The Atom Station (24 page)

“Is it possible to save a little fellow who has got on the wrong side of the law?” I asked.

“It is always difficult to save country people,” said the organist. “Penal laws are passed to protect criminals and punish the others who are too naive to understand society. But though the nature of our friend's performance bordered on the most childish of crimes, like house breaking, it has one redeeming feature, in that his methods were near enough to general business practice to make it debatable whether to convict him would not be an insult to some of our upperclass citizens. In actual fact he only needs a little less than a hundred thousand kronur to get free.”

I pondered this for a while, but soon realized what a hopeless impossiblity this was: “My father and mother are now in their old age, and I am quite sure that though all their life's earnings were added up they would not reach the sum you mentioned.”

“Don't you think it right that such a man should be allowed to test the effect of his folly and obstinancy on his own body?” said the organist. “Can anything else save him?”

I had finished eating and was gazing out of the window at the withered weeds around the house, but at this question I turned towards him and said unthinkingly, “He is the father of little Gudrun, and whether he goes to prison or not he is my man.”

“All right, dear,” said the organist without laughing at me. “I did not know how you regarded the matter.”

“I didn't know either—until now; today; particularly after the night that has just passed. But I don't have a hundred thousand kronur.”

He smiled warily and looked at me distantly. “Bui Arland,” he said, “your Member of Parliament and former employer, would soon write you out a check for that amount …”

“I prefer to wait for my man until he comes out,” I said.

“Bui Arland is the best of fellows, we once went to school together; I know he would do it like a shot.”

“Bui Arland is the dearest man in Iceland,” I said. “Who should know that better than me, having slept with him last night?”

“Listen, dear,” said the organist. “Should we not have some coffee to follow, anyway? There are some pastries in a bag here.”

“I'll make it,” I said. “You have done well already: bought food in many packets, prepared your flowers for the winter, and scrubbed out the house. But listen, where's the picture of our Skarp-Hedin Njalsson with the cloven head, otherwise known as Cleopatra the Fair? How I miss her.”

“I burned her,” he said. “I am thinking of having a change of picture. A man has to do some stock taking every now and again. And you, my dear?”

“I'm going to find myself a job and get to night-school,” I replied. “And when I've saved up some money I'm going to start learning in earnest to be a children's nurse.”

We drank coffee and were satisfied.

“Well,” I said. “Thank you very much. Now I'm going into town to look for something for myself.”

“Go your road,” he said. “And all the very best. And our friend in Skolavordustig—that is all settled, is it not?”

“Yes,” I said. “That's all settled: he is my man.”

This organist, whom men considered above gods, and gods above men, he who was in actual fact most remote from women and yet the only man where a woman could ultimately find refuge—before I knew it he clasped my head with his slender fingers, bent over it, and kissed my hair at the parting, right on the crown. Then he turned away and lifted from the kitchen table the parcel which we had not yet touched, and which I thought contained cheese. He unwrapped the paper with brisk movements. And it was crammed with bank-notes.

“Help yourself,” he said.

“Is that real money?” I asked.

“Hardly,” he said. “At least I did not manufacture it myself. But bring your case over here, just the same.”

“How do you imagine I could ever think of accepting all this?” I said.

“Very well, then, my dear,” he said. “Then we shall put it in the fire.”

He walked with the pile of notes into the living-room straight for the fire; I do not doubt that if he had had his way he would have thrust all this wealth into the fire right before my eyes, and then turned round to face me with a childish titter—and then never mentioned the matter again. But I ran to stop him, seized hold of his hands, and cried, “No, no, I'll accept it.” Then he handed me the money.

“On one condition, though,” he said as he placed the money in my hands: “that you never tell anyone where you got this money from, whether I am alive or dead.”

And while I was struggling to cram all this money into my suitcase, red in the face and bereft of speech and suffused all over with hot shame, did I not see him snipping all the loveliest blooms from his plants and arranging them into a bouquet!

“What are you doing to your flowers?” I said.

He tied the stalks together with fiber twine and handed me the bouquet with a smile.

“I know that no other bride in this country has ever been given a more beautiful bouquet,” I said.

“I shall be content if you will look at them for me while they are alive and burn them for me when they are dead,” he said. “And now goodbye, and thank you for coming. And give my good wishes to our friend.”

A slim, slightly-built man; perhaps he was not in good health; when I embraced him and laid my face on his shoulder I felt him tremble a little.

But when he had seen me to the paving, and was turning to go back into the house, he suddenly remembered something and said apologetically, “Oh, I nearly forgot, don't come back here if you are looking for me again. I am moving today. I sold the house yesterday.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“The same road as the flowers,” he replied.

“And the flowers?” I said. “Who will look after them?”

“Flowers are immortal,” he said, and laughed. “You cut them in autumn and they grow again in spring—somewhere.”

27. Immortal flowers

When I was on my way to the prison in Skolavordustig with my case and my bouquet I happened to pass by the cathedral, and before I knew it I had blundered into the middle of a funeral; the coffin was just being carried out of church. This was no small fry that was being buried, judging by all the ceremonial; as far as I could see it was the overlords of the country, whom I had learned to know by sight last year when I opened the door to them at night, who were now gathered again, dressed in black and white, with tile-hats, in their hands: the Prime Minister and the other Ministers, the sheep-plague director, some Members of Parliament, wholesalers and judges, the mournful lead-grey man who published the paper, the bishops, and the oil-processing plant director. This little group formed a circle round an exceedingly ornate coffin, which was carried by the pick of this
corps d'elite
, the Prime Minister leading on one side, and on the other side the mournful lead-grey man who had published the paper; next came a handsome, virile man with grey-flecked hair and aquiline nose, horn-rimmed glasses like a mask, snowy-white gloves and a tile-hat in his free hand, quite at ease in this company. Who was he? Could it be true? Was I seeing right? Or was I still dreaming—one of those dreams of uncertain joy?

“All that you ask for, you shall have.” Somehow I had never been able to place it until now, when an old Christian text which I had learned as a child flashed into my mind again: “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down …”

The strangest thing about this ultra-distinguished funeral was that there was no cortege behind the coffin; where now were the Youth Fellowships, the schools, the University Citizens' Association, the Road Sweepers' Association, the Women's Guilds, the Office Workers' Association, the Artists' Association, the Equestian Association? No, no people, no bystanders, no mourners; even the solitary dog which in its time had followed a genius of the celestial heights did not consider itself worthy of sniffing along behind this funeral. Was it conceivable that someone had furtively managed to lift up the coffin lid? And seen what? Portuguese Sardines? Or even D.L. itself? And then taken the news straight to the populace? And if so, who? Surely not the Communists yet again?

Ordinary citizens went about their business in the street in complete indifference, without so much as a glance in the direction of this ceremony. But a few paces farther on stood a crowd of street boys who were jeering at the tile-hats as they walked along beneath their burden. One could hear the atom poet's elegy being hummed:

Oli the Figure is fallen
,

Eclipser of the people
,

The fell fiend of Keflavik
;

He wanted to sell the country
,

He wanted to dig up bones
;

Wet as a jellyfish

He wanted atom war in Keflavik
.

Oli the Figure is fallen
,

Eclipser of our people
,

The fell fiend of Keflavik
.

I looked around for the quickest way to escape from this square, pressed my bouquet closer to me, and took to my heels. What point would there have seemed to be in living if there had not been these flowers?

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1982 by Halldór Laxness

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1193-8

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