“In Russia?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “In the Soviet Union.”
Then the girl started to laugh, she thought it so funny that I should have confused Russia and the Soviet Union.
“Russia,” he said in explanation, “was the land of the emperors: that Satanic prison of the nations.”
I thought it strange that he should say “that,” for I had never heard anyone use it in that way before. So I asked, “Why do you say ‘that’? Are you quoting from a book? Or is it Communist jargon?”
He thought about it and mumbled somehting over to himself, then finally he said, “‘That?’—as far as I know it’s perfectly good grammar: that young Iceland.”
“I’m sorry for picking you up on it,” I said. “Tell me more about the Youth Center.”
He had such a clear and spiritual look in his eyes that I asked myself: can such innocent-looking people belong to a cell? He did not know the difference between the spoken word and books, but that was the only false note in what he said.
“In a Youth Center youth meets in a civilized and organized fashion to enjoy all the different aspects of culture,” he said, “there is a swimming pool and a gymnasium, studios for acting and art, a tower for parachutists; rehearsal rooms for orchestras and soloists, general and specialized libraries; a workshop where boys and girls can learn welding, a printing works to teach hand printing as an art, a comprehensive technical college, a laboratory and a botany department, projection rooms, lecture rooms, refreshment rooms, sitting rooms…”
“And a room for flirting,” I said.
“Of course,” said the girl before she had realized it; and the boy stopped short in his list, cleared his throat and looked at her censoriously, and his mouth hardened a little.
“Icelandic youth should not lie in schnapps-spew under the feet of men and dogs,” he declaimed. “Icelandic youth should not be nurtured on murder films and pornographic thrillers, Icelandic youth should not live in the streets where it learns to blaspheme, to shriek, and to steal. Icelandic youth…”
“One white loaf and a kilo of biscuits,” I said.
“You don’t believe him,” said the girl, and served me sorrowfully. I saw that I had hurt her to the quick with my frivolousness. I paid for what I had bought and was about to leave.
“Perhaps I’ll have a few more tickets, come to think of it,” I said, before I knew I was saying it; and I felt myself go white the way one does when one embarks on a secret, strictly forbidden affair. And as always in having an affair, the moment one lifts one’s foot the step is taken. “There’s one thing I would like most of all,” I said, and I even got palpitations and laughed unnaturally: “and that is to attend a cell-meeting.”
There—it was said!
The boy and the girl looked at one another, in twofold seriousness this time, I am almost inclined to say in double-twice solemnity; there was a problem.
At last he said, “You aren’t in the Party.”
“What party?” I asked.
“The Party,” he replied.
“I’m not in any party,” I said. “But if I like the cell-meeting I might become a Communist.”
Now they both started laughing again, and the girl said, “I’ve never heard anything like it: if she likes the cell-meeting! This is literally the funniest thing I have ever heard.”
I walked out of that baker’s an utter fool, not even knowing the reason why until later—until after I had attended a cell-meeting.
For although they had received my request with less than alacrity at first, thinking it complete nonsense, they changed their attitude after I had gone, or perhaps they referred the matter to the Party leadership. Next day the bakery girl took me aside and said she had been deputed to inform me that I might attend. She said I was to come with her the following evening. That night I slept uneasily, troubled by thoughts of the alarming debauchery which my curiosity or congenital depravity was drawing me into. And seldom have I suffered such a disappointment as when I actually attended a cell-meeting; or rather, seldom has anything been such a relief to me.
In a low-ceilinged basement flat some men and women had gathered, most of them rather elderly; they had all come straight from work and had not had time to change their clothes. There were not enough seats for all of them; some stood leaning against the walls, and a few sat on the floor. The youngest child was sick on the floor. And this was the full extent of the debauchery and all the murder.
The business of the meeting was to debate the Central Committee’s draft of Party policy for the Town Council elections. There was a long discussion on whether certain marshland in Mosfell District should be turned into arable land or not. Most of them advocated a system of milk transport and milk distribution different from the one then in operation. An old man made a well-ordered speech about the necessity of inserting into the policy declaration a clause about improving the landing facilities for small boats at Reykjavik harbour: it had now come to the point that Reykjavik Corporation was quite literally evicting the little men who did their fishing in tiny inshore-boats here in the bay; the men who provided the inhabitants of the capital with good fresh fish from the bay had no place of their own along the whole length of the sea front controlled by the Corporation. Then the next item on the agenda was dealt with, the question of a day nursery. I was sitting with five others on a divan, crushed into a corner, and shame on me if I do not think I fell asleep; at least I cannot remember what decision was reached on the day nursery question.
Then a young man asked leave to speak and began to discuss the newspaper, it was the bakery girl’s friend. Yet again it had come to the point where the Party had to make a new effort for the paper, appeal to the Party members, collect new subscribers, collect money, find regular backers. Last week it had been mere chance that the paper had not closed down. The Government had ceased to advertise in the paper because the paper had exposed the Government’s plan to steal the country from the people and sell it; and for saying that these salesmen, moreover, were then going to freshen up their reputations by exhuming the bones of the Nation’s Darling from his grave in Denmark and giving him a tile-hat funeral in Iceland. The wholesalers had stopped advertising in the paper because it had said that they had F.F.F. in New York. The cinemas refused to advertise because the paper had said that Hollywood did not know how to make pictures. In other words, the truth had touched a nerve, the class-enemy feared nothing except the truth; feared lest the people hear the truth. Now once again the working classes had to make some sacrifices for the sake of their paper. The paper was the poor man’s cow; if he slaughtered her or let her waste away to death, the family would die. During this speech I woke up again.
And when I saw these penniless worn people, as worn and poor as my own people home in the valley, reach into their pockets for their purses and open them with these worn hands which all at once I felt I could, weeping, have kissed, and then take out that famous widow’s mite, some of them even emptying their purses on the table and those without purses scrawling their names on a list—when I saw this I felt I was utterly and completely in sympathy with these people and would always be so, however dreary the matters they discussed, whether they wanted to reclaim some marsh-land in Mosfell District or hold on to their country against the tile-hats who wanted to betray it from under them and sell it from them. So I too scrawled my name on the list and pledged myself to subscribe ten kronur a month to the paper’s funds even though I had never seen it.
The woman of the house wanted us to have some coffee before we went, but many, including myself, said they were in a hurry to get home; some said they had not even had a wash yet, and anyway it was getting late. The master of the house accompanied me to the door; he was the cell-leader. He said I was welcome to come again the next time, and that I must then stay on for coffee.