The Atom Station (10 page)

“I shall now tell you what you ought to do,” said the organist, and placed before him a plate containing a few curled-up pastries and some broken biscuits. “You should compose a ballad about Du Pont and his atom bomb.”

“I know what I'm going to do,” said the god Brilliantine. “I'm going to divorce my wife and become a success. I'm going to be a political figure. I'm going to become a Minister and swear on oath; and get a decoration.”

“You two are slipping,” said the organist. “When I first knew you, you were satisfied just to be God; gods.”

“Why may we not achieve a little success?” said the god. “Why may we not get a decoration?”

“Petty criminals never get decorations,” said the organist. “Only the lackeys of the big ones get that sort of thing. To become a political success a man needs to have a millionaire. And you two have lost your millionaire. A petty thief does not become a Minister; to be a petty thief is the sort of humiliation that can only happen to gods, such as being born in a manger: people pity them, so that their names do not even get into the papers. Go to Sweden for the millionaires and offer your territorial waters, go to America and sell the country; then you will become a Minister, then you will get a decoration.”

“I'm ready at any time to offer the Swedes the territorial waters and sell the country to the Yanks,” said the god Brilliantine.

“Yes, but it does you not the least bit of good if you have lost your millionaire,” said the organist.

“So you think I shouldn't bother to divorce my wife?” asked the god.

“Is there any reason for divorcing wives unless they themselves wish it?” asked the organist.

“But at least it will be all right for us to shorten Oli Figure by a head?” said the god.

“It all depends,” said the organist. “Have a biscuit.”

“He's down south,” said the god. “And goes into trances. But we, we have direct contact with the Godhead itself. For instance, if I open the Bible I can understand it. Listen, could I stick a couple of half pastries into my pocket for the twins? They love having a lick at a pastry.”

“Yes, you are one of the greatest Lutherans of modern times,” said the organist. “And a true paterfamilias, like Luther himself.”

“And I don't need to do anything but wait until the spirit overtakes me,” said the atom poet. “I have never needed to work on my poems. And if I commit suicide, which is perhaps the most beautiful poem in the world, then I shall do it from divine inspiration, because the spirit moves me to.”

“Yes, you are the greatest romantic poet of modern times.” said the organist.

“But Oli Figure! His nose runs with snot,” said the atom poet. “He says, what's more, that he has an immortal soul. But the worst thing of all is that this disgusting jellyfish from down south should now be in the Cadillac.”

“So the Figure does not have an immortal soul at all, perhaps?” asked the organist.

They rejected this completely.

“Then I think you should not shorten him by a head,” said the organist. “At least, I should think twice before I murdered a man who had no soul. On the other hand it is quite impossible to murder a man who has a soul, for the simple reason that immortality is the essence of the soul: you kill him, but he lives. And now I must ask you to forgive me for having no time to discuss theology with you any more at present; I need to cull a few flowers for my friend, this lovely young country girl here.”

THE KEY

In
Njal's Saga
there is no mention of the soul, nor in
Grettir's Saga
either, still less in
Egil's Saga
, and these three are the greatest of the Sagas; and least of all in the
Edda
.
*
My father was never angrier than when he heard talk of the soul; his doctrine was that we should live as if the soul did not exist.

