by Sjón
In his brother’s absence Már C. has been running the Stamp Shop and I gather that eyebrows have been raised about the apparent intimacy between him and his sister-in-law.
Pushkin put down his notebook.
— What do you want to do?
He looked at the clock.
— By all accounts Már should be at an AA meeting and Hrafn at a meeting of the Freemasons’ Lodge. He’s given a police escort to and from prison like a head of state.
Leo scratched his head.
— You’re the expert when it comes to this sort of operation.
Anthony folded his arms.
— I suggest we start by snatching Már. We don’t know where he’s hiding the gold so we’ll need time to put pressure on him. I get the feeling too that he’ll be a tougher nut to crack than Hrafn.
Leo and Pushkin agreed.
— Good.
Anthony clenched his fists and flexed his biceps.
— I’ll get myself ready. Please excuse me.
He went out into the hall, fetched his trumpet case from the coat rack and vanished into the lavatory with it.
Pushkin and Leo pored over floor-plans of the Freemasons’ Temple: the dark blue lines delineated room after room, dark corners and maze-like passageways. In the honeyed glow of the lamp over the coffee table the document resembled a map of one of the fabled labyrinths in the Ancient World.
— It’s just a regular Lodge meeting so he should be somewhere around here.
Pushkin planted a finger on a square in the centre of the building. Leo gasped.
— Are we going to break in?
— No, are you crazy? They’ve booby-trapped the entire building with firebombs. Oh, yes, if anyone inappropriate, that’s to say the section of humanity that does not belong to the Freemasons’ order, should blunder into any of these heptagonal, round or beehive-shaped chambers where the sacred rituals take place, the whole caboodle will go up in flames. Boom! The temple will burn to the ground, taking its secrets and the trespasser with it. It’s no coincidence that this is the only large property in town that the fire brigade has never been allowed to inspect, let alone hold plans of, as is usually the case with big buildings. In fact there’s an arrangement that if the Freemasons’ Temple does catch fire from “natural” causes, the fire brigade is merely to ensure that the fire doesn’t spread.
— Are you serious?
— Yes, they can hose down the neighbouring houses and the outside of the building but they mustn’t set foot inside. It’s an unwritten rule. You’ve come up against stamp collectors and I’ll admit that that’s no joke. In a small society like Reykjavík that sort of business would drive anyone round the bend, but what not many people know is that the Freemasons’ Lodge in Iceland is one of the most pernicious in the world. Why should that be? Well, it was founded by the Philatelic Society. When stamp collecting became a popular pastime the hardcore of old-school collectors realised that there was nothing—
— Gentlemen!
They looked up from the blueprints: Anthony stood in the living-room doorway, his head blocking the light from the hall, creating a magnificent silhouette of a man. When he stepped into the light they saw what he had been up to in the lavatory. He had donned a skin-tight black bodysuit, decorated with white brushstrokes depicting a skeleton, his head hidden by a hood with slits for eyes and mouth, which formed the skull. Altogether he was: “El Negroman!”
This is how he had been dressed when he wrestled in Mexico City where he had spent three years studying comparative religion as a postgraduate.
— They enjoy wrestling, and I made my living from it …
He ran a hand over his abdomen.
— I met some fine people there, like Paz. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won the Nobel Prize one day, though he’s not much of a wrestler.’
15
‘The black car crawled along a dark street where vandals had smashed the bulbs of the street lights by throwing stones, and stopped diagonally opposite a peach-coloured wooden house with a black roof and black window frames. It’s our three friends, Leo, Anthony and Pushkin in the car. They have, in other words, embarked on their risky venture and their first stop is the AA meeting house. No one knows what goes on there unless they’ve experienced it for themselves. And once someone has set foot in an AA meeting it’s as if he’s been grabbed by the throat should an outsider ask for information about the workings of the organisation. (What follows is therefore based on conjecture and guesswork alone since I myself have never attended a meeting of this organisation. But if you, dear reader, continue with this tale, in spite of my confession that what follows is nothing but make-believe, there’s one thing I can promise you in recompense: it’s an incredibly exciting story that will hold you gripped to the very end.)
Lights blazed from every room in the house but only in the downstairs rooms could movements be seen. The windows had steamed up and all that was visible of the people attending the meeting was their heads, all facing in the same direction, towards a wall where the organisation’s banner hung next to the national flag. There, a dejected-looking figure could be glimpsed.
