New Wikipedia page

There is now a Wikipedia page on the contemporary Icelandic author Ólafur Gunnarsson. Its earlier absence always puzzled me, and now I have managed to get the page up, though it may still be edited.

The Thaw

Foreword Reviews have published a review of Ólafur Gunnarsson's latest collection of short stories. The stories are in English, translated by the author:

For all its thought-provoking content, the translation is uneven: “The nurse was tending to the child tenderly,” could have been rendered using a verb and an adjective that do not share the same root, for example. Likewise, it would be unlikely that a seven-year-old character would refer to his class art display as an “exhibition.” However, at other times, the translation fits with the story and showcases the author’s way with words, as in this description of an airplane accident: “And like a black goose that had been shot, the enormous plane crash-landed on the gravel airfield.” Or this ironic phrase that expresses a role reversal of a father and his terminally ill daughter: “[She] sat there in her wheelchair like a solemn old woman expressing her approval of her well-behaved grandson.”

Overall, in this elegant collection, Gunnarsson’s stories succeed.

A review and a story

There's a review of Tarkovsky's Horses and Other Poems in Evergreen Review, and Ólafur Gunnarsson has a new short story in Mayday Magazine.

A War Story - 3

III


It was evening and the mother and the daughter were home, but the boy was in bed. He had been in bed ever since his return from the exhibition, facing the wall.

“How is he?” The grandfather asked in a low voice. He was getting ready to go to work.

As his wife was about to reply, the phone rang. She cupped the receiver with her hand and said to her husband with both respect and a touch of alarm in her voice, “it's the city doctor.”

The man took the phone. The doctor needed a taxi for the whole of the evening and the entire night. His regular driver had been taken ill. The man took a pen and wrote down the doctor's address. “You haven´t seen my glasses?” the old man asked his wife as he took the piece of paper, folded it and put it in his pocket.

“No,” said his wife, “and we gave the whole apartment a thorough cleaning yesterday.”

On his way to the doctor two enormous aircraft came flying in low over the city to land. They were B-17s. He was able to identify them from an illustrated article he had read in the newspaper. It was obvious that some sort of airlift was under way. It was getting dusk.

He knew the doctor slightly, had driven him on former occasions. The doctor was a rather short-tempered man. Influenza was ravaging Reykjavík. They drove from house to house. “Will you come with me into the next one and phone the hospital and write down the patients’ addresses?” the doctor asked. “It´s all I can manage to deal with these kids and those crazy grandmothers. The grandmothers are the worst, they make more trouble than the children do,” he added stroking his large bald head.

The man had thought of mentioning his grandson's strange malady, but now thought better of it.

“I´m sorry,” he said. “I can't see well enough to write. I lost my glasses last week and can´t find them anywhere.”

The doctor muttered something and went into a house. Yet another B-17 came sailing over the town.

It was well after midnight until the doctor got a break from his house visits. The driver mentioned the big aircraft to the doctor, who was suddenly filled with an urge to see them. They drove towards the airport.

A few MPs were guarding the great planes that were larger still in the darkness. Under their wings the soldiers looked tiny.

One of the MPs, holding a gun, came over to the car. The doctor rolled down his window. He had been educated in America and explained their business. He and the soldier had a short pleasant conversation. The doctor had been in Idaho and the soldier happened to come from the same state.

Suddenly the soldier pointed to the sky. Yet another flying fortress was coming in. They could see the warbird growing bigger all the time, and the lights on the wing tips blinking.

Then without warning the soldier ran away from the car. It was obvious that something was very wrong. The plane was coming in over the city lake at much too low an altitude. “My God, it's going to crash-land!” the doctor said.

And like a black goose that had been shot down, the enormous plane crash-landed on the gravel airfield. Soldiers were running towards it. The doctor and the driver were out of the car. The soldier who had been talking to the doctor was beckoning to them. The doctor returned to the car to get his bag and then ran towards the soldier. The driver followed. The broken plane seemed to hiss with anger at its own destruction. Then suddenly fire broke out in the cockpit. The driver could see the trapped crew. It was obvious from the men’s terror that they had no chance of getting out. The fire grew more intense with each swiftly passing second. Then, in less than an instant, a fireball engulfed the B-17. Only the tip of the cockpit protruded from the flames.

