by Sjón
The next day my daddy the prelate took me down to Atlanta’s police headquarters. He was as sure as I was that the card would be my ticket to several years in a chain-gang and all that time I would be made to crush rock for “President” Woodrow Wilson. But after we’d cooled our heels at the station for a whole six hours, we were informed that I had done nothing wrong, though a big, strong Negro like me should behave himself all the same. I promised, and my father gave me a clip on the jaw in front of them to show that I meant it.
We went straight down to the post office where we learned that all it said on the card was that a man by the name of “Lord Butter-Crumbe” lived at the “Beau-Soleil” estate. When we heard this I decided that whatever my daddy said, I would learn to read. I was nearly twelve years old and suspected that life had more to offer than Bible stories, snake farming and hard knocks.
Since Nigertown had started out life as a cluster of slave shacks belonging to Beau-Soleil, and since my people knew almost nothing but horror stories about that estate, it was with a slight tremble to our knees that several days later my daddy and I lifted the lion’s paw that served as a door-knocker. It fell with a dull thud.
He was a pederast, my daddy and I spotted that the moment we stepped into the entrance hall, or anteroom, that was decorated with paintings and statues of naked men. But I was big and strong; I would be more than capable of handling a fruit like Lord Butter-Crumbe. That’s what my daddy insinuated after he had shaken hands with the lord on the agreement that he was to become my guardian, starting the very next day.
What did he want with the youngest son of Jimmy Brown?
Well, the man had three interests. He had an anthropological interest in wrestling, an erotic interest in naked men, and a theological interest in “Negroes”, as he called me and my people. He would take care of my upkeep and education until I graduated from college if in return I would deign to wrestle for him, seeing as how I was a naked man and black by nature. It was 1917 and falling into his hands saved my life. That same year my six elder brothers threw away their lives for nothing in the trenches in Europe.
Well, in accordance with the old man’s theories, alongside wrestling tricks I studied theology, or rather I studied Roman and Greek mythology. I wove the knowledge into the wrestling holds and tricks, and so I was able to recite, for example, all the known stories of Helios while I dealt with my opponents. So there was really no question of majoring in anything other than theology when I was sent at last to the University of Berkeley where they were experimenting with educating people like me. Anyway, I acquitted myself pretty well; I wrestled and studied, that’s all I knew. After graduating I began my travels; I’ve done research and collected data in every corner of the world, never staying anywhere long as a rule. This is the longest I’ve lived anyplace since I left Nigertown at eleven years old.
Towards the end of the war I received a letter from the Faculty of Theology here in Iceland. They’d heard a humongous – that is the right word, isn’t it? – amount of praise for me and wanted me to come over and put together a syllabus for a course on comparative religion. It was a combination of pleasure and work for me as I had always been on the point of heading here to study the Norse myths. That’s how come I was on board the Godafoss when we first met.
You were carried off the ship on a stretcher and I was arrested. Naturally I went ashore, as you do, but there was nobody there to meet me, though I suspected that the three men standing by a nearby car were looking out for me, but before I could catch their attention the police came along and took me off to jail. It was all sorted out when I showed them the letter from the Faculty. Someone had forgotten to tell the men I was black. Otherwise life hasn’t been too bad. I live pretty much like a shadow; I’ve never been inside the university, but they visit me and pick my brains when they need to.
But the country cottage at Thingvellir is nice and I’m well paid – in true Icelandic fashion I’ve got more than one job. I guess what I miss most is the wrestling. They aren’t too keen on letting a black man grapple with them here, as I’ve discovered on more than one occasion. But once I wrestled with Helgi Hjörvar. He was a tough customer. We have a mutual acquaintance out west.
Yeah, man, that’s how things are with me.
Leo bends over the clay boy, bathing him with milk. Anthony left some time ago. They plan to meet again. He wants to have this big, strong man on his side when he deals with Hrafn W. Karlsson and his twin brother, the parliamentary attendant.
In the back garden of a tall timber house at number 10a Ingólfsstræti a little goat dozes. She is enfolded in the fairest thing the world has to offer: a spring evening in Reykjavík.’
V
(A Spring Evening in Reykjavík)
11
‘The man who fills the watering can from the tap by the cemetery gate on the corner of Ljósvallagata and Hólatorg has no intention of tending to the graves of the dead. He comes from the countryside and wasn’t acquainted with any of those who lie in the Reykjavík graveyard. Not that it would make any difference to his business here if he did; he would simply avoid the graves of his relatives as he did when he lived in the West Fjords and made use of the churchyard there. It is only at night that he can perform the work that brings him here, as it did there, from spring to autumn. His motives are not honourable, as he would be the first to admit.
But needs must and life is expensive.
We follow him down the slope and along a path to the oldest part of the cemetery. There the grave markers are made of iron that was originally painted black, and more often than not there are knee-high railings around the plot. The moon dips in and out of the clouds and the chill spring wind whistles in the trees above his head. But he’s indifferent to the eerie conditions. He’s completely fearless, endowed as he is with second sight, and he’s on good terms with most of the departed.
