Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  A man might talk about things differently if he had the heart, said Kristján. A man allows himself everything. He plans something—all well and good—then someone comes along, he says, come on. And the man takes a different path.

  He clicked his fingers.

  A man takes a different path—all well and good—then someone comes and says, come on. And the man storms in the opposite direction.

  They laughed. Viggó waited for Kristján to get into the storytelling mood, so he could interrupt. Viggó did not know how to pay compliments, but enjoyed interrupting folk. It confused Kristján who would get mixed up.

  One starts off stiff, said Kristján.

  A large crane swung its arm over their heads. Two workmen came to the box and gestured to the operator to let the hook down. One of the workers stepped up to the D.F.D.S. crate and raised his arm to the hook; the other walked around the box and slipped the sling under him and passed it to the man. He took it without dropping the hook. He folded the loop and drew it over the hook. The box lifted and the man jumped down.

  Now they are taking the crate, said Kristján.

  They stood up from the little box and turned their heads all around. The large crate swung in the air. The workers stood still and raised their arms against the sky and the crate.

  One cannot loiter here indefinitely without shelter, said Kristján.

  We were sitting on a small box inside a larger one, and the big crate was ripped away so we’re sitting on the smaller, Viggó said.

  Let’s go then, said Kristján. And do not let Stein talk to you and hypnotize you out to sea with him.

  The workers uttered a sharp cry. Too much. The crate seesawed in its sling. They seized some empty cement bags and slung them up to the box. The wind tore at the bags, then stopped and flung cement from them. The bags fell in tatters on the quay. The man came out of the lift cockpit with the bag tatters and aimed at the crate. The workers ran about in tattered windbreakers and collected cement bags and slung them at the crate. Mas. Their eyes could barely see for dust, but when the clouds broke they saw a little rat run out from the crate’s edge. Two men attempted to go up in the elevator. The crane operator pushed them away with a foot that dangled from the cockpit threshold. They ran off and grabbed a long pole made of wire and used it to scrape at the crate. The rat jumped from the crate, climbed up the sling, and sat by the hook. The operator kept the bag, but threw things at the rat. The rat turned his head and jumped up on the crane’s arm. The workers raised their caps. The crane operator stepped along the arm with the bag and the rat retreated. He swung the bag in a blow toward the rat, which stood there at the tip of the arm. The bag flew near the rat, but she escaped and dropped back to the crate. The operator lay on the arm and looked down at the pier. Two men attempted to climb in the cab.

  He won’t talk me into anything, said Hermann.

  He will nevertheless talk to you, said Kristján, he might latch on to you and talk.

  The workers had come out of the cab and formed a chain along the lifting arm. Kristján, Viggó, and Hermann said goodbye. Kristján said:

  We were mad not to drink coffee with Hermann who has a bedroom we could drink in; we could have got ourselves a bottle. Everything ends with us getting a bottle.

  No, we are going home, said Viggó. I have a car on the jetty, so long as no one stole it.

  Kristján pushed open the door. They looked around in the dining room. Hermann came after them.

  Now we really need to have a coffee after all that drivel, said Kristján.

  They poured coffee from the glass bowl into thick clay jars they brought to the empty table. The coffee was too hot to drink. While it was cooling they took turns going to the bathroom.

  Have you noticed that when you come in from the cold to the heat your bladder fills? said Kristján. I’ll go first.

  He went to the bathroom. Everything was all smashed: door handles, mirror, sink and paneling. No light. Hints of light passed through tiny air holes with netting over them. On the floor lay underwear and socks and a toilet brush. Only two steel bases on the toilet bowls were unbroken. A man was standing against the wall and peeing and groaning. Kristján peed in one of the bowls and sent some of the stream into the other, then he went out and said to Viggó:

  Now its your turn, spring heels. It’s like getting lost in the piss inside an old woman’s bladder, the stench is so bad.

