Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  i) further thoughts about Dísa

  Sometimes I am hunting for some insinuation from Boggi and ask: truly, you have got some knowledge there; or: Something comes to those who receive full pay throughout the year and put it aside. Boggi replies: Huh, what is it to put something aside; there’s nothing but fatigue from getting into a fight with absolutely crazy children for a whole winter; and the parents are worse. He thinks children’s teachers have a responsibility to be leaders for children, a model for the young. Boggi refuses to get behind teaching out in the country, “simply because of the barbarism that prevails. Much of this stems from a scarcity of teachers, but not because learned teachers refuse to teach because of the paltry salary; this country is actually understaffed everywhere except in the hospitals and while no one wants to face facts, no solution has been found to the problems of teaching; small schools in neighborhoods out in the country continue to build their poor existence around elderly teachers who have stuck with the job, first as a miracle and then with the slight hope of a pension or scraps from the teachers’ insurance funds, or some lump who continues out of some mental calcification, which often rescues rural areas from being total teacher-deserts. I could not give so much of myself and my energy. Teaching, if I may say my opinion, is a job, but it is neither ideal nor torturous. And though I have taught for twenty consecutive years, I prepare each session conscientiously, and observe the teachers’ handbook. But my god, out in the country, no—rather in the grave. In Reykjavík teachers as individuals are at least fairly inviolate in their homes, able to hide away or be left alone, but—absolutely—there is no such thing in the countryside in all the so-called WHOLESOMENESS. There the teacher is a horror like an old woman or turds inside the body and a desire for porn; there seems to be never-ending prosecution material. Men may not have their genitals, nor may women, in case the sexes use them for “general purposes,” N.B. do not even mention them in textbooks, no books at all, but you may wave them at people on the bus. In my opinion, we should not allow a person who speaks this way to keep his teacher’s rights. What concerns me most: the person will not want to accommodate me at all. She will give nothing; no sacrifice and no take. Love, marriage to me, she would treat merely as a new job that she would lay the foundations for not with couple’s handbooks like the wonderful Married Life by Henry and Fredu Thoronto, who are of the opinion that love games and wiles are normal pleasures within the limited framework of privacy; in a marriage, everything is healthy and clean. I can barely keep up with each of Bjössi’s movements. How can I judge thrift. A street corner separates us. I can monitor every move of Bjössi’s almost unnoticed. The dance music falls silent. Only the heavy chirping of intoxicated voices carries out the window, which is now driven fully open. People jostle down the stairs. The hall literally vomits out on the street: intoxicated adolescents, intoxicated men, intoxicated women. People throng close together near the front door. A woman expels a scream. Someone has groped me with their hand jesus. Now Bjössi seizes his renowned inner passions. Tómas Jónsson crashes into the field from where he was hiding between the cars. A girl sits in a back seat and shows three men something that no one can see with much leg kicking, hand gestures, and there-you-go-not-so-ohs. He elbows forward. The less drunk escape through doors taxi drivers keep half-open on their cars, blue and glossy and worried about leather and sweat; they want a fare for a long journey, hate running little errands. A drunk woman bawls at a figure in the disorderly crowd, What kind of sick puppy are you, feeling someone up. The words are directed at a brute in the crowd. A beefy hulk in gabardine clothes, who turns and pees a jet scattered by the wind in all directions so the women have to try to avoid it, complaining, cursing, laughing, and trying to protect their coats (Jeez almighty he got piss on my chic new coat I can’t believe it), two beefcakes in leather jackets storm over one giant and another hulk and the giant attacks the rude hulk and slings him still peeing into the mud where he lies on his back, genitals hanging out his fly continuing to pee in short bursts though the head is senseless and the women navigate around the brawl (no, this is absolutely not possible are we not all Icelanders are not we having fun calmly restrain ourselves the hulks and giants should not be kicking the prone figure’s balls, they only do that in Finland). More giants eventually come along with some other guys and wade in high-handed; they hit and punch, countless icelandic fists in the air and between their legs the muscleman lies passed out, somehow still peeing in the mud in new wingtip shoes, all the rage (fashion is the law). Overcoats flicker and vibrate on their owners, the wind rushes constantly at perms so the women hunker to shelter by the walls screaming and shrieking with short breaths as they hold to the mussed hair on their necks with both hands yelling as if their lives are at stake: car, car, here, car, god where the devil are the cars, you there, don’t drown me already. There’s Bjössi, supporting a middle-aged catch to his car. She is abnormally quiet, almost too tranquil, eyes old as ice and blurred, too drunk to resist in high heeled shoes. Perhaps she has been stuck at the table all night and found that while others were having fun she was terrifically single at this party whirling around her in all the ways we were expecting, she found that you could never go out with Kalli and Jóna, Val and Tóta because they looked after themselves like sheepdogs and not the opposite. Kalli and Val. Oh, no. He shouts: car, car, you, car, there. And the car brakes and he jumps in. Man. Two guys run up to the auto workshop. And back. The driver jerks the car back and the guys jump from the workshop. The driver curses but avoids driving over their stretched legs, which kick in the mud. No doubt he thinks my agitation has to do with being