by Sjón
— I know who you are. You’re Ess-jón.
He shot me a look over his shoulder, ready to snap: “No, actually, it’s pronounced Sjón, like the word for ‘vision’.” But when he realised it was the boy in the wheelchair who had spoken, his expression softened and he simply said:
— Maybe I am. Who are you?
Everyone knew Sjón was a surrealist and follower of the crazy artist Alfred Flóki. There was a rumour going round that earlier that autumn the young poet had eaten a live pigeon in honour of his master during a poetry reading in the assembly hall. So I just said:
— I’m a Ferris wheel, I’m a conch, I’m a sleeping door.
He laughed. The bell rang. And our acquaintance went no further.
A year later Sjón used my answer in a poem called “Paper”. I expect he’d forgotten that he hadn’t come up with the idea himself. So I did make my mark there.’
The Dance
They emerge from the darkness on every side, on to the dimly lit stage, like people at a disco when the band strikes up a tune that gets everyone itching to dance; teenagers now.
Girl: 12 January 1962 –✝13 January 1962, Girl: 13 January 1962 –✝13 January 1962, Girl: 21 January 1962 –✝21 January 1962, Boy: 24 February 1962 –✝27 February 1962, Boy: 1 March 1962 –✝14 April 1962, Girl: 13 May 1962 –✝14 May 1962, Girl: 13 May 1962 –✝17 May 1962, Girl: 5 May 1962 –✝21 May 1962, Boy: 7 May 1962 –✝25 May 1962, Girl: 19 May 1962 –✝26 May 1962, Girl: 27 May 1962 –✝27 May 1962, Girl: 28 May 1962 –✝29 May 1962, Boy: 22 June 1962 –✝23 June 1962, Boy: 27 June 1962 –✝30 June 1962, Boy: 10 February 1962 –✝11 July 1962, Girl: 30 April 1962 –✝11 July 1962, Boy: 10 February 1962 –✝16 July 1962, Boy: 16 July 1962 –✝16 July 1962, Boy: 9 July 1962 –✝18 July 1962, Girl: 19 July 1962 –✝19 July 1962, Boy: 31 July 1962 –✝31 July 1962, Girl: 1 August 1962 –✝1 August 1962, Boy: 29 March 1962 –✝3 August 1962, Boy: 9 July 1962 –✝4 August 1962, Girl: 13 February 1962 –✝7 August 1962, Boy: 1 July 1962 –✝18 August 1962, Boy: 17 August 1962 –✝20 August 1962, Girl: 3 September 1962 –✝3 September 1962, Boy: 1 October 1962 –✝6 October 1962, Boy: 18 November 1962 –✝18 November 1962, Boy: 27 November 1962 –✝27 November 1962, Boy: 18 December 1962 –✝18 December 1962, Girl: 16 December 1962 –✝23 December 1962, Boy: 19 November 1962 –✝? 1963, Girl: 27 July 1962 –✝9 February 1963, Girl: 8 August 1962 –✝14 February 1963, Girl: 30 March 1962 –✝16 February 1963, Girl: 21 October 1962 –✝3 March 1963, Boy: 1 August 1962 –✝1 April 1963, Boy: 7 June 1962 –✝4 April 1963, Girl: 27 February 1962 –✝10 April 1963, Boy: 9 February 1962 –✝15 April 1963, Boy: 11 November 1962 –✝1 May 1963, Girl: 3 December 1962 –✝14 May 1963, Girl: 30 June 1962 –✝16 May 1963, Boy: 19 July 1962 –✝8 August 1963, Boy: 11 December 1962 –✝3 October 1963, Boy: 5 February 1962 –✝26 October 1963, Girl: 29 May 1962 –✝26 October 1963, Boy: 6 May 1962 –✝14 November 1963, Boy: 14 January 1962 –✝16 July 1964, Boy: 10 February 1962 –✝4 September 1964, Boy: 30 July 1962 –✝30 September 1964, Girl: 1 July 1962 –✝18 October 1964, Boy: 10 May 1962 –✝5 January 1965, Girl: 6 August 1962 –✝18 February 1965, Girl: 4 October 1962 –✝9 October 1965, Boy: 24 June 1962 –✝14 November 1965, Boy: 9 February 1962 –✝23 December 1965, Girl: 9 August 1962 –✝13 January 1966, Boy: 29 October 1962 –✝10 July 1966, Girl: 10 November 1962 –✝20 December 1966, Boy: 8 February 1962 –✝10 January 1968, Girl: 12 January 1962 –✝18 February 1968, Boy: 7 September 1962 –✝30 September 1968, Boy: 24 August 1962 –✝8 April 1969, Boy: 22 November 1962 –✝12 May 1969, Boy: 23 December 1962 –✝26 December 1969, Boy: 24 March 1962 –✝1 October 1970, Boy: 22 February 1962 –✝17 November 1970, Girl: 7 August 1962 –✝29 January 1971, Boy: 14 March 1962 –✝10 March 1971, Boy: 16 April 1962 –✝4 April 1971, Boy: 19 June 1962 –✝10 October 1971, Boy: 15 December 1962 –✝26 December 1971, Boy: 17 June 1962 –✝12 March 1972, Boy: 10 May 1962 –✝18 January 1973, Boy: 11 October 1962 –✝30 March 1973, Boy: 7 April 1962 –✝29 January 1974, Girl: 19 April 1962 –✝26 March 1974, Boy: 23 September 1962 –✝28 August 1974, Boy: 28 December 1962 –✝7 July 1976, Girl: 10 September 1962 –✝17 November 1976, Boy: 6 December 1962 –✝1 January 1977, Boy: 22 November 1962 –✝27 June 1977, Girl: 22 July 1962 –✝28 August 1977 …
