It was at the end of my first week in uniform. We’d volunteered for the big offensive out east, me, my father, and Dario, shortly after the fall of Vukovar. Our assignment was to cross the river Vuka.
But they didn’t want a whole family out in the front lines so they told me to stay behind. “Keep post and shoot every sucker you see!” I spent the cold night with my virgin rifle and chattering teeth, looking after three tents and a jeep. In the distance I could hear rifles arguing like angry insects. An occasional flame would light the leafless woods. My brother and father were out there doing their national duty in the cold forest mud. I was trying hard to distinguish the noise of our rifles from the Serbian ones, hoping the former would silence the latter. But of course we were all using the same fucking weapons. Somewhere not so far away some fat fucker was sleeping his ass off on a comfy mattress made from the profits of war.
Finally it started to snow. The flakes were thick and heavy, as if they were full of dirt already. I grabbed one with the tip of my tongue and it tasted like mud.
Close to daybreak, I heard a voice followed by some rustling of bushes. I reacted instantly, firing my first “manly” shot. I was surprised by my swift and sure reaction. Met with silence, it seemed to be a success. Still, I remained on the trigger for half an hour, for safety’s sake, watching the snowflakes fall on the rifle and my hand, building up a small snowdrift on the barrel, but melting away on my skin. Then I thought I heard that voice again, some low murmuring out in the bushes. I fired another shot. They did not fire back. But the faint murmuring didn’t stop. I remained still for another half an hour, firing a couple of more times, but the voice kept creeping through. So I crawled like an undercover snake to the bushes. Finally, I could make out a body lying buried in the naked branches, talking to himself. He seemed to be wearing our uniform. I cried out a warning before rushing through the shrubs, rifle first.
I found my father lying there with a leaking heart. The lower part of his body was covered in snow, as if his legs were dead already. His face was pale, and his eyes were as big as eggs that instantly broke upon seeing me. He managed to whisper the first half of my name, and then he was gone.
I shot my father and let him lie like a wounded deer out in the bushes for an hour, blabbing his life away. When I finally listened to him, he had only half a word left. “Tod…” The thing I became. It was like a fucking curse.
I accidentally blew off the second half of my name. And the better half of my life.
I stood there for some minutes, staring at the face so close to my own. Snow kept on falling, and I watched as the flakes slowly stopped turning into water on my father’s brow and cheeks and started building up small drifts around his screaming eyes. I was surprised how quickly his fatherly warmth turned cold. I couldn’t touch him. I just walked away from his body, leaving his big eyes open for interpretation.
I didn’t cry.
When they brought me the news of my father, they told me my brother Dario had also died a heroic death. As always, he was on the offensive when he met his destiny. He ran like a Jamaican sprinter towards the Serbian spear speeding towards his heart. It was pure Dario.
They said my father witnessed his death and that he instantly went nuts. He threw himself over his body and then suddenly started crying out my name, “Tomo! Tomo!” before running back to our post without his shotgun.
“Oh?” I said to my fellow soldiers, nodding a few times, as if they were telling me the results of some football games. “But, what about the battle?”
“We took the river bank. We hold the river bank now.”
I have seen that fucking river bank. It fucking sucks.
CHAPTER 23
MADE IN ICELAND
06.06.2006
Hanna’s big hands are incredibly white. Much paler than her arms. It’s almost as if she’s wearing white gloves. Her long and strong fingers move softly about in a very swift but silent way. There is hardly any noise to be heard as she gathers my empty plate and glass. My mom is the absolute opposite. When she was doing the dishes, it always felt like there was a punk band rehearsing out in the kitchen. Maybe Dad didn’t give her enough sex. If that’s the reason, Torture must be biblical in bed.
“Are you feeling better?” she asks me in her homely voice that is red wine to my ears, but rotten to my nose.
“Yes.”
“That is good.”
