“In magazines: Mál og menning, Morgunbladid’s literary supplement and Birtingur.”
I hesitate.
“And two poems in the Tíminn newspaper,” I add after some thought.
“Here I am struggling to get published and my girlfriend—Miss Northern Lights as the queer calls you—has been published in all of the country’s top newspapers and magazines.”
“That’s a bit of an overstatement,” I say. “Besides, it was under a pseudonym. I used a male name.”
He looks me sternly in the eye.
“What pseudonym, may I ask?”
I hesitate.
“Sigtryggur frá Saurum.”
He leaps to his feet.
“Are you Sigtryggur frá Saurum? We thought he was one of us. We knew it was a pseudonym, but didn’t know which one of us it was.”
“And one poem under the name of Stella Maris.”
“We thought Stella Maris was Ægir, the Glacier Poet. He seemed so smug when we mentioned the short story in Morgunbladid and behaved as if he knew more than he was letting on, just stuffed his pipe and didn’t say a word. Still, it was different from the lines he had read to us.”
“The short story in Morgunbladid was actually a juvenile piece, I was eighteen when I wrote that. I write differently now.”
The poet sits on the kitchen stool again and buries his face in his hands.
“Are you writing longer pieces?” he asks in a low voice. “I mean something longer than short stories?”
“I wanted to tell you I was writing, but wanted to finish my novel first. I knew you would have wanted to read it, but then I wouldn’t have wanted to finish it.”
He looks at me in disbelief.
“Are you writing a novel?”
“Yes.”
“A whole book?”
“Yes.”
“How long?” I hesitate.
“Longer than two hundred pages?” he asks.
“About three hundred pages.”
Our neighbour, the mechanic, has switched on his radio and turns up the volume so as not to miss the weather forecast. I have to get dressed and go to work.
“Is this your first novel?”
“I’ve written two other manuscripts. One of them is actually with a publisher. I’m waiting for an answer.”
The poet is lost for words.
“My girlfriend is an author and I’m not.”
He opens the fridge, takes out the milk and pours himself a glass.
The cat meows, the saucer is empty.
“And you’ve hidden this from me. I never suspected a thing. I feel like I’ve had to repeat an entire year at school. You’ve surpassed me. You’re the glacier that sparkles, I’m just a molehill. You’re dangerous, I’m innocuous.”
My explanations are futile. The poet has been thrown off-kilter.
“Does the queer know this? That you write?”
“Yes.”
He downs the glass of milk.
“And Ísey?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone but me knows my girlfriend is a novelist.”
He stares at his hands.
“Did you come to Reykjavík to be an author?”
“No, to work.”
He stands up.
“I didn’t realize you wanted to be one of us, Hekla.”
I walk over to him, put my arms around him and say:
“Let’s go lie down.”
And I think: let’s get into bed and spread over us the quilt full of raven’s feathers, full of black quills.
My manuscript
The poet stands at the desk, holding a sheet in his hand.
Mozart’s Requiem is playing on the record player.
His lips are moving.
He’s reading my manuscript.
I put down the shirts I picked up at the A. Smith laundry on the way home from work, walk over to the poet and take the page away from him.
“I’ve read your manuscript.”
“It’s not ready. I asked you not to read it.”
The glass ashtray is crammed with butts.
I open the window.
“Didn’t you go to work?” I ask.
“No, I didn’t feel well. I sent them a message to say I was sick.”
He sits on the bed and I sit beside him.
“If things were as they should be, I would come home for lunch, Hekla.”
He looks at me.
“Would you put some potatoes on to boil like other women?”
I say nothing.
He takes the record off the turntable and turns on the radio. The ads are on.
Second-hand fridge for sale.
He turns off the radio.
“No, you don’t want to be an ordinary woman, Hekla.”
He stands up and props one arm up against the wall, his head drooping over his chest. After three weeks of fickle stormy weather, it has started to thaw and rain pounds the corrugated-iron.
“No one is asking you to write. Why do you have to do everything like me?”
I watch him climbing into his trousers and sweater.
“Are you going out? Aren’t you sick?”
The poet doesn’t answer but switches topic.
He wants to know if that vulgar guy at Hotel Borg has been pestering me lately.
“Yes, he was hitting on me today as it happens.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I was engaged or not.”
“And what did you answer?”
“I told him the truth. That I wasn’t engaged. Because I’m not.”
“How old is he?”
“A middle-aged man. Twice my age. Family man.”
“They’re the worst. I don’t want to see you put on display on a stage for entertainment. It’s a dreadful event: to sell women. Capitalism in its worst form. You would never see a Miss Soviet Union beauty contest? Miss Romania?
Miss Cuba?”
He looks at me.
“I’m not going to participate. I’ve told them so many times. The man is stalking me.”
He swivels on his heels and puts on his parka.
He’s gone out to meet the poets.
A single sentence is more important than my body
It’s 3 a.m. by the time the poet returns home, brandishing a bottle of schnapps in a paper bag.
Starkadur, the son of Hveragerdi, is drunk.
He swings an arm, falls over a chair and drags it with difficulty to the desk where he sits on it and opens a notebook. It takes him a very long time to get the cap off his fountain pen.
“I’m just a shell,” I hear him say.
I get out of bed and walk over to him.
When he’s finished writing I’m just a shell on the page, he caps his pen again with some effort and drinks from his bottle.
“Do you love him?”
“Who?”
“The queer? Does he make passes at you? Does he want to sleep with me as well?”
“Don’t talk like that about him. Besides, he’s gone.”
He tries to clamber out of his trousers,
