“You call it en usynlige nærværelse in Danish.”
He waves the application letter and scrutinizes me.
“There are no mistakes. Flawless literary language. But you use words that are not very common in spoken Danish. Where did you learn Danish, if I may ask?”
“We still had a Danish king when I was born,” I say, “and a section of our book cabinet back home was in Danish.”
The man leans back in his chair and clasps his hands.
My mind travels back to the book cabinet at home. I could have told him it contained the Gyldendals Store Danske Encyclopædi with its 70,000 entries, weighing about four kilos, the cookery books from when Granny was at homemaking school in Jutland, also half a shelf about the history of Denmark, The History of the Borg Family by Gunnar Gunnarsson in Danish and Repetition by Søren Kierkegaard. We also had various Danish-Icelandic dictionaries, the oldest from the nineteenth century, a dictionary that contains most of the rare, exotic and poorly understood words to be found in Danish books, by Gunnlaugur Oddsson. I myself had an Icelandic-Danish dictionary by Sigfús Blöndal. It was rumoured that his wife Dr Björg C. Thorláksson had worked on it for twenty years without getting any credit. I read it back to back, starting on the first page and ending on the last. I actually read all the books we had at home once I’d learnt how to read, one after another, in the order in which they were arranged on the shelves, starting on the bottom shelf and working my way up. Shelf after shelf. You have to grow to read some books, Mum had said when I was annoyed at not being able to reach some of the volumes on the top shelves.
I could also have told the man we sometimes received copies of the Familie Journal, which were lent between farms, with pictures of King Frederick IX who had three daughters in silk dresses. Hissing and swishing, as a local woman put it.
“Recently, I’ve been reading various poetry books by female Danish writers,” I say.
“Really?”
The man looks at me probingly.
“Have you any experience in Smørrebrød, making open sandwiches?”
“I worked in a slaughterhouse and have some experience working with cold cuts,” I say.
He picks up the letter off the desk and slips on his glasses.
“Yes, it says here you worked in a slaughterhouse forfjor, the year before last.”
He puts the letter down again.
“The reference letter attached to the application says you possess a sense of beauty and harmony?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I say bluntly.
When I get home, D.J. Johnsson has bought minced meat, twice-baked buns and eggs and is making meatballs.
I tell him I’ve got a job and that I start at six in the morning and finish at three.
“What did you write in my reference letter?” I ask my friend.
My dear Hekla,
Thank you for the coat for Thorgerdur. No other child in the neighbourhood owns such a fine garment. We bought a lawnmower and I went out to cut the grass at four o’clock in the morning. I kept the door half open but the girls were fast asleep. And their father too. I hadn’t written in the diary over the past weeks, but when I came in I wrote three sentences: “The grass is so tall that it reaches my nipples. It’s on the limit of being able to continue growing vertically. Then it will lie down like a woman giving birth.” It wasn’t really like that, though, because the grass barely reached my ankles. But I longed to mention my nipples. Probably because my breasts are so full of milk. If I had described the lawn after I had mowed it, I could have used a male simile and spoken about stubble. After writing those three sentences, I decided to stop writing in the diary. I’ve packed away my wings. They were a small bird’s wings that could carry me no further than east to the birch grove of Thrastaskógur, oh, Hekla. The other main news is that one of the twins in the fish shop died (unexpectedly) and I don’t know which one it was. The one who survived doesn’t tease me, but I don’t know whether that’s because he’s mourning his brother or because it was the one who called me his darling who died. I’m a 22-year-old mother of two and there’s a streak of melancholic nostalgia inside me. Sorry for sharing these thoughts with you. Throw away these squiggles.
Have I travelled far away enough
from home to cry?
D.J. Johnsson hasn’t come home for two days.
“He’s off this weekend,” says his colleague when I enquire about him at the bar. He looks me over as he dries the glasses.
“Are you his sister? You resemble each other like two drops of water. Except he’s dark and you’re blonde.”
