Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  Have you hit puberty. Poppa’s here for you. Meee. Am I to go lambing. Homely Magga stiffened up, blinked in awe and tried to be in his way in the haybarn and bull stall. Then he said boldly:

  I would not even once want to kick my heel in your pussy or poke into your patch even if your body is for everyone.

  She threw the cat into the silage pit. Last night I forgot to mention that I came across Bjössi near the head of the street and of course he had the briefcase under his arm and news of the refectory. Ásmundur’s ground floor now flows rapidly into him from his soup spoon. He will probably need to move into the basement before the year ends to extend his days. A lot of talk about Ása, he said. But I fear nothing. I just concluded Ásmundur is rather obnoxious. Yesterday we talked with Katrín about the future. With the support of god assisting me in the future as in the past and present. The ever-beneficent god. Give, almighty god, that I may enjoy the light of the following day. I hope he leaves me his grace to sleep soundly in these dim coming nights. Good night. I kiss your image, O god, in the dark. The bull sat behind the cow, he said. The mare flung the foal. Do you love dogs. And he stood fluttering behind the cows in the cowshed and locked carefully the clicked-shut door and the coins. Magga lay on the chimney and looked down and said to me:

  Best wishes, I’ll kill you. You are so bullish, Tómas.

  June 29, 1957.

  (Addition to yesterday.)

  In the night saw a rat stagger across the sidewalk with a needle in its brain. Who stabbed it. The wretch stumbled and rolled paralyzed by the curb near a roof drain, and tried in vain to scratch its way out the slippery gutter. I tied a cord around Títa’s neck and sent her out the window and waited with my hand on the cord while she ate the rat. Now I cannot kiss the cat’s nose for several days. After eating, the puss licked herself, but I regret when thinking about this day that she should have been corrupted and the hourglass runs toward eternity and so eternity is, in a sense ruined, irredeemable because I witnessed the life of a rat and its death disappearing into the belly of a cat said to have nine lives. What need it another animal’s life to nourish its own (clock strikes twelve midnight).

  June 30, 1957.

  . . . merciless. Had I the chance to control time I would stop its journey. I would obstruct the respiratory system, save my sight, breathe for example only every other day but unrestricted every Saturday afternoon, I would see and hear unstintingly on every major holiday, christmas and Easter, for the glory of life, of all existence. I do not want to wake up in the morning light with the upheaval of fear, referred to as nonsense but still there in every man at the day’s arrival. And if I could stop breathing, I would definitely do it and lie in a winter-long coma with a pillow under my heels. I would never need fear my words again and that my sight, hearing, and breathing are not fit for their characteristics i.e. making speech, seeing, hearing, drawing breath. My eyes stare back at me bloodshot and swollen. The word was and never has been a god. I know that life would be welcome without words. Be silent, heart. A lifetime of words is extremely precarious. They blur with use. Although it is possible to rejuvenate a word you can also kill with it. Tell time to speed its journey. Order the flesh to wither quickly. Issue a hurry-up to the decay so one becomes senile and apathetic. Let light shine where rotten blood constantly renews. You let everything return to source, to water, lava and wind.

  If you do not want to rot, rot you still will.

  Everything turns into its opposite and renews itself in a paradox.

  Tómas Jónsson

  17. composition book

  Accident strikes as an oppression habit denies;

  the happy one seeks

  nothing more.