“Those men are trapped,” the driver said out loud. “Those men are trapped!” he repeated.

They heard strange crackling sounds, like someone letting off fireworks. “My God!” the doctor exclaimed, “they’re shooting the crew.”

On the edge of the light cast over the airfield by the fire the driver watched as a group of riflemen, resembling an execution squad, fired at the cockpit which was now completely swallowed by the flames. He didn't know if the sound they could hear was the shots or the windows cracking from the heat. An officer was pointing to the driver and the doctor and shouting something in an angry voice.

“Let´s get the hell out of here now,” the doctor said and both men ran to the car. When they drove away the driver saw in the mirror that they were not being followed. Nothing was visible of the plane now but flames. They met two cars heading towards the airfield, obviously out of curiosity. A few men were also running in that direction. “They’ll be turned away,” the doctor said.

“We were lucky they didn´t shoot us,” the driver said.

“Well, they know who we are. Who I am. I won’t be surprised if we’re called in tomorrow by the police for an investigation of some sorts. They’ll want to keep the shooting from getting into the papers.”

"They couldn’t have done anything else,” the driver said.

The doctor nodded. “Just take me home. I have to rest a bit. Then I'll phone the hospital and go in my own car in the morning and attend to any patients who may phone during the night. You go home now and have yourself a rest, old pal.” He patted the driver on the knee in a brotherly fashion. “This is quite enough for one night.”

They parted, and the man drove home. The shock of seeing the men being shot in this way to save them suffering had not yet sunk in.

He parked his car and opened the door of the apartment block where he lived. He entered his apartment, took off his clothes in the living room, and looked up into the dark sky where the boy had seen the angel or whatever it was, but there was nothing to see except the moon which stood out large and cold-looking. On the sofa the boy was peacefully asleep in his usual way, with his face turned away from the wall.

The man opened the door to his bedroom, slipped under the sheets and lay there in perfect stillness. He decided not to wake his wife. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get to sleep. Grey light began to show in the window. It would soon be daybreak. He must have slept. He woke up. He had had a strange dream, or was it a vision? He had seen his glasses. They lay by a fence in front of a house by the city lake and they were covered by grass. A few days earlier he had stood there before picking up a resident who had ordered a taxi. “Damn it,” he said. He tried to lie still but knew he would not be able to go back to sleep without making sure that the vision was true. He slipped out of bed.

“Are you going somewhere?” his wife said in a sleepy voice.

“Yes,” the man said. “I have to check something.”

“Will you be long?”

“No, I´ll be home in time for coffee.”

He quickly put on his clothes, went outside and started his car. He drove downtown. There was the fence he had seen in his dream. And the tree at the street corner. He stopped the car and got out. He moved the grass near the fence pole with his shoe. There were his glasses. He picked them up and put them on. They were definitely his.

When he got home, his coffee was ready. As his wife poured him some coffee she said: “Oh yes, the boy´s teacher phoned last night. He was rather upset. He said he just wanted to let us know why he hadn’t included our grandson’s work in the school exhibition. He said that the drawing had been totally unacceptable by any standards, so he'd destroyed it to prevent it causing any more offence. What’s wrong with the lad? What did he do?”

“Probably a fine piece of work,” the man said.


THE END

A War Story - 1
A War Story - 2

A War Story - 2

II


The man woke up at noon. There was stillness in the house. He had been out on the job until the early hours of the morning but nothing much had happened, no drunken soldiers, no desperate girls craving for the company of their army boyfriends who were confined to barracks.

The man lay still for a moment and checked for sounds in the house. There was total stillness. Just the occasional rumbling of an engine when a car drove past. He called out for his wife in the dark tone of command that usually brought her into the room. It was her custom to give him his morning coffee in bed, but there was no reply, she must have gone out on some errand.

Suddenly the door opened and his grandson came in. The boy just stood there staring at him as if he had come across a stranger in his grandfather’s bed. “Yes,” the man said at last.”So what do you want?” The boy had a way of looking at him that sometimes made him shudder.

