Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

  life’s fiction is to keep your eyes and ears alert as I do.

  No, but she was many things to me, besides kind and supremely helpful when I struggled on alone in my studies. I do not know how I would have survived the program without her.

  He wet his lips.

  She was the director’s only daughter, increasingly engaged in a brutal rebellion against inertia, society, and the environment; she was vigorous and beautiful, an ardent socialist, almost a communist; she had traveled a lot—most European countries—and spoke seven languages fluently; she had seen both Paris and Rome and had met Theodore Dreiser in Hollywood two days before his death, on 12/28/1945, but

  For the most part fiction is superfluous to me because of my particulars. I could never enjoy books if they were borrowed. I had to own the book to be able to enjoy it to the fullest. Reading books was a youthful thrill, I never felt the day had properly reached evening unless I had read a few pages, sometimes starting in the earliest morning. Here I refer of course to reading good books, classic works, edifying subjects, preferably scientific literature written for the masses; or, something that allows the reader access to the dream world that is the future.

  though Ginger Rogers walked across my stage

  made a face at the citizens of the world

  no one remembers fame nor wealth as we do

  loving with moss-sprung tears

  He stroked his hands around his eyes, exhausted. He thought: We’re dead, imaginary creatures in the mind of some alien god, an unchecked power that man and his science has not been able to better define. If god’s powerful thought forgets us even for a moment, we are extinguished. One would die a clinical death. We who are alive are the largest, biggest lie; we, who are the greatest truth of life; but, my dear, you cannot comprehend this consistent example of existence. What is the soul and the life in our breast but fiction—this veneer, this remote-control power we call god?

  In that moment it occurred to him that he might have plunged into political struggle, as Vala Storð had urged him to. He saw her before him smoking cigarettes from a silver case, always ready for a debate, but he wandered away from her image and her challenge: Society is the patient who needs active medical care to survive, not the old woman with colitis, Sóldal, in that hospital, Parliament, your distinguished forum, which befits your ambition and manliness.

  He fell silent and contemplated his popular wife who looked at him with brilliant eyes, adoring his intelligence and education, the majestic set and manly icelandic expression of his face, anguished by thoughts of death, which lived in the depths of his being, infrequently evident in him, like the slow nagging pain in an affected tooth, constantly present but never so penetrating that he would get rid of it.

  I have put you in a bad mood.

  No, my darling, I just wanted to get to the root of existence; what is this so-called life, what is death?

  Haraldur Sóldal wanted to split the core of existence with the deadly power of his Nordic mood. Thoughts and ideas poured out in his mind like a glacier river in spring thaw, yet he was serene. And he became aware of a solution in the distance, one like the splendor of the icelandic glaciers in its power and destruction. Glaciers and volcanoes? Were they not the very opposite of the functional life of creation? In what, then, resides the life of creation? In woman, in her body, with her breasts, surrounded by her great kindness; in fertilizing a mother’s womb. Celebration lifted him to a higher level. He went to the record player and put an album on: Bach: Magnificat.

  Now he was no longer tired, he stooped meek as a child to her white breast, incipient mother, white like the glacier, hot like a spring in early summer, he put his lips on her neck which quivered with love’s words, and muttered:

  Woman, world, earth, just a snapshot smile but no more . . .

  Often I have felt that someone like me, Tómas Jónsson, possessing a scientific spirit, should be a mathematician and thermionic genius, an electronicker. Such an education was, of course, unattainable in this strange era in which I grew up: amid crushed fish, the Christian faith, and sheep. “Science hides in all ways in the spark and nature of a budding god,” I wrote at some point in my Thought Pamphlet. There I opined and argued that nuclear science was the creed of tomorrow’s world, especially the formula for the nuclear bomb.

  We Icelanders, you should know, my Títa, cannot produce our own nuclear bomb; the nation lacks control over a vast desert, an essential. But we have sharp enough brains for the task. iceland has no lack of brains; Sólheimasandur, however, is too small for the purpose. We could instead do our experiments via electronic brain control. The country appears to be appropriate as regards size; it is well-located and suited to various scientific experiments in the fields of national science and methods of government.

  No, stop, she sighed softly and looked into the eyes of her dear friend.

  He pulled back out of full respect for her virginity but she pressed her body toward him, full of the winsome longing to procreate that a young woman has.

  I would, she said. We should have children, she added, a life for tomorrow. I would love having children, the creation of a new era.

  Yes, he said, but not until our house has its roof.

