Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  The following reasons are the basis of why I do not read literature:

  I do not read novels. They are written with secret revenge in mind, the revenge of craven writers who shrink from coming clean and spitting filth and obscenities in the faces of people on the street. I would read novels if it meant spurring on the hot, privileged rights of an artist who hides, concealing himself and protecting himself under the guise of humanitarianism. He considers himself a physician, that his publications are diagnoses of his time and therefore allowed to bring things to light, however dirty and messy they may be, the way a doctor tells a patient: this festering in your belly means you have hemorrhoids. Your colon must be removed, taken from its belly so you can heal (entrepreneurs and CEOs, with whom writers are especially angry except when they offer to pay the bill, since our country is a kind of highfalutin poetic culture: I was in charge of billing. Minor writers take bills that are all of a piece while major writers take the Nobel prize. The prime bill, a Nobel prize). Some writers are content to publish diagnostic pieces (the remedy rests with you), others come out with palliatives: 20mg nationalization, 30mg Socialism, 1mg national dance and folk songs. One tablespoon twice a day—your health improves! Still others recommend god. But what would happen if doctors publicly disclosed medical records and sold anyone what they wanted. I say: Writers are not physicians but the carriers of infection who weep from their various individual sores and bestow those same sores upon the nation. So these activities attain respectability, writers give themselves beautiful civic names: the conscience of the nation, the mirror of time, the extent of perception. The motto of these cowardly writers is: No one does not get corns; no one should be allowed to live without knowing man at his most oozing. I should least forget Sigurður’s words (stolen, of course): When I read a book by a deceased author, he lives again for as long as I read it and remember its contents. Writers are always being revived. The dead must stay dead, I say. I want to beat them all to death. I have gained a new understanding of death: I kill a writer every time I read a book. Why should writers live longer than anyone else. Do they achieve more. They have no legal right to extra days than we who complete our full day’s work up to evening. Nature is just; no one lives more than sixty minutes in an hour, twelve hours in a day and fifty-two weeks in a year. Avoid breaking the laws of nature. If the pull of the earth were to decrease, houses and men would lift an inch from the ground and hover in the air, we would have to drive rods into the ground so people could continue with their journeys like a ship in a storm, if the top strata was not a gaseous foam. Ólaf answered with a frown: novel characters can whine about love to writers in private; it matters little to me. All writers pretend to be endowed with compassion and true faith. The wrappings are always being embellished, more and more resembling cellophane.

  One time I observed by chance three poets on the way up Bankastræti. One poet said:

  I will be reincarnated and come back worth half what I am now.

  Another said:

  Living this life is enough for me.

  The third said:

  In my next life I will be a poverty stricken mother of fifteen children in the slums of the East End of London. I will lose them all to tuberculosis carried in unboiled milk.

  He was rather tearful over his prospective fate, said farewell, and lost everything, but the poets continued.

  West End, I said and crossed the road to avoid them. This is my total personal experience with writers.

  What concerns we humanitarians, we who never express or reveal ourselves to othersnow I am getting to the pointexcept when the character is alone, adds Óli contemptuously. After a small pause he continued (Ólaf did): Icelanders are particularly stubborn-minded men who abuse others during the day, drunk, then weep at their hangovers at night, which are unparalleled among our brother nations in Scandinavia or farther afieldthat is how stories pamper you readers—“people are, at heart, good-hearted”—in stories you find what is called a justification. Is not a story meant to be a mirror. Un roman c’est un miroir qu’on promene le long d’un chemin, as Saint Real said. Sigurður and Ólaf get quarrelsome about people and culture during the lunch hour. Or the basis of spring, sighs Ólaf, and grimaces. I want to say, supportively: When the maximum vehicle weight on mountain roads is lifted then but not before then spring has come as far as I’m concerned that was my thoughtnobut I kept silent felt it best to keep silent on the mattersilence is prudenceit does not leave one exposedalmost invariably the rule is it that when two strong and equally certain opponents debate they are forever waiting for a third party to drag into the debate then they can both vent their anger at him together in a combined attack because no power despises another power as god does not hate the devil, the devil does not hate god, between them there is only competition whilst they both try to get the other on his side and each is anti-human so it is clear that equally strong enemies are not enemies but devilfriends filled with admiration but trying to conceal each from the other how evil his nature what they know it to be but take note puss to keep silent a man cannot keep his counsel after the fact is intact perhaps only in silencehow to scold a mute, deaf man

  why should we also take a stance

  for a while the inspection has annulled its value

  unless its value is negative for the stanceless

  and those who are without opinions alive from the World War

  national prisons the unrest of state control brainwashing

  from these it means nothing to wash like those who live

  to create the world only for those who live and breathe

  and everyone is created in the image of the creator

  those without ideals don’t destroy others’ ideals

  ideals move about by themselves and other ideals

  die and presumably others become ideals

  the godless do not lose faith in god

  optimism is the root of all wars

  Truly I tell you, Títa-nail, they are able to split hairs into an eternal mid-afternoon over ideals of the soul’s virtue (Sigurður) and undisputed facts (Ólaf) and transform the table and get ulcers from their fanaticism.