When we children were little we were forbidden to laugh—out loud; that was wicked. It was of course our duty always to be in a good temper, but all cheerfulness that went beyond moderation was of the devil; there were many maxims in verse on this subject: “Walk gently through the doors of joy.” My father was always in a good temper, and no one had a sweeter smile—unless he happened to hear a joke; then his face would stiffen, as if he heard cutting tools being rasped on each other's edges, and he would fall silent and become distant. No one ever saw on his face an expression of anxiety or grief, not even if the wild ponies themselves froze to death. My mother loved everything, hoped everything, endured everything; even if misfortune struck the cow, she was silent. If we hurt ourselves, we were forbidden to cry; I never saw weeping until I went to the girls' college: one girl cried because one of her puddings got burned, another cried over poetry, and a third because she saw a mouse. I thought at first they were play-acting but they were not, and then I felt ashamed in the way one feels ashamed for someone whose trousers have fallen down. There was never an occasion on which my father and mother told us children what they were thinking or feeling. Such idle chatter would have been unseemly in our house. One could talk about life in general, and of one's own life so far as it concerned others, at least on the surface. One could talk endlessly about the weather, about the livestock, or about Nature so far as weather conditions were concerned; for instance, one could talk about dry spells, but not about sunshine. Likewise, one could talk about the Sagas, but not criticize them; one could trace ancestries, but never one's own mind: only the mind knows what is next the heart, says the
Edda
. If the story was no longer a story, but began to concern oneself alone, one's own self in the deepest sense, then it was wicked to talk; and even more wicked to write. That is the way I was brought up, this is me; no one can get outside of himself.

That is why I am not going to say how it happened or what it was, I can only tell you the external causes until it ceases to be a story.

I knew that he was waiting for me out in the kitchen, like the last time; I could hear him through the wall without listening, and I knew we would be leaving together. Then my half-hour was over and I put on my coat and shook hands with my organist and received my flower. And then the other was on his feet and preparing to leave, and we went out. It was just the same as the last time, except that this time he said absolutely nothing. He walked by my side without uttering a single word.

Say something,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I am walking home with you because you are from the north. Then I shall leave you.”

“Very well, then, my friend,” I said. “You can be as silent as you like; it gives me nothing but pleasure to listen to you being silent.”

Before I knew it he had taken hold of my arm and drawn me close to him and was walking me arm-in-arm; he walked me quickly, perhaps too quickly, but without haste; and silently; he was holding my upper arm and his hand was touching my side, right up against my breast.

“Are you used to walking with a man?” he asked.

“Not one with a vocation,” I said.

“Talk as if you were from the north and not from the south,” he said.

We walked on and on, until he said bluntly, “You're cross-eyed.”

“Is that so, indeed?” I said.

“It's quite true, so help me,” he said. “You're cross-eyed.”

“Not one-eyed, though,” I said.

“It's quite true,” he said. “If one looks at you closely, you're cross-eyed. Sometimes I think you're not, but now I'm quite sure you are. Listen, you've no idea how appallingly cross-eyed you can be.”

“Only when I'm tired,” I said. “On the other hand my eyes are much too wide apart, just like the owl that I am.”

“Never in my whole life have I ever seen anything so cross-eyed,” he said. “What am I to do?”

He said all this in a gruff monotone that never undulated, but was hot through and through, and something started up in me at hearing him speak; yet I was not afraid, however, for the difference between this one and the other was still locked in my own knees. And when we arrived at my house and I began looking in my handbag, there was no key there; not a trace of a key; and it was past midnight. I had been given keys to both the back door and the front door, and I had never forgotten to take these keys with me when I went out, knowing perfectly well that otherwise I would not get in; and their place was in my handbag; and now of course I had forgotten them, or perhaps lost them; or they had shed their substance and turned into nothing, through miracle or magic. I picked every scrap and tatter out of the handbag, turned it upside down, and searched the lining to see if the keys had crept behind it, but it was no use. I was out on the street.

“Can't you rouse the people?” he asked.

“In this house?” I said. “Certainly not. I would rather spend the night out of doors than make such people open up for me.”

“I have a skeleton key,” he said. “But certainly I haven't much faith that it would fit these locks.”

“Are you mad, man?” I said. “Do you imagine I would enter this house with a skeleton key? No, I'll wait a little. One or other of the family may not be home yet and can let me in.”

He looked at me. “I could imagine you'd be in trouble,” he said, “You say yes and no to the same thing in the same breath. You had better come home with me.”

And that was how it came to pass. And it was not until dawn next morning, when I was leaving him to go home and had put on my coat, that I happened to put my hand in my pocket, and there of course was the key.

