Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

  Copyright © Guðberger Bergsson, 1966

  Translation copyright © Lytton Smith, 2017

  Title of the original Icelandic edition: Tómas Jónsson: metsölubók

  Published by agreement with Forlagid Publishing, www.forlagid.is

  First edition, 2017

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Names: Guðbergur Bergsson, 1932- author. | Smith, Lytton, 1982- translator.

  Title: Tómas Jónsson: bestseller / Guðbergur Bergsson; translated by Lytton Smith.

  Other titles: Tómas Jónsson: metsölubók. English

  Description: Rochester: Open Letter, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017007197 (print) | LCCN 2017010114 (ebook) | ISBN 9781940953618 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Iceland—Social conditions—20th century—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | HISTORY / Europe / Scandinavia. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PT7511.G78 T6613 2017 (print) | LCC PT7511.G78 (ebook) | DDC 839/.6934—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007197

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

  This book has been translated with a financial support from:

  Design by N. J. Furl

  Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627

  www.openletterbooks.org

  Contents

  Biography

  First composition book

  Second book

  Third composition book

  IV composition book

  Fifth composition book

  VI.

  Tómas’s seventh composition book

  8.

  IX. Class A

  Tenth composition book

  This is the eleventh book

  My 12th composition book

  Book 13

  Fourteen

  Fifteenth book

  16. Notebook

  17. Composition book

  Biography

  I am descended from the bravest, bluest-eyed Vikings. I am related to courtly poets and victorious kings. I am an Icelander. My name is Tómas Jónsson. I am old

  no, no

  first composition book

  I think it would be easiest to begin this way, this First Book, and move without further delay right to the kernel of the matter, thus: during the first years of World War II, I took some lodgers into my apartment, Sveinn and Katrín, a married couple with five children: Stína, who died; Dóri, their son; an infant boy; and a small cat, Títa,he naps soft and warm against me as I write and has come back, together with Anna and Magnús and DóriI think they’re all grown up and moreover there’s a new addition to the crowd, Hermann, I hear them call him,cursed forever is the day they returned,and the musician, who rented the small bedroom on the other side of the partition, i.e. this bedroom where I now live, after he moved into the other bedroom, which is much smaller. His rental terms and my own are identical. I consider the terms equitable, beyond reproach, they ensure that the property owner enjoys some privileges in his own home; the musician agreed to the rental stipulations, indeed, he got out of me a written document saying that he could practice his electric guitar every day between four and five o’clock, an amount equivalent to one meter square of space, for my bedroom is larger by a square foot, according to the floor plan. He accepted this because it wasn’t legally practical to pay the same rent, and I made sure the rental agreement clearly stated: a state of complete silence in a bedroom, which is one square meter smaller than the other in the same apartment, must result in the party in question paying a higher amount. Theretofore the unusual, localized noise from the smaller room is accepted by the tenant in question, who is responsible for his sounds, and is obligated to pay the same rent in respect to the tenant who lives beside him. Two hours a day for guitar practice is, I therefore believe, according to my own opinion and the best of my knowledge, equivalent to one-meter square (1 m2). You old financial fox, I sometimes tell myself with a chuckle, you clearly ought to have a sideline in handling rental finances. I am inclined to believe the value of a property increases in such a manner, at least in the eyes of the one paying regular installments on a house. Selflessness and self-sacrifice is my philosophy, occupying and consuming every part of me. I strive to hone my discipline, to control the inevitable oscillations toward backsliding in my disposition, via a continual severity of externally applied arguments.yes just call it a spiritual oppressionFinally I gave up on all such rental stipulations, once the apartment had stopped being a pigsty, a twisted den of debauchery; I lived alone a short while. It behooves a man to live totally alone by himself—O wonderful days of solitude—independent from everything save his own whims and eccentricities, which I compliment myself for having long vanquished and exiled. I became like the world around me. I lived all alone within my own four walls and I put things to the test hither and thither, fiddling and patching the things that had gone haywire while I rented out parts of the apartment. I forgot in the course of time that the gains from my prior renting had been eaten up, I got lost in myself, and incomprehensibly I started taking new renters, Anna and Magnús, on top of which I was remunerated with this blindness the doctors managed to keep at bay until now. I suffer from congenital blindness. (Blindness and baldness alike run in my family.) Clouds cover both my eyes, never drawing away from “the edge of the sun,” shielding the light the whole day, until day wraps itself in civil twilight.and yet I remain capable of distinguishing night from day; as peculiar as it may seem, I can tell red from white, and so I am writing this in red inkIn the past, I put my rental income in a special savings account book, and kept it safe there until I was given an envelope (brown) marked with an elegant signature—Sigurður at one point mentioned, in passing, that it resembled Copperplate—actually he was probably called Sigmundur, that teacher—I reckon I was about twelve years old. (For fun, in parentheses, I want to mention, so everyone knows, that I was one of the school children who received acknowledgment for my beautiful handwriting from the King of iceland and Denmark. Never since has anyone given me such recognition.) The middle of the envelope was labeled in red ink: Tómas Jónsson’s Rental Income. Clear characters swam on blue waves. In every wave valley and under each wave crest was a little period. The far end of the signature rose, a rocky coast with a high lighthouse that shone over the sea. I considered it perfect, the lighthouse a symbol—my own symbol.