"Grandmother said you should take me downtown to school,” the boy said.

“She said what?” the man exclaimed. He had never before in his life entered that establishment.

“To see the exhibition,” the boy replied.

"What are you trying to tell me?" the man asked. He assumed at once that there must be some serious misunderstanding.

“Grandmother had to go away,” the boy said. “Her friend was taken ill all of a sudden. You have to take me downtown, for the exhibition. It’s today.”

The man felt himself getting irritated. “What exhibition are you talking about? What’s happening? Where is your mother?”

“The exhibition of the best drawings and paintings by the pupils this year opens today. My drawing is the very best of them all,” the boy said with no obvious pride, as though he took his superiority for granted. Then he looked at his watch. “It opens at one o’clock, he said. “And we mustn’t be late.

His grandfather felt uneasy. He was not used to dealing with things like this. He drove a taxi, and by doing so provided for the family, but all this business of teachers, authority and too much education made him unsure of himself. He only felt at home in his taxi: there he was in total control of his surroundings.

The boy looked at him with a flat expression.

“And where is your mother?” the man asked again.

“She went out last night with her friend and hasn’t come home yet,” the boy said.

The man got out of bed. He felt that he shouldn’t inquire into these matters any further, at least for the present. He got into his trousers and put on the suspenders. He found his slippers with his feet and made his way to the kitchen. He would have to do without coffee this morning. He had no clue as how to go about making himself a cup.

The clock on the wall showed twenty minutes to one and the boy was looking downcast and nervous.

“And did your grandmother say when she’d be back?” the man asked. The boy shook his head and his grandfather gave up all hope of escape. “Well, get dressed then,” he said. “We’d best get this over with.”

He found his shirt, jacket and a tie and put on his shoes. The boy was waiting for him out on the veranda. He looked unusually pale and distracted. “So what are you so uptight about?” his grandfather asked.

“It’s my drawing. I’ve never taken part in an exhibition before, so naturally I'm nervous about showing my work in public for the first time.”

His grandfather suddenly felt an urge to laugh. How strange his grandson was. He was almost like a grownup locked into the body of a child. “Well don’t you worry about it,” he said. “I'm sure the other kids are not as handy with the crayons as you”.

“Oh, they aren't,” the boy said looking at him. His face broke into an enormous smile. “I know I'm by far the best.”

“Now how do you know that?” his grandfather asked, feeling his mood change from amusement to sudden irritation.

“I just do,” the boy said.

When the school came into view the man saw that flags were snapping in the wind high on top of the pools to both sides of the entrance. The stairs to the doorway were broad and wide and reminded him of the entrance to some official building in Germany he had recently seen in a picture in a newspaper. He felt his old sense of discomfort become more intense. Pupils were streaming through the gate with their parents or other relatives, brothers or sisters. The boy and his grandfather walked up the steps.

Slowly they walked along the corridor and then made a tour of all the rooms. The walls were covered with the kind of drawings that children do. There were houses and people and animals, horses and dogs and cats and chickens in drawing after drawing with an eternal sun shining over most of the scenery and the people and the animals and the occasional flower. When they had made the rounds the grandfather said: “Well?”

“Mine isn’t here. They haven’t hung it up.”

“So much for your lady in the sky,” his grandfather remarked. “Never pay any attention to dreams, for the most part they’re nonsense.”

He knew the words were harsh, but he was hoping the whole thing would teach the boy a lesson.

Suddenly the boy looked over to a handsome young man with jet-black hair and square jaws. “That’s my teacher,” he said in a low voice. He tugged at his grandfather's sleeve. “Let’s go and talk to him.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? If they didn’t see fit to exhibit your picture, and they sure didn’t, you had better accept it,” the old man said.

But the boy was insistent. He tore himself free from his grandfather and went up to his teacher. Suddenly he seemed even more firm and more independent than usual. The teacher was talking to an elderly couple, apparently trying to hide the fact that he was a little annoyed at the intrusion, but the boy kept on talking. The grandfather felt it his duty to go closer in case his grandson needed any help.