  Then we must attend to the foundations in the morning, she said with joy, enthusiasm, a desire to work. What then?

  And that night—the first night after the roof-raising in our new house, which we own, just the two of us, you and I—then I will take your chastity.

  Every night thereafter will be an ecstasy.

  My friend, you are a marvelous child. Wonderfully childish and intelligent-natured.

  And I will become Þorbjörg Sóldal, wife of Guðmundur Sóldal the famous doctor, the one all the other doctors envy for his packed waiting room. What do you think the people at home in Þarafjörður will say then?

  She rose from the bed, the bed of youth’s impoverished station, with its worn upholstery and creaky springs, which hampered her free movement and night pleasures. She moved in stately fashion, like a hind in the forest, going naked across the floor, shielding her breasts with her palms and lifting the window curtains. Cold streetlights shone in the eyes of this proud, triumphant woman. He accompanied his hind, this young stag in life’s forest. The lights in the town, Reykjavík, the progressive hope, seemed slightly distant in the drizzle.

  We are the modern iceland, liberal and strong, was his thought as he kissed his wife, perhaps for the first time before the open curtain of the world.

  Come on, little sprout, she whispered, smiling with a hint of fun in her voice and led him gently, with a hand on his spry back, to the bed.

  Firm breasts. Loins. Eyes in the dusky room. Intense groping hands. Reef. Breakers rose within them. A lonely fish dove for the depths.

  Waves rose and heaved in the red dark of the surf.

  Athens - Mikanos - Milano - Madrid - Vík i Mýrdal summer 1949.

  With utmost respect for the successful conservative regime of Ólaf Thors, I consider the electronic brain to be the preferred mode for we Icelanders.

  T. J. Reflections on science, poetics, and technology, Feb. 3. 1944.

  Here I’m going to shoot a little into the whole story of instinct my urgent need is to trace each thread to its very end complexity that is the fertile bent of the scientist’s nature you say but this is a unique example of my own mentality I say both points of view are acceptable each is your opinion the given answer

