Beatles (62 page)

I had done it. I was going to Iceland. The aeroplane rose into the sky, the world outside the window tipped over and Nesodden fell away. Then time stopped, a bubble burst in my head, I was flying across Norway, through the crystal-clear, translucent winter air, a few metres from the sun. The North Sea came into view, I saw an oil platform, the Faeroe Isles were beneath me, then it clouded over and before I had finished my drink and begun to collect myself, I was jerked downwards towards Keflavik and landed with a bang on the runway as the squalls roared against the fuselage. I retched into a bag, a stewardess accompanied me out between the glaciers with a smile and later the bus took longer to reach Reykjavik than the plane had taken to fly to Iceland.

I was dropped off by a closed petrol station and night had settled over the capital. The wind battered your face with the force of a knuckleduster and what seemed like sleet and shingle hit the back of your head. I looked around for people, but everyone in Iceland must have gone to bed. I took a swig of duty-free and began to walk in a random direction. I tried to keep to what appeared to be a pavement, but the wind was of a different mind and I was forced out onto soft ground. In the end I was standing in the middle of wasteland, up to my knees in mud, and the only things I had were a bottle, a toothbrush, a return ticket and Cecilie’s address.

I took a few swigs and struggled on. My boots squelched. Then I found myself walking on what to all appearances was a football pitch, on gravel. I could make out two goals. I dribbled my way through the wind and found a path. There, at last, I caught sight of some people, ran after them and showed them my piece of paper. They were two couples and they pointed in four different directions
before deciding and sending me north, into the wind, with the hail coming from the side and a lurking fear at my heels.

It was well past midnight when I finally chanced on Cecilie’s street and house number. She lived on the first floor. The entrance was green and smelt of stale eggs. I rang the bell and she took a long time to appear. Then she opened up, wearing a dressing gown,
sleep-befuddled
and grumpy. And the moment she clapped her eyes on me and they slowly widened and her mouth became an empty hole in her face, I knew this had to be just about the most stupid thing I had ever done.

‘Kim,’ was all she said, softly, terrified.

‘I happened to be passin’,’ I ventured.

We stood there, on either side of the threshold, mute, confused, her a sleepy galleon figurehead, me a dripping marsh troll.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said at length. I tugged off my filthy boots and padded in on stockinged feet.

Cecilie was practical and efficient. She lent me dry clothes and hung mine up to dry in the bathroom. I poured myself a dram and sat in the sparsely furnished sitting room, a couple of posters on the wall, EEC, NATO, a narrow bookcase with thick volumes, crumbs on the table after supper, an Icelandic newspaper, a radio.

‘What have you done to your boots?!’ Cecilie cried.

I crumpled. Didn’t she even remember? The badger. I should never have come here. I was a misunderstanding.

‘Got lost in a bog,’ I said.

After a while she came in and sat down, pulling her dressing gown tight. She was wearing yellow slippers. Her eyes lingered on me. I fumbled for something to say.

‘How’s it going in Norway?’ she asked first.

‘Alright. Gunnar’s moved to Sogn, Ola’s married a girl in Trondheim and Seb’s become a Child of God. Otherwise things are fine.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me? I’m the same old idiot. Tryin’ to study.’

‘You’ve stopped working?’

‘It was just a summer job.’

‘And now you’ve used your study loan to come here?’

‘Right.’

‘To visit me?’

‘Yes.’

‘That all?’

My head was beginning to ache. It had to be the flight. The air pressure was still there.

‘Thought I could buy a few Christmas presents at the same time,’ I said.

At last she smiled and gave me a squeeze.

‘Wouldn’t you like a dram, too?’ I asked quickly.

Cecilie stood up.

‘There’s an important lecture early tomorrow morning that I
have
to attend.’

‘Of course.’

‘But afterwards we can take a little trip. You’d like to see the Great Geysir, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yup.’

Cecilie brought me a blanket and I had to sleep on the sofa. I didn’t sleep because I was still flying, just like in my earliest childhood, I was hovering, had to hold onto the cushions. And all the time I had a strange smell in my nostrils, burnt matches, something singed, it had to be a damaged undercarriage, there was going to be a belly landing, I had lost contact with the tower, a disaster was imminent.

