The Fish Can Sing (51 page)

It was little wonder that I now began to grow hot under the collar, and I asked abruptly, “Is that how I sing, then?”

“Yes, that’s how you sing,” he said. “And that damned Icelander had thus managed to ruin this triumphal German-Scandinavian tour right at the start, and now it is the conductor himself who says to you, ‘It’s odds on that if you ever show your face in this choir again, we shall all be drowned in laughter here in America.’

“You shut yourself in your hotel room that evening and start trying to think, even though it’s rather pointless the way things are now. Perhaps you also say to yourself, ‘This is Gar
ar Hólm’s fault, the man who sat on the late Archangel Gabriel’s tombstone and listened to me singing
Just as the One True Flower
over a man without a face – it was he who put the idea into my head that I possessed that string of grace, that note which reached the heart and could call forth that useless salt water we call tears.’

“And then, that very same evening that your singing career has been shattered, suddenly the door of your room is thrown open and a well-known concert organizer is standing in front of you and starts to embrace you and kiss you. ‘Dearest beloved act,’ he says, and waves his cheque-book, ‘you are almost as good as the man who plays a stringless fiddle with a broomstick. You have those tired, despairing, bloodhound’s-eyes which almost equal Grock himself. I’ll dress you in a seaman’s blouse and send
you across the length and breadth of the United States with a company of comedians. I ask nothing of you except that you sing that funny solo by Handel, and sing it for yourself just as you did this evening without paying any heed to the people who come to listen – just so long as you promise to lift up those incredible Icelandic eyes of yours a few times during the recital!’ ”

When my life story had reached this point, Gar
ar Hólm paused again in his narrative and asked, “What do you do now?”

“I don’t want to be a famous half-wit,” I said.

He said, “Fame is just as good however it is achieved, my friend. Fame is like the Koh-i-noor jewel that miscreants from the Punjab stole and gave to the English king to put in his crown. That German-Scandinavian European cultural association you were committed to has told you to go to hell; and at the same moment an American comedy troupe arrives and offers you all the money and all the fame that a clown can possibly earn in this world. What do you do? The choice is to become a funny dramatic singer who is shown the door wherever he goes, or a sad clown for whom all doors are open. Now you have to be very clear about what a man seeks in his art. Did you want anonymity? Or were you seeking fame?”

I said, “Unearned fame seems to me no fame at all; at the very most it would be someone else’s fame.”

Gar
ar Hólm said, “Does the English king deserve to wear the Koh-i-noor diamond?”

“I think the only person who can wear it is the man who can match its value within himself,” I said.

“That’s a misunderstanding, my friend,” said Gar
ar Hólm. “The man who is worth anything never gets a jewel. What are you going to do?”

I said, “I suppose I would just go back home.”

“You can’t go back home,” said Gar
ar Hólm. “You have no money. And your grandmother is dead. You could, of course, go out and wash motor cars at night or wash up dishes in a hotel, in the hope of saving enough money for your fare in three or four years – and then come back home like a castaway to the liquor-shop in Gú
múnsen’s Store, from which you had originally
set out. But your problem is still unsolved. Why don’t you want to gain wealth and fame instead of standing behind the liquor counter in Gú
múnsen’s Store?”

“If I don’t attain the one pure note, I have no wish to be famous,” I said.

“Ah, if only that note were the guarantee of fame!” said Gar
ar Hólm. “But unfortunately it is much more likely to be the way to total anonymity. If you read an encyclopaedia, you will find that common thieves, to say nothing of murderers, particularly multiple murderers, command much more space than the greatest geniuses and men of intellect. You set forth to seek wealth and fame as a young singer; and you are offered the world on a plate as a clown – perhaps as a criminal. Choose! Make your choice here and now!”

I replied something like this: “Oh, most of the things I am told about fame and such-like go right over my head, although I’m rather fond of singing. I’m so bound to Brekkukot, somehow. I have always hoped to be allowed to become a lumpfisherman; and I know that when I am ninety and have lost all sight, hearing, sense of smell, taste, and feeling, I shall sit in a corner somewhere and think about when I was seeing to the lumpfish-nets with my grandfather in Skerjafjör
ur late in the winter before another living soul was up and about, and there was no glimmer of light anywhere except in one little cottage on Álftanes.”

“You’re a strange boy,” said Gar
ar Hólm, and looked at me in the late-summer dusk. “You don’t believe in anything, not one single thing; not even in the Barber of Seville.”