“Hey,” I tell them and wink.
I’m going to bed. I’m tired. I’ve definitely acted fully composed and tricked Mom so she doesn’t realize a thing. I just need to watch my step with the waving and rocking, to take care not to fall on my face when the floor tilts. When Mom comes back, I say firmly:
“Good night, Mom, I’m going to sleep now.”
Did she hear what I said? What did I say again? Did I tell her I was going to go to bed, or did I tell her I was asleep? I repeated the words to be on the safe side.
“Well, Mom, I’m going to sleep. Good night, Mom.”
I was all set to leave and had deliberated it in my mind, calculating the angle of the floor and how I could walk to my room as normally as possible. I set off, except I forgot to stand up and fell over right there and hit the floor. Damn sloping floor. I had miscalculated and couldn’t stand up by any means. It was so ridiculous that I started laughing again. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the back, seat of a car and my dad was behind the wheel. The next thing I remember was that some people were running beside the car. Maybe some kids were trying to get the car. Still, it was strange because it was nighttime. It was all incredibly funny and amusing, and I laughed.
The next day I woke up in intensive care at City Hospital. Someone was sneaking about inside the hospital room. Whispers. I didn’t follow what was being said. Sneaky demons shot back and forth. Whispers.
“Huh? What are you saying? I can’t hear.”
The room rocked back and forth and turned in circles. I was dizzy. A doctor came walking towards me, and I poked him to see if he was real — he was — but I didn’t understand what he was saying and struggled to distinguish his voice from all the other voices.
“What’s your name?”
“Jón. Jónsi Punk.”
He took my hand.
“Do you know what year it is, Jón?”
I knew that.
“Nine hundred and eighty…” I couldn’t remember. “…something,” I added and giggled.
When I woke up next it was evening. The hallucinations were gone. What had happened? What was I doing here? I thought about Tintin. Did they have any Tintin here? The nurse came and asked how I felt.
“All right,” I replied. “Do you have any Tintin comics here?”
She didn’t answer, and I let my eyelids droop. Endless pictures of Tintin flicked past my mind’s eye. I vaguely heard the nurses who came and went, taking blood pressure, saying things to me, then going ahead. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. My eyelids were as heavy as lead shutters.
“Do you know where you are, Jón?”
“In the hospital?”
“You’re here in intensive care at City Hospital, you came here with your Dad last night — don’t you remember?”
“Sure,” I said, but didn’t.
“You’d taken a lot of pills and had them pumped out of you.”
Pumped out of me? I didn’t remember it. How were they pumped out of me?
“We gave you some drugs which should counteract the poison you ingested.”
“Okay.”
“What pills did you take?”
“Travel sickness tablets?” I asked, with eyes closed.
“Travel sickness tablets, okay.”
“Do you think there’s someone here with Tintin?”
The effects of the sickness tablets persisted through the course of the evening. I received a sedative, and that felt good. Tintin continued to haunt me. I tried to get the nurses who came and talked to me to talk about Tintin and read me Tintin books. I told them about my favorite book about the adventures of Tintin and then asked them what their favorite Tintin book was and so on. When I changed the subject to Tintin’s friends Thomson and Thompson, I couldn’t keep from laughing. The bed I was lying in was on wheels. Someone came and said something to me, and I was moved into another room. There was a closet, like inside all hospital rooms. When I was alone I crawled out of bed over to the closet, curled myself into a ball, squeezed myself into the closet, and closed the door on myself. The closet was a rocket. I was in the hospital, but it was still a rocket. But maybe this was just my own nonsense? Maybe I was just an idiot inside a closet? I heard the voice of Captain Haddock: “A hundred thousand blistering barnacles.” The closet took off and shot into space. I felt the whole cubby shaking. I slept. Outer space was infinite. Someone came and opened the closet. I took a breath. Then I was back in bed where someone gave me medicine.
When I woke up the next day, I was in yet another room. I staggered out of bed, opened the door and went into the hall. I only vaguely remembered what had happened. I was filled with terror. What had taken place? A doctor or nurse came walking towards me.
“How are you feeling?”
“All right. Is this a hospital?”
“Go back to bed.”
“Where am I?”
“You were brought here last night. You are in Department A2, which is in the psychiatric ward in City Hospital.”
The woman followed me back into the room. The psychiatric ward of City Hospital? Was that true? Was I going to be sent to Klepp? When the woman was gone, I snuck back down and found the person on duty.
“Can I make a phone call?”
They gave me a phone. I called Alli, who I knew had some Tintin books.
“Hi, this is Jón.”
“Hi.”
“Would you bring me your Tintin books?”
“Tintin books? Why?”
“I’m in a mental ward.”
“You’re in a mental ward?”
“Yes. Would you bring your Tintin books to me in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital?”
I said goodbye to Alli and went back into my room. He came later that day with the Tintin books.
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know? I took travel sickness tablets.”
“But why are you here?”
“I don’t know. I just really want to read Tintin.”
“Okay.”
I chose The Black Island and began to read it. Alli sat with me for a few moments, then stood up and said goodbye.
“Bye.”
“Bye,” I said and did not look up from the book.
Later that day my mom came. It surprised me that she wasn’t angry. She was just happy and said:
“I’m simply glad you’re okay. You must never do that again, my darling boy.”
“No.”
We didn’t have to discuss it further. I’d never do that again.
“I’m just going to read Tintin.”
Mom stroked my hair and sat silently while I read Tintin. Several days went by, and I regained my equilibrium. I occasionally went out and sat in the lounge and chatted with other patients. A few days later, Mom and Dad came to get me. I learned later what had happened. I had run out of the babysitting party all of a sudden. I had probably gotten very weird, but they did not know what was affecting me. Mom was then woken up in the night and summoned outside by a kid who knew me and had found me lying under some car. It was freezing cold out, and he realized that I wasn’t okay and decided to take me home. Neither Mom nor Dad discussed it ever again. We never ever discussed it.
STUDIO MEAT
When I was working selling lottery tickets for the Red Cross, I got to know a few shopkeepers from the time I had a sales table at Glæsibæ. Since I was very polite and did pretty well and was a pretty likeable youth, I decided that spring to talk to Guðmundur, the store manager in the shop at Glæsibæ. I had chatted with him a few times when I was selling tickets. I had gotten his advice about where to set up my table, and as a result we’d ended up chatting. I decided to talk to Guðmundur and see if I couldn’t get some work from him in order to get some money. Guðmundur was receptive and asked if I had any knowledge of salted meat and that sort of food. I couldn’t believe it! I replied without hesitation that I was brought up on Icelandic food and my dad was from Breiðafirði, that he had a sour-barrel out on the balcony full of liver and blood pudding, salted meat and seal flippers and rams’ testicles and all kinds of stuff. I knew it all by name. And so I ended up with a job at the meat counter in Glæsibæ. The work consisted mainly of cutting and carving meat, carrying carcasses, and being generally of use to people as a meat-fetching-person, but also jumping in and assisting with serving when needed. This I did with great success. I served sausage meat, slices of leg of lamb, and other such things with courtesy and professionalism. Customers reckoned that I was some kind of meat specialist and were constantly asking me about this and that to do with meat. What did I recommend, would this be better than the other, and questions like that. I had no idea about any of it and just said whatever.