“And do you know what this fellow is called?” he asked, and grinned again, full of expectation.
One girl immediately raised her hand.
“Gandý?” she asked cheerfully, like someone who knows she’s ready with the absolutely correct answer.
It was like she had splashed a piss-pot over him. He stopped smiling and jumped one step away from her. We all understood that something had happened, but we didn’t know what. He stared angrily at her, his eyes shooting sparks. Then he suddenly pointed at the door with his index finger and said loudly:
“Be gone!”
The girl jumped to her feet, looked uncertainly around, and went. When she was gone, Gandý gathered himself and went back to smiling.
“Well, let’s try again. What do you think his name is?”
No one dared to say a word for fear of saying something wrong. Some shook their heads. When Gandý found the excitement enough he cried out:
“Straightie!” He couldn’t keep from laughing, so much that his large teeth shone.
Lessons with Gandý were a veritable circus. At the beginning of the class, he stood by the door to the room and waited. As soon as the school bell fell silent, he closed the door and locked the room. Those not present couldn’t enter. He didn’t even wait for anyone hanging up their coats outside, he just closed the door on their noses and gave them no chance. Anyone not already inside the classroom when the bell fell silent couldn’t get in. It was that simple. He rarely opened it for those who knocked except just to tell them to go to the principal. Sometimes only half the class was in the lesson while the other half waited outside the locked door. And the most striking thing about this was that Gandý wasn’t angry; on the contrary. It was like he thought it was fun, beaming with joy and anticipation and with a mischievous expression over his face. When he quarrelled with students, he enjoyed himself so much that he grinned.
Gandý was an enigma. The story went that he was a professor and even had multiple degrees, but he’d read so much he’d gone mad. He had that kind of look. He resembled a lunatic scientist out of science fiction. No one knew where the nickname Gandý came from. And no one dared ask him about it. Doing so got you chucked out for sure. He answered any question about his identity with a series of fabrications. He said he was an inventor who had a laboratory up on Vatnajokul where he grew square tomatoes. And then he said that he had invented a new plant.
“What plant do you think it is?” he asked, full of anticipation.
When no answer came, he answered himself:
“Seven-Up trees!” And how he laughed.
He embellished his story, saying that it was a tree that he grew somewhere on Vatnajokul. The tree bore fruit once a month, when Seven-Up bottles grew on the branches. One time he even brought to class a mysterious hexagonal apple he showed us, saying that it came from his laboratory on the glacier. I occasionally enjoyed being in class with Gandý. He mostly left me alone. I sat by the window and sometimes smoked out of it behind the curtains, but he didn’t protest and pretended not to notice anything. The lessons went on and I only understood bits and pieces, both because of my lack of interest and because of Gandý’s eccentricity. He did admittedly explain Darwin’s Theory of Evolution clearly, but mostly he focused on making us learn the Latin name for “buttercup” by heart — we wasted countless lessons on that. It was like this was some kind of obsession with him, and he wrote it on the blackboard and made us recite it over and over again out loud: Ranunculus acris. He even wrote a few words on the board to help us remember: ran, uncle, less. His method achieved its intended goal. It was probably the only thing I learned in his class. I have waited for a moment in my life where I could show off this evidence, but the opportunity has never arrived. One day when we got to class, several of the upper class students had taken Gandý and hung him on a hook by his belt. There he dangled, unable to touch his toes to the floor. I decided to make myself scarce, disappeared, and went out to smoke. I heard later that the ones who helped him down had been sent to the headmaster.
Arni Njalsson taught sports. He was known either by the nickname Arni Nails or simply just Nails. I could not even think of going into the showers after sports because of what took place there. Fighting and torture were found more there than anywhere, so I made sure never to show up with my gym clothes, and had to sit on the floor while others worked out like mad. Arni never called me anything but Punky. He had no real expectation that I would bring my gym stuff. Since I was of course unable to do anything during these times, I got given the task of taking his daughter down Bústaðarvegur to Fossvogs School.
“Punky?”
“Yes?”
“Got your gym kit?”
“No.”
“Take the girl to school.”
So I walked to his house, got the girl, walked her down Bústaðarvegur, and accompanied her over the pedestrian crossing. After that, I had free time.
To become more punk and to gain respect and peace from those persecuting me, I started trying to become more disgusting. I had a unique talent that I had often whipped out many times over the years: I could vomit when I wanted. I found out when I was trying to talk while belching that I could also vomit. The difficulty of it depended on what I’d eaten. Coarse food like potatoes, meat, and apples were difficult to puke. But soup and beef and the like are easy to bring up. The best thing to throw up is ice cream. When someone was annoying me, I vomited up food and spat it in their direction. This came in handy. Most thought it was so unpleasant they avoided me. I also would spit on a windowpane and lick up the sputum and swallow it while everyone watching got nauseous. I used the same defensive strategy as skunks and fulmars do. This often brought me peace. I even became quite famous for it and was known as the disgusting punk who vomited on people if they messed with him — Jónsi Punk.
Everything that happened at school decreased my interest in studying. I was far behind in the curriculum, and instead of revealing my inabilities, I covered them with misrepresentations, jokes, and indifference. In English, I was actually far ahead of others in the curriculum. I found that punk taught me more and was more useful to me than the English at school. I didn’t bother to read what I was assigned. Icelandic was annoying. The course was dead dull and was centered mainly on spelling and spelling conventions and endless rules. The words and phrases were just silly, like “Ingunn disgraced herself when the farmers in eastern Skaftafellssysla went to Þingvellir.” Damn, this Ingunn is so clearly very boring. What did she do to shock the farmers in eastern Skaftafellssysla? Danish and math I refused to study at all. I took an unofficial free period during those classes. Physics and chemistry I found similarly pointless. I stopped bringing my schoolbag and schoolbooks entirely; at best, I had a pencil with me. At times I hung forward on the table, scrawled something in a notebook, or tried to launch discussions with the aim of getting myself thrown out of class. Some days I didn’t show up or went home immediately after the first class. I distanced myself from the school, and my peers grew more and more alien to me. I went up to the city library, hung out there, and read Melody Maker. Then when the time for school was over, I went home and it seemed like I was coming home from school. I felt like an extraterrestrial on an alien planet. Everyone but me seemed to enjoy it okay. I didn’t understand why I was different from everyone else. It was like I had no connection with others and was sentenced to hang about alone in a world that seemed based on principles that I either didn’t get or found to be incorrect and unfair. Then my mom got a call from the school. Baglet the principal called her and expressed concern about me and my attendance and behavior. Mom sat down with me and demanded a response. But I had nothing to say. There was nothing I could say to her. She didn’t understand me. She would not understand my side. She was on Baglet’s team and not mine. She wanted me to do what Baglet wanted me to do. What right did this disgusting loser have to call her and say they were worried about me? I despised him. He didn’t give a shit about me. Why didn’t he say to her what he always told me, that I was a disgusting slob and rude? Why couldn’t I just quit this damn school and stay home? What was so stupid about wanting to be like Johnny Rotten when I grew up? Johnny Rotten was famous. It was better than being like Pills or the Christian Studies teacher.