Хьелль Аскильдсен - The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

A)

Pay close attention every day to keeping your belly, bottom, hips and genital area warm. Don’t show too much skin during the winter months. At issue is the area from the navel down to the loins, front and back. This applies both to the girl and the boy.

Importance of this element: 5*

B)

Beware of cold floors.

Importance of this element: 5*

C)

Before the couple starts making love, the boy can massage the girl, her hips, lower back, bottom, belly and groin. Then he can massage his own groin. Then the love-making may begin.

Importance of this element: 3*

D)

Before the couple starts making love, it’s good to dance barefoot, even though the floor is cold—in the living room—to three or four lively songs and cheek-to-cheek songs, and laugh a little.

Importance of this element: 3*

E)

Go into a cowshed, sit for half an hour in the warm or tepid grass, and breathe in deeply the smell of sheep and cows.

Importance of this element:?

F)

Don’t let your hands get cold throughout the day.

Importance of this element: 3*

G)

Decorate each other’s hair and head with flowers.

Importance of this element:?

Have fun.

Life doesn’t end. I was a building that stood by the pond in Reykjavík: one day I stood up, walked away and left behind a grave in the landscape. I was an escort whose services people bought at the sports clubs’ tombolas; one day I fell off the shelf. I was a frightened animal that lived under a table. One day the table walked out of the living room and out of the house, down the street, nobody knows where to. I was the rain that fell down the roof and washed your windows, washed your eyes, washed the windows, washed the eyes. I was the decoration in your hair and you decorated my hair with flowers. Now the farmer shears my hair, the flowers fall down last and land on top of the pile of wool. Perhaps you’ll knit a sweater from me.

I was a lost son who was found, and got lost again. I was the nail polish on your fingers: the knife of night will scrape that off.

A theatre critic on the radio that rests on top of the table says: the director didn’t manage to communicate the sorrow and oppression to the audience.

I ask the table leg: do you know the couple sorrow and oppression? Do they suit each other? Will the relationship last? Will they conceive a child? What is the child of sorrow and oppression called?

The table leg: the one who oppresses has the sorrow, the oppressed have the hunger.

I feed the table leg leftovers from the jars.

Finally: this is not a theatre, this is a former theatre, and the show is a danger to me. The poet who sleeps under the vertical shafts of sunlight on a bench in another country far from here says with dignity dressed in black: I am never afraid.

Two female artists inside an apartment where the floor is made from the blocks of chocolate that are only available in the most liberal of countries—the escort women’s delivery service sent me here—tie me to a chair, blindfold me and gag me. They carry the chair between them down the highfalutin stairs and into the frosty night.

Is this a throne of woven arms?

Am I part of a performance?

Judging by the Sunday chimes of the Independent Church, they are travelling with me south along Brook Street, in the direction of the pond—I also know the direction because I know the Brook Street wind, the temperature and the toxic, biting mildness. The women set up my throne out on the ice. I listen to the women skate around me on the ice; on the frozen pond, the swans warble, I also hear:

The children squealing at the preschool, yelling, shouting. I hear the theatre ghosts writhe and complain about the constriction and hip pain. I hear the hippies dance in their burning Funville. The magnate milks a cow, a din in the udders, inside his gazebo behind the National Gallery, where the woman in the lobby knits a jeep onto a sweater that is too small and tight. The milk spurts into a can. The ghosts writhe in old and new roles. Hamlet runs away from Ophelia, her face rime-white. Nuns sweep the floors at the Downtown School. I have to go over there and look for the green crown I once lost. Where is the fancy chocolate from the floor in that house? And the breadcrumbs for the swans and ducks?

WE DRANK MORNING COFFEE in the garden. We hardly spoke. Beate got up and put the cups on the tray. We should probably take the chairs up onto the veranda, she said. Why? I said. It looks like rain, she said. Rain? I said, there’s not a cloud in the sky. There’s a nip in the air, she said, don’t you think? No, I said. Maybe I’m mistaken, she said. She walked up the steps onto the veranda and into the living room. I sat there for another quarter of an hour, and then carried one of the chairs up to the veranda. I stood a while looking at the woods on the other side of the fence, but there was nothing to see. I could hear the sound of Beate humming coming from the open door. She must have heard the weather forecast of course, I thought. I went back down into the garden and walked round to the front of the house, over to the mailbox beside the black wrought-iron gate. It was empty. I closed the gate, which for some reason or another had been open; then I noticed someone had thrown up just outside it. I became annoyed. I attached the garden hose to the tap by the cellar door and turned the water on full, and then dragged the hose after me over to the gate. The jet of water hit at slightly the wrong angle, and some of the vomit spattered into the garden, the rest spread out over the tarmac. There were no drains nearby, so all I succeeded in doing was moving the yellowish substance four or five metres away from the gate. But even so, it was a relief to get a bit of distance from the filthy mess.

When I’d turned off the tap and coiled up the hose, I didn’t know what to do. I went up to the veranda and sat down. After a few minutes I heard Beate begin to hum again; it sounded as though she was thinking about something she liked thinking about, she probably thought I couldn’t hear her. I coughed, and it went quiet. She came out and said: I didn’t know you were sitting here. She had put on make-up. Are you going somewhere? I said. No, she said. I turned my face towards the garden and said: Some idiot’s thrown up just outside the gate. Oh? she said. A proper mess, I said. She didn’t reply. I stood up. Do you have a cigarette? she asked. I gave her one and a light. Thanks, she said. I walked down from the veranda and sat at the garden table. Beate stood on the veranda, smoking. She threw the half-finished cigarette down onto the gravel at the bottom of the steps. What’s the point of that? I said. It’ll burn up, she said. She went into the living room. I stared at the thin band of smoke rising almost straight up from the cigarette: I didn’t want it to burn up. After a little while I stood up, I felt unsettled. I walked down to the gate in the wooden fence, crossed the narrow patch of meadow and went into the woods. I stopped just inside the edge of the woods and sat down on a stump, almost concealed behind some scrub. Beate came out onto the veranda. She looked towards where I was sitting and called my name. She can’t see me, I thought. She walked down into the garden and around the house. She walked back up onto the veranda again. Once again she looked towards where I was sitting. She couldn’t possibly see me, I thought. She turned and went into the living room.