Miss Iceland

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  It takes work to be a poet

  The poet is waiting for me when I get home from work and has good news to share.

  “They’re going to publish one of my poems in Thjódviljinn.”

  His poem ‘The Blazing Red Flame’ had been lying on the desk of the paper’s editor since the spring, he explains to me.

  He’s delighted and distracted and pulls me into his arms. Then he immediately releases me again and paces the floor.

  “I got Stefnir, the Brook Bard, to read over the poem and he liked it and mentioned in particular my twofold reference to the netherworld of Hel: hellishly cold hands, infernally deep sand… as morning dawns. He suggested I substitute one word and instead of saying ‘Till death comes to fetch you’, I write ‘Till death comes to haunt you’. ‘You only have to adjust one word,’ he said.”

  “Yes, that has a different ring to it,” I say.

  The poet halts and sits on the bed. He’s having second thoughts.

  “Now I think I should have changed two words in the line that starts with ‘assuage the wound’ and ends with ‘crepuscular gasping of mantled hopes’.”

  He reads the poem to himself.

  “Then it’s a question of whether it should be mighty or almighty…”

  He lights his pipe and fetches a poetry book from the cabinet and skims through it in search of a particular poem. The poet has recently switched from Chesterfield cigarettes to a pipe. He reads a few lines in silence, then closes the book and puts it aside.

  “I’ll never grasp the winter of death,” he says and stands up.

  He says he’s thinking of maybe popping down to the editor of Thjódviljinn to see if the paper has already gone to the printers.

  “Isn’t it all right the way it is?”

  “All right isn’t good enough, Hekla.”

  He sits on the bed again and rubs his face in his hands.

  “The text is too loose. The opening is predictable, there’s a lack of precision in the choice of words, it lacks depth, it lacks the pithiness of the form. It would be best to postpone publication. I’m going to ask them to delay publication.”

  I sit beside him, put my arm around him.

  “I don’t know where I stand with the other poets, Hekla. I just know I have a chair at the table in Café Mokka.”

  He gazes beyond me.

  “I feel they look on me as one of the group and yet I’m not quite one of the group. Then I showed Stefnir the poem, he patted me on the shoulder and told me I had it in me.”

  I stroke his hair.

  “I’ll never be as good as Stefnir. I’m no match for him. I’m promising but nothing more.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Stefnir read the first lines of a novel he’s working on at Naust last night.”

  The poet walks the length of the floor and then walks back. He’s searching for the right words. He stops in front of me and stares at me.

  “It’s better than anything either Laxness or Thórbergur Thordarson write. We might be talking about a new Nobel Prize winner, Hekla.”

  “Has he had anything published?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Isn’t that because he can’t stop boozing and his output is so low?”

  The poet acts as if he hasn’t heard me.

  He marches over to the window and is silent for a moment.

  “It takes work to be a poet, Hekla. Inspiration isn’t about output. Output is what you get when you work at unloading a ship or digging a ditch. Working in a cement factory or whaling centre gives one output. Constructing bridges gives one output. Being a poet isn’t about output.”

  He picks up his pipe from the ashtray and relights it.

  “A true poet sacrifices his personal life for the calling. Stefnir isn’t engaged. Unlike some poets I have a girlfriend to take care of.”

  “Are we engaged?”

  “No, but it might come to that.”

  He smiles.

  “On the other hand, it so happens that the poets are green with envy about me. I told them you’d been invited to participate in Miss Iceland and they wanted to know what it was like living with a beauty queen.”

  “And how is it?”

  He walks over to wrap his arms around me.

  “Since a woman has moved in, I felt the need to put up a mirror.”

  I look around and see that a small mirror has appeared on the wall, beside the wardrobe.

  “Is it too high up?” he anxiously asks, as he walks to the turntable, pulls a record out of its sleeve and slips on “Love Me Tender”.

  The needle rasps.