He stops by the grave of Ólafur Jónasson, student (b. 1831 – d. 1868), puts down the watering can and sets to work. He unbuttons his coat and we see that the garment is lined all over with pockets. The light catches a garden trowel that juts like a red claw from his breast pocket; his other pockets are stuffed with similar tools, as well as seeds and seed potatoes.
While the man from the West Fjords gardens in the cemetery – he knows the place like the back of his hand, going from one grave to the next, sowing here, turning the soil there, watering – the dead are busy with their own affairs.
For so it is in the Old Graveyard on Hólavallagata, I can’t answer for other places, that by night it transforms into a pleasure garden for the dead. They stroll here and there in their shrouds or sit on benches discussing issues of eternal interest, while others idly toss gravel against the cemetery wall. Materialists, who hadn’t for a moment anticipated a life after death, hold themselves aloof from the rest, attending cell meetings and arguing about whether there’s a life after this one that they’re living against their will and in defiance of science. Only the odd person can be heard complaining about getting neither to heaven nor hell, which has been the state of affairs for God’s creation ever since 1941 when the trumpeter Gabriel sealed both the Pearly Gates and the portcullis of hell by incinerating his instrument in the bonfire of the sun.
It is the recently deceased who gather in the air above the cemetery where there is a good view over the city to east and west, north and south. They’re naturally livelier than the old-timers on the benches below. They romp around, turning somersaults and generally enjoying life after death. Among their number is Ásgeir Helgason, the shower attendant, whose funeral took place barely seven hours ago.
Then he lacked a tongue, four fingers, three toes and both earlobes, to mention the most important bits. Now everything’s back in place and he can start over. From sheer exuberance he swims the length and breadth of the graveyard: oh, if his father could only see him now. He powers through the air with elegant strokes. The fear of water that plagued him in life, and led to his father’s forever fin
ding fault with him, is history. Breaststroke, backstroke, crawl, butterfly, treading water, he can do them all.
On one length Ásgeir spots the West Fjords man bending over a grave and planting potatoes. He dives.
— Boo!
But the graveyard farmer doesn’t turn a hair at the haunting by the late shower attendant. He looks calmly over his shoulder and studies Ásgeir’s spiritual body before retorting suddenly:
— Boo!
Ásgeir starts so badly that he tumbles backwards through a handsome poplar tree. The other grins, turns back to the grave and says mockingly to the loam:
— New here, are you?
Fascinated by the man, Ásgeir floats over to him.
— Is it that obvious?
— Well, we have an understanding that you lot leave me in peace in return for my keeping quiet about what goes on here. People getting together and that sort of thing …
He lowers his voice.
— And not just men and women, if you know what I mean.
Ásgeir is all ears and the West Fjords man continues:
— No, here you see hard-bitten old trawlermen fondling vicars, nurses getting off with ordinary housewives, and I don’t know what else. I expect they think it’s all right to give in to it now they’re dead. But it would be a pity if their families got wind of it, if you know what I mean?
— I’m sorry, I didn’t know – about the understanding.
— That’s all right.
The man stands up, sprinkles water over the grave and moves on to the next. The shower attendant follows him: this man is well informed about the affairs of the dead and it would be better to learn etiquette from him than to make a fool of himself in front of the other ghosts. The afterlife is quite different from how Ásgeir had imagined it; he had almost hoped that he would end up in some kind of hell.’
‘Whoa, there! He wanted to go to hell?’
‘Ásgeir had strange needs…’
‘The shower attendant positions himself behind the man and tries to think of something to ask him. But it’s difficult to know what to say when you’re a greenhorn in a new place where all the laws of nature are obsolete.
— Do you make something from this?
— Well, if you know what you’re doing it works out fine.
— Is it mostly potatoes?
— I’ve got all the root crops: turnips, swedes, carrots, radishes, then cauliflower, scurvy grass, white cabbage, parsley and chives. They’re over there. I’ve been experimenting with tomatoes, basil and other herbs in the mausoleum too: there’s a huge demand for fresh herbs at the restaurants. I can’t complain. And these here are strawberries.
He rakes up the soil around the three-leaved plants on the grave plot of Jóhann Skúlason, joiner (b. 1867 – d. 1943).
— These aren’t for sale, they’re for my kids. I’ve got everything, really, except rhubarb. People don’t want rhubarb on their graves here in the capital. At home in Ísafjördur it wasn’t a problem. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind?
— I’ve nothing against rhubarb as such.
Ásgeir wants to keep the man sweet so he can pick his brains. The gardener’s face lights up.
— Where are you?
— Where am I?
— Where’s your grave?
— It’s down by Sudurgata.
— Down by where?
— Er, Sudurgata …
— You really are a greenhorn, aren’t you? This graveyard has named streets and numbers, French-fashion. Some nob introduced the practice several years ago.
