House of Evidence (17 page)

And then the railroad is supposed to be our only salvation. Apparently there are those who have convinced themselves that all our problems will vanish when it arrives. And yet they would have a job on their hands showing that the railroad can meet any of our region’s needs that cannot be met with other and much cheaper means. The railroad would not pay for itself, not even given the desperate and heavy-handed measure of granting it a monopoly of commercial transportation.

But the nation, all Icelanders, would have to carry the can forever, for the benefit of no one except possibly the very few.

I readily admit that we who are against this business have kept quiet for too long, but our silence stems from a natural apathy coupled with our tendency to trust in the common sense and conscience of our nation’s guardians to ensure that matters such as this would never proceed.

Jóhann continued to leaf through the file, finding more articles both for and against the railroad. The discussion seemed to have gone on for years, and many weighed in on the argument. Among the papers were also parliamentary documents showing that this had been frequently debated in the Althing. In time, the affair seemed to have died a natural death, despite engineer Jacob’s attempts to engage the interest of persons of authority through correspondence. In the end, he had formed the Iceland Railroad Company Ltd. and taken matters into his own hands.

Diary V

December 24, 1918. I have just received the most tragic news that Lieutenant Peter Faidley, Elizabeth’s fiancé, was killed at Verdun in November 1916. I had a letter this morning from Miss Annie Barker, who says that she asked her father to exercise his influence in the Foreign Office to find my address. Now I know what the consul in Reykjavik wanted with me. Annie says that Elizabeth is very unhappy. I have been thinking this over all day and there is no doubt in my mind; I must go to England immediately…

December 25, 1918. It is a cause of great regret to me that I had to interrupt Mr. Wolfert in his Christmas celebrations, but I could allow no delay in resigning my post here. He accepted my resignation, but urged
me strongly to come back to work for C&NW, saying as we parted that there would always be a place for me in his office…

December 26, 1918. O’Hara was kind enough to come in to the office and take over my assignments. I had finished briefing him on all matters by noon, and set off immediately for New York…

December 27, 1918. I bought a ticket on the first sailing to England. It is the
Mauretania
, leaving tomorrow morning. The ship is engaged in transporting American soldiers home from Europe, but they take civilian passengers on the return trip…

December 28, 1918. When
Mauretania
set off from harbor this morning, I realized that I was exhausted. I have not slept at all since I got the letter from Annie, but now I can relax. I am on my way to Southampton, and can rest in the knowledge that the ship will carry me safely and at full speed across the ocean…

December 29, 1918. Slept for the best part of the day…

December 30, 1918.
Mauretania
is 31,938 tons, 232 meters in length, and achieves a maximum speed of 25 knots, one of the fastest ships now sailing across
the Atlantic Ocean. Launched on September 20, 1906, it is the sister ship of
Lusitania
, which perished in the war…

December 31, 1918. A new year is beginning. The passengers were not able to agree on which time zone to use for midnight, so we raised glasses to the New Year every hour all evening. My feeling is that this year will bring good fortune…

H
refna climbed the stairs, heading straight for Jacob Junior’s office, according to the plan of the house they obtained for their investigations. She sat down at the desk and considered the neat rows of ring binders on the shelves, their contents labeled in block capitals:

FINANCE, ACCOUNTS
ACCOUNTS AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS 1972
ACCOUNTS AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS 1973
OTHER DATA

She pulled the records down and began leafing through the pages of the Finance, Accounts binder. Jacob Junior had kept very accurate books of the domestic finances, all double entry in separate debit and credit columns, and all written in pen with blue ink.

Expenses were divided into a number of categories: domestic running costs, house maintenance, food, clothing, entertainment, and so on. Income was split into two columns: salary and other income. Each page covered one month, and at the end of the month the columns were totaled and the balances carried
forward to the next. Hrefna noted that Sveinborg’s name was a separate item, and that each month a sum was entered for her wages under “domestic running costs”; there were no entries, however, to indicate that she had been paid.

The debt was quite large by now, and it seemed that Sveinborg had not received any wages for nearly three years. Jacob’s salary from the bank was paltry; Hrefna would not have felt able to run her own home on that amount, and indeed it seemed to her that the expense items in Jacob Junior’s accounts were considerably higher than his salary. The difference was explained by the “creditors” category, which showed that a considerable debt had been accumulated. Who these creditors were was not specified.

She closed the accounts binder and opened the one labeled “Other Data,” which seemed to contain mainly letters and copies of letters. On top was a copy, made with blue carbon paper, of a typewritten letter to the mayor.