  Sitting halfway up in bed, with the pillow behind my head, I became aware that something unusual was going on in the hallway. There came to my ears a sound like the rustle of low moans intertwining. I listened to the sounds in the dark, low but intense, and I kept mouse quiet. sometimes a man’s own integrity is insufficient and he knows he must throw the doors open, all other measures having proved fruitless

  From out in the dark, from my own corridor in my own premises, I heard a stifled moan, at first low, then turning into a heavy moan or maybe a whisper from a half-open mouth, as if of a fist being forced into the base of a belly (I later verified this experimentally on myself). Because the lungful of air emerges unopposed through the throat and mouth, open about an inch, the gasp never becomes piercing or painful, but heavy, hungry, sensual. Or so I felt: lips nibbling kisses. Because I lived in darkness, there could be no doubt that the light had been turned on in the deep of night; I saw faint light in the keyhole and a strip of light from under the door. The apartment has no doorsill. Those disappeared with the arrival of the American military force. Clearly someone was wasting electricity late into the depth of night
. After this incident, I set myself this rule: to take out the fuses from the board each evening. Before I went to bed I made sure to check that the lights everywhere were extinguished. The electricity bill was enough of a burden on me already, sparing as I was with light. And I dropped into the lease conditions some new clauses about light-times in the apartment (I was idiotic enough to include light and heat in the rent): on weekdays in all the shady months, lights must be turned off after 11:30 P.M.; moreover, the housework must stop by then and the apartment must be silent, with the exception of weekends, when the light-time is extended by one hour. And a clause about the use of lights around the major festivals: a) A week before the big festivals, christmas and Easter, the rules that apply on weekends will be observed (to allow for baking and the consumption of baked goods); b) On christmas eve, according to ancient traditions, the lights shall stay on, but the tenant shall replace their bulbs, ones with a smaller wattage. Instead of conventional bulbs, only 15-candle bulbs are allowed. In a chandelier with more than four arms, there must only be two bulbs. All wall sconces and standing lamps must be extinguished. Special provisions for light over the summer months: the homeowner reserves the right to remove all the fuses from the fuse box, other than the one labeled kitchen, and store them in his own room. Final clause: should a situation arise in which someone needs light after the lawfully-approved light time, he must have a flashlight available so he can go in and out of the house. Non-negotiable clause: The use of oil- or candlelight is strictly prohibited because of the risk of fire. Exemption from these regulatory clauses: If a student is in the apartment, he shall be authorized to have a night lamp on, provided the landlord is notified in advance of the bulb size and how long the student intends to read into the night.

  Reykjavík, 13. January 1943.

  Tómas Jónsson.

