ideally I would never give a thought to Sigurðurbut Ásmundurhis story is a bit special and of all people I could tailor to myself were I not Tómas, son of Jón, do you want to listen shall I
death alone is beyond the understanding of mortal
living men
why should man complain about his science
eternal life never gets disproved or
proved by experience
life must commit suicide in the search to know
writers and priests and philosophers
are useless in thought
and with the outcome
their ignorance attempts to gain
significant value
no one can disprove anything beyond
understanding
no one prove anything beyond his knowledge
in a nonsensical search and soundscape constructed
existence an assignment
for the gods of poetry and religion
and call politicians cunning
the writer and the priest
bluff god when they need to lull to sleep
the waking
each country hypnotized with regalia and verbiage
they speak with affectation
I lack words I need a writer or a priest
to take wing and provide my thoughts flight
and the historic reality
floats away on winged words of deception
that masterly Tómas, who barely trusts bragging
writers and priests and philosophers
and the lying words of power-sick politicians
tell you Ásmundur’s story, Títa.It goes like this:
Ásmundur “the glove” Þórsson had with perseverance, dynamism, and hard work, which had been preserved in his family for two centuries alongside depression and psychosis (he came from a very priestly country), managed to build an impressive house at the intersection of X and Y. He was born at Görðum in Garðahreppi (I didn’t care to get the correct birthplace because his materials and earnings there are gone and lest it comes to his mind to improve his situation by bringing an action for damages against me), son of Thor Ásmundursonar (the formula for first born sons: Thor, then Ásmundur, then Thor, then etc.) and Herdis Einarsdóttur (who came from the most ambassadorial and writerly country) in 1881. He grew up around farm work but his mind was summoned early (like meltwater) down to the shore and out to (the silver shining) sea. While Ásmundur was completely healthy and sane (depression entered the dynasty in 1821 with Þorhalla from Efrabæ in Flóa, who seemed an awfully strong character of a woman) he lived in a small bedroom chamber in an attic no larger than the floor area, so that his sea bag hung behind the door and a couch filled the whole room; it was otherwise empty. In the room, he could not stand upright comfortably except under the skylight, which was no significant problem, because he was mostly lying down while he was on land. Ásmundur pursued the sea, first in open boats, later on trawlers. He was esteemed among the trawler fishermen for three things: thrift, magnanimity, and never taking his toll on voyages abroad. (N.B. to take the toll in fishermen’s terms has an ambiguous meaning a] to purchase certain amounts of duty free goods for domestic sale or one’s own use, b] to take your toll on women, as in physical sex.) And yet a woman was the reason he met with an accident that led him to lose his honor and employment. It is not certain how the accident occurred, but one of Ásmundur’s hands was ripped off and also a toe; from that time on he was crippled. There are different stories about this; in their aggregate we might find a trace of what we call the truth:
1. He was standing by the capstan while the net was being hoisted up, the wire got looped and cut off his hand. Ásmundur startled, although he did not react, and the result of the muscle contraction in his leg loosened his big toe. For some reason this upset the balance in his head; some believed him heavier on one side because he slung to when walking, and his gait was not unlike the motion of a wave. Some people call this disease “touched by jellyfish” (since the muscles vibrate like jellyfish).
2. He was unusually food-greedy and his hurry to eat led to him inadequately removing the bones from fish before boiling. The body was full of bones, which he swallowed and which rattled about him; they either dug into his blood vessels or pricked out of his fingers and toes and sometimes out of his body so he resembled a sea urchin or hedgehog if he did not pluck the bones.
3. He suffered significantly from a mad strength and the berserker disease. One time he and other crewmembers were at the circus where they saw a strongman bend a thick iron rod between his hands. When they returned to the ship, the sailors were sitting over a beer and gin with some british tarts in the dining room. One tart was particularly outspoken. She was of tall build, slender, pale in the face, small-mouthed with teeth that bent inside her mouth. This and the short torso were all characteristic of english women. (As morning flutters in, they dress loosely, in a sky-blue and pink nightdress, fresh from sleep, to go have bacon and porridge at the breakfast table. English writers call this coming like a sunbeam into her husband’s life. In England it is the custom to establish a marriage at the breakfast table and in english poetry the woman is like a beam and when she dies she visits her husband as moonlight so Britons sleep by an open window, but in the process they go about with their fly open, and with this there’s more to lunatic folk in England than in other countries and the women are untouchable and distant, like a colony. This womanly demeanor is the result of a maritime national mentality, the opposite of the seaman, whose woman is there just as “a piece to stick it into” and Ásmundur was like that to a certain extent but he was also a sailor and seafarer who would dream about woman as a vast ocean, as sunshine, as moonlight. He went whole months without her and therefore she [he] became wet dreams after the english national spirit.) The tart in Ásmundur’s story could both sing and demonstrate judo moves. She went berserk in the dining room as Ásmundur’s comrade told her about the strongman in the corner, but when she began to flex her muscles they urged Ásmundur and her together, and said:
It doesn’t do to save money or strength; neither is useful untouched in a bank.
