House of Evidence (30 page)

“I didn’t really miss those organs. I should naturally have preferred the operation to be tidier, but my problems were only physical. Matthías, on the other hand, was never the same man again; his personality changed completely. Once a strong, virile man, he became very sensitive, listless, and lethargic. I had to become the strong one in our relationship for many years after.”

“Where did you say they moved you to?”

“To Dreibergen. As the war drew to an end, the Germans retreated eastward from the Allied advance, taking their prison population with them. The Dreibergen prison also played an important role after the abortive attempt on Hitler’s life on the twentieth of July 1944. Everyone implicated in that conspiracy was taken there and executed. We prisoners witnessed the executions that night, though we didn’t know who these people were. We just saw the shadows and heard the cries of agony. Up to that point, we had believed that the Nazis would not actually put us to death, and that if we could just survive the mistreatment, we should be safe. These hopes were shattered that night, and Matthías broke down completely. Over the next months, all he wanted to do was to curl up on the floor and await his fate.”

As Hrefna listened to this account, she thought about how distant these events were from her own reality. She had been five years old at the end of the war, and remembered nothing of the war years. During her life, there had always been peace. She thought about the generation that had been born in Europe before the turn of the century and had experienced two world wars. How had they managed to stay sane?

“What saved you?” she asked.

“It was the German girl from Hamburg, the one who interpreted for the Norwegian prisoners, who saved us and many others. The president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count
Folke Bernadotte, managed to negotiate with Himmler for the release of Scandinavian prisoners. A motorcade of Swedish buses traveled between prison camps in Germany to pick people up. The German girl had put us on her list. Because our names were there, we were set free. We arrived in Sweden in April 1945. We were in a sanatorium there until we managed to get to Iceland on the
Esja
that summer, arriving in Reykjavik on the ninth of July.”

“And then you met Jacob Senior again.”

“Yes, that’s why we went to Iceland. We were in a bad state after the mutilations in Rendsburg; our urinary systems were a mess, and we urgently needed the attentions of a skillful surgeon. We knew of a clinic in Switzerland where we could have treatment, but it was expensive, and Matthías thought that Jacob might be able to help us.”

“Was he able to?”

“To a very limited extent. It was a mistake for us to come home.”

“Why?”

“Hearing our account proved too much for Jacob Senior. He blamed himself for what had happened to us, and he had a breakdown.”

“And that was when he stopped writing his diary,” Hrefna said.

“I do not know,” Klemenz said.

“What happened next?”

“Jacob managed to scrape some money together for us, and made a legal transfer of half of the house to Matthías. Old Alfred had disinherited Matthías, and Jacob wanted to make amends. Jacob died a week later, as you know.”

“Do you have a theory about what happened to him?”

“When I heard that Jacob Senior had been found dead, I felt certain that he had taken his own life. His reactions during our meetings over the previous days were of that nature. I recognized them from the prison camps; it was usually obvious when people were haunted by such thoughts. I discussed this with Matthías and we were both worried, regretting very much having burdened him with our troubles. At that point, we decided that this would remain our secret forever.”

“But Jacob Senior was murdered.”

“Yes, according to the police, Jacob was shot. For what reason I do not know, but then I was not familiar with his history here.”

“What did you and Matthías do after Jacob died?”

“After attending the funeral, we left the country on the first available boat. We managed to put together enough money for our operations, and stayed on in Switzerland for a few months. Matthías was on hormone injections after that, and recovered fairly well, mentally. I, on the other hand, chose not to have hormone treatment.”

“Were you told what happened to Matthías yesterday?”

“Yes, I went to the hospital and talked to the doctor who treated him. He said that he had been brought there from the prison. I cannot imagine why he was locked up in the first place, but I know he would never have been able to tolerate it, given his health condition. After the prison camp internment, he suffered from acute claustrophobia and could, for instance, never sleep in a closed room.”

Klemenz had finished his account and now sat forlornly on the sofa, his head down, tears silently falling down his cheeks. Acting on an impulse, Hrefna moved over to the sofa, sat down next to him, and put her arm around his shoulders. He leaned his head on her chest and cried like a child. She hugged him and thought about this man, this human being—this woman,
because she now felt in her heart that the person she held in her arms was an old, tired, grief-stricken woman. A woman who might have become a good mother and a good grandmother, had not a quirk of nature put her into the wrong body many, many years ago.

And still, fate had continued to prey upon her, right up to now. What an ordeal, to have had to conduct one’s life in such deception, just to be able to live in peace with someone you love. Perhaps things will change one day, and people will be able to live the way they were created.

Hrefna recalled having held her mother like this in difficult times, when she had become ill; even the perfume smelled the same.

They remained like this for a long time, until Klemenz recovered himself and sat up.

“Thank you for being so kind to me,” he said, and blew his nose into a white handkerchief.

