The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 3

the pleasure she took in so doing. She did not intend to quit her commitment to rebellion merely because the act of giving birth had momentarily overwhelmed her powers of defiance. She did require a fortnight to recover, the nursing of me preoccupying her until Grandfather, in his cruel way, reminded Lamba of her plight. Once the couple was chosen, and my adoption process so far along that all that remained was a rubber stamp or two, Grandfather pushed into Lamba’s room and told her what was about to be done. Lamba lay passively. She wept, did not sniffle or wipe her eyes. She reached beneath her pillows in order to bring forth her magic hand-mirror like a weapon. Grandfather bolted, appalled at the reminder that his only daughter might be a witch. He left Radar in charge while he waded through a new snow to his office in the rectory of the Pillar of Salt Lutheran Church. He telephoned his spiritual advisor, Thorbrand of the Supreme Lutheran Council, to tell him that the deed was done, the future was set. He was right. He was wrong. By the time Grandfather returned home, past dark, I was gone, not to be seen again for many ominous years. Lamba never crossed Grandfather’s path again. Radar wept inconsolably. Grandfather called on the police, on Anders Horshead, and then returned to his study to call on his Lord God and, in prayerful repose, on his deeply missed Zoe.

Lamba had bundled me in the usual swaddling clothes and walked to the foreign quarter on the other side of the city. It was Christmas week (though not Christmas Eve). Stockholm was decked in its finery, natural and commercial, its fourteen islands dusted with a fresh snow atop a heavy crust of ice, its streets filled with as many sleds as automobiles, its evergreens buffeted by the arctic winds that whined through the small stone closes of the oldest sections of a city part quaint, part deliberately futuristic. Back then, Stockholm was always aggressively organized. In winter, it also seemed serendipitous and not entirely credible. With only a few hours of sunlight, the twilight that predominated was that much more dramatic for the on-again, off-again flurries. And the deep night was philosophical. Lamba plowed a furrow through a city of ice and stainless steel, singing nonsense songs to herself and to me. Lamba was resolved, but not unafraid. She was not that far from childhood’s nightmares, and in those dreams (and also at the zoo) she had seen the telltale yellow eyes of the Norse wolf, poised to strike from out of the darkness.

One might assume she could have taken a bus. She did not, and not only because she was an operatic girl. The recent border wars in the Middle Eastern kingdoms had precipitated an embargo that even then condemned the North to a dim panic. Public transportation was erratic. Shops closed early. My first Christmas was not well lit or well heated. Considering the other problems I endured, such as maternity, paternity, survival, the fact that there were more candles than light bulbs on Christmas trees might be superfluous. It was instead prescient of fratricidal chaos to come.

Lamba shoved into the crowd at the entrance to the very same shabby beer hall, the mickey mouse club, where I had been conceived. Some were taken aback by a snow-flecked golden girl gripping a bundle that could hardly have been bread. A few of the women suggested the worst aloud: “It’s dead.” Lamba did not appear that desperate. The eerie depth to her features intimidated the curious at the last moment before interference. She was a beauty but, in cold lights, could seem overdone and spooky. Her mission reinforced her intrinsically bizarre manner. After all, Mother was magic.

THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB was a series of concentric ovals, the inmost being the bar, the next being the booths, the outermost being the cafeteria line and auxiliary items, such as the music box, the pinball machines, and the telephone booths. Lamba moved to the bar to inquire in Swedish of the dwarfish bartender, Felix, as to the whereabouts of a tall, hairy, red-bearded American dressed in blue jeans, plaid shirt, vest, and Irish cap, who made telephone calls at the back. Felix told her half of America was tall and the other half lived on the phone. Did she have a name for him? Lamba backed away from the stares. She weaved her way back to the Christmas tree set up by the music box. Some women jumped in her path for fear she might deposit me amid the presents. Lamba continued on to the very’ phone booth of the act. She placed several calls to her sister sibyls, the last of which, to Astra, secured a room for us for the night. Lamba was a practical pagan. She was prepared to return to the beer hall as often as it took. Under the circumstances, she was finding me the best home available. Mother never, never planned to abandon me.

Peregrine came in late, since it was the first week on his first job after more than a year in Stockholm. He and Israel had fallen into part-time employment selling snacks during, and cleaning up after, a game at the rink of a semipro ice hockey team, the Slothbaden Berserkers. It was filthy work, and it paid slave wages, yet Peregrine and Israel were glad to get it. Like most of the Americans in Stockholm—draft dodgers, deserters, thieves, bad characters—Peregrine and Israel did not have work permits. The King’s government might let them stay, because Sweden prided itself on its so-called neutral status, but the King’s government would not readily let them work. There was bureaucratic wind about clearance, waiting lists, adjusting the labor pool. In the end, there were half a million foreign workers in Sweden; very few of them were American exiles. It does not matter profoundly, I know, except to make the point that Peregrine and