Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  DEAD IN HIS ROOM FOR MORE THAN TWO WEEKS

  Last night a man in his eighties was found dead in his room. The man, who was single, lived alone. It is believed he had been deceased for more than two weeks. The body displayed an advanced stage of decay. The cause of death was not clear when the newspaper talked with the investigation, but it was likely that the man had died of a heart attack. The tenants were not believed to be aware of his death: no unusual odor was detected as the window was wide open and it was very hot in the room so the corpse had almost dried up. Moreover, cats from the street lay by the corpse at night, so the people in the house said they would not have seen any unusual cat activity by day. The man was called Tómas Jónsson, a former bank employee in XII. pay grade, owner of the apartment. Inside his belly was found a household cat who said in healthy icelandic via meows: My name is Títa.

  Continued next edition.

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  so death comes to the garden I grow exhaustedmy hands trembleI have no appetite for coffee and set the thermos away from me anyway I can barely lift it lie supine in my bunk above the cat the cat shoots up and scratches me if I died no one would know until I started to smell not until then but the death has gotten so great in here he should be put out in the corridorI hear the woman scold a young child I should put the telephone in my room I hate big floral dresses I’m exhausted I’m fatiguedsomeone goes slowly across the gravel outside the window during winter darkness the sky is constipated it strains str-str-str-in and morning barely arrives it is not enough to squeeze the nipple and wish light would come all day people are around me it is a gameI am here alone with my oxygen tank and a cat

  in my memories I sprayed insect venom that is DDT in West GermanyWhat has happened to methe cat gobbles broken glass and laps coffee from the nozzle of the thermos shits in the chamber pot up on the table like Dídí in the old days are you not too harsh man with her my Dídí mine do not grow up girlI weak I dwarfI have a black cat soul and a soul called Katrín I reach for the pill bottle they keep my arteries open at night increased cholesterol level in my blood they are my friends the pills now Elísabet has come in from her piling heart in the herb garden a great horror it is beautiful under the grasses and rivers taken in each pail Elizabeth however is delighted a large turnip and potato harvest a year’s supply she spreads on the bag in the sunshine and begins seed sowing immediately hardy potatoes gold-eyed everything hangs together like a pearl ribbon around the rootif I die no they will discover eternal life before it comes to that.To whom two downcast horses tölt past the potato beds and cough a gentle cough Elísabet wakes before everyone else and spins a single string in her knit underwear two strings in her socks and three strings in Jónas’s smock a great pleasure it is to look at her blue combed unspun wool and Jófríðar from Jófríðarstaður the work never fell from her hand they combed it all and spun it at home pregnant each year they ate the whole potato harvest for mealtimes is it any wonder if they pushed themselves forward to regional meetings and demanded to sit up front with the milk drivers while other women’s groups stood on the platform with laments over the need to protect themselves against dust no would young women not now put themselves out striding the snow and mountains to get themselves a bass at the ball something other than the servitude of the working icelandic women they are the most beautiful and most capable in the world who can bind bales of hay up in the moorland and tie their skirts around themselves with bloody thighs singing patriotic verses whenever they get time to breathe and children in infancy with their dúsu their pacifier of chewed food they suck into evening after work only just returned from a moss-covered lava field sorely tired Annakatrín Annawater I cannot breathe and she hands me her water in a glass to me Tómi a tome mom she says praying

  you must not excite yourselfyou are creating some cursed hunchback of thought you cannot escape you grow frightened like a kid lying in your lair all day and nightget up so I can wipe youand let Dóri lead you out by the trash cans you’ll benefit from this Tómasit always has a good effect on you

  don’t squash the cat with your feet.

  what catthere is no cat here unless it’s in your mind

  where is he?

  now you say your soul dances outside you rage at Hotel Borgcan you not just take care of her I sayset a scrap of paper on yourself like wiping a kid’s butt then back in your lair

  Do not step on Títa.

  graagh my godthere’s no cat here

  Do not step on the cat.

  graagh my godI think I’ll speak to the renterwipe yourself then or do you plan to just rot here as you live same as me I suspect not even the old folks’ home will take youyou can have your home at the refuse disposaloh oh you are nauseatingthat you should have been an important man in banking

  Don’t crush the cat underfoot in your impudence

  what cat now graagh

  Do not step on the cat.

