CoDex 1962

by Sjón

  — Did you ring me?

  — Yes.

  — How do you know I was in Krýsuvík?

  — You told me.

  — What, that was just a joke.

  — I need to see you.

  — Oof, I’m a bit tied up right now …

  — When would be convenient?

  — Ooh, yes, yes, nearly finished, nearly finished …

  — I’ll be finished by five.

  — Pushkin wasn’t talking to Leo, Pushkin is with an informer.

  — Were you able to check for me?

  — Hee, hee, yes, yes …

  — I’ll be home by about half past five.

  — Bye, comrade, ha, ha …

  — Bye …

  — Ha, ha …

  Leo hung up: Pushkin was clearly in bed with some female. It was extraordinary what a hit he was with the ladies in spite of his tail. Or was it because of his tail?

  Leo sat on a stool in the garden, milking the goat. He pulled the teats with a steady motion, causing the hot milk to squirt into the bucket with a rhythmic hissing. There was no other sound in the world. Pausing in his work he zipped up his jacket. The wind was picking up and the odd raindrop traced its outline on the paving stones that ran along the side of the house. Pull, hiss, pull …

  — Mr Loewe?

  He looked up and saw a short but lithe figure in a white tuxedo, with a black bowtie and sunglasses as dark as his sleekly combed hair, peering round the corner. It was Pushkin.

  — You’re very smart!

  — Oh, there was cocktail party at the embassy.

  Pushkin lit himself a Chesterfield cigarette and blew out the smoke with a thoughtful expression.

  — Herring, herring, herring …

  Leo saw a shadow appear at a window on the second floor:

  — Listen, why don’t you go inside, this’ll take a while. Anthony’s here, and there’s hot coffee in the pot.

  — Spasiba.

  Pushkin disappeared round the corner.

  The goat bleated angrily; Leo had inadvertently pinched her teat when the Russian threw him that chummy “spasiba”.

  He had certainly smartened up his appearance and manner since Leo saw him last, but then he’d had a good model, none other than Alexander Alexeyev, who had learned how to dress when he was posted to Paris after the Second World War and managed more often than not to be a step ahead of the existentialist Sartre when it came to guessing the length of that season’s coats. Also, that autumn all the weeklies were bursting with sensational news about the film Dr No which told of the adventures of 007 – the true heir to John Dee, magician and spy to Her Majesty Elizabeth I, and a real man of style.

  This brightened the existence of men like Pushkin. There was little glamour attached to being a Soviet spy in Iceland: nothing ever damn well happened there. The Left had little to say as they were never given access to information that mattered. They were mainly preoccupied with reporting one another for various accounting swindles to do with the importation of propelling pencils, razorblades, tyre irons, and other small items they were licensed to buy in from Bulgaria.

  Pushkin’s principal source of information at the US military base down on the Reykjanes Peninsula was a mentally handicapped man who did various odd jobs for the steward in the enlisted men’s mess hall. There he picked up little crumbs that to Pushkin seemed better than nothing, such as flyers about entertainments at the base: dances, bingo, barbecues and so on. In return Pushkin rewarded him with various kinds of badges and flags, since the idiot didn’t drink.

  By this means Pushkin had managed to scrape together enough information about the movements of the military force at Keflavík Air Base for his superiors in Moscow to promote him.

  * * *

  OPERATION BELLA

  Women in the West do not enjoy the same degree of respect as they do in the lands that are governed by a Communist vision of the two biological genders of Homo sapiens. As you are no doubt aware from your sojourn in countries oppressed by global capitalism, Western women are utilised principally for bearing children and spoiling men. You would never see a Dutch woman using a welding torch at a shipbuilding yard, or a French girl laying paving stones, nor would Spanish señoritas be caught dead carrying coal, oh no. And the respect these women enjoy is correspondingly small or non-existent. Yes, even if a woman in Brussels is beaten to a pulp by her husband she can’t get rid of him. Things do not work as well there as in the egalitarian Soviet Union where we can get married and divorced in five minutes flat if we so desire. Nor are these women able to exercise the human right of choosing their own bed-mate according to their whim. No, they are subordinate to their capitalist husbands. In your work you will exploit this knowledge, together with your understanding of Communist teachings and the natural attractions that an upbringing in the spirit of Communist ideals has conferred on you; this will be your contribution to the Permanent Revolution.

