The threshold had ripped out the concertina doors separating the rooms and it was fitting that the relationship between the rooms ran aground. Only scattered things carried across—what did you say—well—but of course . . . Occasionally a complete sentence stretched across, always from the interior room to the outer, like this: Why isn’t security equipment installed? asked the Board, concerned about the accident from a technical perspective. “Well, it’s not possible,” said the outer room, boasting about their complicated and life-threatening jobs. The answer gave the Board material for a “philosophical discourse about a person with a simple job facing the giant creatures of a mechanical organism,” which subsumed natural life in industrialized society and fomented new myths in the masses who assume the helplessness of primitive man, sacrificial animals over which he should rule. These workbeasts never followed their coworkers to the grave, but the repeated question was: did many people attend the funeral? “A man doesn’t sit down at work,” they told them apologetically. “You cannot extinguish the sun while the day shines.” This sentence was their refrain and belief that one had to work while any trace of lifeforce lay in the body.
The voluntary desire for servitude within the working class was as thoroughly supported by the newspapers as possible with headlines like: THE POWER TODAY LIES WITH MAN. HE GLOWS WITH LIFE’S JOY AT MAINTAINING INDUSTRY AND THE NATION. Large headlines were followed by photos and smaller writing about the great excitement in this little box, descriptions of zealous workers rolling herring barrels, unloading salt and cement or lifting enormously huge halibut and embracing giant cod. The readers became, among other things, more erudite about the number of workers in the working class working for Eimskip, the date of birth and age of the worker who broke his leg, what region he was from, the names of his grandparents, how many children they’d brought up, how long father and son had been employed by the same company, and eventually comparisons of the living standards of people past and present were published; they’d improved, of course, for men no longer carry salt on their backs, coal is lifted from the ships with a crane. Everything was presented as a tremendous miracle.
The newspapers appeared to be in the trough with employers and their aims of increasing efficiency and a labor cult. Joyful workers enjoyed great fame as part of the “interest the newspapers and the nation have in men who complete the toughest, worst paid, and most essential tasks in society: ‘SUCH MEN DESERVE EVERY GOOD.’” The papers published scant general foreign news about cloud-smoke in Arizona and new insects found in grain, which few cared about; instead they were gradually filled with actresses who were or were not pregnant, things understood or not were mixed with the achievements of the invisible men, the working heroes behind the “great changes that have occurred in icelandic employment.” The popularity of the radio program We Work grew exponentially and the power of journalists around the country increased, not just meeting priests and magistrates and discussing lambing, but going between villages and workplaces, which raised people’s hopes of getting in the papers. The tension and the waiting period over whether they could get into the papers made for much sleeplessness and taut pain in their whole frames. They became subscribers and bought papers in the hope of a picture, of reading something about themselves, even the same enumerations as usual in these interviews that were little more than birthdates and years, the region one was from, the farm name, the mountain near the farm, the old country place names. The life of the working class hero was lost in a soup of names; irrelevant. The leftist papers had their part in this work madness, never having had enough of entrepreneurs and of effort, zeal mixing with sport and the regular column About Fish, swollen with interviews with herring kings and their relationships with the major poets, and not to forget the factory owners and their slave masses.
Once the Board was about to let this clamoring discourse fade, the journalist’s obligations and the role of the newspapers, you could scarcely hear faint life-breaths from the lips of the workers in the outer room. But when they were confident that no one at the Board was eavesdropping and mocking their conversations about whether it would be better to work for this magnate or another, each considered his own salmon, admired the size and initiative, and wondered if he would have a better future working for Coal & Salt Co. or Eimskip. The company- and magnate-rivalry was a root guiding this boring city. Most often Coal & Salt Co. won the competition and comparison; a man was lucky enough to break a leg in the Company, he was automatically placed in sequence with those who approached the mysterious scales the angels keep as they appoint people to their designated bowl, a kind of heaven. In the outer room ate two broken-legged men who’d survived and were moving hopefully along this scale. One was the third in line to be deemed disabled and the other the tenth. The first was full of pride but the other wanted sometimes to waive all rights since he had received a half-promise of joining a steamer with some mysterious assorted work crew which would GET MORE FROM THIS THAN THEY PUT IN. “For sure, many will argue about the situation,” he said.
These workbeasts lived in constant fear of strikes controlled by “those there” at the top in order to maximize personal gain by causing goods to rise in price, and so food and lodging, too. The beasts murmured about “those there” sitting on flat butt-cheeks. But all the talk was underground, with no way of identifying who “those there” were unless you were “up there” deciding the basic pay and performance of the workhorses in this foggy world. Were “those” trade union leaders or employers? No way to tell from their talk. Sometimes “those there” ran together. But some controlled the lives in the workplace with “balloons and syringes,” which were sent down to them and spurted at someone or blew him up with air.
The workbeasts took care against syringes and demanded to get their money in an envelope, not collected like some unintelligible purchase that “those there” dandled to make them crazy, blurring the lines “like when kittens get into a ball of yarn.”
