by Sjón
* * *
— That’s nothing like my book …
— But this is what you were dreaming.
— You must be joking. I was reading a love story.
— When you fell asleep the story continued in your dream, taking a new direction. I’ve read the book from cover to cover, but this is a new edition. Listen:
* * *
But he can’t dwell on his thoughts about the sky: he’s on the run. Carefully picking up the hatbox, he wedges it firmly under his left arm, seizes the handle of the suitcase and sets off in the direction of the forest, leaving …
* * *
— Which is what you should do.
— He’s on his way here.
— So what? As far as I’m concerned, the people I dream about are welcome to visit me. Go and find your own book to fall asleep over …
— Goodnight, Marie-Sophie.
— Goodnight.’
II
2
‘Gabriel bestrode the Continent, his celestial soles planted on the Greenland ice-cap in the north and the Persian plateau in the south. The clouds lapped at his ankles, billowing the snowy skirt of the robe that hid his bright limbs and all his blessed angel-flesh. Chains of pure silver spanned his chest, azure epaulettes graced his shoulders and his glorious head was wreathed in twilight so the flood of bright locks would not turn night into day. His expression was pure as the driven snow; a crescent moon glowed in his eyes, a fire that erupted in an annihilating blaze at the slightest discord in his heart; an ice-cold smile played about his lips.’
‘Now that’s what I call a proper angel.’
‘Gabriel stroked downy-soft fingers over his instrument, a magnificent trumpet inlaid with opals, which hung about his neck on a roseate thong plaited out of poppies from the fields of Elysium. He spread his heavenly wings, which were so vast that their tips touched the outer walls of the world in the east and west, and the feathers swirled over the earth, falling like a blizzard on fields and cities. He shook back his sleeves, grasped the trumpet, braced his shoulders until the epaulettes touched his ears, flexed his knees and thrust out his holy hips. Hosanna! He raised the instrument.’
‘Hosanna!’
‘Shut up!’
‘No.’
‘Gabriel laid the trumpet to his lips, puffed out his cheeks, emptied his mind and prepared to blow. He concentrated on listening for the tune, hosanna, waiting for the right moment to let it sound out over the world that lay at his feet.’
‘And?’
‘Gabriel had long awaited this moment, but now that it was nigh he had difficulty pinning down his feelings; he wavered between anticipation and fear, euphoria and despair. On the one hand he felt like a well-trained player who has been forced to sit on the substitution bench for game after game, though everyone says he’s the most talented member of the team, and now that he has finally been sent on to the pitch it was to save the team from a hopeless situation. HOSANNA – he would do his best. On the other hand he was afraid of the emptiness that would follow in the wake of the clarion call; naturally there would be turmoil and confusion after he sounded the trumpet and he would take part in the cataclysmic events that ensued, leading a fair host of warlike angels into battle against the powers of darkness, but when it was all over he would have nothing to look forward to and nothing to fear. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. The angel didn’t know whether he felt happy or sad.
He was surprised at himself. He had always imagined that when the time came he would seize the trumpet in both hands and sound the blast without hesitation; that it would thunder in his mind like the very voice of the Creator, finding its way to his lips without hindrance; that all he would have to do was take up position and amen: doomsday in heaven and on earth.
Gabriel knitted his fair brows in an effort to banish these thoughts. He lowered the trumpet for a moment and ran the tip of his sweet tongue over his lips, closing his limpid eyes and swaying from his hips. He imagined the tune trapped in his nether regions, in his withered rectum, and that he could free it by rhythmic movements of his pelvis so that it would rise like a lifebelt from a sunken ship, ascending his spine to his wondrous brain where it would bob up on the surface of his consciousness. The angel’s head nodded, his neck veins swelled, his fingers clenched the instrument, his stomach muscles cramped, his knees shook a little, his feet trod sand and snow. The tune eddied in his brain fluid like blood in water: Leluiala, iallulae, aiallule, ullaliae, eluiaall, lleluaia, auaellli. The angel sensed it was coming, thank God. He drew a mighty breath through his sublime nostrils.