  Guðmundur Böðvarsson

  The evening is warm. I feel a passionate desire that has become rather rare: to saunter along the downtown streets. Few people are about. Probably they are at the movies. I have not been to work for a few days, but no one wants to know why. Only rarely did I use quiet afternoons to sneak out the house and crawl the streets to my satisfaction. Now I take care to come home before the evening shows let out. Even the door handles nauseate me, how people push into cafés at closing to eat cream cakes and drink coffee. One giggles, half-bent in an overcoat, strokes some snot from a nose in the cold and discusses the film. I despise snot unless it is large and hangs like a spider from the tip of the nose or dandles up and down after respiration. These are very rare. Usually only clear water or moisture runs from the nose. Snot used to be SNOT not clear water. On Sunday morning I walk along the streets while the city sleeps off its hangover. The streets are empty until noon like a moor with birds and landscape wherever you look. No one to see except the man in the flight cap collecting empty beer bottles from the streets and stuffing them about himself. His face red and raging. He has good clogs and clean work clothes. He sells the bottles at Lækjarbar and gets coffee in exchange. I stand at the glass door and see him drink and devour Danish pastries. He does not seem to save any of what he gets from bottle collecting, but just buys coffee with the returns. Last night’s cigarette smoke still streams around the window. I hate going past groups waiting to be let into the movies. I don’t venture out until the clock strikes nine, and the people sitting in their seats are feasting their eyes in the shadows. The movie houses clear the streets. Cinema is an excellent trashcan. I go look at the building where I work during the day. It is square and long. I look up at the walls in search of the window where I work. Many windows are in a row on the side. I find the right window. The building is about the same outside as it is different inside. My desk cannot be seen in the window. I cannot guarantee this is the right window. I count the panes to the right and left on the third floor and my fingers almost meet in the middle of the wall. My window should be the fifth window from the left and the third from the right. I could have overlooked so I count from the roof to the ground. As I do I always leap past the fifth and third windows which I find strange. There is no light inside. The front of the building is not illuminated. On the street there are few souls about. I go to the door and touch the handle with a handkerchief. I push the door. The door gives after I push with my knee. It is heavy and oak. I head in and stand breathless in the hallway. Everything is quiet. The building unoccupied. This is a public building. I open a door to a room. The door closes by itself. The door has a spring that closes the door after you. I walk to the stairs along the walls surrounding the rectangular opening that connects the four floors. The building was built out of bold optimism. According to the plan, an elevator was going to be where the stairs are, pausing on four floors. It was to have space for two people on the way up but not down. I do not turn on the lights since it is night. Because it is night it is not possible to see how the stairs wind up the stories and touch the platform on each floor, then resume on the next. The stairs go up the stories, one after the other, until they are no longer. The roof takes over. Stairs never rise up from building roofs. At the handrail on the third floor I always think: if you fall here you would be knocked out on the floor. Due to the stack of cardboard on the ground floor you would probably escape unharmed or just badly injured. Of course, you would crush the boxes and fall stably to the floor. I keep Títa in the bag and whisper to explain thing as if her eyes. Títa is curious to know how things are organized where I work. In theory this is called field study. I was fleeing a few rain drops that fell on the road. Outside it is beginning to rain. I sit on the stairs and decide to wait off the rain. After some consideration, I saunter up the stairs. When I go upstairs I run my palm along the railing, like when I go down the stairs. In this there is security; one might stub toes on something. I reach the third floor. On the way I grab at each door but they are locked. I always want to touch them all but did not get to until now. A person always finds some adventure. I sit on the platform by the door I’ve walked past for many years. I lean my left shoulder against the wall. It squeals under my clammy palms as I stroke the lacquered walls. It is dark in the hallway. Str
eetlights shine from below and signal vague shadows through the window frames. Maybe these are what’s called window dressings. I do not know what the crossbeam in the window is called. Maybe just the crossbeam. I rise and go to the window. Someone might come in by chance. I variously stride or saunter. The streetlights are dim and far from the window. The light on the right is near so the shadows are clearer on the wall to the left and break on the door placard on Ólaf’s office. If I was in charge, I would bronze the placards. Someone makes a racket in the corridor below. I’m not frightened of the dark. A door slams. Often it is the CEO who drinks and boozes at the office after work. At least, they did so in my time. They would store glasses of water in a desk cabinet and rinse them in the toilet, in the wash basin, white at the bottom from the mineral material that settled in it. This is not a urine stain like in a chamber pot, but, what I would call a wine stain. They drink hard liquor in what’s called a mix: beer or water. From here I stand at the window on the third floor and hear the sound that must be carrying either from the first or second floor. The possibility that it comes from the second floor is negligibly small, since then it would be heard clearly. Someone is running about the first floor. Do not go down the stairs. The sound comes from Bjössi’s flat, the watchman’s apartment, which is one room and a tiny kitchen. The front door slams locked. Again the hallway becomes quiet. I’m locked in the building and ponder things.

