In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  “What business have you with me?” Helgi asked.

  “Freyja says you are a chess expert.”

  “Freyja,” Helgi said her name with delight. He might have been given a small but precious gift. “A bloom in the desert. A flower in any man’s life.” He studied Tom suspiciously. “Are you investigating a chess crime? A villain stole a pawn? Or kidnapped a queen?

  Tom ignored the sarcasm. “I had a question for you about the Icelandic chess club in Winnipeg.”

  “You know about that? Isn’t it rather obscure?” The question had gotten his attention. He stopped rubbing the mastiff’s head and looked more closely at Tom.

  “My father played chess. He heard about it at the Jewish chess club.” His father, wanting to play the best players, went to the Jewish chess club. Although he was Anglican, he was always welcome, only his skills at the game mattered, but Gudrun didn’t approve. In Iceland, the prejudice against Jews was so great that the few Jews who lived there concealed their religion, practised it in secret, their deception helped by the fact that Icelanders were lax Lutherans. During the war, Jews who escaped to Iceland were often sent back to Europe, to certain death.

  Tom could feel sweat running down his sides. The air was absolutely still. The leaves on the trees were limp and curled at the edges. Shorts, he thought. I should have worn shorts. His legs felt like they were enveloped in steam.

  They stood there awkwardly, held in place by a gossamer fragment of history. The mastiff seemed to be studying Tom’s throat, the beagle his ankles.

  Helgi was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a blue tie with a repeated gold pattern. It must be a school tie, Tom thought.

  “You play?” Helgi History asked.

  “A little,” Tom replied. “But I’m out of practice. I played with my father and was in the university chess club.”

  “Dogs, go!” Helgi History commanded, waving them away. They reluctantly shuffled a few feet from the door.

  “Come in,” Helgi said to Tom. “Shut the door behind you.” He turned abruptly and went down the hallway. Tom followed him. The walls on both sides were fitted with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and every shelf was filled. They went into a living room that took up the entire front of the cottage and overlooked the lake. The wall facing the lake was glass from floor to ceiling. The other three walls were bookshelves, and stacks of books of various heights were piled here and there about the room. There were a half dozen chess sets with the chessmen in various configurations of unfinished games. A leather couch stood behind a table, the top of which was a chessboard with a game in progress and a chair opposite. The chess pieces were copies of figures from Viking times. Helgi History sat on the chair and told Tom to sit on the couch.

  “What’s white’s next move?” he demanded.

  Tom studied the board and finally said, “Knight to queen five.”

  “Good enough,” Helgi History answered. “Make the move.”

  “Whose game am I playing?” Tom asked.

  “My other self,” Helgi History replied. “My light, virtuous side against my evil, dark side.”

  “Jekyll and Hyde,” Tom answered.

  “Or Heckle and Jeckle. Or Mutt and Jeff. Or Martin and Lewis.”

  “Antony and Cleopatra. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,” Tom replied. It was a game of pairs he’d often played by himself.

  “Too obvious,” Helgi History said, his eyes shifting rapidly from side to side behind his glasses. He looked like he was sorting through invisible files.

  Tom reached into the grocery bag and took out his nearly full mickey of Scotch.

  “You know the way to a man’s heart,” Helgi History said, and he leapt up and collected two glasses from a table covered in papers. “Ice?”

  “An inch of water,” Tom said. “Cold.”

  Helgi History went into the kitchen and washed the glasses. “Pawn to rook four,” he yelled, and Tom made the move for him.

  Helgi History came back into the room with two glasses, one empty and one with a faint line of water on the bottom. Tom poured them each an ounce of whisky.

  “You had a question?”

  “Was there an Icelandic chess club in Winnipeg?”

  Helgi History had a single ice cube in his glass. He swirled the whisky around, held it up to the sunlight to admire the colour, then drank it in one gulp.

  “Through the 1920s, 1930s. They were among the best.”

  “Did the Cuban come to Winnipeg?”