The three friends made themselves comfortable in the car. Pushkin smoked a cigarette, Anthony sat in the back seat, going over wrestling moves in his mind and muttering their names:
— Cross-buttock aloft, half-nelson, body-scissors …
The engine purred quietly below the sound of the gospel emanating from the radio. Leo was the only one who was obviously tense. Sweat beaded his upper lip and he was gnawing at the nail of the index finger on his right hand. He tried to focus on the catarrhal tones of the man who was expounding on the fourteenth chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians:
— Is it so that speaking in tongues is pleasing to God? Yes, did the apostles not speak in tongues? Does not Paul say that he is superior to others in the art of allowing the Holy Spirit to flow unhindered through his body in the language that he verily speaks? The only thing he warns his brothers and sisters in Corinth against is that too many should speak in tongues simultaneously, or that those who speak should not understand themselves. Speaking in tongues is a gift of grace granted to those who are pure in spirit, pure in body …
— Shabba-dee-da-da-da-dee-da-a, baba-ba-bee-bibbibbidddeedooa, dooah …
Anthony raised himself up in the back and drummed on the seat in front of him:
— Babba-dabba-deea, baba-deea …
— Let’s see what’s happening …
Pushkin switched off the headlights, opened the glove compartment and turned on the radio receiver concealed inside, which was evidently custom-made for cars of this type. He turned a large dial until a man’s voice could be distinguished through the hissing and crackling:
— I started drinking with my father. I was only twelve. It changed my life bzzzzzzzz …
Pushkin adjusted the tuning.
— Bzzzzzzzzzz my father stopped beating me and we both took to thrashing my mother. She was Swedish. I was brought up on a diet of jam, redcurrant jam; she called it fruit soup …
The speaker broke down, but after a lengthy silence he continued through his sobs:
— That’s no food for an Icelandic boy.
His audience responded with a combination of snorts and throat-rattling. Pushkin opened a compartment under the handbrake and took out a small medical bag. He opened it, revealing a collection of ampoules, pill bottles, tubes, syringes and the like.
— This is not going to be much fun. Amphetamines, anyone?
My father raised his eyebrows just as the next man cleared his throat.
— My name is Már C. Karlsson and I’m an alcoholic. I had my first drink in the Scouts. We were both in the Scouts, my brother Hrafn and I, in the Niebelungen Troop. This was on a hike up Mount Mosfell. One of the older boys had brought along a flask of brandy. Once we had planted the troop banner, someone pulled out the cork. I can still hear the pop in my mind. In my memory the mountains seem to echo
with it. Whenever I drive past it’s as if someone’s standing on the mountain, popping their finger in their cheek: Plop!!! It still echoes there.
And then: Dig-k, dig-k, dig-k.
Or: Glug, glug, glug.
Or more like: Ghunk-ghunk …
That first sip. There was something magical about tasting the liquid on one’s tongue, flooding one’s mouth, cascading over one’s tonsils. I remember passing the flask to Hrafn but he looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles. I thought he was stupid not to want to follow me Lethe-wards, for with the very first sip I heard it calling: “Friend, friend! I’ll look after you, my embrace is great, my waters are wide, wide as the abyss, I am as empty as the abyss of thirst.” After that first sip my throat was never dry again.
Oh, how I envied my brother Hrafn for refusing that bitter chalice! Today I realise that I was driven by an inferiority complex. I was never as good-looking as Hrafn, never as clever or respected, but of course I shouldn’t have let that get me down; I mean, he could never match up to me at hammer-throwing.
Well, things didn’t get any better at the sports college in Nuremberg, no, that’s when they really got out of hand. I could still more or less run, jump, throw and shot-put but that didn’t last long. I have so much to thank my brother Hrafn for; he stood in for me more often than not, setting various records in my name. This is a secret but I know you’ll keep it, just like everything else that comes out at these meetings.
Yes, although he’s in prison today, for something he didn’t do, he’s still a pillar of strength for me in my battle against Bacchus, or “the Führer” as we brothers like to call him.
The audience tittered.
Pushkin was humming something that sounded like a hymn but couldn’t be: the man was a godless Communist, as Leo had gathered from his reaction to the miracle in the pantry. Yet when the Russian finished his humming and wiped a tear from his eye, my father was unsure. And he was not alone. Anthony Theophrastus Athanius Brown laid a great black paw on the singer’s shoulder.
— Say, is that Orthodox?
At this Pushkin flared up in his seat: the man who had sung himself to tears only a few seconds before had reverted to being a ruthless Soviet agent.
— No, that was the “Cosmonaut’s Lullaby”. Popovich and Nikolayev sang it to each other when they met on their space missions right here above Iceland. But what do you care? You’re only interested in the unbelievable up there in heaven, in gods and angels and all that crap, but there’s more out there that’s beautiful than the invisible, let me tell you. And that’s the human creature itself – the whole, undivided human body with its nerve-controlled consciousness – which is beautiful in all its labours from cradle to grave. But it requires a poetic frame of mind to place man in circumstances in which he is able to shine like a newly manufactured tractor in the morning sun. And that’s where the Soviet Union wins out. You Americans tell stories of paperboys, shoe-shine boys, errand-boys and bellboys who become millionaires, but they tell us absolutely nothing new about the human condition. For what’s new about people being driven by greed? No, stories like that are old hat. They’re journalism. It takes a Communist approach, an epic consciousness, to create adventures like the one that took place over our heads the other day.
Do you think anyone at the arch-capitalist American space agency would ever come up with a proletarian lullaby in space? No, old Nazis like Wernher von Braun and others of his ilk rule the roost there, and I can’t imagine them seeing the beauty in a duet between a shepherd boy and a lumberjack. They don’t have the words to describe how the two of them float over the continents of the world as light as, light as …
Pushkin was now completely under the influence of the amphetamines.