The teacher looked in his direction and said, “We only hung the pictures we thought were good enough to exhibit.”

“Come on,” the grandfather said. “I’ll treat you to a soda pop on the way home.”

He glanced down at the child. The boy had a stunned expression, as though for the first time in his life he had had a glimpse of reality.

It was a good lesson, his grandfather thought. But he felt annoyed that the child’s drawing had not been considered good enough to be included in the exhibition.

(to be continued)

A War Story - I

A War Story - 1

By Ólafur Gunnarsson


I

If there was anything positive about the whole affair it was mainly the fact that whoever had got his daughter pregnant, it wasn’t one of the soldiers. It was one of the members of the jazz band that now entertained the soldiers downtown. The boy, strange child that he was, had actually been conceived well before the war.

The boy was now seven years old, and he had always been strange. But the day before, when the man was dining with the family, the boy had really surpassed himself and made his grandfather uneasy. The boy had suddenly looked up from his plate and pointed to the window and said, “I saw a lady in the sky last night!”

“A lady?” his mother asked.

“Yes.”

“And was she out in the street?” the grandmother asked.

“No,” said the boy. “She was up above the rooftops. In the sky. She was flying.”

Now the boy’s mother had one of those crazy, explosive fits of laughter that were the hallmark of her temperament. “A lady in the sky! Flying. Now that beats everything!”

“Tell us more about it,” the grandmother said.

The man felt sudden irritation. Anything out of the ordinary made him uneasy, and his grandson was most certainly out of the ordinary.

“Well,” said the boy, ”the lady was very beautiful and she was all dressed in blue and holding a yellow harp and she was looking at me. She stood still in the sky for a long time. Her enormously long gown moved in the wind. It moved softly," he added. "And then I just went back to bed.”

“Oh, she’d just come down from the Almighty to tell you that you’re going to be a great musician like your father,” was the mother’s response. “That´s why she was holding a harp”. She was still laughing, but the laughter now verged on hysteria. “Oh, what a funny boy you are,” she gasped.

“No, I don’t think that’s why it was,” the boy said solemnly. “I don’t like it when you try to make me play an instrument. I like drawing better. I thought you knew that.”

By now the boy’s grandfather had picked up a newspaper, he was trying to read something but could not find his glasses, he patted his breast pocket, but the glasses were not in their usual place there.

“But what were you doing up in the middle of the night?” the grandmother asked. “Did you need to go to the toilet, maybe?” She had infinite love and patience for the boy.

The boy looked at his grandfather. “No, I was just very sorry because I’d got butter on the wallpaper and wanted to see if the mark had gone away.”
“Well, that explains it all,” the grandfather said, greatly relieved.

The day before the grandfather had papered the living room walls. The new paper had strange designs that nevertheless seemed to reveal a regular pattern, and as the boy had been admiring this he had, quite by accident, put a spot on the wall and been scolded for doing so.

“You only woke up because you felt sorry about the spot, and you dreamt it all,” the grandfather said.

“No, no, I didn’t!” the boy shouted suddenly becoming very excited, and there was an edge to his voice, something close to outrage. “There was definitely a lady there.”

“Yes, yes, that's right,” the boy’s mother said. “Let’s not talk about it any more.”

“Are you taking him to school tomorrow?” the grandmother asked.

“No,” the boy’s mother said. “I have business to see to.”

The grandfather abandoned the newspaper, looked at them all, and before he could be drawn in to whatever was in the making said: “I’m off to work.”

“It’s all right, dear,” the grandmother said to the boy. “I’ll take you.”

“Yes,” the boy said nervously. “It's a big day and I don't want to go all by myself.”

The grandfather was out on the veranda now, and the rest of the conversation was lost to him. He looked at his car and somehow felt a sense of relief at returning to the normal world. He was a taxi driver, and was duly proud of his car. It was a 1940 Chevrolet Sedan.

