Sjón - Moonstone - The Boy Who Never Was

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

* * *

The toe of the shoe is thrust out from beneath the skirt and stamped down with such force that the floor creaks. Gray slime wells up between the boards. The air grows thick with the stench of rotting fish.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

The hands reappear. The figure flings a pair of eyebrows onto the lid. Pain lacerates the boy. He raises a hand to his forehead, but it is shaking too much for him to feel whether his own brows are still there.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

The figure withdraws its hands inside its clothes.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

The gramophone voice buzzes inside the wooden box.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

The veiled figure bangs down a nose between the cheeks and a moving mouth below it. The floorboards creak. The slime flows over the boy’s feet.

Green eyes are cast onto the lid of the box. And a chin.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

A handful of teeth.

— A little closer, dear, a little closer …

A fistful of red locks.

— A little closer, dear …

The gramophone slows its revolutions. The voice drawls.

— A little …

The black garment billows around the figure. It holds out its gloved hands, a woman’s breast resting in each.

— Closer …

The boy cries out. At last he knows what is expected of him. But he’s too late. He’s rooted to the spot.

— Closer …

He sucks up the gray slime through his bare soles.

— Closer …

Milk oozes from the nipples.

Plashing waves. Summer-pink light. The tide is going out. Small, twinkling-footed birds are busy pecking for insects at the water’s edge. He is standing in a bed of tansy where the beach shelves down, taking care not to frighten them. The sunlight sparkles on the waves, which foam dark red at the crests as they roll over themselves.

* * *

The boy examines himself in a hand mirror, spreading the dark blood on his lips with the tip of his tongue. Blood spurts from the corners of both his eyes, runs along the lids, and stays there like lines drawn by a master’s hand. Ropes of blood pour from his nostrils to form a thick mustache. Drops of blood congeal on his earlobes.

* * *

Hearing someone calling his name, he looks away from the shorebirds, whose movements are hampered now by having to wade through the thickening blood. By the three-story building that stands on the spit, a big wash is under way in huge tubs. The water steams. He hurries over to the washerwomen. The blood dyes the birds up to their breast feathers.

* * *

The nails of the boy’s left hand put on a spurt of growth, becoming as long as fingers in the blink of an eye. Both fingers and hand triple in size all at once, with a cracking of the bones. He drops the mirror. His shadow is lying on the floor, stubbornly human in shape. The shadow stretches its limbs and leaps to its feet, distorting the boy.

* * *

“Tut, tut,” say the washerwomen when he reaches them. “Tut, tut, look how he’s dirtied himself!” They chivy him out of his clothes and sling him into the boiling water with the bloodied bedclothes. Push him to and fro with the laundry bats, pound him, lift him out and dunk him down again, until he’s as soft as linen.

* * *

The boy no longer has any need of blood or bone, muscle or gut. He dissolves his body, turning solid into liquid, beginning from within and rinsing it all out, until it gushes out of every orifice he can find. He is a shadow that passes from man to man, and no one is complete until he has cast him.

* * *

He is hoisted out of the tub, flung onto the wringer, and thoroughly squeezed dry; then two washerwomen take him by the arms and legs, stretch him between them, and hang him out with the rest of the laundry. “I reckon it should fit her now,” he hears the larger woman say as they walk away from the line.

* * *

In the evening, when the birds on the shore have drowned in the boy’s blood, Sóla G— comes and fetches Máni Steinn from the washing line. She takes him home and puts him on. She thinks his red lips, lined eyes, and earrings suit her, but she washes off his mustache and sheathes his nails.

— This one’s not dead.

— But he isn’t breathing …

— He is breathing, faintly.

— But he hasn’t got a pulse …

— If he’s breathing, his heart must be beating.

Half-awake, the boy feels a metal object being placed against his left breast and held there.

The old lady’s voice:

— But his hands are like ice …

The unknown man’s voice shushes her brusquely.

A moment’s silence.

— His heartbeat’s regular. He’s alive.

The metal object is removed from the boy’s chest. His undershirt is buttoned up. The quilt is drawn over him again.

The old lady:

— Aren’t you going to take him, then?

The man:

— There’s no need. How are you yourself keeping, ma’am?

Her:

— I’m alive too.

Him:

— So I’d noticed.

The boy manages to crack open an eye.

— I owe it all to these …

The old lady’s gnarl-veined hand intrudes into the boy’s narrow field of vision, holding a sea-green packet of Three Castles cigarettes.

— Surely not.

The man, who is sitting on the edge of the boy’s bed, shifts position. It is Dr. Garibaldi Árnason, the surgeon.

— You couldn’t spare one?

The boy half opens his eyes. The doctor reaches out a hand and extracts a cigarette from the packet. The old lady sticks a match in the paraffin stove and gives him a light.

He draws the smoke deep into his lungs. She watches him smoke the cigarette halfway down.

— How is the landlord’s family doing? They haven’t wanted me downstairs since the boy was taken poorly.

— The son’s with us at the French Hospital; he hasn’t got long to live. The daughter’s not quite as bad.

The old lady:

— Hell and damnation …

She breaks off, then adds:

— God bless the landlord and all his socialist folk.

The doctor pats the quilt.

— One’s grateful for every life that’s saved.

He rises to his feet.

— And, thanks to you, this fellow’s going to pull through.

The boy blinks. The doctor turns away from the bed and addresses someone at the other end of the attic:

— Would you get the car ready, please?

The boy raises his head from the pillow.

On the landing stands a figure with hypnotic eyes.

Sóla G— gives the boy a conspiratorial smile — gestures to her neck and from there to the red scarf that is knotted around Máni Steinn’s own — then lowers herself nimbly through the stair opening.

As the boy is drifting off again, he hears the old lady pestering the doctor to take the packet of cigarettes in return for his help; his need is greater than hers.

Dr. Garibaldi replies that it is more important she herself stays fit and sees to it that as soon as the boy is back on his feet he presents himself at the emergency hospital in the Midtown School, where they could use some stout lads.

The morning the boy was up and about again it was officially announced in Paris that an armistice had been signed between the Allies and the Germans. According to the handbills circulating the news, the announcement was accompanied by a salvo of gunfire and scenes of wild jubilation.