For some mystical reason she has 100 percent faith in me. I’ll be “góður,” she says half the time. It both means “good” and “to get well.”
Once again I read the story of Saul, the self-made holyman from Tarsus, Turkey. It’s the same story as Goodmoondoor spontaneously told his audience my first night in Iceland, and now it has become the foundation of my recovery, Torture says. I get the point. Like me, this guy also changed his name. And like me he has a bloody past. Yet he became St. Paul, “the father of the church.” I’m sure to become St. Tom, father of something. Hopefully not a church, though.
Deep into my second week in Torture’s basement, Hanna brings me a letter after dinner. She lays it gently on my chest, with a nodding smile that wrinkles her skin around the eyes, and says “read it” before she silently gathers empty dinnerware from my bedside table and goes back upstairs, her great horse tail swaying behind her back, above her round and solid bottom.
I open the letter. It’s handwritten. No e-mails in the house of Abraham. Nice hand. Blue ink. “Dear Thordur.” It’s Father Friendly writing, from his house in Virginia, last October.
“Let me start by thanking you so much for your kind words and the invitation to visit Iceland. The thought of coming all the way up to your exotic island, which I have heard so many fascinating things about, I find very exciting, to say the least.
My good friend Rev. Carl Simonsen has informed me about your excellent work on behalf of the Lord, and I am aware of your friend Engilbertsson’s TV station. I would only be happy to do some shows up there.
It is therefore with great regret that I inform you, that due to my personal situation, I cannot possibly accept your good offer. Last month, my wife Judy had a terrible car accident and will be hospitalized for the next three months at least. As you must understand, this sad situation prevents me from all traveling for the time being. I have postponed everything that includes flying until early spring next year.
Please write me again in 2006.”
Professional but Friendly. The busy brother.
Poor guy. For staying at his wife’s deathbed he was rewarded with his own death. How cruel of me.
The letter is accompanied by an autographed color photo showing the Friendly family standing in front of a big white house that could either be their church, their home, or both. Here is my bald victim with the white collar around his neck and his beaming blonde wife Judy by his side, the woman I was married to for two whole seconds in Goodmoondoor’s car earlier this spring. She’s a southern semi-beauty that could pass for Laura Dern’s well-preserved mother. A Day 7 type. The couple proudly stands behind two kids, about ten and eight years old. One is black, one white. The latter sits in a wheelchair. Like only American women are capable of doing, Mrs. Friendly is smiling so hard she cannot possibly see the camera. She’s blinded by bliss. Actually, they’re all smiling with the same enthusiasm as if they were modeling for the brochure of the best hotel in heaven. The disabled kid has a bit of a disabled smile, though. A touch of disappointment with life in general.
I sum up my impression of Rev. David Friendly from letter and looks. He doesn’t strike me as the usual southern televangelist, the con man of Christ. Somehow he seems genuine. I guess he didn’t deserve to die at the age of forty. Despite all his homophobia. The soul-saver outweighs the widow-maker on any scale. Plus he has a crippled child, and another one adopted…And now the kids are orphans, fatherless, and motherless little creatures. I should probably offer to adopt them.
The day after, Hanna rubs it all in. Did I read the letter and see the ph
oto? Yes, I did.
“He was a good man,” she says with wrinkled eyes and without the slightest hint of accusation in her voice.
“And he lost his wife?”
“No,” she says. “She had an accident and is para…What do you call it?”
“Paralyzed?”
“Yes. She is in a wheelchair.”
“But Goodmoondoor told me she died.”
“No, no. She almost died but she is getting better, I think.”
“And they have two kids?”
“Yes. They have two adopted kids. The younger one is from Gambia. And the other one is in a wheelchair, also.”
No shit. The crippled one is adopted as well. How fucking holy can you be? And now there are eight wheels in the family…
“You maybe want to write to them?” Mrs. Torture continues.
No.
“Yes, maybe.”
