Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  The girl, who had or did not have sex with the sailor, was called Anna and she became pregnant after this ended. After a nine-month gestation period the fetus ended its stay in the womb; the girl had birth pangs while she was hanging laundry, but the contractions were mild and at long intervals.

  Grandma, with whom the girl lived, knew no better than to give her soda powder mixed in water to intensify the pangs, which led to nothing useful except the girl got rid of her wind without getting rid of the child; her belly swelled, her suffering increased, and then after three days in an awful state of health—the sickness at times passed from the girl or appeared in her in quick fits—she lost consciousness and was at death’s door. Then the neighbor women took her off her grandmother’s hands, engaged the bakery van to come and drive her to a hospital in Reykjavík; she could hardly stand, and in the end she had a cesarean section and the child was taken howling from her by force; it had—according to the official reports of the event—changed its mind right away during the first day of labor pains; suspecting serious consequences if born it decided to remain in the womb as long as possible; the child had hovered to and fro with its decision to make its fate visible or hide itself away without taking a definite decision.

  And the doctors, holding the child up by his feet and shaking and shaking it to activate the organs’ functions, diagnosed that the child manifested some kind of perversion. It was born white in color, but in the hands of the doctors, to their great alarm, its skin began to darken until it became coal-black, which they thought was caused by contact with the atmosphere, unless some color gene had the peculiar property of changing according to temperature or circumstances.

  The chief physician of the hospital was well familiar with the Government’s provisions in the Defense Treaty. For this reason, he quickly rang the Foreign Service and explained in his best phone manner the scientific premise that the color genes had undergone a transformation because of exceptional chloroform levels in the air in the operating room and the toxic gases formed in the womb and the interaction they had undergone.

  Here in our hands lies a dark-skinned child attached to an umbilical cord, no longer white, although the windows were open wide, the doctors eventually admitted.

  The ministry employee who answered demanded further explanation of the phenomenon, ideally a report on the incident before a decision could be taken on the Ministry’s behalf. The doctor then had to explain the difficulties with which the woman had had to struggle to birth the child. The negro child had too large a head for the icelandic woman’s frame, and it was clear that stubbornness and reluctance were innate in negroes, especially in making decisions. The doctor in charge of the birth said:

  With regard to the above considerations and the fact that more male children are born than girls, and that regional physicians out in the country are hardly prepared with the special equipment necessary for a successful caesarean section and to pull the child from the mother by force, there are dangers in this journey: if the nape and head size of the population grows disproportionate to women’s hip width.

  It is not promising, answered the man with whom he was speaking, if we are of one dimension but negroes are broader across the crown and we will collide with each other and stalemate together.

  The doctor was unprepared for this coarse icelandic humor given the danger of the moment; his tongue was tied, but when he recovered he stressed the urgency of the need to try to find out, free from any pretexts, what action should be taken.

  Hold off on any intervention, the office worker Tómas Jónsson answered. Let the woman lie unconscious while I send out feelers on the matter; a meeting of the ministry will take place.

  The mother has not been brought out of her anesthesia and it is imperative we take a decision right away, the doctor said, exasperated.

  Hold tight, said the office employee in soothing tones. No hurry.

  We simply cannot wait. The mother cannot tolerate an extended anesthesia. It could be done before she wakes up; we could notify her in good conscience that the child is dead and has been taken for autopsy. Do you understand what I am saying?

  Between these two men, the resolution was agreed: cut the baby’s cord and then off it.

  The doctor came out of the phone booth with sweat beads on his forehead. The head nurse wiped them gently from him by applying sterilized gauze. He asked for a cup of strong coffee, set it down at the table’s edge and took a sworn oath from everyone who had assisted with the birth. The umbilical cord was severed and the body was thrown into the milk bucket on the floor and bled to death. But there was so much strength to the circulation that the umbilical cord swung to and fro around the pail rim like a jet from a powerful water hose and it twisted and buzzed on the floor not dissimilar to a wriggling articulated earthworm. The body was burned, with its limbs cut off, in a special oven that hospitals have, connected to the central system. After that, everyone had a cup of strong bitter coffee.

  “Thus, with snares and sleight of hand, the tendency toward racial hatred and discrimination that would otherwise loom large within the nation, and which other countries must confront and seek a way past, was erased. Had it not been, the birth of this one child would have brought upon our defenseless people the threats racial fanaticism creates”; so read a secret report to the authorities on the matter.

  The government reacted quickly to put an end to unruly protests (the first in the country’s quarter-century of military occupation) that were provoked by the poor handling of one black man’s arrival and the breach of conditions and provisions designed to protect iceland from invading forces.

  The head of the U.S. Defense Force reacted angrily to the government’s claims, sending word that he would charge the individuals concerned with murdering the offspring of an American citizen, and threatening to bring the matter before the United Nations, presumably after its founding, which clearly violated iceland’s proposed Declaration of Human Rights and would hinder the admission of this unarmed nation, the most cherished in the world, into that fellowship; the threat was never carried out.

