She first laid eyes on me in a National Socialist march in the summer of 1933. I was the standard-bearer. I felt such power at the time that ever since then I’ve presumed to understand Adolf Hitler’s innermost feelings when he was lauded by the torchbearers in Nuremberg, who formed a swastika and tramped in circles in the dark.
We Nationalists expected the Reds to attack us that day. We were
well armed, and I know that one of us was carrying a pistol. I’m sad to say
that it didn’t it didn’t come to a clash. If there’d been a street fight, I
never would have made the stupid mistake of knocking up a woman that night.
I went to a dance that evening, but the Red Guards were such
miserable wretches that they didn’t dare show their faces. I was having a drink
when she sat down bashfully next to me and said that she’d seen me in the
vanguard that day at the intersection of Túngata Street and Súðurgata Street.
I remembered her very well though I didn’t acknowledge it. I
remembered her because of how enormously ugly I found her. A lot of us there
had bottles and no one was stingy with drinks for his mates, and when you’re
feeling mellow you’re not particular about women, more’s the pity. I haven’t
gotten rid of her since.
When I woke the next
morning I shuddered to see her.
I had to get rid of
her immediately! I threw her out into the hallway and her clothes behind her. I
cursed myself up and down for being so beggarly and not renting a room with a
bath, but I had little means in those days. Then I got dressed and hurried to
work.
I worked at the Shipyard, doing every sort of repair work on
ships. I was a trained mechanic. The day passed as usual until late afternoon,
when the foreman came to me and said: - Sigurlaugur, you’ve got a visitor.
There’s a woman asking for you.
Even when he said this it didn’t occur to me who had come. I was
flabbergasted when I saw her. She was wearing a gray coat and carrying a
handbag, loitering beneath a street light with a kerchief round her head. I
strode across the street and yanked her arm and asked what the hell she wanted.
She said shakily that she’d wanted to see me and it made me even angrier to
hear her voice tremble. Then she pulled a sandwich wrapped in wax paper from
her pocket. Around it was a rubber band. The butter showed through in places. I
heard shouts and laughter behind me. The boys were taking the piss out of me
for having a visitor. – Bring her over! they cried. –Don’t be selfish!
I stuck the sandwich in my pocket and went back to work without
saying goodbye to her. I wouldn’t have minded having a visitor at work, had the
woman not been so damned unsightly. She was in her twenties but looked closer
to fifty. I was hammering out rust from an old side trawler and around coffee
break I took the sandwich out of my pocket and ate it. It wasn’t such a bad
meal: a cold steak between slices of bread, with chopped potatoes and a
slathering of butter. I felt good there in the sun by the ship’s side. A
seagull was waddling on the foreshore in search of food. A bird with train oil
in its wings lay lamely on the beach, tossing and turning now and then. I was
glad to have moved south. Dad, who was a goddamn bully, beat me and my siblings
like stockfish when I was a boy and the old woman was powerless to stop him.
When I came to Reykjavík I gained a new lease on life. I felt as
if the world were going to cast off its rags and step forth strong and healthy.
And it could have been; it would have happened if Dr. Goebbels had had his way.
Then the Germans would have had the victory when they invaded Russia.
But who am I to presume to find blame with men who had the courage
to try to conquer the world? I- who had no control over myself when it came to
one lousy female.
She came to my room that evening and it went exactly the same. I
have no desire to go over the next weeks and months. I did everything I could
to shake her off but always turned out to be so weak-willed when she arrived in
the evenings. I even beat her up once even though I was disgusted with myself
afterward, because that’s how Dad usually treated Mom. But it didn’t do a
damned thing. She didn’t leave. Finally I realized that the only way for me to
get rid of her would be to kill her..
Who the hell did she think she was, hanging herself like that on
another person! She didn’t leave. And I couldn’t stop myself from sleeping with
her. I was disgusted with myself for being such a damned fool that I could
never refuse it.
