“What other thing?”
“That soon you will die,” said the girl.
“Thanks very much,” I said. “So now I know. I didn’t know it before.”
“Yes, so now you know.” She slammed shut the book she had been reading, stood up, and sat down at the piano and began to play one of those heart-rendingly lovely soulful mazurkas by Chopin. But only the beginning; when least expected she dashed headlong into some demented jazz.
13. Orgy
The master of the house, too, had flown off for a while with that soft fragrant yellow-creaking briefcase of his, and I was left with the children. And as soon as his presence ceased to be felt, the house ceased to be a house and became a public square. First came the children’s friends, the accepted ones and the secret ones, then the friends of the children’s friends, and then their friends; and with that, the whole of Harbour Street. A case of liquor lay in the hall; I had no idea who had paid for it. Some of the guests had brought musical instruments with them, and a female was dancing on the grand piano. About midnight, food was delivered on platters from a delicatessen store; I had no idea who paid for that either. But at least the domestic staff was not expected to wait on them, the guests served themselves; indeed, the female sinner Jona had long since retired to her bed, and through those leather eardrums no discord other than the voice of conscience could ever penetrate. I roamed through the house, keeping in the background.
I imagine that this was to have been a dance, but it was only very halfheartedly that a pair or two trailed on to the floor to jitterbug for a while; on the other hand there was much singing of Fellows were in fettle and O’er the icy sandy wastes, but more especially and in particular they vied with each other to produce the weirdest sounds without words imaginable; never in my life had I heard in one single night such a medley of inarticulate human sounds. Then came the vomiting, first in the bathrooms, then in the stairs and passageways, and finally on the carpets and over the furniture and into the musical instruments. It was as if everyone were engaged to everybody else, couples were slobbering over each other indiscriminately; but I think that no one was in fact engaged to anyone, and that the kissing was just a variation of jitterbugging—with the exception of the maiden Fruit-blood, who, in an ecstasy, with childish movements in her body, clung on to a lanky American-looking guy at least twice her age and already going bald, and finally disappeared with this scoundrel into her room and locked it from the inside.
I had not the physical strength, much less the moral courage, to interfere with any of it; this was just life in a new image, and perhaps not so very new at that, although it was new to me; but when the time was nearing three in the morning I began to wonder how my little Gold-ram would be behaving himself in all this; would he now be out in the dark busy stealing minks and revolvers or perhaps telephone wires to Mosfell District, the little darling? I opened the door of the brothers’ room and peeped in. There on the elder brother’s bed a sozzled couple lay slobbering, and on the younger boy’s bed a girl in a vomit-smeared brocade dress had been laid out in a Christian attitude, with arms folded across her breast. The radio was tuned to some American stallion-station, with hideous squealings and rending farts. Then I saw that the door of the clothes-cupboard was ajar, with the light on inside; and what was going on in there in the midst of the orgy of the century? Two boys playing chess. They sat facing each other, crouched over a chessboard in the cupboard, infinitely remote from everything that was going on just beside them; the mink and revolver thieves, Gold-ram and his cousin. They made no reply even though I spoke to them, and never looked up even though I stood at the cupboard door for a long time watching them. And at this sight I was once again captivated by the essential security of life, by the radiance of the mind and the healing powers of the heart, which no accident can destroy. I contemplated once more the civilized peace of the chess game amongst the din from the American radio station and the four gramophones scattered throughout the house, some saxophones, and a drum: then I went up to my room, locked the door, went to bed, and fell asleep.
LINGO
Next morning, of course, it fell to me to wipe up the vomit, clear away the broken crystal and porcelain, and remove the alcohol stains and food marks from the carpets and furniture; and I was wondering how many nights like that one it would take to lay a house waste; and I was busy with this all day long until the children began to straggle home from their various schools. All at once I heard goings-on in the vestibule, and when I went to look, the whole thing was starting up again, as far as I could see; a few fair-haired jazz-fiends of secondary-school age were drinking Black Death from the bottle and singing Fellows were in fettle and vomiting in front of the maiden Fruit-blood out in the hall. They were obviously in love with the girl and wanted to show her that they were men, well deserving of a maiden’s love. She sat on the stairs smoking a cigarette in the long tube, a little tired, and gave them a cold bewitching smile.
I barged out and said, “This time I refuse to clean up any more spew today, and will these boys kindly remove themselves?”
Of course these bright-haired drink-wan youths poured over me all those insults and obscenities that can only stream out of the well-bred children of better people, including such far-fetched vituperations as “double-minus-person,” “gas-oven fodder,” and “Polish-Jew chain-harlot”; but out they stumbled backwards in the end, the poor things, taking their Black Death with them. And I slammed home the lock.
When they had left, Fruit-blood walked over to me, almost right into me as if she intended to force me to give ground, and stared at me with loathing in her eyes like a gangster-girl in a film.
“How dare you throw my men out of my house?” she said.
“Men? Those dirty little hooligans?” I said, and let her come as close up to me as she liked.
“I forbid you to call south-country people names,” she said.
