The Journey Home: A Novel (16 page)

When the Germans invaded Denmark in April, shipping between Iceland and Denmark was suspended, trapping many Icelanders in Copenhagen who were waiting to come home. Georgia was the wife of the Sveinn Bjornsson, the Icelandic ambassador to Denmark. He was to become Iceland’s first president in 1944 when the country declared its independence from Denmark. I had heard that their son Bjorn and Atli were very friendly.

“We’ll have to get a message to Atli. We’ll contact Vilhjalmur Finsen in Stockholm. He passes on messages to Jon Krabbe in Copenhagen. Jon gets on well with Renthe-Fink.”

And he saw them off with the long, hard handshake of a man who knew he had no choice. Feeling he was drowning, he hung on tight to the one slender rope that someone threw him out of a sense of duty.

For some reason, the mistress was livelier than usual these days. She generally rose before noon, dressed and came downstairs, sometimes going out into the garden to look at the birds and plants, saying to me when she appeared in the kitchen doorway: “Disa, imagine, it’s getting warmer at last!” She would sit at the corner table and I’d watch her in the mirror as I stood over the pans on the stove, wondering whether I could do anything to cheer her up. Sometimes she would tell me of her childhood in the west of the country, of trips abroad, a room at the Angleterre which she said she was particularly fond of. She seldom asked me anything about myself, perhaps from indifference but more likely out of consideration. The cup she drank coffee from was blue with a picture of a tree in the middle of a field, the only one left from a set her mother had owned. She drank her coffee slowly, popping a sugar lump in her mouth from time to time, always with the same words: “perhaps I’ll just sneak one more . . .”

The visits to my employer lasted for more than a fortnight but it was not until the last few days that Maria thought she guessed their purpose. She had to put two and two together because they generally fell silent when she brought them refreshments, waiting for her to leave before resuming their conversation.

“It’s the son,” she said. “He’s in some fix in Germany. Dr. Bolli’s trying to get him home via Denmark.”

I cut off the conversation as quickly as I could but that night I slept unusually badly. “My darling Jakob,” I whispered to myself repeatedly, weeping into the pillow so that no one would hear. “Oh, Jakob, Jakob.” Unable to reach out a helping hand, utterly useless.

“It’s the son,” said Maria. “I’m sure it’s him.” “Cakes and coffee,” said my employer. “The morning sunshine was so beautiful when it shone through the windows of the Angleterre in Copenhagen.” “Come on in,” called Jakob. “I won’t pinch your toes, I promise . . .”

A restless night, full of voices in fragmented dreams. And the dawn all too far away.

Maria had warned me. “It doesn’t happen often,” she said, “but at least once a year. Usually in the spring or autumn. In the Easter blizzards, for example, or when it’s growing colder in September and the grass is fading and the trees are all bare and dismal.”

“Celebrate Christmas?” I exclaimed when she came to me in the kitchen after seeing the mistress upstairs. “Now? This evening?”

Dr. Bolli had gone out east the previous day and wasn’t expected home until after the weekend. When he said good-bye I noticed that he had lost weight. The same could not be said of his visitors from the government.

“You should see how they stuff themselves with your cakes,” said Maria. “It’s impossible to tell which of them eats more.”

Before my employer left, a premonition stole into my mind, as when the whispering of ghosts troubles one between sleeping and waking. A vague suspicion that some change was imminent. Unconfirmed, of course, and no doubt groundless, as I told myself.

The mistress’s orders, on the other hand, were clear. She wanted the Christmas lights put up, candles placed in candlesticks, the gramophone moved down to the drawing room and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio put on at one o’clock and played until six. The silver was to be polished, the china plates brought out and the table laid for three. She asked Maria not to forget to go out into the garden and cut some pine needles, dry them and carry them burning around the house to make a nice smell. I got in touch with my Danish friend in Hafnarfjordur and asked him to supply me with ptarmigan and smoked lamb.

“It’s Christmas!” she cried. “Now we’ll have some fun!”

She had asked the hairdresser to come and see her at three o’clock and Maria was worried that the woman would see the Christmas decorations and gossip. So we postponed decorating the front room and entrance until she had left.

