29
Death of a Soldier
1940
We were silent on the way home. I looked around at the people, streets and houses. You could tell Denmark was a dead country at a mere glance. It was clear that even the lamp posts were in mourning. Cars drove down the streets in a funereal silence. Many windows were concealed behind dark curtains, and pitch-black swastikas fluttered over public buildings like ominous eagles. All of a sudden I felt the chill of the occupation and broke into a cold sweat at the same time that I reached the height of my ten years, acquired a new maturity, and understood that Mum was right: it is impossible to occupy a country. It’s like wanting to control someone in his own home.
I said goodbye to Åse on the landing and ran up the stairs into our apartment, which now seemed as vast as a whole region to me: the last free patch in Denmark, an Icelandic island in the middle of the ocean of war, inhabited by a few isolated people.
Yes, we were even more isolated than the people back home in Breidafjördur because now there was no longer any telephone contact with Reykjavík. The last phone call had come from Grandad to Grandma: ‘They want me to be governor. It’s a new post, temporary, while the occupation lasts.’ Then Grandma passed the receiver to Dad, and the future governor of Iceland spoke with Hitler’s future soldier. I remember him standing in the long corridor, with one foot on a Turkish rug and the expression of a stubborn twelve-year-old as he listened to his father.
‘Son, they… they say that a father who watches his son go to war feels… feels two things.’ His voice quivered slightly. ‘Pride, on one hand… and apprehension, on the other.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It pains me, son… It pains me to feel only one of those emotions.’
‘Yeah?’
I think Dad was spared a death on the battlefield by the fact that he was already dead before he left.
30
Mashed Turnip
1940
The uniform-obsessed man was, of course, always in his grey jacket, complete with shoulder straps and a collar marked ‘SS.’ Grandma had asked, if not ordered, him on several occasions to spare her these horrors under her roof, but Dad said that he couldn’t be seen in civvies.
‘But we have guests this evening and I would prefer it if…’ she’d answer in Danish.
‘I’m afraid I can’t, Mother. The rules of the Third Reich are very strict in this regard. Apart from the fact that it’s very difficult to take off the jacket with this cast on.’
In the evening the seven of us sat at the table: seven little dwarfs from a snow-white island that had absolutely no impact on the history of the world and yet each one of them was a world unto himself. On this occasion we were dining with Dad’s siblings Puti and Kylla, and Jón Krabbe, a half-Danish Icelander who now headed the embassy after Grandad’s departure and whom Grandma sometimes invited for dinner. I remember him precisely because of how unmemorable he was, as is often the case with diplomats. He was a handsome but wooden man in his seventies with a straight nose and white hair, a flash of exuberance in his eyes, but stiff lips and slightly oversized ears. They were the best weapon in his diplomatic arsenaclass="underline" here was a man who listened. Jón always tilted his head slightly before he spoke, to emphasise the fact that the words he was about to speak did not necessarily reflect his own personal opinion or that of the Icelandic government but were open for discussion.
Grandma sat at the end and glared at the SS insignia on my father, as he slipped into the place furthest away from her. I sat opposite him and felt as if I were sitting at a negotiating table. Because it was a tricky situation. Grandma was a Danish aristocrat who was married to an Icelander and despised the Germans. Dad was a German soldier who was married to an Icelandic woman and despised the Danes. Jón Krabbe was a half-Icelandic official, married to a Danish woman, who every day had to bow to the Germans. Puti was a half-Danish, but optimistic Icelander who allowed himself to dream of an independent Iceland. Kylla was also Icelandic Danish but married to a Faeroese man who considered the idea of Icelandic independence utterly ludicrous. Mum was from Breidafjördur and saw everything from the perspective of the sea. I was still a work in progress.
So in came the good old rosy-cheeked Helle, who convinced herself that the deadly silence was due to the utter failure of her mashed turnip and rabbit pie, and started to blab nervously.
‘Have I ever told you the story about Ebbe Roe?’ she began, with a nervous laugh. ‘No? Haven’t I? There was once a turnip farmer back home called Ebbe Roe. One day he found a giant turnip in his garden. It was so big that everyone told him to take it to the agricultural fair in Hobro, where it won a prize. To celebrate, Ebbe took it to an inn, but there it was stolen from him.’ She became more animated, chuckling as she continued, ‘Ebbe searched for it all over town and finally found the turnip in a gambling club on the outskirts. Someone had bet it and lost, and after Ebbe Roe –’ Helle paused to catch her breath, laughing harder, ‘After Ebbe Roe had lost his house, cattle, wife, children, shoes and braces, he finally managed to win the turnip back and walked out into the dawn with it. Then he got hungry and decided to take a bite from the giant turnip. BUT. IT TASTED. BAD.’ She howled, between shrieks of laughter. ‘It tasted so bad that he gave it to a poor family he met on the road, ha-ha-ha. And then he walked towards the rising sun in his socks with his trousers around his heels… That’s a story from Jutland for you.’
This was followed by an awkward silence as the ambassador’s family stared at the cook with a strained smile. They had learned from their very first years in the Icelandic foreign service not to interrupt people, however loquacious they seemed, and not to pass judgement on them, even if they were servants. It was something we could be proud of, to be the only Icelanders who understood the protocol of international courtesy.
‘Oh, what a delightful story,’ Grandma finally exclaimed in Danish, half-closing her eyes. Then she smiled and nodded at the cook, who clocked her expression and light-footedly choo-chooed out of the dining room, parting with a sentence that hovered in the air like a trail of locomotive smoke.
‘I just hope you haven’t lost your appetite for my turnip! Ha-ha.’
‘A typical Danish parable. No one’s allowed to be better than anyone else here, and the worst thing that can happen to you is a stroke of luck,’ said Dad as soon as the door closed.
‘It’s never good to have a stroke of luck,’ answered his sister, Kylla.
‘You’ve lived here too long,’ said Dad.
‘Do you think you’ve had a stroke of luck?’ Puti asked, grinning with his chubby cheeks.
‘What do you mean?’ Dad said.
‘Come on, you must be able to see it. You think you’re going to get a slice of that giant turnip that’s growing bigger and bigger and will soon be the size of Europe.’
‘Are you comparing the Thousand-Year Reich to a turnip?’ Dad asked, indignant.
‘No, not a turnip, a giant turnip,’ his brother said with a smirk.
Kylla sat between Jón Krabbe and Dad, and now, leaning forward, she said, ‘Have you thought this through, Hansi? What will you do if Hitler loses the war?’
Dad had the expression of a rooster that had just entered an empty henhouse. He’d never heard anything like this before.
‘Loses? What do you mean?’
His sister fixed her gaze on him without moving her head, and said, ‘It’s very likely. No one can win a war in five countries at the same time.’
‘Then he’ll just cash in his braces and shoes and get his turnip back,’ said Puti, in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.