House of Evidence (29 page)

W
hen Hrefna arrived at the office just after eleven o’clock, Jóhann called her into the lab and told her of Matthías’s demise.

“I’d rather you heard it from me than Egill. I’m not sure that he realizes the seriousness of the situation yet. That guy is completely lacking in judgment.”

Hrefna was grateful. “I’d probably have hit him over the head,” she said.

They sat together sipping coffee for the next hour. Neither felt like doing any work.

When Halldór arrived, he summoned Hrefna to his office and explained in private what he had found out that morning. She listened without interrupting, her thoughts on poor Matthías.

“I’m not going to share what I have told you with the others,” he explained. “It’s enough that you know about it for now. I do need to ask you to go see Klemenz and talk to him, though. There are still some issues that we need explanations for.”

“I’ll do that,” Hrefna replied, “but I want to take this opportunity to give you my letter of resignation.” She placed an envelope on Halldór’s desk.

“Is this something to do with Matthías’s death?” Halldór asked, taken aback.

“No. I’ve been carrying this in my bag for a few days; I just haven’t got around to giving it to you. But today’s a very suitable day for it; there are plenty of good reasons.”

“I’m not going to try to talk you out of it,” Halldór said. There was a short silence before he added, “I’m thinking of quitting myself.”

I’m not going to try to talk you out of it either, Hrefna thought, but she didn’t say anything.

Diary XVIII

November 1, 1942. Went ptarmigan shooting today with Jacob Junior. We drove to Kolvidarhóll and hiked up past Mt. Hengill. The weather was fine and plenty of game. Jacob is a poor shot and not very interested in hunting, but he likes to walk with me and carry the bag. He also really enjoys looking after the guns for me, cleaning them and oiling them. We practiced shooting with the revolver…

March 23, 1943. Yet again the communists were creating trouble over the drainage project. I managed to settle matters so that the work was finished by evening. Mr. Wallace thanked me especially for it…

H
refna opted to go on foot to see Klemenz; the weather was ideal for walking, and she needed time to think. She was used to delivering bad news in this job. Many times she had had to visit people and tell them of their loved ones’ demise, and though she suffered with them, she did not shirk these tasks. Now, however, she felt unusually anxious. Someone had already phoned Klemenz the night before to tell him of Matthías’s death, but she would have to ask questions about their private life, and she was not happy about it.

Half an hour later she was standing outside the apartment; she grasped the knocker and rapped on the door.

A finely dressed older woman answered. For a moment, Hrefna imagined this to be a female visitor of Klemenz’s, but when the woman said “Hello,” Hrefna recognized the voice immediately.

Klemenz was wearing a dark gray, two-piece suit with a pale pink silk blouse, nylon stockings, and black high-heeled shoes. His face was carefully made up and his black hair was nicely blow-dried. He had on a pair of modest earrings and a matching necklace.

“I hope my being dressed like this doesn’t upset you,” Klemenz said as he invited her in. “I wasn’t expecting visitors,
and I find it easier to cope with my grief if I am wearing my own clothes.”

“Umm…” Hrefna hesitated. “I just need a bit of time to get used to it.”

“The men’s clothes were just an uncomfortable disguise,” Klemenz explained. “Matthías preferred me to wear them in public, of course, and I complied with his wishes. Now I don’t need to anymore.”

He invited Hrefna into the parlor, and she couldn’t help but notice how feminine his movements were. As he sat down, she said, “I should like to offer you my condolences on the death of your loved one.”

“Thank you.”

“The last twenty-four hours have been very difficult for you, I imagine.”

“Yes, my dear, this has been difficult. Matthías and I have lived together, been a family, for over forty years. We have gone through thick and thin together, been as one. And then, when my spouse dies, I just get a phone call from the detective division to announce that he is dead and that the family will be in touch for a final salary settlement.”

Hrefna bit her lip. She wished that Halldór had had the sense to let her speak to Klemenz the evening before.

“We were actually prepared for the eventuality of one of us dying before the other, and had made financial arrangements,” Klemenz continued. “I do not, therefore, have to worry about being unfairly treated in that respect.”

Hrefna did not write any of this down, the notebook and the pen remaining untouched in her bag. She knew that she could remember every word of this conversation if necessary, and she doubted much of it would end up in the official report anyway.

“Tell me about your relationship with Matthías,” she finally asked. “If you care to do that and feel able to, that is,” she added.