  “If the poets only knew that I listen to Elvis with my girlfriend. Can I ask my darling muse for a dance?”

  White

  I’ve been waiting at the basement door for a good long while, without anyone coming to the door, and am about to turn back when Ísey comes walking between the patches of ice with the pram. She’s pale and her cheeks are cold.

  “I wanted to see people,” she says. “So I went out to visit the painter at his studio. I wanted to tell him that I understood him. I walked all the way because prams aren’t allowed on the bus, both because they’re jam-packed and because they catch on nylon stockings and make them ladder.”

  I help her in with the child and the pram and she pulls the girl out of her overalls and removes her hat. She sticks the bottle into a pot to warm it up and then says she’s going to make coffee. Her pregnancy is beginning to show, a small bump is forming under her skirt. It occurs to me that the pinafore dress from Jón John might fit her.

  “Did you meet the painter?”

  “Yes, and he was very friendly. He shook my hand with his callused hand. ‘From the handles of the paintbrushes,’ he said.

  “I told him I had three of his paintings and described them to him. He immediately knew which ones they were and said there were still jars, turpentine and rags stuck in the lava cracks of a mound where he had painted one of them.

  “He also told me that there were scrape marks in the painting from the handle of the brush and that if I rub one of the paintings with paraffin oil, I’d find another painting underneath. No one knew about it but him. And me. And now you, Hekla. I held Thorgerdur in my arms and he said she was a beautiful child, even though she was grumpy. He asked about how the pictures had been framed and said that many paintings had been ruined by the frames. I described the frames to him and he was satisfied. I told him I live in a basement in 12 Kjartansgata where the sun can’t be seen for five months of the year. Then the light of the paintings comes to my rescue and illuminates the living room, I said. He was pleased to hear that. I wanted to say that they illuminate my life but was afraid of bursting into tears. When he told me that the white colour was the most difficult because it was so delicate, I had to look away and dab a tear. He said such beautiful things, Hekla. He told me that unfortunately, he was all out of coffee, but that to make up for that he was going to share another secret with me, which is that there is actually green under the white colour. There are now three people who know this: him, you and me. Before I left I told him that I was afraid that my husband was going to sell the paintings to buy cement for the foundations of a house in Sogamýri. He offered to buy the paintings himself so that my husband could buy the cement.”

  She sits at the kitchen table with the wriggling child and is silent for a moment, occasionally casting me an inquisitive glance.

  “Haven’t you told the poet you’re a writer yet?”

  She could just as easily have asked: Does he know about the wild beast that’s running loose inside you and waiting for you to release it? Does a poet understand a poet?

  “He hasn’t asked me,” I say.

  “Has he taken you to Café Mokka with him yet?”

  “I mentioned it to him once.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said that none of them took girlfriends with them. Besides, he’d assumed I didn’t drink coffee.”

  �
��Men are born poets. By the time of their confirmation, they’ve taken on the inescapable role of being geniuses. It doesn’t matter whether they write books or not. Women, on the other hand, grapple with puberty and have babies, which prevents them from being able to write.”

  She stands up, lifts the child into the cot and winds up a music box. Then she turns to tell me about a dream she had last night.

  “I dreamed of a bowl full of freshly fried crullers and I don’t know how to interpret the dream. Now I’m afraid that they’re children. My life is over if I get pregnant again. Then I’ll change into the woman who lives in the basement across the way. She’s stopped going out to the shop.”

  Miss Northern Lights

  Suddenly he’s gone. My sailor.

  A tremendous downpour and storm have broken out and there are few customers in the dining room. Then I spot him standing at the door with his duffel bag and I know he’s saying goodbye. He says a place unexpectedly came up at the eleventh hour on one of the Fossur cargo ships that sails to Rotterdam and that it’s leaving tonight. He solemnly hands me the key to the room so that I can pick up the cat and typewriter.

  He says he’s terminated his lease on the room.

  “They were about to throw me out anyway,” he says.

