Dr. Lassi seemed familiar with the antiseptic revolution brought about by the Hungarian obstetrician Dr. Semmelweis, I mused there in the hay-wagon, how he saved countless lives with hand-washing and good hygiene for mother and newborn alike; perhaps Dr. Lassi knows Dr. Semmelweis through the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, as I do: Céline wrote an important essay about Semmelweis when he qualified as an obstetrician, La vie et l’oeuvre de Philippe Ignace Semmelweis, really more a literary than a medical text, I thought in the hay-wagon on my way to Freysnes, many good writers have been doctors, these professions are by nature similar …
It’s the custom in Öræfi to make do with whatever lies to hand, and Dr. Lassi was well acquainted with that region, having steeped herself in regional life; during her vacations at the Skaftafell campsite with her family and camper van she considered herself a true Öræfing. They would arrive early each spring before lambing started, a time when there were few tourists around. This year, their vacation had run together with Easter, which fell later than normal. Dr. Lassi didn’t hesitate in her task, injecting me with horse tranquilizer via a horse syringe, the sight of which turned me white: I’ve dosed you with the butter-drug, my friend, said Dr. Lassi, and you’ll feel a little numb, beyond cares; you’re heading to another world but remaining with us still, watch carefully now, watch everything carefully and then tell me what you see.
The patient’s case revolves around a significant injury to his leg, Dr. Lassi wrote shortly after in her report: the foot had frostbite and septicemia, and gangrene had begun to develop in the upper thigh, an ugly fleshrot known as coldburn had entered the bone; a large chunk had been bitten out of the thigh, probably several days ago, in a bad frost, Dr. Lassi’s report concludes. I examined the wound and saw at once the bite was from something with straight teeth, not canines, thought it can hardly have been a man who bit this kid in the leg, wrote Dr. Lassi, unless it was someone with an oddly large mouth, like Mick Jagger, though it’s highly unlikely he’s on a trip to East Skaftafell at this very moment, nor would such a decent man turn utterly brutal without warning, though given he’s been out west sailing a little cutter recently the possibility can’t be entirely ruled out, not that you’d find a cutter amid the black sands here, with all the surf and oceanic erosion—no, some wild animal bit the boy, some highly-evolved wild animal with transverse-ridged teeth … Dr. Lassi jotted the three periods of an ellipsis in her report; the interpreter was standing right there, some timid country girl. What’s the guy saying? Dr. Lassi asked the interpreter and the interpreter pricked up her ears: He’s telling his mom not to go over to some green Mercedes Benz, he’s repeating that phrase again and again, he’s looking for her and can’t find her.
Dr. Lassi and the interpreter scanned their eyes over me a long time, their garrulous patient, until Dr. Lassi became angry at the continual delay in fetching clean towels and the rest of the things for which she’d asked; lacking what she needed, she started taking off her own clothes. Underneath she was wearing gray woolen underwear and some kind of tank top; she tried to remove my pants but couldn’t do it without causing me great pain so she vigorously cut the pants’ legs open with a pocket knife. Dr. Lassi slipped off her underclothes and made a tourniquet above the wound using her bra, untying the scarf I’d bound there to cut off my circulation, a scarf now thick with coagulated blood. Dr. Lassi was in good shape, and people were embarrassed at suddenly having a naked lady there inside the hotel room. She cried out for vodka and whiskey and Brennivín and spirits and toothpaste and any books that could be found out here, maps, almanacs … everything! shouted Dr. Lassi. People leapt to their feet and disappeared about the hotel, searching in the kitchen and the toilets, opening all the cupboards, going into bedrooms; someone picked up the phone and made a call. Amid all this a bottle came flying, as if summoned by the shouting itself, responding of its own accord … Dr. Lassi plucked it out the air and upturned it over her underwear, cleaning the thigh with great care and devotion; she took a decent swig herself then poured the dregs sensually into my mouth, as though I was her lover dying in a mountain cabin …After finishing up, Dr. Lassi got to her feet; she wrapped herself in her wax overcoat to hide her nakedness and looked at everyone with large, predatory eyes.
In Dr. Lassi’s report there are arguments about how it wouldn’t have served any purpose to call an ambulance: since the community was reunified, it’s 350 kilometers to the nearest hospital, a 12-hour drive given how much there is to see on the way, things one simply has to stop and examine, all kinds of natural wonders which no one could remain unmoved by—and the helicopter was busy out west in the fjords doing something with the Viking Task Force, shooting rogue cattle or else out with reporters, capturing images of Mick Jagger some damn place, Dr. Lassi writes, and there’s no port anywhere in Suðurland, just immense breakers crashing over the sands and across the wilderness; in order to steer a ship to land here, you’d need to know by heart an essay written by the “fire cleric” Jón Steingrímsson, Um að ýta og lenda í brimsjó fyrir söndum (“On Steering and Landing a Ship on Waveswept Sands”)—an essay everyone has neglected over the years; the article isn’t part of the education curriculum and the consequences for today’s travelers are most grave.
Dr. Lassi asked for all the toothpaste in the hotel: once gathered, the toothpaste was to be squeezed out of the tubes into a large bowl; she also needed a trowel or tile float. Several people got to work on this. These tubes are appallingly tiny, said Dr. Lassi. And then Dr. Lassi needed a saw: she stretched out her hand, looked up to the heavens and asked for a saw but no saw appeared in her palm; there wasn’t a saw to be found at the hotel in Freysnes, which shocked many people. No saw? I have saws a-plenty at home, said old Muggur, the farmer from Bölti, if we were at my house, you could have your pick of saws, Dr. Lassi, I have all kinds of saws, wood saws, hacksaws, wheel saws, a saber saw, a table saw, a chainsaw … At the hotel, there were blunt, non-serrated kitchen knives of every kind (only soft food was served there) and a number of wickedly sharp pocket knives, whetted on emery, all arrayed on a tray the local farmers offered to Dr. Lassi so she could carry out her mission; Flosi from Svínafell said that perhaps there might be an angle grinder in his jeep, could she possibly make use of such a thing? …That’ll do it! Dr. Lassi’s exclamation echoed around the hotel, already wobbling on its foundation, the patient is totally out of it …What did you give the fellow? demanded Jakob from Jökullfell quietly, why does it smell of hay? It’s butyric acid! cried Dr. Lassi, made from silage, a domestic-designed and produced medicine, often used in date rape; even if the good gentleman is half-awake, he won’t remember anything after the operation, won’t feel a thing during it, all because of how effective the medicine is. Flosi from Svínafell came back from his vehicle; the angle grinder leapt to life and the hotel splattered with red gore; people felt the mountains dim and the glacier cracking and the sands moaning … Dr. Lassi was dexterous with the angle grinder, taking the leg off at the asshole and scrotum with swift hacks. It saved the tourist’s life, Dr. Lassi writes a little further on in her report, and it was necessary—because of the acute abscesses, infections, deep freezing and frost and fleshrot and coldburn—to entirely sever one of his ass cheeks, and also his penis; the tourist was then sewn back together with twine sterilized in Brennivín; his asshole was saved, although it would have been safer to take that, too, Dr. Lassi writes in her report, before proceeding to provide a literary survey of the local region.
Rumor has it that Dr. Lassi sent the pecker into town on a bus, rolled in cellophane and packed in a cooler to preserve it. The package was