It was dark outside when Hrefna left Klemenz. She walked through town enjoying the cool breeze. Her head felt empty, and she barely registered the displays in the shop windows she passed. When she reached Borgartún, she found the detective team gathered together in the office.

Something was wrong. Jóhann wiped a tear from his cheek and sniffed. Halldór was cleaning invisible dust from his glasses, and Egill paced the floor, his head bowed. Marteinn sat with his head down, wringing his hands.

“Has something happened?” she asked.

Jóhann looked up and nodded. Then he asked her to come into the lab with him. For the second time that day, he wanted to talk to her in private.

Diary XVIII

December 3, 1943. I dreamed about my brother Matthías last night. He was standing here in the garden, talking a lot, but there was no sound coming from his lips…

February 25, 1944. The Althing passed a unanimous resolution to sever the union with Denmark and annul the Danish-Icelandic federal treaty of 1918. There will be a national referendum at a later date…

May 21, 1944. We went to the polling station and voted for the break-up of the union with Denmark and the formation of a republic…

June 1, 1944. The results of the referendum have now come in. Separation from Denmark: 70,536 for, 365 against. Establishment of Republic of Iceland: 68,862 for, 1,064 against. Average turnout over the whole country was 98.61%. In some constituencies the turnout was 100%.

June 17, 1944. We got up at 6 o’clock this morning and drove to Thingvellir, all four of us. It rained. We were present at Lögberg when the republic was formally inaugurated. The Regent of Iceland was elected as the country’s first president, a
good compromise. I am, nevertheless, still of the opinion that crowning a king of Iceland would have generated an even more solemn occasion. We did not want to overnight at Thingvellir, and got home just after midnight.

August 10, 1944. This is the last entry in this diary, the eighteenth of the series. The nineteenth lies here on the table, brand new and ready to receive the record of days to come, and my thoughts on matters concerning this country and its people. With these diaries, I have sought to be honest; I thus learn more about myself and gain a perspective of the development of my life. This also means, on the other hand, that I do not want all and sundry to have access to these, my writings, and have therefore consigned them to a safe place. This particularly applies to the diaries dating from 1932, books that are to remain indefinitely closed to all persons. Yet I cannot bring myself to destroy them. My descendants may read those diaries that deal with the years before 1932, numbers 1–12, if they so wish after my death. Elizabeth is aware of this decision of mine, and will ensure it is observed. I can trust her in all matters…

A
fter Jóhann and Hrefna had talked together privately in the lab, he took her home in his car. They drove there silently; she felt numb and tired, and she needed to think. When Jóhann stopped the car outside her house, however, she stayed in her seat.

“I handed in my letter of resignation this morning.”

“Did you have to do that?” Jóhann implored. “Not all days are as bad as these have been.”

“No, I’ve thought this out very carefully. I’ve been offered a job at a law firm. I’m going to accept it and go to night classes to finish my university entrance exams; I’ve already completed five terms for them a few years back. Then I’m going to study law at the university.”

“I’ll miss you,” he said sadly.

“Maybe we could meet up sometime,” Hrefna suggested, climbing out of the car and then bidding him good night.

There was nobody near the house or on the stairs when she approached the building. She was relieved not to have to put Pétur off with some subterfuge.

“Elsa, love,” Hrefna exclaimed, when she found her daughter in her bedroom studying Danish. “Come, let’s cuddle up in bed together, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Elsa looked at her in surprise, but put her book away and followed her into her room.

They climbed into the old bed, and Hrefna put her arms around her daughter. “The last time you said something like this to me was when Granny died. Is it something just as bad now?”

“Yes, it’s bad this time, too.” Hrefna hesitated a moment, before continuing in a trembling voice. “Dear little Halli…is dead.”

“Halli? Dead?”

There was a short silence while Elsa took this in.

“What happened?”

“He was hit by a train in Austria.”

“No!”

“Yes, sweetheart. Apparently he went out for a walk last night, and it seems he went along a railroad track near the hotel where they were staying; and because of his low intelligence he didn’t know that was a dangerous thing to do. He didn’t hear the train coming from behind. The engineer wasn’t able to stop in time.”

“Intelligence!” exclaimed Elsa. “It’s got nothing to do with intelligence; it’s just that he didn’t know it was dangerous because there are no trains here in Iceland. I wouldn’t have known that, either.”

“Maybe that’s true.” Hrefna was silent a while; then she continued. “When he phoned, Erlendur told us that this had been Halli’s best day ever. He took the first lift of the morning up the mountain and spent all day skiing—his last run was with the patrol, who are the last ones down when the runs are closed for the day.”

“I would have done that, too,” Elsa sobbed.

Tears ran down Hrefna’s cheeks as well. After a while Elsa asked, “What are you thinking, Mom?”