The younger boys are dressed in confirmation outfits, suits made of smooth velvet in shades of bottle brown or navy blue, with flared trousers and wide collars. The older ones are wearing suits bought for other people’s special occasions. Two of the girls are wearing new-looking dresses – one is dark blue, the other red with a fine floral print of forget-me-nots – while the third is wearing an ankle-length dress of white cotton with a lace trim, made especially for her funeral.
A mirror ball floats down from the ceiling. Four clicks echo in the darkness and from four different directions long, narrow beams of light pick out the silvery, multi-faceted surface. The ball begins to spin, splintering the beams into hundreds of dazzling spots that whirl around the space, illuminating the faces and bodies of those they encounter among the crowd of children silently watching the newcomers.
It takes the young people a moment to realise that this is no ordinary dance floor. Here they dance to the silence that ensues whenever someone departs this earthly life. Each of them sways to the absence of sound that attends their footsteps and hand claps, to the absence of their voices and intestinal noises, to the absence of all the rustling, splashing, banging and creaking that resulted when their living bodies made contact with the external world, to the absence of their breathing, the absence of their heartbeat.
They tread stiffly at first, their movements hampered by the differing causes or relative recentness of their death, but gradually they limber up.
Boy: 31 January 1962 –✝8 January 1978
Boy: 3 May 1962 –✝17 June 1978
Boy: 6 February 1962 –✝26 July 1978
Boy: 1 May 1962 –✝5 December 1978
Leading the dance is the boy who died in hospital after a long battle with a terminal illness, followed by the boy who disappeared with three others when their flimsy boat capsized in a flat calm while rowing out to an island on National Day – nothing ever washed ashore apart from a single trainer and one of the oars. He is pushing a wheelchair, in which sits a boy who had been seriously handicapped all his life but is now dancing along with the upper half of his body. And a little way behind them, his body undulating in the dance, comes an agile, curly-haired deckhand who was washed overboard from a trawler and sucked down into the cold December sea in the deeps off the West Fjords.
Boy: 15 October 1962 –✝13 May 1979
Boy: 12 July 1962 –✝8 December 1979
Then a boy dances in so fast that nobody would suspect for a minute that his leg had been amputated above the knee in his battle with the disease that had dragged him to his death in less than two years. A moment later their number is swelled by the boy who drowned when his car drove off the docks. In Iceland you can get a driver’s licence at seventeen.
Boy: 13 November 1962 –✝23 October 1980
He hesitates on the edge of the blizzard of lights, surveying those already there, including the boy who died in a work-related accident, crushed by a bulldozer during the construction of a hydroelectric power station. He joins the group. But he doesn’t dance.
Boy: 31 May 1962 –✝14 January 1981
Girl: 14 July 1962 –✝5 September 1981
Girl: 23 May 1962 –✝23 November 1981
Next to emerge from the shadows are a boy and girl who died in separate car crashes. He enters from stage left, slowly but light of foot; she from the right, swaying her hips, folding her arms at her chest. In her embrace we glimpse the faint image of a boy child, her eighteen-month-old son who died in the same crash. Then another figure enters the stage, as if from another room – though here there is no room apart from the stage itself – another girl, wearing a smile.