She stuck her cigarette holder into her mouth and swept grandly away with exaggerated gestures of her arms, waving that shapely little bottom of hers regally as she withdrew, then sank down into a deep chair, leant back limply, closed her eyes and smoked with infinite weariness—all pure cinema.
“Ugla,” she said. “Come here. Talk to me. Sit down.”
When I had sat down she stared dreamily into the blue for a while, and then said, “Isn’t he wonderful?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Isn’t he marvelous?”
I said I did not know what she was talking about.
“Is it a man?” I asked.
“Do you think it’s a dog?” she said.
“I don’t know,”
“Who should it be but that damned Lingo?” she said. “My Lingo—don’t you think he’s a great guy? I love him. I could kill him.”
“You don’t mean that long devil, bald and I don’t know what else?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one I mean. Worse luck. I know he’s terribly tall; and going bald; and, what’s more, married. But I sleep with him all the same; sleep, slept, having slept; will sleep.”
“Are you mad, child? Do you think you can sleep with people at your age? He can be put in jail for that.”
“I’m my own boss, my girl,” she said.
“That sort of thing never even occured to me when I was at confirmation age,” I said.
“Listen,” she whispered. “Have you heard that girls stop growing if they lie with men too early?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I do know this, that you are such a child, Fruit-blood, that the next time I see that long devil I shall give him a good hiding.”
BUYING AN ANEMONE
“If everything starts again tonight, the house filling up with people breaking still more crystal and vomiting on the carpets and ruining the veneer of the furniture, what am I to do? Call the police?”
“Why ask me, my dear?” said the organist.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“In my ho
use criminals and policeman sit at the same table,” he said. “And sometimes clergymen too, what’s more.”
“It shocks me to see these drunken young devils,” I said.
“Do not speak ill of the young in my hearing,” he said. unaccountably switching to the formal mode of address, and completely serious. After a little thought he went on: “I imagined there was enough crystal in the world for those who read crystal. I for my own part take greater pleasure in a film of ice over a clear brook on an autumn morning.”
“But what is one to do when those around one behave both wrongly and badly?” I asked.
“Behavioristically wrongly?” he asked. “Biochemically badly?”
“Morally wrongly and badly,” I said.
“Morals do not enter into it,” he said. “And there is no such thing as morality—only varyingly expedient conventions. What to one race is crime, is virtue to another; crime in one era is virtue in another; even a crime in one class of society is at the same time and in the same society virtue in another class. The Dobuans in Dobu have only one moral law, and that is to hate one another: hate one another in the same way that European nations used to do before the concept of nationalism became obsolete and East and West were substituted in its place. Amongst them, each individual is duty bound to hate the other as West is duty bound to hate East, amongst us. The only thing that saves the poor Dobuans is that they do not have such good weapons of destruction as Du Pont; nor Christianity, like the Pope.”
“Are drunk as well as sober criminals to be allowed free rein, then?” I asked.
“We live in a rather inexpedient social system,” he said. “The Dobuans are pretty close to us. But there is one consolation, and that is that man can never outgrow the necessity to live in an expedient social system. It makes no difference whether people are called good or bad; we are all here; now; there is only one world in existence, and in it there prevail either expedient or inexpedient conditions for those who are alive.”
“Can I then come barging in here blind drunk and shoot your flowers?” I asked.
“Go ahead,” he said, and laughed.
“Would that be right?” I asked.
“Alcohol produces certain chemical reactions in the living body and alters the functioning of the nervous system: you might fall downstairs. Jonas Hallgrimsson fell downstairs; some people think that thereby Iceland lost her finest poems—those which he had not yet composed.”
“Of course he drank too much,” I said.
“Do we think it makes much difference whether or not it was morally wrong of the man to take a drink so often? Perhaps he would not have fallen if he had only had ten drinks. Perhaps it was just the eleventh drink that felled him. Is it not just about as wrong morally to drink one drink too many as to remain out of doors for five minutes too long in the cold? For you might catch pneumonia. But both are inexpedient.”
I went on contemplating this man.
“On the other hand it would deeply offend my aesthetic sense to see a beautiful north-country girl drunk,” he added. “But aesthetics and morality have nothing in common: no one gets to Heaven by being beautiful. The authors of the New Testament had no appreciation of beauty. On the other hand Mohammed said: ‘If you have two farthings, buy yourself bread with the one and an anemone with the other.’ Anyone is at liberty to break my crystal. And though my own rule is no drink, it is not a moral rule. On the other hand, I buy anemones.”
After a moment’s thought I began again: “Do you contend that it is right for a fourteen-year-old girl to shut herself in with a married man and perhaps come out again pregnant?”
He always gave sort of a titter when he thought something funny. “Did you say fourteen, my good girl?” he said. “Twice times seven: it is a downright twice-sacred number. But now I shall tell you about another creature that also counts in this case, except that it counts up to sixteen; it is a species of cactus that is said to grow in Spain. There the blessed plant stands, in those scorching Castilian uplands, and counts and counts with precision and care, yes, I am probably safe in saying with actual moral fervor, until sixteen years are up; and then blooms. Not until sixteen years have passed does it dare to bear this feeble red blossom which is dead tomorrow.”
