The poetic ear
The corrugated-iron roof glistens in the silvery frost and the kitten-laden cat has difficulties walking. She no longer dares to jump down onto the neighbours’ garage roof, so I escort her out in the mornings when I go to work. She follows me a long way, but then turns around. When I come home in the afternoon, she’s waiting for me by the door. I boil fish and potatoes in the evening for the three of us: the cat, the poet and me. It doesn’t take long. I drink a glass of milk with the fish. Occasionally I make rice pudding and we eat it with cinnamon sugar.
The poet says he’s thinking of quitting at the library and getting a job as a night porter.
“I’ve no time to write with my library job,” he says. “It’s also a question of finding the right environment for inspiration,” he adds.
He says they’re looking for a night porter to share shifts with Áki Hvanngil at Hotel Skjaldbreidur. Áki has a poetry book in the works and says he has his best ideas at night.
“One can’t create surrounded by constant distractions.”
“How about in the mornings before you go to the library?”
“Mornings aren’t my time, Hekla.”
When the poet is asleep, I get out of bed, turn on the desk lamp and pick up the book.
Then his eyes are suddenly open. At first he lies there dead still, watching me, but then sits up. He wants to know what I’m reading. I hand him the book and he examines the cover, turns a few pages for good measure and reads the title.
He looks at me.
“Is this one of the books from the queer?”
He seems sullen.
“Some of the things you read, Hekla, are offensive to the poetic ear,” he says before lying down again and turning towards the wall.
I continue reading about the second sex:
It is through gainful employment that the woman has traversed most of the distance that separated her from the male; and nothing else can guarantee her liberty in practice.
I think to myself: I have both, but I earn so little that I will never be able to save enough for a ticket abroad.
Missing you
The postman stands in the slushy snow in the skimmedmilky grey light and hands me a postcard. “Hekla Gottskálksdóttir,” he reads, and I know he wants to know who is sending me a card with a photograph of red tulips and missing me. Another postcard arrives two weeks later with a picture of Frederick IX of Denmark in full attire.
Found a job and a place to live.
“I see you’ve received yet another card from the queer,” says the poet.
Next I get a letter in a sealed envelope with a return address.
In it he writes that at first he rented a room in a B&B, but now he just rents a room.
Then he says:
I’ve met a man, Hekla.
Books then start arriving, one book in every parcel.
I pick them up at the post office.
In the weeks that follow, I get Last Tales by Karen Blixen (a postcard my friend slipped into the book tells me she also used the penname of Isak Dinesen), Childhood Street by Tove Ditlevsen and Light by Inger Christensen.
I round up words
Then one night I get up to write. I sit up, the hot body in the bed turns over and wraps the eiderdown around himself. His breathing is deep and regular. The cat sleeps in the recess under the window. The alarm clock reads five and Dad will be on his way to the shed to feed the sheep.
The skylight has misted up in the night, a white patina of snow has formed on the windowsill. I drape the poet’s sweater over me, move into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe it up. A trail of sleet streams down the glass, I trace it with my finger. Apart from the squawk of seagulls, a desolate stillness reigns over Skólavördustígur.
I fetch the typewriter from under the bed, open the door into the kitchen, place the typewriter on the table and feed a sheet into it.
I’m holding the baton.
I can light a star in the black vault.
I can also turn it off.
The world is my invention.
An hour later the poet is standing at the kitchen door in his pyjama bottoms.
The cat follows at his heels.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “Are you writing? I woke up and you’d disappeared. I searched for you, but the earth had swallowed you up,” he continues as if he were way-worn after travelling down a long road and not just from the other side of the partition, as if he’d climbed a heath in search of a lost sheep who hadn’t returned from the mountain and finally found her under the lee of an eroded bank where she was least expected to be found. Unless he had been searching for me in a dream?
The poet scrutinizes the pages on the table.
“Are you writing a poem?”
I look at him.
“Just a few sentences. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“More than that it seems to me. That’s a whole load of pages.”
The cat stands by the empty saucer on the floor so I stand up, get the milk carton from the fridge and pour some into the bowl.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were writing as well?”
“I was waiting for the opportunity to tell you.”
“Have you been published?”
I hesitate.
“Yes, a few poems.”
“A few poems?”
He seems confused and anxious.
“Four poems, to be precise, and two short stories.”
He pulls out a kitchen stool and sits on it.
“A poem of mine was lying on the editor of Thjódviljinn’s desk for three months and you’ve had four poems and two short stories published. Where were they published