  “The Human Chess Machine? You know about him, then you know more than anyone else.”

  “Capablanca. I remember his name because it’s similar to the movie Casablanca.”

  Tom hadn’t thought about these things in a long time—names, games, end games, strategy, moves, countermoves—had forgotten this basement room in his mind that contained all the things his father had talked about, the people he had admired, the books that he’d told Tom to read, while, at the same time, with his tone of voice, or the way he held his head, making a subtle suggestion that Tom wasn’t up to chess. And when he went out to the chess club, he left Tom at home. For a long time, it was chess, and only chess, that would cause him to set aside everything else he was doing. Later, bridge began to take over his life, and the fierceness of the competition, the desire to be the best, to be a grand master, may have led to his gambling. No game was so hard fought as one in which one’s paycheque was at stake.

  “Don’t you find players among the Odin?”

  “They’re more interested in less demanding pleasures.”

  “Chess is the Icelandic game, I’ve been told.” It may have been an Icelandic game, but it was his father who had given him his own chess set.

  “In the golden past, it was,” Helgi replied. “Now, our culture is reduced to eating Icelandic sweets and wearing costumes on special occasions. Our people brought their Bibles and chess sets in their wooden chests.” It was obvious to Tom that he’d struck a nerve, because Helgi History’s attention had strayed from the board. “There’s a folk story in which a boy and girl, waiting in a cave for a giant to return, play chess to pass the time. In the 1500s, German trader Gories Peers said that Icelanders spent the winter lying in bed playing chess. Here, here in Valhalla, the tradition has died out. There are chess sets, but no one knows how to use them. It’s like the spinning wheels and the Icelandic books. They are decorations. I collect the chess sets. I collect the books so they don’t go to the garbage dump. Lost, lost, all lost,” he said dramatically. “It’s your move.”

  Tom had seen players like Helgi in the chess club he’d belonged to. Brilliant, focused, able to play numerous others at the same time and defeat them. Tom studied his move and was glad they weren’t playing against the clock.

  “In the days before the Odin, Valhalla was very Icelandic. Everyone spoke the language. You hardly heard a word of English. It was their own world. Those people had the true Viking spirit but no money. Money destroys everything.

  “They came to find Baldur’s palace—Breiðablik—and instead got hunger and cold and disease. But they survived the winter playing chess, spinning and weaving, waiting for the sun. Dr. Ford, the builder of your house, turned up looking to catch big fish. He stayed with the Frederickssons. Paid cash. There wasn’t much of that around. The Frederickssons always had an eye for money,” he said with contempt. His eyes swivelled from the board to the bottle that glowed amber with the sunlight streaming through it. Tom poured out another ounce.

  “I don’t like to drink alone,” Helgi History said, and Tom poured himself half an ounce. “You are miserly with yourself.”

  “Dr. Ford,” Tom said and moved his rook.

  “He had that place built that you live in now. It was unimaginable. To build a house just for the summer. Our people had come from rock and turf huts. They’d lived and died in shanties here the first years. In Iceland they never built with wood. Here, at least, there were houses with stoves. Stoves! You don’t know what that means. There we
re no stoves in Iceland. What would have been the point? There was hardly any fuel. Driftwood for those who had shore rights. Brown coal for a few in the right location. People were so desperate they burned fish bones and seaweed. Body heat, animal heat, in that climate. Ten to a bed, head to foot, to keep warm. There was injustice everywhere.

  “But we had books.” He leapt out of his chair and held up his empty glass and described an arc around the room with it. “Precious books. No kings in palaces, but we had palaces built with books.”

  The shelves from floor to ceiling were crammed with books, with books set flat on top of those shelved with their spines out, with piles of books towering up like high-rises in a city made of books, so that a person had to be careful moving about the room, for if one tower fell, it would bring down another. Tom could imagine the chaos that would ensue. A stumble, a careless reaching out, a shivering of the house in a violent storm, even the pounding of the waves against the shore, and one dislodged book would bring chaos, with the chessboards toppling, scattering chessmen through the tumbled books. It was a room jammed full of delicately balanced knowledge, and he wondered about the mind that had created it.