(to be continued)

Note: this is an original edited text, not a translation

The Lumpfish

by Ólafur Gunnarsson


I thought I recognized him when we first ran into one another in Hotel Borg. I didn’t know from where. He was sitting at a table with a glass yawning. That’s Nonni, said my girlfriend Sigga, and introduced us. I didn’t think he was much to get excited about but Bob hadn’t showed up. Nonni asked me to dance. We smooched our way through a tango and I watched the trumpet player over his shoulder. The trumpet player was really nice looking. Nonni invited me up to the bar for a drink and I let him drool all over me the entire evening. Then we went home together and I let him do it to me. They didn’t always get it straightaway in the old days. Even though they were Americans. I often used to send them home crippled. Ha ha ha. Really crippled.

Well, so he called me on the phone and asked me out to a movie and I went along because Bob had given me up and Nonni had such a fast car. Also he kept his shoes shined and he had some manners. We saw a movie with Tyrone Power in. I bet he was a good fuck. I could really have killed myself for not being in town when he came to Iceland. My girlfriend Sigga still has a five krona bill he wrote his name on.

Nonni and I had been going steady for a month when I discovered I was pregnant. I could have murdered myself. But Nonni wanted to marry me and what was I supposed to do? He had just started an import business. All kinds of stuff from Spain. A lot of it was really nice. Mom and Dad were pleased I was going to get married. Dad was always poking his nose in and he used to get real mad if I came home with a fellah. There was just one time when I had to scream out loud and then Dad said to me next morning: you little whore, I heard you last night. Ugh I paid no attention. I mean is it anyone’s business but her own what a girl does with her cunt ? I’ve always been liberal myself, though I all the old traditions.

Then my Halli was born. Nonni said he didn’t look like him. The garbage they keep in their heads. He started to get drunk and by the time he came home he was real crazy. The boring crap they keep in their heads. First Dad and then Nonni with this quarrel. Well, it’s nice to have some peace at last. That’s all I can say.

Then he started moaning dead drunk about how he wanted to give up business. Said he wanted to live in the country. Stupid dumb fool. He wouldn’t have been able to stand it one single day. I really can’t stand people who sit round moaning they want to be something different from what they are. Even in their old age. The country. Him that always had to lie for a week in bed after a drunk and couldn’t eat anything but hash stew. Opened his sweet little mouth while I spooned the warm meat into him. Ugh. And while I’d be spooning it into him he’d always remind me of something but I was never sure what it was. Dad’s hands.

We got rich quick. You have too look out for yourself. I can’t stand these people who’re always trying to be different from everybody else. Decent people shouldn’t pay any attention to that crowd. They’re against everything and no one’s supposed to own anything so they get it all from others and don’t want to work. They’re perfectly able to look after themselves, if you ask me. Why don’t they all just go to Russia. Ha ha ha. Russia.

Well, when we moved into out house I wasn’t too pleased with the kitchen and then I saw such a smart one at my sister Svana´s place that I just had to change it. Nonni complained at first and I thought he’d never give in. And then one time when he came home from a meeting in the middle of the night he hit me in the face. I had to run out into the street half naked. But I was just joking. I let the blood drip all over everything. I knew he’d be miserable as hell the next day and I’d be able to get whatever I wanted.

Anyway he calmed down a lot over the years and completely stopped having those fits except occasionally. His system just couldn’t take the booze any more. But that moaning! That nobody understood him and that other people ought to show him some respect. That Halli didn’t look like him. You never knew what was coming next. These men have to be taken a firm hold of right away. My poor friend Sigga. She married a real bastard, who tormented her and then walked out on her. Left her with five children and married a twenty-year old girl. But then something else happened. The girl tormented him and he was always as timid as a mouse. Men like that really make me sick. Then Sigga got married again but this guy was only a store assistant and it didn’t work out. He’s in a mental hospital now and talks about nothing but bills and promissory noted the girls were telling me the other day. Poor Sigga. I really must go and see her soon.

