Oraefi. Ófeigur Sigurðsson

more like a predatory animal, this job isn’t the way children imagine it, I think all veterinarians planned to become veterinarians as children and fixated on the dream and never found a new dream amid the idea-destroying weight of their home environment; it is a dream that arises when children have somewhat lost faith in humanity or, more accurately, their parents, who are humanity’s representatives among children, and so children stop loving mankind, their parents, because they see their parents as executioners; instead, they direct their love to animals, to the animal kingdom, children find harmony with dumb animals and their suffering, although they’re not dumb, all animals have their own language and gestures, it’s just the interpreters are missing, not yet arrived, if I can’t understand German or Viennese, how can I understand pig? And when I step into my childhood dream of giving animals my love, I find I must castrate and kill them, castrate them and kill them, day in and day out, inject them full of drugs and filth; the childhood dream bursts in the adult nightmare, for veterinarians and for everybody else … the adult world is horribly brutish, my Interpreter, it is too late for me to become an author, if my dream had been nurtured when I started my biography at nine years old, I would have become a writer, everyone is always trying to destroy others’ dreams, my parents destroyed my dream by making fun of it, instead of encouraging it, you must start early if you want to flourish as an artist, there’s no time for anything else, you need to start your education at an early age and never stop, I am not talking about school education but self-study, the peace to pursue one’s interests like the Tvísker brothers have been able to, having never busied themselves with farming except for sheer pleasure, they would not be the scientists and artists they are today if they had been required to farm or carry out some other duty; if I’d been invited to write the story of my life when I was a little girl I’d have become an author and lived my dream instead of living in a nightmare as a vet, unceasing, how badly I’ve spent my time, spent my life badly … and now I’m hungry, can you fetch sandwiches or something, and get Sigurður on the way, my Interpreter, sandwiches now and Sigurður from Tvísker, now we need to put the big truck in the report, I first need to disperse my thoughts before I can collect myself in intense concentration, I don’t feel I can write right now, perhaps I can glean something from Sigurður while we have ourselves some sandwiches, put the time to use, instead of eating while staring into the air, we can find out something useful about the history of the Skaftafell district, perhaps when the phone lines were laid across Skeiðarársand, I don’t want salad or anything like that, just ham and pineapple, I think gleaning Sigurður’s words would be a glacial marker on the way to bringing the report to fruition, crossing the choppy, moving glacier that is writing, preferably white bread, and I could become a writer and stop having to castrate and kill animals, but my real dream, my dream is to get out of my dream, though then someone will take my place and continue to torment the animals, so it’s just as well that I do it, I want the sandwich toasted, animal suffering is a cog in the mechanism of society, you can’t stop the wheels, although that sanctimonious bore is always saying so on the radio, over and again, that reedy-voiced little fatso, can’t remember his name, also a jug of water and some glasses, Sigurður’s full of interesting information, he’s a really good and talented man, no ketchup or anything disgusting like that, it’s staggering that these Tvísker siblings are such intelligent people, perhaps it’s because they don’t waste their time farming but attend to their studies, I wish I could lose myself in study, you hear farmers and farm-dwellers say, but we need to attend to the livestock, attend to the livestock and attend to the livestock, always on the run from studying, or how else would we all live? Interpreter, off you go now, it’s just that everyone wants to be like them, like those gifted fellows without progeny, it’s said there’s mental illness in the family, now I’m going to stop castrating and killing and I’m going to apply myself to study, apply myself to creative writing, my dearest lady, my man! Applying oneself to writing is the most exalted and most sinful thing, worse than castrating and killing, I’m headed out of the ashes and into the fire, but who settled Öræfi? I’m going to ask Sigurður as we eat a sandwich, I know Ingólf Arnarson lived here a year or two at Ingólfshöfði but scholars don’t consider that settlement, so what’s settlement? My books are all at home, I want to travel with my books, to install bookshelves in the folding camper or pop-up camper or whatever it’s called, but my wife denies me even that, I was going to pack several essential books for the journey to Öræfi, including The Settlement of Skaftafell & its Governing by Einar Öl. Sveinsson, that first-class piece by a first-class scholar of those first-class pillars, it would have been better to leave a toothbrush than The Settlement of Skaftafell & its Governing, I’ve read it before, but a long time ago, I know the book well but that’s not the point, I’ve brushed my teeth often enough, I would not have to disturb Sigurður if I had the book, you follow, although everyone benefits from disturbing Sigurður, one grows more accomplished from proximity to him, a man spends his time well in the presence of smart people it says in The Brothers Karamazov, something like that comes to mind, I cannot remember who said it, whether it was Ivan or Alosja rather than Dimitri, it would have been good, time well-spent, looking that up, my wife took all the books out the camper van and put them back in their places in my office, she considers books to be furniture, or junk, she said that the family was headed on a trip together and I was not going alone on an outing with my books—but what family? Just her and her abominable poodle, I admittedly neglect them for my work, my endless work trips that take me the length and breadth of Suðurland, and, yes, by reading when I’m finally back home, it’s possible to watch TV together but not to read books together, unless we each read to one another, though I do not want to hear my wife spoiling the text of The Settlement of Skaftafell & its Governing by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, destroying a book which is so precious to me, she goes back to the TV and lies about all day and stares at it in the campsite between browsing about the Visitor Center, looking at postcards, lapping down ice creams, shitting in the bathroom … In modern society, we have to do everything ourselves, so there’s no way for anyone to become a real writer or real scholar, let alone a polymath, no one in modern times has the potential to become a generalist, that’s the past, it’s not so much that infinite specialization has set knowledge and science and philosophy into the shredder, rendering science nothing but a pile of strips nowadays, it’s rather there is no time, they are clever, those brothers Tvísker, they divided the studying between them so that together they are one great polymath; you have no time in these modern times, you have to do everything yourself, despite all the machines, appliances, all this stuff which makes you think you don’t have to do anything except be a master of all of it, cradling oneself in a rocking chair and sucking a pipe and thinking about the deeper questions of existence or even trifling questions, modern appliances let you think they are doing it all and that you yourself have nothing to do, but a person is constantly in a frenzy in their household, if you aren’t constantly in a frenzy the appliances send you an accusing glance so you are always guilty of not being in a frenzy with the appliances, and when you’re in a frenzy over these domestic devices, you’re guilty of not doing your literature and science, of not using the time to gain knowledge instead of being this damned slave to domestic appliances, for modern man is a slave to technology, to nothing else, everything intended to relieve human activity has made it heavier: as well as needing to know everything, you need to do everything yourself, in the past there were many people in a home and each had their role, now everyone is alone at home and has the task of doing everything; in fact, no one is at home any longer because all of us are out serving the State. Where formerly one cooked dinner, another tidied, one raised the kids, the shepherd herded the sheep, things were clear, now everything is so unclear, now everyone feels insulted, particularly women if reminded of a domestic role, there cannot be any division of labor, everyone has to do everything, know everything, and no one can be at home during the day because that would be State inequality, though no one does anything and no one can be anything but a domestic slave and nothing sensible comes from nothing … it will be nice to meet Sigurður from Tvísker, I want to tell him I’ve been a subscriber to his magazine Skaftfellingur from the beginning, although my wife was against it, because we aren’t from Skaftafell district but rather Rangárvalla district, so couldn’t I subscribe to Rangvellingur? But there is no magazine called Rangvellingur, there is the magazine Árnesingur from Árnes district but I don’t care to read it, then there’s the magazine Goðasteinn which Þórður published