I woke up a wreck and on the table was a hastily written note:
Back at twelve. Cecilie
. I staggered into the bathroom to repair the damage, but as I approached the water I almost about-turned. Either the sewage system had gone to pieces or I had the worst mouth odour of the century. I tried the tap in the kitchen, but it was just as foul. It was the same odour I had smelt in the night, scorched rubber, sulphur, I was standing on a volcano, it would not be long before lava surged upwards like steaming red porridge, the ground beneath my feet shook. I found a bottle of beer in the fridge, Skallagrimsson, had to be strong mead. Tasted of flat lager, lay like a lead weight in my stomach. I had to go to the bathroom again and pee, dabbed some water under my arms and put on my dry clothes. While I was standing there in the burning sulphur smell, curiosity got the better of me. I had a peep in the cupboard over the basin, an extra
toothbrush
, eau de cologne, I should have bought some on the plane,
damn, tampons, guitar strings, I was gripped by a serious longing, so serious that I had to bring up some Skallargrimsson. Afterwards, I felt pangs of guilt and carefully closed the cupboard door. Of course they were not guitar strings but dental floss. But her guitar was in the bedroom, I could see it through the crack. I did not go in. I sat down by the window and waited. There was an hour left until twelve. First of all it rained. Then there was a grey period before the sun burst through in its full glory. Then a wind blew up, a covering of sleet was released, the rain took over, the wind came inland and moved the clouds along, a tornado sent a couple of dustbins flying through the street, then it was quiet and suddenly the sun was back in full force. Then Cecilie came. She sailed up in an immaculate Land Rover and hooted the horn. I rushed downstairs and patted the bonnet.

‘We’re going now,’ said Cecilie, ‘so that we can get home before it’s dark.’

‘Classy set of wheels,’ I said, and was unable to restrain myself. ‘Alexander the Great piss in the pot, did he?’

‘You can walk if you like. Fine by me!’ Cecilie snarled and gave it full throttle. I sprinted after her. She stopped at the corner.

‘Didn’t mean it like that,’ I grinned.

She let me in, did a U-turn with screaming tyres and roared off.

‘The upper classes have exploited the workers for years, haven’t they. And when my upper-class daddy wants to buy me a Land Rover, I say yes and exploit
him
! But he can’t buy
me
, if that’s what you think.’

‘Course not. By the way, the water at your place tasted of athlete’s foot.’

‘Same everywhere. The water in Reykjavik’s like that.’

‘Thought I’d entered the lowest circles of hell. The sulphur stung my nose.’

‘That’s where we’re going,’ Cecilie said.

‘Where?’

‘To Hell.’

She put her foot down and it was not long before we had left the town behind us. On a hillock stood a huge spectacle, an unfinished church, the frame resembled the skeleton of a dinosaur. Then we were in the wilderness and in the far distance I espied some
snow-white mountain plateaux and shining glaciers. I saw a small, sturdy horse walking across the rotting fields in search of fodder. It started raining again.

‘The meteorologists must get pretty frustrated here,’ I said.

‘Just so long as it doesn’t snow,’ said Cecilie. ‘We could get stuck on a mountain pass. People have been trapped inside their cars because of snow there.’

‘Isn’t there anythin’ excitin’ to look at in Reykjavik?’ I ventured.

But Cecilie drove on. I lit a cigarette. It stopped raining. A flock of sheep leapt off the road in fright. The wind shook the high-sided vehicle. We reached bizarre terrain – rugged, reddish, wavy forms like a petrified sea and that is precisely what it was.

Cecilie pulled into the kerb and stopped.

‘This is lava after an eruption,’ she told me. ‘Can you see what it resembles?’

‘A petrified sea,’ I said.

‘A moon landscape. The American astronauts trained here before they went to the moon for the first time.’

I looked at her. She said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Is that true?’ I whispered.

I opened the door to get out. Cecilie stopped me.

‘You can’t walk in those boots!’ she laughed.

She produced a pair of robust safety shoes and I changed. Then I trotted off, but Cecilie didn’t want to join me. She stayed in the car while I walked on the moon, alone, wearing heavy shoes. I had to tread carefully, slowly, balancing on jagged rocks. There was a smell of sulphur and smoke rose from the ground. I staggered across the moon and space was silent and windswept.

‘You’re a child,’ Cecilie laughed as we drove on.

