Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  Sunday—lemon drops, he said, and emptied the glass into the coffee. Monday—almond drops.

  He grabbed the pitcher, held it to his mouth and nose, but did not want to drink the coffee.

  Damn cardamom drops every day of the week.

  I do not want this piss.

  Piss? he asked, surprised. Swig it! Drinking it is like being equipped with an automatic oil-heating device. You get to a certain level, and if you plan to go past that, the device turns your stomach off by closing the opening. Should you try to force down a single drop more, the safety valve automatically opens and you vomit a mashy pulp. If you are on some different drink, the heat supply enters from the top without the valve loosening. See? That’s the way alcohol renders men senseless. Everything boils and bubbles; nothing ever gives.

  Where are we going? he asked, half-interested. Are we headed to sea?

  Hold your nose and take a sip.

  He did not delay, but grasped his face with his paw and gulped the drink down. His face fell onto the tabletop.

  Feel better? he asked, and laughed vilely.

  A bit, he said, trembling.

  Yes, where are we going? he asked, and laughed scornfully. Toward the porbeagles.

  Did I sleep for long?

  Half a day and a whole night. Since yesterday.

  Anxiety seized his features and he grimaced with disgust over the drink. Like a fog the harbor ran past and he pressed his fingers to his eyes as he swallowed saliva poisoned with lemon drops.

  What are the porbeagles for? he asked.

  For profit, came the reply, and he slung himself shakily onto the bench face-first, so hard that his sense organs could taste the cardamom as he thought:

  neither Sunday nor Monday, but all the other days.

  The man looked at his swollen eyes and said, without pausing:

  so everyone can profit, but you intellectuals do not understand, your soul governs you, but a single porbeagle lasts longer than twenty exams, those things you misers collect. Industrial freezing plants cannot sell examinations to Italy; they sell black creatures with rough skin from the sea. The porbeagle basks on its back and lets the waves tickle its belly like a lover. We are prepared to look amid strong currents to find her, though we’ve found none. When we get her fast, our hooks deep inside her, the freezing plant will buy her and trim her and sell her to Italy and the Italians go crazy for porbeagles; they eat it like tuna. Want a longer lecture?

  He shook his head. The man appeared on the stairs and said:

  I have lost faith in this venture. We are fishing neither one thing nor another. Those boys you picked up some devilish place have jumped ship; this one does nothing but sleep and vomit. It was enough before, the two of us, and then you wanted to expand, and where is everything? I am leaving. You can keep the ship.

  He crawled into the bunk and turned his back.

  Why did you head out and let yourself be fooled?

  If we hang about down in the ship, we can’t catch anything, the man said.

  They climbed the stairs and he squeezed out from the bunk and followed them. Hermann went back down. The sunlight had cut into his eyes. The cabin door opened and sun glared on the table.

  Come back up when you have recovered.

  Hermann heard him mutter:

  The sun never shines on the fishhook. There is no hope for the fisheries.

  The muttered words reverberated in his dull ears. The eyes looked over the table and discovered three hard pastries in an envelope. He fumbled in it, took his fingers back out, reached over to the stove, lifted the lid from the pan, and wolfed down the remains of roasted meat inside. The pan was on the stove and the meat was warm, dry, and fried; he washed it down with coffee. His stomach grated at the unexpected arrival of guests and threw him in the direction of the door. He vomited coffee and meat over the hotplate. He gagged, paled, and clutched at a brass rod on the machine. He screamed, sweat-covered, and when nothing more came up he pushed the mix together with his toes, crumpled some newspaper around it and put it in the firebox. A concentrated lemon odor erupted from it. The other man came down and said:

  What’s up, citronman? Did you vomit?

  He looked at him there, saliva drooling from his mouth, and shook his head in disgust.

  No porbeagles to be had and steam rising off that man. He is howling something about an experiment and railing and demanding damages and saying: the banks must pay the fishing company damages, not me. Let him rail against the birds.

  What is this ship called?

  Katrín, he said, and stood at the edge of the table. Katrín Jónsdóttir.

  He did not stand there for long; he went over, opened the siding, and drew a glass from under the lifeboat.

  You’re a sight for sore eyes. Nothing is better than to vomit and to shit and to get rid of the pulp inside your body.

  The other man came down and asked:

  Are you just going to loiter about in here? What is your name?

  Tómas, he said. How about you?

  Yes. Tómas. I think so. Tómas Jónsson, national bestseller.

  My name is Tómas, he said, pointing to his chest.

  They were all silent and stared at each other and thought about it:

  Three Tómases on board the national ship.

  Then one asked:

  Can you feel the climate changing? A fog is approaching. Breezes are an omen of fog.

  Yes, said Tómas, sluggish. Sea fog is common in Portugal.

  They arose simultaneously and surged to the stairs. Out on deck, they laughed. A white haze lay over the ocean; its waves had turned green from their usual blue. They sat morosely on the hold hatch, and Tómas said:

  I’ll go down and fetch something to cheer us up.

  He came up again, pointing out to sea into the fog as he sat down.

  There goes the Gullfoss, he said.

  Yes, there goes our flagship, the others replied.

  The black bow of the ship towered up out of the fog with the sun shining behind it and the wind swirling in transparent wisps. The fog flew forward like a thin, tattered curtain, covering parts of the ship so that it no longer looked like an ordinary ship, jumping out of the water in dolphin leaps, striking under the wave peaks and kicking up spouts and sea-spray. It did not sail in a straight line but instead in an eel-like curve, forming a circle around the Katrín. The ship sailed, turning about itself, and Tómas said:

  It seems that we are looking at the icelandic national vessel, going in circles around everything and nothing.