“And cinnamon, Disa. Something with cinnamon. I do so love the smell.”

“Baked apples?”

“Yes, what a very good idea.”

“Ptarmigan and smoked lamb!” said the Dane. “Are you celebrating Christmas or something?”

I didn’t answer but could tell that he knew what was going on.

“Do give my regards to the mistress.”

When Bach was on the gramophone and the smoked lamb in the pan, when Maria had walked around the house with the crackling pine needles and lit the Christmas lights in the dining room, it suddenly felt as if we had both been lifted by the festive atmosphere out of the gloomy spring day into a warm, merry glow. We became inadvertent participants in the game, suggesting that we should put the angel candles on the sideboard in the dining room and the fir branches in a vase in the drawing room, then dressing in our best clothes later in the day, drinking toasts in port with the mistress at six o’clock and wishing each other a merry Christmas.

We dined at seven. The mistress wore a blue silk dress with white pearls at her throat. They cast a glow on her face and in the candlelight I saw how beautiful she must have been when she was younger. We sang “Silent Night” and then tucked into lobster soup followed by the smoked lamb and ptarmigan.

After dinner we sat in the drawing room with coffee, port and biscuits. The mistress handed each of us a present and we were embarrassed at not having bought anything for her. She gave me a brooch and Maria a scarf. We played whist till late, in the highest of spirits. As the evening wore on the wind began to blow and every now and then a cloudburst poured down. Judging from the rattle on the windows, the downpour was mingled with hail. But we didn’t let it affect us because we were merry and the port warmed us to the core.

“No trump,” said Maria.

“I say. And you, Disa?”

“I’ve got a useless hand.”

The shadows which assailed her were far away at this moment and a calm glow lit her face. Her eyes were peaceful. She took a pebble from the table and stroked it between her fingers, softly as if it were fragile or held some sort of answer.

“He gave it to me as a Christmas present when he was five,” she said finally. “ ‘It’s a wishing stone, Mother,’ he said. ‘You can wish for anything you like.’ ”

For a while she continued to caress the stone with the thumb of her right hand, then put it carefully aside.

“He’s always been sensitive. Always. He’s not suited to these political squabbles. This war . . . Thank God, he’s coming home.”

We didn’t stop playing until the candles began to burn down one after another. Then we thanked each other for the evening with kisses and retired to bed.

As I shut my eyes, yet another cold squall battered against the window.

A letter from Anthony, dated July 24, 1940, written on faded blue paper. Somehow it has found its way on this journey with me and so has now come to Iceland for the second time. I read it with half my mind, the rest occupied with the view from my window here at Hotel Borg; over the square which looks awfully desolate in early morning, and the profile of the independence hero’s statue, which hasn’t changed at all since the last time I saw it.

I’ve had no news of Jakob despite various attempts to investigate,
he wrote.
I’ve been told it’s a di ficult undertaking—hopeless, some say, but I
ignore them—to try and get news of people who have been sent to prison
camps. But of course, I won’t give up and will write again in a fortnight, as
usual.

I’m not going to depress you with any new accounts of the situation in
London; nothing’s changed since I last wrote. There’s next to nothing to tell
of my own news, the sun rises and sets and sometimes I get a visitor to cheer
me up.

Yesterday I received a letter from my cousin who is stationed just outside
Calcutta. He was on leave and wrote to me from the bar of the Great Eastern.
Although he hasn’t yet seen any action, his letter served to remind me of
how useless I am. Stuck in this ludicrous desk job. I know I’ll never be sent into
battle.

I try to play tennis at least twice a week and have taken part in the odd
cricket match this spring. I sometimes play bridge with the Old Bridge Farm
crowd, the Wakefields and their relatives, to pass the time while the world
burns . . .

David took a trip down here last week and stayed with me over the weekend. He’s showing the effects, blaming himself for not having gone to Germany
instead of Jakob, usually in silence but out loud when he’s been drinking, and
that’s more often these days than is good for him. How different they are, those
brothers, Jakob so strong and reliable . . . But no more about that.

