Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

  I wrestled the divan to me tried to avoid lying too much on the side where my heart is but lie flat directly on my back raise a beam with my feet so my chest is not pressed up against my heart I like this position best I sleep on my left side and so went bald on that side of my head first I am also hairless on my calves from sitting cross-legged the heart is on the left side of a man’s chest cavity that genius of nature carefully protected under curved ribs no it would not be good if the heart lay stupidly visible in front of the chest and the kidneys and all internal organs hung outside you like in dreams and it was possible to see food decompose in the intestines and sink lower and lower or the blood that pumps in the veins and lungs blood cells always eating oxygenthen I think people would be horrified by manyes I know man is repellent

  I could as easily have my biography read: I started my career as an errand boy in a textile store. Or somewhere else. Meaningless aspects that describe rusty houses that charm the eye and are some of the most beautiful I have set eyes on. There is no scenery on a par with corrugated iron that has long started corroding. No sunset enters an attic’s windows with the natural beauty of red rust spots on houses that are beginning to decay. Rust must ideally come from salt burns, a patch against eternal sea- and sandstorms; saltburn offers a greater variety of color than plain water or rain. An old, marked ship, its side broken and bruised, gnawed at by surf and seaworms, thick with neurotic birds on the bulwark snickering on a summer day. Later I worked my way up and became a government employee. I pulled myself up from the nameless turn of the century. I was nothing. I am called Tómas Jónsson. I had nothing but this body with its head, two arms and legs, eyes and mouth, and all my associated parts, all undisfigured except the ears. Now I have both my body and my apartment in a good place in town. My body has entered her. I dislike the jam-packed street bus. I do not enjoy being around so many people, unless we are working and isolated from one another. I do not like being touched or talking with close-standing folk. I feel comfortable stroking my fingers along walls. I take pleasure in stroking a smooth-shaved chin. I dislike the image of Héðinn Valdemarsson, “who worked so hard for the common people.” My family is scattered and dispersed amid bank books. And so I will never become lonely like Sigurður, Dísa, Ólaf, and all the people in my head and be without an earthly place even if I reach Abraham’s astronomic age. There are many ways you can write a biography; a person lives many shapes, stepping up stairs until he gets off the top step into the clouds where his gods are. But Héðinn never wanted to pay his workers higher wages than others. Go on strike and demand money from me, then, said Héðinn. He could have paid people more than the set rate, says Miss Gerður, and offers a good example. Now, when I think of Miss Gerður I get the smell of Knorr soups. Héðinn simply refused to assert an atmosphere of fatherly providence at work, says Sigurður. Although he might be acknowledged for giving the communist Einar Olgeirsson a whole house lined inside with silk upholstery, answered Miss Gerður. Did you not think that Einar had received that and other valuable belongings and gold from Russia, asked Ólaf; try to accept it. I am only repeating what the best people say, what’s widely known, said Miss Gerður. Try to develop your independent opinion, suggests Sigurður. Rush off home to the commie Einar and look into things. O you are just a mortal man, like me and others, Ólaf, and you make mistakes and say things in inscrutable ways, even if you do know the poet and bum Stein Steinar and have bought him beer, said Miss Gerður spitefully. After having held her own she seemed momentarily confused. Then she rushed out (oh jee) and had a weeping fit and an agitated stomach. Chairs toppled. People leapt to hands and feet. Shocked faces. Troubled expressions. Silence. Friðmey standing by the toilet door and asking: Come on, Gerður dear. Can I just talk to you briefly, just one word. But Miss Gerður sits on the toilet seat with heavy sobs and cannot stand up (jeez almighty some people can be so malicious). I was about to say that Steinn simply “landed” in that poetic hell as a way to put his mark on the town, the same way she “landed” in the bank, and that he had been in the war in Spain, which in his own words was the highest ideal for an browbeaten writer, and also about to say to Ólaf, that he had just “landed” being shot in the ravines in Teruel, and I felt it was redundant to point out, the way Ólaf “landed” buying Stein beer or a person lands in one of a number of things; he did not say: I am a man eternally without goal or purpose; no need to search for deeper meaning, as each donkey nowadays does search, he described himself further, yes . . . these old women always have to go off on their personal hymns, says Ólaf, partially reprimanded over the outcome of his dispute with Miss Gerður who sits triumphant, crying on the toilet. She triumphs through her stomach pain and tears. Ólaf got no further in “setting my mark on the town” than buying beer for the poet Stein and boasting about this prestige in a refectory. I think little of it. I could buy a whole case of beer and send it to my namesake, Tómas Mann, but I would be no more of a man for it. Miss Gerður cried loudly fighting for her breath on the seat and blowing her nose in the toilet paper; the women had to use the men’s room and stand guard for each other. But we all agreed at the table that no one had come across Einar Olgeirsson the commie exchanging large amounts of rubles in the Bank and at the same time we agreed that everybody could have his personal view on the matter, without it being a political opinion, and of course Einar could easily have divided amounts down into countless smaller amounts and gotten a military man, some commie in his service, to exchange the rubles in various banks, without any evidence of it. It occurred to me that he was copying my method: I have four savings books, five books at five banks, one in my name at National Bank, the second in my mother’s name (she is dead) in The Farmer’s Bank (she loved the countryside and cows),I do not know if my parents are alive or dead they lived their life or death according to their own whimsthe fourth is in the Industrial Bank in my sister’s name, the fifth, no I have a third in the Fisheries Bank (my father was a fisherman) in my father’s name, my fifth is in the Trade Bank and that one is made out to Títa. This method of depositing means I do not wallow in money. Immediately when my annual statement comes I hand Títa the one with 9% interest; there is a big difference between six and nine percent interest on savings. You know, the government has failed to provide me with a new property survey. In such a society, individuals must be endowed with more than a little prudence in their transactions with the government. Títa gets the highest interest rate, but she may not, that catskin, take anything out of her book for a whole year, even if her life depends on it. Admittedly, she may pawn the book and get the equivalent of the credit, but Títa is unaware of these terms, as set out in the annual statement. Her charming little playmate keeps his money hidden between the leaves of books. Soon he will get a book from the Money Bank. Perhaps he longs for a different wife than Títa. He looked approvingly at Dísa in in the hallway.