  I don’t ask him if he’ll be coming back.

  He tells me to take the books I want, but asks me to do him a favour and send the rest of his stuff on a coach west to Búdardalur.

  He hugs me tight and says he has to hurry.

  As soon as I stick the key into the lock, I hear a meow. The cat rises to its feet and stretches. I bend over to stroke it.

  Odin has put on weight.

  The books are in a pile on the table and, in the middle of the floor, there is an open cardboard box, on top of which I see the feathery cape Jón John has packed away.

  What attracts my attention the most, though, is a full-length sleeveless dress which has been draped lengthwise on the bed. I touch the material.

  On top of the dress is a letter marked Hekla.

  I open it.

  Try on the dress.

  I saw a photo of Jacqueline Kennedy in this dress in a fashion mag and drew a pattern based on the same design. Her dress was white but yours is Northern Lights green. I now hear you ask: What am I supposed to do with an evening gown? You don’t need a reason to wear a beautiful dress, Hekla. You are Miss Northern Lights.

  I’ll write to you when I’ve found a job in a theatre.

  YOURS, D.J. JOHNSSON

  P. S. Ísey should get the sewing machine. I’ve included two patterns for Christmas dresses, one for a thirteen-month-old girl and the other for a four-month-pregnant woman.

  The poet has gone to Mokka when I get home with the cat, typewriter and dress. For the moment I keep the typewriter in a case under the bed. The cat surveys the room, then hops onto the bed and coils itself at its foot.

  I hang the dress up in the wardrobe.

  The poet comes home as I’m boiling the fish. He’s convinced the cat will be able to crawl out through the skylight, down the drainpipe and onto the roof of the neighbour’s garage.

  He shuffles through the records I’ve arranged on the bed, picks one up and examines the sleeve.

  “Bob Dylan,” he says, turning the sleeve to read the back. “Sure doesn’t look like any Rachmaninoff.”

  When I come back into the room after washing-up, the wardrobe is open. The poet wants to know why a long ball gown is hanging in there. He says he was about to hang up his jacket when he was confronted by this glittering Northern Lights splendour.

  “And no available hanger.”

  Sailors’ Special Requests

  The poet is restless and paces the floor.

  He says he was listening to the radio and by chance heard a request from me on the Sailors’ Special Requests programme.

  “With love to D.J. Johnsson on the Laxfoss cargo ship.”

  He wants to know what it means.

  “I’m just giving him my support. He’s so badly treated on board. And he gets seasick.”

  “You’re my girlfriend. I’m not willing to lend you out. Not even on Sailors’ Special Requests.”

  He turns it over in his mind.

  “It wasn’t even a waltz like the other sailors were getting, but a Beatles song: ‘Love Me Do’. It stood out.”

  He turns off the radio, swiftly crosses the floor and then comes straight to the point.

  “Have you slept together?”

  I ponder on the words slept together in relation to our escapade on the geranium patch behind the sheep shed.

  “Once.”

  “Oh, my God… I don’t believe this.”

  He scuttles back and forth across the room, clutches his head, opens the skylight and immediately closes it again, searches through the pile of records, takes one out of its sleeve, stops himself from putting Shostakovich on the turntable and puts the record back into its sleeve, looks for a book on the shelf, hesitates and finally pulls out Bishop Vídalín’s Sermons for the Home. Was he going to find an answer from God? He quickly fumbles through the book, then replaces it in the cabinet and struts over to the desk.

  “I thought he wasn’t into women.”

  “It happened when we were teenagers.”

  I think.

  “We wanted to see what it was like. There was nothing else behind it.” I could have added: We didn’t take all our clothes off.

  “How long ago was it?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “Was he the first?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were probably his first love too?”

  “I wouldn’t say love…”

  At least not Oh, my dearest love, I think to myself.

  He interrupts me.

  “Women never forget the first one.”

  “Like I said, we were just kids.”

  “And you’ll always be the only woman in his life…”

  I say nothing.

