different from them. Now, finally, now my parents are dead, I will allow my dream to come true, for why haven’t I done it before? In reality, it isn’t possible to do anything in this world until everyone is dead and one finally gets some peace—when all those who have placed obligations on your shoulders are finally dead, you are free and can make your dreams come true, although then you’d be alone in the world, unable to achieve anything. I never wanted children, just to be kind to animals and care for them in this evil human world, prevent them from suffering and cruelty, but it’s proved impossible to escape my family, I’ve been forced to cause many animals to suffer and worse, so much worse, I have been forced to castrate them and kill them, to castrate animals, Interpreter, that is an unspeakable horror … and I cannot get out of this, it has often occurred to me to castrate myself as a deliberate punishment, a payment for all the eunuchs I have made, to remove my uterus, because these are undeniably crimes, crimes against animals, crimes against nature, crimes against life and crimes against God! …You have selected a good job, how noble it is to interpret between people in this post-Babylonian world of ours, Dr. Lassi said, her face clouding as she looked wearily up at the ceiling light, causing shadows to thread shallow wrinkles around her eyes, making her look intensely disordered and cruel, her youth and dreams eaten up the way suburban street systems eat up nature. I have sometimes looked at myself, feeling a pressing need to justify myself, to have self-belief after a hard day at work, and have told myself I’m an interpreter, interpreting between humans and animals, and my wife tells me to cook and clean, she does it indirectly, I come home and nothing has happened at home since the morning, she has been at home all day watching TV, she commands me, dead tired, to cook and clean and I tell her I’m an interpreter between humans and animals, and then I clean and cook food and do it with good graces … but I’m no interpreter, I’m 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
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