  “What does each pillar represent?” Tom asked.

  “Projects,” Helgi answered. “Every one is a research project. An independent scholar has to have many irons in the fire.”

  He went to a shelf and selected four books. “The Elder Edda, poetry,” he declared, holding up a book with a green cover. “Here, the Passíusálmar, the Passion Hymns, written by Hallgrímur Pétursson. He held up a blue book. Here, a history of Iceland. Here, Njáls saga. It’s all there. Know these books and you know Iceland.”

  He put three of the books back, kept the Passion Hymns, sat down and moved a chess piece. “We had our own ways. Then Dr. Ford came with his modern ideas. And Ingibjorg, the beautiful, dangerous Ingibjorg. He fell under her spell.” Helgi History went to a cabinet and took out pictures in old-fashioned frames and sorted through them. He selected one and handed it to Tom. It was a sepia picture of a beautiful young woman with long flowing hair. She was wearing a traditional Icelandic dress.

  “A heart-stopper,” Tom said.

  “A heart stealer,” Helgi History replied. “She had a fantastical mind. To her, dreams were a path to another world, a world as real as this one, the one we are in right now. We enter this other world through dreams, but every morning we have to return. She sought ways to enter this dream world while awake, to join the two together.

  “She took Ford as her lover. He took her back to Michigan with him. He introduced her to people in New York. Took her to meet artists, playwrights, actors, producers, philosophers. He took her to Iceland on a rented yacht. They came back with Godi-1.” Helgi History rummaged excitedly through the drawer again. “Here is the great Rune Master, the knower of all things, the guide to the portal to the other world.

  “Godi-1 became her lover. There was conflict between him and Ford, so Ingibjorg came up with the idea that they were all One, that what one did was like all doing it. There could be no separation. Everyone shared themselves with everyone else. There was no sin, for they were all one and the same.”

  He thrust a studio portrait at Tom. It was of a man with a prominent forehead, deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks and long hair. He was wearing a floor-length robe and held a large book to his chest with one hand above the other. His fingers were long. On every finger there was a ring.

  “Godi-1 was charismatic. He soon had a following. Imagine living out your wildest fantasies. Not just given permission but encouraged to engage in sex and drugs. Why wouldn’t people give donations?

  “Valhalla. The name was propitious. It was, he said, a portal to this other world, Valhalla to Valhalla, the world we live in for a third of our lives as we sleep and are vaguely aware of its terrors and pleasures.” He held out his glass. Tom poured another ounce into it. Poured another half ounce into his own glass. Helgi History raised his glass in a salute, and they both drank.

  “That other world could have been a bunch of uptight Lutherans flagellating themselves with guilt.” He laughed. “Ingibjorg’s other world was much more attractive. She understood that religion and sex go together like ham and cheese, like hangikjöt and rúgbrauð, like...” but his attention wandered for a moment. “Queen to knight seven,” he said. “Make my move for me. My hands are full.” He was leafing through the Passíusálmar, humming to himself. “Do you sing?” He was waving his index finger as he read one of the passion hymns.

  “I’m tone deaf,” Tom replied.

  “That’s unfortunate. Pastor Jon is tone deaf as well. His predecessor could sing. He held Bible study classes. He read Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. He also knew about bees.”

  “He left under awkward circumstances,” Tom rejoined.

  “Talent should excuse little peccadillos.”

  “He got a farmer’s wife pregnant. Or so I heard. He was lucky he didn’t become mink feed.”

  “Don’t you think that Ingibjorg’s solution is better? What harm was he doing? It’s not like we can only have sex so many times and then are used up. Move my bishop to rook six.”

  “Crazy,” Tom said.

  “Yes, but Ingibjorg was no crazier than lots of others,” Helgi said. “At least they didn’t kill millions. They didn’t destroy countries. They were too busy finding enlightenment. Be grateful for small mercies. If Hitler and Stalin had been as involved with finding truth through sex, millions would have survived. Those making love have no time to make war.”