  Probably I should not remember this thing I recall I cannot obstruct myself from remembering you can deny me the chance to speak out loud but will never be able to wall up the holes in my mind well I make a large cross × in the air you know with what I remain a cross in the air leaves no mark behind I live with police authority domineering feline nature hahaha

  to be in agreement with the world depends on the soul. and writers are the world’s moral apostles prophets and failed priests. the way doctors rebuke diseases you understand me. it may be that at some point souls were the word’s foundation. that has long passed from our memory. in this shines public opportunism. it is understandable that Icelanders do not attend churches. each Icelander has a home chapel plus missionary calluses that maintain his debate on the box.

  To my mind this is how it happens as it appears in the laws of earth and man:

  The world is primarily the acts of its constituents and a movement across unequal but distinctly drawn lines. I’m desperate to mention this theory to Ólafsometimes it’s the case that we are the last to get up from the table in the refectory.in truth these are his own words forgotten by everyone but me how can he remember everything he says with that parroting mouth below his nose and eyesI am sufficiently prepared to deny or admit if it comes to that and I get to have his friendship. Ólaf has prepared the ground, he has sown so much in me, but doesn’t care about the yield. With Sigurður it is clearly pointless to speak of fraternity.the soul’s house rhymes with compass compass needle the needle points somewhat crookedly in his head hehehe Títu-totterI never feel the presence of this legendary soul; at every moment it resists the plan. Ólaf laughs and says: no one can coddle his soul. It just is, Tómas. This resting place is our Stalingrad. This broadside I allow like wind rushing about my ears, grin pro forma and look silently at Dísa. Dísa looks ah
ead and pales. If she feels uneasy at our words, she searches for strength from the cactus on the window. Dísa is a cactus. They destroy you in substance, Tómas, he was saying—women. how can men offer a sane man up to such an outdated solution . . . Dísa is a spherical cactus. Yes, a torpedo directed at me. Ólaf has looked into my thoughts. I’ll let Sigurður draw Ólaf’s attention. I’ll let him say: Universal literature—such art is the hardest of all art: love of life and men, the search for the truth. I felt sympathy for Sigurður this time. Poor Sigurður, I seldom save him from doing the same thing. Siggi has become emotional and affected in his worldview, some kind of chaos and fog. And in that vein he later opines: I do not believe in god, but I have a great need to believe in him . . . what . . . Sigurður is the most hopeful of men; a tormented wretch who can truly say: give me, god, the incomprehensible solution to my problems

  he lies there hungover the duvet spittle-stained old sperm on his back and helpless now straining toward the bottle of malt I clasped at the neck that black rascal and brown ale flows from the throat over the floor he wipes the sweet viscous substance from his tongue with his palm howling and keeps nothing down puking and shitting god you are yourself you too much now he lectures not about petty citizens now is that mon dieu donnez-moi la médiocrité the wretched Mirabeau of the table in the refectory now drives nothing down with might and great authority and splotches of french he lies on his back like a shot bird broken-winged down in the maltspittle on the floor in a white nylon shirt with silver buttons a filigree shirt he dare not send to the laundry or he will be treated savagely

  The whole town recognizes Sigurður’s rakish behavior and we make fun of him during the lunch hour for being the “most infamous man in Reykjavík and some ways farther afield.” On the other hand, it befits a blank man like myself to evade people’s thoughts. Sigurður is a useful diversion but only in five-minute stints. To torment him calms the tension. No one should stay too long in the vicinity of a man who spews poison; no medicine is better against him than the hydrochloric acid of a healthy mind or else total quarantine.

  You must isolate yourself from such men.