Stretching his eyes so wide that they shot out sparks into the abyss, forming seven new solar systems in the process, he glared at the doomed earth below. Aallelui! Sinful mankind lay abed, snoring, breaking wind, mumbling and gulping saliva, ugh, or grappling with another of its kind, drunk with lust, exchanging bodily fluids.’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘The occupations of the wide-awake were no more savoury.’
‘Go on.’
‘Gabriel shuddered; it was clearly high time judgement was called down upon this rabble. He saw platoons of plague scouts storming over the Continent, sweeping from country to country, torching towns and cities; armed with hard steel they answered to tyrants who sat twisted with bloodlust in their underground bunkers, desecrating the map of Europe; with panzers, helmets, shields and guns they trampled growing fields, ripped up forests by the roots, pissed in rapids and rivers, massacred mothers and children, murdered and maimed; to strike and stab was their pride and joy: they paid no heed to judgement day.
The angel trembled with righteous anger. Hosanna, glory be to God in the highest, woe to them and woe to them; soon they would suffer the ultimate fate and their cold corpses be robbed of their robes of state.
Stripped of power they’d be nothing but worms’ bait.
He heard air-raid sirens wailing in the cities – those human fiends made a worse racket than the devil himself – but now they would get a taste of some real doomsday music. ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! The tune surged against the angel’s inner ear, sounding absurdly like the death cries that emanated from below, strong and full of promise about the great battle in which the angels of heaven and devils of hell would strive for men’s souls in a magnificent showdown. Hah, mankind’s sordid struggles would end the instant the notes poured forth from his fair trumpet: Creation would be overturned, the firmament torn, the oceans set on edge, the rocks split and the guilty cast down while the virtuous were raised up to the highest heights on high. Yes, such is the song of the end of days!’
‘Bah!’
‘Gabriel tried to curb his fury, he must get a grip on himself: the trumpet was a sensitive instrument and the note would go awry if he blew too hard. He relaxed his shoulders, breathed out slowly and counted the tempo in his head: One-two-three A, one-two-three A, one-two-three A, one-two-three A, one-two-three A, one-two-three A, one- two-three A. Gabriel was about to inflate his magnificent lungs afresh when he caught sight of searchlights cleaving the night above the capital of the Kingdom of the Angles – a blasphemous name; oh, good heavens, they were groping like crude fingers up under the costly robe.
The angel was chaste, yes: no one was going to get an eyeful of his Jerusalem. He yanked his robe tight about his holy body and the heavenly garments swung modestly against the shining limbs, concealing the sweet treasure between his legs, which was a good day’s work by God and ineffable, Kyrie eleison. But Gabriel could not prevent the twisting movement from running the length of his body. His glorious head was flung back, one of his brightly glowing locks fell out from under the dusky headdress and obscured his view of the earth, and the tune went awry, slipping out of his consciousness and sliding into the amygdaloid nucleus of his brain like a snake into its hole.’
‘No!’
‘Oh yes! It was the work of Lucifer Satan – he who passes through the world with delusions and dirty tricks, sowing the seeds of
heresy in human hearts.’
‘Woe to him!’
‘Gabriel smelled the scent of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris) and brushed the hair from his eyes: he was standing on a verdant plain under a crystal sky; tens of thousands of suns cast their rays on fields and meadows; doves (probably Gallicolumba luzonica, which is marked out for the Saviour by its blood-red breast feathers) cooed in olive groves (Olea europaea), and she-tigers (Panthera tigris) gave suck to kids (Capra hircus) on the banks of a tinkling brook. Away on the horizon cherubs hovered over marble cliffs.
The angel was in Seventh Heaven, his home, as far from mankind’s vale of tears as could be imagined. He heaved a sigh of relief: doomsday appeared to be over. All was quiet, the Almighty had conquered – for ever: AMEN!’
