Gnarr (9 page)

I had no idea what a mayor actually did. We’d had mayors who were mentally unstable and others who were alcoholics. I was neither. What would an average working day look like? I’d probably be in my office sitting at my desk, signing a few documents and making a lot of calls. Then a debate about something or other, and then a concert or theater premiere. It didn’t sound bad. And I would get a chauffeur—much to my amusement.

“What kind of car does he drive?”

“A Skoda Octavia.”

“How respectable. Anyway, we can change that. We could buy an Explorer with tinted windows instead.”

The next morning the driver picked me up from home. I was nervous, excited, and bleary-eyed. I’d lain awake all night. On the way to City Hall we stopped off at Heiða’s, as she was going to be at my side as personal advisor for the first few months. When she was later promoted to the party presidency, S. Björn Blöndal took over, and he’s done a good job as my assistant and advisor ever since.

City Hall had inspired some unease in me ever
since it was built. I had entered it only in exceptional cases, for example when one of the children had to go to the bathroom urgently, and I’d seen the building as cold and depressing every time. In addition, it stood for all the endless debates and countless scandals that had marked city politics in Reykjavík over the years.

We rolled into the underground car park beneath City Hall and parked under a sign that said
MAYOR
.
From there we took the elevator to the third floor. The staff greeted me and introduced themselves. Deputy Mayor, Head of Department, Chief Secretary, Head Porter. I had no idea who was responsible for what. The office manager was Regína, a red-haired, feisty woman my age. I liked her immediately. She was quick-witted and seemed to have a sense of humor.

Then they presented me with my office, which more precisely consisted of two huge rooms along with a private bathroom, shower, and view of the Reykjavík city lake. Outside along the glazed front ran a balcony that looked out directly onto the surface of the water. On the desk gleamed a brand new MacBook Pro with a fifteen-inch monitor. My computer. Originally, they’d wanted to get me a ThinkPad, but I’d told them I absolutely couldn’t cope with Windows.

Then Regína took me in detail through my rights and obligations. By now I’d realized that I had not only one new job, but several. I was the chief supervisor of the largest employer in Iceland. I had eight thousand people under me. Also, I was, politically speaking, the
representative of the city council—and of all the inhabitants of Reykjavík.

Fuck.

Finally, the conversation turned to my family.

“And your wife will always be by your side?”

“Hm. I haven’t thought about that yet.”

“In general, the mayors decide for themselves whether and to what extent their spouse is a public presence.”

Without my wife, nothing works for me. Our relationship is extremely close, and we try as much as possible to participate in each other’s lives.

“I’d like her to be there, as often as possible in any case,” I said. “So long as, well, it isn’t too stupid or annoying for her.”

“Would she go with you to premieres, openings, and similar events?”

“Absolutely. Even if we’re not always the biggest of premiere goers. I just don’t want it to turn into a form of torture for her.”

“In two weeks the ‘Forum of Scandinavian Capitals’ is taking place in Stockholm. It will be a chance for you to get to know the mayors of Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen.”

Fuck.

“We have to organize the trip and book the flight. So will you wife be going too?”

“Er, that would be great, yes. Would she have to pay for herself?”

“No. You’re entitled at any time to take your wife,” said Regína. Then she added, “But you have to expect that the media won’t leave it without comment.”

“You mean that if my wife comes too, then the next day her photo may be all over the front page of
Morgunblaðið
, along with a headline along the lines of
Reykjavík’s New First Lady: City Foots Bill For Luxury Trip
?”

Regína nodded. “Something like that. They’re always phoning here. They’ll jump on you and ruthlessly use whatever they can find.”

“Okay. If so, I don’t want my wife or my family to be exposed. I’ll see it all through on my own.”

“That will probably be best under the circumstances, I’m afraid,” she agreed. “Unfortunately.” There followed a long silence.

“Do I actually get any leave?”