“Of course you don’t tell them who you are. You just say that you knew Father Friendly as a preacher and that you heard about his death, and that you are sorry.”
She makes a pause. We look at each other. Me and Mother Earth.
“If you are,” she adds.
“Yes, of course I’m sorry.”
“That’s good. You’re getting better.”
And here comes the good part. She strokes my cheek with her big white hand. With her strong, soft fingers. If this was a movie, I would now grab her with my Tom Cruise arms and we would kiss like two people eating their first grapefruit after a week in the desert, and then I would tear off her clothes and in one cut we’d be making biblical love on my Old Testament bed. The movie would be titled Trinitatis, containing a love triangle between sinner, priest, and his wife.
“I just think it could be good for you to write them a letter.”
“OK. I’ll think about it.”
Actually, I should write the other sixty-six widows as well. I should write them all a standard sorry letter.
Dear Mrs. ___________,
It is with great regret and a degree of sadness that I write to inform you that it was me who killed your husband. Of course, I know that nothing can replace the love of your life, and no matter how deep my regret will be, it can never bring him back to life.
All the same I want you to try to understand my situation. At the time of your husband’s extermination I was a professional hitman for a certain national organization. Killing was my living. Between the years 2000 and 2006, I killed 67 men. Your husband was only one of many.
Mr. ________________ was hit #__.
I can assure you that his death was among the most memorable on my list. Your husband was a good man. He died with great dignity and did absolutely not complain about his fate.
It is, however, with great pleasure that I inform you that I have now decided to thread a new path in the forest of life. As from May 2006, I am leaving the homicide industry. Shooting people is certainly one of the most difficult jobs you can find. The physical pressure and the psychological strain is very high. And now I have simply had enough.
Therefore I can assure you, in case you have found yourself a new partner (which I want to congratulate you on, if this is the case), that I will not kill your husband again.
Yours truly —Tomislav Bokšić.
This is the last time I will use my father’s name. It’s dead now. My attempt at suicide wasn’t a complete flop.
The new me comes with a new name. After killing two priests, I’m baptized by two more.
“Good morning, Mister Ólafsson!” Goodmoondoor says as he suddenly appears at the end of my second week in hiding, smiling his teeth out. He hands me a brand-new Icelandic passport sporting my face and my own Icelandic social security number, called kennitala. I’m resurrected under the name of “Tómas Leifur Ólafsson.” The two preachers have a good laugh when they watch me read it. They just can’t control themselves. I don’t know exactly why, but they find it extremely funny.
“Tómas Leifur Ólafsson! Congratulations! You are Icelandic now! You have to learn Icelandic!” Goodmoondoor almost shouts.
I study the passport. It looks impeccable. Even more so than the Chinese-made one for Igor.
“How did you…? Where did you get it?” I ask them.
“It’s made in Iceland! Handmade!”
Goodmoondoor can hardly control his joy, nor can he hide the immense pride he feels from having been able to arrange this illegal artifact.
“I have a friend in the police,” he says and winks at me with the silliest of smiles. “And another one in politic party.”
I want to run outside and laugh myself to death. There is nothing more hilarious in this world than holy men doing illegal things.
They produce another round of laughs when they ask me to say my new name. “Thomas, leave her” is my first, and for me quite logical, attempt. Apparently “Toe Mash Lay Fur” is more like it. They make me say it some ten times before they’re ready to wet my post-Friendly hair with the tap water that Torture makes holy with a blessing and a smile. They’re having the time of their lives.
“Actually, you should have been Tómas Leifur Bogason,” Torture explains. “That’s the direct translation of your Croatian name, and for a long time this was the tradition here in Iceland. Immigrants were forced to take on an Icelandic name that was usually a translation or some version of the original one. But we don’t want to risk anything, do we, so we came up with this one. Ólafsson means ‘son of Ólaf’ and that’s the name of our president.”