  There is no cat in evidence

  Where is he then?now I feel relatively clean and washed in bed I am Katrín you say I am TómasDon’t step on the cat.

  there is no cat hereno you will not feel better in the countryside you are no farmer you will quickly start to kick the cows in their assesis the water good did it refresh you

  It is perfect. Just don’t step on the cat.

  don’t be difficult there’s no cat graagh god indeed simply no cat stop thinking about mistakes you should be Prince Albert of Arabia with two warlike falcons with outstretched wings up on head having eaten you up from inside your head

  ÆÆÆÆÆ

  Oooooo

  Try to avoid worry or negative thoughts, the doctor saysI do not need his reassurance to keep on going my life is certainly safer than the doctor’sI could send you to this Dr. Busch and let him cut you. Your medical insurance will pay for everything. Do not go. You get a discount for two. First know your homeland before wandering abroad and getting killed. I’ve never been to Geysir. Not yet to Gullfoss. I have not even seen the Tub at Grímsnes or the salmon running the falls into the Hvíta at Borgarfjörður, which is apparently a beautiful thing. This would not exactly be a vacation. iceland is an excellent tourist destination, although the hotels in Siglufjörður are lacking. The doctor looks at the calendar over my head. Lake Lugano, he says, it is renowned for its natural beauty, extremely unusual. I took my whole family one summer. The hotel can be seen in the picture, if you look closely. We were extremely lucky with the weather. We were there when a tourist bus drove off the road into the water. Thirty women drowned. All art friends from Minnesota. Tragic accident. We were brought breakfast in our room. And when we went to Geneva, all the hotels were full. C’est pour la fête, they said. We drove to Lausanne, where the streets are either up on rooftops or in deep ravines. And when we left to return to Geneva there was no hotel to be had. C’est pour la conference, they said. Many bees fly about Switzerland, continually gliding in and out of bakery doors. And if you buy the cream cake, a large crowd of bees will chase you around the streets. Extremely good Klees in the museum in Berne. Take these pills, which I’ll prescribe, regularly.one needs to see his country from all sides to recognize all familiar landmarks and place names who was killed where put your finger on a map of iceland some story happened thereHave you been to Lugano, the natural scenery is unique. There, in front of a birch, my wife and I met a light-haired Norwegian student of classical architecture who had just graduated: Copenhagen - Paris - Rome - Switzerland - Berlin. They know how to enjoy life the Norse before they go and specialize at university. If Norwegians and Icelanders meet abroad it’s like brothers accidentally coming across each other after a long absence, both broken-winged at the loss of their women to the same disease, nephritis. We drank a morning coffee together. He was going to work at a pharmacy. He was going to Berne. A uniquely sympathetic young man. We recognized him immediately from his student’s hat. You must go to Switzerland. A person goes neither there nor anywhere else. A man is too busy paying for his house. You hav
e to have a roof over your head. And after to think about getting a wife to care for him under his roof.You cannot spend your whole life taking hot water bottles to bedshoe soles hum on the polished linoleumif a man has a hammer and a wife then he will want to nail four-inch nails in his wife’s head,but as you know, Berne is the Mecca of the pharmaceutical industry.

  My sister died. Does anything mark it or was anything erected at her demise. She was four times married and three times engaged, never to the same man. After her death I am alone of we siblings and never married but maybe to my cat. My sister was called Björg. A good name for a sister. We were six. I felt no special emotional connection with my sister. She died. Yet I went and dressed up for the funeral. A cemetery, as is best. Someone said he almost didn’t recognize me. The years have changed you. I hardly know myself as the same person. Hahaha. My sister has gone to her grave. And I loped around the yard in search of my parents. I asked god not to let me die suddenly; that must be so revoltingly easy. I want to have some relationship with death, I hope to struggle against it. I listened to the ocean. Here in Reykjavík you don’t hear it. I despise the lazy sea, lazy waters, lazy years. Some kind of white sun shines in the sky over the cemetery and the horizontal ocean by the beach. A lot of rain has fallen and the sun sucks the rain from the earth in a white spray. The mountains sweat. The people crowd into cars, which drive to Tanga, hidden in the bluish haze of the bone factory. I see Lóa standing with Anna at the cemetery gate. I know Anna is the daughter of my niece. I walk to the boards and examine the well-dug grave. The coffin is white in a silver-gray grave. The soil is sandy with hard grass patches due to the shells. Here everyone has torn fishskin eyes except Anna. Her eyes are yellow like piss stains. Horses in their winter hair stand by the yard and watch with calm eyes the people carrying sand in their shoes toward the crosses. Someone calls: Will you be here for a bit. I start. I look back. Someone answers: No, not this time. I stand by my parents’ grave; they have their children with them under little tussocks. Sentimentality extends beyond the grave and death. I think the answer has sounded in my mind for two centuries. I used to know every face. Now I know almost no one. I am in no hurry. I walk to the town over the sandy flood plain. I thread for stones. And there on my walk I feel similar to Nick, sitting on the pier’s end: he seemed confident that he could not die.to gain wisdom in love you need sometimes to have been untrue the way illnesses are necessary to gain life experience many people have left the hospital entirely transformed by their life experiences who was it said thatsomeone in the refectory when we were discussing love and diseasesI sit facing Dísa at coffee anyone can sit anywhere he pleases invariably Dísa and I sit in our assigned places I face Dísa Dísa sits opposite meDísaI remember only that I sat with feet crossed under the table facing Dísaeverything else I’ve lost and forgotten

