The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

30 Mashed Turnip 1940

The uniform-obsessed man was, of course, always in his grey jacket, complete with shoulder straps and a collar marked ‘SS.’ Grandma had asked, if not ordered, him on several occasions to spare her these horrors under her roof, but Dad said that he couldn’t be seen in civvies.

‘But we have guests this evening and I would prefer it if…’ she’d answer in Danish.

‘I’m afraid I can’t, Mother. The rules of the Third Reich are very strict in this regard. Apart from the fact that it’s very difficult to take off the jacket with this cast on.’

In the evening the seven of us sat at the table: seven little dwarfs from a snow-white island that had absolutely no impact on the history of the world and yet each one of them was a world unto himself. On this occasion we were dining with Dad’s siblings Puti and Kylla, and Jón Krabbe, a half-Danish Icelander who now headed the embassy after Grandad’s departure and whom Grandma sometimes invited for dinner. I remember him precisely because of how unmemorable he was, as is often the case with diplomats. He was a handsome but wooden man in his seventies with a straight nose and white hair, a flash of exuberance in his eyes, but stiff lips and slightly oversized ears. They were the best weapon in his diplomatic arsenal: here was a man who listened. Jón always tilted his head slightly before he spoke, to emphasise the fact that the words he was about to speak did not necessarily reflect his own personal opinion or that of the Icelandic government but were open for discussion.

Grandma sat at the end and glared at the SS insignia on my father, as he slipped into the place furthest away from her. I sat opposite him and felt as if I were sitting at a negotiating table. Because it was a tricky situation. Grandma was a Danish aristocrat who was married to an Icelander and despised the Germans. Dad was a German soldier who was married to an Icelandic woman and despised the Danes. Jón Krabbe was a half-Icelandic official, married to a Danish woman, who every day had to bow to the Germans. Puti was a half-Danish, but optimistic Icelander who allowed himself to dream of an independent Iceland. Kylla was also Icelandic Danish but married to a Faeroese man who considered the idea of Icelandic independence utterly ludicrous. Mum was from Breidafjördur and saw everything from the perspective of the sea. I was still a work in progress.

So in came the good old rosy-cheeked Helle, who convinced herself that the deadly silence was due to the utter failure of her mashed turnip and rabbit pie, and started to blab nervously.

‘Have I ever told you the story about Ebbe Roe?’ she began, with a nervous laugh. ‘No? Haven’t I? There was once a turnip farmer back home called Ebbe Roe. One day he found a giant turnip in his garden. It was so big that everyone told him to take it to the agricultural fair in Hobro, where it won a prize. To celebrate, Ebbe took it to an inn, but there it was stolen from him.’ She became more animated, chuckling as she continued, ‘Ebbe searched for it all over town and finally found the turnip in a gambling club on the outskirts. Someone had bet it and lost, and after Ebbe Roe –’ Helle paused to catch her breath, laughing harder, ‘After Ebbe Roe had lost his house, cattle, wife, children, shoes and braces, he finally managed to win the turnip back and walked out into the dawn with it. Then he got hungry and decided to take a bite from the giant turnip. BUT. IT TASTED. BAD.’ She howled, between shrieks of laughter. ‘It tasted so bad that he gave it to a poor family he met on the road, ha-ha-ha. And then he walked towards the rising sun in his socks with his trousers around his heels… That’s a story from Jutland for you.’

This was followed by an awkward silence as the ambassador’s family stared at the cook with a strained smile. They had learned from their very first years in the Icelandic foreign service not to interrupt people, however loquacious they seemed, and not to pass judgement on them, even if they were servants. It was something we could be proud of, to be the only Icelanders who understood the protocol of international courtesy.

‘Oh, what a delightful story,’ Grandma finally exclaimed in Danish, half-closing her eyes. Then she smiled and nodded at the cook, who clocked her expression and light-footedly choo-chooed out of the dining room, parting with a sentence that hovered in the air like a trail of locomotive smoke.

‘I just hope you haven’t lost your appetite for my turnip! Ha-ha.’

‘A typical Danish parable. No one’s allowed to be better than anyone else here, and the worst thing that can happen to you is a stroke of luck,’ said Dad as soon as the door closed.

‘It’s never good to have a stroke of luck,’ answered his sister, Kylla.

‘You’ve lived here too long,’ said Dad.

‘Do you think you’ve had a stroke of luck?’ Puti asked, grinning with his chubby cheeks.

‘What do you mean?’ Dad said.

‘Come on, you must be able to see it. You think you’re going to get a slice of that giant turnip that’s growing bigger and bigger and will soon be the size of Europe.’