  Despite the considerable furor, the child had been cremated, so there was no irrefutable proof that it had been anything other than the brainchild of the office employee who answered the phone (when the Ministry was forced to further defend itself by saying that the report was drawn up drunkenly and was a bunch of nonsense, one could only foster the idea of a black child drunk); he was fired. After a heated meeting in a back room of Parliament, the apologizing for the report stopped (the case was made a principal issue) and the government went on the offensive, sending the chief of the defense force his first and only letter of insult proclaiming the national mood. The letter, of which Tómas Jónsson kept a copy, included this section:

  “. . . you Americans should have adopted such ingenious solutions at the beginning of slavery, and castrated the blacks so none of that dark race outlived their life. A sizeable herd of them were taken so as to get something for your ancestors in Africa. Had you applied an equally radical approach against the multiplication of blacks, you would not only have been able to prevent the present and future chaos of racial tension, but also, with time and pillaging, managed to clear the whole of Africa of blacks and thus with that removal and your descendants have removed the old colonial troubles.”

  It is completely unknown whether the military administration answered the letter; by that time Tómas Jónsson had been let go.

  Recorded following the account of a bank employee in XII. pay grade.

  have I moreover been yes deprived them of their automatic right to lie undisturbed yes in my mansion or is my sanctuary become a cash cow no I have some money saved in general no and again no knock on their door yes to seek out friendship no rather to inquire yes what about I am engaged in nothing here no I just sit with idle hands behind a locked door

  who knows what happens while I

  loiter apathetic old age concentrates

  or fasts your resolutions
to nothing

  distributes anticipatory thoughts but as

  flickering sparkles strewn by some hand

  sentences which I had thought

  irrelevant written on the black table

  the stamen was hard the table black

  on the walls of the mind I came there

  to knock at the door of the body that soars

  on wings around me like

  a dead satellite that works

  systematically to resolve

  indiscriminate thoughts all scattered

  about the seventy-minute days not

  my thoughts inoperate at the origin

  I tómmas am only the

  receiver for remote transmissions

  an occasional inactive aerial and

  I say that your life lies is in winning or

  losing in the lottery of chance

  I lie still as if entirely as if a dead thing on a table

  The Corpse’s Brutality

  a folktale

  Shortly after New Year, Katrín Jónsdóttir’s parents came to Reykjavík via the Stykkishólm coach to seek a remedy for their infirmities: he for his sick heart, and constantly suffering from hay fever (some said he was left unable to breathe due to an infection transmitted from the sheep); she for rheumatic pain in her lower back. Katrín met her parents at the coach stop and accompanied them home on the bus. That evening, the couple would not touch anything other than boiled milk and pretzels. They turned in early, rather knocked about by their journey in the bumpy vehicle.

  Katrín lived with her husband and seven children down in a cellar, which, following the laws of storytelling, was very unhealthy.

  The apartment was jam-packed, so the couple had to huddle in the same bed as three of the children; they slept head to toe. Despite their age the children still slept together and loved in a half-aware way according to farming custom: in outdoor work, with milk pails, at cowshed stalls, and herding the sheep. That is to say: cooperating—in an honest manner.

  The dark room was illuminated by a naked bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling. Inside the bulb was a finely twisted filament and it lit when a black switch was flicked down.

  And because the children were readied for bed and asleep long before the couple, according to Reykjavík city police regulations, they undressed to the brightness of the hallway bulb.

  Next morning they awoke habitually at six. In bed, while they were waiting for signs of life in the hallway (Katrín ordered them to lie still and not start pottering about until Sveinn dragged himself to his feet), The couple whispered about their visits to their doctors, of which they were afraid. At half past seven they heard Sveinn. He went farting along the hallway and groaned with contentment after this morning breaking of wind. Then the couple got out of bed together and said their prayers:

  As I leave my comforter

  my intention is your bequest.

  Living Jesus care for me

  and lead me on the right path.

  They both broke wind after that and the prayer felt relieved of their concerns; they were filled with courage and boldness.

  By just past nine, after the children were at school or up to no good out in the street, and the youngest child sat carefully tethered to the foot of the bed, Katrín followed her parents to a new doctor, whom everyone had faith in. The outcome of the trip was that the woman should return the next day, two hours before normal visiting hours, to place her body inside a light-box. For the man’s heart, they would need to take a graph.

  Throughout the day the couple sat nervous and anxious in chairs in the kitchen and had little or no appetite. They were almost perfectly still, except when they had to lift one of their buttocks, and as uncomfortable as they were they did so as much as possible, since they considered it an antidote to idleness. They said little and were barely bold enough to look out into the garden at the trash cans, which they found very interesting and probably full of useful stuff. Each of them carried inside their minds their worry over the cow in the cowshed, whether it was being milked at the right time. The children played games on the floor and inside the kitchen cabinets, but the games were unfamiliar to the couple. Nevertheless the woman made fumbling efforts to get on well with the children, without success; they squirmed away from the caresses and touches, getting a bad smell from grandmother and struggling against grandfather’s “hot-hott-horsey” until Katrín made a decision and said to her parents:

  Children should be free. A person should never force children to do anything; it causes them emotional turmoil.