To: The Mayor, City of Reykjavik

Reykjavik, November 10, 1971

Sir,

With reference to our conversation in your office on last Tuesday, I am very keen for the City of Reykjavik to acquire the property Birkihlíd complete with all its contents. The objective would be to establish a museum of the life of a family of Reykjavik townsfolk during the first half of the century. I should like to invite you to send your
representative to meet me and examine the house and to discuss the implementation of this arrangement.

Respectfully yours, Jacob Kieler Jr.

There followed another letter to the mayor:

Reykjavik, March 12, 1972

Sir,

Thank you for sending your representative from the city curator’s office to meet me and examine the property Birkihlíd and its contents, and to evaluate its conservation status. As he is able to testify, the house is already in a state fit for showing.

I appreciate fully that it is not easy to finance such an investment, but we owners will most certainly be agreeable in any negotiations. I am working toward an understanding that we offer you the house without payment of consideration, in return for the city assuming any unpaid current debts.

I am, subsequently, prepared to work in the museum as consultant in return for a small fee.

The present owners’ conditions for handing over the house would be as follows:

1. The City of Reykjavik will establish a museum to commemorate engineer Jacob Kieler, and operate it for a minimum of 99 years.

2. The museum shall be named “Engineer Jacob Kieler Museum.”

3. The museum shall be open to the public for a minimum of four hours each day.

4. Entrance fees shall be accumulated to finance the writing and publishing of a biography of engineer Jacob Kieler.

I hope that this matter will be dealt with swiftly and satisfactorily by the city administration.

Respectfully yours, Jacob Kieler Jr.

And another one, over seven months later:

Reykjavik October 25, 1972

Sir,

I regret to say that I am not able to keep to my undertaking that the present owners of the Birkihlíd property will transfer to the City of Reykjavik the house and its contents without payment of consideration. I had overestimated my relatives’ readiness to preserve the memory of my parents. I am, however, requesting that the City of Reykjavik purchase the house with the objective of establishing a museum as discussed in my previous letters and in discussions with yourself and your officials. I feel certain that agreement as to an acceptable price can be reached.

Respectfully yours, Jacob Kieler Jr.

Behind these copies was a letter bearing the blue letterhead of the mayor of Reykjavik himself:

Reykjavik, January 8, 1973

Dear Jacob Kieler,

Your proposition as regards the property Birkihlíd and its future has now been discussed by Reykjavik city council and the city curator’s office. The conclusion reached was that there are no grounds for the City of Reykjavik either to establish a museum to commemorate engineer Jacob Kieler, nor to undertake any commitment as regards its operation.

In spite of coming to this conclusion, we wish you well in your attempts to establish the museum. Should your plans not materialize, the Árbæjarsafn Museum would be happy to accept articles from the estate for conservation.

Respectfully yours, Mayor of Reykjavik (signed)

Hrefna continued to leaf through the papers, coming across two deeds of conveyance dated December 3, 1972, referring to Jacob Junior’s purchase of Matthías’s half share of Birkihlíd, and his purchase of Kirsten’s quarter share of the property and her half share of the contents.

Hrefna pondered over what she had found. While Jacob Junior was busy buying his relatives’ shares in the house and its contents, he had still been trying to interest the city in the purchase of the house as a museum. The conveyances seemed to have been an attempt to gain time, but then the mayor’s letter had shattered his hopes. And according to the accounts, Jacob Junior lacked the means to meet the financial obligations that the conveyances imposed on him, let alone pay any of his other debts. He was clearly bankrupt. These last days of his life must have been difficult. His dream of a museum in Birkihlíd had come to nothing and he himself was insolvent.

Further on in the binder Hrefna found a magazine clipping with the headline “Icelanders Offer Kingship to German Citizen.”

Evidence has been uncovered to substantiate the rumor that in 1938 certain worthy Icelanders invited a German nobleman, Rudiger von Kuppel, to become King of Iceland. The authorities here, however, have wanted to suppress the affair, officially claiming no knowledge of it. Von Kuppel came here himself in 1967, having previously written to announce his arrival, but was received as if he was not entirely sane, and departed a hurt and disappointed man. On arriving home he wrote a paper about his experience, which ended up in an archive in Cologne, along with other papers belonging to the von Kuppel family, when he died last year.

The paper revealed that in the summer of 1938 a number of Icelandic patriots had arrived
in Berlin looking for a suitable candidate to be king of a new, independent monarchy. The king had to be in the prime of life, have a son, and be of a former ruling family. Von Kuppel was, of course, extremely surprised when he was approached, but having given the matter some consideration was able to confirm to the Icelandic delegation that he would accept their offer. These plans, however, came to naught, thanks to developments in Germany with which we are all familiar.

