Sjón - Moonstone - The Boy Who Never Was

In Reykjavík the cessation of hostilities was greeted with the same indifference as the cessation of the Katla eruption a few days before. And indeed the sight that confronts the boy’s eyes when he arrives in the yard of the Midtown School resembles nothing so much as scenes from a field hospital in a Pathé newsreel. There has been no cease-fire in the influenza’s war on the inhabitants of the town.

The school is simultaneously orphanage and hospital, lunatic asylum and mortuary. Charabancs and horse-drawn carts come and go in a constant stream: bringing in critically ill patients for admission and cure; carrying away corpses to the cemetery chapel to be laid in coffins and buried.

All is performed with well-oiled efficiency, so swiftly has necessity taught people to service the sick and the dead.

* * *

The boy hasn’t set foot on the school grounds since he left at age twelve, at the bottom of his class.

Before he knows it, he is standing at the foot of the high wall along Laufásvegur, in the “invisible spot” that used to be his refuge during break, where he could watch his fellow pupils from a safe distance — for it had dawned on him that the choice was his; that it was he who declined to take part in the other children’s games before they had a chance to leave him out. The day has yet to come when he will voluntarily mingle with his contemporaries.

Now here he is, back in his old lookout, and despite the appalling state of affairs, he is, as he was then, unmoved by the scenes unfolding before his eyes.

* * *

— Are you just going to stand there like a spare part, boy?

Three men are waiting beside a boxlike stretcher that is sticking halfway off the back of a truck. They are short a fourth man to support the foot end on the left-hand side. With them is a nurse, and it is she who calls to ask if the boy is going to make himself useful.

The yellow box would look just like a coffin were it not for the window in the lid, which admits light and air, and allows the invalid to see out. Ashen-gray fingers with purple nails grope at the edge of this opening, as tentatively as the petals of a small flower awakening, and suddenly a delicate hand emerges onto the lid. The white lace at the wrist is stiff with blood.

Next thing he knows, the boy is shouldering the box with the other three men, and they are carrying it in through the main entrance of the school.

* * *

On the way to the emergency room, the boy notices that the assembly hall and all the classrooms on the ground floor have been converted into hospital wards. Every bed contains a patient far gone with the disease. Groans of suffering and anguish, and the sounds of adults and children weeping, can be heard out in the corridor. There are gas rings for heating water on tables here and there, and steam rises from large cauldrons.

In the classroom where the boy had failed to learn to read, they hold the box steady so the latest victim can be lifted onto the examination table. The nurse and a young doctor remove the lid. And the boy discovers that inside is the elder sister of one of his former classmates.

Her face is blotchy; her eyes are glazed.

By giving the boy a hard stare, the nurse manages to drag his attention away from the corpse. She points to a basin containing bloodstained sheets:

— Take this to the laundry, dear; then come back up here and I’ll tell you what to do next.

The Angel of Death has entered among us with the great epidemic and cast a pall of the deepest despair over many of our homes.

Men and women of all ages and stations have been snatched away. Death makes no distinction, and one often feels that it strikes where it least should. It is beyond comprehension that parents should be carried off from their children, or that the elderly, with one foot in the grave, should be deprived of their sole support. If only people could be brought to a better understanding of their duties toward others beside themselves, then death’s choice, which appears to us so harsh and unjust, would not be so impossible to understand. If only loving-kindness were a more potent force among us, a new provider and a new friend would come forward for all those who are bereft. And if only the devastating wave of grief could induce people to make more effort to bear goodwill to all men and show greater love and charity than before, it would not have broken over us in vain.

The great upsurge in loving-kindness that has been experienced around the world as a result of the late hostilities has barely touched us here. Will it not then occur to all those who believe in Divine Providence to wonder whether this terrible scourge has been released upon our nation expressly to awaken among us the same sentiment? Could any exhortation to give more thought to eternity be more memorable than that which our community has lately received?

Most of those who have crossed over to the other side were in their prime and had service yet to perform for the public good, however different they were in outward appearance. Most had friends and relatives who now bear a heavy burden of grief; parents bowed with age weep for their dashed hopes; those left alone in the world for their mainstay; children for their loving parents.

But happy in their grief are all those who, through their faith, are certain of a life hereafter. They know that this is but a brief parting, and that those who are gone have merely attained a higher plane of existence and have not vanished forever into dark graves.

* * *

Below these words of consolation in Morgunbladid are printed the names of the eighty-two townsmen and — women who had died by the time the paper went to press on the eve of November 17.

The boy glances around the classroom, which is used as a rest area for the volunteers. His fellow workers are exhausted from the day’s labors; no one is paying him any attention.

He folds the newspaper and tucks it inside his clothes, thinking it looks like something the old lady would enjoy.

Above the text there is a cross, bordered in black.

* * *

As the cinemas are still closed, he heads for home.

But first he is going to pay a visit to the National Library on Arnarhóll.

The basement is the refuge of Sívert Thordal, D.Phil., a stooping, downy-haired manuscript scholar. One would be forgiven for thinking that he was hiding away down there from the pestilence, but in fact, ever since the large white edifice was built, he has been allowed to dwell in a cubbyhole in its depths — for he is married to his research — and so Dr. Thordal always speaks of himself as the peculiar Atlas “of the Icelandic literary world, whose bowed spine bends but does not break beneath the weight of its heritage.”

The boy sometimes allows this genial hunchback to suck him off for two krónur.

* * *

He quickens his pace. He must get to bed in good time; he needs to be well rested for tomorrow’s exertions.

The situation is now so desperate that there is barely anyone left in most homes with the strength to help the doctors’ drivers to carry the worst cases. So a strapping fellow is to be assigned to every vehicle to assist them.

Máni Steinn has shown that he has what it takes.

Tomorrow morning he is to commence home visits with Dr. Garibaldi Árnason and his driver.

Dr. Garibaldi’s driver is Sóla G—.

From morning to evening, from evening to night and through to the early hours, for nine days running, the boy accompanies Dr. Garibaldi Árnason and Sóla G— on visits to the sick.

They do the rounds in a vehicle borrowed from the Reykjavík Automobile Association, which the boy recognized immediately from the engine sound as belonging to the man who had winked at him in the garage yard. The man had died early that month, and when no driver was left at the station to take his place in the Ford, Sóla G— was called in and put behind the wheel, though she had no license: her skill at riding the red Indian was well known, and it did no harm either that Dr. Garibaldi had been at school with her father.