The other picture is a confirmation photo. My lips are slightly parted and I’m staring at the photographer in bewilderment, as if a stranger had woken me up, as if I had yet to feel my way in the world that I’d been born into. It was a world made of teak with floral wallpaper in every room; apart from that it was all in black and white, like the TV.
I make one final attempt:
“I don’t know who I am. I’m nothing and I own nothing.”
“Your father didn’t live through the Iranian war, nor the Iraqi war, nor Afghanistan, nor Ukraine, nor Syria … nor the Kárahnjúkar power plant protests, nor the roadwork that doubled the width of the Miklabraut highway …”
She stretches across the bedside table and pulls out some red lipstick.
Shortly after that I hear her launch into the Nordic king sagas:
“… Haakon Athelstan, Harald Bluetooth, Sweyn Fork-beard, Cnut the Great, Harald Fairhair, Eric Bloodaxe, Olaf Tryggvason …” she rattles off.
She is getting agitated and tells me she’s busy.
“I’m a bit busy, Pumpkin dear.”
The news is about to start and she half rises to turn on the radio and tackle the war of the day in the news summary, after which she will lie down with the death notices and funeral announcements in her ear.
When I leave, I call the help line to let them know there is a goose with a broken wing at the old folk’s home.
“A male bird,” I say. “Alone. With no mate.”
And then I try to remember, didn’t Hemingway shoot himself with his favourite rifle?
… the scepticism of manliness, related to the genius for war and conquest
The guy at the tattoo parlour had told me that my skin would be sore for a few days and that I could expect it to redden, or possibly even to itch and burst into a rash. If the skin started to swell and I developed a fever, I might need to take antibiotics or, in the worst-case scenario, go to an emergency room. I wouldn’t be surprised if I were already experiencing the first symptoms.
Svanur is polishing the Opel when I get back from Mom’s, the caravan sits ready in the driveway. He is wearing sandals and an orange fleece jacket, emblazoned with the logo of the tire company he briefly worked for a few years ago. We met when he was working at Steel Legs Ltd., and it was actually Svanur who told me about the vacant attic apartment on this street, opposite his and Aurora’s place. Apart from that, we’re not close. At the moment he’s convalescing at home, recovering from a slipped disc operation. Two “stay-at-home men” is what he calls us.
He has set up two folding chairs on the sidewalk, as if he were expecting a guest, and beckons me over.
I get the feeling that my neighbour has been watching me; when I came out this morning he was lingering near the trash cans with his dog and watching my front door.
Over the past few days his visits have also multiplied; he needed to borrow a wrench of a specific size and then returned it and asked me to help him lift the new fridge he just bought for the caravan. First and foremost, though, he wants to chat about what occupies his entire brain: motorised vehicles and the status of women in the world, two fields of interest that he tries to combine as much as possible. He drags over one of the folding chairs and signals me to sit. I have no alternative but to chat with my neighbour.
“People don’t take good enough care of their cars” is the first thing he says to me. “We live on an island that’s blasted by the sea and rusts the chassis. It’s not enough to spray it once a year and change the oil; you’ve also got to polish it regularly. Three coats of polish and rubs in between. It’s just garbage the stuff they use in those car washes.”
He leans on the other folding chair.
“Some people drive on punctured tires for years and end up having to change the whole wheel.”
Svanur doesn’t do conversations, but instead delivers monologues without looking at me, gazing somehow beyond me, as if the person he were really talking to were somehow beside or above me.
“When you think about how women are treated in the world, it makes you ashamed to be a man,” he continues.
He straddles the chair and leans forward, pressing his elbows against his knees.
It transpires that Svanur has subscribed to some foreign TV channels and last night he watched a documentary about the circumcision of women and a current affairs programme about women and war.
“You’ve got a daughter …”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that women do 90 percent of all the work on earth, but only own 1 percent of its assets? And what do men do in the meantime?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer and continues:
“They dawdle, get drunk, and wage war.”
He holds his big blacksmith’s hands up to his face, his fingers greased with oil.
“Do you know how many women are raped every hour?”
“In the world, you mean?”
“In the world, yes.”
“No.”
“Seventeen thousand five hundred.”
We both fall silent.
Then he continues.
“And do you know how many women will die giving birth tomorrow, Tuesday, May the sixth?”
“No.”
“About two thousand.”
He draws a deep breath.
“And as if it weren’t enough for them to die giving birth, they have to endure forced marriages.”
He removes his glasses, which are as thick as the bottom of a bottle and haven’t been polished for ages. He says that he’s near-sighted and astigmatic and that, if he takes