‘I’m a tourist,’ I said.

We climbed the mountain pass and drove to the white plateau. I thought the snow had started and was nervous, but it was just odd snowflakes flaying the windscreen. Cecilie gripped the wheel tightly and the needle registered 130. She snarled, bared her teeth, squeezed the accelerator, coaxed out a few more horses, cracked the whip, I could hardly take a swig, the bottle rattled against my teeth.

‘We won’t get snowed in, even if you slow down a bit!’ I shouted.

But she just summoned her last ounces of strength, and the windscreen wipers went berserk. It’s me who’s wrong, I thought. I’ve been running at the wrong speed. I’ve put an LP on 45. It’s been like that all the time. It’s going too fast. Then we came down to sea level. Cecilie turned to me with a proud smile. A cool wind caressed the car. I rolled down the window. The föhn. Sudden sun. The smell of salt. I saw the sea. The ground was green and rolled towards the mountain like an upright carpet. The hot springs simmered and smoked. There were big greenhouses by the farms. Two horses ran across a field. A small white church stood surrounded by a stone wall.

Cecilie flung the Land Rover onto a new road and tarmac turned to gravel. The brown-green expanse spread towards a chain of mountains in the east. I still hadn’t seen a tree.

‘Living in Iceland, you get to know what imperialism is,’ Cecilie started to explain.

I studied a few enormous rocks scattered down a slope. A jet black bird sailed through the air with an animal in its yellow claws.

‘The government keeps saying it’s going to run down the base, but the fact is that they’re making Iceland more and more dependent on it. Jobs. Foreign currency earnings. They lick the USA’s boots.’

We drove over a river of green water. A bank of fog rolled towards us and for some minutes I couldn’t see a metre ahead.

‘Do you know that the Americans have their own TV and radio programmes here? And they’re transmitted to the whole of the Icelandic population! It’s brainwashing pure and simple!’

When we hit clear weather again, Cecilie stopped and jumped out. I followed suit.

‘Are we there?’

She shook her head.

‘Come on,’ she said.

We scrambled up a hill. The air was cold and pungent. Then we reached the peak. Our lungs contracted with a gasp. Blood took refuge behind knees. I was staring down the mouth of a volcano, a crater, several hundred metres in size, greyish-white ice floes floated on the brown water a long way down, like a crushed eye.

I crept backwards. Cecilie laughed.

‘It’s not dangerous. It’s been extinct for ages.’

I ventured forward again, threw a stone as far as I could, but didn’t hear it fall.

‘Imagine all that power,’ was the only thing I could say.

‘Yes. One day it might erupt again. Just like the people.’

‘Thought you said it was extinct.’

She started to walk back to the car. I needed a leak. I peed into the volcano. It gave me a sense of superiority.

I ran down to join Cecilie.

‘You really
are
a tourist,’ she said. ‘All men absolutely have to pee into the crater at all costs. You should’ve seen an American coachload here!’

She laughed out loud. I was piqued. We drove for an hour. There wasn’t a road any more, just two wheel ruts. The snow lay strewn in filthy clumps. The fog hindered any views. I was frozen.

Then we were there. We got out and the stench hit me. Sulphur. I had to cover my nose, I almost retched again. I followed Cecilie into the area. The soil was red and brown, deep vents bubbled and gurgled, the steam coiled around my legs. I began to lose a sense of orientation. It was like walking through a dream with someone who was fully awake. Everything trembled around me. I heard a bang and a few metres away a glistening column of water shot into the air, it stayed there for ten seconds, twenty seconds, half a minute, a howling pillar of boiling water, then it slowly subsided and disappeared down a crack. I was stunned, crept closer with care. The earth was breathing, small bubbles simmered around the rim, the water rose, inflated itself into a glass bell, a transparent membrane, an embryo, a pulse, it was beating, then it exploded and the fountain spouted forth again. I ran back to Cecilie.

‘Never seen anythin’ like it,’ I whispered.

‘This is not the Great Geysir,’ she said. ‘It’s Strokkur. Geysir’s up there, but it’s dormant now.’

She pointed to a steaming hillock behind us.

‘Strokkur is just the younger brother,’ she smiled. ‘The only way to make the Great Geysir gush up is to empty green soap into it.’