Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was

xxv

— Put him out of his misery, I say … Easy enough to hide his body … the mortuaries are full of nameless wretches … Give him to the medical students to skin … they’ve been snapping up the bodies of prostitutes … Nothing left of Good-time Jóka but the bare bones … split among them for souvenirs … the nights they spent with her before she went down with the flu … Ha-ha … Put him out of his misery, I say, put him out of his misery …

Máni Steinn has his ear pressed to the door of the room where he is being held, trying to make out the conversation on the other side. No one backs up the shouted suggestion of the agitated individual who wants to “put him out of his misery.” Nor is the boy alarmed by such talk. He has realized that the men meeting to decide his fate are not the type. The agitated man is shouting more to himself than to the others:

— Drown him like a rabid cur … The bloody brat’s got the eyes of a sheep-killing dog …

But the other men’s unenthusiastic response to the idea that they should murder and fillet the boy does not make them innocent of the wish to solve the problem by the quickest possible means.

* * *

The last thing people want to see at the dawn of the Icelandic sovereign state are headlines in the domestic or Danish press about a sodomy scandal in Reykjavík.

The country would be a laughingstock in Denmark; opponents of its new sovereign status would make capital out of the incident for ridicule and derision in the snide manner that is the trademark of the Danes; declaring good riddance to this nation of “up the assers” who are incapable of leaving Danish sailors alone — why, they might even dub the country Assland and choose a crude flag for it as a mockery. Yes, the Danish papers can be relied on to hold the Icelander responsible for the perverted act, and to whitewash the sailor, although he had of course already been badly infected with the vice before he ever came to the country with the Falcon. Fortunately, the captain of the warship is supporting their decision to hush up the affair. The vessel has left port and the sailor will be subjected to Danish naval discipline.

No, the morale of the townspeople is so low after the blows of recent weeks that they cannot cope with any further setbacks. The clouds of unnatural foreign practices must not be permitted to cast a shadow over the warming sun that rose in the sorrowful hearts of the nation on December 1.

It should also be borne in mind that the offender lives in the same house as a respectable citizen, an influential member of the Socialist Party, who has recently lost his son.

* * *

Then the boy hears a voice he recognizes.

Dr. Garibaldi Árnason takes the floor.

— It’s clear that the lad is not like other people … a homosexual … given over to the lamentable vice of wishing to engage in erotic acts with his own sex … revolting to other people … Now we know that in such cases … the body is no less infected than the mind … a specific and multiple disorder in the body’s glandular development and functioning … His perversion compounded by satyriasis … In other respects a diligent lad … can testify to that … plucky … A tricky matter … Hardly any cases known in this country … hasn’t become established … will proliferate if … My theory … a word of warning … men are rendered more susceptible to homosexuality by overindulgence in films …

The doctor is interrupted:

— … do you say, Gudbjörn?

The answer is firm:

— … have to get him …

This comment creates a stir among those attending the meeting, who all start talking at once, such is their solidarity in the face of this abomination.

xxvi

Máni Steinn has no idea where he is. He came to his senses in this room and has been here ever since.

A woman he has never seen before brings him food. She is dressed like a nurse but doesn’t behave like one. And the room itself does not resemble a hospital ward. It contains a sofa, two armchairs and two dining chairs, a coffee table and a basket of newspapers, a decorated screen with a stool and a clothes stand behind it, and, opening off the room, a cloakroom with a washbasin and WC.

The room is windowless but has electric lighting, and the boy guesses that he has been there for three or four days and nights. He sleeps on the sofa, covered by a blanket, with an embroidered cushion under his head, and for the first two days he slept almost continuously. He suspects that he has been drugged.

To prevent the boy from escaping, the nurse takes the precaution of placing the food tray on the floor outside the door, then knocking, opening it a crack and waiting for him to go to the opposite end of the room before widening the gap and pushing the tray inside with the toe of her shoe, then slamming the door shut. Rather than fetching the tray, she brings a new one every time, so a pile of trays and dirty crockery is building up in the room.

The room has two other doors besides the one that leads to the WC: the one at which he has been eavesdropping and through which the nurse delivers his tray, and another that has not yet been opened but from under which comes an agreeable odor of disinfectant.