‘Amen.’
‘Gabriel observed from the shadows of the olive trees that it was approaching suppertime in heaven (everything casts a shadow there even though the suns are always at their noonday zenith – I mention this merely for information) and suddenly he felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue throughout his colossal frame.
He was truly exhausted after his descent to earth, aie; now he had no greater desire than to return to his blessed lodgings in the house of the Father on the main square of Paradise City. He longed for a perfumed bath; to lie in the foaming holy water of the silver tub and let the tension seep out of his body. In the evening he would go out on the square and dance on the head of a pin with the guardian angels.
The angel spread his weary wings, adjusted the goodly trumpet, raised himself into the air and headed for his quarters.’
‘Praise be to God.’
‘Yes, let us praise His holy name, but don’t forget that Satan has taken charge of the Lord’s show.’
‘Oh dear!’
‘And although the story will now turn to other matters for a while, he has not had his final word.’
‘Gabriel?’
‘He’ll come into the story again – later.’
‘Kiss me.’
‘How much will it cost?’
‘You can have one free for the she-tigers: I identified with them; they were so utterly adorable.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Not at all, the pleasure was mine.’
III
3
‘The cook was hard at work kneading a voluminous mass of dough on the kitchen table when Marie-Sophie came down in the morning. The servant lad sat at the end of the table, forming gingerbread men from the lump of cake-dough he’d been allotted, shaping small human figures with his large hands, digging a nail in the soft dough to divide legs and arms from body, pricking eyes and mouths with a roasting skewer.
— Thank goodness you’re here!
The cook turned her plump face to the girl without missing a beat in her kneading: the dough danced on the table, took to the air and smacked down, turned, stretched and contracted, like a squirming brat refusing to have its nappy changed. The cook was wholly in its power, her massive body quivered and quaked, right from the small feet, which performed quick dance steps under the table, to her double chin, which bulged and compressed, all in obedience to the origin of the movement – the dough.
— Well, I don’t know how much of a blessing it is, I’m not working.
Answered the girl, pretending not to notice the boy who was bending over his creations with a wolfish grin on his face.
— I haven’t had a Sunday off in ages.
— Sweet Jesus, I wasn’t going to ask you to help me, no, dear child, nothing could be further from … No, no, no …
The cook lowered her voice and motioned Marie-Sophie closer with a toss of her head, which is how she directed everything in the kitchen when she had her hands full with the cooking; with lightning-quick motions of the head she drew invisible lines in the air, connecting hand to pepper-pot, grip to ladle, fingers to saucepan lid.
— Why am I put upon like this?
The cook darted suspicious eyes at the boy, all the while nodding to Marie-Sophie until the girl was up close to her quivering flesh.
What is it with fat people, anyway? thought the girl, now partnering the cook in her dance. I always feel closer to them than I want to be. Is it because the distance between men’s hearts must always be the same, regardless of a person’s girth?
— What have I ever done to those people?
The cook raised the dough aloft and kneaded it at head height as if by this means she could absorb the impact of the dreadful news she was hugging to herself but now wished to share with the girl.
— Why do they have to stick him in the kitchen when you lot have the day off?
Marie-Sophie glanced over her shoulder at the pimply, red-haired youth, chief protagonist of the first major event of the day at Gasthof Vrieslander; the gingerbread figures dwindled in his hands and his face was so flushed that you’d have thought he was sharing the oven with his progeny.
— I do declare I’m afraid of him!
The girl found it hard to believe that the cook, who was still brandishing the ever-moving globe of dough aloft, would not have the measure of this scrawny boy – the dough must weigh nearly twelve kilos.
— Isn’t that going a bit far?
The cook squinted at Marie-Sophie and whispered:
— We’re not talking about physical violence, dearie, he’s not man enough for that, oh no, what do you think he’s gone and done?
