“I’ve recently begun writing a little story myself,” says Áslákur, after a few seconds have passed without Sturla saying anything. “But I’m not sure it counts as literature,” he ploughs on, stuffing the laundry into a red plastic tub.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s an altogether different thing to be a real artist who carefully puts together well-rhymed and well-alliterated poems,” replies Áslákur and closes the dryer.
At around the same time the day before the salesperson in the clothing store on Bankastræti had contrived to tell him he painted. And though Sturla had found a need to let this stranger, his neighbor, know he was going to a book festival (not to a gathering of supers), generally speaking Sturla didn’t have any reason to let people know out of the blue that he writes poetry. When it seems that Áslákur doesn’t have any more questions about the poetry festival, Sturla starts to suspect Áslákur asked him down to the laundry room because he doesn’t like being there alone. As it turns out, he doesn’t seem to have the interest in Sturla he had so genuinely shown. Sturla offers to help with the laundry baskets but Áslákur declines; his expression changes as though to suggest that he has forgotten why he invited Sturla to the laundry room in the first place. When they get back to the elevator Sturla studies the envelope from Cambridge — partly to see whether the mail will arouse Láki’s interest in the poet — but once they are in the elevator and Áslákur doesn’t say anything, Sturla suspects he’s occupied with the little story he mentioned he is writing. Perhaps he is lamenting his missed opportunity to be a published author, like his fellow traveler in the elevator.
When they part ways, with Áslákur saying goodbye to Sturla somewhat curtly as he launches himself out of the elevator, Sturla is beginning to wonder why this fifty year-old man is home alone in the middle of a weekday. He supposes that his wife and children are at work and school, but what does this curious — and seemingly moody — man do in his apartment when it gets to be two o’clock in the afternoon? Does he start looking for something that he knows doesn’t exist, something which he can’t be sure about, something concrete and intangible at the same time — and is he sorely disappointed when he doesn’t find anything other than what existed in front of his eyes every single day?
The first thing Sturla does, on the other hand, when he enters his place is open the envelope from the Biographical Center. In the upper right corner of the letter is a red logo, a simply sketched image of the earth, and below the logo are the initials of the sender: IBC. A little further down was a drawing of a church building in Cambridge.
Sturla begins to read the English text:
Dear Mr. Jonsson
2,000 OUTSTANDING INTELLECTUALS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
The Oxford English Dictionary defines intellectualism as the “doctrine that knowledge is wholly or mainly derived from pure reason” and it follows by saying that an intellectual is a “person possessing a good understanding, enlightened person.”
Surely, therefore, this definition is the reason for your selection to be included in this prestigious publication which is due for release in early 2007. I invite you to take your place within its pages. Only two thousand intellectuals can be featured from across the world and I therefore urge you to complete the enclosed questionnaire as soon as possible.
He takes a break from reading and lets himself scan the rest of the text with his eyes. Is he being mocked, or has he ended up on a list of world intellectuals because of some kind of misunderstanding? Could it really be the case that the recipient has to act fast to avoid being excluded from the two thousand people there is room for in the volume? Who’d had the idea of sending him — Sturla Jón Jónsson — this letter? The name of a Nicholas S. Law is written below the body of the letter, his signature looking rather like the lines of a cartoon EKG; what on earth could this man have been thinking as he put down his pen after signing the letter? The postscript asks the recipient to recommend someone he knows who deserves to be in the book by writing their name in a special box on the reverse side of the letter. Here is the answer to why Sturla received the letter: some spiteful individual from the crowd of Icelandic writers had also got a similar letter — at the recommendation of another spiteful author — and he had added Sturla’s name to the list of suggested recipients. The person had thought they should add, “of course, the inferior poet Sturla Jón Jónsson — who has never had any thoughts that have had any influence on other people — he ought to be very much at home on your list of the two thousand most vital thinkers on earth.”
Sturla would without doubt have done the same thing, if he’d been able to step outside himself and look from a distance at the mediocre poet Sturla Jón. In fact, his first thought is to return the letter with the words to the effect that he isn’t worthy of or able to accept this honor which has been offered to him, but he can instead recommend the bearded Icelandic poet Svanur Bergmundsson, the same person who had, in conversation with his fellow poet, friend, and countryman Sturla Jón, described how the Japanese-English author Ishiguro (or Japenglish, as Sturla can’t resist adding for his own benefit) had shown complete disregard for his loyal readers by allowing three-quarters of an hour to pass inside just two minutes during one of his novels.
But perhaps a similar letter has already dropped into Svanur’s mailbox.
Suddenly Sturla is depressed at the thought of how little these colleagues, he and Svanur — and also their fellow Icelandic poets of a similar stature — have contributed to world literature; their contribution even to Icelandic literature is pretty modest. And on the heels of this thought he begins thinking of his neighbor Áslákur, and an even greater gloom descends over him; in all the apartment buildings in the country — in all the high rises in the world — life goes on in exactly the same way as inside the residences of Skúlagata 40 in Reykjavík; how pathetic it is, how miserable. Weren’t fathers of numerous children all over the world fetching brooms from laundry rooms of apartments, only to return them to the same place later? Is there anywhere in the world where you can’t find insignificant men struggling to write some insignificant texts which are of no use to anyone but themselves — in other words, useless products that actually prevent the people who write them from being human beings of any value.
Or are they?
Doesn’t the piece Sturla wrote yesterday have any message? Could it be that the actual message of his damning, sarcastic critique of poetry festivals is self-deception, which springs from his discomfort and dissatisfaction over his own impotence and uselessness? That’s all very plausible, but he isn’t able to shake the feeling that this decision to make the leap from poetry to prose — a personal change of form — has aroused something entirely new inside him, something which really means something, for him or to others. He decides to fix himself a drink, and on his way into the kitchen (where the drinks are), he puts the newest Richard Thompson album, Front Parlour Ballads, on the CD player.
Isn’t this something that happens to him at regular intervals, these reflections and this doubt about his occupation? After having gulped down two shots of vodka and persuaded himself, by scanning his eyes briefly over his article from yesterday, that he is on the right path — that he couldn’t be on anything but the right path — Sturla rings the editor Jónatan Jóhannsson.
“I think I’ve written you an article,” he says, letting Jónatan know he will swing by in the morning with it; he is heading abroad on Friday.
“Is it a short-story?” the editor asks and continues noisily eating something he’d picked up while Sturla was saying his name at the beginning of the conversation.