  when the company received illegibly written correspondence, they would look to Tómas Jónsson’s advice, expert in reading small writing.this has been a detour and now I will continue where I left offfirst it must be said that my book purchases had become strikingly costly. I never patronized libraries. Jag brukar inte gå på Stadsbiblioteket och plugga, as the Swede said. In libraries all books have the same appearance, the same binding, and dust jackets (I cannot do it, I find it more than a little troublesome to see scholars surge into the collection carrying three-compartment b
riefcases dressed in thick winter coats and fur hats like Abdúllah Khan, sandals on their feet and an expression on their faces as if they are going about with an aphid up their nasal cavity; wearing sandals in the frost) the appearance of the books is always extremely dry and important. Librarians stroll about in Swedish sandals made of tan leather and white striped socks made of nylon crepe, on account of the moisture (such socks dry overnight if they are washed in the evening). In the mornings they anoint Lykt-ó-nei (Odor-O-No) between their toes; nothing works. They cluelessly study their little toes, which have fungus in ways the lady podiatrist does not understand. To me it’s impossible to understand your little toe any which way. The other ones I understand perfectly. With constant attention and care it is possible to cultivate the nail on the big toe if it falls off from nail-rot. Your toes should last your life if you follow these measures. I see nothing on my nails. You seem to have a normal cornea formation. I’ll try a Valkyrie band-aid on my corns, apply tar powder to my toes, plug a Dr. Scholl cork between them so that air can play freely across the toe-webs, and see what happens. Onychomycosis is nothing but a fungus that grows in a damp environment. Sprinkle talc regularly on your feet; I would advise you to drink isinglass dissolved in warm water after each meal. Gelatin is also good for the intestines. There’s nothing they despise so much as a little troublesome onychomycosis. I looked for assistance at second-hand bookstores where I often made affordable book purchases. A text does not lose its value like a binding, the book’s external form, as it frays. I adopt a commercial model, buying a book from one bookseller and selling it to the next after reading and mending it; then I buy another book from him with the money, and sell it to the first; this is a striking example of prudence that under the circumstances is based on precise calculationthis went on and on for years and years. Any loss that resulted from this passing-between, I could consider small and manageable. Sometimes I made a profit. The method was feasible until, due to my frequent visits, the booksellers suspected me of having a sizeable collection due to my frequent visits (I had actually stopped reading and studying as a pastime), and that is their bread-and-butter. Inside their airless bookstores you’d constantly find dawdling an assortment of mail carriers, sometimes a writer, and other boring specimens of men of a similar nature who would go on tirelessly, perched on boxes (often eating Danish pastries), about valuable publications that had disappeared into crevasses and cracks from pack horses during the time of the North Post, and how worthwhile it would be for adventurers to journey into the wild beyond to look into all the cracks on the mail route; now is the moment and they could make themselves famous in the pages of the newspapers for their daring, no one since the nineteenth century has risked their life rappelling into the ravine after books and horses when the postal wages were simply miserable, just five state dollars for a winter tour. They do not risk such poor payment these days to mail carriers. Yes, there lies a great store of literary riches buried in icelandic fissures, sighed the mail carriers, bless the wealth in books in the world’s fissures. I discovered an interesting chamber document by Levetzow from 1786 more or less display quality. A larger effort is needed for this. In antique book stores one generally requires a major effort for anything except jabbering. Of course these companions would try to entangle me in conversation and get me to join them in condemning book burnings in Hitler’s Germany and the interesting Levetzow chamber document from 1786. I want nothing to do with it. It is, however, most interesant in my mind when it is hotter in Grímsey than in Akureyri, not to mention London. No matter that the difference might be one degree—but that’s okay. Yes, temperatures elsewhere in the country don’t concern me, just in Grímsey, this distant country cut into pieces by the Arctic Circle—excuse me, what island can boast such a phenomenon? Grímsey is unique. Equally, I want the temperatures to be at least higher there than in Akureyri. It’s fun when it is hotter there than in London or Paris on the noon news. So too . . . (strangely, if I end a sentence, for example, with “s,” then I always begin the next sentence with the same letter) . . . powerful protests, which Icelanders have in their blood, and condemnations of Levetzow; they had hearty verses written by the late Jón from Kotleiti and used the verses as “a contribution to the struggle” for a fairer world; these were the words that were very much in fashion: everything was supposed to be a contribution to the fight for a fairer world. (Directly as a result, you cannot help but imagine a damp basement, a secondhand bookshop with three or four moth-eaten men of indistinct characteristics, wretched men chewing and eating noisily in a thought protest against the likes of famous tyrants, the Levetzows and Hitlers and saying: “This Hitler was not a man in the icelandic sense of the word” and, because they did not really understand, instead that he was one of the “worst workhorses in history” and “the people made a big mistake not rushing at him right from the beginning and shouting him down with robust verses, as the old icelandic ghosts would have done, hehehe!” Our belief is that a button is missing from everyone’s vest.) I was bored of their congress, these people who had never agreed whether to adopt ideas shaped by radical or conservative policies. Various sorts of restrictions have become very popular in the dark corners of second-hand booksellers. I searched for new second-hand booksellers, and after a few years I had threaded my way through all the second-hand stores in town; they were all overflowing with these quirky icelandic loiterers, headed for death yet complacent, the long-awaited death that is nourished on the concept of “iceland’s leadership role among nations.” Manuscripts home from Denmark to iceland, which is suffering from a thirst for reading! When it seemed there was no way out of the labyrinth of reading (my plan was to make myself immune to books by reading continually, just as you inject cowpox into humans to ward off cowpox [I managed to make myself immune to Kvaran’s novels within five months of reading his books]). But to make oneself immune to books by reading books will probably never happen until science manages to isolate the literary virus, classify it, kill and inject it in its dead condition (i.e. used books) into the human brain at birth so that man as a creature will be immune to the frequent and ominous literary epidemics from Paris, though fortunately these epidemics are significantly milder by the time they reach us. Miss Gerður heard at some women’s meeting that a vaccine had been found against painting and had been used experimentally in iceland. Several sick Picasso fans on Skólavördustígur were selected as volunteers; they were injected with material derived from paintings by the “Master” and then they were isolated in some museum in Paris, where only his paintings hung. The men came back to iceland untouched but the experiment was such an extraordinary strain on their nervous systems that they could not see paintings by icelandic masters or else they broke out in a rash and some of it got into their stomach and they vomited semi-digested food all over the National Museum. But I mustered all the energy I had in order to stop buying books. After a hard struggle, I managed to change this quirk in my mindset: an absolute contempt for writers and books, the quirk led me to a decent outcome in my impotence, a way of giving someone confidence and certainty.