Boy: 5 September 1962 –✝
10 January 1982
Girl: 6 June 1962 –✝30 January 1982
Boy: 3 October 1962 –✝14 March 1982
The boy who died with his half-brother in a car accident now joins the dance, nineteen years old, the 110th child born in Iceland in 1962 to die. Close on his heels comes the 111th child, a girl who had become a mother herself less than a year before her death. Her body had not only been incubating a child but also the disease that was discovered three weeks after she gave birth. The disease is no more but the child is alive. The last to dance on to the stage this time has just risen from his deathbed in a bunkhouse in a fishing village, where he’d been suffocated by poisonous smoke after a fire broke out in his room. He looks over his shoulder into the darkness. For the moment there is no one else to be seen.
Four clicks. The mirror ball goes dark. The lights come on upstage.
The crowd of children is revealed. The youngsters screw up their eyes, shading them with their hands until they adjust to the light. Yes, they recognise some of the newcomers.
Thirteen voices have been added to the chorus:
— Dear brothers and sisters, born in 1962, we await you here.
A newborn cries.
14
‘To be something, to have a status in society, to be born at the centre of things, to live through momentous times, to be part of the world’s anthology of stories – if only in the gap between the lines, between the words, between the letters, or even in the minute blank space inside the lower-case “e”, just once in that dauntingly long book; could there be any more human desire than that? Don’t we all long to be something, to feel that we exist, that others notice our existence, for the brief space of time that we are here? And if you’re unlucky enough to be born on the northern periphery of war, whether war conducted on the battlefield of ideas or war that is fought with weapons in the skies, on land and sea, what choice do you have but to employ every trick in the book to write yourself into the history of ideas, to engineer a place for yourself in the great scheme of things, to think your way into human history, to weave yourself into the tapestry of all that exists?
* * *
THE GRAIN
She was known as “Blue Thread”. The first time they ever saw her her arms were blue from fingertips to shoulder. The colour started out as midnight blue on her nails, growing progressively lighter the higher it went, becoming crepuscular under her armpits before gradually fading out altogether into milk-white skin. Since it was a summer’s day, she was wearing a man’s black shirt with the sleeves cut off, which is how everyone could see her arms.
Over her shirt she wore a leather jerkin that came down to mid-thigh, and under this a pair of thick linen hose and rough wooden clogs on her feet. In other words, she was dressed like a male dye-worker – but as she was only eleven years old, and the overseer’s daughter to boot, no one took any notice if she wore hose like a boy or skirts like the women. If the girl found it more comfortable to crop her hair and walk around in men’s clothes, then she was welcome to, so long as she wrapped a sheet round her legs and donned a headscarf whenever officers of the church came by (to seek her father’s advice, for example, on a new, more vivid shade of red for the blood that springs from Christ’s body on the Cross, for what could be more wonderful than to see with one’s own eyes the glowing vitality in the blood that he shed so that mankind might prosper for all eternity?) or when she was dragged along with her family to social gatherings. It was in the company of her brother dye-workers that people saw her first.
And because, in addition to being blue, the girl’s arms were so slender as to be almost ridiculously spindly, though obviously possessing enough wiry strength for her to rival the adolescent boys when it came to lugging tub after tub of newly dyed hanks of wool and silk into the dye-shop, they nicknamed her “Blue Thread”.1
The name stuck when, two years later, she was taken on at the weaving workshop. It came in useful to have an experienced dyer on site in case the yarn of a particular colour unexpectedly ran out in the middle of an urgent commission. The dye-works where she had grown up was a day’s journey from the city and stood on the bank of a river that patiently received its dirty run-off, while the evil stench that accompanied the boiling and fermenting of the dyes was blown out to sea by the breeze off the shore at the end of the working day. Blue Thread brought with her sufficient supplies of dyestuffs to last in most cases for the first year or so, but to be on the safe side she acquired for her use a corner of the garden behind the building that housed the weaving workshop, and there, in a series of luxuriant beds, she cultivated plants for the primary colours: woad for blue, madder for red, and a variety of mignonette that yields a sunshine yellow, from which three ingredients she knew how to concoct all the 250 shades required by a workshop where such important and costly textiles were produced.