When D.J. Johnsson finally returns, he’s wobbling on his feet, clutching a bottle of beer. He looks like he hasn’t slept.
I stare at him.
“I’m not selling myself,” he says. “I don’t do drugs. I’m celebrating being alive.”
I sit beside him on the bed.
“You know, Hekla, some men want me to dress up and play a woman. I don’t want to be treated like a woman, Hekla. I’m a man.”
“I know.”
He droops his head.
“I’m just a guy who likes guys.”
He lies on the bed and presses the pillow against his head.
I sit with him and stroke him. He’s shaking.
“I’m a foreigner in this flat country. D.J. Johnsson. I’m a guest on this earth. I was born by accident. I wasn’t planned for. Sometimes I’m so tired, Hekla. Of existing and sometimes
“I just want to
“Sleep
“nod off
“conk out
“for a whole month.”
I try to remember if we have any leftover herring and beetroot.
“Shall I make you some smørrebrød?” I ask.
“I want to sew, Hekla. The sewing machine is my typewriter.”
Hekla dear,
The day has turned into night. Temperature: 9°. It looks as if the hay harvest will be reasonable, despite the wet, windy spring. It would have made a difference to have you with us in the haymaking, unlike some poets who are too feeble for outdoor work. It’s actually quite amazing how so many poets lack physical stamina. If they’re not blind like Homer, Milton and Borges, they’re lame and can’t do any sort of labour. Once a poet from Reykjavík joined us for six days, a distant cousin of your mother’s, whom she pampered, of course. At the peak of the haymaking season. His mission was to listen to the vernacular of country folk while we were working.
Apart from that, the main news is that the eruption in Surtsey continues. It has been going on for nine months now and the island has grown to a height of 174 metres. In the spring, two new craters opened beside the mother island and two extra islands were formed. They were named Surtur the first and Surtur the second in the royalist tradition. And it’s not all over because yet another island is expected to be born from a small black crater that has been named Syrtling.
Then the July nights arrived, warm and silent. All days pass, all moments vanish.
YOUR FATHER
So far from the battlefield of the world
“I could,” says D.J. Johnsson, seemingly giving it some thought, “ask a friend of mine to read it over if you want to try to write in Danish.”
“Like Gunnar Gunnarsson?”
“I was thinking more of a short story maybe.”
That night he climbs into the bed.
“It was cold out there.
“And I was lonely,” he adds.
I make room for him.
“I dreamt,” he says, “that I was on a merry-go-round in a deserted Tivoli Gardens, in a bleak barren landscape. I was alone and I thought: the world spins with everything but me.”
He hesitates.
“I think, Hekla, that I want to be buried beside Mum, in the west in Búdardalur.”
My dearest Hekla,
We’ve got a patch of land in Sogamýri. Lýdur goes there every evening to work on the foundations. Then I’m alone with the girls. He’s going to join the Lions or Kiwa
nis club. It’s the only way, he says. A family man with a wife and two children has to have connections. Otherwise you won’t get any builders. Lýdur is really happy with his girls and I’ve got to give it to him, he’s good at sleeping through the children crying at night. He’s also understanding about the mess the apartment is in. I’m making Lýdur a pair of trousers with the sewing machine Jón John gave me, but it’s more difficult than it seems.
Burn this letter in a fire. No, tear it to shreds, scatter it in the air and let it snow on you, dearest friend, and fall on your shoulders. You don’t have to be naked.
YOUR BEST FRIEND (FOR LIFE)
South
“We’re losing the flat in the autumn,” says D.J. Johnsson. “What should we do then?”
I finish the sentence I’m writing and turn.
“We’ll find another flat.”
He looks at me.
“Let’s go away, Hekla.”
I stand up.
“Where to?”
“South. By train.”
He’s standing in the middle of the floor.
“We’re two of a kind, Hekla. Neither of us is at home anywhere.”