  Hermann covered his mouth. Acid coffee came up in his throat. He got up and spat just past the door. Viggó went in and peed. The man and he pissed long and spoke about the wet weather. Viggó was cold and peed a lot, and while he was at it he glanced up in the air saturated with yellow drops, and felt sure it was caused by the steam from the bowls, then he looked at the other man’s stream, and he looked furtively at his stream. Then they locked eyes in the twilight, saying almost simultaneously:

  No, what a coincidence; you are airing your socks here?

  Neither responded directly to the exclamation, but the man in the booth reached in his coat pocket, pulled out a bottle, and handed it to Viggó, who drank from the neck.

  The man said:

  These are the city’s best toilets.

  And so they drank alternately, one drinking while the other peed. Viggó was done first and did not like to hang around pretending to pee. He went, kicked the underwear to the wall and said:

  We have met before.

  When Viggó came into the refectory, he slapped Kristján on the back.

  Who do you think is taking a leak in there?

  I am not in the habit of studying people while they pee, said Kristján.

  Only Silli, with a full bottle.

  I’m leaving, said Hermann. I don’t want to get into anything.

  Kristján went in and pretended to urinate. Silli pulled out a bottle and they drank and peed for the hell of it and enjoyed it.

  I did not recognize you, Kristján said.

  If a hundred men were made to piss through holes in a wall, their faces covered, I’d know you by your stream, said Silli.

  He backed out of the booth. He brushed the dirt from his shoes with the underwear on the floor and threw them into the booth. They went out, and Hermann was gone. He walked aimlessly out of the harbor and probably thought to himself:

  it doesn’t matter even if in front of you there’s the mug of an old acquaintance

  He got there as the ship was docking and heard a shout:

  You there!

  Stein called out. Hermann continued, turned around, walked to the prow where it touched the pier’s deck, and cried:

  Hey, you there!

  His feet took him toward the twenty-ton ship that rolled on the waves. The box was at the opening to the hold. He asked:

  What?

  The man told him to move closer. He noted a milk carton afloat in the harbor. Without paying attention to Hermann, he said:

  They throw rubbish from the ship even though there’s a whale belly for trash hanging outside the hull.

  Hermann stood with one foot on the jetty and saw the milk cartons caught in the suction current from the ship’s propeller and floating in the harbor, White-brand condoms distended like jellyfish in the calm waves. He crossed the jetty and looked down into the sea on the other side. Then he went back over and looked at the man standing bent over the line in the shadow of the engine housing. He waved back and said:

  Are you going fishing?

  The man knew he was standing there. His shadow fell on the white engine house. His eyes were fixed on something. His tongue dry in the mouth. After some hesitation he moved closer to the battered boat and saw a bearded head peering out from a window of the engine housing. The eyes looked around and regarded the man.

  You coming? We are setting out.

  The man’s head looked down from the wheelhouse. Hermann did not answer. He thought:

  i’d kill for a hot dog

  He said:

  I’m no sailor.

  Oh, it doesn’
t matter. We’re not going out to sea.

  His feet took him down the harbor stairs, cautiously along the pier to the boat deck, to stand by the wheelhouse under the men’s eyes. The boat moved. He felt a thin, solid layer between himself and the sea. It was different standing with the ocean under your feet instead of firm ground. He said:

  I know nothing about boatwork.

  Doesn’t matter. The fisherman inside you won’t be hiding any deeper than two days’ seasickness.

  He thought:

  fishing

  He looked over the railing and saw the harbor like a metal sheet. There were clear markings on the color of the sea at the harbor entrance. Small beautiful fishing boats sailed in, but the big ugly ship with its unwieldy bulk sailed out. The boats sailed about the harbor, their movements agile and sharp-hulled, like they were sleek surface fish. The transport ship sailed out like a dead whale.

  He said:

  I did not bring any clothes.

  He grabbed at his pants legs, spreading them, and pulled open his jacket to tug at his dirty shirt. Look.

  We’ll loan you something from the trunk. Come on down and get out of your coat. We’ll try you as chef first.