As one might expect, Blue Thread’s particular skill lay in the blue dye, and although the colour of her arms faded over the years – they remained as thin as ever even when her body began to thicken out in later life – the range from the darkest to the lightest shades on her skin remained the best point of reference the weavers could ask for when working with this colour, which was more challenging than all the rest, used as it was for the heavens, the home of God and His angels; for the robe of the Blessed Virgin Mary and for her flower, the periwinkle, and for the coats of arms of kings and queens, princes and princesses, who, along with the nobility and the growing burgher estate, were the workshop’s principal patrons, ordering tapestries to decorate their halls or as donations to churches and monasteries.
When, after working for five years as the in-house dyer and general saviour of the workshop, Blue Thread turned eighteen, she was finally offered a seat on the weavers’ bench. Ahead lay the biggest commission the master weaver had ever undertaken, a series of enormous tapestries, six scenes in the millefleur style, depicting a noble virgin with a lion and a unicorn.
The weavers got no wind of the negotiations between the patron, master weaver, designer and artist – in which the cost and make, quality and magnificence, subjects and symbolism, conditions and delivery date of the tapestries were worked out – but as soon as the first watercolour designs reached the workshop, they began to set up the looms, expanding one and lowering another, building two more, spinning the yarn and stretching the warp, calculating the number of hanks of wool and silk required, counting the shuttles and needles, and dividing up the different tasks. From the moment the cartoons were delivered on vast sheets of paper and positioned behind the white warp threads until the textiles were taken down four years later, Blue Thread sat alongside her brother weavers, labouring three days a week, from the clang of the morning bell to the ding of the evening one, while on the other days she took care of the dyes and yarns.
When major works are woven on horizontal looms, the cloth is taken up as you go along, so it disappears under the loom and the weaver never sees any more than the part he or she is working on at any given time. (One could liken this to diners being unable to see anything but the vague outlines of the food on their plates, only the morsel they cut off the cutlet coming into full focus, together with a splash of gravy and the three peas they pushed on to the fork, a type of dining that would seem most disagreeable to the uninitiated.) So it is always a great moment when the cloth-beam is released and the fabric unrolled, allowing people to see the bigger picture. In Blue Thread’s day this was done every four months.
In the third year of labour on what was to become one of France’s greatest national treasures, displayed to the public in the old monastery of Cluny in Paris under the title of La Dame à la licorne (the lion has been forgotten), the patron, Claude Le Viste herself, visited the workshop accompanied by a trio of inspectors armed with a royal charter to confirm their expertise and the authority to unravel any tapestry that did not meet their exacting standards.
The noble lady’s visit called for a full-scale clean-up. The workshop was swept and scrubbed from floo
r to ceiling. Anything shiny was polished until it gleamed. Men and women’s better clothes were washed, darned and pressed. The workers bathed themselves and cut, plaited and combed one another’s hair. These were good days, filled with hot water, the scent of soap and gales of laughter. Once the inspection was over a banquet was to be held in celebration of passing the test and people couldn’t wait. But as the big day approached, the weavers’ trepidation grew apace: the inspectors were notoriously hard to please and many months’ work would go down the drain if they didn’t like what they were shown. To make matters worse, there was no telling how the craftsmen would react to their verdict.
One shouldn’t fall into the trap of assuming that weavers are meek or cowardly, simply because they can sit still for hours engaged in what tough types dismiss as mere messing around with rags and twine. (It’s true that in photographs weavers often appear a little distracted, perched at their loom – that contrivance of beams, wheels and threads that looks like a half-finished organ with no sides or boards to hide its incomprehensible workings – staring at the camera with a far-off look in their eyes, for their thoughts are all on the cloth in the loom, not on the world that is in that instant directing its gaze at them.) In fact, the complete opposite is true. Of all the creatures on earth the weaver is most akin to the greatest predators, those patient animals who lurk motionless in a rocky cleft on the seabed, silently in a forest thicket or hovering beneath the clouds in the sky, waiting to pounce or swoop on their prey at exactly the right moment.
The weaver’s “pounce” can take many years. From the moment the first thread of the weft is pulled through the warp until the final knot is tied, those who “sit at the loom” most closely resemble the owls shown hunting small creatures in slow motion on natural history documentaries:
