’s past two o’clock.”
“I’m a bit under the weather.”
Something must have happened to him, I always thought. I sometimes wanted to ask him what it was that weighed on him, wanted to help because I thought I understood him, even saw Jakob in him, tired and weary. Lethargy, drink and cigarettes —as if he felt best when he was asleep or had dulled his senses. Sometimes he fell asleep in a chair in the corner before the guests had left. Sometimes he had to be helped down to the basement. His father usually came to his aid but once it fell to me.
“Thank you, Asdis,” he slurred. “I just don’t think I can manage it by myself. Gravity, I mean.”
“Maybe you ought to drink less,” I ventured.
He smiled.
“Sometimes it’s best to know as little as possible.”
Once a quarrel broke out between father and son. It was late. They had gone to a party in the afternoon and came home just before eleven. The swan-lover was with them. They asked for coffee and brandy. Hallur Steinsson had a whiskey. They shut themselves in the study. The son of the house and Hallur were both very drunk, though Dr. Bolli didn’t appear to be. Atli was talking. He was speaking not loudly but with emphasis. I heard the sound from the kitchen but couldn’t catch the words except now and then. Soon Dr. Bolli interrupted. I had never known him to lose his temper but this time he was obviously angry. This discord bothered me but all the same I moved closer to the study.
“I won’t listen to such talk,” I heard my employer say.
“The boy’s right, Bolli,” said the swan-lover. “He was asked to pass on this message.”
“I won’t listen to such talk, Atli,” repeated his father. “And it would be better if other people didn’t hear it either, after all that’s happened.”
Silence.
“I’ll do what I like.”
“Not another word! Not a word!”
I moved away from the door.
“Why don’t we just play a game of cards?” suggested Hallur. “It’s still early.”
Dr. Bolli opened the door.
“I think it’s bedtime for some people. Atli . . .”
He put his hand under his son’s arm and supported him to the basement stairs.
“Leave me alone. I can walk by myself.”
“That is a change.”
He released him but didn’t turn away until the door to the basement had closed.
“It’s probably not worth playing cards,” said the editor.
My employer fetched his coat and saw him to the door.
“He promised to deliver the message,” said Hallur. “He should publish what he’s been writing, too.”
At that point Dr. Bolli seized the editor by the scruff of his neck and shook him.
“You will never say that again, either to him or anyone else. If I hear it again, I’ll hold you responsible.”
Hallur Steinsson was distressed as he stumbled out. My employer remained standing in the same spot for a long time after he had gone, before slowly mounting the stairs to his bedroom.
I was about to go to bed when I noticed a light on the basement stairs. When I opened the door to turn it off, there sat the son of the house on the top step, sound asleep. I tried to wake him but it wasn’t until after a number of attempts that he opened his eyes.
He gave an unfathomable smile.
“Germany,” he said. “We understand what’s going on. You and I.”
I helped him down the stairs. He lay down fully dressed.
When I turned around in the doorway he was asleep.
Anthony said he had bought it in a moment of high spirits when he lived in Paris during the winter of 1930. Though it wasn’t cheap, it naturally cost only a fraction of what we got for it when we finally decided to part with it. He said he’d seen it through a window during an afternoon walk on the west bank of the Seine when the rays of the autumn sun had begun to fade and the breeze hinted that the night frost was on its way. He couldn’t help noticing it as the sun shone directly on to it where it hung on the wall nearest the window. It wasn’t a large picture, but the master’s touch was unmistakable. His name was written in tiny letters in the bottom left-hand corner: Picasso, in light blue. The youth—a boy, I think, rather than a girl—was stretching his arms heavenward, fair complexioned, with shoulder-length, red-gold hair. It was a beautiful picture but one we couldn’t afford to own. When I first hazarded the suggestion to Anthony that the most sensible thing was probably to sell it, he cut short the conversation immediately. A few years later he pointed out to me that we would have lost a large sum if he had followed my advice, as the picture had steadily increased in value. He was right and I regretted the fact, knowing how much easier our lives would have been had we sold it. Every time I passed the picture in the library it reminded me of my defeat. I began to look askance at it. Just you wait, I told it. Just you wait.
When we decided to make a start on the changes to the east wing and games room in the main house, it just so happened that Anthony received an offer for the picture which he couldn’t refuse. I had, naturally, prepared the ground, as shortly before one of our guests had got talking to me in order to angle after it. He was a wealthy American called Lloyd, who had made his fortune in the canned goods business, from what I could gather. I welcomed his interest as we were in dire need of cash. He mentioned a large sum and raised it three times after we had chatted for a while. When I finally told him that sadly I didn’t have the authority to arrange the sale and that he himself would have to raise the matter with Anthony, he seemed annoyed but recovered quickly, especially as I promised to give his offer my vote if Anthony consulted me. I also thought I’d better whisper to him that it wouldn’t be wise to mention our chat to Anthony.
After Mr. Lloyd had left with the Picasso, I once came upon Anthony standing in front of the blank wall and staring at the patch where the picture of the youth had hung. I’m ashamed to say it but at that moment I felt almost jealous. When he became aware of me, he said, as if in explanation: “I always felt as if the boy were reaching out to the Almighty.”
I felt jealous again but was able to hold back.
“While we were clutching at thin air,” I said to myself and left him standing by the blank wall.
The voice still whispers in my mind: You have only yourself to blame.
Relentless whispers in my half-waking state, when the moon hovers above me like a lantern in the wind and also when evening comes and the sun withdraws in shame behind a cloud. Relentless whispers, chasing me, hounding me: What did you expect? You have only yourself to blame.
Fleeing from one place to another, resting by a cold wall, far from the merciless glare which
spares nothing. The corridors offer shelter, as does the conservatory and the bridge over the brook when my face, reflected in the deep water, floats away.
Then I’m free. At last.
“Asdis, we understand each other. You and I. We know what’s going on.”
I see the beast between waking and sleeping, feel its breath on my cheek, hot and moist, slow at first, then frantic with lust, feel its tongue lick my throat, sense the terror. The groans were predictable, the shudder of pleasure which shook his body, the silence and emptiness when it was all over.
“I was lucky, Asdis. But I don’t want to talk about it. Too difficult. Home at last. So much behind me.”
The mistress asleep and my employer out, Maria visiting her sister out east.
“Asdis, would you mind helping me downstairs? My right leg sometimes aches. If you wouldn’t mind . . .”
Only a faint smell of alcohol on his breath that evening— he said he’d been to a concert. Yet he wants me to help him. Puts his arm round my shoulders. I hold him round his waist.
“Jakob,” I say to him. He’s surprised. “Atli,” I correct myself, “the last step.”
The door opens into the bedroom. I lead him to the bed.
“Won’t you sit down here beside me, Asdis? I was lucky. I’ve come home.”
His breath on my neck, gentle and hesitant, disconnected words. I close my eyes.
“Disa, swim to me,” says Jakob. “I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Come here. Then you’ll find out.”
“What?”
Brown eyes? Blue eyes? I can’t decide.
“Come here.”
His hands move up from my hips under my blouse, stopping at my breasts.
“Lie down.”
“Come here,” I hear Jakob call in the distance. He’s out in the middle of the pond, ducking under the water every now and again, popping up when least expected. Smiling.
“Come here, Disa.”
The reflection shatters on the trembling surface of the water.
He enters me. His breathing is rapid and eager, his hands fumble over my body, hot with desire. His tongue licks my throat and chest. When he takes my nipples in his mouth, his hair flops against me, soaked with sweat.
I swim to him and put my arms around him. He raises his hand out of the water. He’s holding a bunch of flowers.
“Did you pick them for me?”
“What did you think I was going to do? Tickle you?”
He grabs me and shakes me, I can’t escape, don’t try to escape, don’t scream, don’t ask him to stop, don’t moan a single word.
He loosens his grasp and subsides. Gets up.
I come to myself. He’s standing in front of me, pulling up his trousers, wiping the sweat from his brow with his right sleeve.
“You should visit me more often down here in the basement.”
In my dream, the flowers are withered when Jakob hands them to me.
14
I tried to avoid the son of the house after that. Fortunately, I saw him less often than before because he had procured himself an old car and spent weeks at his parents’ summer cottage at Thingvellir. He took advantage of the lack of snow, coming to town from time to time to fetch provisions and have his washing done. Once I remember he rang from Hotel Valholl and asked for his father. My employer was on the phone for a long time, talking first to Atli, then to the caretaker, I suspect. I heard him promise to send money to cover his son’s expenses.
“He’s always been a nature lover,” said his mother, but I thought Dr. Bolli frowned when the conversation turned to these trips to the summer cottage. No doubt the whiskey crate in the boot of the car had something to do with it. He had also recently taken on two high school girls for extra coaching in German but seemed now to have forgotten them. One of them obviously attended these lessons as the result of parental pressure and seemed only too happy when they were cancelled. Her fellow pupil, a pretty brunette sixteen years old, was more persistent, however, and at first rang almost daily to ask for “Atli.” Her tone took me by surprise, then I forgot it and didn’t think of the girl again until later.
There’s no need to go into detail about the sort of state I was in following that evening in the basement. I sometimes ask myself whether I had a soft spot for him, but can’t follow the thought through. I give up when I remember New Year’s Eve a month later, and feel dirty.
But I do know I was convinced by then that some misfortune haunted him. I imagined that he had been treated harshly in Germany; he had hinted at this but never said so directly. The dullness in his eyes and his apathy, the smile which was not a smile but a painful grimace, the damp, weak handshake—all seemed to me to point the same way.
Brown eyes? Blue eyes? I can’t see. Perhaps the eye sockets contain only darkness.
Childishness, I want to say and draw a line through my behavior without further obligation or anguish. So long ago, I want to say, everything’s changed. But nothing’s changed and two decades are no time. You grow up, people say, as if they have attained some higher wisdom, and will even put on a solemn face if they are sufficiently dishonest with themselves, or else mutter the assertion in low tones, avoiding looking in the mirror.
In the evenings I tried to distract myself by listening to the radio, as I found it difficult to concentrate on a book and didn’t seek out company. I hardly saw Jorunn, though I spoke to her on the phone from time to time, but the conversations were short, though polite. Father and I wrote regularly. He said Mother was not in good health but I doubted this. Sometimes I managed to pick up broadcasts by the BBC, especially late in the evening before midnight, and in addition the British started to bring us news of the war in Icelandic at the beginning of December 1940. I had to force myself to sit through those reports.
I can’t tell exactly when I gave up hope of seeing Jakob again. Perhaps I had long ago given up, without realizing it. I sensed that Anthony’s letters left a lot unsaid, so cautious was he when he told me, for example, of David’s fruitless investigation or of his own conversation with officials in London who had nothing encouraging to tell him. “But,” he always added, “we must hope for the best.”
Hope is the sister of self-deception and I have learned to avoid those sisters as far as I can. Their smile is fawning and their manner false, they give many promises but keep few of them. Nowadays I will make a detour especially to avoid them—for example, pleading with Dr. Ellis to spare me from half-truths. He got rather tangled up but eventually managed to avoid lying. I remember him standing up and going to the window, pausing to look out, twisting an ancient fountain pen between the fingers of his left hand while he ran the right through his thinning hair.
The truth demands accuracy and concentration which sometimes makes it hard to handle.
“Eighteen months,” he said eventually.
“Eighteen? Are you sure?”
“Twelve to eighteen.”
“I’ll take twelve.”
This evening I mean to take a taxi over to Fjolugata. I’m not going to get out, just ask the driver to stop by the fence so that I can look at the house, and especially the garden, in peace. I want to recall the light in the garden, which used sometimes to be my only entertainment when I sat in my room in the evenings; a light blue shade in summer under the trees and among the shrubs; peat-brown in the autumn like rain-soaked heaps of leaves or the greatcoats of British soldiers. I’m going to go there this evening because I’m ready to hear echoes from the past and to see a white face at the window. I’m not afraid of anything because I’m ready.
I’m ready for anything.
Early in December I felt as if I’d received a message that Jakob was dead.
Gabriel Turville-Petre of the BBC had finished his address, and the sound of the Moonlight Sonata flooded from the radio. Outside it was windless with a heavy drizzle, but in the distance the remnants of a glow could be glimpsed between the clouds. When I looked ou
t into the garden I saw a cat dragging its prey behind it across the lawn. It moved slowly, stopping now and then to get a better purchase on the bird, which struggled at first. But gradually the fight went out of it and by the time the cat had vanished into the next-door garden, the fight was over.
I sat for a long time in the twilight. In the evening it began to pour, turning into a storm during the night. The following day there were puddles on the frozen ground.
After the war David came down to Somerset to tell us that he had received confirmation of his brother Jakob’s death. Listening to him was like reading an old newspaper. It had no effect on me.
I don’t suppose he understood.
“Bad influenza,” wrote Father, but I ignored it as I suspected he was trying to blow up Mother’s cold out of all proportion. During the past few months he had made various attempts to make peace between us and I had become suspicious. But when he rang a few days later I knew what he would say as soon as Maria called me.
“Your Mother is dangerously ill,” he said. “She’s asking for you to come.”
It was December 20. We were in the middle of the Christmas preparations. At the mistress’s request we had decorated the house in the middle of the month so it was already festive. Jorunn had asked me to dine with her, Gunnar and Helga on Christmas Eve but I declined since I knew that she had invited me only out of a sense of duty. But now she had gone north to be at Mother’s side, taking Helga with her.
It was difficult for me to get away so close to Christmas. The mistress had arranged to hold four dinner parties over the holiday season and, in addition, Dr. Bolli had invited the bank staff to a cocktail party on the 30th. I was looking forward to cooking something more substantial at last as the mistress had had little appetite recently and Dr. Bolli always wanted something simple. The call therefore came at the worst possible time. On top of this, I still couldn’t help suspecting Father of exaggerating Mother’s condition.
The scheduled buses to Akureyri did not run in winter but Dr. Bolli came across a notice in the newspaper saying that Kristjan Kristjansson would be driving his bus north the following day with a few passengers as conditions were good and the roads were clear. I received this news with mixed feelings but I had to go.
The Journey Home: A Novel Page 16