Long into the evening Ásmundur resisted taking on the girl. She called him the dead muscle-bank, one that gives no interest, and then taunted him meanly, and he beat his fist on the table so the glasses jumped and the ginmilk splashed on her dress (she drank gin with milk like tarts do because they are pretending they are not drinking alcohol, just milk). She jumped up in a rage, demanded that he find her a new glass, but he refused to serve a woman at the table and said:
I’m no hooker’s bartender.
The girl poured abuse over him and settled into a boxing stance, and the women cried out an english wail, a quick yet protracted eúúú-sound reminiscent of the name Ésu.
She’s challenging you to box, said the sailors. Ásmundur would not listen and stayed seated.
You don’t dare fight a tart? asked the sailors.
I could crush her head, said Ásmundur, and crumpled a beer can between his hands.
Eúúú.
The sailors translated his words, but the girl grabbed the other beer and crushed it just as forcefully as Ásmundur. For some time they competed crushing beer cans with great joy and resounding eúúú-shouts. Ásmundur’s temper rose; he laughed and slobbered. But the girl was not satisfied with the strength test. She insisted Ásmundur get her a fresh glass.
I never will, answered Ásmundur stubbornly, sticking out his head as deer do for an attack.
Either he gets me a glass like a real man or we will come to blows, interpreted someone who understood her language.
I will never fetch a glass for a British tart, said Ásmundur and remained steadfast, his chin tucked into his chest.
At that answer the tart became deformed with rage. For safe-keeping, she scratched three artificial moles from her chin and cheekbones, put them in her purse ready for the next customer, and spat on Ásmundur’s nose a grayish beer frot
h slightly darker than coal smoke; it leaked into his mouth.
No strongman would allow himself to do this, said the sailor. Ásmundur shot up and struck the woman with a fist; she flew from the blow like a beam and grabbed him in judo hold, swung him in the air so he and all his limbs slugged powerless to the floor where he lay out cold. When he woke up that night he dragged himself to his ship’s bunk with the glossy beauty spots glued on his face as a disparaging gift from the girl, as if he were the ship’s hooker. The next day the sailors found a shriveled toe on the floor, and since anything can happen when drinking they each checked his own foot, and when they saw Ása’s foot they made fun of the toe and the beauty spots. Because of the irony that had befallen him, he hid the injury to his hand. He tortured himself with work, and the worse the agony got the more heated grew his confidence and pleasure. He hid the injury under a full sea-glove as his hand swelled with a violent rash of blood boils and abscesses he cut into from time to time with his gutting knife in secret over the shit bucket (this happened after the sailors on the ships stopped needing to sit with their asses half out over the railing to shit before toilets were introduced) and in a strange way he enjoyed seeing the pus-streaked blood well from the cut into the bucket. The sailors thought he had hemorrhoids and teased him because they believed that only those who take it from behind got hemorrhoids and Ásmundur stopped touching the tumors which made matters worse. Finally, his lower arm and armpit gland were so inflamed the arm lifted from his side, which made Ásmundur combative on deck.
He has grown mighty, the sailors howled, this man who struggled to wrestle rags.
One day out at Halamiðum, the sailors were chopping fish down in the hold, one of them was stood apart from the group, chopping away. Ásmundur snuck up behind the man who was totally unaware and so drove his tool into the swollen hand; the sailor tugged back, thinking it was caught in the hold’s opening and stuck fast. The tool did not want not to come free and so the sailor turned to have a look, and saw spurting pus and putrefied blood splattering in his direction.
I was lucky I was there, was how he put it and laughed heartily at this turn of events. Ásmundur turned pale and tottered, but five nearby fishermen saved him from falling, took him under the shoulders and dragged into the dining room. On the floor they cut off his coat and the evidence came to light, blue veins that seemed to stand outside the curd-white skin like the dark roots of a peculiar abscess flower (his hand) with its five swollen stamens. The first mate cursed before he issued his diagnosis:
This is not an inflammation but idiocy and folly.
Upon diagnosis the Captain said:
Fisheries are not required to cover the consequences of stupidity. He walked down into the dining room, stood astride over Ásmundur on the floor in a puddle of pus and challenged him to show that seaman’s pluck he knew Ásmundur had inside, and bear the infection, at least while the trawler filled itself. Ásmundur’s assurance quickened slightly at this encouragement, which indicated a degree of faith; he thought there on the floor and said:
I will do my duty.
And he kept on thinking: I stand with you against sailors and abscessesAnd after he said this he salivated. He was rolled on his stomach and his pants pulled down. The first mate wiped one of his ass cheeks with cotton and, having pressed with a finger near its bottom, injected him with morphine. Half an hour later Ásmundur stood on deck like a new man, half as work-mad as before. He was sedated while the morphine supply lasted, but they needed more from home, and they would not be done until the trawler was full of fish. Ásmundur became beside himself with the pain and the first mate had to take him below deck and tie him to his bunk with strong straps. The trawler sailed with fish and the half-dead Ásmundur to England where his hand was cut off, and the heads cut off the cod were sold at market in Grimsby. On the way to the hospital, lying almost unconscious in the hamper, he said:
She used illegal wrestling holds against me; it cannot be taken seriously. And before he went to sleep thanks to a dose of anesthetic he said:
Five. No. Five times no.