“Yes, you have the right to four weeks of vacation per year, but you should, if possible, never take more than one or two weeks off at a time. Most mayors take two weeks over Christmas and New Year, and then two weeks in the summer.”

“Okay.”

“Now, in the first week you don’t yet have a full schedule. It’s a matter of you meeting people and making yourself familiar with how it all works here. I’ve made you appointments with all the major heads of department who’ll give you the info on the different areas. Oh, and the city treasurer would like to have a
chat with you and the Coalition soon, on the Orkuveita situation.”

I attended the strangest meetings and gatherings. Quite early on, I took part in a video conference of the “Fund for West Scandinavian Cooperation,” a cooperative project between the capital cities of Reykjavík, Nuuk, and Tórshavn to promote the goal of cultural exchange between these cities. So I sat in City Hall in front of a webcam, while behind me images of city council meetings in Greenland and the Faroe Islands were projected onto a screen. The wifi was quite weak, and as soon as someone moved too fast either the picture froze, or there was no picture at all. When I looked into the camera, I couldn’t see the others. The sound came over the in-house speaker system, which, with the unstable online link, led to people sounding as if they had a wet dishcloth in their mouths. Since, to crown it all, I’m hard of hearing, I had great difficulty in following the discussion, especially since it was taking place in Danish, a language in which I had never excelled.

The whole thing was incredibly embarrassing, and at the same time rather comical. Luckily, we’d gone over the proposals before and had marked everything we wanted to approve. So Heiða stood on a chair, pressed her ear to the speaker, and gave a thumbs-up or down. Then I looked into the camera again and said either “Reykjavík siger ja” or “Reykjavík siger nej.”

After the initial hysteria had subsided and the voices of the critics and carpers gradually faded, people took a closer look and realized that many initiatives supported by the Best Party were correct and necessary. The merger of schools was well received on the whole. We merged the preschools into fewer and bigger units and also merged the primary schools with the after-school daycare centers. Students and parents were satisfied, and instead of skepticism and contempt we earned confidence and respect. Within the party, we tried especially hard to adopt a decent tone. We supported each other in our respective roles and took the time to talk about problems and to explain why we were doing or not doing this or that.

Soon, by a majority decision, I was appointed as the group’s “Smokescreen.” This meant I had the task of embarking on deliberate maneuvers to draw the attention of our opponents to me as a kind of decoy, a lightning rod for attacks and nastiness of any kind, so that others could focus on the party agenda. After all, I was used to attacks. And besides, it meant I could justify my nickname “The Clown at City Hall.” So, for example, in a live interview I cheerfully admitted that there
was plenty I didn’t understand and certain questions to which I simply had no answer. This might have seemed like a distraction, but it was a plan to get back to work.

I’ve had all sorts of lousy jobs over the years. As an unskilled laborer on construction sites and in factories. As a taxi driver, psychiatric nurse, and caregiver in facilities for the disabled. For me there are no good and bad jobs. At best, a job can be done well or badly. So far, I’ve tried in every job to do my best, whether it was laying paving stones or packing plastic bags. If people are still not happy, there’s almost nothing I can do about it. They just have to make do with me—or find someone else.

In the first one hundred days of my time in office, the media more or less left us in peace, only to pounce on us all the more mercilessly shortly thereafter. Newspapers published countless reports and articles about all my screw-ups and everything that was wrong about the city. Our political opponents couldn’t get over my appearance, my fashion style, and God knows what else. Almost daily, journalists would call, on the hunt for new details about me and my work. The press were watching me everywhere, trying to make me feel uncomfortable and laying the blame for everything they could at my door. They used quotes from interviews I’d given, taken completely out of context, to prove what a failure I was. When we had a particularly snowy winter in Reykjavík, this of course was also my fault.

I did my best to react with calmness, patience,
and restraint. The fact that journalists didn’t exactly love me came as no surprise; after all, I’d never spared them either, often throwing their own questions back at them or giving them incoherent answers. But the press obviously considered it their democratic duty to expose me. I had done my bit to encourage them with sayings like “The media are part of the problem, not the solution.” But while they tried to wear me down, to general sympathy, my colleagues could calmly get on with work for the party. Most of them were quiet, restrained people from other professions, completely unaffected by the hurly-burly of the media.

