The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness

The master of the house, too, had flown off for a while with that soft fragrant yellow-creaking briefcase of his, and I was left with the children. And as soon as his presence ceased to be felt, the house ceased to be a house and became a public square. First came the children's friends, the accepted ones and the secret ones, then the friends of the children's friends, and then their friends; and with that, the whole of Harbour Street. A case of liquor lay in the hall; I had no idea who had paid for it. Some of the guests had brought musical instruments with them, and a female was dancing on the grand piano. About midnight, food was delivered on platters from a delicatessen store; I had no idea who paid for that either. But at least the domestic staff was not expected to wait on them, the guests served themselves; indeed, the female sinner Jona had long since retired to her bed, and through those leather eardrums no discord other than the voice of conscience could ever penetrate. I roamed through the house, keeping in the background.

I imagine that this was to have been a dance, but it was only very halfheartedly that a pair or two trailed on to the floor to jitterbug for a while; on the other hand there was much singing of Fellows were in fettle and O'er the icy sandy wastes, but more especially and in particular they vied with each other to produce the weirdest sounds without words imaginable; never in my life had I heard in one single night such a medley of inarticulate human sounds. Then came the vomiting, first in the bathrooms, then in the stairs and passageways, and finally on the carpets and over the furniture and into the musical instruments. It was as if everyone were engaged to everybody else, couples were slobbering over each other indiscriminately; but I think that no one was in fact engaged to anyone, and that the kissing was just a variation of jitterbugging-with the exception of the maiden Fruit-blood, who, in an ecstasy, with childish movements in her body, clung on to a lanky American-looking guy at least twice her age and already going bald, and finally disappeared with this scoundrel into her room and locked it from the inside.