Marie-Sophie couldn’t imagine what the boy had done that could take this worldly cook by surprise: the woman had experienced a thing or two in her time, after all, having worked with her backside and bosom under men’s noses ever since she could remember. The girl had heard all the stories after the rum baba distillations in the evenings: “Because you have to make rum baba in the evenings, child, as it needs to stand overnight.”
But today, apparently, the cook was shaken:
— He’s using psychological violence against me, the filthy little beast!
She slammed the dough down on the table so hard that the kitchen reverberated. The boy jumped and for a moment the grin fell from his face, but when the banging and rattling in the cupboards had subsided it lay again between his sticking-out ears like the gaping flies on a pair of trousers. He was agonised: he was the type who smiles when he gets into trouble – which led to frequent misunderstandings. This time it was the cook who misunderstood him: And he just sits there laughing at me!
The boy tried to hunch lower over his gingerbread in the hope that his face wouldn’t show – as if that would change anything. The cook had kneaded his disgrace into the cake-dough. The guesthouse regulars would eat it up with their morning coffee and later in the day they would pass it out the other end. And with that his unfortunate prank and the shame of being scolded like a randy dog in front of Marie-Sophie would have become part of the world’s ecosystem.’
‘So what on earth had he done?’
‘The cook began to knead life back into the dough, which had lain limp between her hands since being slammed on the table.
— Mein Gott, I can hardly bring myself to talk about it …
— Yes, you can, I’ll see that he gets his comeuppance.
Marie-Sophie pretended to glare at the boy. He was obviously relieved, though he was trying not to let it show. The poor wretch had been drooping in reception all night – honestly, it was rotten of them to order him, still heavy-lidded from the night shift, to assist the hung-over cook with the baking. Was it any wonder if the lad resorted to a little mischief to keep himself awake over the gingerbread?
— Just look!
The cook jerked her shoulder at a baking tray which was on a chair by the door to the backyard; it had been placed as close to the edge of the chair as possible without actually falling on the floor. Under a page from the Kükenstadt-Anzeiger, the town newspaper, a cake-shaped lump could be seen – this gingerbread was clearly a reject.
— What do you think it is?
Before Marie-Sophie could answer the cook b
egan to edge them both in pursuit of the dough, which was creeping off in the direction of the rejected baking tray.
— Mein Gott, you’ll never guess!
The cook made the sign of the cross in the air with the tip of her nose as she transferred the dough from the table to the wall by the back door and proceeded to knead it there.
Marie-Sophie was no longer indifferent to this kitchen drama in which she had unwittingly become a participant. She felt queasy from having the quivering formlessness before her eyes, the heat from the oven was suffocating, and she was seized with the fear that she might never break free from her intricate dance with the cook. It was her day off, it was Sunday, she had slipped downstairs to grab a bite to eat. Her fifteen-minute date with a simple breakfast was developing into an interminable tragedy in which answers were sought to major questions about honour, morality and evil in the human soul. And, as befitted a great showman, the cook spun out her testimony to the very brink of anticipation:
— There it is!
The boy flinched. The cook spat out the words. Her proximity to the object of disgrace, the forbidden confectionery, made her blood boil to such a pitch that it seemed she might pass right through the wall into the yard and Lord knows where, with the cake-dough held aloft like a banner of censure.
Marie-Sophie no longer saw any chance of escaping with her sanity intact from this kitchen of the absurd; the cook would never bring herself to expose the evidence in the case of “Propriety versus Clumsy Hans”; the gingerbread men would end up so small in the boy’s hands that he would split the atom, and she herself would never make it to her date with that glass of milk, slice of bread and pear, even though her business was first and foremost with them on this Sunday morning – she would starve to death in a kitchen.
The girl now reacted quickly: she tore herself away from the cook and made as if to whip the newspaper off the baking tray when the boy leapt to his feet:
— I didn’t mean anything by it …