A wise man once said: Everything that a man undertakes in the
world has consequences. Dr. Goebbels said: Millions of men in the Red Army are
prepared to fight for us, mein Führer, because they desire nothing more than to
see Stalin hung on Red Square. Later we can eliminate all of our enemies. But
Hitler was too proud to take this good advice. He wanted the German army alone
to conquer the Bolsheviks. He sent in death squads after his invasion forces
and had them do their job. He who was so scheming lacked the wit when it was
most critical.
I have a terrible time sticking to the subject. I’m thrown
completely off-kilter thinking of the time when there was still hope that
justice would be done in the world.
Then I chanced to get what I deserved for my spinelessness; truly
received my reward for all my lack of willpower.
She came one evening and informed me she was pregnant. She wanted
us to get married and become man and wife in the sight of God. I suffered a
horrendous fright. On the table was a bread knife and I grabbed it and pointed
it at her. She cried out and begged God to help her. I told her that she could
scream as long as she wanted. It wouldn’t help her. There was no God. And
therefore she’d never put an eternal yoke on me in the sight of God. I put down
the bread knife. A peculiar reflectiveness came over me, icy and calm. I
ordered her in an austere voice to abort the child. Then she started
whimpering. Said that God would punish her. Said that she would rather kill
herself. What lunacy! I couldn’t help but laugh, and asked whether she was such
an idiot that she didn’t realize that then she’d kill her child too. When I saw
her reaction to this observation of mine I was even more tickled and said
softly and fawningly: -Do you love me?
-Yes, she said eagerly, a faint gleam of hope appearing in her
eyes.
-Then you’ll be so kind as to get out of here! Because if you
don’t remove yourself fully and completely from my life, I’ll kill myself. I’ll
borrow a pistol from a comrade of mine and blow off my fucking head, because I
can’t live with this. Wait and see, you'll find me dead! I shouted myself
hoarse.
She believed me! Over time I marveled at this- as if I’d shoot
myself over her! She was thunderstruck at these words of mine, put on her coat
without a word and beat it. She didn’t return.
And now certain things
occurred that led to nothing becoming more precious to me than life.
After she was gone I stoked the stove and fell fast asleep. I
dreamt that four men walked into the room. The dream was peculiar, because it
seemed I was awake. One of the men was young and handsome and spoke for the
others. He wasn’t unlike my foreman. It was easy for me to recall his
appearance. The others I couldn’t remember when I woke.
- You spoke well, said the young man. -God does not exist. What
you say is absolutely correct. But that doesn’t mean that the same goes for
Satan. He exists! On the other side is only Hell. Remember that. Having said
this, they walked single-file out of the room.
I woke drenched in sweat. The room was burning hot. I had slept
for almost two hours. I was surprised that she hadn’t returned to torment me. I
opened a window and sat down at the miserable table in order to organize my thoughts.
The dream had been quite natural. Just as if I’d received visitors. Gradually
my mind stopped racing. When it was past midnight I lay down and fell asleep,
and slept soundly until morning without dreaming anything. But I was far from
being able to celebrate a total victory.
The next day was Sunday and my Ástrós didn’t turn up. That puzzled
me highly. Nor did she ask after me at work on the Monday. Thursday had arrived
before my foreman called me over and said that a woman was waiting for me in
reception. Well now, I thought. So my darling has finally come; yet it turned
out not to be her but her sister, wanting to ask me whether I knew anything
about her. This was the very first time I saw any of her relatives. I’d
repeatedly refused to have Sunday coffee with her family. I told her sister how
it was. Ástrós had left me on Sunday evening and I hadn’t seen her since.
Everything had been perfectly fine between us; nothing more to add. At that the
woman left.
My co-workers were saying that I needed to shake women off me,
which was true. The next day the cops came. They could have spared the effort.
They knew that I was a National Socialist and had often made trouble for me and
my mates. And now, on top of everything else, I was accused of kidnapping. They
wanted to inspect my room. I told them that of course they could, and I asked
whether they could visit me after work, but they said they couldn’t. They
threatened to haul me off in irons My foreman gave me a dubious look as they
led me away. It wasn’t a long way to go. I rented a room on Vesturgata Street.
