Moonstone (2 page)

The man lies down in bed, takes the boy's head out of the casket, and lays it on the pillow beside him, then draws up the quilt to its chin. The head's eyes open.

From the pillow the boy can see his body standing at the foot of the bed, dressed up in his Sunday best but lacking a head.

His head begins to laugh; the body shakes with laughter.

 

II

(October 19–20, 1918)

 

iv

Reykjavík has two picture houses, the Old Cinema and the New Cinema. Films are shown daily at both, one or two on working days and three on Sundays. Each screening lasts from one to two and a half hours, though lately films have become so long that they sometimes have to be shown over consecutive evenings.

The boy watches all the movies that are imported to Iceland. As a rule, he goes to both cinemas on the same day and sees most films as often as he can.

*   *   *

He was eleven years old when he saw his first motion picture, in the autumn of 1913. On the first day of summer that year, Pastor Fridrik, public benefactor to the boys of the town, had founded within the YMCA movement a brigade modeled on foreign scout troops, called the Varangians after the Norse warriors who had once fought for the emperors of Byzantium. The old lady had got wind of this and, on the strength of her connection with the man of God—she'd shared a bed with Pastor Fridrik's maternal aunt for a whole winter when they were both young hired hands—pleaded with him to accept into the Varangian troop an unfortunate orphan whose upbringing had been dumped on her five years before.

She had, she said, no more idea than anyone else from the countryside how to bring up a child in town; the boy was an outsider and at the age when, if nothing were done, he would join the rabble of little savages who roamed Reykjavík's main street, squealing like pigs, chucking horse manure at passersby, and tipping over cyclists. Either that or—which she found more likely—he would end his days in the attic, since he was already such a loner that rather than go out and play with his classmates he preferred to hang around at home, smoking cigarettes with her.

The boy had overheard her saying something of the sort to Pastor Fridrik, since he had been ordered to wait outside in the passage, munching hard candies, while they had their talk.

Once the old lady had finished her piece, the boy was summoned into the office. Imposing youth leader and puny youngster looked one another in the eye. After they had studied each other for a while, Pastor Fridrik announced:

—He's a promising lad. I'll take him.

Then, stroking his distinguished beard, he added:

—But he'll have to stop smoking.

The business of being a Varangian turned out to be insufferably dull. The other youths knew the boy from school and shunned him just as they did there. It all boiled down to being a strapping young man and currying favor with the patrol leaders who led the brigade in the scout training that was intended to enhance their virility and mental powers. Most bearable for the boy were the occasions when they were permitted to dress up in the costume of the Varangian Guard, after the fashion of the men of old, in blue-and-white tunic, red cloak, and blue-and-red cap, both because he enjoyed making his cloak swirl around his thighs and because it allowed him to become somebody else.

Then, on the first day of winter, the proprietor of the Old Cinema invited the Varangians to attend the premiere of
The White Glove Band
, on condition that they turn up in their full regalia.

That night, for the first time that he could remember, the boy dreamed.

The Varangians made no further trips to the cinema, so he stopped attending. Instead, he made a pact with the old lady that providing he didn't take up smoking again, he would be allowed to go to the pictures.

*   *   *

And now the boy lives in the movies. When not spooling them into himself through his eyes, he is replaying them in his mind.

Sleeping, he dreams variations on the films, in which the web of incident is interwoven with strands from his own life.

But he has yet to dream of Sóla G—.

 

v

The boy is loafing idly on the pavement outside Hotel Iceland. He has just emerged from the Chaplin film at the New Cinema and is waiting to go to the latest Fatty caper at nine o'clock on the other side of the square. Both the town's screens are showing nothing but riotous comedies, presumably because today a referendum is being held on the country's independence, and life is supposed to be fun. Not that the boy is affected by the fuss, as he has no more right to vote than anyone else under forty. Still, the clowning and slapstick of Fatty and Chaplin can be enjoyed at any age and can just as easily raise a laugh for the twenty-third time.

There's a convivial atmosphere around the hotel, as there always is when a passenger ship is in port. The steamer
Botnia
docked at coffee time, having voyaged from Copenhagen with a cargo of people and freight. Men and women of the better sort wander in and out of the lobby; strange languages hover in the air, mingling with the fragrant blue tobacco smoke from cigarettes and cigars; the town's followers of fashion are out in force to cast an eye over the foreign visitors' tailoring, and in the hotel dining room a brand-new gramophone record is playing. Interspersed with this modern feast for the senses is a cacophony of barking and neighing, creaking of harnesses, and shouts of “ho, ho, ho,” while piles of dung, deposited by the horses of recent arrivals from over the mountains, steam gently in the cool evening air.

It would be incorrect to say that the boy is wholly idle as he loiters there on the hotel sidewalk. He is, in fact, amusing himself by analyzing the life around him, with an acuity honed by watching some five hundred films in which every glance, every movement, every expression, and every pose is charged with meaning and clues as to the subject's inner feelings and intentions, whether for good or for evil. Indeed, all mankind's behavior is an open book to him—how people conduct themselves in groups, large or small; their relationship to every conceivable thing; their movements in all kinds of interior, in the streets, in the town and country—since the simplified and exaggerated miming of the actors has made it easier for the boy to fix it all in his mind.

His attention is particularly drawn to a knot of young men who have gathered by the hotel doors. Although they are dressed up in their best suits to gain entrance to the dining room, he recognizes among them three former Varangians, who are now at the College for Marine Engineers. He overhears them saying that some of the
Botnia
's crew are ill with the same influenza that ravaged the country last summer, and that the ship will be delayed while new hands are found to take their place. The boy knows the illness from personal experience. He was as sick as a dog for five days, with a headache and a high temperature, a cold and an upset stomach, and missed the films
From Headquarters
and
The Black Owl
, neither of which, to his great dismay, has been shown again.