  Look, here comes Dísa.

  Good morning, I say, and take off my shoe covers (a durable Pirelli model).

  Morning, responds Dísa.

  With a noble lightness in every gesture she undresses herself, off with her boots (she tugs gently with her index finger and thumb high on the heel and yanks the boot with a quick pull off her stockinged toe). Dísa’s hands are white and feminine. Blue, Nordic, gently feminine eyes that are reminiscent of two sky-blue forget-me-nots in deep snow.

  Hi, we’re just sitting down to eat, I say. Hi. Hi.

  Up the stairs go Sigurður and Magnús, another Magnús than the one who rents from me, Magnús Jón Einarsson of Flateyri in Önundarfjörður, a very modest and frugal regional type who barely speaks about anything but the difference between dried fish here in the south and frozen and sweetened frozen fish in Flateyri. He takes great pains over the topic.

  Do you have some hidden agenda, asks Sigurður.

  Dísa and I have a lot in common, I answer and peek at her out the corner of my eyes.

  That’s good, she says (my jee how good).

  Inside you�
��ll find another fellow who is a better match for you than me.

  Well, she says with a gentle, feminine demeanor.

  A fellow who can go a bit loopy, Sigurður says.

  Dísa’s whole character is feminine. She is 100% woman. If she understands anything, she understands the meaning of the feminine (whatever special understanding that may be), the value of feminine intuition, of looking at things from a woman’s point of view, and even of conflicts within the feminine perspective.

  I’ve heard his complaints, I say, meaningfully. He is called Baui.

  Baui, she repeats with womanly wonder. I have never heard of or seen him.

  Of course not; he talks about things that are totally foreign to you.

  Magnús and Sigurður de-wind themselves with a couple of farts and move into the refectory. It is pointless to get ahead; every pensioner knows that he may only take two steaks from the platter on Sunday; along with four potatoes; brown sauce is not rationed.

  It’s dark in the hallway. I scent the dark for a while. Our eyes meet. Little john thomas notices Dísa’s presence. She takes a step forward, stroking the flat of her palm down her stomach; brushing herself off. I hurry over to Dísa. She stands nailed to the floor (my jeez what is this man doing). She blinks her eyes a few times very rapidly (are you angry for some reason).

  What’s happening, she asks with a gesture (I am astounded).

  Here you have him, I say.

  She doesn’t budge even when I pat her belly. She does not say O! but she looks like an iceberg on an ocean. You will die on a rock, she is thinking, who knows. I cannot think of a solution, so I do nothing, just stand motionless on the mossy carpet right in front of her. Hips still in the hallway. And we breathe excitedly in front of each other without words on our lips. The scent of a kiss on her lips. We stand there, each thinking calmly: what does this mean, what will he/she do. She coughs in my face (atch hoo), a glorious cough, like opal. Then she progresses rapidly up the creaky stairs, plunking along somewhat in her heavy shoes. I tremble.