Occasionally, Sigurður went to the workbeasts to submit “a draft of trade union awareness signaling they fulfilled requirements other than simply toiling.” “You should ask for something from your life, other than working for Coal & Salt Co., even given you’re the salt of the earth,” he said. “Nothing is too good for the working class.” “They trade more than coal and salt now, Coal & Salt Co.; it’s big business,” they said smugly to the ignorant blue-collar man. His attempts at persuasion bore little success, although one sentence entered into the beasts’ heads that they liked to say in the spirit of the Board: “Writers should write books for the people,” he repeated and cast his eyes at them even as he said it from the insurmountable remove of the threshold, as irrelevant as the Board and the people sitting there. But the man repeated the phrase several times: Yes, if people cannot have books for themselves, I do not demand any at all. He asked for nothing and had a four-inch nail for scraping the concrete spatter from inside his boots. He’d always worked in cement, and the dust from the bags gathered in his boots and turned to concrete due to the sweatiness of his feet. At night he would sit on the edge of the bed scraping the inside of the boots; he had stretched twine across the radiator so he could dry his overalls during the night. This brought him pleasure. In the basement room he giggled over the stupidity of “those there” and the Board, talking the whole meal time, satisfied as to the hardships in cement: it was well paid, there was no dawdling or fawning, no babbling over everything and nothing. He vowed solemnly while he tore and fixed his boots, to not let some syringe ferment inside him, but instead to memorize some basic political phrases to repeat when required: This cannot continue; it simply isn’t feasible; can you really offer that to the people: no, people will not put up with it any longer. With these four sentences he sailed undisturbed when “syringes” came down, jabbering about some disaster and then going back to tell “those there”: “He’s definitely our man.” Then “those there” sat and jabbered but ran their assholes, to the inexpressible pleasure of the workhor
ses, they bragged about nothing so much as if “those there” ran their assholes in acquisition disputes and that strikes gain nothing except inflation.
Their laughter burst from the basement, where they took off their work overalls in a central room and then went to eat their meals in the outer room. It was inevitable that those who worked messy jobs needed to take off their protective clothing before they sat at the table. The requirement for hygiene didn’t extend to their hands, legs, or faces; as the matron said: “You can scrabble whatever that stuff is on the food with your large paws, but I do not want you polluting the air or soiling the chairs.”
It was comical to see the beasts crowd up the stairs with grub-greedy eyes, often wearing strange clothes: frayed sweaters reaching halfway up the arms; torn striped shirts with round-neck collars, old dress vests with rusty buckles dangling on the back, Álafoss-brand pants with patched knees, ripped and tattered. One-time outer pants had now become inner pants. María giggled at the kitchen door. “Have you ever seen a ewe in half a fleece?” they asked, laughing, but María had only seen idiotic comedy in old films with someone similarly attired hanging up an apple tree. “Such mad men,” she said and turned up her nose. The workbeasts’ clothes smelled of the acidic smell of people who are still largely rural men and wash their clothes in homemade soap given them by a thrifty old aunt who skims the fat from smoked lamb in her pot, collects it in a fruit can and boils soap once a year. All workbeasts live in basements or lofts. “From a loft it’s a shorter way to heaven, but shorter to the grave from the basement,” the men said, believing they would never die, but would instead continue with Coal & Salt Co. during the day then sleep with their boots and work overalls right by them at night so their livelihoods would not be stolen from the hallway; they were always saving for old age.
The filth and stench awakened joy, especially coal and cement dust and grime in their faces as they sometimes stopped at the threshold, striking the Board as figures of agonizing pleasure and pity. For appearance’s sake, said someone to hurt or destroy not so much as too mock: You’re half-black today. The half-black started to sing tunelessly, stick out his tongue, dance his feet on the waxed floor and get tears of joy in his eyes. With that done, the moment became sorrowful for him. The animal stiffened his face, the smile cooled on his black lips, his red eyes blinked rapidly, he plunked himself down in his chair, roiling in mind and trying to suppress the memory of the fall slaughter. He could picture sheep carcasses lying in coverings across the board so the sand would not spoil them. Finally, he managed to push this from his memory and say: Yes, I was in coal. “You cannot complain about a lack of work,” said the Board. “No, there’s work enough with Coal & Salt. A man can always toil through a double shift to earn extra money.”
The porcelains slunk inside themselves, crossed their arms, elbows pressed to their stomachs, wearing miserable expressions. They felt a cold gust of wind coming from the harbor or a draft in the automobile garage playing on their abdomens; their shoulders shook, their teeth clenched together.