By the way, an acquaintance of mine at the Foreign Ministry told me an
extraordinary story about David’s girlfriend Anna. (Ex-girlfriend, I should
add.) Extraordinary, I say, but somehow I don’t think you’ll be surprised. As
you know, she was never short of a shilling, coming from such a well-to-do
family. The story doesn’t mention where her parents are now but Anna is a
passenger on a Dutch ship sailing between Amsterdam and New York. Naturally you will ask if she is on her way to America. And the answer is: sometimes and sometimes not. Apparently, there are quite a number of Jewish girls
playing this game, most of them married with husbands in prison camps. The
crews call them “water babies” and treat them like ladies, and there’s nothing
coincidental about which officer gets which girl on each voyage. They have
actually got up a rota system which is strictly adhered to. The captain chooses
first, then the first engineer, and so on down the line. However, they are not
allowed to have the same girl for more than two voyages in a row. This is to
prevent the relationship from becoming too close. The girls are thought to
dance well and ornament the tables—and more than that, I expect. They sail
in this way back and forth across the Atlantic and when the ship puts into port
they don’t go ashore, just read newspapers and magazines and order their
clothes over the phone. If they hear of some of their girlfriends aboard another
ship in the same harbor, they get in touch. Always by phone, as they don’t dare
to leave the ship.

I didn’t mention Anna to David. Things are bad enough . . .

I put down the letter. The last I heard of David was that he was living on the east coast of America, possibly in New York. I’ve had no news of Anna and made no attempt to obtain any.

Two gulls take to the air over the independence hero, who pays them no attention but continues to contemplate the façade of the parliament building. I slept well until four o’clock this morning but have been lying awake ever since. Perhaps I’ll take a painkiller at six. It’s ten to, now.

A workman crosses the square carrying his lunch pail. I watch him appear, grow larger, shrink and finally disappear in the direction of the harbor. I reach out for the telephone directory. Atli Bollason, managing director, 22 Havallagata. Respectable, no doubt, the father of two or three children, probably running to fat, a sober pillar of the community, his wife standing meekly at his side, remaining silent while he talks. Gazing at him with admiring eyes. 22 Havallagata.

It’s five to six. I can’t wait any longer. I gulp down two painkillers and close my eyes in the faint hope of sleep.

My relationship with my sister Jorunn began to break down the day I left her daughter alone in her flat. I apologized many times and tried to make her understand what effect Mother’s letter had had on me but it just made things worse. Sometimes I persuade myself that everything would have been different if Mother’s letter hadn’t been left lying in the middle of the sitting room table—wrapped in a yellow ribbon for all to see—but I have to admit that this is a lame excuse. Perhaps ignorance and self-deception are the best insurance for a happy life, and so it would be best to leave this world in perfect ignorance of what was true and what false. After all, the truth has often proved a poor provision on my journey.

Jorunn never blamed me openly but I knew very well how she felt inside. And I wasn’t in any doubt about her husband Gunnar’s attitude. I don’t blame him. In spite of this, he was polite to me on the occasions when I met them after that, which was not often. As a result, Jorunn’s illness largely passed me by. After I returned to England we didn’t communicate until 1952 when we began to write to each other again. This was after Anthony had urged me to take the initiative and send the first letter. I remember writing to her about the arrival of spring in Somerset, the plants and birds, trout streams and Tina, then just a puppy. For the first months I ignored some of the signs in her letters, omens and strange premonitions, but as time went on I couldn’t look the other way any longer. Although sometimes it wasn’t obvious that anything was wrong with her, increasingly often I was able to read between the lines and sense her indisposition and anguish, usually over something trivial, and her fear of everything and nothing. I tried, in other words, to ignore it at first, telling myself, for instance, that I had bad days myself but in the end I couldn’t avoid facing up to the fact that my sister Jorunn was not in a good way. By then we had been corresponding for nearly a year and when I reread her first letters and compared them with the ones I’d received recently, there was no question that the shadows on her soul had grown longer and darker. After taking advice from Anthony and a friend of ours who was a doctor, I decided to seize the bull by the horns and ask her what was the matter in a letter which I sent early in September. I did my best to word it carefully so as not to hurt or offend her in any way. I even took the letter to the post office myself as if this would somehow have an effect on how it was received.