“Bingo,” said Ludd. “But call it what you like. I say getting rid of evidence. And, hey, did you never wonder why there is no hieroglyph in ancient Egyptian for ‘fruitcake’ or ideogram for it in Chinese or no word for it in French? The best they can do is Bûche de Noël Anglaise. And by the way, in Spanish fruitcake’s ‘adobe’.”
Sensing from Hobart’s face that he’d made a convert, Ludd continued earnestly, “Why, you ask, didn’t we hear about all the people killed over the centuries by falling fruitcake? Because the powers-that-be have hushed it up. They’d say if people knew they’d run panicking in the streets. But the most important thing was that this knowledge gave them a handle on power. Now they could say, We know something too terrible for the masses to know and that gives us the right to tell them what to do.
“Think about how fruitcake has shaped modern life,” he said. “Like television. A whole civilization sitting around watching a box with a screen on it. It’s all about keeping us inside. Shopping malls are the same thing. Get ’em under roof where they can’t be hit by falling fruitcake going from store to store.”
Ludd shook his head. “Well, you can’t run democratic governments like that. No sir! We are adults. We’ve got to face up to the truth. And I’m the boy to lead the way.”
Now he looked at Hobart and confided, “Look, call me crazy, but I’ve always had this feeling that I’ve been put here for a purpose bigger than myself. Writing this book I decided, damn it, this was why!”
For a brief moment Hobart actually found himself envying the man, having had that same special feeling of purpose himself so very long ago. Now all of a sudden it sprang up inside him again. No, he realized, he couldn’t let this man reduce the meaning of life to keeping out of the way of falling fruitcake and disposing of the evidence. All the finest artistic achievements and monuments of human endeavor mustn’t become some kind of fruitcake absurdity. Poor Ludd was a lunatic who had lucked upon a terrible truth. But one he could not be allowed to make public. No, his book must never be published. Strange how things work out. The man who believes he’s been put here to reveal this terrible secret meets up with the man who now knows that his mission in life had always been to make sure that it wasn’t.
Hobart knew he had to act quickly. But how? Then it came to him. “May I look?” he asked, nodding at the petrified fruitcake. When Ludd nodded back Hobart picked up the block in his gloved hands and carried it over to the window next to the bookcase as if to examine it in the daylight.
As he did, Ludd said, “Hey, back there you asked what itsy-bitsy change my Transom House editor wanted. Well, get this. She’s a vegetarian. She saw fruitcake from outer space as an attack on her core beliefs. So no fruitcake. She wanted me to make it guess what? Meatloaf. Meatloaf! Give me a break. No, she won’t be publishing my book. But somebody else sure will. And it will blow the lid off the biggest secret in the history of the world.”
Ludd was directing all of his resentment at the telephone now. Hobart wished there was another way to stop him from publishing his damned book. But he knew there wasn’t. Uttering a prayer for both their souls, he raised the fruitcake shoulder high and brought it down hard on the man’s head. Ludd fell forward across his desk.
The fruitcake broke in half with the blow. The pieces dropped to the floor and out popped a metal tube. Hobart shoved the tube and Ludd’s manuscript into his briefcase. Then he left the office, giving one last glance back at Ludd’s body. Maybe the authorities would think Ludd had been killed when something like traffic vibrations had inched the block forward until it finally fell from its high shelf. Then he left the office, closing the door firmly behind him to spare any student the shock of discovering the body.
Hobart started on his walk home at his usual pace, glad for the time to think things out. Then he looked up at the sky, quickened his step, and wished he’d brought Ludd’s hard hat.
Terrible as it was to kill a man, he knew he’d done the right thing. When spring came and made the ground diggable, he would bury the tube and Ludd’s manuscript in some deep out-of-the-way hole in his grandfather’s memory. The thought made him remember something his grandmother had once told him way back then. With a nod at the hole at the end of the garden she said, “Your grandfather’s a wise man. He thinks ahead.” She meant, he now understood, that he’d dug his hole before winter and the fruitcakes came. It seemed ironic now, for later his grandfather had been replaced as reeve by a young newcomer to town who built a fallout shelter large enough to hold all the council members and their wives. Hobart wondered if fallout was a code word for fruitcake.
Anyway, he knew he’d done the right thing. What really bothered him was that long ago he thought he’d been put here for some high artistic purpose. Not to kill some poor sap who’d lucked onto a terrible truth. No, he didn’t like that part of it. And this reminded him of what their late cosmic neighbors had said about those malfunctioning fruitcake machines, how it was the natural tendency of created things to rebel against their creators. Well, Hobart damn well knew if he’d been created for a lifetime of grinding out fruitcake he’d have rebelled too. Here was something more for him to think about during the long, cold winter ahead. He might even read over Ludd’s manuscript and translate the tube. Yes, and he might even find himself thinking clearer with the decoder ring on his finger.
When Hobart reached the door of his apartment building he turned back for a moment. “Look out, world,” he warned the horizon. “Maybe fruitcake does happen.”
Death of a Sunflower
by Ragnar Jonasson
Translated from Icelandic by the author.
Ragnar Jonasson is the author of four crime novels published by Verold Publishing in Iceland. A TV series based on the books will soon begin filming in North Ice land, where the books are set (see Sagafilm). One of the novels also came out in Germany in 2011, and received rave reviews. The following tale — the authors first for EQMM — appeared in a German magazine before being translated into English for us. It’s set against the backdrop of turmoil created by the 2008 collapse of Icelandic banks.
He always knew that he would return to the scene of the crime.
He didn’t know that fifty years would pass. Now, he was an old man who had carried the burden of this sin — this crime — which had changed everything. As a result he had moved abroad and lived there for decades, like an outlaw. His native Iceland had no place in his heart anymore — and hadn’t had a place there since this dramatic night in 1958. Iceland meant nothing to him, but now he had returned there nevertheless.
From the tower suite at Hotel Borg one has a bird’s-eye view of Reykjavik. The city comes to life, the colorful houses are transformed into a magnificent kaleidoscope. The Square of Austurvöllur becomes oddly minute and the large parliament building looks like any other building. Nothing is like it was before, the point of view changes everything.
It is New Year’s Eve and the noise from the fireworks is thundering. The sky is lit up like an abstract painting, colours from imaginary cans of paint scattered all over the place.
The colours of the sky cast a glow into the suite where all the lights are turned off. Everything is so strangely quiet in spite of the loud fireworks. Everything is as it should be except for the still body in the middle of the floor. Life fades away during the dramatic symphony of the fireworks; a new year makes its entrance.