It didn’t work. Everything froze at the table. Krabbe exchanged glances with each brother in turn, like a chaperone at a kids’ dance, as he scooped the remains of his sauce onto his fork with a knife. Mum had emptied her plate and smoothed the napkin on her broad lap. Puti sat between Mum and me and, after a generous gulp of red wine, deflected the conversation back to Grandma.
‘Isn’t that story by what’s his name… H. C. Andersen?’
‘No, it’s just a typical old Jutland tale,’ said the ambassador’s wife, stabbing her meat with a fork.
‘Which is now German,’ Puti added teasingly, and to complete the joke he clicked his heels under the table and raised his right arm: ‘Sieg Heil!’ What made it really funny, though, was that Puti lifted his arm as if it was in a cast, like Dad’s.
I released a laugh, but Mum managed to swallow hers. Dad darted me a glance of disapproval and surprise. He’d turned bright red and sat at the end of the table like a beetroot in a grey jacket. Grandma stared at her Puti in astonishment. His joke seemed to have caught everyone off guard. Dad didn’t know how to respond. At first he pushed his chair back from the table as if he intended to leave, but then he stopped and instead delivered a sermon in defence of Hitler and Nazism. He didn’t get far, however, because Grandma halted him to remind him that we were not sitting under German rule and that freedom of speech reigned here, and then she asked him in the kindest of tones to stand outside on the windowsill if he wanted to sing the brown shirts’ praises. Then she looked away to avert her son’s stern gaze and said that while she didn’t make a habit of imposing her politics on her children, she asked him to please ponder on his father’s words when, on returning from a business trip to Berlin, he had said that Nazism struck him as a society turned upside down, where the beer cellar reigned over universities, parliament and church.
‘But… but those are precisely the institutions that failed,’ Dad said. ‘The times called for new and unconventional solutions. Isn’t Dad going to be governor at the service of the British? The civil servant who takes over from the king! Isn’t that turning things upside down?’
Puti looked at his mother in surprise.
‘Is that true, Mother? Is Dad going to be governor?’
Lady Georgía didn’t answer.
‘He’d never do that. Dad would never betray the king of Denmark,’ said Kylla.
‘Betray the king? How can Iceland serve him when it’s been occupied by the English and the king by us?’ Dad asked authoritatively. The blushing was gone now.
‘By us? Tosh!’ Grandma thundered in Danish. ‘You’re not German, Hans Henrik! You’re my son!’
Grandma wasn’t used to outbursts, and a new kind of silence descended on the table and lasted until she hesitantly stretched out for a sip of wine. Puti tried to revive the conversation: ‘Krabbe, what exactly is Iceland’s position with regard to Denmark now?’
Krabbe tilted his head before commencing his reply, and carefully averted all our gazes while he spoke.
‘I think the Danes fully understand that the Icelanders need to, to some extent, take care of their own affairs in their current predicament in full cooperation with the occupying forces, in the same way that we Icelanders must understand the predicament of the Danes with regard to their distinguished invaders.’
In its journey around the table, Krabbe’s gaze had locked on Dad’s eyes as he pronounced those last words: ‘with regard to their distinguished invaders.’ Then he bowed his head again, as if waiting to be absolved of his impudence. The guests sat without batting an eyelid. No one seemed to comprehend these tactful words with their soporific effect. And to quash any protest that might be voiced by anyone who had understood his words, the official snatched the napkin off his lap and painstakingly raised it to his mouth, as if to prevent it from uttering any further indiscretions. That was the role of the diplomat: to shock people with courtesy.
The table was therefore silent again until Helle returned to carry away the dishes. Recovering her senses, Grandma turned to Mum.
‘So what do you make of that Ebbe Roe tale, Massebill?’
‘Yes, well, they sometimes caught giant halibuts in the nets back home in Svefneyjar, but it always caused problems, destroyed the nets, and made the lads too cocky. They always had to sail straight to Flatey to show it off. And it doesn’t taste particularly good either.’
31
Danish Primary School
1940
We were stuck in Denmark until autumn and beyond. There were few trips by ship to Iceland and they were risky. German and British submarines were locked in a relentless ship hunt and there wasn’t a single whale in the sea that was unaffected by the war. Grandma Georgía went back to Iceland in autumn, on the famous Petsamo trip, in which two hundred Icelanders living in Nordic countries were offered the option of sailing home on the Esja but first had to make their way to Petsamo, a fishing village on the northern tip of Finland. Grandma insisted on our not coming with her. ‘You don’t put all your golden eggs into one boat.’ Puti immediately feigned offence and said, ‘Am I not a golden egg then, Mum?’ since he was to accompany her on the trip.
‘No, you’re a balding egg,’ I answered.
Mum and I were due to travel on the next crossing. But it never happened. Dad had vanished to his war job in midsummer, and the two of us were left in the embassy residence. In light of events, the embassy had been shut down, but the sale of the upstairs apartment had been delayed for many months because of the occupation. Initially we held on to our heroic chef Helle and chauffeur Rainer. He descended from Franco-German nobility but had lost all the papers that proved it in the mess of World War I. The genes were still firmly implanted in him, however, because his heels always clicked when he was forced to wait in a corner or on a pavement. He sported three bushy black eyebrows on his face: two on his forehead and one on his upper lip.
At the beginning of September, I was placed in the local school. The first day didn’t go well because I came home with ‘scrap wounds.’ The kids had surrounded me in the yard and jeered at me: ‘Klipfisk! Klipfisk!’ – Salted fish! Salted fish! A day later the teaching started. The teacher was a fat gentleman with a high-pitched voice.
‘And here we have a new pupil from Iceland, Miss Björnsson. Perhaps you’d like to tell us a little bit about Iceland? Is it true what they say, that no trees grow there?’
‘No. But they’re very short. They say if you get lost in an Icelandic forest, you only have to stand up.’
The class laughed loudly to show they were laughing at me and not my joke.
‘But they also say that to see Danish mountains you have to bend down.’
For that impudence I was beaten up in the school playground and came home with a torn ear. I refused to go the next day, and a week-long school strike followed, until Mum found a cosy little school for me up by the Rosenborg Park that went under the charming name of Sølvgades Skole, Silver Street School, and every morning Rainer drove me there.
The bullying of Icelandic children in Danish schools seemed to have been approved by the parliament as part of the national syllabus, since I got the exact same treatment from this elementary school as I had from the previous one.
‘Salted fish! Salted fish!’
The teacher was a tall blond man with thin hair and thick-lensed glasses who finished his introduction by mispronouncing my name to gales of laughter in the classroom, and the nickname ‘Hebron’ was whispered around the room. The Hebron Hotel was a notorious brothel at the time, so the children thought it was hilarious.