  He went into the wheelhouse and pointed a telescope at the ship. He looked long in the telescope.

  I don’t see a soul on board, he called through the window.

  Darkness fell over the ship and the eyes of the men on deck became watery with the spray. The sun shone again and wind scattered the darkness and fog. The Gullfoss sailed constantly around them in a wide or tight circle, but the Tómases were neither afraid nor surprised there by the railing.

  Is this flagship only in our eyes? asked Tómas, asking for the telescope so he had something to rely on other than his naked eyes. He pointed the telescope to the ship and said:

  It is drunk. A ship won’t behave that way unless it’s drunk.

  He was relieved, glad that his eyes were sober, that they weren’t marbles in his head full of blood and wine. He slipped, fell on the deck, and lay senseless for a moment; when he woke up, he was sober. He checked the engine, set it full speed out of the vicious circle to avoid the collision. The Gullfoss was raging, blowing its foghorn, its propeller at an evil speed. Tómas said:

  We need to head down and fetch the lifeboat. This ship is berserk.

  Together they dragged the inflatable lifeboat on deck, filled it with air; in the same breath, the side of the black ship loomed beside them. They read: GULLFOSS.

  This is the flagship, no mistaking it, the font is plenty large, said Tómas.

  The ship sailed uncontrollably in large curves, but
when it went in a reverse circle Tómas saw that the passengers had arranged themselves along the railing and were staring down into the sea, resistant to cries and calls, only their tongues moving, lolling from their open mouths. Fog covered the surface of the ocean and soon they could see neither the ship nor its errant circle. They no longer knew where they came from or where they were going, but they could feel the ocean under their feet. Tómas came numbly down from the wheelhouse and said:

  The best thing we can do is drink and wait for day to come.

  Suddenly the fog and first light enveloped the ship. The Gullfoss seemed to be there and sped toward them on its next curve. The passengers were still at the railing, heads drooping with hanging tongues flapping like skin newly slipped off fish. They wondered if they were vomiting or if they were airing their tongues after drinking.

  Perhaps they are lookouts for porbeagles, said Tómas.

  No, he replied. The bar is open and they are having a session. After a ship leaves port, the passengers no longer know this world or any other; chance decides whether it will dock somewhere. It rushes about the ocean and they’re used in Scotland to seeing ships lapwing out on the firth, and if it cannot find the right way, then it cannot find it. But as soon as it appears as a shadow, tugs are sent out to drag it confused to the harbor.

  They settled into the lifeboat and could not agree as to whether they had seen the ship or not.

  I never saw anything, said Tómas.

  Nor I, said Tómas.

  Then nor did I, said Tómas.

  What’s this then?

  A jaunt?

  Night came and they felt for each other.

  We are three, he said.

  They found six arms, but just five feet. They searched for the sixth in the dark, but could not find it.

  We are three, we all have two feet, there should be six feet, they said, and bent down to check whether they could feel their feet.

  It is gloomy here, they said, and we have no maritime navigation devices.

  In the cabin, the stench of lemon drops. The counting began. They arranged themselves on the bench and ordered themselves to let their feet dangle down. Tómas stood up and said:

  I will count.

  He tallied carefully on his fingers, but the result was always the same.

  Five, he said.

  He had a good mind to give Tómas a slap in the face with a dirty table cloth. He rushed up and attacked him, but it came to light that Tómas had been all the while sitting on one foot and hiding it. Tómas cursed:

  How stupid.

  What does this mean? he asked.

  Blows rained down on him; he noticed a fire extinguisher on the wall, took it, and pointed its trumpet at the limp shapes of people swaying there and making unintelligible sounds. Carbonate sprayed out. The pictures fell and he threw himself over the others like a sprinkle of coal from a pail. The pictures flocked against him. Men and pictures rolling on the floor, finding faces, holding each other fast, kicking their feet.

  Eventually he gave up the vision, his head lolling helplessly to one side. He cried and felt a face coming toward him and sticking a slender tongue between his lips.

  Stop! he cried. Stop!

  He lay on his belly and repeated:

  Stop, boy, stop.

  The interior was dark and the outside dark and foggy. The old man saw Hermann rolling on the floor covered in ashes and tears.

  Tómas, Hermann said, you are my concept.

  Tómas Jónsson looked suspiciously at Hermann lying euphoric on the floor and said:

  You cannot trick me.

  Hermann stood up and flopped over to the bench. He took the old man’s shoulders and said:

  Say nothing more until you have died and I have finished the work. Then you may go back to this book: Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller.

  Sometime during the night, the three drunk and doubting Tómases came on deck and crawled into the lifeboat. The ship adrift on a sea of fog and darkness.

  If the ship sinks, he said, and if we are drifting to shore, I know Faroese Óli will come down to the skerry to welcome us.

  Do not worry, we will drift to land before shellfish weigh down the boat and sink it.

  In an inflatable lifeboat, we’re safe.

  He managed to think:

  i call the northern lights night rainbows

  Guðbergur Bergsson (b. 1932) is the author of twenty-one books, including novels, poetry collections, and works of childrens’ literature. He is also a translator from the Spanish and is responsible for bringing Gabriel García Marquez into Icelandic. He won the Icelandic Literary Prize twice and, in 2004, received the Sweish Academy Nordic Prize, commonly known as the “Little Nobel.” His novel The Swan is also available in English translation.

  Lytton Smith is a poet, professor, and translator from the Icelandic. His most recent translations include works by Kristin Ómarsdóttir, Jón Gnarr, and Bragi Ólafsson, and his most recent poetry collection is The All-Purpose Magical Tent. A graduate of Columbia, he currently teaches at SUNY Geneseo.

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