  With the flat of her hand she had stroked her smooth hair beside her cheeks and wet her lips with an irritated expression. I had seen her red, moist tongue tip flick rapidly between her lips and twist like a snail in a hole; she had smacked her lips, set her teeth as if to kiss. Her lips suddenly solidified, grew scales. One should not agonize over, but forget; I am unable to forget.

  The door of the refectory has tiny colored panes with a thin cloth as a protection. She reaches a hand in front of herself and opens the door. She heads into the refectory (one must expect such men to attack).

  The dining matron resembles the women of her station: heavy, fat, slow to react. With great effort she manages to serve dinner on time. Her extensive arms are red from tottering over the boiling-hot crockpot steam; she is always poking at the food with a fork to see if it is decently fried and so her arms have gained a paunch or two of slack flesh around the elbow joints. Nevertheless, she claims to have long been armless thanks to all this cooking. That’s at odds with reality. But we know the first commandment of eating out: never oppose a woman’s advice. Her name is Sína. And on Sundays she invariably gives us chopped steak for lunch. So this all happened on a Sunday. I wish all Sundays were Sundays. I wish it rained every Sunday except right as we were coming and going from the refectory. I wish I could hunker down under the covers and sleep blacked-out between Sundays without waking anxious on a Monday. The steak is too spicy for my gastrointestinal system. Dísa sits at the table. Sigurður sits at the head of the table. Magnús sits in the middle of the table between the two students; they send each other chess moves across the dishes or around his back. Ólaf rushes in and sits beside Sigurður. Dísa strokes her flushed cheeks with flat palms. She is blushing as the blue chill of a house-cold breaks out in her cheeks. She clears his throat, hav-he-hav, and soon the fat from the soft steak scales her lips. She put it in her mouth on the tines of her fork, her jaws swinging to and fro, bjabb-bjabb, as the steak mashes down her esophagus down to the stomach grog-grog. I see her before me like an X-ray, all her organs trying to digest and process nutrients from the steak and turn them into that flesh I yearn to possess, almost sixty kilograms of woman with hair and toes and all the limbs in place, all for man’s pleasure. A man should never think anything, then the question posed is: How are things with the apartment. Not ready, I reply. But they promised it to me in the spring. Then you’ll get it in the winter. You probably will not have to wait long to get something inside it, says Ólaf. What should one get inside, I answer ill-temperedly. And so we ask and answer the things that get asked and answered when someone buys an apartment, and then Bjössi comes in holding a briefcase. Bjössi is a night watchman. The bag is his black soul; he never leaves it alone, he says. Yes, the bag is dark brown in color, and in it he stores all his possessions, gold watches, rings and jewelry. I know nothing about it for sure except that the case goes wherever he goes. While Bjössi eats he sticks the case firmly between his legs and clamps his knees together so no one can steal it. On the street he has it tightly gripped in his right hand; it has given his hand a leather odor. Bjössi wears a large gold ring on his right index finger. On the ring’s shield are his initials engraved in ornamental lettering. Does he let go of the bag at night, asks Magnús out of nowhere; he doesn’t otherwise participate in conversation. If he talks again, it’ll be about dried fish. Bjössi does not answer; he picks his teeth very rapidly with a sharpened match. After that he gnaws the match at the end then works like mad at his front teeth and bores with it into the farthest reach of his maw. If he’s not chewing food, he’s gnawing matches, and I counted that he gnaws on average one match between courses and two while his stomach finishes digesting. The brimstone heads he tears off with his front teeth, drops them in the ashtray, lights another match and pushes the flame carefully against the heads, igniting them with a whish-piss-whish, he seizes it and rises to his feet with a repressed belch ro-bo-bo, says bo-boro and is a touch queasy: Yes, that’s it, be well, slamming his chair into the table, steadying himself with a ro-bo-bo: greetings to one an all. His largest expenditure is matches, which Sigurður says he lives on. We, the people, watch the sulfur deflagrate in the ash tray, noticing the stubs but not saying how tedious we find this oddity. Bjössi claims that he gnaws matches to quit the habit of tobacco. He eats very fast. But I’ve sat with Bjössi for ten years, five since he left off the pipe. Why not cook for yourself in the watchman’s apartment, Ólaf inquires. What does a man care for such complexities. But at night he does not take coffee to go, as the others do. His job offers perks, though he flatly denies it. First, free lodging; also, no