Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.02.2006, Qupperneq 20

Excerpt from Z : A Love Story (Z: ástarsaga)
Translated by Anne Jeeves. Printed with permission of the
author, Vigdís Grímsdóttir
I’m going to think of you in New York.
I imagine you in the coffee shop on Fourth Avenue where
the Chinese couple with the rose-patterned aprons work. I
can’t fathom why they keep pointing with their thumbs to
the table by the stairs. Suddenly I realize why. It’s because
you’re sitting there with your back to me and you don’t
know I’m here. I whisper to Hrafn that I won’t be a mi-
nute, walk past your table and touch your shoulder. You’re
wearing a blue dress and you look up and smile. What a
beautiful smile you have. There’s a curtain across the stairs
and the couple point to them and we sit down on the steps.
I’ll never forget your neck there on the stairs of the restau-
rant on Fourth Avenue. There’s a vein in your neck which
I suck at and I almost forget that Hrafn is sitting waiting
for me.
I’m going to think of you in New York.
I imagine you in the striped bar opposite The New C.
Hrafn and I are drinking pina colada, actually waiting for
the fourth round. He’s tipsy and is talking about us having
to move to a new flat. I’m thinking about how lovely your
skin is but pretend to show interest in what type of parquet
we should have in the living room. Your skin is all beautiful
but your back is the most beautiful. When the waiter brings
our drinks he pushes an envelope over to me. Hrafn doesn’t
see anything, I manage to open the envelope and pull out
a letter from you. When I look up you’re standing behind
him. You beckon to me to come, I follow you out into the
street and we make love quickly and frenetically in the alley
next to The New C.
I’m going to think of you in New York.
I imagine you everywhere.
You’re the girl in the ticket office.
You’re the lead in the film we’re going to see.
You’re the maid in the hotel.
The girl in the lift.
The stripper in the nightclub.
The artist’s model at the art exhibition at the X.
The biggest star on Broadway.
I imagine you everywhere.
And next to me in bed at night I touch your eyes, your
throat, your breasts, all of you and let myself forget, and
bite, sink my teeth into your throat, deeper and deeper,
suck at your love with the blood, everything becomes you,
and Hrafn, he becomes you as well. My imagination makes
any journey without you a journey with you. Without my
imagination I couldn’t go anywhere. If I didn’t have it,
everything would be revealed.
Loving regards,
Z
(107-108)
Z: A Love Story is available in English on Mare’s Nest
Books, published 1997.
about it. I write because I have to. It comes to me, and I can’t
ignore it. Back in the day, my grandmother asked me: Have
you had sex? I said no. Don’t do it, she said, because you will
not be able to stop. It’s the same with writing. I have to do it
because I want it so bad. If I’ll ever have a writer’s block, I’ll
quit. It’ll mean that I have nothing left to give. It’ll be defini-
tive too, because things like that happen to me definitively. But
that’s okay, I never meant to be a writer.
/// Paul McCartney once said in an interview that he wishes
he’d written the song “Fields of Gold” by Sting himself. Is
there any book that you wish you’d written?
– I wish I’d written Of Mice and Men (by John Steinbeck). It’s
one of those big books. It has a tremendous weight.
/// Is there a particular part of your career, starting in 1983,
that you’re the most proud of? Any work, award or recogni-
tion that comes to mind?
– I’m very sensitive, sometimes even sentimental. My dad died
in 1989. Without my knowledge, he’d collected everything that
had been written about my books from 1983 until he died. It
was his secret. When I’d finished the second last draft of Ísb-
jörg, my parents went on a trip to my mother’s hometown. On
the way there, they stopped and read my draft. My dad kept a
diary, and the last thing he wrote in it before he died was: Dísa
has written something important. It was the greatest reward
I’ve ever gotten. He was a very critical man. Being recognised
as a writer is nice, of course, but that is the biggest reward I’ve
received.
/// What part of being a writer have you found the most dif-
ficult?
– When the book comes out. It’s a schizophrenic situation.
You’ve been by yourself for a long time, writing, and all of a
sudden there are countless interviews and recitals and what
not. I think it might come in handy to be an actor in this situ-
ation. You have to be able to switch gears, preferably switch
cars. Sometimes the transition from solitude into being con-
stantly social happens in a really short amount of time. I find it
very difficult. I’m not an actress. But I’m a little schizophrenic.
I’ve pulled it off sometimes. I find the whole process of writing
a book wonderful, even if the subject isn’t. Doing research is so
exciting. Handing a finished book over brings great happiness,
even if the book isn’t perfect. No book will ever be perfect.
Promoting a book is something you have to do, because you
love the book. To hell with your shyness, your fear and all
those little emotions you have inside. They’ll just have to wait,
because you love your book. I don’t bother complaining about
it anymore. It’s a part of the process.
/// What are you currently working on?
– I’m working on two novels. I want to write memoirs for peo-
ple who have a lot to give in the next few years. I’ve had a guest
over from Finland for a month, whose biography I’m writing.
But before that, I want to write the biography of an Icelandic
woman whom I’ve yet to meet. I don’t know if she exists.
/// What direction are you going in as a writer?
– I want to work with real people, instead of building charac-
ters on real people. I’ve never created a character that doesn’t
have a role model in reality. For now, I want to be in the
presence of the role model itself, and register the story the
way he or she tells it. When I turn 100 years old, I’m going to
write a children’s book. I’ll be mature enough then. Writing for
children is very hard. Changing their world. I’ve written one
children’s book, Gauti vinur minn (My Friend Gauti) and the
reaction was immense. I received pictures from several classes
of elementary school children.