  I am in quarantine from:

  a) Sigurður

  b) Dísa’s glance

  c) Profligacy

  d) Any kind of dreamy feelings

  e) Rubber shoes (except overshoes)

  f) Having progeny

  Jon Tómasson Tómas Jónsson from there point by point and for a thousand generations to eternity they change places the about-to-be-born Jón Tómasson for fifty years Tómas Jónsson the other seventy-six and then -son gets added to Tómas and -ss and -on to Jón century after century until one gets dizzy with -ss and -on or -son and soon the new Tómas or Jón screams his first cry of agony out in the world and catches his breath to pump it mechanically in and out of his chest cavity for forty fifty sixty years tirelessly like a device in the lungs or god knows how long no my only thought about the terrible game of conception is about strengthman is nothing but a devil with an automatic device that draws the wind into him and pumps it out of him so his legs move and his eyes roll and he moves and stares for example at houses or women and birds no I cannot think of producing such a devil with for example Gerður

  g) Thinking about my grandfather at ninety

  Títa think of grandfather nine decades and still breaking the brain’s bounds with life’s problems and trying to make sense of it with a tobacco mix in your nose at the grave’s edgedevil get away from memewling cat-creature or I’ll pour ink in your mouth ×

  ×: one time Ólaf said (they were discussing literature and what they called the embellished leprosy of human mediocrity): Can you explain, Sigurður, why men and events are made simple in commie books like The Little Yellow Hen. Because the world in detail cannot fit in a single book (he says). The public understands only the simplest of life’s key elements: You need to eat because you are hungry after work. Yes, but my dear sir who can repeat such simple things indefinitely, it is more appropriate to say: You have to eat so you can enjoy your new pink toilet and extra-soft blue toilet paper. The result of working and wage rises is meat and potatoes and Hitchcock movies on Sundays. It gets a bit on my nerves that commies only use a simple A to Z, and never the whole alphabet, which is very complex. They are not interested in more than two colors; the whole color palette runs together, color gets lost in their hands. Pfff, he says, you do not understand the theorists’ theories. Previously, everything had ended up botched thanks to them, the delirious hope of a two-thread-system resulting in the national yarn getting tangled in its movements. They do not know that no system can be so simple as that which trusts in one true god withstanding time’s attacks; sooner or later the system will split into an alphabet. The commies soothe life’s journey by denying the existence of letters other than A and Z. Another thing about them is that household grievances are clothed in political costumes like with the price of whole milk. And what results from labor struggles other than people going to see Hitchcock pictures and reading Úrval.poor Sigurður getting splashed with water I did not want to be in the way nowhy are rulers made comically simple in commie books.yes because he isn’t victorious, that great intelligent poet and communist who knows everything and stuffs his mouth with mouth-knowledge in the workplace and dining areasPerhaps they are laughable in the same way as other men are, Ólaf says snidely, narrowing his eyes at me, and on the other hand sly, he adds, malice on his face.I would add that otherwise they could not remain indefinitely in power with their infamous conscience as the mirror of the world’s timeMy cheeks warmed with pleasure. His eyes paid me a compliment.I wanted to thump Sigurður I felt very sorry for him in his doubt as it squeaked from his lipsIn our capitalist society we can only be negative, we have nothing else. You know many people have distorted the path to socialism, but when we have built our society people will become more positive than ever before in history. Ólaf laughed and waggled his finger at Sigurður. Religion; my very intelligent friend Siggi, he said. This is the sort of promise a man can only make to himself in his dad’s scrotum. I suspect the reason for the unusual number of icelandic commies is that they know that things will never come to the point where they have to propose anything, for what’s easier than to pretend to be something if it is certain you never have to prove yourself capable. Ólaf exaggerates when he claims we have been boastful cowards from the outset of the great masked ball we call our history—Nothing—increasing our inorganic isolation, succeeds in effortlessly moving the geographical location of the country toward the world’s central axis, no, I think we are as much on a roll as when we dress in rock giant and snow lord costumes for the annual fête at Elementary School—you could call the nation the U.S.’s foster-daughter—denying it is Nothing. Otherwise, we would perhaps be Something, because a cottage farmer who considers himself to be an estate farmer will always be a cottage farmer, and a fisherman who believes that he is the captain will get cut loose by the captain and human responsibility and he will never become his imagination; as with a worker, who considers himself a contractor. He should instead say: I am a slave, I talk like a slave, I think like a slave, I should deduce I am a slave. Otherwise his struggle for liberation would be over, he’d become free-minded, free from hassle, a slave who lazes wishfully on a soft couch. (But I say, one must not deceive himself, let your mind drift forward so a lie becomes a truth: I become what I once lied I was?) Like Sigurður who lives on schnapps and dreams, I suggested to Ólaf on the landing, never achieving anything. Do you remember what Gestur Pálsson wrote in Should We. No, said Ólaf.