‘Are you comparing the Thousand-Year Reich to a turnip?’ Dad asked, indignant.

‘No, not a turnip, a giant turnip,’ his brother said with a smirk.

Kylla sat between Jón Krabbe and Dad, and now, leaning forward, she said, ‘Have you thought this through, Hansi? What will you do if Hitler loses the war?’

Dad had the expression of a rooster that had just entered an empty henhouse. He’d never heard anything like this before.

‘Loses? What do you mean?’

His sister fixed her gaze on him without moving her head, and said, ‘It’s very likely. No one can win a war in five countries at the same time.’

‘Then he’ll just cash in his braces and shoes and get his turnip back,’ said Puti, in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

It didn’t work. Everything froze at the table. Krabbe exchanged glances with each brother in turn, like a chaperone at a kids’ dance, as he scooped the remains of his sauce onto his fork with a knife. Mum had emptied her plate and smoothed the napkin on her broad lap. Puti sat between Mum and me and, after a generous gulp of red wine, deflected the conversation back to Grandma.

‘Isn’t that story by what’s his name… H. C. Andersen?’

‘No, it’s just a typical old Jutland tale,’ said the ambassador’s wife, stabbing her meat with a fork.

‘Which is now German,’ Puti added teasingly, and to complete the joke he clicked his heels under the table and raised his right arm: ‘Sieg Heil!’ What made it really funny, though, was that Puti lifted his arm as if it was in a cast, like Dad’s.

I released a laugh, but Mum managed to swallow hers. Dad darted me a glance of disapproval and surprise. He’d turned bright red and sat at the end of the table like a beetroot in a grey jacket. Grandma stared at her Puti in astonishment. His joke seemed to have caught everyone off guard. Dad didn’t know how to respond. At first he pushed his chair back from the table as if he intended to leave, but then he stopped and instead delivered a sermon in defence of Hitler and Nazism. He didn’t get far, however, because Grandma halted him to remind him that we were not sitting under German rule and that freedom of speech reigned here, and then she asked him in the kindest of tones to stand outside on the windowsill if he wanted to sing the brown shirts’ praises. Then she looked away to avert her son’s stern gaze and said that while she didn’t make a habit of imposing her politics on her children, she asked him to please ponder on his father’s words when, on returning from a business trip to Berlin, he had said that Nazism struck him as a society turned upside down, where the beer cellar reigned over universities, parliament and church.

‘But… but those are precisely the institutions that failed,’ Dad said. ‘The times called for new and unconventional solutions. Isn’t Dad going to be governor at the service of the British? The civil servant who takes over from the king! Isn’t that turning things upside down?’

Puti looked at his mother in surprise.

‘Is that true, Mother? Is Dad going to be governor?’

Lady Georgía didn’t answer.

‘He’d never do that. Dad would never betray the king of Denmark,’ said Kylla.

‘Betray the king? How can Iceland serve him when it’s been occupied by the English and the king by us?’ Dad asked authoritatively. The blushing was gone now.

‘By us? Tosh!’ Grandma thundered in Danish. ‘You’re not German, Hans Henrik! You’re my son!’

Grandma wasn’t used to outbursts, and a new kind of silence descended on the table and lasted until she hesitantly stretched out for a sip of wine. Puti tried to revive the conversation: ‘Krabbe, what exactly is Iceland’s position with regard to Denmark now?’

Krabbe tilted his head before commencing his reply, and carefully averted all our gazes while he spoke.

‘I think the Danes fully understand that the Icelanders need to, to some extent, take care of their own affairs in their current predicament in full cooperation with the occupying forces, in the same way that we Icelanders must understand the predicament of the Danes with regard to their distinguished invaders.’

In its journey around the table, Krabbe’s gaze had locked on Dad’s eyes as he pronounced those last words: ‘with regard to their distinguished invaders.’ Then he bowed his head again, as if waiting to be absolved of his impudence. The guests sat without batting an eyelid. No one seemed to comprehend these tactful words with their soporific effect. And to quash any protest that might be voiced by anyone who had understood his words, the official snatched the napkin off his lap and painstakingly raised it to his mouth, as if to prevent it from uttering any further indiscretions. That was the role of the diplomat: to shock people with courtesy.

The table was therefore silent again until Helle returned to carry away the dishes. Recovering her senses, Grandma turned to Mum.

‘So what do you make of that Ebbe Roe tale, Massebill?’

‘Yes, well, they sometimes caught giant halibuts in the nets back home in Svefneyjar, but it always caused problems, destroyed the nets, and made the lads too cocky. They always had to sail straight to Flatey to show it off. And it doesn’t taste particularly good either.’