“I’m thinking about what you just said, and about the man who wrote the diaries I’ve had to read these past few evenings. His dream was to build railroads across Iceland; if that dream had come true, then perhaps Halli would have known about trains and their dangers.”

“Do you think he was a good man, this man who wrote the diaries?” Elsa asked.

Hrefna thought for a moment before replying. “Yes, I’m sure he was a good man. He had some difficult moments and was often depressed, but he was a good man.”

They lay there together for a long time until they both finally dozed off. It was well past nine o’clock when hunger woke them again.

“How was your day, my dear?” Hrefna asked.

“I was going to have a bath, but the tap wasn’t working properly, and there was nothing but scalding hot water,” Elsa said. “Pétur came and tried to help me. He said there was sand in the pipes.”

“Was he able to fix it?”

“No, it’s still not working, but Pétur was asking if I knew anything about this murder case you’re investigating.”

“Oh, so he’s resorted to asking you now?” Hrefna laughed softly.

“Yeah, but I knew nothing, of course. Then he told me that he had once done some work in that house where it happened.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He said that he was breaking something down with his jackhammer and had found some kind of a gun.”

“A gun?”

“Yeah, you know, the sort of revolver you see in the movies.”

“Perhaps he was joking?”

“No, no,” Elsa remarked. “He seemed pretty convinced.”

A revolver in Birkihlíd
. Hrefna had to check this out.

Pétur lived in an apartment on the top floor, and as Hrefna mounted the stairs, she realized she had never been upstairs, despite having lived in the building for several months. She rang the bell, and Pétur answered the door in his undershirt.

“Sorry to bother you,” Hrefna apologized, “but Elsa told me that you once did a job in Birkihlíd, and that you’d found a gun there. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Pétur replied. “I’ve been wondering whether I should mention this to someone, but it was such a long time ago that I didn’t think it mattered.”

“When was this?”

“Around 1960.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“Just an ordinary revolver.”

“Where did you find it?”

“I was using the jackhammer to knock out a fireplace that had been bricked in, down in the basement of the house. The gun was lying at the bottom of the hearth.”

“Do you know how it might have gotten there?”

“Either it was there when the fireplace got bricked in, or it fell down the chimney.”

“Was there anything else there?”

“Yeah, one or two dead birds, as far as I remember. They must have flown down the chimney and got stuck.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, there was some kind of cord, and then there was a weight like what they used to use on shop scales back in the old days. Apart from that there was just a lot of dirt.”

“What happened to the gun?”

“Jacob, the one that’s just been shot, was hovering over me, and he took it. I never saw it again.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Nothing. He just said that I could go, that he would clean up the rubble himself.”

“You didn’t ask him about the gun later?”

“No. But he was bloody difficult when I was trying to bill him for the work. It all turned into a complete pain.”

“What do you think he did with the gun?”

“Probably threw it away with the other rubbish. It seemed a bit rusty to me.”

It was almost eleven o’clock when Hrefna took a taxi to Borgartún.

She began checking through the case reports, and it was not long before she found what she was looking for. “Deceased was sighted on the roof of his house on Tuesday, January 16. According to witness, he was fixing the chimney stack.”

Egill had clearly typed this. Hrefna counted seven misprints.

“You weren’t asleep, were you?” she asked when Jóhann answered the phone.

“No, not very.”

“Come and fetch me from the office. We have to go to Birkihlíd immediately.”

Diary XIX

September 6, 1944. The bridge across the Ölfusá River collapsed last night. One of the cables broke under the weight of two automobiles. I had warned
people that this might happen, and had banned military vehicles from crossing more than one at a time…

November 12, 1944. Everything is going very well at the engineering studio. Thórdur is of invaluable help, as is Kristján. Thórdur told me to take time off, and he will complete the cross-sections…

November 13, 1944. I did not sleep a wink last night, I sat downstairs and thought. I keep on getting new ideas that will aid this nation’s prosperity and progress. Paid a few visits today…

November 15, 1944. The lack of respect for my talents here in Iceland has become intolerable. I have visited persons of authority, with good ideas and proposals regarding a variety of matters, and they all say that they will “look into the matter.” They do not want to listen. There is an old proverb that says, “Many a man might have gained wisdom had he not considered himself wise already.” The editor has stopped publishing my articles, as he says that there is no room in the paper. I went to see the President of Iceland with a list of good suggestions regarding his office because, as it says in Hávamál, “Who wanders
wide hath need of wits.” The president only listened for a few minutes, and then he had a meeting to attend. He will talk with me at a later date…

November 16, 1944. Elizabeth has locked away my clothes. She says that Jónas, the doctor, has ordered that I stay at home. These people are all nonentities…I have decided to become an artist. My only worry is that I may not have time to paint enough pictures to meet the demand, like Kjarval…