He was stubborn in nature and would not even one time accept anesthetic let alone a woman.
Now look at this and consider the sequel:
Ásmundur comes stumbling into the refectory from his place. He fixes his eyes on his chair right by the door as if it is a distant goal. And when he stands at the table he swings himself into his seat. With a peculiar hand gesture he manages to wring his paw, clad in a black leather glove, well-polished and gleaming, up on the table’s edge. A hollow wooden sound resounds through the dining room. In appearance it resembles a dead beetle, the stitching on the gloves somewhat frayed; it lies oddly stone-dead on the white cloth, and probably it would be more tasteful to carry a neat stump than this lump connected via straps to the stump. There is something disturbing about the black glove motionless right beside the soup dish as afternoon music sings from the radio; it is like a crime thriller or something at an antique sale, dross mixed together with the past, things that once had their uses, but the hand is old and dead, this icelandic fist. Ásmundur does not get food from the common platter, like the rest, the platter that is passed among the plates, but rather morsels of the dining matron’s meat; she picks bones from the fish in the kitchen and carries it to him like a small child. Humiliation is Ásmundur’s agony; he is chock full of memories from the past. His face weeps self-contempt when María puts the plate in front of him. She is Danish and the pain is for two reasons. He feels terrible and he wants to hide from our attention behind a grimace. He sits at the table like he is the matron’s economy measure, her method of reducing the pensioners’ appetite. This residue does not make you physically sick, but it does lessen the hunger inside.
4. The story goes like this: it often happens to a heavy man that they get the love of a cheerful woman who plays with him like a cat with a mouse in the hay yard. Ásmundur is said to be that type. A marriage incurred by such a man can only be blessed compared to one where the husband closes his eyes to the past and is able to enjoy the game, knowing that a backsliding wife would become obsessed by guilt as often as she gets dressed, particularly concerning the enjoyment of sexual partners prior to marriage, which they regard as a sin. In this fine state, a man enjoys his wife more than if she had always been loyal to him. Coexistence with a loyal wife is characterized by mental inertia; she has a chastity bonus. I have every right and reason to be grouchy and twisted. I am loyal and reluctant. Ásmundur was sure he could never win the favor of women, that he was too faithful a man to be an option. There is poison in the eyes of women who do not consider marriage a direct biblical command: Go forth and multiply. This sort of woman is harder to find. Instead we have: Go fulfill your wishes. He had enough sense to suspect that he would never get near a spouse except by sharing her. And so he decided to pull together his money and build a big house. Very few women can resist a three-story house, deposits in banks, or companies. The house was built from scratch in the midst of an economic crisis. He sought a woman’s body to accompany him and their relationship would exist among words and sentences such as: “stand upright except under the ceiling window” and “mostly lay down while he was in the country.” One day, it was like in a storm that some anxiety seized him and he had difficulty breathing. He bolted to his feet and involuntarily opened the skylight to breathe some fresh air. The room was so small and the air so heavy it seemed emptied of oxygen; he felt he could not breathe, so he breathed out of the window such that his head protruded from the roof while the rest of his body could not be seen from the windows across the street. Since the room was low to its ceiling, his chin was past the window frame. While he breathed and his body replenished its oxygen, he occasionally saw a girl’s head emerge from the roof window in the house across the street. These lonely heads appearing on two red roofs often looked into each other’s eyes. Some evenings he saw sticks lift up to the window and hang lingerie and underclothes to dry. The girl seemed to wash underwear
inside her place and dry them on the stick. In Ásmundur eyes this resembled a standard flag that flutters from a ship’s rigging, but though he knew semaphore he set no meaning in symbols. This indicated only that the clean female had the same kind of little, narrow attic bedroom as he did. Now one time he was standing with his head up out of the roof and staring at the washing fluttering. And before he knew it, the clothing had fallen from its stick, swinging in spirals over the windy street and landing on the roof right in front of his nose. He is startled to see the garment tossing before his eyes and manages with some presence of mind to capture it, and he sees he has some women’s panties. Time passes and he waits but there is no sign of the girl’s face in the roof window and he does not know what to do with the panties. His shyness means that he does not like the idea of going with them in hand down the stairs and across the street, so he stands guard all day in his window, food- and coffee-less, making sure the frost does not bite him; he is used to standing on watch in all weathers. In the evening, when darkness had fallen, it seemed to him a globular hump appeared in the window, the girl’s face looking out the roof in search of something since there’s nothing on the end of the stick. He puts up a hand and waves the panties several times in the same way as a shipwrecked man on a raft. The hump scans around without making any sound so he starts to holler. The face of the hump then looks across the street. Then it disappears down the roof. Ásmundur is about to give up hope but at the same time the girl reappears with a flashlight and directs it to his window. Ásmundur does not hide away but rather exceeds his ingrained reserve, waving the panties vigorously as he shouts:
Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller Page 28