Walking Into the Night

by Olaf Olafsson

  The other day the Chief asked me what I was up to. He was taking his evening stroll around the house with his dachshund, Helena, in tow, and put his head round my door. Perhaps he thought he’d find the corpse of a bird on my desk; the dog had been drawn by the smell a few days earlier, when I was attempting the bluebird. I told him I was jotting down my tips, as he had suggested. He asked to see them when I had finished because, who knows, it might be something for the readers of his papers. “We’ll see,” I said to him. I was thinking that there was plenty that would come in handy for the general public, though I’d have to adjust quite a few things which might seem pretty strange to those who aren’t familiar with the ways of rich men’s households. I even got quite excited about the prospect of doing this until the Chief said: “We’ll give you a byline. We can call the column ‘The Butler Suggests,’ or something along those lines. You think about it, Christian. It could work. People always want to upgrade their standard of living. Whether they can afford to or not.” I was silent. I hope he’s forgotten about this idea by now. If he brings it up again, I’ll have to tell him I’ve given up on the whole thing.

  So here I am in the dusk, writing in an exercise book about how best to set a table. “You, Kristjan?” I hear you say. But I know you won’t take pleasure in the fact. You’ll just pity me.

  8

  They stood before him, three of them, their faces revealing nervous anticipation. It was two o’clock. There was no one else in the staff dining room; most of the household were busy preparing for the ball that evening. He wanted to speak to them in private and so asked them to step aside. The girl jumped when the bell tolled in the tower above them, then smiled shyly and looked down. She had started work a week before and was still unaccustomed. The boys had shiny shoes and slicked-back hair. They were new, as well. There was a clashing of pots and pans from the kitchen but it was muffled and didn’t disturb them.

  “House rules,” he said.

  They looked up.

  “Three simple rules that the Chief’s guests must observe.”

  Suddenly noticing that someone had forgotten to clean one corner of the table after lunch, he went over to the sink, fetched a wet cloth, wiped down the table, then took it back to the sink and wrung it out before turning back to them.

  “Rule one: no drunkenness. You’re to watch the guests and let me know the moment you think someone has had too much liquor. Regardless of who it is or what they say.

  “Rule two: no bad language or off-color jokes. If the first rule is observed, there’s generally no need to worry about people’s behavior. Again, you let me know as soon as you believe this rule is being broken.

  “Are you with me?”

  They nodded.

  “Rule three: no sexual intercourse between unmarried couples.”

  He was about to continue, then fell silent for a moment. They waited.

  “No sexual intercourse between unmarried couples,” he repeated.

  One of the boys, a footman, tried to hide a smile.

  “How can we keep a check on that?” he asked.

  Kristjan cleared his throat.

  “A man and a woman do not sleep in the same room unless they are married. This is a rule. . . . Coming and going between bedrooms is not tolerated . . .” He hesitated. “It’s prohibited,” he added. “That’s a rule, too. Those who break it are sent home the next morning.”

  Silence. They glanced at one another.

  “Three simple rules. Do you trust yourselves to remember them?”

  They nodded.

  “Good. Then there’s no need to keep you.”

  He went to the door and opened it, showing them out with his eyes.

  The inquisitive footman stopped in the doorway.

  “May I ask one question?”

  The others stopped as well and waited to see what would happen.

  “Are the Chief and Miss Davies married, then? Or is it true that he has a wife and family living on the East Coast? Just so we know if we’re asked.”

  Kristjan hesitated a moment.

  “You won’t be asked,” he said after a short silence. “Now go and try to make yourselves useful.”

  9

  The apple had tumbled out of the pig’s jaws and rolled over the port-marinated pears surrounding it, off the silver dish and past the long fork and newly sharpened carving knife. It had come to a halt in the middle of the table as if it had lost heart for a longer journey, yet it didn’t seem to feel self-conscious alone in the vast white expanse. The caramel glaze had begun to crack and its wake could be traced in a straight line across the starched tablecloth. The pig stared after it with empty eyes.

  It was the evening of the Chief’s costume ball. He had invited between sixty and seventy guests, most from Hollywood but also a handful of his own employees—editors and reporters—as well as the odd businessman. Most of the guests had already arrived and were now standing in their rooms before the mirror as they slipped into their costumes—heroes from past centuries, knights, cowboys and popes, clowns and courtesans, queens and nuns.

  Kristjan heard a car in the distance and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the late-afternoon glare; the sun hung low in the sky over the ocean and flashed on the black limousine as it crawled up the winding drive.

  Reaching into his pocket, he fetched the guest list and peered at it. He reckoned he could guess who was arriving—friends of Miss Davies from Los Angeles, Miss Bette Davis with a director and two other actresses.

  “They must have been held up on the way,” he said to himself.

  Without waiting any longer he turned on his heels and continued his patrol of the buildings.

  In the orchard nearest the main building a long trestle table had been set up in a quiet clearing. Pergolas led to the clearing, lined with lamps and torches which would be lit once darkness fell. By the swimming pool a tent was being erected, white with a blue ceiling studded with stars. Wax statues of violin players and a priest with a mouth organ stood side by side outside the tent. Kristjan wiped some bird droppings off the priest’s shoulder. He thought he seemed oddly out of place.