“We don’t have the money for a train ticket. We don’t own anything.”
I think: my only possessions are two typewriters, one of which is electric.
“We’ll find a way. I’ll take on more shifts.”
He muses.
“It’ll take us a week to travel and you can write.”
“All the way?”
“Yes, all the way. We’ll travel as far as the train can take us, until we reach the sea. On the journey we’ll buy bread and cheeses named after the villages they’re made in.”
Dear Hekla,
I have news to share. We just bought a car, to be more precise: an orange Saab that Lýdur got as a bargain through his brother-in-law. And not only that, but I now have a driver’s licence. Lýdur encouraged me to and took me on several drives to save on the driving lessons. The driving instructor was really surprised I knew how to reverse. In the test I had to park the car. Neither Mum nor my mother-in-law has a driving licence. I wanted to drive to Sogamýri on my first drive to see Lýdur working on the foundations, but I got no further than Snorrabraut where I almost backed into a tourist. He wasn’t hurt but we were both equally startled. Who expects to find a tourist in the country in the second half of August? He turned out to be a French geologist, who’d come here because of the Surtsey eruption. He had a map and pointed out where he was going. I felt the least I could do was drive him to Thorlákshöfn even though I had the two girls in the back. Fortunately, Katla slept in the carrycot for most of the way. Otherwise I would have had to stop at the ski shelter to breastfeed her. It took a while to explain to him that my friend was called Hekla and my daughter Katla, but he got it in the end.
They’re two volcanoes, I said.
P.S. I saw Starkadur on Barónsstígur yesterday with a girl. I think I spotted engagement rings. He asked whether I’d received any mail from you and I said that I got a letter every week. He peeped into the pram. His girlfriend was all wide-eyed during the conversation.
There are two people inside me
and they are at war with each other
D.J. Johnsson is waiting for me after work and accompanies me home. He rides his bike and I mine, and I immediately sense he is on edge.
“Is something up?”
He gets straight to the point.
“I was wondering, Hekla, whether it wouldn’t be better to get married before the trip.”
I look at him, he seems worried.
I smile at him.
He strokes the fringe over his eyes.
“I’m serious, Hekla.”
This is the third time he mentions marriage in a short period, either because some friend of his is about to get married or he believes he’ll eventually end up getting married.
“Does that mean you’re going to give up?”
He doesn’t answer the question but looks straight into the distance.
“I’ve been thinking about it for some time. It could be useful for both of us.”
He hesitates.
“It’s also cheaper. We only need one hotel room if we have wedding rings.”
“It would never work,” I say.
“There are many different types of marriages,” he continues. “You’re my best friend. We’re both misfits.”
He stops and looks at me.
“It wouldn’t change anything. I’d get to be myself and you’d get to write. We’d take care of each other.”
We approach the hall door. He helps me lock my bike.
“It’s not as if I haven’t been propositioned by women,” he says.
Two dogs start fighting in the alleyway.
“We’d make a pretty couple. We’d make the most beautiful couple, Hekla.”
My dearest Hekla,
My father-in-law died two weeks ago after a difficult illness. I wrote an obituary about him in Morgunbladid. It was the only eulogy. Even though he hadn’t been close to Lýdur, I felt he deserved the article for the Kjarval paintings. Lýdur embraced me that evening and said that he never knew that his father had been a fan of Hannes Hafsteinn’s poetry. (He had asked me to read the article to him because for some reason the letters became all jumbled when he tried to read it himself. I don’t understand why.) I based it on the lines: “I love you, storm, I love you, love you, eternal battle.” What was heartbreaking for Lýdur, however, was that there was a woman with a black veil sitting in the church that no one seemed to recognize. She seemed so devastated. Lýdur says he can’t figure it out. I pulled myself together and made some curtains with the sewing machine. They’re orange like the Saab. Lýdur didn’t notice any change in the bedroom.