Von Kuppel says in his paper that the Icelandic delegation numbered five, but that he could name only two of them. It is probable that they only introduced themselves orally when they met, and that von Kuppel was not able to memorize the Icelandic names. There were, however, two people in the group whose names von Kuppel found it easy to remember as they were of German origin. They were the brothers Jacob and Matthías Kieler.

During this period engineer Jacob Kieler was making his final attempts to turn his railroad company into reality, seeking help in Germany for this purpose. One may suppose, therefore, that turning Iceland into a monarchy was but a small matter for him in his quest to gain backing for the railroad business. The most likely explanation, in fact, is that he became a guide to the royalists on their trip to Berlin because he knew the city well, having studied there, and then used the opportunity to gain support for his business at the same time. Matthías Kieler actually lived in Berlin during these years, and was thus very likely to have been of assistance to the delegation.

The present writer has experienced some difficulty in finding further information on this story. Engineer Jacob Kieler was shot and killed in 1945, while Matthías, who now resides in Austria, has not responded to written enquiries on the matter. It is tempting to speculate that Jacob Kieler’s fate was somehow linked to the royalist mission, and it is a known fact that Matthías Kieler experienced a crisis in Germany during the war that has not been explained. It must have been difficult for the engineer to carry this secret with him when he became chief contracting agent to the British and, later, the American occupying force, here in Iceland during the war. The fact that their royal candidate was a professed Nazi with personal connections to the leaders of the Third Reich would have caused Jacob Kieler considerable concern.

The article bore the signature of Yngvi Jónsson, historian. The document right behind it in the ring binder was a handwritten draft of a summons issued against Yngvi Jónsson for libel. Hrefna removed these papers from the binder and tucked them into her bag. She put everything else back in its place and went downstairs, where she found Jóhann in the engineering office, buried deep in old papers.

“Have you discovered anything?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, shamefaced. “I’m mainly just nosing around. Jacob Senior seems to have been incredibly interested in railways.”

“Yes, that’s what his diaries show,” Hrefna said, looking around the room. “So this is where he worked.”

“Yes, it’s as if he walked out of here yesterday.”

Hrefna perused the filing cabinets, opening them and examining the contents.

“He must have been very orderly,” she said. “I wish I was like this.”

She turned to a long, wooden box standing by the outside wall.

“Have you looked into this box?” she asked.

“No, I hadn’t got that far.”

Hrefna opened it and found two tripods and a steel measuring tape. A compartment in the lid of the box contained a booklet in Danish, with the title
Jäderin’s Basisapparat.

“What’s all this for?” she asked.

Jóhann took the booklet and leafed through it. “It’s equipment for measuring distances,” he said.

“Surely the measuring tape can do that on its own?”

“No. To get an accurate reading, the tape needs to be pulled taut with the correct force. You place the tripods over the points whose distance you want to find, stretch the tape across the tripods, and hang a heavy weight from it to create the correct tension. Then you apply the angle of slope of the tape to the distance measured to get the correct result.”

“Well, well. Very interesting,” Hrefna replied, about to close the box.

“Just a minute,” Jóhann said. “It looks as if everything’s in the box apart from the weight. Here’s a compartment where it obviously
should be, but it’s not there. It’s unlike the Kieler menfolk not to have everything in place.”

“Put it in your report, then,” Hrefna suggested skeptically.

Diary V

January 3, 1919. Sent a telegram to Miss Annie Barker that I have arrived in England. I presume that she will arrange for me to meet Elizabeth…

January 4, 1919. Received an invitation at the hotel to come for supper to Mr. and Mrs. Barker’s home tomorrow evening…

January 5, 1919. I arrived at the Barkers’ home a short while before Elizabeth. When she came in and saw me, we stood and gazed at one another, not able to utter a word. Finally we shook hands. She was pale but very beautiful. She has matured and now looks like a rose that has just come into bloom. Elizabeth is complimentary about my knowledge of English; she says I speak just like an American…This time I shall not hesitate. Tomorrow I am going to ask for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage. I am not going to make the same mistake twice in my life…

January 6, 1919. I dressed in my best clothes and took a carriage to the home of the Chatfield family. I asked to see Elizabeth and immediately put the question to her whether she would permit me to ask her father for her hand in marriage. She said yes. Mr. Chatfield has agreed to see me tomorrow…

January 7, 1919. I met Mr. Chatfield at his club. He made me tell him my life’s history and describe my family. Then he asked me about my future plans. I told him that it had always been my determination to go to Iceland and build railroads there. I showed him my letters of recommendation…