“You’ve got to have a bike,” he says. “It’s actually second-hand. But I bought a new bell for it,” he adds, ringing it.
I tell him I’m going to look for a job.
“I want to work too,” I say.
I tell myself I could maybe get a job at the Hotel d’Angleterre spreading rye bread with plaice and remoulade paste or peeling shrimp. Or polishing silver. In any case, somewhere behind the scenes where no one would notice me. Where I would be left in peace.
Once I’ve finished the book.
Hekla dear,
I have good news to share. I’ve had another girl. Katla. The birth went better than last time. I spent a week in the maternity ward. My sister-in-law took care of Thorgerdur while I was there. It was the best time of my life. I was served meals in bed, buttermilk with brown sugar and raisins in the morning. Lýdur didn’t show his disappointment even though it was another girl. He intends to have more anyway. They’re just the first two, he says. I’ll die if I have more children. Now I’m really worried that the dream I had—one where I was alone out on a heath and found a plover’s nest with five eggs in it—means that I will have five children. Thorgerdur is really good to her sister. She’s the big sister now and hands me the dummy when her little sister spits it out. The midwife came to the flat to weigh Katla yesterday. My mother-in-law says she’s the spitting image of Lýdur. She said the same about Thorgerdur (I found that offensive). The sisters are nothing like each other. Lýdur has quit his road work job and started working as a welder in town. I take Katla out of the room at night, so that he can sleep because I don’t want him to collapse from exhaustion into the foundations of a building. We’ve made a sandpit in the corner of the garden. With a lid to prevent the cats from pissing in it. Thorgerdur and I dig together and she sprinkles the sand in the air over the two of us: it rains ash and darkens. I think it’s beautiful. Reminds me of you. An eruption.
D.J. Johnsson meanders up the stairs
to me and the stars
D.J. Johnsson works most nights and it is often late in the morning when he staggers up the stairs to me and crawls under the covers. There is therefore no point in making the bed because as soon as I get up my friend comes home.
Sometimes D.J. doesn’t work his usual night shift and is home several evenings in a row.
“The body needs some rest too,” he says then.
I sit by him on the edge of the bed. He makes room for me and I lean against him.
“I thought it would be different here. I thought it was only at home that queers got married to be left in peace, but most of the guys I meet here have wives and children. It’s difficult for queers to age. People ask them how come they’re not married. Some give up and get married and have sex with their wives once a week with their eyes closed and listen to Brenda Lee singing ‘My Baby Likes Western Guys’.”
He stands up.
“Maybe I’ll give up and get married some day, Hekla. But I don’t want to have to lie to my wife.”
My dearest Ísey,
I’ve started a new novel. After the manuscript that I sent to the publisher four weeks ago was lost at sea, I’ve followed Jón John’s advice and now use carbon paper to make a copy, although it’s more expensive (twice as much paper). I also have to hit the keys harder. Jón John said: Someone has stolen your story, Hekla. He’s been to two painting exhibitions with me, one in Charlottenborg and another at the Kunstforeningen Art Society and also to a ballet at the Royal Danish Theatre.
Most memorable of all, though, was the concert we went to at K.B. Hallen last week with the Beatles from Liverpool. They played “I saw her standing there” and “I want to hold your hand” and other songs, but it was difficult to hear them properly because of the screams and hysteria from the Danish girls in the hall.
Job interview
I’m ushered into an office with leather upholstered furniture. The man tugs at the knees of his crisply pressed trousers as he sits opposite me. My application letter is on the table.
“It says here you want to work behind the scenes.”
“Yes, very much so.”
“It’s unusual to specify the wish to remain invisible.”
“You call it en usynlige nærværelse in Danish.”
He waves the application letter and scrutinizes me.
“There are no mistakes. Flawless literary language. But you use words that are not very common in spoken Danish. Where did you learn Danish, if I may ask?”
“We still had a Danish king when I was born,” I say, “and a section of our book cabinet back home was in Danish.”
The man leans back in his chair and clasps his hands.
My mind travels back to the book cabinet at home. I could have told him it contained the Gyldendals Store Danske Encyclopædi with its 70,000 entries, weighing about four kilos, the cookery books from when Granny was at homemaking school in Jutland, also half a shelf about the history of Denmark, The History of the Borg Family by Gunnar Gunnarsson in Danish and Repetition by Søren Kierkegaard. We also had various Danish-Icelandic dictionaries, the oldest from the nineteenth century, a dictionary that contains most of the rare, exotic and poorly understood words to be found in Danish books, by Gunnlaugur Oddsson. I myself had an Icelandic-Danish dictionary by Sigfús Blöndal. It was rumoured that his wife Dr Björg C. Thorláksson had worked on it for twenty years without getting any credit. I read it back to back, starting on the first page and ending on the last. I actually read all the books we had at home