  In the morning, newspapers publish a law that sets high fines if you let an apartment stand empty, due to the housing shortage in the city. An infraction carries a steep cost. I, an autonomous apartment owner without debt, had not planned to launch into the housing market until prices in the country fell, inflation ceased, and things returned to a balance after the world-famous World War which made us money-rich and dignity-poor. I thought to myself, the high cost of living cannot increase indefinitely, or so I reasoned. It was growing even as I thought it through: surely conditions must improve. It seems that nothing can stop it once it is accidentally jostled into motion. Is there not a law governing inexhaustible unchangeable energy. The high cost of living became terrible. I decided not to wait for an improvement. I brought out all my possessions. I gathered together every króna. I decided to save whatever could be saved. No one should take anyone else’s share to justify their lack of income, not even you, mayor, who besets me with hard conditions even though I have voted for you and your party in good faith ever since I got the right to vote. I make my mark even before election day, so careful in every respect, as soon as voting begins at the polling stations. That first day I go right from work and vote in case I die before election day, die very suddenly, then what would happen to my vote. I do not care if you have a corpse’s vote so long as it lands in the right place. When I take my leave of my life and voting rights, I want to be sure my vote ended up with my party, the mayor. I had tenants in my house and know what comes from taking strangers in. At first they act like tenants, refined and discreet, but then they trample on the master’s bench. Finally, you cannot move without coming across their chairs, table, the long shoehorn in the shape of a negress, shabby reeds in flower vases, candlesticks with glinting birds that dangle on a chain and spin in a circle when the flame is lit. You come across a comb with shaggy hair; gnawed pencils; an dirty laundry bag. No piano appears, played by children with tremendous talent. The tenants multiply and the landlord gets smothered in child rearing. You cannot hold with their custom of talking constantly with full mouths in the kitchen doorway, covered in ketchup. You are driven from your house. As soon as you are carried to the grave an unknown woman sinks to her knee, not from grief, but to pour Lysol where your footsteps were and scrub the floor with a strong alkali soap. Your brass name card is removed from the door and another nailed in its place, cut from the lid of a shoebox. The box that was your house becomes a dwelling place for robbers; contracts get trodden all over despite agreements assenting: This is splendid. The day after the tenants arrived I could not get into the workshop; the woman had hidden it under dirty laundry and giant bedding. Barely two years later, the kids had demolished my construction tools. Everywhere my body was squeezed by boxes, helpfulness, and idling in the toilet until I scrambled to my room like a snail in a spiral shell. I rarely risk myself in the danger area of the corridor except for the most urgent of needs. I got no peace on the toilet, a storm raging at the door, the rabble always needing to shit at the same time as me or piss or squeeze a blackhead on their nostrils in front of the mirror. I can’t even scratch my head freely, but freedom is intolerably restrained. I have no one to blame. The couple wanted a contract extension despite their promises to get out with all their things as soon as the war was over, lodging ended, and we all stopped fighting for every square meter once new houses got built. I did not want to extend for fear that they would appropriate the apartment in posterity for time and eternity, not from greed but friendship. They moved temporarily, but asked to leave some of their possessions, as they had no confidence that the city housing problems were solved. The next morning, the newspapers announced the rule against flat owners letting housing stand unused. There is once more a shortage in the city; tomorrow I expect a commission from you, mayor, an order on paper insisting that I take on new tenants. It would be better to get the old ones back, having their possessions in storage. What about my rights in being deprived of my storage. I am vulnerable, I am writing you this letter to lay out the facts, but you turn a deaf ear to the town, powerful enough to be deaf the way I am blind when it comes to it. You do not need, as I do, to scratch away with your pen, and fill composition books to defend yourself, mister mayor. You are beyond explanation. In your hands you have the power to make laws and rescind laws at will. Your maturity and justice have obtained such over-maturity that you shun them in the name of power. Promises and decisions prevail against you as lightly as the little man gets a sore throat. You cry out countless contradictions as you opine about individual rights, no doubt to make sure people think of you from multiple perspectives. Your head is that shop, Nora, its glass cases full of small objects; in order to see them you look past the glare of helmets or lines of the Bible. I know shamefully well there is neither truth nor justice but I do not know how to define their nature. I was taught that truth is a concept. How can it be a concept if it leads to me not being able to keep my own flat in my own possession, instead needing to rent it out, mister mayor, a concrete compartment where I can sleep sheltered from rain and wind and avoid neighbors and not need to wear my warm overcoat or be a wolf disguised as a sheep—instead, I get some unrelated woman (in my own apartment!), a husband who works for a home—theirs!!—so they never need to carry their children outside and leave them under the lava rock as it is said we to do. I was born long before you, you little stooping man (I’ve seen pictures) who saw his first light from under the white shade of a hanging lamp that hung from a rose-patterned cap in the ceiling of your parents’ very own compartment. You remember the plaster and the copper lamp and the oil burner you did not want to throw in the rubbish dump. I am an old man who has practiced self-denial and integrity. Now you overthrow me with threatening letters and seals. I could stop you, brazen and playing tricks with words, but the seal remains in your hands, you Tlaloc raining documents and papers. I am an annoyed animal in an apartment I own but over which I have no jurisdiction, worse off than a fox in a wild hole. Who would demand an animal take animals of different species into his den. Animals build their own holes. Am I then subordinate to animals, right below them. What would it take for me to have a home free from unrelated generations, a wife, a husband, children, Ásu and Ása. Ási has an ace. Ass, says Ási. Ása, Ása, says Ási. Ása has an ace. Ási has an ass, says Ása. Ása the wife of Ási works outside. Ási eats in the cafeteria. During the day the couple store Ási and Ása the children at the orphanage. In the evening the family meet in their rented box. Does Ása have an ass. Ási has an ace, says Ása. What’s new, says Ási. You’re new, says Ása. Where’s the newspaper, say
s Ási. On the table, answers Ása. Let’s just go to bed, says Ási. I am exhausted, says Ása. Ási turns on the radio. On the news, says the radio, two sheep were found inside the Hrunamanna news booth, in excellent health despite living outside. Is the newspaper on the table, says Ási. Yes, my Ási, the newspaper is on the table, answers Ása. Will you read it, asks Ási. No, my Ási, you read the newspaper, says Ása. What’s on the front page, asks Ási. It was three sheep, replies Ása. You never listen to the newspaper, says Ási. There’s never anything to listen to, says Ása. Leave me to read, requests Ási. If you can, snorts Ása. Don’t hog the paper all night, says Ási. I am not keeping anything from you, answers Ása. What do you have in your hands, asks Ási. Nothing, answers Ása, but here. The compartment is equipped with amenities. The divan is splendid. I come to visit and Ási lies on the divan like a skate. Anyone who comes: Ási the family man is lying exhausted on the divan.