  * * *

  Pushkin moved out of the embassy kitchen on Gardastræti and into a two-room bachelor pad in the Hlídar district. His new mission was to charm lonely Reykjavík ladies with the same skill that he had formerly brought to cooking “badger filet on a bed of red cabbage” for the ambassador.

  That is how he became the Romeo of the switchboard girls from the various businesses and institutions. He was an expert in weighing them up and reeling them in. Many of them had recently arrived in town, they were without exception badly paid and lived in basement flats or lodged with strangers; that is to say, they were easy prey for a handsome Russian who was also so charmingly clumsy and had such a funny way of speaking. There was no shortage of these women.

  How did he get them to work for him?

  Well, irrespective of their political sympathies, they turned coat in support of world peace when he laid on the table such evidence as photos of nuclear bunkers belonging to Icelandic authority figures, proof that they were primarily concerned with saving their own skins; the general public could roast and burn in the nuclear bonfire for all they cared. The pictures showed innocently unsuspecting errand boys from the Reykjavík Area Cooperative passing whole pallets of dried fish, water, smoked lamb, peas, collections of the Icelandic Sagas, black pudding, liver sausage, lamb suet, the yearbooks of the Iceland Touring Club bound in leather and gilt, singed sheep’s heads and legs, sour whey, curds, mare’s cheese, angelica, stockfish, bilberries and copies of Icelandic Humour down through a hatch in the lawn behind the government minister’s handsome residence. Yes, his back view was instantly recognisable as he stood there in his shirtsleeves, directing a boy towards a stack of barrels marked “seal fins”– as one could see with the aid of Pushkin’s magnifying glass.

  To prevent the women from realising they were being brainwashed, he used to slip them various small presents. (In addition to treating them to the odd night at Hótel Valhalla.) He slept with them – it wasn’t as if they had trouble attracting men, no, but he was highly trained in the art of lovemaking. His training had involved a spell in the KGB “Swallows’ Nest” where he was manipulated into various positions that were to prove a novelty in the land of ice and fire.

  That was the clincher.’

  14

  ‘The representatives of the two superpowers sat in the kitchen at Ingólfsstræti, sizing one another up. It was the first time they had met. They had introduced themselves. Midway between them on the ice-blue kitchen table was a plate of pancakes, and both had mugs of coffee in their hands. Neither the Soviet spy with the tail nor the American theologian with the bull neck touched the pancakes; neither had ever set eyes on such a species of man before.

  Pushkin broke the ice.

  — I have rear-projection …

  Anthony agreed whole-heartedly.

  — Me too.

  And put three sugar cubes in his coffee.

  — Really?

  — Yeah, it’s totally verboten.

  — Oh, no one has told Pushkin this …

  —
I’m sorry, man, I don’t know how it is in the Soviet Union but back home in Louisiana …

  Anthony waved his hand with a light “ooh-la-la”.

  — Not to mention if you’re a “Negro” born and bred, then it sure ain’t no “please Mama” …

  Pushkin adjusted the knot of his tie, glancing out of the window as if seeking an escape route should the kitchen suddenly fill with one-hundred per cent Icelandic police officers on the lookout for men with illegal tails, brushes, sterns or scuts. Drizzle spattered the window panes; it grew dark.

  — What do they do to you?

  — Well, what do they do to any criminal?

  — Criminal?

  — Yes, can you call it anything other than a crime? The punishment could be anything from hard labour to the electric chair …

  Pushkin broke out in a sweat.

  — But no one can help it …

  — That’s debatable …

  Answered the theologian.

  Pushkin shuddered and raised his mug to his lips; everything they said about these capitalists was true. At that moment Leo came indoors with the milk pail. Anthony laid his black fists on the table, spread out his fingers and examined his nails. Pushkin blew on his coffee and stared at the far rim of his cup. Leo fetched a funnel from the kitchen cupboard and began to decant the milk into bottles. No one said a word until Anthony leaned back in his chair, making it creak.

