History. a Mess.

by Sigrún Pálsdottír

Truly interesting? I thought this lukewarm reaction a bit strange, but Lucy spent much of his time in Spain—the rumor was that he was after a position at the Prado Museum in Madrid—so I concluded that his mind lay there. I decided not to trouble myself and to look for help elsewhere. Old Mary, thanks in fact to Lucy’s mediation, was a help to me in everything concerning documentation of the period. I took classes in the gender history and met both teachers and students in relevant areas. Mom followed along with me, insisting on reading everything as I did; during that period, I reckoned she was sending me Amazon shipments at a book a week. All this stuff helped me gain insight and look for clues in S. B.’s text, which was otherwise entirely free from incident. And now the mundanity itself had gained meaning; there was some feminine behavior to that! To these dreary repetitions. The constrained expression. The diarist was holding back. Always “busy around the house.” And “in the pantry.” And “in the buttery.” Eternal headaches, never out of the house unless riding out in the meadows with her father. Never at the tavern. Inconsistent spelling, indicating that the author of the manuscript had not received a formal education. The father the teacher. Always close by. No nudity but great emphasis on patterns in clothing and jewelry. The material of the still life painting was unusual. It was typical of a female artist from the period. But based on various information from the diary, she may have pre-dated all the others, and that made all the difference! Most important, of course, she had created the image of Tom Jones’s face that belonged to the art history canon. An image known for its unusual use of color in the face and distinctive depiction of the eyes—the lines around the eyes—an image I now knew as well as my own palm, so often and for such long periods had I looked at and scrutinized it. Indeed, S. B.’s phrasing of the production of the portrait, her connection to it, and the young Jones formed the essence of my thesis: “Every lovely grace of his face.” A moment any novelist might well have dreamed could spin out into a memorable story. But here there was no need for the poetic. Documentary testimony to feelings 365 years old was superior to all fiction. But the emphasis on the moment described on day 203 had, of course, not entered my research thanks to some sentimental emotion. The emphasis primarily had theoretical resonance. The moment revealed the story behind an artwork that had a distinctive place among portraits from this era. It gave rise, based on written and personal proof, to a watershed moment in art history from past centuries, one that needed to be heard.

  Renaissance Man

  “Of course, we have our responsibilities to history.” It’s my father-in-law speaking, but for what purpose and to whom I am not entirely certain. He’s standing in the hallway of our new home, together with his family. The group stands in a knot, somewhat vulnerable, as people always seem once they’ve slipped off their shoes to enter someone else’s home. But who invited these people? And why have they taken off their shoes? It’s awful to look at my mother-in-law, in a lightweight outdoor vest which somehow isn’t quite an outer garment, in yet more olive-green capris to mark spring, and in thin nylon socks stretched over the bunion at the base of her big toe; she reaches out for me with a warm embrace across her sister-in-law, who seems to have been mid-story, saying something entirely unrelated to my father-in-law’s declaration when the visitors arrived. A sister-in-law who is the only one who did not take off her shoes, her heavy, black leather boots that step forcefully along the hallway and almost land on her husband’s toe, his white sports socks. He is light-hearted by habit, his thin, fringed hair parted down the middle. Before leaving the house later this evening, he will ask, as usual, for a shoe horn, though he knows full well we do not “hold” with that. After them comes their daughter, seemingly untouched by the environment that fostered her. And she’s made of completely different stuff than my father-in-law, who is now in the kitchen, having a little private chat with Hans. No doubt something of great importance.

  Next thing, my kitchen is filled with plastic bags and crockery from other houses: common, even crummy, but nonetheless entirely tempting dishes. The party is some kind of potluck that I had no hand in, for which I’d actually tried to avoid being up and about. But when the fragrances meet my appetite, I discover no evident reason to panic; my circumstances will not be mentioned tonight.