Nonni was a bit like that too. He was really hard on his staff and of course I won’t deny that a boss has to be boss but he never tried anything on when I was around. Otherwise the business went well and Nonni employed fifteen people. He also joined the freemasons. I sometimes used to go along to the banquets with him, and I always went with him to Hotel Saga when the old boys from the Business School held their anniversary dinner in the spring. The year my Halli graduated Nonni was speaking to the class of twenty-five. Then my Halli walked into the hall. I was so proud. Nonni also gave a speech to the class of thirty-five last spring. All those old guys with their womenfolk, shoveling the food into themselves. I’ve always kept an eye on the inches, but Nonni had gotten fatter than ever and he couldn’t do it to me any more. Once when he took a trip to Germany to buy firecrackers I went to Hotel Saga with my sister Svana and got myself this sweet little boy. He was really fantastic. I thought he’d never have enough. I was lucky that Nonni was at a meeting. Except that by that time he’d lost all interest in anything but eating. But I was doing something creative. I embroidered and sewed bell-ropes. I must have dine six rococo chairs and all my friends say they’ve never seen anything so nice. The stupid whores. They ruined my parquet floor when they came home after the funeral. Oh yes, while I still remember. Those Business School dinners at Hotel Saga. They remind me of something, those old guys. All those folds upon folds of double chins ? Dad’s hands. In spring when I was little. Where was it I used to go with Dad ? I was never sure.

Well, Nonni´s heart started to crack up and I was lucky if I got it twice a year. The same position time. The woman on her back, the man on his front. Or what was it that book said. I can’t remember now. But it was different in the old days.

Four British soldiers had me at the same time. But that’s a secret. I was so drunk. The doctor told Nonni to lose weight but do you thing he could that. Oh no. He just ate and ate and in the last weeks he’d even stopped going to the office My Halli had just started to work in the family business. He’s a nice boy who’s getting to be more and more like his Dad. He got married the other day. They looked so wonderful at their wedding those two. He mentioned his shares but she didn’t want him to cash them and neither did my Halli when it came to the point, and anyway he’s a lot happier now that he’s started working for himself.

So anyway one evening Nonni said he felt so bad that I just had to call the doctor. Helgi, the doctor arrived too late and said next to nothing. It’s really terrible to see Helgi these days. He was a lot livelier in the old days. Maybe there’s a bit of life left in him yet ? Well, Helgi had just gone when Nonni said his chest hurt him real bad and then he just fell back in bed wheezing and blowing. What could I do? I tried to talk to him but he was so blue in the face and he was belching and wheezing. It just so happened that I’d had a fresh plaice for supper and the entrails and the blood reminded me of something while I was cutting the fish. The bright-colored entrails and Dad’s hands. I leaned over him to get a better look. He’d stopped wheezing and blowing and I’d been staring there for ages looking at him when all of a sudden he opened his mouth wide. And then I remembered what it was Nonni had reminded me of all those years. I tried not to thing it but it was absolutely true. He was like one of the lumpfish in Dad’s sink in the old days. Like a lumpfish. A gaping lumpfish.

translated from Icelandic by David McDuff

Joseph Brodsky in Iceland

by Ólafur Gunnarsson

The door stood wide open to the sunshine on the veranda as he came walking up the steps and right into the parlor. He looked around and said, "I can see that there is some literature going on."

It was June 1978 and an English translator had come to Iceland to compile an anthology for which he had chosen one of my stories. We had translated the tale the day before and I was hammering it out on my Remington typewriter.

As often happens to Icelanders and Russians, and the occasional Englishman, we had shared the translator's bottle of duty free Cutty Sark, in one go, a week before, the very evening the translator came to the country. And, as the famous midnight sun had begun to rise on the horizon, without ever setting, in the course of the night the translator had announced at dawn, "I want to talk to Joseph."

So I had responded, "Well, call him up then."

Soon he had Joseph on the phone and was talking to him in fluent Russian. And then he gave the Russian a halt and said, "Joseph wants to come."

"Well then, tell Joseph to come over," was my response.

The translator conveyed the message and then looked at your correspondent again and said, "But he´s flat broke."

"Well that has never been a problem to us Icelanders," I said. "Tell him we will arrange for his ticket later in the day and he can pick it up at the New York office of Icelandair tomorrow."

When I had slept it off and woke up the next afternoon I wondered how it had come about that I had invited some Russian I had never heard of to fly over but it was a matter of pride not to go back on the invitation. So now, exactly a week later, he had arrived with his one bag of luggage.