The West Fjords man beckons Ásgeir closer.
— The snobbery here’s something awful. If you’re down there that’s supposed to be a terribly posh area. I won’t be able to get away with planting rhubarb there. There would be an outcry. By the way, you’re Ásgeir, aren’t you?
— Yes, how did you know that?
— I do read the papers.
— Oh, you mean that.
The West Fjords man takes off his gardening glove and scratches his red Jack-of-Spades beard.
— Is it right, what I heard, erm…?
He puts his glove back on.
— Ah, it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t be sticking my nose in …
— Go ahead and ask.
— No, I don’t like to.
— Go on, it’s all right, honestly.
The West Fjords man gives a low whistle, then says quickly:
— Is it true your stamp collection’s gone missing?
* * *
The Grettisgata Ghost was thirteen years old when he was found more dead than alive under a stack of loading pallets in the yard of the Freezing Plant. At first the accident was a mystery. People found it extraordinary that the weakling boy had managed to mutilate himself so badly: his guts were hanging out, his face was a bloody pulp and his trousers were round his ankles. After a detailed inquiry, however, the police came to the conclusion that he had rocked himself to death. For the Grettisgata Ghost was none other than “Kiddi Rock”, Kristján Hermannsson, a rock’n’roll-mad GI bastard from Lokastígur.
Folk memory has it that Kiddi saw every single showing of Rock around the Clock during the months it ran at Stjörnubíó cinema. He talked in quotes, could hardly walk for the twitching of his hips, hey-heying, and clicking of his fingers, and for the first time in his life he appreciated the fact that his ancestry included a story of forbidden love between a Mohican girl and a nineteen-year-old cowherd from Stavanger in Norway.
The posing, the raven-black hair and congenital boxer’s nose turned him into Kiddi Rock in the eyes of the girls, whereas the boys carried on calling him “Krissi Chick” – as they used to before his life was revolutionised by rock’n’roll. But the insult “Chick” backfired on his tormentors because kids from other neighbourhoods assumed it referred to Kiddi’s success with the girls, and when he was seen with the prettiest chick in Nordurmýri and also with Donni Halldór’s sister in the same week, the boys couldn’t take it any more.
Kristján Hermannsson took a long time to die. He may have been a second-generation townie boy and so lacked the toughness of his forebears from Trolls’ Cape (his grandfather had been the biggest child born in Iceland in 1874, his mother the largest born in Reykjavík in 1928, though in her family’s eyes she was a puny little thing), but he had an inbred tenacity like others of that stock.
* * *
Height/weight of newborn infants on Trolls’ Cape, 1900–1908
Name
Height
Weight
Arnaldur
96 cm
14.1 kg
Áshildur
98 cm
14.7 kg
Birna
97 cm
13.4 kg
Björn Ólafur
93 cm
12.8 kg
Brynja
100 cm
15.2 kg
Einarína
100.5 cm
11.5 kg
Eiríkur
92 cm
13.3 kg
Finnur
97 cm
12.5 kg
Grímur
95 cm
13.0 kg
Gudrún
97.5 cm
12.2 kg
Helgi
89 cm
11.3 kg
Hildur María
92 cm
14.0 kg
Jón
100 cm
15.7 kg
Jón
103 cm
12.3 kg
Kristján
106 cm
13.0 kg
Kristrún
100.5 cm
15.2 kg
Leifur
95 cm
13.8 kg
Margrét
96.5 cm
13.4 kg
Ragnar
104.5 cm
14.0 kg
Rannveig
99.5 cm
12.9 kg
; Sigurlinni
101.5 cm
15.5 kg
Thór
96 cm
15.0 kg
Thóra
89 cm
13.5 kg
Average:
97.3 cm
13.6 kg
* * *
Anyway, it was a long battle and Kiddi Rock did not regain consciousness until the very end of his time on earth. The day he died there was a young medical student on shift. She didn’t believe for one moment that his injuries were self-inflicted. He might well have been an incorrigible dance-maniac, and some of his injuries may well have been caused by his losing his footing during a rock’n’roll move on top of the stack of pallets, but she was quite sure he hadn’t sodomised himself.
She noticed that the boy was finally managing to give up the ghost. Sitting down by his bed, she held his hand to help him on his way. In the midst of his gasps he opened his eyes and looked at her. She leaned forwards and asked:
— Is there anything you’d like to tell us, Kristján dear?
And Kiddi Rock answered:
— See you lader alligador …
He kept his word, which was how the Grettisgata Ghost came into being. He keeps to the lower end of the street from which he takes his name and can usually be seen in the underpass leading from Grettisgata down to Laugavegur and the Stjörnubíó cinema. His head jerks, his eyes glow, and he says: “Hey-hey-hey!” Or else takes his place in the queue for the cinema, then vanishes when he gets to the ticket window. In all other respects he’s harmless.