need to buy clothes. I could direct him to the 4th article: Automobile inspectors and special law enforcement officers shall receive a free uniform. Each year they get a uniform and every other year an overcoat, alternating between rain- and dust-coats. Headgear as necessary. Finally, and this is not unimportant, all major repairs and modifications to the uniform and overcoat are free of charge. But he gnaws matches and is said to spend significant amounts on women on Saturdays. Because of this Magnús had to ask whether the bag has ever been put down.what percentage of men in the world have enjoyed a woman at nightBjössi sleeps with women as they leave the dance, and the rumor is he collects refuted arguments, i.e. the women who rove about the dance hall irritable and militant after the choice pickings have been eaten. Bjössi’s method is to mix in with the multitude of people the dance hall vomits onto the street at two o’clock in the morning, acting like he was inside and jostling and standing in the throng like anyone else. If he sees someone a little too corpulent for her dress, a woman tiptoeing around sore-footed and careless in the crowd, he walks up to her and says I’ve got my car so she goes with him though she curses at not getting a moment’s peace from being fondled. They are mostly nags, Sigurður says, swearing he has seen Bjössi on the pull at Thor Coffee Bar. I don’t get paid in work clothes, objects Bjössi. No uniform or hat (he has at least five) provided. The
y cost a great deal, he says. Tómas you should bone up on and learn Bjössi’s method, Sigurður says. I look at him with puzzlement. A used garment protects bare buttocks. I cannot understand Sigurður. In a flash, it’s Saturday. I move my leg and the weekend has arrived. In this drawer are all life’s Saturdays along with their lonely humiliations, their inactivity, their sleep. I wrap a scarf around my neck and set a hat on my head. Outside the air’s warm. But a man could catch cold in such sly weather. I hear overshoes scrape on the muddy street. I avoid street lights while I am in sight of the house. I know how to pull the wool over others’ eyes. I walk very slowly. I should have been a spy. Everyone tries to work out where I am headed and to what end. No one does. On the way to the nightclub on the prowl I am blindfolded by the women who believe that it is enough to jump girlishly and excitedly around a man in his underwear and get money off him without doing anything else; I finish up quickly, blindfold this imitation girl and drive her out to the bus station at Hlemmur where I uncouple from her, leave her senseless for the next man. In this way, the women can’t find their way to my home when they come to their senses, can’t demand money or threaten me with complaints, suicide, or childbirth. Five fleshy Rubens-women lie with their wet eyes on the night’s battlefield. They curse and fume at Hlemmur—“yes, that one should have paid, the swine”—and do have not a cent for the cab ride home to sleep off the liquor on their double ottoman. Who would have thought that in every cell of my body lives a little lusty elf able to satisfy an entire regiment of Tel-Aviv women. I look at them from the perspective of King David of Israel marching his army forward, the chosen of Yahweh, broad-hipped and with a pleat on their skirts, to a Gazan battlefield. Baui sniffs at them. I have read that Arabs fight with their life and death. But I thrust the hat’s brim down on my forehead. Oh, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep for yourselves and your children. It folds and bends, this hat brim poorly made of felt, but it still gives any countenance a criminal expression, and every woman has the lofty dream of saving at least one criminal in their lifetime. Poets want to save the whole world; women want to save poets and criminals. And if I were some damned poetaster, I would be called: A fleshpoet (skáld holdsins). Yes, you’re going to make yourself into suckers, fellas. Not everything they say about their adventurous nights is true. Songs and dance music burst out onto the street from the open windows. I see heavy curtains of red felt stir slowly in the breeze from the hall, which leaks a haze of smoke as though it was the gathering of some primitive tribe. I stroll casually up and down the street. The night is moderately dark. The streets are illuminated just enough for darkness. Some man snooping about gets in my way. I ask: will the dance be over soon. The doorman denies me entry; I say it is imperative I talk to the man who plays electric guitar in the band. He stares at the watch’s bracelet under my frayed jacket sleeve, its figures not fluorescent. Yes, soon, he says. I look around. He has not gone far; perhaps he is engaged in similar pursuits as Bjössi. I seek refuge near the gas station and wait in the shadows. It’s safe to stand here; there’s always movement from the carport. I see movement in the corner. Bjössi stands at the entrance of the garage. He is wearing a light coat and puffing a pipe. Every other year a