He owned nothing except a trunk; the bed, chair, and table went with the room; but the piano was on hire, for he was so far ahead of me in music that he could think of a piano when I could think no further than a harmonium. Everything was in neat order and array. There was a smell of soap. He offered me the chair to sit on, and opened the trunk and brought out a flask of schnapps, just like any other shrewd and provident country person.

“Perhaps you're going to offer me a bite of tobacco too?” I asked.

“Chocolate,” he said.

I accepted the chocolate but not the schnapps.

“What else have you got?” I asked.

“Don't be so impatient,” he said. “You'll find out soon enough.”

LOVE

I could best believe that love was some sort of rubbish thought up by the romantic geniuses who were now going to start bellowing like cows, or even dying; at least, there is no mention of love in
Njal's Saga
, which is nevertheless better than any romantic literature. I had lived for twenty years with the best people in the country, my father and mother, and never heard love mentioned. This couple begat us children, certainly; but not from love; rather, as an element of the simple life of poor people who have no pastimes. On the other hand I had never heard a cross word pass between them all my life—but is that love? I hardly think so. I think love is a pastime amongst sterile folk in towns, and takes the place of the simple life.

There was lived in me a special life over which I had no control, except to an insignificant extent, even though I called it me. Whether I was kissed or not kissed, a person's mouth was a kiss, or at least half a kiss. “You are an innocent country lump, closely akin to the awfullest crime,” sang the atom poet when he saw me; and he came remarkably close to the truth, for if anything is wicked it is life itself, which goes in its own way in this moist honeycombed vessel called a body. Did I love this deep-voiced, straight, burning man? I did not know. On the other, the one who made my knes go funny? I knew even less. Why ask? At one level a girl loves all men without differentiating them into individuals; she loves the male. And that can be a sign that she loves no male.

“You are wonderful,” he said.

“That's also what people say who meet in brief accidental embraces for a midnight hour in the middle of the roaring stream of life, and never meet again,” she replied.

“Perhaps that too is true love,” he said.

To walk home alone at night is a disaster, in novels. Some girls confuse the state of being in love and being lonely, and think they are the former when in fact they are the latter; in love with everyone and no one, just because they are without a man. A girl without a man does not know where she is placed. A man comes up to her one night as she stands preoccupied outside a house, and before she knows it she has gone home with him, where he confides to her everything: nothing. Was that love? No, she has only thrust a gag into the gaping jaws of a ravenous beast which was threatening to tear her apart, a dummy into the mouth of a thirsty unweaned infant: herself. The man was no more than an implement; and if that was wrong, then life itself was indeed the poet-singer's awfullest crime.

Once some surveyors came from the south to survey waterfalls. One of them was wearing an enormous coat, with his scarf hanging out of his pocket, and he smelled slightly of drink. She was seventeen then. He kissed her in the parlor when she brought him coffee. Why did she go to his tent that night, even though he had whispered it to her? From sheer curiosity. She was of course hot and sweating and flushed all day, from having been kissed at the age of seventeen. His tent was pitched down in the gully beside the stream, and there he stayed on his own for three nights; and she with him. She never said a word to him, and how glad she was that he was married, or else she would perhaps have begun to think about him. Then he left; and as a result of this I first began to think about myself. In reality, he gave me myself, and in return I own him for the rest of my life, despite everything—if I want to.

The other time was a boy I got to know when I was at the girls' college. First he danced with me for a whole evening, then he wrote me a letter, and finally he whistled outside my window. I sneaked out during the night. We had nowhere to go but we went none the less, for nothing can thwart a boy and a girl. But there is one thing they do not like—that it should be discovered, that it should be spread around; this is ourselves, this we alone know, here is the point where experience ceases to be a story, where the story has no longer any rights. But by good fortune he had to go south after we had met three times, and from then on everything was quiet and no one was afraid in that dangerous place, the girls' college, where immorality is defined ethically but not chemically.