What never happened
I sit at the table and I think he is still lying in bed, but suddenly he’s standing at my shoulder and watching me write. I turn around.
“What do you look forward to?” he asks.
“I look forward to finishing the book I’m writing.”
“And then?”
“To starting a new book.”
“And then?”
“To writing another book.”
“And when you finish that?”
I hesitate.
“I don’t know.
“And you?”
He walks to the window and turns his back to me.
“Make us lovers in the story, Hekla. Make what isn’t going to happen happen. Let the words become flesh. Make me a father. So that I leave something behind.”
“The world won’t always be like this,” I say.
“The liberation of queers is about as likely as men walking on the moon, Hekla.”
I pull the last page out of the typewriter and place it on the pile, face down. It’s page 238. Then I stand up from the table and walk over to him. He looks at me.
“Even if the world can’t accommodate a queer, Hekla, it can at least find room for a female writer.”
“Let’s go to sleep,” I say. “You’ll feel differently tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is seven minutes away,” he says.
Dear Hekla,
We have finally moved to Sogamýri. The neighbourhood is full of half-finished houses with many children inside. We live in the only room that has been completed and I cook on one hotplate in the laundry room. The bathroom, however, has just been covered with yellow tiles. Lýdur did the tiling but I got to choose the colour. We still haven’t got the inside doors and there’s plastic instead of glass in the living-room windows. Beside us are the open foundations of a building full of yellow water. I’m so scared of Thorgerdur falling into them and I don’t let her out of my sight. At the end of the month, I’ll be getting a cooker and sink in the kitchen. We’re going to lay a lawn next summer and I dream of planting a bush on one side of it—preferably redcurrant—and have a pretty flower bed. I want poppies most of all.
Your friend,
ÍSEY
The body of the earth
A bizarre whine resounds, not unlike the howling of an animal or the wailing of wind pressing against a loose windowpane in the heart of winter, and, just as swiftly, the floor of the 400-year-old guest house is jolted and there’s a rumble, as if a throng of forty horses had suddenly been unleashed from a bare patch of land and started to gallop. The earth trembles under the foundations, everything is in motion. The wardrobe shifts and I see it fall flat over the bed, the garden rails collapse, the windows shake, a fissure has opened in the earth. There is a cracking sound, like the wall has fractured.
I lie on the grass chewing straw when Mum comes running out. When we go back inside after the earthquake, the kitchen cupboards are open and two Bing & Grøndahl porcelain cups with white birds and gilded rims lie broken on the floor.
I grab the typewriter and manuscript and rush outside.
Hekla dear,
It’s been an inclement winter. A heavy snowstorm has now broken out from the east with a fierce spell of frost. Your brother met a girl at a Thorrablót feast but it was a short-lived relationship because he got jilted. It’s a long way to the end of wintertide. Surtsey is still erupting.
YOUR FATHER
Dear Hekla,
Thank you for the manuscript. I read it in one session and shut myself off (I had it in the taxi so I could dive into it between fares). I was surprised by your request to use my name on the cover of the book. Nevertheless, I fully understand that you want the book to be published. At first I thought it was preposterous for me to appropriate your work, but after careful consideration and consulting my girlfriend Sædís about it, I am willing to accept your request. The book shall therefore be mine.
STARKADUR PJETURSSON
* This is Hekla. My very best friend. Hekla, this is Casper. [Translator’s note]
* It’s so delightful. [Translator’s note]
NOTES ON QUOTATIONS
There are loose translations from Nietzsche on page 7 and page 191. Loose translations of poems by Hulda are quoted on page 23, Grímur Thomsen on page 122, Steingrímur Thorsteinsson and Jónas Hallgrímsson on page 160, Karítas Thorsteinsdóttir on page 184, and Stephan G. Stephansson on page 209.
The headings on pages 15, 242 and 245 are references to the Song of Songs in the Bible. The heading on page 102 is an indirect reference to Tomas Tranströmer. The heading on page 120 is a reference to André Malraux and the second heading on page 201 to Shakespeare. The headings on the following pages reference lines of poetry by the following authors: on page 143 to Stein Steinarr, page 193 to Abelmajid Benejelloun, the first heading on page 205 to Mhamed Lakira, the second heading on the same page to Haldór Laxness, and page 229 to Hulda.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS
Living at home with her baby, Ísey wonders ‘“What would happen if I strolled into the cloud of smoke [in the poet’s café] with Thorgerdur in my arms and ordered a cup of coffee? Or walked into an abstract art exhibition in Bogasalur with the pram?”’ What do you think would happen if she did? Do you think mothers are excluded from literary and artistic culture?
Hekla is pestered by one of her customers at the hotel to participate in a beauty contest to become the next Miss Iceland, a contest that she learns is something of a scam. Do you feel that the novel subverts the idea of a “Miss Iceland”?
Towards the beginning of the novel, Ísey reads Hekla’s coffee cup and declares ‘“There are two men in the cup… You love one and sleep with the other.”’ The end of the novel finds Hekla married to Jón John, yet the arrangement doesn’t seem to make either of them happy. What kind of roles
