“Damn damn damn the devil’s hell.”
The Christian Studies teacher angrily blew the whistle, and I was banished from the pitch. My teammates looked at me hatefully and silently swore at me. The other team celebrated.
After the soccer game, it was snack time: sponge cake and milk. Then free time where we could stay inside our rooms or go for a walk. I went to my room, got a whiteboard pen, drew a big A in a circle on a piece of paper, then hung it on the door with sticky putty. I’d marked my room and was relieved and filled with pride. I couldn’t imagine that this was going to trouble anyone since I hadn’t scrawled directly on anything; it was just a piece of paper, and I hadn’t ruined anything. I never imagined that anyone could get angry about it. But only a micro-speck of time had passed when the Christian Studies teacher came into my room, wearing an absolutely furious expression of anger. He looked at my anarchist sign, suddenly tore it down from the door, and crumpled it up. I sat alone, frozen on my bed, and had no clue what was up. Why was this man so terribly angry? This was odd. Was he opposed to anarchism? Did he know what anarchism was and hate it? Why? I would have understood at once if he had gotten a little irritated, perhaps thought it was untidy or something similar. But he was much more than frustrated. He was totally berserk. His eyes shot sparks, and he shook with anger. There must be some misunderstanding. Because I thought he was too angry for the situation, I smiled awkwardly at him, as if to show him it was okay and that he had no reason to be angry — and also to let him know that I wasn’t a bit angry, even though he’d torn down my sign. He rushed over to me, seized me as I sat on the bed, shook me, and yelled at me:
“And you smirk right to my face!”
I wasn’t smirking. I was just surprised and scared.
“Are you completely brain-addled, child?” he said and shook me some more.
Some people came running, and my peers who had heard the hullabaloo retreated, crouching down outside the door to watch this strange scenario.
“You won’t stay here a minute longer!”
An employee came and took my hand.
“Get away from this place!” the Christian Studies teacher yelled at me.
I hated this man. Psycho. We gathered my stuff into my bag, and the employee led me along the corridor and out to a car. The kids watched with surprise. I got in and set off to town. I looked out the window and saw that the boys were standing petrified, watching me. What had happened? I couldn’t understand it. All kinds of thoughts rushed through my mind.
What had I done? Why was this lame-o idiot so angry? Why didn’t he tell me? The employee who drove the car was angry, too, and I dared not ask him. I just stayed silent and racked my brains. How could I explain this to my mom? Why had I been sent home?
“What are you doing back?” Mom asked as I walked into the house.
“I don’t know. I was just sent home.”
“What did you do now?”
“Uhh, I don’t know. We were in the middle of football, and I swore. I didn’t know it was forbidden.”
It was the only explanation that came to mind. Of course I knew it was forbidden, but not that it was quite so forbidden. Mom sighed and lit a cigarette.
It was not until the week after, when I met my classmates again, that I understood why the man had become so angry. After I had gone, all the boys on the Vatnaskóg confirmation trip were called to a meeting. The meeting was about me. After the boys had settled down, the Christian Studies teacher smoothed out a crumpled piece of paper and showed them what I had written. The A with a ring around it: anarchism.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked in a loud voice.
“Isn’t that the anarchism symbol?” someone said.
“No! This symbol stands for the Antichrist. The boy drew a sign of the devil, and hung it on the door.”
Everyone knew he was mistaken. Maybe he’d never listened to the Sex Pistols and “Anarchy in the UK,” like Johnny Rotten sings:
I am an anarchist
I am an Antichrist
Maybe he thought that anarchists and the Antichrist were the same? Maybe he’d mixed them up? It made no difference to me. He was stupid and annoying. No good.
After I was sent back to town and the meeting at Vatnaskóg was over, the good boys were able to have peaceful, curse-free days with the Christian Studies teacher. They didn’t have to worry about anything because the Antichrist had been sent back to town and his mother had been notified.
There was an odd atmosphere about the management of Réttarholt School, Bústaðir Church, and Bústaðir. The guys who ran these places struck me as peculiar and almost alarming. I felt like they were connected in some mysterious way. Maybe they were just friends. I had my suspicions that they were all in some secret clique that held meetings late at night. At the meetings, they decided who was important and who wasn’t, who mattered and who should be left out, and — what was most frightening — who ought to be hounded out. Kids who were beautiful and well-behaved at school and played sports were the best. They were deemed important. Kids who knew how to dance were also important. I wasn’t good at any of that stuff. Me and my kind were unwelcome. I was unimportant. These guys were in charge, and the kids obeyed. I felt their power everywhere: at school, in preparation for Confirmation, in the community. And I felt that these guys were somehow disagreeable. Hitlers. There was something about them and their presence that was so uncomfortable: how they moved, how they talked and watched. I could feel no warmth in their eyes, just hardness and arrogance. And I was not the only one who felt this because it was widely talked about. Even the beautiful and the well-behaved kids objected to them. But none of us really understood why. You couldn’t talk about it too loudly; you needed to be careful who might hear you. No one wanted to say something that somebody would then rat out to the guys. It all happened in whispers. You’d hear claims of strange goings-on and didn’t always know what was true and what was an exaggeration or a fabrication. It was whispered that the priest was a pervert. Was he? The girls said he was a creep. I didn’t quite know what it meant to be a creep, but it was obviously not a good thing. It was said that he sometimes fondled the girls, their breasts, and said lousy things to them, that they were beautiful or something like that. All this was reported in greatest confidence. I dared not ask anything more about it. I found sexual intercourse awkward enough a topic. I didn’t quite know what to make of having your breasts fondled. But I thought it was weird that some old guy would do it — especially a priest. Don’t priests have to be good? And he didn’t ask for permission. I would never fondle someone’s breasts without permission. But it was almost a source of embarrassment. Awkward. You just got a sense that things were not as they should be. Disgusting guys. I thought the guy at Bústaðir was a creep. An old man who liked to dance. These men didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them. They looked at me askance, and I was wary of them. But they were careful to leave me alone and had few direct dealings with me; they just allowed the other kids to do it for them. They probably sat for hours with those kids behind closed doors and talked about how much of a loser I was, saying they should make fun of me and drive me off. They knew full well the bullying and violence that took place. They had seen it time and again with their own eyes, but they didn’t care. It was what they wanted, and I knew they were hiding something.
When I was a kid, I believed in God. Grandma taught me. She taught me the Lord’s Prayer and talked a lot about God. She also told me that God watched over me, thought about me, and loved me and that I should diligently pray to him. I had absolutely tried to pray to God on several occasions but felt he didn’t concern himself with me. I didn’t exactly doubt his existence but reckoned he had more important matters to consider than me. It meant nothing to ask for protection from God. Once, for example, I had a really terrible toothache the day before my birthday, and I lay praying, asking God to stop me having the toothache on my birthday. I prayed and hoped, but he saw no reason to grant my wish. He felt it was okay if I had a toothache on my birthday. I didn’t really think much about God; he was just somehow there with Grandma. And when Grandma died, he left my life. Punks weren’t impressed by God. They were outright against him and even claimed that God didn’t exist up there above our heads. Punk was partly about challenging Christian and civic values.