rain or dust-coat, I think, and the hope is that it has not been spoiled by the tobacco. I turn my back quickly to him, draw myself to the opposite corner. The man with the frayed jacket sleeves is there and looks at me sulkily, furtive. Tómas Jónsson suddenly feels a need to explain his presence. The guitarist lives with me. His wife fell ill suddenly and it is irresponsible of the doorman to deny me entry, he says. That’s how people in positions of authority behave. Couldn’t Valla take a message, says the man, hesitantly. He refused to. The man looked at Tómas with a sad and serious expression, the sort women encourage, a helpless, false guise that impresses any woman: Oh, you have no idea about his troubles, the terrible war he wages with alcohol; we have to help him. His eyes are flat gray fishskin eyes. Valla won’t let anyone in this late, he says; you could try to call.Does Valla sell hunting licenses outside the doorRing, says Tómas, shocked, in extreme situations one must deliver one’s message verbally. I should go and write about this situation in the papers, that’s all that matters. The man scratches his head. I can name examples. Once I had to wait around a full three hours at the Telecom Station for a long distance connection, please have a seat and wait calmly thank you, S-iglu-fjörður; when I threatened to write to the papers about the receptionist and the poor service and asked for her name to mention in the letters to the editor section: Dear readers, I spent all day down at the Telecom Station sitting there, bim-bam . . . the phone lady was quick to turn the page, Tómas for Sauðárkrókur, booth number two. Yes, that’s how it works, sometimes, says the man. Would you like to learn about a tragic accident via telephone. No, he replies, it’s normally verbal. As an added bonus, I have to stand around out hereI Tómas Jónsson, humiliated, loitering like those “door chaser” men, as they’re called; they are notorious in town but brash in their sex games and women are excited about them but also extremely huffy—“they are absolutely disgusting.” Do you think it’s anything more than self-promotion, the men bray. What’s self-promotion and what isn’t. He points to Bjössi. See, I say, for what purpose could this man be here except to fish for fermented rags, for poor women. What do you think Valla, doorman and bouncer, would pay this man here at the door to catch women. No, what we need is an energetic, progressive journalist to eradicate this behavior via a pithy article or a writer to compose a poem about these blatant poachers; here we have the basic framework for a poetic social commentary. He pauses. The man looks at me, waiting, with his sycophantic womanly eyes, but I have no intention of giving him a longer speech; I want to give the wretch an opportunity to slink away. His actions are against the law, no hunting here, the street is a public domain, I say, adding to what I was going to say. This man’s name WILL be in the papers. ALL OF ICELAND WILL GET TO KNOW WHAT HE’S CALLED AND WHY HE WAS LOITERING THERE. My thoughts wander to Bjössi. He can fit anything in his stomach without any discomfort. Edeltraud carries in a dish piled with round steaks with chicken wire decoration above made from a knife tray. A woman’s diet is cheaper than a man’s. Still, I can report the impossible fact that Dísa leaves less on her plate than we. And yet she doesn’t get fat. Strange how Dísa stays so slim. Food-greedy women get no fatter; it’s as if the greed leaves nothing for the body, as if she somehow eats herself. In a drunken speech Sigurður says that the Hound of the Baskervilles has ripped out Dísa’s heart and absconded with it to the island of Malta, where it is stored in fermented mare’s cheese, defended by two castrated rats. More Sigurður drivel. When is the steak coming, says Bjössi. Do not bring in another, replies Dísa. Better to turn to the delicacies. She smiles to disguise her food-greed, forcing her nails into her palm, barely controlling her salivary production, her larynx jogging up and down when she swallows, the murmurs of her gut particularly appealing: grogg-durr-grogg; her little stomach sings when totally empty, and soon it gets potatoes to digest, to crush and dissolve in sweet acids. She talks little otherwise. Dísa is reserved. A man who kisses a cat that has just eaten a rat could release Dísa’s heart from its shackles, Sigurður says. Better to tell me no one has acquired it for the future. While she eats, Sigurður uses terrible words but her appetite remains unchanged, it is perhaps somewhat increased by the nervous tension. I am fattening women for pornography, don’t you know. Sigurður has an excuse for everything he does. You never know what lies within frail, porcelain women, says Carl Gustav Jung. To take unto yourself some other person, on the off-chance, completely unknown, to bind her with bonds of devotion and love: that is a game of chicken. She may be good enough to look at, but I would probably become annoyed with her on closer acquaintance, with her true nature. Damn her.