The Atom Station Read Free Page A

such an air of sincerity, and exulting as if he himself were the composer, I was sure that everything was as it should be. But none the less I started sweating; again and again all sorts of tearing sounds rose above the growling background, and all at once I understood what a dog feels like when it hears a mouth-organ being played and starts to howl. I wanted to yell and at any rate I would have panted and screwed up my face if the organist had not been sitting on the other side of the table, looking devout and alight with joy.
    â€œWell then?” he asked, when he had stopped the gramophone.
    I said, “I don’t know what I am to say.”
    â€œDid you not feel you could have done that sort of thing yourself?”
    â€œYes, I can’t deny that—if I had had a few tin cans and a couple of pot lids, say. And a cat.”
    He said, smiling, “It is a characteristic of great art that people who know nothing feel they could have done it themselves—if they were stupid enough.”
    â€œWas that beautiful, then?” I asked. “Have I such an ugly soul?”
    â€œOur times, our life—that is our beauty,” he said. “Now you have heard the dance of the fire-worshippers.”
    As these words were being spoken the front door was opened and there came a sound of much traffic in the passageway, until a pram was wheeled into the room by a young man; and this was god number one.
    This incarnate spirit was tall and well-built and handsome in his way, wearing a herring-bone overcoat and with his tie carefully knotted in the way that only town people can do it and country people can never learn; he was bare-headed, with wavy hair parted in the middle, gleaming and smelling strongly of brilliantine. He nodded to me and looked directly at me; his eyes glowed piercingly, and he gave me the savage smile that people smile at those they are going to murder—later; and bared those splendid teeth. He steered the pram into the middle of the room and then propped up amongst the flowers a long flat triangular object wrapped in paper and tied up with pack-thread. Then he came over and offered me a clammy hand and mumbled something which sounded to me like “Jesus Christ”; I thought he smelled of fish. Perhaps he said “Jens Kristinsson”; anyway I returned his greeting and stood up according to the custom of country women. Then I peeped into the pram, and there slept a pair of real twins.
    â€œThis is the god Brilliantine,” said the organist.
    â€œMy goodness, to have these darling little children out so late at night!” I said. “Where’s their mother?”
    â€œShe’s south in Keflavik,” said the god. “There’s a Yank dance.”
    â€œChildren survive everything,” said the organist. “Some think it harmful for children to lose their mother, but that is a fallacy. Even though they lose their father it has no ill effect on them. Here’s some coffee. Where’s the atom poet, if I may ask?”
    â€œHe’s in the Cadillac,” said the god.
    â€œAnd where is Two Hundred Thousand Pliers?” asked the organist.
    â€œF.F.F.,” said the god. “New York, Thirty-Fourth Street, twelve-fifty.”
    â€œNo new metaphysical discoveries, no great mystic visions, no religious revelations?” asked the organist.
    â€œBugger-all,” said the god. “Except this character Oli Figure. He says he’s made contact with the Nation’s Darling. * The snot’s dribbling from his nose. Who’s this girl?”
    â€œYou as a god should not ask about people,” said the organist. “It is ungodly. It is a secret who a person is. And even more of a secret what a person is called. The old God never asked who a person was and what he was called.”
    â€œIs Cleopatra better of the clap yet?” asked the god.
    â€œBetter, in what way?” asked the organist.
    â€œI visited her