  I had realized that this was a terrible waste of time and money, that the money involved would be worth more had I put it in the bank. Thereafter, my inclination crept ever toward my savings account book. now I understand that these adjustments in man’s nature sneak somehow past him in an instant I thought I was contemptuous of books but discovered the relationship between the things as they are in books and it is true what the psychotherapist Jung said in the magazine Úrval that a man always falls in the same well, even if you avoid wells and there are no wells arounda person instinctively digs his well and falls inI must out of necessity discover a valid aversion to second-hand bookstores: their presence is poisonous.no not a conclusive argumentsecond-hand bookstores are unjust and their books poorly sourced. They store books purchased from bookstore thieves in the christmas rush inside a small room at their home. Never in the shop. Would you like to see my home means that the sec
ond-hand bookseller wants to get rid of some stolen books, and have you take a look around his cubbyhole. This cubbyhole is a shabby closet under the basement stairs. Maybe you light upon some tome. Light on—tome—the very words they use—they strike you. How great to finally find words that fit into the idea I myself have shaped of second-hand booksellers (I created it, of course, in my own image. Note: I am invariably writing a veiled self-portrait). The same goes for writers who do not assemble word lists and make a glossary to rely on; they fall short and on issuing their works only cause problems. But is the purpose of fiction and biography to provide the reader vocabulary samples. Well, this will come later in my thesis. Recently I obtained, by pure chance, a rare book in excellent condition at a great price. Thus the wording should remove all doubt that here is a genuine second-hand bookstore worth consulting. No one uses such formal sentences as second-hand booksellers and collectors and then there is the exceptional appearance of books taken from the houses of recently deceased, intestate spinsters. (Most old women hoard by nature, stockpiling an incredible multitude of meaningless and useful junk. Old men do too, once they are approaching the condition of old women in looks, physical activity, and spirit. See below.)

  After the following events, the second-hand bookseller stopped acquiring valuable books: some old spinster in Þingholt ate sweetened soup made from three prunes, five currants, and a clove-stem. After that she gets heartburn, spits in a fragment of wrapping paper, and gives up the ghost, legs clad in black cotton socks dangling out of the bed. In Þingholt the colonizing and colonial culture of pure virginity has reached its zenith among people who live in low wooden buildings with crocheted curtains in front of windows full of vases that house everlasting flowers. Spinsters usually die but some seem to live forever both alive and dead. Now, assume they die; so long as that happens, the dead are borne to the door shortly after noon the day before Trinity Sunday. For this reason, the refrain of spinsters is: Everything in threes. Their newly-enriched relatives (lifelong virginity requires a significant nature; women are often too spiritually impoverished to maintain themselves intact beyond fifteen years) will get rid of “all the old woman’s things” on account of the sales potential of the property; land in the virgin colony is in the uppermost price bracket. They call the second-hand bookseller and give him the opportunity to see the house the day after the funeral and check through the old volumes in the attic. At night, after closing the store, the book dealer strolls over to the house, wearing black herringbone clothing gone shiny on the ass, elbows, and knees. He is led through the tiny bedroom that everywhere bears witness to her virginity: the round table with wrought legs: countless crocheted cloths; cloths on the commode; cloths on the stool-seat; cloths on the other cloths; brown wallpaper; a sour odor from the kitchen sink with its grille over the drain; the smell of cat urine in the bedroom. The bookseller yawns at the serenity standing on the open threshold of the living room and thinks: until 1930, this was how housing in this country was: a house divided into four equal parts and a shed with a protective door facing either north or east. He is shown to the loft ladder. He goes up the loose steps and is soon in a broad, low space barely the height of a person. There he rummages in countless dusty cardboard cookie boxes, Marias brand. godt smag giver sjælesbehag, he recalls and can taste Marias cookies and tea biscuits. He remembers gobstoppers and sugar mice, marzipans and toffee caramels, and sits there perfectly still within the unusable space defeated by his memories and the stale air with the intense scent of moss. He sighs and sneezes. Having found something valuable amid the junk he says: I looked through it all. But unfortunately there’s nothing really worthwhile. If you want, I can estimate a price for the whole caboodle. And that’s how I got a rare copy, which I had always lacked. He dusts off the books with fingers that are half-clenched from arthritis, puts udder ointment on the leather, brushes and polishes it with a cloth, and sells the books to newly-rich collectors who want to “build up their library” for display in the hardwood living room; sometimes the very same relatives who sold the dross in the first place. I can see before me the evident reason for the previously mysterious antipathy I have for second-hand booksellers. I would finally like to mention that I feel sorry for the virgin colony and its honesty, as though it belongs to bygone days in this boring town, which has been condemned to crumble in the jaws of excavators. A new symbol of virginity arises in the ruins of the neighborhood: the local bank. Congratulations, Miss Gerður.