  “And now?” Tom said. “What about now? What of Odin today?” Tom moved his queen.

  “Everything changes,” Helgi History said. “New truths emerge.” He held out his glass and Tom filled it to the top this time. Helgi demanded he drink up too, and Tom poured the last of the whisky into his glass. They drank, and Helgi took the empty bottle and held it up to the light to be sure nothing was left. He threw the bottle out through the front door and disappeared into the kitchen. He came back with a green bottle. “Black Death,” he announced. “At one time there was a skull on the label. They should have kept it. I’ll repay your generosity.”

  He opened the brennivín and filled both their glasses. The liquor looked like water. He drank from his glass and Tom did the same, remembering what his mother told him: “Always look in the eyes of your drinking companions. Otherwise, they will think you dislike them or have an evil intention toward them.”

  His mouth went numb and he thought, Thank God there’s no rotted shark.

  Helgi opened a can of tobacco and filled his pipe. He tamped the tobacco into the bowl and fished a wooden match out of a box.

  “I won’t ask permission to smoke in my own house. You are free to leave if you object.” He struck the match and there was the sharp smell of sulphur. “There are few enough pleasures in life. I don’t intend to give up any of mine. These new puritans that would protect our health—do you think on their deathbed they’ll proclaim they’ve had a good life because of all the things they haven’t done?”

  The sweet smell of tobacco filled the room. Tom did not bother to answer what was obviously a rhetorical question.

  “So,” Helgi History said, “you have come to find the portal, to see Valhalla?”

  “No,” Tom protested.

  “Bottoms up,” Helgi History cried. “You have already found one treasure. To Freyja,” he said and drained his glass, and Tom felt compelled to do the same. “There are portals and portals. A beautiful woman is one.”

  “What of this treasure?”

  “You already know of the hidden treasure! You are investigating our history, unravelling our secrets. Be careful—many secrets are benign, but a few are like old bear traps rusting in the bush. Step on them and they clamp tight on your leg.” He started using his index finger to direct his humming of a hymn.

  “Do you think it exists?”

  “Many think it may be buried on your property. You have become its keeper. You will have
to protect your property ferociously. Otherwise, there are those who will tear everything down, dig up every foot of land, dynamite the rock.”

  “The Whites,” Tom said. His head was spinning from the whisky and Black Death.

  “A house fallen into ruin,” Helgi History declared.

  “What about Siggi and Freyja,” Tom managed. His tongue was thick and clumsy.

  “Siggi,” Helgi History said. “Freyja shouldn’t have gotten involved with him. She’s too smart. He’s not stupid. I’m not saying that. He’s like those bright students who won’t study, won’t do their assignments, because they are too busy playing sports, partying, making a buck. High energy.”

  “Sports hero,” Tom added, trying to clarify.

  “Hockey hero, mud-race hero, speed-skating hero, every kind of hero. Like he’s on Red Bull twenty-four hours a day.” He said it with a resentful tone.

  “Not a chess hero?”

  “Doesn’t think ahead. Ideas of the moment. No thirteen moves figured out. If you’re losing the hockey game, beat your opponent up. Lot of penalty time. High-sticking, tripping, checking from behind. Fighting.”

  “Bad guy?”

  “Local hero. Generous. Loyal. Helps people out. Never grew up. Now playing a more dangerous game.”

  “Growing tomatoes and cucumbers.”

  “And lettuce,” Helgi said. “Difficult place for it. Wrong climate.”

  “And Freyja? What’s he likely to do about Freyja?”

  Helgi was sitting with his back to the front windows. As Tom waited for him to make his next move, he saw the face of an elderly bald man appear. He had a long white beard and was holding a baby. Before Tom could react, Joseph rapped sharply on the glass with his knuckle.

  Helgi turned just enough to see who was at the window, then turned back and said, “Baby Jesus has arrived. We’ll have to finish this game another day.”