drunk. No, follow him in the green. They drive through the streets and turn the corner, where the car stops in an empty street with sleeping houses all around. The doors swing out like wings; a man leaps from the front seat and unwinds the window, the girl half falls onto the sidewalk, after her slinks a man who lifts her up and pulls her panties up her white thighs under the street light and supports her stumbling into the door nook, a mash of feet from the car. Then three lights in the house turn on. He pays the fare and the girl pulls free and comes at him swinging her hands and strikes the bag into the air: go on, idiot, perv, get. Everywhere Saturday night is in full swing, it shines from drunken eyes, it’s in stomachs, mouths, houses, feet, in the air, even in the sticky hum of tires on the street. The city cleans its bowels from its workdays, its blood and its thoughts of work, and climbs drunk and purified over the bounds of Sunday, unconscious like a newborn baby. The city center has become incapable of joy, a dangerous place to walk. I get to the house after a strenuous hike. Bjössi works here as a night watchman, barks at thieves, locks and unlocks doors, dusts mats. Here’s where I humiliate myself in the XII. pay grade. Here stands the building. Within touching distance. Light shines in the basement window. Through the back door, they have gone down the stairs. Now they lie motionless under a feather duvet and an Álafoss carpet. The street police drive very slowly past. The car’s window is open and the police speak into their new carphone. The car pauses so I can observe how they talk in the phone. I stare at the technology. Then the car disappears around a corner. Bjössi’s voice. A taxi drives to the house, a girl staggers. She focuses on walking ahead. I barge out. Between Tómas Jónsson and the girl, a sharp conflict erupts. I strike out with the bag and yell. What does this man want, I hear her scream. I have not become an attacker. Bjössi slams the door. I grab her waist, soft as boiled sheep’s head, but she drags my body after her outside against the car’s right buttock. I thrust a forearm between Bjössi and the girl. The police car continues its circuit. Do you want me to call the police, my driver says. He calls and the car stops at a suitable distance so we can all see how they talk on the car phone in full regalia. I run and then I stop running. When I feel my legs can run no longer I wander aimlessly along the street until I startle and stop. A bottle has fallen from an open window and broken on the pavement. I could have died, no more liquor for me, says a girl. Come on up, friend, it�
�s just me and three meathead giants having a party. Louts. Louts crowd to the window and threaten to urinate on me if I continue to snoop around the house. Then they tug her away from the window. You can lie by the window with me and look at me all evening. The girl comes back and swings her arm and throws me thirty timeless roses. I do not know if this is the same girl who visits me and who I long to touch, I lift my hands and see my fingers are bloody meat, and the girl sails on like a cipher. You are awfully shaky-handed today, Tómas, says Bjössi, one might think you were hungover, if we didn’t know you were teetotal . . . If it were not known that evil blood congeals inside. Does Bjössi know if I drink liquor or not. He cannot; I drink my liquor in secret under the covers. Is my private life a hindrance to him. Did Bjössi not come to look for it. Oh, I am not hungover, I answer quietly, it’s just my old heart. I am often filled with admiration at my self-control and the great power I have gained over myself. I can never have enough of repeating old glories. A complex but eminently manageable god lives inside me. I have divined a demon. I sense things even before the gnashing of teeth. I dream before daybreak. How could a Birthday Book know aspects of my personality: willpower, self-control and calm in any situation are fundamental elements of who I am. How could a small book in an inferior format have known me inside and out long before I knew, everything it has taken Tómas Jónsson seventy years to discover about himself. Most likely a man is not fully born until he dies. How does everyone know all of everyone else’s individual make-up, but I never know anything about any one. Does man, as an individual, only exist to the extent that he is a context for other people. In chapters, I do not recognize even myself: What is Títa doing, a cat, prowling around Hotel Borg. Who am I. Tómas or tómmas or some other Jón Tómas. My quiet is unique. I must be so carefully made because I’m an Icelander. The last purebred Icelander. Do you each day feel you have a bad heart, I ask Bjössi and seek help from him. The sound of empathy in his voice fills me with pity. O yes, I have long had poor health, this is not as incidental as many consider, I say while sugar cubes melt on my tongue.I wanted the bird from some legend to come grab my heart and put it in mare’s cheese next to Dísa’s heart or any heart.In the cold, Dísa’s nose becomes as colorful as a puffin’s. The human heart has long been a difficult assignment, says Ólaf.no he says nothing just stares over the table at something distant probably an airplane out the window treetops in the garden like he sees a dream flutter in a cave among the kelp and algae or wind and the suction in a grounded shipmedical science has found a new drug that stimulates blood circulation to the heart, says Boggi.no she can never talk beautiful words from her lips she just talks about regional studies and the perfect method of reading instruction taxes and percentagesno drug can benefit my heart, I say. Dísa retreats behind her eyes, finishes her cup and clasps her hands. She rests her chin on her knuckles. Her knuckles are hard and white from effort. She inspects the cactus, but perhaps she sees me out the corner of her eye. A person should have steel health and a steel heart in a sturdy steel body, says Ólaf sarcastically, in a steel world inside a steel lung. Everything from stainless steel. Dísa. And deer all around a steel deer Dísa, Dísa.

  f) though I have lived through twenty years of war and wasted a lot of power and won no victory—I must take my mind off Dísa