P.S. I read the Sylvia Plath poem you sent me and it changed everything, I’m not the same person as I was before because it was about me. It was so strange and beautiful, thank you for translating it for me; I haven’t been able to think of anything else.
Nebula
I’ve written to the editors of three newspapers in Iceland to ask them if I can send them travel pieces. I would preferably need to be paid in advance. When we’re on the point of giving up on the idea of the trip, three things happen: I get an answer from the editor of Alþýdublad who is willing to pay for my articles and give me a small advance. Then I also get a letter from a Danish editor who wants to publish a short story I had sent him and which Jón John’s colleague at the bar had read over for me. The letter said the structure was unusual and reminiscent of nebula. But there is a system “i galskabet”, method in your madness, he writes. The letter is accompanied by a cheque. I fetch the bike and cycle straight to the station to buy two train tickets. One way.
But the greatest difference to the travel fund came from the contents of Dad’s letter.
Hekla dear,
The summer has been its usual self. Neither dry nor raining at the right time. You write to say you’re thinking of taking a journey down south. Won’t you be needing some pocket money then? Enclosed is a stamped letter that your mother had in her belongings and which is from a pile of letters handed down by her great-grandfather. It’s a reply from a royal official to a letter of complaint her great-grandfather had written about a magistrate’s unauthorized expropriation of eggs from his land. It occurred to me, Hekla dear, that you might be able to make some money out of it. Stamps are considered more valuable if they are still on the envelope. That’s all I have to say but hope that your trip down south will be educational and satisfactory.
Hotel Beach
We step off the train late at night. It’s still dark so we sit on a bench in the waiting room of the station, waiting for the fireball to rise above the curved horizon and the world to assume a form. Then we take our cases and walk down to the beach and lie in the sand. And fall asleep.
I awake with sand in my hair, shell fragments in the hollows of my knees and heat on my eyelids; a white
light fills every corner of the world. I taste salt on my lips. A man comes running over with two parasols and plants them in the sand beside us.
I fall asleep again.
When I open my eyes, I see D.J. Johnsson standing dead still on the edge of the shore, staring straight out at the sea. He still has on the same white suit he was wearing when we started our journey five days ago; his trousers rolled up. I see him wading out into the water and walk over to him, bend and plant my hands in the water, which gushes between my fingers, leaving them salted. Then I turn again. The beach gradually fills with people; children dig holes in the sand and women massage their men with oil. They have baskets from which they pull out towels and sun hats.
The heat hits me.
I’ve no experience of such high temperatures, apart from one day seven years ago at the peak of the harvest when there was a heat wave in Dalir and temperatures hit 26°. My father undid one button of his flannel shirt: a line at the bottom of his neck marked the beginning of his snow-white torso.
I lose sight of D.J. Johnsson, but suddenly he’s standing beside me holding two ice pops.
“Let’s go,” he says.
I notice that men aren’t just looking at me, but also at my friend. And he at them.
“Don’t say anything and don’t look back,” he says as he stretches out his hand and hoists me to my feet.
My dear Ísey,
I have some news to give you. Jón John and I are going on a trip. After the rainiest summer in the city in human memory, we decided to move south. We gave up our jobs and flat, I sold my electric typewriter for a pittance to an Icelandic Nordic Studies student and we packed two small suitcases. I’d never stepped onto a train before and experienced the world in movement while I sat still. Don’t be shocked, Ísey dear, but Jón John and I got married in the city hall before we set off. So I am now a married woman. It was a beautiful but short ceremony. We bought two golden rings. Jón John was wearing a white suit and I the Northern Lights dress which he’d sewn for me last year, but which I hadn’t had a chance to wear. The best men were Jón John’s friend who is a teacher and Mette who worked with me at the Smørrebrød department. We bought a marzipan tart and Mette brought some sweet white wine and we sat down on a park bench and drank it. Don’t worry, Jón John understands me and my need to write, and we take care of each other. I’m strong and he is vulnerable, but he protects me in his own way.
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