  — Sorry, man, we were just discussing the fact, me and Comrade, er …

  — Comrade Pushkin.

  Supplied Pushkin.

  — Yes, me and Pushkin have real objections …

  Pushkin sighed and nodded in agreement.

  — Aie …

  Leo paled: he had been so happy as he milked Ambrosia for what he had believed was the last time before his son was born. Afterwards he had brushed her and promised that when her role as the boy’s wet-nurse was over he would send her to a good home in the country.

  Anthony continued:

  — It sounded like a good idea yesterday, just grab the guys and you hold them down while I pull out their teeth. Done and dusted, man.

  — What?

  Exclaimed Pushkin.

  — Yeah, and we don’t even know whether the other guy has one in his tooth or not …

  — Whose teeth are we going to pull out?

  Asked Pushkin.

  Leo was thoughtful: Anthony Theophrastus Athanius Brown was right. Of course it was madness. They could be charged with assault, kidnap, or whatever you call extracting people’s teeth against their will. He couldn’t expect these men to put their reputations on the line for him; after all, he hardly even knew them well enough to call them his friends. If the plan – what bloody plan? – went wrong they would all end up in jail. Then Anthony and Pushkin would be deported while he himself spent several months kicking his heels inside and in the meantime his son would turn to dust; the boy would come to nothing.

  Leo distantly heard Pushkin saying:

  — No, no, that’s not right …

  The adventure was turning into a nightmare before it had even begun: Anthony Brown had managed to hide among the Icelanders for seventeen years, so why should he sacrifice himself for the private miracle in Leo’s hatbox? The same thing had happened to him as happened to most foreigners who wound up on this godforsaken rock. They couldn’t bring themselves to leave, whether under duress or of their own free will.

  In other words, Anthony was enjoying his stay.

  Although he had suffered a major bout of homesickness after Kennedy Junior came to power, he had undergone an abrupt recovery exactly ten days ago when Miss Monroe checked out of the American dream (it was none other than the myth of the dark prince and the goddess of light that he had been intending to research when he returned to his homeland). Mythological logic indicated that now the young lady was out of the picture, it wouldn’t be long before Kennedy himself fell. So Anthony had no reason to go home; after all, man, his family were long since buried under the green sod, six feet under, not an inch less.

  The reason why more pressure could not be brought to bear on Pushkin, on the other hand, was that the intelligence department of the Soviet Embassy couldn’t afford any more scandals. As if there hadn’t been more than enough in recent months, what with all kinds of scoops by the Vísir newspaper – and that damned stupid blunder at Lake Kleifarvatn. And, to top it all, the two men would never know why on earth they had become embroiled in this lunacy.

  If Pushkin and Anthony had to explain why they had got involved in nocturnal burgling raids on the mouths of Icelandic citizens, the only explanation they would have for their conduct was that they had been helping a man mine for gold there. It wouldn’t look good, no, it would look terrible. And while Leo kicked his heels in jail, the boy would turn to nameless dust; little Jόsef would turn to dust; he would disintegrate into dust.

  In the autumn of 1989 an unnamed biology student rents a basement flat in a house on Ingólfsstræti. While his mother is cleaning the flat before he moves in, she finds an old hatbox in the pantry that her son, the biology student, intends to use as a study. She puts the box out on the pavement along with all the other junk the flat contained; it’s extraordinary how much rubbish some people accumulate. A gang of kids appears and once they have gone, so has the hatbox. The children open the box in a backyard by some dustbins. It contains nothing but grey dust. They pour it out. The gust of wind that wanders round the corner at coffee-time whips it out of the yard and carries it into the street where it blows away, away into the blue yonder.

  No, my father couldn’t ask his comrades to do this. He turned white, groped for the edge of the table and collapsed on the floor.

  When Leo came to his senses he was lying on the living-room sofa with a cold compress on his forehead. Pushkin sat in a chair reading a Hebrew dictionary. Anthony was standing by the radio, bending his head to the speaker from which a drawling voice was praising Dizzy Gillespie and co’s version of the song “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. Leo sat up; it was dark outside. How long had he been lying there?

  — Time?

  The dictionary flew out of Pushkin’s hands and landed on the window sill. Anthony looked up from the wireless.