  He noticed the apple on the table as soon as he looked into the tent. Reacting quickly, he asked someone to fetch the chef and his assistant to repair the table ornaments, ordering two waiters to bring a new cloth. He impressed upon them the importance of keeping their eyes open.

  “You’re lucky it was me and not the Chief who noticed this,” he told them.

  In the kitchen, quails, ducks, and pheasants turned on spits over hot coals while outside men were shoveling bundles of wood into a stone-built oven and preparing buffalo joints for roasting. The wood had begun to smoke. Kristjan’s gaze inadvertently followed the smoke as it curled out into the quiet afternoon, then he got a grip on himself and continued his patrol before his thoughts could follow it and lose themselves yet again in the stillness.

  There was a sweet smell in the air. In the morning two kitchen maids had gone down the hill to pick fruit from the orchard— pineapples and pears, oranges, bananas, and nuts. They had washed the fruit, placed them in rows on trays, and arranged them meticulously in numerous bowls. Kristjan paused in the kitchen to check that they had performed their task properly, before reminding the stand-in chef yet again that the Chief liked his meat rare.

  An hour later the guests were gathered in the Assembly Room. Kristjan alerted the Chief and Miss Davies when everyone was present. They took the elevator together from their adjoining bedrooms and entered through the concealed door in the paneled wall, like gods, with a calm, distant look in their eyes. They stood motionless side by side until their guests became aware of them. A murmur passed through the crowd, then voices were lowered, people looked up from their chessboards or jigsaw puzzles; those who were visiting for the first time glanced around in the hope of picking up clues on how to behave. But there was no need for guidance because after a few seconds Miss Davies came to life like a wax doll touched by a magic wand. Her fa
ce broadened in a smile as she released the Chief’s hand and vanished into the crowd that welcomed her with hugs and kisses. David Niven, dressed as a pickpocket. Bette Davis with a beard. Carole Lombard in a Tyrolean outfit. These were her friends and they adored her.

  The Chief, meanwhile, turned aside to check his messages on the Teletype machine.

  Kristjan thought Hearst didn’t seem right that evening. There had been no warning earlier in the day but now he saw that something was wrong. He was sure it wasn’t business that worried him, because the Chief never let it show when times were tough. “Miss Davies,” he muttered to himself, and determined to keep a close eye on her during the evening.

  He noticed that a guest at the other side of the room looked rather the worse for wear and nudged one of the footmen, indicating that he was not to fill the man’s glass again. According to the Chief’s rules, the guests were not permitted more than two glasses of spirits before dinner or three glasses of wine. Kristjan knew from experience that it could be difficult to keep track of consumption among so many people, particularly at the beginning of a party when the guests were drinking on empty stomachs. Some were weary from their journey but the excitement always overcame them and then they forgot how much they had consumed. He was in no doubt about whom the Chief would hold accountable if anyone got drunk. Especially Miss Davies. He would be a long time forgetting the Chief’s eyes at the dinner table when she had passed out once in her chair opposite him. Yet no one had seen her take a drink all evening; no one had seen her touch anything but water. She had hidden a flask of gin in her handbag and drunk from it when no one was looking.

  The guests filed out one by one. They were greeted by the evening sun, pale and timid on the ground but more cheerful in the branches of the trees, and lively on the streams and fountains. The chef adjusted his hat and wielded his carving knife on the first pig. There were nine more waiting their turn.

  The Chief remained inside with a few of his guests; he was dressed as a woodcutter in brown breeches and a green jerkin with gilt buttons. On his head a feather bounced in a flat cap of green velour. Apparently it was tight since he kept taking it off and rubbing his forehead. He surveyed the room ceaselessly but couldn’t see Miss Davies. Three of his guests, middle-aged men whom Kristjan knew to be in the newspaper business, stood around him, talking away obliviously as he scanned the room.

  Could she have gone outside?

  The dusk was deepening in the gardens, the shadows of the trees lengthening. Kristjan paused for a moment on his way to the tent to watch the lighting of the lamps. Generally a sense of calm flooded over him at this time of day, but now he was on edge and had no time to savor the view or the twilight spreading over the mountainsides and the plain below. In the spring the dusk approached like silent veils of rain, but in winter it wore a gray gown. With the dusk he sensed her presence, why he didn’t know.

  “Klara,” he’d say, when he felt her coming closer. “Are you sleepwalking again?”

  Just as he was about to continue on his rounds, someone nudged him. He jumped and turned sharply. Miss Davies smiled at him.

  “My glass . . . fill it up, dear.”

  “You know . . .”

  “Just a teeny bit.”

  “. . . I can’t.”

  The smile lingered on her lips but the tone of her voice changed.

  “Come on, quick. Fill up my glass.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be like that. Come on.”

  Silence.

  “Fill my glass, I say.”

  “The Chief . . .”

  She didn’t raise her voice but it quivered as if someone had plucked an overtaut string.

  “To hell with him. He doesn’t know what I’ve been through. I can’t do it again. It gets worse every time.”

  He didn’t know what she was referring to. She had begun to shake and was on the verge of tears.