Klemenz thought for a moment. “It’s probably good to talk at times like this. Besides, I have no secrets anymore.” He paused again and then said, “I am not a homosexual man. I am a woman in a male body. There has never been any doubt in my mind. My earliest memories are of feeling confused when people talked about me as if I was boy. I knew I was a girl!

“My father was a seaman and my mother worked in a shop. I was a biddable kid and mostly looked after myself. I just always had this compulsion to swap clothes with the girls I played with.”

Hrefna smiled faintly, and Klemenz went on. “When I reached puberty I only had feelings for men, there was never any doubt about that. Still, my sex life was very limited. I did not have a strong sexual drive, and my first lovers were unfortunate souls, desperate over the shame and guilt attached to their urges. I never felt guilty, just disappointed when my lovers turned out to be rather worthless characters. All that changed when I met Matthías.”

Klemenz smiled at the memory and wiped a few tears from his eyes.

“I had gone to a concert at the Music Society where he was playing. Afterward there was coffee, and I noticed that he was watching me from across the room. Of course, I had often fallen for heterosexual men, and that had naturally come to nothing, but I sensed that this man might be different. And, as it transpired, Matthías was a homosexual.”

Klemenz got up and paced the floor slowly.

“We got to know each other very gradually. It took me a long time to get Matthías to respond to his feelings. When he finally did, and we became lovers, I had to use all available means to
counteract the shame that his upbringing had instilled in him. But we got there in the end, and we enjoyed every moment of our time together. The big upheaval came when my father caught us in my bed together. Though I was nineteen at the time, I looked young for my age, and Father regarded me as a child still. He was convinced that Matthías had seduced me, an innocent boy, and so reported him to the authorities. Old Alfred was summoned, and he immediately renounced Matthías forevermore. Jacob Senior saved whatever could be saved of the situation. He got them to agree to drop the case, provided Matthías left the country. I was not allowed to see him before he left, and that almost finished me off. I was ill for weeks, but in the end, I secretly met with Jacob and told him the full story. He understood it as much as he could, and advised me to convince my parents to let me go abroad and learn to be a waiter, which is what I did. I left Iceland in the second half of 1928. By then, Matthías was in Berlin and had started his cello studies at the music academy, which were going well, as he had learned German from his old music teacher. We met again in Berlin, and were now able to live together; I began my course, and life was wonderful. We got to know a large group of homosexual men and women, and we were able to live there in an incredibly tolerant environment. I worked while going to school, and very soon Matthías also began to earn money playing the cello. We severed all connections with Iceland, with the exception of Jacob; Matthías and Jacob kept up a correspondence.”

“Did you never come back to Iceland?” Hrefna asked.

“No, we had no desire to do that.”

“So how did Matthías get mixed up in the monarchy business?” Hrefna asked.

Klemenz laughed softly. “Jacob Senior was working on promoting his railroad company, and was negotiating with German
companies during the years before the war. As a way to build up working capital, he became an envoy for some eccentrics who wanted to find a king for Iceland in Europe. Jacob tested the opinions of some of the aristocracy here, in confidence, but von Kuppel became rather too interested, and tried to get the support of people of influence in Germany so that he would be the only candidate for the office when the invitation arrived. Then, during the war, he became a bit confused, and began to believe that he had actually been offered the position. That was how Jacob’s and Matthías’s names came to be associated with this matter.”

“How successful was Jacob with the railroad enterprise in Germany?”

“That’s another story.” He sighed. “Jacob was well received, and there were German businesses prepared to assist him with the company. But it all had to be played down in Iceland because of the political situation, so it was agreed that Mannheim Stahlwerke would build two trains and contribute these as equity in Isländische Bahn AG. That company would then lease the trains to the Iceland Railroad Company.”

“Was Matthías involved in any of this?”

“Yes, unfortunately, he agreed to become his brother’s agent in Germany.”

“Tell me more about that.”