  The guests seat themselves at the table. I hear conversation but not always what is being said, because my attention is focused on people’s gestures and self-presentation. At first, it’s my mother-in-law and sister-in-law who do the talking, but as the evening goes by, my father-in-law becomes restless, wanting to present his repertoire. The cultural agenda of the empirical scientist who spends time on serious thought during the day then inclines toward more artistic pursuits in the evening. In his spare time. Perhaps picking up an instrument with some friends. Composing some poetry to be published via an old acquaintance and cultural authority. But what burns within him at this moment has to do with the statement that left his lips as he entered earlier. And since he no longer cares to listen to his son-in-law and his political platitudes, he leans back and takes a meaningful look at us, me and Hans. At the first-rate scientist his son, and his wife, me, who researches ancient images and texts, a subject obscure enough to be somewhat gratifying to him:

  “What is your opinion about this Guðlaugur affair?” He appears to direct this question at me in particular, but before I can form any words he continues on with a sort of expansion of the original question, saying in an awkward British accent—a strange thing, given he was educated in America: “Is archival research a special case of the general messiness of life?” Then he squints his eyes down and sets his mouth as though he’s planning to answer his own question, first giving me some time to review the case: an esteemed foreign publisher has recently published a significant monograph by a young professor, but now his colleagues in Iceland have drawn attention to the fact that one of the key documents of the research cannot be located where it was said to be kept. And since it does not have its own individual call number, belonging merely to a loosely-catalogued collection, there are doubts about whether the document, a letter from the Foreign Secretary to the American Ambassador, ever actually existed. The young professor believes that the letter has been misplaced and everyone’s energy should be put into finding it.

  But what exactly was my father-in-law’s question? What do I think about the Guðlaugur situation? Or whether archives are inherently jungles, emblematic of life’s general chaos? I would likely echo his simile, but then he does something I did not expect anyone to do this evening, and does so in a way that utterly betrays my wishes: “What would happen, for example, if this manuscript you spent so much time researching vanished? Perished. What would happen to your research? Could you still submit your dissertation?”

  To make matters more unfortunate, as soon as he lets slip these words, the conversation my mother-in-law and her son-in-law are having about some personal woes of a local councilor up north comes to an end, and so a deadly silence suddenly reigns at the table, causing all the guests look toward me, their coffee cups poised at their lips. Oh, how perfect it would be if my sister-in-law inserted herself into the discussion, wiping out the question that hangs in the air with some tips or buzzword from her field. But she does not do so, and it’s actually her daughter who comes to my rescue, breaking the silence with an unexpected, refreshing outburst of well-informed, unprejudiced adolescence, making everyone laugh and bringing the guests together in an unforeseeable, agreeable mood. A mood that does not last though, because soon the sister-in-law comes into her element and railroads everyone. Still, anything is better than my father-in-law’s airy meditation about the flat reality of the past, his idea of history; he has reduced me to a pounding heart and cold sweat while he just sits there with the chattering guests. Not able or wanting to join in, he plays with his coffee cup. And once the shoeless guests are milling in a heap in the living room and saying thank you on their way out, I see him standing alone in the hallway. He faces the floor mirror and loo
ks inquiringly at his own image. But what do you need to ask a mirror if you’re wearing a stylish sports coat from a popular designer and comfortable corduroy pants ribbed with creases? Stiff creases. “Renaissance man!” Words my old Icelandic teacher spoke about this “versatile” and “talented” father-in-law of mine, who seems to have found the answer to the question his reflection posed, because, sure and certain, he nods his head to himself in the glass as he moves closer to it. Is a poem coming into existence? Each word must be peised and weighed for valor and wisdom / taking pains over details and progression and systems. But just when I think he’s going to walk clean through the glass, he takes a step backwards, beside the mirror, pulls in his stomach so his chest expands and his face deforms in such a way that his lines deepen, his skin crumples together, and his eyes bulge. Then I see him look toward me. He looks into the mirror and then at my face, reflected there. Just before I turn away.

  I pretend to write. Then I start to write. To write off Diana

  I receive a message from Diana D. about needing to discover the little guy. The so-called Demolitionist. And I am writing the message down in my notebook when Sigga arrives. We’re soon sitting outside on the balcony and are nicely settled there. The balcony is off the dining room, and overlooks the neighboring garden as well as our own, a largely unexplored territory. It suffers from negligence.