Between his invitation and arrival I got, bit by bit, the high and low of Brodsky´s life. He had been a star poet in school. He had been the head of the intelligentsia in St. Petersburg. Later on he had been charged by the state with vagrancy. When he came before a judge, who asked him to state his occupation, he had replied, "I am a poet." And when asked to show some certification of his claim he replied, "I can't." And when the judge asked why not he had replied, "The ability to write poetry is a gift from God." This cost him some years in Siberia from which he finally got out through the persistent efforts of his colleague W.H. Auden.

Joseph Brodsky was a rather chubby fellow beginning to go bald. He had a good natured smile and a stomach bearing witness to his fondness for hamburgers. He was not at all keen on what he had seen of Iceland. He said, "When I landed out a Keflavik airport, I thought I was on the moon. When we got closer to the Reykjavik suburbs I was reminded of Riga in the USSR. And now, this looks like New York."

Joseph was suffering from jet lag so it was decided he would take a nap before partaking in a party in his honor later in the day.

I was at the time living in a large wooden house almost at the bottom of a street which, rather than New York City, brings San Francisco to mind. The house at the bottom of the street happened to be The State Monopoly of liquor and beverages. On a late Friday evening in June, when the sun was shining on the streets of Reykjavik, it was good to sit at the living room table with the parlor window open and watch the slow flowing stream of people and their popping heads coming down the hill to store up for the weekend. It was always a possibility that a friend would be among them, ready to drop in and share a bottle of red or white wine or, on occasion, strong liquor.

We had set the table for a late lunch when one of my friends and I went upstairs to wake Joseph. I knocked politely on the door and when he did not reply I opened the door ajar and there he was, struggling to sit up in bed and trying to get a pair of sleep eye shades, of some sort, off his head. I told him we were about to have lunch to which he replied, "Terrific!" and stretched out for his bag and drew forth two bottles of vodka. When he was putting on his pants he asked a question which surprised me. "Are there a lot of KGB men in Iceland?" he asked.

"What?" Was my startled response.

"KGB," Brodsky responded, "Are there a lot of them over here?"

"No, I don’t think so," I said. "But I can’t vouch for it. I´m not good at identifying them anyway."

"Leave that to me," said Joseph.

We went downstairs to the parlor. The flow of people coming down the street had intensified as The Monopoly was about to close. Suddenly I saw an acquaintance of mine, a failed actor, pass by the window with his large hat and sunglasses. His jaws were working vigorously on a piece of gum. He passed from view. A while later, having stocked up for the weekend, he rang the doorbell. When he saw Joseph Brodsky he asked, "Who is that?"

"A very famous Russian," I said. "And a great poet!"

Joseph was eyeing us both now, not quite knowing what to make of the situation.

"Well," said my friend, and sat down on a solitary chair by the wall. "I was once almost famous myself."

Joseph was all ears.

"It was in the city of Rome."

"Oh, yeah?" said Brodsky.

"Well it so happened," my friend said, pushing the sun glasses closer to his face with an index finger, "I was sitting in a night club in Rome when suddenly the famous Federico Felinni comes in. He notices me, walks up to my table and announces, 'You look like a movie star. I am a director and I am going to make you a star.'" My friend fell silent. When it became obvious that nothing more was forthcoming Joseph broke the silence and said, "So what happened next?"

"Nothing," my friend said after a pause. "I never saw the man again. I did not become a movie star."

"Well this was a sad story," said Brodsky and looked around. Then he took up a piece of dry fish, studied it intensely and announced, "Oh, I know what this is! It tastes like old shoe soles."

My friend, the actor, had been so struck by the naked details of his sad life, in the presence of real fame, that he had left the party to mourn in solitude.

"What´s his occupation these days? Joseph wanted to know.

"I don’t know," I said.

"My bet is the KGB," Brodsky said. "It´s written all over him."

"Have some herring, Joseph," said the translator, who wanted to change the subject.

Joseph lifted up a whole herring with his fork and inspected it. "It is called herring in English," he said. "Now as everyone knows, the letter 'H' comes out as 'G' when pronounced in Russian, which makes Hitler a Gitler. So this must be Goering. Herring, Goering, it even rhymes."