  The musician fixed a little flashlight to his belt, attached to a key ring—cylindrical, finger-sized, with a convex magnifying glass on the tip, to amplify the light. He used the flashlight to get his key into the lock. The musician had a certain ingenuity; for example, he had marked his soap dish and toothbrush holster with a cap around the bristles of the toothbrush. Before he combed his hair, he spread his hand towel around his shoulders. These and other facets I noted in his character, and credited him for them. He never over-used brilliantine, as was common at the time. Instead, he used hair cream. He left his shoes in front of his door, making it easy to monitor whether he was in or out. This meant he never got the musk of shoe odor in the room; he put his socks inside his shoes. I sometimes sniffed the socks, but they never had an unpleasant fragrance. No one had a room key. No secrecy is needed in a house where each person respects the others’ individual rights. I also wanted to be able to walk freely around the apartment, if necessary, at all times of the day.

  The apartment is this sort of dwelling: from the main entrance you walk down into the basement, five steps of green, speckled linoleum. To the right, when you have come down, is my apartment’s door. On the left-hand side another door down a short hallway leads to a shared laundry room for all the apartments in the building. Inside my own apartment you come first to a small vestibule. On the left is my bedroom door. The storage closet lies opposite. If you continue straight on through the vestibule and the open door with its window fitted with thin screens, you come into the hall. In the hall you find four doors: the kitchen and the musician’s door on the right (the room still bears his name even though I have now comfortably moved in). From the far end of the hall extends a bathroom, and opposite the kitchen is the living room door. From the living room is the entrance to the couple’s bedroom, the so-called inner room. (I commanded this room when I lived alone.) the man felt fine about lying up against the big fat smudge on the wall Katrín’s remnants it gave him pleasure to thrust his nose up against the stain smelling sniffing thinking how she had slept with Sveinn the smell of perfume unmistakable the patch on the wall on her side of the bed she must have had to lie with her ass squashed up against the wall her body steaming warmth The bathroom features a bath. In the bathroom there’s a chair bath, as I call it, i.e. the tub is shaped like a cistern with a pedestal for perching on once the water’s drawn. I am opposed to long baths. Women have a compulsion for spreading a loose mat in the bottom as decoration, and feet catch on the mat above the slippery enamel, then you fall and there’s almost no grip on the wet edges; one could likely drown. Jacuzzi tubs can be fatal, particularly for heavyset people. On the other hand, I could sit steadfastly on the perch of a chair bath and let the water flow over me from the shower without any danger. (Anna insisted on bringing a crocheted mat for the bottom, but I would throw it out onto the floor before stepping into the bathtub.) Because I’ve always been hydrophobic, I built myself a nose-cap, a kind of proboscis made from an old faucet to prevent water bubbling through my nose and into my lungs. I’d tightly fasten the nose-cap behind my ears using elastic, which worked wonderfully. Great time and ingenuity went into inventing and perfecting the cap so that it was fully functional. My inventions mostly came to me during the period when I lived entirely alone. I had nothing better to do in the long evening hours than think and ponder. I found it difficult to properly seal the device around my nostrils. No thanks to my over-abundance of nose hair, the water was still inclined to trickle down from my forehead, past the corners of my eyes, and into my nose through my nostrils. In truth, I should have been born during the Renaissance, when painters desired nothing more than to make portraits of hairy-nosed aristocrats. The newspapers, on the other hand, harp on about how we live in an Industrial Age of Innovation. How it is possible to expect significant artworks will be painted during an age when national industries dominate, or any other important ideas emerge when employment—think about that prefix, em—is the byline for this age? Initially, I was as gullible and empty as a fetus in its mother’s belly; or did I suspect how things were embroiled? I have racked my brain on the matter, trying to emend the situation, without reaching a conclusion. I don’t know there’s ever been a safe conclusion found about anything. But I have described the exterior of the apartment, its embellishments, my tiny world that I assembled, for myself alone, from much-loved partstake a nap, my sweet pussyI have described the entire apartment except its colors.

