The Bone Clocks

GOING DOWNSTAIRS, I make way for a dozen teenagers trooping up. Where do Juno and Anaпs go on their school trips in Montreal? Not knowing saddens me. What a long-distance, part-time father I am. These twenty-first-century children of Iceland are plugged into headsets but still exude that Nordic confidence and sense of wellbeing, even the two African Icelanders and a girl in a Muslim headdress. All have a 2 in front of their birth year and need barely scroll down an inch when finding it on an online form. They carry a fragrance of hair conditioner and fabric conditioner. Their consciences are as undented as cars in a dealership showroom, and all are bound for the world’s center stage, where they’ll challenge, outperform, and patronize us old farts at our retirement parties, as we did when we looked that beautiful. Their teacher brings up the rear and smiles his thanks at me, and as he passes, a rather fine mirror is revealed on the Laxness stairway. From its deep square well of grays peers out a haggard look-alike of Anthony Hershey. Look at that. My metamorphosis into Dad is complete. Did some evil spirit at Бsbyrgi suck out the last of my youth? My hair’s thinner, my skin’s tired, my eyes bloodshot; my neck’s going all saggy and turkey-like … I summon a Tagore quote, for consolation: “Youth is a horse, and maturity a charioteer.” Dad’s aging lips twitch into a sneer and speak: “I see no charioteer. I see a sociology lecturer at a third-rate university who just learned that his department’s being axed because nobody except future sociology lecturers studies sociology anymore. You’re a joke, boy. Do you hear me? A joke.”

My prime of life is going, going, gone …

TRUDGING DOWN TO the Mitsubishi waiting in Gljъfrasteinn’s small car park, I check the time on my phone—and find a message from Carmen Salvat. It is not the message I might have wished to receive.

hello crispin pIs can we talk? x yr friend C

I huff. My soul still aches from being dumped, but I’m handling it. I don’t want to have to unhandle it, or un-unhandle it. We ingest our emotions, and grief for a lost relationship is not what I want to ingest. Carmen’s “yr friend” is code for “We won’t be getting back together”and “hello” instead of “hi” is the textual equivalent of a chilly air-kiss rather than a cheek-to-cheek contact kiss:

maybe not for a while, if that’s ok. It still hurts and I’m bored of the pain. No offense meant and mind yourself. C.

After pressing send I wish I’d taken more care to sound less petulant and/or self-pitying. Suddenly the river’s annoyingly clattery: How did Laxness get any work done, for buggery’s sake? The gathering clouds are lead-lined gray, not Zen gray. The aging day’s intersecting meanings form a crossword that defeats me, not inspires me, like it used to. I’m not as good a writer as Halldуr Laxness. I’m not even as good a writer as the younger Crispin Hershey. I’m just as shit and uncommitted a dad as Dad, only his films will survive longer than my overregarded novels. My clothes are crumpled. My lecture’s at seven-thirty. My heart is still crusty with emotional scabs, and I don’t want them pulled off by a Spanish ex-partner.

No. We can’t talk. I switch off my phone.