"How´s the KGB doing these days in Russia?" I asked.

"I can tell you a KGB story," said Brodsky. "Now listen. It was a while ago. I am not going to disclose the whereabouts of the factory because this is a true tale. Once upon a time it so happened, in a factory, that a large part of the production never made it to the stock room. This was a toy factory whose sole production was the manufacturing of iron ducks which, when a spring inside them was wound up, were able to walk a certain distance. Now, to solve this problem guards from KGB were stationed at the entrance of the factory. They thoroughly searched everybody but not so much as a single duck was discovered. But the ducks kept right on disappearing. At last it got so that some KGB brass was brought in from Moscow and after intense speculations he cracked the mystery. There was a drain in the floor and the pipe ended outside the factory in a ditch. Now, some worker had made a practice of lifting the lid, then he wound up a duck, put it in the pipe and then the duck took a promenade the length of the entire pipe and fell into the ditch where it could be picked up after work. But in the end the State decided, as no culprit could be found, that no charges could be brought as the ducks had left the factory by themselves."

When the table had been cleared and toasts were being made to various Russian writers of greatness the doorbell suddenly rang and a friend of mine and the head of the sect that still worships the old Norwegian gods Odin and Thor appeared with a crowd of people.

Joseph stared at the group. "This is right out of The Idiot," he said. “Rogozhin and his hundred thousand.”

When I had introduced Brodsky to the leader, the latter offered to lay Tarot cards for Joseph. He took up cards drawn by the magician Aleister Crowley. These are beautifully drawn cards, no matter what you may think of Crowley, and he spread them out on the table, right in front of the astounded Russian, in a ring-like formation. "At the center is the hanged man," he said. "That is bad news." He drew another card. "But here comes the sun. That means that in time the hanged man will turn and be crowned with more glory than he himself can imagine at the present time."

And then, just like in any Dostoevsky novel, the whole crowd took off for town. I soon lost track of Joseph who said the next morning that he had gotten tired of the party and had strolled along the coastline of Reykjavik just to witness the spectacle of the sun never setting and suddenly it had seemed to him that some supernatural being had stepped right out of its yellow disk. "I think I saw an angel," he said.

He gave a reading two days later and was much lionized when the intelligentsia of Reykjavik found out who had arrived. In the autumn I noticed on the calendar that the night following the day of his arrival had been the so called midsummer night, the very night you are supposed to see supernatural beings, if you are one of the chosen few. So I wrote him a note telling him what night it had been and received a letter some time later in which he expressed his intense joy.

Memories

With Joseph Brodsky and Jóhann Hjálmarsson in the garden of Jóhann's home in Reykjavík, Iceland, June 1978. I was staying with the novelist Ólafur Gunnarsson and his family at the time, and Joseph also stayed there during his visit. It's a long time ago now, but I still remember it clearly. Joseph played soccer with a group of well-wishers in a field at 2 in the morning - the sun was shining. The photo is from Morgunblaðið, and was sent to me recently by Sjón.

Importing the Future

As translator of Icelandic author Ólafur Gunnarsson's prescient novel Miljón Prósent Menn (Million Percent Men, 1978), a book which was written well over 30 years ago and foretells the business and banking "revolution" in Iceland which recently brought the country more or less to its knees, I was intrigued to read Michael Lewis's mammoth essay on the collapse of Iceland's economy in the recent issue of Vanity Fair. Unlike some other U.S. journalists who have covered the Icelandic financial crisis, Lewis has actually spent a reasonable amount of time in Iceland, and has got to know some of the characteristics of this nation, which stands out from the other Nordic countries in several notable aspects. Lewis makes some shrewd comments on Icelandic society and culture, especially with regard to the deep divide between men and women that is typical of them, and also has some surprisingly on-target aperçus on the subject of the national character:

Maybe because there are so few Icelanders in the world, we know next to nothing about them. We assume they are more or less Scandinavian—a gentle people who just want everyone to have the same amount of everything. They are not. They have a feral streak in them, like a horse that’s just pretending to be broken.