  The apartment is painted green save for the hallway (it was painted in a period when that color was believed to rest your eyes, and the house is therefore a green interior meadow), which is a light muted gray color. (The corridor was painted in the prevailing period of muted colors, “which no one could settle on,” as the saying went.) Gold-bronze tiles covered the blue ceiling, but the doors and doorframes were white, since it cleaned easily with a cloth and mild soapy water. (Everything was painted in period colors, cleaned easily “with a soft cloth and mild soap and water.”) The apartment is evidence for developments in taste when it comes to color between 1943 and 1950. The walls of the bathroom each has its own color and the ceiling is black (abstract). I had the doors and windows gold-bronzed; I do not really believe in the restful power of green. Immediately the uncomfortable suspicion snuck up on me that in the corridor a disgrace was taking place, something I, Tómas Jónsson, could not tolerate in my vicinity. The reasons for my inner suspicion remain unknown to me. Was I aware Katrín sold herself? To whom? A kept woman? Should we be protecting ourselves? So far, I have been rather naïve as to the possibility. Man is by nature suspicious, but I compensate against my tendencies in that direction. Believing people have the dignity to live according to true stories. But the shallow breathing bore unambiguous witness that the soul’s moral strength was being smashed to pieces right under my nose by the coat hooks—and I was not raising a finger to help. Something held me back. It would have been sensible to rush out with the fruits of the night, to pour them over this fire (as was done at my childhood home with dogs in heat, when people could not sleep for the growls and barks. The bitch Mjóna slept in the garden dock plants under the wall, beneath the gable window, and my sist
er Björg kept a chamber pot on the table when spring arrived and the dogs had started to frisk about, as was their nature. From the table, she placed one foot on the windowsill and the other on the side of the bed, which made it possible for her to empty the pot, splattering a cascade of piss out the window and over the dogs. For a few nights, this alarm worked. The dogs had been spoken to. Then they started up again. Dogs are like that. Another time, mom adopted another, better plan, spreading cowshit on the bitch’s ass to scare the dogs from her) but instead I scrutinized the paint and the shoes in the hallway. I spread the comforter over the alarm clock. Maybe I was most bothered about my shoe covers. I pressed the palm of my hand to the button on the back of the clock. I did all this blindly under the comforter, in the dark. I altered the regulator until I felt, more than I heard, a low crack. The clock would not ring. The button was no longer connected. All that . . .

  (Part of the manuscript is missing here.)

  . . . sat up in bad with the utmost care. In a pale sheen of streetlight somehow fumbling its way through a tear in the window shade, I could make out, using glasses and a magnifier, that it was only about four in the morning. Drowsiness and lethargy lay upon me. A body that had not received its fill of sleep and dreams. The deficit spoke for itself. I was exhausted from the drowsiness, clammy with sweat. The shallow breathing was still going, still as zealous. He must be slow, was my thought. Or maybe he has studied books, taught himself to last. I knew full well what was going on around the partition past the door. I groped about under the comforter and pillows, shamefully joining the team, and finishing first. I didn’t need much preparation or time. I am like the animals in this respect. She glides from his arms wet and satisfied.

  Because of the cold floor—

  precisely because of the cold floor and because I am sensitive to changes in temperature, fearful of the cold of many weeks of cold and getting up and leaking piss you are warned—I walk around naked at night no sooner than I get under the comforter I realize my bladder is filling even if it’s only a drop of pee I try to pee I must empty myself during the night I lift the lid from the seat and stand with feet a-straddle I hold the chain on the water tank and let a trickling sound trickle suggestively two short spurts of the constant urine-production standing on the cold and damp and chilled floor at night would damage my fragile health I’ve always been prone to colds not only during cold season mid-January to March April but all year round(Due to this sensitivity to cold I use a plastic chamber pot which I empty and rinse thoroughly under the cold water tap before the couple rises from their tepid bed. Enamel pots, once the custom, were piercingly cold. Until pots made of something other than iron were available, I started lining the outside of the chamber pot with old woolen singlets. I trained myself to grasp it, swing it up into bed, empty my bladder and shake myself dropless without losing any sleep. My method: I pulled the pot under the divan with a left-handed motion, bent my wrist and slid the pot under the bed fast asleep. But the cold contact of the pot with my body’s night sweat earned me bouts of bronchitis or chronic blisters.