/// Weren’t you mature enough to write a children’s book
back then, even if you weren’t 100 years old?
– No, I’m constantly maturing. I love that book. I wrote it for
my son, so he’d move back home from New York. He said,
okay, I’ll move if you write a book for me. So I did, but he
didn’t move back home. He likes his wife too much.
/// Would you describe your style of writing as ever-chang-
ing?
– In my writing, there are always one or two main characters.
The style in which the story is told belongs to them. I write the
way they are. That’s why my style is never the same, because it
serves whomever I’m writing about. I write in first person a lot.
If the characters are similar to me, their style is similar to my
style. The truth is, you only have about ten people here (points
at her chest) who step forward and want to speak.
/// A fan of yours described you as a writer who is constantly
searching for beauty in everything, even ugly situations. How
would you respond to that?
– I’m very grateful if someone views me like that. That’s what
I’ve always tried to do. I took the Finnish man who visited me
on a little trip. We went to the harbour, where there are a lot
of containers. He thought they were filthy and disgusting. I
told him: We’re an island. Containers are wonderful things,
because that’s where everything comes from. What does it
matter if they’re grey? Beauty can be found in anything if God
is close by.
/// You are known amongst other things for a great grasp of
the language. Where does your vocabulary come from? Is it
something that comes naturally for you, or is it something
you’ve worked at expanding?
– If what you’re saying is right, then I suppose it stems from
my upbringing. That, and reading a lot. My mother’s friends
often say that she could’ve written my books, like the words
could’ve come out of her mouth. That’s where my vocabulary
comes from.
/// Is there a desired effect that you want your writing to have
on your readers?
– I suppose I want to have an effect on people’s thought proc-
ess, evoke something new in them. That’s all. There’s nothing
else I want.
/// Why did you wait until you were 30 to publish your work?
– (whispers) I was so shy. Also, it was made very clear at school
that female writers were weird. When you’re a kid, the last
thing you want is to be weird. I wrote an essay when I was
fourteen, and I had to read it out loud. It was about a plane
crash and it was highly dramatic. When I was done reading,
the teacher said this horrible sentence: “Vigdís dear, you’re
not thinking about becoming a writer, are you?” I didn’t even
answer, because I thought it was such a rotten thing to say. He
was asking me if I was thinking about becoming weird, basi-
cally. On my way home from school, I asked my friend: “What
on earth did he mean?” She said: “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t
worry about it.” It was such a taboo. Not many women wrote
books at the time, and there was an utterly strange way of
describing them in the educational system. But I was also shy.
I was in Denmark, writing, when I sent my brother a draft.
He said: “I’m taking this somewhere.” He did. After that, I
couldn’t stop.
/// Why are children often protagonists in your works?
– That’s where everything starts. That’s where everything is.
That’s where you get your input for life. It’s how you process
your provisions from childhood that make you who you are. I
think about children a lot, about their soul. I love people who
don’t lose their inner child, who preserve it and don’t throw
it to waste. It gives you a sincere outlook on life, and a lack of
fear. Children have to go through incredible things, good and
bad. They have a heavy load. All children do. Just having to
grow up is extremely hard.
/// Dreaming is also a recurring subject in your work, hence
Nætursöngvar, Lendar elskhugans and Gauti vinur minn. Is
there a particular reason behind this?
– You can always see a part of yourself in everything you do.
The characters always inherit something that belongs to you.
Dreams are such a big part of my life, I couldn’t live without
them. I think the theme of dreaming is more characteristic for
me as an author than a certain style of writing. My characters
dream a lot, foresee things and events. That’s me. That’s me in
these people, and these people in me. Guðrún Helgadóttir had
a better way of putting it. She said in some interview: “You’re
always writing about yourself, anyhow.” I like that. You can’t
fake it in fiction.
/// Last but not least, supernatural things often take place in
your books.
– That’s what people say. People call this and that super-
natural. I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know what
people mean when they say that. What do you suppose they
mean? That someone is psychic? There’s nothing supernatural
about that, some people are psychic and it’s a fact. People who
foresee events have always existed. We have a strong tendency
to reject everything that’s supposedly supernatural, but it’s real.
/// So being psychic is just as natural as being blonde or
brunette?
– To those who are psychic, yes.
/// Are you?
– Some people would probably say so, yes. I don’t feel very psy-
chic. I’ve seen things that other people haven’t seen. But that
may have happened when I’d been awake for a long time. (She
laughs.) I don’t like it when people talk about clairvoyance as
some part of epilepsy or insanity or something supernatural.
It’s just a part of a person’s receptivity. There are so many di-
mensions that we’re unaware of. I would never dispute a person
who claims she’s psychic. Why does mankind always have to be
able to prove everything to believe it? Once upon a time, there
was a man who wanted to invent light. He was laughed at.
/// Anything to close on?
– Yes. Whenever a journalist interviews a writer, he has to
bring him kleinur. It’s a must. They’re so tasty, and they’re
nowhere in the world as good as here in Iceland. If there’s any-
thing I recommend for the foreign readers of the Grapevine,
it’s to try kleinur.
By Þórdís Elva Þorvaldsdóttir Bachmann
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I took the Finnish man who visited me on a little trip. We went to the harbour,
where there are a lot of containers. He thought they were filthy and disgusting.
I told him: We’re an island. Containers are wonderful things, because that’s
where everything comes from. What does it matter if they’re grey?”
20