— As …
He frowned at his distorted reflection in the windscreen, and it provided the answer.
— As lambs, yes!
The next speaker was a man with a deep, booming voice and a polished narrative that indicated he had rehearsed his story a thousand times before.
— My name’s Arinbjörn Egilsson and I’m an alcoholic. It happened like this: one morning thirteen years ago, that’s five years after we became a free nation among the nations of this world, I happened to walk past a playground for small children on Freyjugata, on my way to work, and saw that something special was afoot. I slowed down to see what was happening, since the progress of youth is one of my main preoccupations, whether it’s onward or upward. For tomorrow belongs to them; we are nothing but the godfathers of the Icelandic Republic, at most half-brothers of the true Icelanders who were born after 17 June 1944. We were born under the Danish Crown that fitted us badly at best. But are they not crowned by the Northern Lights that dance airily and independently over this northerly island nation? The wonders of heaven are not our coronets, no: our part is merely to admire, polish and preserve them.
As I was saying, the children were making an unusual amount of noise. Their clear voices echoed in the morning air, they tussled energetically in the October breeze, there was an atmosphere of anticipation. “What’s going on here, young man?” I asked a fair-headed urchin who in the heat of the game had been driven howling to the concrete wall that fences off the playground – a highly necessary precaution since the streets are full of fast-moving motor cars which present a major hazard for the youngsters, let us not forget. “Thliding,” anthwered the little boy.
Here one of the audience interrupted Arinbjörn:
— Excuse me, didn’t you mean to say “answered”?
— Didn’t I mean to say what?
A third voice:
— Yes, you said “anthwered”’.
Arinbjörn was wrong-footed. He caught his breath, muttering:
— What did you say? Anthwered?
— First you said “thliding”, then “anthwered” …
— Oh dear me, well, thank you for correcting me. I really wouldn’t want to inflict that sort of thing on you. Yes, thank you very much, I only meant to sort of, sort of spice up the story by saying “thliding”, like the little lad did – after all he was only a child – instead of “sliding”, but I should have refrained, oh dear me, yes, I shouldn’t have done it; speech impediments are so infectious. Er, perhaps it would be best if I stopped at this juncture?
Silence.
— I leave it up to your judgement.
Silence.
— Well, then …
Arinbjörn cleared his throat and hissed his s’s for the remainder of his speech.
— “Ssliding,” ansswered the little lad, pointing across the playground to what at first appeared to me to be a monstrosity of shining metal – not a heap, no, please don’t misunderstand me, it had a very definite shape which wasn’t revealed until five handsome, muscle-bound young giants from the city engineer’s office set it up.
— And what have we here, my little friend?
I asked the urchin but he had stopped crying and run off to the shiny steel miracle, since the piping of the children was now so insistent that it could best be described by the word “buzzing”, yes, goodness me if they weren’t buzzing, or “burbling” perhaps, or was it more like “humming”?
Well, I beckoned one of the childminders to come over and speak to me. She obliged. “It’s a slide,” she answered when I interrogated her about the construction in the middle of the playground, which stood gleaming in the winter sun that peeped over the rooftops as if to bid good morning to the first generation of the republic. “A slide,” I said. And there was I thinking “slide” was a verb.
— And what do you want with something like that here at the playground?
I asked.
— It’s for the children, she replied.
Me: Which children might those be?
Her: Why, the ones you can see here.
And what did I see? Well, I saw something that led me down the thorny path of alcoholism. Our little children had formed a seemingly endless queue behind the construction, which
I later referred to as a “slippery slope” in my articles in the People’s Will.
— Hah!
Snorted Comrade Pushkin:
— Is the old sod trying to imply that he was driven to drink by that? He’s always had a weak head for booze and drunk too much of it; he headbutted Stalin’s favourite cousin on a friendly visit to Leningrad in 1948.
Amphetamines, anyone?’
16
‘After Arinbjörn Egilsson had spoken for close to an hour on the slide affair and its impact on his drinking, people began to trickle out of the meeting. Pushkin switched off the radio and the twin-hunters took up position to ambush their first victim. It was not long before Már C. emerged on the doorstep. A woman was standing there in a cleaner’s overall with a beehive hair-do and her left eye blackened, sucking on a cigarette. Már zipped up his jacket, knotted the double-checked KR football-club scarf round his neck and said goodnight.
They shadowed him down the road and managed to corner him by the back entrance to the Stamp Shop where he had naturally intended to prepare for the next day’s wheeling and dealing by weighing up useless junk by the pound for unsuspecting youngsters and ignorant foreigners. It was not to be. Pushkin pounced on him like a polecat, stabbing him in the shoulder with a syringe full of a tranquillising drug.
Now Anthony Brown was standing by the boot of the Volga, his chest heaving with effort, while the prisoner was inside and remarkably subdued considering what had gone before: Már C. Karlsson lay curled up like a wolf cub, his breath whistling through a broken nose. A Russian man’s sock bulged out his cheeks, and his hands and feet were bound with shoelaces.