  “Isn’t that definite?”

  “He also has a mother…”

  I walk over to him and embrace him.

  “Sorry.”

  I stroke his cheek.

  “Let’s not make a drama out of this.”

  The poet has calmed down and turns on the radio. They’re broadcasting a violin concerto performed by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

  When he has finished stuffing his pipe, he stretches out to a bookshelf and pulls out Hunger by Hamsun.

  “Mum sometimes used to make Royal Chocolate Pudding,” he says. “All you need is a whisk and a bowl.”

  From your consciousness to my lips

  The wind is picking up, a storm is breaking out and the cat is nowhere to be seen. I call her but she doesn’t answer. After I’ve searched the neighbourhood, it occurs to me to take a look around Stýrimannastígur, but she isn’t there either. On the way home, I pass by Café Mokka to find out if the poet knows anything about the kitten-laden Odin. As far as I can make out, there is a squirming earthworm in the snow on the pavement, which is odd for this time of the year.

  I make a beeline to the table where the poets are sitting. Silence strikes the group as I appear.

  The poets huddle together on the bench to make room for me, but I tell them I won’t be stopping. Starkadur stands up and I talk to him in hushed tones.

  He knows nothing about Odin.

  “I’ll see you later,” he says with one eye on the poets as he talks to me. They’re observing us in silence.

  “I found that a bit awkward,” says the poet, when he comes home late that night. “When you suddenly appeared. Like you were collecting me.”

  He removes his sweater and combs his hand through his hair.

  “We were discussing Steinn Steinarr,” he says, grabbing hold of me. “From my consciousness to your lips lies a trackless ocean. But they thought you were cute. I was beaming with pride when you appeared in a red beret and long tossed hair. Ægir, the Glacier Poet, s
aid you looked like a member of the French Resistance, but Dadi Dream-fjörd said you reminded him of a young untamed mare.”

  He smiles at me.

  “I have the most beautiful girlfriend by far.”

  He sits on the bed and wriggles up to me. Then he assumes a stern air again.

  “Stefnir’s had a tough time lately.”

  “Oh?”

  “He lost the manuscript he was working on. He managed to forget it in Naust. Apart from the opening lines he’d read to us, he didn’t want anyone to see it, but said it was almost finished. It just needed proofreading.

  “When he remembered it a few days later and went to pick it up, it had disappeared and no one in the place remembered seeing it. He might have left it somewhere else, he now thinks, but can’t remember where. Maybe in the cloakroom of Hotel Holt. He’s gone to his mother’s at Hvolsvöll to drown his sorrows.”

  Then he turns to me.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?”

  He smiles at me and pulls the Odyssey off the bookshelf.

  “You’re my Penelope.”

  That night I think I hear meowing outside the hall door downstairs.

  I sit up.

  “I’ll go down and open, Hekla dear,” says the poet.

  Laxfoss

  D.J. Johnsson doesn’t return to the Laxfoss boat in Rotterdam.

  The crew was too drunk to notice when he disappeared and no one on board knew what became of him. The ship sailed off without him.

  “He won’t get a place again,” says the captain, when I ask about the fate of my sailor.

  I’m allowed to phone his mother from the hotel. She remembers me well, the Dalir lass. I tell her I’ve put a box on the coach for her and she asks me whether I think her son will ever come back again. I say I don’t know. She describes D.J. as good and kind and speaks of him in the past tense as if he were dead. He had brown eyes and dark hair, she says. He picked violets and put them in vanilla extract bottles because he wanted our home to look nice. He drew rainbows. There was nothing he couldn’t do with his hands. I bought material for curtains and when I came home one day, he’d sewn them and put them up in the kitchen. He was ten years old. I hadn’t even taught him how to use the sewing machine, but he’d figured it out by himself. He was a happy child, but the other kids gave him no peace. They heard gossip in their homes. He was shunned. Children are merciless, but adults are even worse.