“By 1937, homosexual people in Germany began to be persecuted. I wanted to emigrate, but Matthías felt he had to look after the interests of the railroad company. By the end of the year, we moved to Hamburg, where nobody knew anything of our personal affairs. Matthías oversaw the building of the trains, and he had to push hard for progress on the project, as military industry had been prioritized. In the meantime, Jacob was preparing the construction of the track in Reykjavik. He wanted to build the
railway from the harbor to Öskjuhlíd to begin with, because he was convinced that as soon as the Icelanders saw the trains, they would open their eyes to the value of the railroad. He was, however, not able to deliver his part of the project on time, which meant that it wasn’t possible to ship the trains to Iceland when they were ready; so Matthías took a picture of one of them, parked on the quayside in Hamburg, and sent it to Jacob.”

“Where were you during the war years?”

“The Germans were not happy with how things were progressing with the railroad company, and imposed travel restrictions on Matthías, confiscating his passport so that he was unable to leave the country. Of course I could not abandon him. We tried to get out of Germany secretly at the beginning of 1940, but we were betrayed and arrested on board ship at the Hamburg docks. We were imprisoned until the end of the war.”

“Do you feel able to talk about that time?”

“Yes, perhaps it’s time that story was told,” he replied, sighing. “To begin with, we were detained in Hamburg while our case was being investigated. The conditions there were tolerable to start with, compared with other prison camps, but they would later become worse. We were lucky enough, however, that a young German woman, who worked for the Ministry of Justice as an interpreter for the Norwegian prisoners, put us on her list of clients. The Norwegian seamen’s pastor in Hamburg was thus able to visit us with her, and they sometimes sneaked in vitamin pills, which probably saved our lives, because the food they gave us was little and unvaried. When the Allies began to step up the air raids on Hamburg in 1943, we were moved north of the city, to a town called Rendsburg, on the Kiel Canal.”

Klemenz was silent for a moment, and then continued. “In Rendsburg we were forced to do hard labor, and our health began
to deteriorate. We were, nevertheless, relieved to be there, because other inmates transferred to our camp brought terrible stories of prison camps elsewhere; names such as Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen would come to epitomize horror to our ears. Although our guards were of varying dispositions, there were those there who tried not to treat us with unnecessary cruelty.”

Klemenz paused and gazed out the window. Hrefna waited patiently, in silence, for him to continue with his story.

“On the second of December 1943, we were paid a rather unpleasant visit in prison,” he began again. “Up to that point we had been detained on the basis of the escape attempt and alleged fraud to do with the railroad company. Later, actually, we learned that the German envoy in Iceland had tried, in vain, to use our imprisonment to bully Jacob Senior into spying for them. Anyway, on this atrocious day, two men arrived from Berlin with an indictment for alleged antisocial behavior and immoral acts under the so-called Paragraph 175 law. Our friends and comrades from the homosexual community in Berlin had been arrested, and, after brutal torture, had broken down and named names. These men from Berlin now wanted more names. We were interrogated in separate rooms, and I immediately told them everything I knew, whereas Matthías remained silent. The men were clearly not satisfied, having probably long since arrested all those I told them about. They took me into the cell where Matthías was being held. He was naked, and they had tied his hands and hung him from a hook high up on the wall. He had been beaten badly, and his mouth was bleeding. I was told to strip, and they tied me and hung me up, too. They kept pressing Matthías for names, but he kept as silent as the grave. Then the knives came out.”

Klemenz fell silent. He looked down and put his hand to his eyes.

“You don’t have to say any more,” Hrefna said.

“If you think you can hear it, then I think I can continue,” Klemenz replied, looking at her. She met his gaze and, after a moment, nodded.

“They told Matthías that if he didn’t answer their questions, they would torture and then kill us. At that, he relented, but the names he was able to give them were no different than the ones I had already given them. The men were still not satisfied. They seemed to be looking for evidence that some high-up people in Berlin had been members of our circle. Something we had no knowledge of. They beat us and threatened us with their knives. And then, without warning, they cut my genitals off and threw them to the floor.”

Hrefna felt like she had been kicked in the guts. “Off you? But Matthías, he was…are you also…” She could not finish the sentence.

“Yes, then it was his turn. But I had passed out by then.” The thought seemed to send a chill through Klemenz, and he crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes closed.

There was a long silence, until Hrefna finally said, “But you survived.”

“Yes, we survived. The men from Berlin left the scene, and the guards at Rendsburg took over. There was an old German doctor, long since retired, who served the camp, and with the help of some Norwegian prisoners, he was able to stop the bleeding. He also managed to preserve the urethra, though it was not neatly done. We spent months in the hospital wing, until we were moved east to Dreibergen.”

“How did you feel after that?”