Then he began to speak: “Icelanders,” he said, in a deep, calm, national-father voice; and the people fell silent, acknowledging the drama. “Icelanders,” he said, repeating this word that is so little in the world and yet so large, and now he lifted three fingers on high over the crowd; then he uttered his oath slowly and firmly, with long pauses between the words:
“I swear—swear—swear: by everything which is and has been sacred to this nation from the beginning: Iceland shall not be sold.”
9. Bad news of the gods
The organist and the self-conscious policeman were sitting at the battered old harmonium with some barely legible scrawled notation in front of them, so engrossed that they neither saw nor heard me when I came in; and for half an hour they were unaware that I was sitting behind them. For a long time they struggled their way through some sort of tunelessness, full of weird sounds that recalled the light over the countryside early in the morning before anyone is afoot. In the end, however, I seemed to perceive a melody emerging, but it came from such a distant place, in addition to which its wonders revealed themselves to me in so sudden a flash, that perception struck rather than touched me. And just as I was beginning to get palpitations over a new world, a fantastic and undiscovered world, on the other side of usual form, the two had stopped and were on their feet, animated and exalted, with a light in their eyes as if they had composed the music themselves, and they greeted me.
When I began to ask questions, the organist said he did not know if it was safe to trust me with one of the more important secrets in the world, the name of a new genius: was I stupid enough to come face to face with such a problem without missing my foothold in life? And if I were not stupid, was I then intelligent enough to obey this new maestro’s call to each individual to deny the world in which we live and take part in creating a new one for the unborn? But when my organist saw how grieved I was at not having his confidence he was sorry for me, patted me on the cheek and kissed me on the forehead: “It was a violin concerto by Roberto Gerhard,” he said, and asked me not to be angry, saying that he had just been joking. “He is a Spanish boy in Cambridge, who does not even know music; if there were any vigor left in the Esterhazy family they would beat him. Let us hope he does not get a bigger funeral than Mozart.”
He went into the kitchen to see to the coffee, and the self-conscious policeman looked at me searchingly, to see if I had understood anything.
“It’s always becoming more and more difficult to live,” he said. “Now I’ve heard this on top of all the rest.”
At that moment the gods arrived, Brilliantine with those hot piercing murderer’s eyes, and Benjamin drifting through the ether in a trance of pessimism. The organist welcomed them with his usual kindliness, asked them for news of the godhead and the upper regions, and offered them coffee.
They were agitated and brought bad news of themselves: Pliers had thrown them out. “He has taken up with Oli Figure. Figure says, Dig up bones. It’s been in all the papers that they are in communication with the Darling.”
“By all means let them go digging,” said the organist. But the self-conscious policeman asked, “Where is the Cadillac?”
“He has stolen our Cadillac,” said the atom poet. “And I revenged myself by smashing with a sledgehammer all the keys on the piano he gave me. I’m going to bellow like a cow. Then I’m going to kill myself.”
“I am quite sure you will not commit any such lechery, my friend,” said the organist. “Suicide—masturbation multiplied by itself! You who are a god! No now you must be joking.”
“I have seen all the pictures from Buchenwald,” said Benjamin. “It is impossible to be a poet any longer. The emotions stand still and will not heed the helm after you have studied the pictures of these emaciated bodies; and these dead gaping mouths. The love-life of the trout, the rose glowing on the heath, dichterliebe, it’s all over. Fini. Slutt. Tristram and Isolde are dead. They died in Buchenwald. And the nightingale has lost its voice because we have lost our ears, our ears are dead, our ears died in Buchenwald. And now nothing less than suicide will do any more, the square of onanism.”
“But it is always possible to kill someone,” said the god Brilliantine.
The other replied, “Yes, if one had an atom bomb. It is both intolerable and unseemly that a divine being like me, Benjamin, should not have an atom bomb while Du Pont has an atom bomb.”
“I shall now tell you what you ought to do,” said the organist, and placed before him a plate containing a few curled-up pastries and some broken biscuits. “You should compose a ballad about Du Pont and his atom bomb.”
“I know what I’m going to do,” said the god Brilliantine. “I’m going to divorce my wife and become a success. I’m going to be a political figure. I’m going to become a Minister and swear on oath; and get a decoration.”
“You two are slipping,” said the organist. “When I first knew you, you were satisfied just to be God; gods.”
“Why may we not achieve a little success?” said the god. “Why may we not get a decoration?”
“Petty criminals never get decorations,” said the organist. “Only the lackeys of the big ones get that sort of thing. To become a political success a man needs to have a millionaire. And you two have lost your millionaire. A petty thief does not become a Minister; to be a petty thief is the sort of humiliation that can only happen to gods, such as being born in a manger: people pity them, so that their names do not even get into the papers. Go to Sweden for the millionaires and offer your territorial waters, go to America and sell the country; then you will become a Minister, then you will get a decoration.”
“I’m ready at any time to offer the Swedes the territorial waters and sell the country to the Yanks,” said the god Brilliantine.
“Yes, but it does you not the least bit of good if you have lost your millionaire,” said the organist.
“So you think I shouldn’t bother to divorce my wife?” asked the god.
“Is there any reason for divorcing wives unless they themselves wish it?” asked the organist.
“But at least it will be all right for us to shorten Oli Figure by a head?” said the god.
“It all depends,” said the organist. “Have a biscuit.”
“He’s down south,” said the god. “And goes into trances. But we, we have direct contact with the Godhead itself. For instance, if I open the Bible I can understand it. Listen, could I stick a couple of half pastries into my pocket for the twins? They love having a lick at a pastry.”
“Yes, you are one of the greatest Lutherans of modern times,” said the organist. “And a true paterfamilias, like Luther himself.”
“And I don’t need to do anything but wait until the spirit overtakes me,” said the atom poet. “I have never needed to work on my poems. And if I commit suicide, which is perhaps the most beautiful poem in the world, then I shall do it from divine inspiration, because the spirit moves me to.”