The Atom Station (23 page)

“Not even that he's up the road now?”

“Who is where?”

“Since you haven't heard anything,” he said, “I doubt if I'm the right person to tell you the news.”

“Up the road?” I went on asking. “What is up the road?”

“In Skolavordustig,” he said.

“The prison?” I asked.

“We call it up the road,” he said. “Up the road: where the small fry go. But all in good time, my dear; I believe things will improve. He got so far, in fact, as to buy the Cadillac off Pliers, his fellow parishioner. In actual fact he only blundered in one thing, despite the fact that the organist had often warned him about it, and us all: if you are going to commit a crime, you must first get yourself a millionaire, or else you are just a ludicrous person; and belong up the road; in Skolavordustig.”

“And the firm?” I asked.

“It never existed,” he said. “And no merchandise, either. He never, indeed, actually claimed that the merchandise existed, he merely said: the merchandise will arrive soon. And then he sold and sold everything imaginable, and accepted payment. But when at last he stood there with the money in his hands and was going to start importing the goods for his customers, Snorredda claimed priority for foreign currency. And the Government, which is one of Snorredda's assets, had come to the decision that petty young businessmen were for the axe.”

“I can't understand what's gone wrong with my legs,” I said, and took hold of his arm; truth to tell I had simultaneously a feeling of nausea and sparks before my eyes, as if I were going to faint; and I asked him to halt for a moment, and dashed my free hand across my eyes to wipe away this plague.

“I shouldn't have started gossiping about this,” he said.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “But I'm a little tired after the journey still.”

After that we walked arm in arm across the road and behind the buildings; to the house; and I pulled myself together enough to be able to say: “Oh well, since we are a sold people in a sold country, I suppose nothing matters very much any more.”

“Now we'll see what sort of mood our organist is in,” said the unself-conscious policeman.

*
The street in which the old jail in Reykjavik stands.

25. Before and after atomic war

Of course this favorite of fortune was in a good mood. He was working on his flowers, with sleeves rolled up to the elbow and earth on his hands, planting roses, thinning, snipping off withered leaves, weeding, preparing the ground for winter. Various plants were still well in bloom, including a few of the roses. But when one looked around, one saw that the house was emptier than ever before, the battered harmonium away, the picture gone from the wall. Apart from the flowers there was little left except the three-legged sofa which required such skill to sit on.

“Good morning,” said the organist, fresh and cheery from his beloved daily work, his mere presence a peace-giving refuge, “and be welcome.”

He wiped off the earth and offered me his warm hand, kissed me, bade me welcome to the south, flattered me, and laughed at me—“Do please have a seat, the coffee will be ready in a twinkling.”

We put my wooden suitcase under the legless corner of the sofa and sat down, and he laughed—at us for sitting on such a wretched sofa, and at himself for owning it.

“And where is Cleopatra?” I asked.

“Cleopatra took off when my mother died,” he said. “She though she might get a bad reputation off me. Cleopatra always had a
petit-bourgeois
streak in her, even though she was a great woman; and Napoleon the Great a great man.”

“Napoleon the Great?” said the unself-conscious policeman in surprise.

“Fancy, so you
can
open your mouth after all. How very solemn you are, my friend,” said the organist.

“What is a man to say these days?” said the unself-conscious policeman. “The whole nation has lockjaw. As Ugla and I were just saying, people are so innocent that they cannot believe such a thing is possible; the man in the street hasn't got the intelligence to imagine anything like it. Just when we had finished fighting for seven hundred years!”

“Would it be impertinent to ask what you are talking about, my friend?” said the organist.

“Sell the country, bury bones,” said the unself-conscious policeman. “What else?”

“What's all this, children?” said the organist. “Don't you want to have any heroes?”

“That'll be the day.” said the unself-conscious policeman. “Heroes! Not half!”

“A man who risks everything for his cause, even his good name if his cause is defeated—I do not know who is a hero if not he,” said the organist.