  The feet obeyed and traveled down the stairs. His head disappeared at the same time the man raised the gangplank. He stood on the deck, swinging the ladder over his head and knocked it against the pier with a quick blow and shouted:

  Get some coffee. You’ll feel better.

  The face in the window of the wheelhouse growled with dissatisfaction. A swollen fist stretched from the window and brushed dirt from the solid pane with the flat of its hand. Below, in the hold, his head rolled, too sluggish to resist. The only logic was to throw oneself anywhere and try to sleep. In the narrow cell the unclean environment, bleak and cold, was all too evident: a table on the floor splashed with coffee, dirty jars with a dried coffee crust on the bottom, matches, cigarette butts. His feet dragged him to the table, to the stove, where his hands cleaned the blue coffee pot that came trembling near to his mouth, which opened halfway and sucked the spout then gulped down cold coffee. Movement stirred in the body: a growling stomach and in his head the old woman crouched inside the closet of the basement bedroom, but he did not know why she was there or how she had gotten there and then she broke into pitiful giggling. Drool leaked from her mouth. Slow vibrations tickled the legs and bottoms of the feet.

  Feet in heavy clogs hustled down the stairs, heels first, then the man was standing on the floor, rubbing his hands and asking:

  Are you hungover?

  The shoulders shrugged but the hands did not release their grip on the spout.

  Lie down and you will rise again like a newborn foal. I will clean the ashes from the machine in the meantime.

  newborn baby

  He repeated the sentence several times in his mind. The man grabbed him and threw him to the cot. A hard mattress, a moldy smell. In the bunk lay crumpled newspapers; no blanket, sheet, or pillow, and he mustered the energy to ask:

  Do sailors sleep under newspapers like winos and bums?

  Hurry out of those overshoes and your canvas overcoat and lay it over yourself.

  The man was down on his knees struggling in front of the coal stove, poking in the fire-box, but he noticed immediately that Hermann was finding it hard to take off his coat. His arms got tangled in the sleeves, and finally he gave up and fell groaning on one side on top of the coat. He drew his heavy legs up into the bunk since it was too short for him. At once everything was in motion and things were moving about inside his dark crying brain where thoughts burst out in a colored pile:

  if you open the flesh with a knife blade you see momentarily white tendon tissue and nerves that bind the body together but its fluid is brimful and flows over the arm in a struggle a thick stream onto the bedraggled floor mat the flat floor sloping a fearsome cord of blood searching out the doorway you hold your hands away from you the blood searches a central pipeline while you lie and no aid comes you there prone on the floor watching how blood oozes from the wound you see that the flesh is just scratched but they do not know it standing scared on the stairs because they woke up and heard the cry reverberate in the basement they are still on the cool steps listening hearing neither sound nor sigh she says:

  you go first

  he steps hesitantly down some steps

  The limp body asleep lashed in the overcoat. When the eyes woke they opened wide. He realized without moving he lay crushed between clothes and the head of bed and had a poor memory of how he got down here. Light from a bulb shone from the ceiling. Behind him, conversation carried from the table, emerging from a cloud of cigarette and coal smoke:

  . . . political guru?

  It is self-evident that if absolute constraints prevail in the Soviet Union, no one is free to develop private enterprise so that he can eke out the little he has and cultivate it and move his family to a sunny country.

  The man drew up his leaden legs. The sound of clogs kicking table legs that were bolted to the floor. As he listened to the men’s discussion he closed his eyes and drew a newspaper over his face. He was breathing heavy under it and the conversation through it was muffled. Then he moved his head on the bed and the paper fell off his mouth and nose.

  Do you think people in the Soviet Union are sacred and just and there’s no crime?

  Not sacred. It’s just a new people there—a brand-spanking-new race. A chosen race sprouted from Leninist-Marxism.

  Race?

  Yes—what’s the name of the famous ugly French philosopher with chameleon eyes and a pipe?

  . . . why is it not possible to remember . . .

  He hears the interlocutor get impatient, a man who does not tolerate forgetfulness. He snaps his fingers and Hermann gets interested in the topic of conversation though he has heard something similar a thousand times.