  — It’s late, man, pretty late …

  Leo lay back with a pained sigh. Pushkin poured water into the glass on the coffee table at Leo’s side and waited impatiently for him to take a drink. When Leo had done so, he began:

  — I have rear-projection, not real objection; I will do whatever I can to help you get what you want. Comrade Brown no longer has real objection. He is just tired; he’s been wrestling with men from YMCA all day.

  Anthony raised an apologetic hand.

  — Every Sunday.

  Pushkin straightened his bowtie and brushed a finger over his eyebrow. He opened a gold-plated cigarette case with a deft movement of the hand, took out a cigarette and tapped the filter on the lid.

  — Mr Loewe, our friend of the oppressed black race is right; it would be better if you told us straight out why you’re in such a hurry to get hold of these men’s molars.

  — You see, we’re not Icelandic citizens like you, man; the authorities will take a different view of things if we get on the wrong side of them.

  Anthony sucked his teeth.

  — So we need a real good reason …

  Leo bowed his head and turned on his heel. They followed him into the kitchen where he opened the pantry door and motioned to them to step inside. They obeyed. He went in after them and shut the door. A red light-bulb sprang into life. The three men became massive shadows in the resulting dim illumination.

  My father squeezed his way to the back of the pantry and took the hatbox down from the shelf. Anthony and Pushkin leaned forwards as one when he placed it on the table, lifted the lid and unwrapped the pink silk from what it contained.

  The soft red glow fell on the well-formed image of a child that lay there as if in a womb. It was a little boy, a sleeping b
oy, who seemed to come to life in the irregular interplay of the light and the shadows thrown by the onlookers. (His expression shifted and it looked for all the world as if he were smiling.) Then my clay breast slowly rose – and fell even more slowly. It was I who breathed.

  Two gasps.

  One of the men saw in me a magnificent fulfilment of the relationship between man and God; the other the achievement of a man who has broken free of all ties with the divine.

  Pushkin now recounted for Anthony and Leo all that was known about the twin brothers Hrafn W. and Már C. Karlsson. Most of his information derived from the archives of the Soviet Embassy, the rest he had discovered by drinking whisky with his Icelandic informers. They wouldn’t touch vodka so he traded with his opposite number at the British Embassy, whose informers turned up their noses at everything but vodka.

  — This is why Pushkin is sometimes a little tiddly – Ishelanders drink so much whisky; Pushkin drank only vodka at home in Russia. But here Pushkin must not say no – no, it’s part of the job.

  Anyway, Pushkin had received the information about the Karlsson brothers from “MILO” who worked on the switchboard at Iceland Prime Contractors, sat on the committee of the Conservative Women’s Association “Incentive”, and had been in the same class as the twins at the West End School.

  — She’s good woman, could be Russian …

  Pushkin proceeded to read aloud from a small notebook:

  — Hrafn and Már are the sons of Karl Hadarson, a mechanic, and his wife. Karl died several years ago and his wife is a patient at the Kleppur Mental Hospital. The brothers graduated from the Reykjavík College and were nationally renowned champion sportsmen in their youth. During the winter of 1943 to ’44 they attended a course in youth association studies in Germany and were on their way home when your paths crossed aboard the Godafoss. They were not part of the regular crew but worked their passage as deckhands. For some reason their names cannot be found anywhere in the Steam Ship Company crew lists, of which we have copies at the embassy.

  At the end of the war they retired from sport and Hrafn W. opened the Reykjavík Stamp Shop with the profits from the commemorative stamps the brothers had postmarked at sea on 17 June 1944. (The only set known to exist.) Már C., on the other hand, took to drink. After being caught with his trousers down at the City Hotel Christmas Tree Celebration he managed to clean up his act. He worked as a police officer before becoming a parliamentary attendant. Hrafn W. is married to the daughter of a car salesman here in town and they have three children. Már C. has been associated with various disreputable women but currently lives alone. Hrafn has done well out of the stamp business and built himself a house in an upmarket neighbourhood whereas Már rents a two-room apartment in the Melar district. And, as we know, Hrafn W. is currently serving a prison sentence for the murder of Ásgeir Helgason.