  “Beautiful,” says Sigga, reaching for the notebook, which lies next to my coffee cup on the table between us. She caresses the string, but instead of opening it, as she seems to have planned, she places the bright pink leather object in my outstretched palm and says, “You’re better, aren’t you? Could you get some help wrapping things up?”

  Sigga would understand me, she would do anything for me in this hopeless situation in which I’ve found myself, but nothing can help me. My problem is such that it can only worsen if I drag it into daylight: “Yes, but there are things I’m not entirely satisfied with.”

  “Did you know that the loft attic in that house is full of old dolls?” She indicates the old Danish stone house next door. I make a mock ghostly sound and say there’s nothing sinister about such stereotyped and worn out symbols, that they can’t possibly arouse fear in anyone.

  “Still, it would be fascinating to know more,” she says, draining her cup; she has to go to another meeting at the manufacturing plant, safety helmet firmly on her head, to discuss something I know nothing about. This oldest, dearest friend of mine. Who has a fierce passion for nineteenth century English literature and everything connected to it but who, due to a series of chances, of wrong decisions, has to waste her days as far away from that world as possible. She was an outstanding student, equally competent in all her subjects in school, and so no one ever thought anything except that she would go on to study science. But in high school she met the fateful jerk who did nothing but humiliate her with troubling, underhanded behavior. Still, nothing seemed to be able to dampen her affection for her boyfriend, and eventually she followed him on to university where she achieved such distinction that she was offered a grant for graduate study abroad, which she had no choice but to accept, because at that point the boy had finally put an end to their relationship, and her only desire was to flee the country. And now Sigga Daðadóttir makes hay from this great education with endless high-paid work opportunities and a sweet husband educated in the same field. But she rarely speaks about her job and the place she is trapped because to do so would bring back to mind the humiliation of high school and her loss of self-respect.

  Sigga reminds me of our planned trip to her parents’ cabin before she walks herself to the door. I sit a while longer on the balcony with my notebook. At the top of the first page I have written: Meeting with Diana D. May 30 at 14:00. Notes about the Demolitionist. Why had I not yet canceled? Was I looking for the perfect excuse so that it would not be possible to be read into the cancellation, or use it against me to indicate that I really did need help? I close the book, hold it up to my face and run the tip of my nose along the leather. Then I see the woman. I first noticed her the other day. She’d had her back to me and was patching something in the house. Now she’s out in the spring air, straw hat on her head, wearing loose clothes and gardening gloves. She rummages in the flower beds, her face hidden under the hat, but when she stands up, I see she’s an old, thin woman. Almost emaciated.

  The south wind moves the clouds from the sun. I lean back in my chair, eyes closed behind dark sunglasses, feet on the balcony rail. When the heat is about to seal itself around me the clouds come floating back. I jerk my feet toward myself and am about to head inside when I see the gardening woman standing up close to the limestone wall separating our two gardens. She looks right at me, but I barely get to notice her face, because I instinctively look down into my lap and go momentarily stock still. Since I feel I cannot hold the position anymore, though I also can’t look up, I reach for my notebook. I pretend to write. Then I start to write. To write off Diana. A quick reflection in the form of questions that I end up responding to with another reflection. A reflection about the Demolitionist. Then I pretend to read over my words just before I get up and head inside.

  I want to call Sigga and ask her where she heard the story about the attic dolls. I know she will pick up the phone as she stands in her suit-skirt amid a swarm of guys inside the colossal plant, saying, “Excuse me a moment, I have to take this.” But I don’t call, because my phone rings instead; it’s Hans, letting me know he will be late, so I ask him if he knows anything about the woman in the house behind us, though I know he does not. I put the notebook on the coffee table and throw myself down on the couch. I lie there with eyes wide open, fearful of seeing what I almost just saw, and would see if I close them. I look at the door behind the tapestry until my eyes grow heavy. And then she appears. The gardening woman. Standing beside the tapestry, arrow-straight and resting her pitchfork on the floor. She looks straight ahead.