That’s his first name, that is. Those guys have no use for family names. Icelanders still uphold the Viking tradition of letting their children’s second names be derived from their father’s first. If I had kids, they’d be honored with the cool and catchy Tómasson (boy) or Tómasdóttir (girl).
I beg my ministers for an easier version of my new name, and after some thinking they come up with Tommy Olafs.
CHAPTER 24
HARDWORK HOTEL
06.13.2006
To go with my illegal passport, they put me up in an illegal housing close to Torture’s church. It’s a pretty young building that houses a fancy furniture shop on the ground floor and some grungy immigrant workers on the first floor.
I enter the Icelandic underground. It seems we’ve switched roles, me and my holy friends. Goodmoondoor’s man from the political party, a big-nosed guy with no neck named Good Knee, (no relation to the Wounded one) has that international Mob look in his eyes that is quite difficult to explain to the innocent reader but his colleague can’t fail to notice. Those are eyes that have seen all of life and some of death.
He scuttles over to the entrance from his black and bruised SUV, a chubby unkempt man of fifty wearing a dark blue windbreaker that seems to be oversized, but on a closer look is just overweight with pockets full of keys (and guns?). He brings out a dozen and tries three of them before finding the right one.
Goodmoondoor introduces me, looking quite ridiculous, like a proud father recommending his son to a famous football coach. Good Knee gives me a dull eye for a second and murmurs an all-Icelandic “hi” before entering the shabby entrance flooded with colorful, but footprinted, advertising brochures and unread local newspapers. We follow him up the staircase and down a long, raw looking corridor with a new door every fifteen feet, left and right. The ceiling is pretty high, rising up in the middle, but the walls, being only about eight or nine feet high, don’t connect with it.
At the end of the hallway, a few red-eyed and dark-browed men with small white bits of concrete in their hair are sitting in a small kitchen clutching beers. A small TV sits on the cheap worktop, beside an ancient looking microwave. Some amateur murder thing lights the screen, but the workers are not watching. Good Knee greets them with a few inaudible words in Mobish.
One of the workers answers him in English with a thick Slavic accent and points down the corridor we just walked:
“Number three on right.”
That’s my cell. The president’s
son has to settle for storage space built for spare parts and divided into for-sleeping-only stalls by paper thin walls. The bed is a futon mounted on leftovers from the wall-building, with piled up sawlogs for legs. There is nothing else in the room except for an old, cheap office chair, a lamp lacking both bulb and shade, and a lonely silver spoon lying on the dirty floor. The wall facing the door is basically one big window with an oblong radiator beneath it. The view is a building similar to this one, with shops on the ground floor and a parking lot in front of it. Goodmoondoor throws a black plastic bag, containing some sheets, on the bed, saying, “this is good” to his friend before turning to me with his born-again smile:
“You know that you can always come to our house to eat, washing the clothes, or watching TV.”
Something I never heard my father say.
The Good Knee gives me the good key plus his billion-dollar cell phone number in case there’ll be an uprising in the barracks or some hostage taking. I better not tell those foreigners that they’re sharing a roof with the president of Iceland’s only son. I should probably ask the Good Moon to give the dump a quick blessing, but the two Goodfellas are off. My new life begins.
It starts with a small sports bag and a big Bible.
My fellow inmates are from Poland and Lithuania, plus one black-browed but thin-haired Bulgarian named Balatov who looks like a fellow hitman. It’s the good old Warsaw Pact. Our only bathroom is called the Mausoleum. According to house rules, you either go there to see Lenin (the yellow thing) or Stalin (the brown thing). The camp itself they call Hardwork Hotel. They usually come home around eleven at night and are gone by seven, sighing out in the hallway and kicking themselves into their steel-toed shoes.
“I no Seven-Eleven,” Balatov informs me. He stays home all day playing loud Iron Curtain Rock on his small boombox and watching TV out in the kitchen, cursing everything that appears on the screen in his native language. I have to take good care not to show him that I understand some of these words.
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