One of the boys from the engineers' college shows his companions a ring he is wearing on the little finger of his left hand: a silver ring with a black stone. It is a gift from his sister, who has today returned from Denmark after six months' training in home economics at the
smørrebrød
school in Odense. The youth holds up the ring to catch the glow of the gaslight by the hotel entrance, and his friends duly admire it. He kisses the black stone: Sis really is the best! What a pity she couldn't come along this evening, but she's feeling a bit out of sorts after the voyage.

The cathedral bell tolls nine.

The group of friends is drawn into Hotel Iceland.

The boy dashes across the square: the projectionist at the Old Cinema is as punctual as the sun.

 

vi

—Moonstone …

The boy makes a puzzled sound. The man points at him:

—
Your name, Máni Steinn, Moonstone …

He repeats the word, mimicking the man's pronunciation:

—Mún-stón …

The man nods gravely.

—
Yes, you are
 …

The boy translates the words in his head: “Yes, you are.” Is English such a simple language, then, that it fits Icelandic word for word? Perhaps he could learn it like that, beginning with the words that are exactly the same, if he repeats them often enough?

He points at the man.

—Yú neim …

The man laughs.

—
Is none of your business
 …

Turning serious again, he runs his fingers through the boy's dark-red hair.

—
Auburn moon, harvest moon
 …

This requires more effort in language learning than the boy can be bothered to make. Yet, unable to resist the temptation, he repeats:

—Óborn mún, nonn off yor bisniss …

Smiling at the man, he seizes his hand and removes it from his head to place it between his legs. They are under the covers in the man's bed in Hotel Iceland.

The man turns away from the boy, pressing against his hot body and guiding the boy's hard member inside himself.

*   *   *

Spring turns to Autumn over night

In Flanders field,

Before its time the corn is cut,

Your auburn hair,

A harvest meal by ravens pluck'd.

—From
Billy
by Anonymous (1915)

*   *   *

After the Fatty short was over, the boy had wandered around the center of town, ending up by the illuminated window of Café Skjaldbreid.

A foreigner was sitting at a table inside, reading a book through a pair of pince-nez. He was about thirty, and the boy was intrigued by his fair waxed mustache and wavy hair. After a few minutes, the man sensed that he was being watched. Lowering his book, he glanced around. When finally he caught sight of the boy's face in the window, he turned chalk-white and leaped to his feet.

The boy waited for him outside in the dark street, his back to the café, and let the man come right up to him before he turned. The man held out a shaking hand as if he couldn't believe the boy was of this world.

—Billy?

*   *   *

After the boy had crawled in through the window of his hotel room and they had begun to take off their clothes, the man unfastened the artificial leg made of hardwood that was attached with a leather harness to his right thigh.

The boy had never seen such a device before and examined the leg from every angle until the man took it away from him and hung it from the foot of the bed. He drew Máni Steinn under the covers to join him:

—
Moonstone
 …

 

III

(October 31–November 1, 1918)

 

vii

Almost all anyone in Reykjavík can talk about these days is the “Spanish flu,” which, it is now believed, was carried to the country on the steamship
Botnia
.

Cables from Copenhagen report that the pestilence is raging there with devastating virulence; comparisons are being made with the cholera epidemic that ravaged the city in 1853. At the same time, articles appear in the Reykjavík papers with statements by respected Danish physicians claiming that the symptoms of the disease are no more serious than might be expected from common influenza, and that there is no cause to resort to drastic and costly preventative measures, since the mortality rate must be regarded as within acceptable limits. Endorsing this policy, the Icelandic Board of Health merely urges the public to take precautions similar to those they would take for the seasonal grippe that does the rounds every year. Other voices are heard saying that no notice should be taken of the bleating of the Dane, since he is made of different stuff from the Icelanders—those proud descendants of the Viking warrior Egill Skallagrímsson.

But with every day that passes without government action, more of the townspeople are struck down with symptoms just like those described in the news from Denmark as afflicting the lesser race. These include painful pneumonia, physical prostration, nervous depression, and fever.

The boy has heard the old lady reading these things aloud to herself from copies of
Morgunbladid
, which she receives gratis at the end of every week when their landlord downstairs has finished with them. For such skill had she brought to wiping this man's bottom in his infancy that, once her working days were over, he had invited her to live in his attic rent-free. Later, when she was asked to take in the boy, the landlord had made no objection to his living with her. And this despite the fact the blessed man is a
socialist
—and all his folk, as the old lady exclaims every time the family downstairs does her a kindness.

The boy has learned in addition that at number 5 Raudarárstígur there is a used cooking stove for sale; that Mrs. Harlyk is to lead a meeting of the Salvation Army; that a marriage has taken place between the painter Fridrik E. Borgfjörd and Ólöf Bjarnadóttir of Lambastadir; that such Danish foodstuffs as
appetitsild
,
ansjoser
, and
sardiner
are available from Einar Árnason's stores; that a purse has been lost and a silver brooch found, because the old lady enunciates every last word that is printed in the papers.

He is grateful for the old lady's noisy delight in reading; were it not for her, he wouldn't know the first thing about home or world affairs, since he himself is so illiterate—the letters of the alphabet disguise themselves before his eyes, glide between lines, switch roles in the middle of a word, and might as well be a red code to which he does not have the key—that he can barely struggle through the programs and title cards at the cinema.