  And it’s Bonný who breaks the silence, raising the question of whether this all has anything to do with the professor

  I had insisted on being unable to attend the cabin getaway but was having second thoughts. And in my head, there’s a memory, an image of a grassy patch by a little hollow. Of a teak sofa with a moss-green woolen cover, facing a table of the same wood with storage for magazines under the leaf; the two of us sitting there. Eleven years old. Short-haired, wearing tight turtleneck shirts and striped toe-socks. We let ourselves sink down into the thin, loose cushion. It’s hard underneath and unstable but we don’t think about this with our faces behind the Weekly News. I read about the mysterious experiences of some Icelanders during this era of space travel, while Sigga reads about going to the moon. Why send a man to the moon without being sure he can return? Then she stands up, puts the magazine on the table, where it falls open to the French president and the great power he seems to have over his surroundings, and says she wants to go outside. But I’m too absorbed in the story of Aron Guðbrandsson, the Stock Exchange Director, concerning a mysterious incident that took place in his office in the center of Reykjavík in the mid-1960s. I’m finishing Aron’s story when Sigga’s father, Daði, gets out of the bathroom, for sure having just peed a little bit on the peach-colored, downy-soft and fluffy contour mat, having dried his strong, coarse hands on a mint-green hand towel and tucking it, according to the custom of the house, in the flowery copper ring so that the embroidered water lily and the lace edge face out. Tall and robust, he carefully closes the door and walks toward me. For some reason, I flip further on in the magazine, past the mysterious experience of the speculator, and once Daði is standing by the sofa where I’m sitting, magazine in hand, he looks down at me, claps me on the back, and laughs at the comic strip: “Mr. Jiggs.” Then he’s out on the terrace looking down at the water. I reach toward and rifle about in the pile of magazines, which seem at first glance to be somewhat older than the cabin itself. On the cover of one is a sketch of a young girl with a notebook in front of her. The girl re
sts her cheek in her hand and gazes off thoughtfully on December 15, 1938. I look at an article about a Spanish painter who despises his fans; I grab another issue and am about to start reading a story called “The Luncheon” when I hear my name called from the terrace. It’s Daði, smiling there outside and pointing toward the lake to indicate that I should come out and join them on a trip down there.

  I do not get up right away, but look at him from the living room, as he first takes off his delicate slippers then puts on black rubber boots. I’m thinking about where this man came from and how he became the way he is. How is he so gentle and tender, having been raised by a single father in a remote region? About how my own father is also such a good man. So warm and just and almost unbearably tolerant for having grown up in a cramped, damp place with seven siblings and two apathetic parents in Reykjavík in the middle of last century.

  No, I did not ask about any of this back then. I’m asking myself now, lying in bed in my new home in Reykjavík with Hans’s breath in my ears, and later I ask: Where are all those old Weekly Newses now? Were they thrown in the trash at the end of the century, or are they at the bottom of some new storage compartment, hidden under a beech table-leaf that closes up and which has replaced the old teak table? Are they lying there under some new glossies? Under the gleaming but depressing pictures Bjarnfríður Una starts to rummage through with one of her large paws—the other holding a beer can—the day all the women except me arrive at the cabin, having hardly finished taking stuff out of their cars. Bjarnfríður Una sits down in a brown wicker chair, sets the can down on the pulled-out table leaf, and fishes out from the storage section a recent magazine that includes, among other things, twenty photographs of a British television star and her lesser-known lover in various places within their cheerless, tidy home; Queen Elizabeth in a red coat and a hat of the same color, then an ash-gray coat with blue hat, a salmon pink coat with olive-green hat, a dark purple coat with golden-brown hat, a magenta-red coat with white hat, a siren-pink coat with purple-colored feathers on her head, a pale yellow coat with scarlet red hat, a plum-colored dress with a fuchsia pillbox on her head, a coral hat and an indigo blue dress, a lime coat with a hat completely in style, and bending her head and looking down at the earth.