“Then Quisling was a hero,” said the unself-conscious policeman, “for he knew right from the start both that he would be hanged and that the Norwegians would execrate him after his death.”

“Goebbels murdered his six children and his wife before committing suicide, rather than yield to the east,” said the organist. “It is a fallacy to think that heroism is in any way related to the cause that is fought for. We Icelanders, who have the greatest heroic literature in the world, ought to know what a hero is; the Jomsvikings
*
are our men, they made obscene remarks while they were being beheaded. We do not doubt that in the Fascist armies there were proportionately as many heroes as in the Allied armies. The cause makes no difference to the heroism. For myself, I believe that the Icelandic nation has gained a few heroes in the last few days.”

“And if their cause should conquer, are they still heroes in spite of that?” asked the unself-conscious policeman.

“They themselves know better than anyone that it never will. It has never yet happened that those who sell a country conquer. Only those who settle a country conquer. One simply must not confuse heroism, which is an absolute concept, with the fame of the conqueror. Take Hitler, the murderer of Europe: never once throughout all his murdering did it occur to him to surrender; he even got married with the noose round his neck. That brute Goering never cracked. Some think heroes are some sort of idealists and kind-hearted people like you and me, but I tell you truly that if we incline to such an opinion it could mean that all those millions whom Hitler burned in his furnaces would be called by the name of heroes, or even those hundreds of millions of women and children who will be roasted by the nuclear bomb.”

“But what if these heroes should succeed in murdering all Icelanders?” asked the unself-conscious policeman. “A military power is not long in converting a welfare station into a nuclear station, if need be.”

“We know how things went for Hitler,” said the organist. “People are immortal. It is impossible to wipe out mankind—in this geological epoch. It may well be that a sizeable portion of the earth's population will die in the war for a more expedient community-pattern, it may well be that the cities of the world may have to be laid waste before this pattern is found. But when it is found, a new golden age will arise for mankind.”

“That's small consolation for Iceland, if we are razed to the ground and annihilated by those who are fighting over the world,” said the unself-conscious policeman.

“Iceland does not matter very much, when one looks at the total picture,” said the organist. “Icelanders have not been in existence for more than, at the most, a thousand years, and we have been rather an insignificant nation; except that we wrote this heroic literature seven centuries ago. Many empires have been wiped out so utterly that we no longer even know their names, because they did not keep pace with evolution when Nature was seeking a more convenient pattern for herself. Nations are not very important on the whole, and indeed it is at one and the same time a recent and an obsolete phenomenon to think of nations as political entities: to confuse, in general, countries and politics. The Roman Empire was not a country but a particular armed civilization. China has never been a country, but a particular moral civilization. Christendom of the Middle Ages was not a country. Capitalism is not a country. Communism is not a country. East and West are not countries. Iceland is a country only in a geographical definition. The nuclear bomb wipes out cities but not geography; so Iceland will continue to exist.”

“And you who are a man of culture—can you look with equanimity on them levelling all the world metropolises where culture resides?” asked the unself-conscious policeman.

“I have always heard that cities were the more valued the more ruins they had,” said the organist, and laughed carelessly over the water that was beginning to boil in the kettle. “Long live Pompeii!”

“Yes, and do you perhaps want chickweed to grow on the pile of rubble where London fell in ruins, and duckweed on the pool where Paris sank?” said the unself-conscious policeman.

“Why not rose bushes?” said the organist. “And a swan on the lake? People reckon cities the more beautiful the larger the gardens in them, so that dwelling houses can disappear between apple trees and rose bushes and mirror themselves in still lakes. The loveliest garden is nevertheless the country side; that is the garden of gardens. When the nuclear bomb has razed the cities to the ground in this present world revolution because they have failed to keep pace with evolution, then the culture of the countryside will arise, and the earth will become the garden that it never was before except in dreams and poetry …”

“And we shall start believing in ponies again,” said the girl from the north, and lay down on the sofa behind her unself-conscious policeman, and fell asleep.