In contrast, I grew up in an environment where violence and aggression were always on the agenda. Even as a stand-up comedian, I had been exposed to constant threats and harassment. Early in my career I didn’t make much of a good impression; people were outraged and dismayed, some were even offended. I was accused of homophobia, racism, misogyny, and disrespect for central social values. I picked up no fewer than fifteen criminal charges for things that people didn’t find funny. Plus a charge for attempted treason and criminal proceedings for trespassing in the Althingi.

Interestingly, among my aggressors I attracted the mentally disturbed in particular. For a while I was pursued by a woman who thought I would steal the thoughts of her sleeping children. Once, on the way home from my job at the radio station, a mentally disturbed man came at me with a sledgehammer. I ran
and hid in a supermarket. Eventually the police came and pulled the man out of traffic. When the incident was reported in the media, the undertone of schadenfreude was unmistakable: finally, someone who was always dragging others through the mud had gotten his comeuppance.

Anyone who has ever tried to make comedy knows that he is thereby embarking on a fight against rejection, bigotry, and misanthropy. How many times have I stood on a stage in some low dive in front of a more or less drunk audience and had to listen to threats, verbal abuse, and humiliation. All this is to say that the sharp wind that was now whistling against me in the political scene was nothing new, and I defended myself by being provocative and even raising the wind myself. Sideswipes from the opposing camp left me relatively unfazed—the meaner and nastier they were, the better. As long as they worked off their negative energy on me, at least the others were spared such attacks.

From the beginning I tried to build up a good relationship with my employees, my colleagues, and the management team in the city administration. The city of Reykjavík is fortunate to have well-trained professionals with years of experience at its disposal. I treated each of them with respect, but also wanted to be respected in return. Very soon they all realized that I intended to go about my job seriously and sincerely, and wasn’t just the unpredictable, crazy clown that many people took me for.

If there’s one thing that has particularly influenced my fight against violence and negative energy, it’s so-called sustainable transparency. Sustainable transparency uses the approaches and methods of judo and transfers them to interpersonal skills. In short, it consists of this: Instead of fighting negative energies, you simply let them sweep over you. You don’t put up any resistance, but either give way or try to adopt the destructive power of your attackers and turn it against them. In Chinese philosophy, this principle is called Wu Wei, which literally means “let it happen” or “non-intervention.”

I’ve read all the most important scriptures of Taoism and have trained in judo for years. It was always my greatest ambition in so doing to learn how to suggest to the enemy that he is unsure or afraid. I learned the various holds and throws, and how to make the other fall into a trap by pretending you have a weak spot. In other words, you lead your enemies to underestimate you, and as soon as they to seize the opportunity and launch an attack, the trap snaps shut—and they’ve lost. What most amazed me in judo was how blind to these strategies other people were. How they fell for the
same trick again and again. It worked best with rough, primitive thugs. The coarser and more aggressive they were, the more easily they could be distracted and flattened. With them I just needed to pretend I was wiping the sweat off my brow, and already they felt safe and inattentive, just as I intended: I quickly responded—and that was that. In this way I defeated opponents who were twice as strong as me.

The point is to wear down opponents gradually, until they finally give up. In addition, this principle prevents you from stooping to the level of the attacker. Through this deliberate non-intervention you get the others to lose their balance. When, for example, someone gets terribly upset in a meeting and starts being noisy—the first level of violence—I just look into the face of the person concerned with big eyes and a simple smile. This in turn makes him even more upset. So he gets even louder and hurls empty insults around, because the absence of any reaction on my part makes him incandescent with rage. A surprisingly large number of people freak out at the slightest opportunity and don’t pull themselves together until everyone is staring at them in perplexed silence. By that time they have not only lost their self-control, but also their dignity.