“Yes, but a child is a child,” I said stubbornly; and to tell the truth I was becoming a little annoyed at having so frivolous an organist.
“Just so,” he said. “A child is a child. And later the child stops being a child—without arithmetic. Nature asserts itself.”
“I am from the country, and year-old ewe-lambs are never put to the ram.”
“The lambs of year-old ewe-lambs are not usually much good for slaughtering,” he said. “If mankind were reared for the slaughter house, to be sold by the pound, your point of view would be valid. It is a common saying in Iceland that the children of children are fortune’s favorites.”
“Is one then to believe every damned stupid proverb there is?” I said, and was now a little angry.
“Look at me,” he said. “Here you see one of fortune’s favorites.”
It was the same as always: all conventional thinking turned into crude exaggeration, and universally-accepted notions into vulgarity, when one was talking to this man. My tongue tied itself in knots, for I felt that anything further I said in this direction was bound to cause him unpardonable offence—this man who had the clearest and most gentle eyes of any man.
“Was it wrong that I should come into being? That my mother should give birth to me the summer after she was confirmed?” he asked. “Was it bad? Was it wicked?”
Something flashed into my mind and I kept silent. He went on watching me. Did he expect me to reply? At last I said in a low voice, the only thing I could say: “You are so far ahead of me that you are almost out of sight; and I hear you as if on the long distance telephone from the other end of the country.”
“She was a clergyman’s daughter,” he said. “Christianity has robbed her of all peace of soul. For these few decades of a whole lifetime she has lain awake most nights to beg forgiveness of the enemy of human life, the God of the Christians; until Nature now in her mercy has deprived her of memory. You may now be thinking, perhaps, that those who believe in such a bad god must become bad themselves, but that is not so: man is more perfect than God. Although this woman’s doctrine, in which she was brought up from childhood, told her that all men were lost sinners, I have never heard her censure any man with so much as half a word. All her life is symbolized in the only words which she knows in her dotage, when she has forgotten all other words: Please do; and, God bless you. I think she has been the poorest woman in Iceland; but nevertheless for half a century she has kept open house for all Iceland; and most especially for criminals and harlots.”
I was silent for a long time, until I looked up at him and said, “Forgive me.” And he patted me on the cheek and kissed me on the forehead.
“I am sure you understand now,” he said with an apologetic smile, “why I am always stung if I hear views that reflect on my mother; and on me; on my existence as a living being.”
14. Oli Figure murdered
As a result of the Prime Minister’s last oaths there was no more discussion for a while about selling the country. There was now to be an interval of a year, followed by Parliamentary elections over the matter, and meanwhile attempts were to be made to get the representative of the Great Power to moderate the wording of the application: to ask not for a base for attack or defence in an atomic war, but rather for a shelter for any welfare missions which might be dispatched to alleviate the sufferings of European races. A temporary truce was declared between street and State. The Communists stopped saying that F.F.F. was going to sell the country, and F.F.F. stopped writing that people had to be true Icelanders and dig up bones. But in the middle of the calm that had fallen over country sales and exhumations, the main tidings of Christmas were that Oli Figure was found in a hut down by the sea with his head smashed in; the iron bar with whi
ch he had been assaulted lay nearby. As is the custom when murders are committed, little was written about it in the newspapers, so as not to offend the murderer and his family; until someone had the fine idea of blaming the murder on an unknown American negro, for it did not matter in the least if a colored Yankee and his family were offended.
PHILOSOPHY FOR THE ADVANCED
When I came home one evening, between Christmas and New Year, there, standing in the hall, was the man who was to me the most unknown of all, the most incomprehensible and the most distant, even though he was closest of all to me in that mysterious disintegrating way which I shall never admit: the father of the children; the husband of the woman; that famous man, my employer.
“Hello.”
I replied, “Good evening.”
There was no party on, and the house was silent. He had just arrived from the airport, and his leather case stood in the hall.
“Where are the children I gave you?” he said.
I said I hoped they were out enjoying themselves.
“Let us hope so,” he said. “People should enjoy themselves while they can, for the time comes when they are bored with enjoying themselves. I would give a lot to be able once more to enjoy going to the cinema.”
I only wanted to disappear as quickly as I could behind locked doors, for I could never think of anything to say when he spoke to me; I am sure that in my eyes could have been clearly read the palpitation of my heart at his return, once more chatting in that bantering melancholy absent-minded way of his.
“Good night,” I said abruptly and without preliminaries, and turned to go.
“Ugla,” he said.
“What?”
He inhaled so deeply on his cigarette that no smoke came out. I paused in the doorway.
“These children,” he said.
I waited in the doorway and watched him smoke.
“It is said that a man forgives those he understands, but I think that is a fallacy; at least, a man first and foremost forgives those he does not understand, such as children. Now the year is almost at an end and the main juvenile entertainment of the year is approaching—blowing up the police station. My cousin the Chief of Police is always telling me to keep the little boy indoors. Should I bother to do that at all? My children have anyway always taken part in blowing up the police station on New Year’s Eve. I think it much the simplest thing just to let them blow it up, forgive them, and then build a better police station.”
The Atom Station Page 10