*
A semi-legendary, highly exclusive band of Vikings, who lived spartan and war-dedicated lives in the Baltic city of Jomsborg (now unknown) in the tenth century. They were wiped out in the battle of Hjorungavag, against Earl Hakon of Norway.

26. The house of wealth

It had long been broad daylight. My organist was cleaning up the room after all the earth work, in his shirtsleeves, with bucket and brush. I woke up under his winter overcoat.

“My goodness, how I have slept!” I said.

“You cheated yourself of your coffee,” he said. “And now it is nearly mealtime.”

“I'm absolutely amazed at myself,” I said.

“Oh?” he said, and looked at me with a smile.

“Yes, to wake up like this in a strange place,” I said.

“What is not a strange place?” he said. “We are all overnight lodgers in a strange place. But it is wonderful to have made this journey.”

“Even though the world is a den of murderers?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “even though the world is a den of murderers. What difference does that make?”

“And though the country is stolen from under our feet?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “even though the country is stolen from under our feet. Did you expect anything else?”

“I have milk in my breasts,” I said.

“Go next door and do yourself up a little before we eat,” he said.

He had been out buying food while I slept, all sorts of delicacies wrapped in paper, eggs in one packet, sausage in another, dried fish in a third, butter, curds, cream; and one larger parcel which I thought contained cheese. We sat on the kitchen table and dangled our legs and regaled ourselves on these delicacies out of the packets.

Finally I spoke up and said, “Well, tell me now, what has … my young man done?”

“In our society there is only one really dangerous crime,” he said, “and that is to come from the country. That is why all the cities of the world will fall in ruins.”

“But he had a vocation,” I said. “He must have had something in mind.”

“Yes, that is one of the greastest disasters that a country person can suffer,” he said. “Take, for instance, the Maid of Orleans; all at once famous saints had started ordering the poor girl about while she was herding sheep.”

“But still, she saved France,” I said.

“That I do not believe,” said the organist: “it is a fundamental misunderstanding. Historians have proved that the saints who did all the talking were characters out of fictitious supernatural stories from Constantinople; even God himself made a fool of the girl by letting her hear the voices of saints who, as none knew better than He, had never existed. Finally the wretched girl was burned—through a misunderstanding. There is nothing so dangerous for country people as to start listening to heavenly voices.”

“Was he perhaps going to free the country,” I asked.

“No, no, thank goodness, it wasn't as bad as all that,” said the organist. “On the other hand he once heard a voice from heaven that said to him, when he was mowing hay: If you want to become a man, you must ride south at once and become a thief.”

“To the best of my knowledge he came south to become a policeman,” I said.

“In the
Edda
it says that every man should be medium wise but never too wise,” said the organist. “He thought the best place to learn the techniques of house breaking would be in the police force. Country people and saints, and even God, think that house breakers make some profit out of it. I proved to him over and over again last winter that this was a fallacy, that house breakers make much less out of it than dustmen.”

“But the Northern Trading Company?” I asked.

“Yes, well, naturally an intelligent and musical person like him quickly realized that valuables are too well guarded for country people to get at them simply by climbing through a window at night. If someone wants to steal in a thieves' community, he must steal according to the laws; and he should preferably have taken part in making the laws himself. That is why I never tired of urging him to get into Parliament, get himself the backing of a millionaire, float a joint stock company, and get himself a new car—simultaneously, if possible. But he was too much of a peasant, and never fully understood me; and that is why it happened as it did. He thought it would be enough to float a dummy company like the Northern Trading Company and have dealings with a dummy millionaire like Pliers, and buy off him a car that had been stolen many times over; whereas it has to be genuine joint-stock company and a genuine millionaire and a new car of this year's make straight from the factory. In other words, he made blunders in all the technical details of his vocation. The obvious outcome is that he, who ought to have started by setting up house at Austurvoll, is now resident in Skolavordustig.”