No other communication existed between the outer and the inner rooms.
tómas’s seventh composition book
I, Tómas Jónsson, armor myself against laxness. I have striven to create an ordered, organized home. I despise spiritual anarchy and chaotic thought. Since childhood I have beaten away any disposition toward disintegration and sworn an oath to refuse inferior or destructive company. When studying and working I was forced to accord people considerable laxness. Instead of bodily pleasures I enjoy my superiority, the power of my purity. Most people think that happiness in life comes from your image as others see it; no, it resides in your image of yourself. In their homespun faith people look for happiness among neighbors and family members. I curse my family even though it is dead and distant. People think that people like me who practice discipline forgo happiness without knowing it. No. They start to save money and set it aside before some commodity destroys their will to save. Money exists independent from life’s whims. And so they betray no one in their loyalty to it, though others betray them. They have no reason to land in evil hands. Victims should have knowledge for their priests. A person should take the value of money as a model in our times when human value is reducing and monetary value increasing. The original character of money is healthy and doesn’t budge if sloppy people try to abuse it. Even in fraud cases the money arrives clean, the icelandic coat of arms on its back; it’s the traitor who gets taken to prison. No one is so ignorant that he puts money under arrest. Only touchy Communists believe money is complicit with man or else they point to its guilt and man’s innocence. Soviet money sits under a prison sentence. Rubles live on bread and water behind bars. Not totally. They are pampered in banks that are not monetary prisons; everything is done to increase them. But many Russians sit behind bars for having attempted to disparage money. Money achieves happiness the same way we do, demanding everything for itself. Its value matches its exchange. The value of people matches their exchange. No difference between man and money. We discuss the characteristics of money and men the same way: value, exchange, worth, advantages, disadvantages, etc. I’m not one for religion. I feel sure that human wretches need to believe; fear of destruction is the basic force of existence. Would you feel better, you calculate, perishing in belief or disbelief. In that there is no difference. Man is sentenced to destruction. Saving lets you grow in confidence. It provides greater security than religion. As soon as a small amount amasses, you rejoice greatly. You are a mature man. You have the amount you want in a book and can increase it via the interest rate. You increase as rapidly as your financial amount. So I might have the same meaning; so that I exist. I have therefore I am. Come evening, a beggar has the amount in his hat. Only a few sage misers spot as evident a truth as this. They look at life under the microscope. This truth is too obvious for the masses who see with lazy eyes, drooling in pleasure over the Eiffel Tower. The masses waste their seed in a few short years and then stand there destitute, their purses similarly empty. I was a child when the truth appeared to me: Be a miser in what you take with your hands, be a miser with yourself. I decided to invest myself in bank deposits as much as expend mental and physical energy. I got a return on every penny I acquired. I own an apartment. The apartment is mine. The apartment is me. I am a somewhat dark and dank basement but I am myself.
N.B.: I’m no Dolgorukiy, although there are many similarities in our social conditions.
Chapter I
Tells the story of how Tómas Jónsson came, in the course of time, to the basement apartment in Hlíðahverfi
I cannot help but sit down and write a narrative of my first steps on the career trail (perhaps) I should restrain myself . . . One thing is sure, I will never write a biography, though I live to a hundred. One must be endowed with unspeakable selfishness to overcome the shame inherent in writing about oneself. I can only excuse myself by writing a bestseller for others and so do a good deed for my publisher—if I can find a publisher and readers who are eager for best-selling books. I’m not going to extend the narrative by describing the difficulties I had to endure to get to this world (readers know those firsthand), but rather commence with the time I acquired self-awareness or felt that I was a person. Before it happened, I felt a part of others.
Now I am simply myself. Bound inside me were such exalted hopes that I was afraid of not being able to fulfill them. I did not want to change anything. Nothing is a more devilish yoke than the feeling of obligation that comes when subtle praise chimes constantly in one’s ear. This discomforting feeling is closely related to wanting to please everyone. A person becomes slave to praise; it delays his normal movement through life and keeps him in a perpetual straitjacket. Provident parents wrap their offspring in a cardigan before they realize the meaning of this love, which they must now privilege and serve. Parental love is the worst kind of slavery: it is legally protected and children are totally defenseless against it.
We lived out in Tanga,
facing a hill that obscured views of the sea and the cluster of houses at the water’s edge. There are now continuous buildings where once there were meadows I or my sister had to run across when we were sent to the store.
I must have been sent on this occasion; I think it unlikely that I have swiped this material memory from my dead sister. If there was an additional errand, I cannot remember. The main business was to get a check I think from the fishing company my father sailed with in Miðfjörður; this may, however, be the wrong memory, or it had come from America. My mother’s relative went there, Jón from Tanga, a well-known man in Winnipeg. He came up with the theory that the icelandic genealogy in Greenland had gone across America and across the Pacific Ocean, such mariners, and settled in Kamchatka. Anyway, I had been sent to the store, which was also the post office, and to ask for the store manager. On the door to the office hung a colored sign of a woman sniffing a rose. The advertisement is clear in my mind as I am certain she was the first color picture I saw in my life. I have ever since been fond of sweet color-photographs in the Art Noveau style from around the turn of the last century.
I, this well-sheared model child, asked for the manager and he handed me a large brown envelope with a broken seal. I opened it, pulled the money out, wet my fingertips and counted the bills. The store manager looked at me with satisfaction, then he said:
I see you’re going to be observant at all times. You count your money as soon as you get it in your hands. That is a good idea.
Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller Page 15