A few weeks later he showed up for the haymaking in Breidafjördur, and then he headed to Germany the following spring to pick his university. By some unfortunate coincidence, having barely reached the age of thirty, he happened to be standing on a pier in Hamburg on 5 May 1937, when for the first time he saw ‘Hjalti,’ who was officiating over the launch of the gigantic cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff in a grand ceremony in front of a vast crowd. (Before the war, Dad and other Icelanders used to call Hitler by the Icelandic name Hjalti, and a few years later, after the famous series of Hjalti children’s books came out, I started calling him ‘little Hjalti,’ much to my father’s horror.) Dad often spoke about that event. Beholding the Führer seemed to have branded his soul. Already by then the Nordic Studies faculty in Lübeck had changed into some kind of Nazism-justification department: its roots were steeped in Old Norse mythology and the Icelandic Sagas; its ideology stemmed from those glorious blonds who inhabited the Great North. Dad was therefore a weak man in the wrong place, a blond Viking who spoke German with an Aryan accent and, what’s more, came from a high-ranking family. Twenty minutes before the war, Himmler’s bloodhounds sniffed him out and discovered that Herr Björnsson was not just a super Aryan but also the son of the highest official in the land, a formidable catch. They offered him a gilded grey uniform. With runic letters: SS.
Hans Henrik suffered severely from what some people call leader-induced paralysis, or starstruckness. The symptoms are clear: In the presence of a leader or film star, the subject loses his faculties of speech and free will. The ability to reason diminishes and the face moulds itself into a canine smile, coupled with a hanging-tongue syndrome. This is a paralysing condition that can afflict the most unlikely people and transform noble gentlemen into drooling puppies.
People who suffer from leader-induced paralysis (LIP) always feel a compulsion to follow strong men. In that sense my father was representative of the German nation: an upright man bent by humiliation, a man of great heritage but no future. But he was far from being a Nazi by nature. He was kind to everyone, and his only friend in Argentina after the war was a Jew. He didn’t subscribe to the Nazi heresy because he agreed with their extreme views, but simply because of his vulnerability to the dazzling glow of power. He mistook his weakness for strength and his uniform for proof that he was a man among men.
Instead of being a son of the new Iceland, he joined up with the murderers of Europe. That was the real tragedy of his life, a fact he could never flee from. Like a stray dog he roamed from one country to the next, without ever being able to remove that SS collar. Not even Mum could get it off him when, freshly widowed, she took him back into the house. And death didn’t manage to remove it either. His memory will always be soiled by the mistakes he made at the age of thirty.
How would the great Freud have interpreted my father’s error? Most sons kill their fathers sooner or later. The lucky ones do it with their own hands, others hire someone else to do it for them, but Dad would settle for no less than the entire German army to avenge himself for his defeat in the battles of Reykjavík, Vejle and Kiel.
There is nothing more risible than the vengeance of a coward, and nothing more tragic.
23
Aldon Heath
2009
There is a man named Aldon Heath and he lives in Australia. I’ve never been there. But he writes to me enthusiastically at the end of his day, which is the morning mail for me. I skim through it, along with the obituaries, and answer if I feel like it. It’s mostly tedious abdominal measurements, really. In the olden days it was said that the people down under walked upside down. In the case of Aldon, this might be true. His mind never stretches higher than his waist, and his waist seems to dominate his whole existence. But I doubt he’s any more gifted down there, even though his entire intellect is stored right there in that small skin pouch split into two compartments.
He works as a muscle inspector in some gym in downtown Melbourne and updates me on the status of his torso the way Icelanders do about the weather.
‘Just got home from a three-hour power session with Bod. It sure takes its toll, working out this hard after a day’s work. But of course, we intend to do even better after your e-mail last week.’
What a bitch I can be.
We really went for it tonight. Sixty minutes on the mill and then bench presses and weights. Bod did 295 lbs on the bench, which doesn’t happen every day. We were the last out, after Jeff gave up on the bench. As I was telling you, he got first prize two years ago and second last year when Héctor won. But Bod is way better than them now. Makes all the difference having Miss World behind you! He’s increased his muscle mass. This evening’s measurements are: weight 196, muscle mass percentage 44, arms 18, torso 48, waist 33, thighs 26. Promise better readings tomorrow. Might cut eggs down to six.
‘Love, yours, Aldon.’
I’d like to point out that the brute writes in a lingo that’s too modern for a woman who learned her English in Greenwich Village bars in the fifties. Lóa has been polite enough to translate some of it for me and discreet enough not to ask any questions.
I allow ‘Linda’ to torment this macho wonder mercilessly. He has absolutely no brain, this guy, and refers to his own body in the third person, as if it were his pet dog. Linda plays along with the game and sends her regards to Bod, saying that she can’t wait to meet him and hopes he’ll be ‘in shape’ when the moment comes. But the beauty queen sets clear demands on results; she only mixes with winners. The Melbourne bodybuilding tournament is imminent, and our man is throwing heart and soul into it. He comes home boiling hot at the end of the day and fries his eggs on his flat belly and bacon on his forehead. Then he downs some steroids, bless him, and something called a protein drink, which Lóa tells me people drink in all the gyms of the world.
It occurs to me that I could try to build up my ‘muscle mass’ with those steroids, but Lóa tells me I’m aggressive enough as it is, without having to top myself off with that stuff. Some body-obsessed relative of hers had a bad experience on that front, showed up at a family do with a puffed-up chest and winged arms, threw himself on the table and started biting it, and got involved in some rape case, which was all fist and fury, however, since one of the unfortunate side effects of steroids is that they shrink a man’s tool to the size of a pea.
No doubt this is also the case with Aldon, the Aussie. The guy’s raving mad.
‘Bod starts his tanning sessions tomorrow. Three weeks to go and everything on full steam. We want to keep the engines going full throttle after the victory because Bod wants to be in top form when he meets you in London. And the pussy ban is still in force, of course. You can trust me on that. The Linda muscle is still a restricted area.’
Miss Pétursdóttir has promised to meet him at the May Fair Hotel in London right after the competition. I’m playing with fire. Because I’ve got a fire organ, too, somewhere, rusty and sooty as it may be.