  “Is there something I can do?” he asked.

  “Yes, fill my glass,” she begged. “Please just fill my glass . . .”

  He took her arm.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat. The guests are waiting.”

  He led her to the main building, out of the half-dusk and mist and towards the twinkling lights. The noise of the party reached them, roars of laughter and the clinking of cutlery and glass; she gripped his arm tight, gradually loosening her hold as she managed to suppress her sobs.

  Was he trying to console her when he said all of a sudden: “Do you remember when Mr. Valentino taught you how to dance the tango right here in the garden?” He didn’t know; maybe he just meant to comfort himself. But whatever his reason, she said without looking at him: “Yes, it was awful. Even when I was happy, I couldn’t dance.”

  When they had climbed up to the terrace nearest the house, the Chief came towards them. She straightened up, touched anew by the magic wand, and said with a smile:

  “There you are, dear.”

  Kristjan hurried away, past the musicians who had begun to play in front of a statue of the Three Graces, and the guests who were dancing on the terrace, looking neither to right nor left but quickening his pace until he reached the doorway of the tent. There he stopped, at last to catch his breath and wipe the pearls of sweat from his brow. Pursuing him into the tent, the music would have seemed sweet and uplifting under different circumstances—“I only have eyes for you . . .”

  There was hardly anything left of the pig on the long trestle table but the apple was still gripped in its jaw. When the waiters replaced it with a slightly smaller pig, Kristjan made sure they put parsley eyelashes and cranberry eyes where the pig’s own eyes had once been.

  10

  The guests had gone to bed.

  I was the only one left downstairs; the staff had finally retired to their rooms, the kitchen maids last of all. I had turned off all the lights and was making a last tour of the ground-floor rooms to make sure that all the candles had been blown out and no cigarettes had been left smoldering. The logs had burned down in the great hearth in the assembly room, though the embers still sent up the occasional spark. Through the window I saw that a lamp was still shining in Casa del Mar. I felt better knowing that someone else was still awake. I don’t know why.

  All the lights were out, yet it was bright where I stood in the middle of the reception room. The moon was now high in the sky and laid a long strip of light across the mirror-like ocean, up the hillside, across the floor—to my feet. I walked towards it, opening the terrace door. Everything was quiet. I hoped the antelope, leopard, and puma would be able to sleep tonight. I didn’t like them being locked up in cages in this place; they didn’t belong here. None of them belonged here.

  The air still held the fragrance of woodsmoke and the pungent smell of pine, which I never notice except in the evenings. A reverberation came and went, a distant echo which I tried to concentrate on. But the evening’s songs got in the way—“I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright, ’cause I only have eyes for you . . .” I stepped inadvertently backwards, first two steps, then another. The moonlight pursued me, surrounded me, as if I were standing in shallow water. I looked down and stared at my feet for a while, the refrain in my ears slowly changing, the evening’s songs falling silent and the echo growing clearer in my mind.

  I was walking in through the door of our house in Eyrarbakki. It was after midnight, the servants had gone to bed, little Einar was long since fast asleep. You were sitting in your chair in the living room, just finishing breast-feeding Maria. You looked up and smiled when I came in; I put down my suitcases and quietly removed my coat and hung it up. You slipped your nipple from her mouth. She was asleep, so you got up and laid her in her cradle before coming over to me. I had just returned from a month in Denmark. I put my arms round you in the middle of the room and pulled you against me, neither of us saying a word. All of a sudden you began to hum. I recognized the tune immediately— “Bei Männern,” fro
m The Magic Flute—you used to play it so often when we first met. I began to move to the rhythm and you followed. I pressed you against me, couldn’t let you go, didn’t want to let you go. There was a lantern burning on top of a cupboard, shedding a faint light.

  I began to dance in the moonlit reception room. How silly I must have looked! But I felt as if you were with me. It was as if nothing had changed, everything was as it had been before I lost my way. Because that’s what happened. I lost my way. But now, for a moment, I had found my way back and I shut my eyes and held on tight to your memory. You hadn’t buttoned up your blouse after feeding Maria and I undid it even further as we swayed around the room. Your breasts were hot and soft and I took your nipple into my mouth, gently because I knew it was still sore from the baby. You had stopped humming now but we continued to dance.

  I didn’t know that she had come down and started to dance with me. I wasn’t aware of her, I was so far away, your breath soothing against my cheek. The moonlight lapped the floor under our feet; we undulated as if dancing in water.

  “Christian,” she whispered.

  I came to with a jolt.

  “Fetch a drop of gin for me. Booth’s. Quickly, so we can keep going.”

  The silence was broken. I thought I heard the puma snarling lower down the hill.

  “What’s the matter, Christian?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry . . .”

  I fetched the gin bottle from the locked cupboard and a glass on a tray. I spilled the liquor outside the glass and had difficulty cleaning up after myself.

  “Christian . . .”

  Leaving her behind in the middle of the room, I hurried away, trying to say good night but unable to get the words out.

  My fingers smelled of gin. I noticed it when I locked the door to my room and buried my face in my hands. I had done wrong, yet again.

  I harm everyone I care for.

  11