  She did not know what to do with her parents. Rural conversations, always ending in low sighs and a chorus of affirmatives, were for Katrín symbols, like an oil lamp or a coal stove that never came to life; she wanted to get moving, to be lively and fun, to have polemics about people and topics.

  We like to be around you all here in the kitchen, the couple explained when Katrín suggested that they move into the bedroom or all stroll down the street to see the glass-eyed cat.

  So they loitered there the whole day.

  Before the couple went to bed that night, the woman removed some grease paper from her clean knit underwear and put it on the chair at the headboard.

  What coffin do they want to stick me inside while I’m still alive? she asked in the dark, worried.

  Something invented by learned men, the man said.

  He tried to seem calm, used to coming to Reykjavík every year to get things fixed. The woman raised objections until the man said, exasperated:

  What is this, woman. You will do as you are told.

  Then she fell stone silent and went to sleep, certain of her husband’s protection; she asked god to set over her a wall of powerful angels before she took her rest. She was happiest when her husband firmly rebuked her and told her to stop this and that: get out of the barn, scram, get lost. The woman smiled contentedly, even in her sleep.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, the woman woke when the man sat up suddenly with a snort, then wheezed through his nose; as the woman was about to help him he fell back on the pillow and gave off a protracted belching sound. She was going to fumble out and get him some digestive medicine for his gas but she dare not look in their bag because she would have to turn the light on at the switch; though it “was simple enough to look at, it was still complicated,” and Katrín had repeatedly insisted “no wandering my house in the middle of the night.” And so the woman, concerned as she was, merely wrapped the duvet around her husband’s clammy body, calling upon god, asking him again to put a strong wall of angels over them; and she thought:

  he has relieved himself with his belching

  Then she belched, lay back down and fell asleep.

  At six in the morning she woke up, sat up in bed, combed her hair from its plaits, scratched her head carefully with the comb, over the crown along her part, and plaited her hair again, staring distractedly out into the morning darkness and silence. When she finished, she swung the plaits up on the pillow, folded her arms on her chest and did not stir.

  The woman was not in the habit of thinking much; she felt that ritual blunted the body, which needed to preserve all its strength throughout the day, but at night she thought sometimes about god and why He allowed man in some countries, not all, to have many wives; she reckoned such households had to be happier, especially in rural areas, since not all the work landed on the one woman. But now, up with the dew and sitting in bed, she found unacceptable omissions, lying still with her feet apart under the blanket, staring ahead without looking at anything in particular. Never before had she been able to hold her sight still for so long on the same spot. Her eyes were active and efficient like her fingers and toes. To her surprise, her thought started to work unprovoked. She giggled foolishly, and at first she thought: great raven eyes winging in flight across the lava moss and Magnús in the mossy lava; she gasped in the calm and continued thinking, which led her to come up with: how on earth do people live without hen
s; her third thought considered canned food: how could food be locked in a closed canister with no lock, and how could no ravens be seen on the streets when the eternal poison for foxes was meant to eliminate the ravens, but not vixens, who were clever enough not to eat vixen-poisoned food. This was more than enough thinking for now; she yawned, smacked her lips, and pushed a finger into one of her breasts; there was a hole in the breast and she gained a strange pleasure from fiddling in it with her fingers.

  At half past seven the children woke with protracted wails. The woman got out of bed, filled her mouth with sugar, and stuck her wet tongue tip in them, one after the other, appeasing their fear of waking up. She changed her underwear in bed, reminded herself to get the man to replace his underwear after the doctor’s visit, put on knit underwear again; so that she would not forget, she tied a string around her index finger.

  He is due for a change of underwear, she thought.

  Now she stroked her head, cheeks, shoulders, and hips, rubbing hard to convince herself that all her body was awake from sleep. She praised god for not depleting her health during the night and went into the kitchen; she ate porridge with her grandson and taught him to start the morning with a prayer out on the steps.

  Breathe the outdoor air three times, your mouth open wide, she said.

  The boy didn’t know how to take in the morning in moderation; he breathed really quickly until he got faint and staggered on the stairs. Then she took out his prick and let it spurt out over the steps in a thin arc against the stone and dented tankards. She taught him to shake off the drops, “the way men do.”

  With the clock almost at ten, Katrín said annoyed:

  Mom, I wasn’t expecting dad to park himself in the bedroom all day long.

  I do not dare shake him.

  What’s that, woman, thinking you cannot torment him awake; you are not a serving maid.

  The woman then took off her shoes and walked into the bedroom in her socks and shoved the man. He was dead in bed.