They searched my room high and low and naturally found nothing, because there
was nothing to find except for a few copies of the Icelandic Reconstruction,
the organ of the Nationalists in Reykjavík.
And now my mind wanders to the tremendous stupidity when Hitler
ordered his troops to the Caucasus to take control of the oil reserves there,
thereby delaying the advance to Moscow. He thought his army would be
invincible. When his army finally pressed toward Moscow, it was too late.
Winter had arrived, worse than the worst winters here. Russian soldiers poked
the eyes out of the Germans whom they managed to capture; that’s what they
called mercy.. Yes, it was pride and nothing else that led the greatest military
force in the world to its destruction.
Whatever the Führer may
say, and I have brought up the subject.
I asked the coppers whether they were going to arrest me for
possessing the journal. They said no and scrammed. Ástrós was in the habit of
coming and cooking dinner in the evenings and I missed that. On the other hand,
I was so jolly after having fooled the cops that I decided to treat myself and
dine at Hotel Skjaldbreiður on Saturday night.
The place was crowded. I was shown to a table immediately and had
just started studying the menu and decided to order fried halibut when a plate
with precisely that dish was placed before me, unordered. I asked the waiter
what he meant by this and he replied curtly: -I brought you what you were going
to order.
And what could I do but nod? He was right. I thought I recognized
this waiter, but couldn’t place him by any means.
A dance was held at the hotel that evening. It was crowded and I
met several good mates there. When the dance ended and I went to retrieve my
coat the man in coat-check pointed at me and asked people to make way, then
handed me the garment and said: -This man here takes priority! We like this
man!
I felt proud that he knew
who I was.
I was no less amazed when I came outside. People were frantically
waving down taxis in the bitter cold. One of the taxi drivers stood next to his
car and turned away everyone until he spied me. -I was sent to pick up this
man, he said, despite the loud protests of the others gathered. I sat down in
the car. Despite telling him my address, he drove off in the opposite
direction. When I asked him why he did so he replied: -I was sent to drive you
to a celebration.
I settled for that.
He stopped outside a house on the western edge of town. He
couldn’t accept payment. He said that the car had already been paid for. He
pointed me to a lit-up, hoarfrosted window.
I got out of the car and he drove away. The front door was open.
The steps were covered with new-fallen, loose snow, making it clear that no one
had traversed them for quite some time.
I can’t bear snow. I always feel sick when I see snow. It makes me
think of when the Sixth Army was wiped out at Stalingrad.
I stepped up to the front door and took hold of the doorknob; the
door was unlocked. I entered the foyer and saw a door standing open to an
apartment on the first floor. I took several steps up to the landing and peeked
into the apartment. Dining room chairs had been arranged in the sitting room;
each chair was occupied. The people’s backs were turned; they sat silently,
staring at the dinner table. I stepped closer and looked over the heads of
those gathered. In the room was a corpse. The corpse wasn’t in a coffin, but
had been laid on the dinner table. The dead person was covered with a sheet
from head to toe. I was alarmed. I stepped out in front of the mourners and
asked: -What’s going on here? I tore the cloth from the corpse’s face. It was
she.
Then her sister pointed at me and said, - It’s him! The people
stood up one after another and started calling me a murderer and criminal. My
fiancée, as they called her, had walked into the sea and was found driven
ashore at Grótta Bay. The people started shoving me and tried to beat me.
I hurried out and went home. I was terribly agitated. Suddenly I
felt as if I remembered the waiter, the coat-check man, and the taxi driver.
They’d all appeared to me in my dream.
I lay down. After pondering these things for a long time I finally
fell asleep. I dreamt that a man walked into my room. It was the young man from
the group, but now he was alone. He was naked from the waist up.
I was going to ask whether
it was true what he’d told me, that on the other side was only Hell.
It was as though he could read my thoughts. Before I managed to
open my mouth he smiled at me and huge wings, drenched with train oil, rose
from his back.
***
Author Olafur Gunnarsson has written 20 books.