  Silence continues.

  Listen! shouts the interlocutor.

  The man pushes Hermann’s leg firmly, but he does not move. Then he moves up and breathes out in his face. Hermann feels the stench from his mouth and nose, but does not answer.

  Do you remember what the famous frenchie with chameleon eyes is called?

  No response.

  Do not pretend. You are not asleep. Your eyelids are trembling. I can see you are awake and listening.

  The man moved back to the table and said to his companion:

  It does not matter what his name is, but what he said: In the Soviet Union, a marvel has happened, a new race has come into being, and it can grow potatoes in the snow. A new type of man has come into human history there in the plain and in the potato gardens of Moscow where Napoleon lost and was driven home.

  and that’s where a dead man is best preserved on the ground in the snow his blood perfect

  The eyes woke up completely. The lips smacked. His ears awoke and listened because the curiosity in Hermann had woken, too, as he listened to the men at the table.

  As if that helps, protested the other. No one can eat frozen potatoes.

  People are taught to raise themselves up.

  Who doesn’t raise themselves? Don’t be absurd.

  People do, I know, but not the right way; as the Soviets do.

  What’s right? What’s wrong? Everyone has an example that works for himself.

  We are all our own judges. But the Soviets have this spanking-new method of fishing. You bring out to the ocean several thousand suction disks with pumping equipment, head to where the fish are, and pump them directly onto a conveyor, which runs the fish right to the automatic floating factories in the area, staffed by just one woman in a white gown—totally automatic—and the fish get processed into cans or packages straight to the consumer, straight into the pan. Now the idea bulb lights up! The suction disks are at different depths so you get all the fish and you take one bank at a time, empty it, go to the next, and re-cultivate it in the meantime. A fishing system. That’s how the Russians do it. Here, we can warm the sea, perh
aps all the nation’s spas, with water pipes from the hot springs. We could place enormous pressure equipment systems around the country and trigger a new icelandic Gulf Stream, just for us. It’s only water from the tropics and are the tropics out there in the wider world somehow better than our geothermal regions? Listen to this famous French guy. What’s his name? You! Then it would become fun to live in iceland; people would stop living a hundred kilometers away from each other, like now, but with less poverty and ignorance. Back then, if someone needed to look you in the eye, he might as well stare up at the clouds in search of an angel.

  Hermann rose on his bunk and regarded the men at the table, their suspicious faces and arms stretched from the upper part of their body and cracked index fingers hooked into the ears of the coffee jars and indifferent about the future of socialism in iceland.

  Here, you look like some pasty sea lion. Don’t dawdle there, not with your crown pointing toward the stove! Point your toes at her, the brain can dry out, but it’s healthy to warm your toes. Who is that famous Frenchman with chameleon eyes?

  You are mad, the man said. This is all nonsense.

  Really, the thing the brightest men in all the world proclaim, mad: Þórbergur, Kiljan, Elizabeth Taylor, this french guy, and Ben Hur and jesus too, if he were alive. Did you see Ben Hur?

  The older man got off his bunk and drank from the pot with it raised over him like a dead flounder. Then he put his pitcher away and shuffled with open hands to the table and eased himself over to the stairs. He looked stubbornly at Hermann, with his pale face, ruffled hair, and his raggy clothes crumpled from sleep, before disappearing on deck.

  You look awful. Hurry up out of bed and get yourself some coffee and salt.

  As Hermann dragged himself out of the bunk he noticed a stink emanating from the neck of his shirt; he hauled himself over the bench, feeling like he had not shit in two weeks, everything stuck firm in his guts.

  The man gave him coffee in a thick mug. Outside was a pitcher filled with a lubricant and he offered it to him.

  Having brought him the pitcher, the man went to the stairs and called up to the opening:

  Listen up, troll!

  No answer. Then he rushed over to the fire pump, shook it, struggled and rummaged in the cubby by the stairs, moving the life preserver, dirty socks, and rubber lifeboat from the floor. Finally, he found what he was looking for.