He has tried peering through the keyholes, but both contain keys since the room is, of course, locked.

* * *

There is a knock on the door; the key is turned. The boy moves to the far end of the room. But instead of the nurse four men walk in.

He recognises three of them: the landlord from downstairs, Dr. Garibaldi Árnason, and Gudbjörn Ólason, but he can’t place the fourth, good at faces though he is.

Gudbjörn acts as spokesman, and once all four are seated he explains to the boy the plans they have for his future. It is in his interests to comply. He must understand that if this hadn’t happened in such special circumstances, he would be on his way to prison or worse by now. Dr. Garibaldi pats the boy’s knee, firmly and encouragingly; the landlord from downstairs keeps his eyes lowered; the fourth man snorts.

Finally, Gudbjörn asks if there is anything in particular, apart from his clothes, that Máni Steinn would like them to fetch from the old lady — he calls her by her full name — who will be told that the boy has been given a place on a trawler.

The boy replies that under his pillow is a red scarf that he would be glad to have.

When they are leaving, the shadow of the door falls on the fourth man just as he turns back and calls out:

— But, but, shouldn’t he, shouldn’t we…?

And then the boy recognizes the voice of the man who wanted to “put him out of his misery,” who is none other than the shifty gentleman he sucked off on the slope of Öskjuhlíd the night the Katla eruption began.

He smiles at the man. That shuts him up.

* * *

The boy lies down on the sofa and in no time he is asleep.

He dreams of antelopes.

xxvii

— Máni, Máni Steinn …

The boy feels a touch on his shoulder:

— Máni …

Sóla G— is kneeling beside the sofa.

* * *

They emerge from the clinic where the boy has been held and he discovers that he’s in the largest building he has ever entered. A whitewashed corridor; black-varnished doors on either side as far as the eye can see; a ceiling three times the normal height; highly polished linoleum; and great spherical ceiling lights that recede in a row down the corridor like a fading echo.

Máni Steinn feels an urge to shout.

The staircase alone would make an impressive structure. As if hewn from rock, the steps descend and vanish into the darkness of the lower floors. And from the wide stairwell rises a tower of wrought iron: the elevator shaft.

Sóla G— is at home here. Her father’s office is on the first floor. She presses a button beside the elevator doors.

A clank is heard from the top of the shaft.

The mechanism comes to life and with a reassuring hum begins to drag the elevator up to where they are standing.

* * *

Sóla G— lends the boy her hand and helps him out of a window on the top floor of the huge Nathan & Olsen building. It is pitch-dark.

— Stay close to me.

The boy picks his way after the girl’s silhouette, first along a walkway above the eaves, then diagonally up the sloping roof until they reach the top. His head swims, and Sóla G— tells him to straddle the ridge. Seated like this, he shuffles after her to the tower, where she helps him to his feet.

— I thought you might like to see this before you leave.

From the roof of the largest building ever constructed in Iceland — it is a whole six stories high — there is a view north to the Snæfellsjökull Glacier and south to the Reykjanes Peninsula with the pyramid form of Mount Keilir.

There is a view of Reykjavík too, darkened by the shortages — the houses look like the lumps of coal that people can only dream of.

Máni Steinn gazes out at the spit of Laugarnes, the only place in town left untouched by the epidemic, and suddenly the thought strikes him that before he and Sóla G— say goodbye for the last time there is something he must tell her about himself.

He points to an imposing wooden building on the spit.

— That’s where I lived for the first year after I came to town.

The girl is thrown.

— At the Leper Hospital?

* * *

The freighter Sterling is lying at anchor in the harbor.

Two passengers are to leave with her at dawn.

The boy is one. The other is an Englishman, who for more than a month has been waiting out the Spanish flu at the Merchant’s House in the village of Eyrarbakki on the south coast. And he’s surprisingly kind for a peg leg — as the old lady would put it — since he has agreed to escort the boy to London.

There he will be received by an Icelander who knows all the ropes — the playwright Haraldur Hamar.

Máni Steinn laughs; black wings beat wildly in his breast.