  I lie supine on the divan my feet out past the edgeI don’t moveI lie flat as a slab and do not move I lie with my head in a magnetic direction but the earth’s magnetic field is constantly in motion and that stops me caring about the Guddas about the abducted Turk-Gudda and Thief-Gudda and any Guddas overhead as I lie passive in bed my peers are piling up lifelong card files to note down and try to remember the dates of the books they read but I would be ashamed to remember a single word from a book my body fuses to after reading what they call scientific essays about icelandic studies at the University of iceland but I dig in my nose with character laudabilis prae ceteris and magna cum laude but when I get up and can move my brain I’m going to write an article about icelandic Studies so that the University will grant me the status of doctor honoris causa then I will stop digging in my nose because honores mutant mores I’ll get a strained groin like the professor’s superstructure out of matchstick feet roaring mewling mewling with a gurning expression when I júbílea with the Gádeamuses hymning on Independence Day June seventeenth I am instructed to rest the doctor says get your blood moving with an evening walk push your circulation around the heart is lazy once the dust has disappeared from the air and settled to rest for the night on the ground don’t drag your feet don’t stir the dust lift your knees I know myself best what’s best for me . . . I allow the disembarkation point of the infectious army of germs to gain a foothold on the beach after that I counterattack and drive the germ rabble away from me into the ocean like twelve bulls who turn their four heads in every direction in the middle of my temple

  On Kimblagarr

  Tómas Jónsson

  an essay on icelandic studies

  Kimbli is considered by many scholars to be the son of Broki, but the scholar Finnur Jónsson brings many interesting arguments against this, most of which are guesswork (like much of Finnur’s work; he was not completely infallible in his research). If, however, Finnur was headed in the correct direction, wouldn’t Kimbli rightly have been living in the seventh century (was the poem composed then?) According to genealogical research, the names Blágarr and Garr often occur then, but these names have roots that follow from Úlfsteins Hrets (the cold), and derivations of them, especially Blágarr, may after various shifts mean that Kimblagarr was composed no earlier than the thirteenth century; later, even. The name Bölvi (and indeed Mildís, too) first appeared in Yngli’s family tree. And Glámur lived out east in Miklagarður a.k.a. Constantinople. It is probable that King Ólaf of Norway sailed with him to Garðarríki, but it is barely possible to guess at comparable arguments (cf. Heusler) as to what Yngli was thinking.i The consideration seems very doubtful, that Vefja the Black had had a ship in passage, as has been argued (cf. Kuhn); it is not known that she had a ship at her disposal, though set that aside for now, and on the other hand consider Garr (Garrdrápa I) and Mimbil (because the English word Wimbledon and the icelandic word vembill are derived from there (and Spanish warrior-king Wamnba, 672- ); they mean “one with a belly”) said that Vefja sailed the Valkyrie plain, which can be established with good probability. It is also doubtful that a one-handed man was standing in front of the forces of the Völsungs (were the names Kimbli and Mimba confused?), suggesting that he has ceased to lie about Kimbli. Very peculiar here is the use of the word “vilmögum,” but it proves nothing about the poem’s age or origin (no knowledge has emerged about Kimblagarr since Finnur died; we have not managed to find the author, the scribe is unknown and nothing known of the history. Kimblagarr is not mentioned in the reports of the Árni Magnússon Institute, the Royal Library in Sweden or the Antiquarian Society. The age of the manuscript cannot be determined, neither by orthography nor font; it could be written in the later part of the seventeenth century or the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as will be discussed below). “Hirð” probably entered the language in the eleventh century. “Vilmögum” appears in the Poetic Edda, so it is cautiously proven that way (was, then, part of the poem written before Hávamál [21 v.] while the later part (42 to 61) is from the twelfth century?). There are many lexical correspondences between Garrsdrápa 1 and Kimblagarr and Oddrúnargráti. Most significant, however, is the relationship of the poem to Mimblatal: “continued to the high placea chieftain-meeting,” which obviously references Oðinn, and Meierbaum’s correction “The chief continuedhigh in the meeting” is in the fullest way unlawful. From all this thorough scientific examination the poem seems to have been written in the eleventh century or perhaps earlier.ii But thoughtful people view the poem as composed earlier or later than stated here—when, then? Here, as is to be expected, there are no ideas backed by resolved arguments, only indications about simple things that inform those who wish to read a poem-fragment. The poem as a whole is lost, with no mention of it in the Codex Regius, and little to use as a source except oral tradition recorded in the eighteenth century, though it seems Finnur had caught wind of the poem in a paper manuscript.