In the wake of a “village idiot” and a murder investigation, the Swiss evokes the fishing crisis in Iceland by mixing realism, humor and poetry.
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Kalmann closed, we begin to hope that a filmmaker like Aki Kaurismäki adapts it. The latter is Finnish and not Icelandic, but after all, Joachim B. Schmidt is Swiss (German-speaking) and he writes about Iceland where he has lived since 2007. And we find in his fourth novel, Kalmannqualities shared with the filmography of the director of The Man Without a Past : very dark and luminous at the same time, realistic and surreal, poignant and funny, socio-economic and hypnotic, depressing and joyful. A nugget published last year, which had escaped us in the pile, fortunately resurfaced thanks to an almost tectonic movement of plates.
The title takes the first name of the narrator and main protagonist, Kalmann Óðinsson. This strapping 33-year-old lives in Raufarhöfn, a small port near the Arctic Circle. Far from Reykjavik where everything is decided, starting with fishing quotas, an activity from which this village has always lived. Overfished, herring has become extremely rare, Raufarhöfn has fallen back on lumpfish, haddock, ling, sea bass and mackerel. That’s when quotas were introduced, with shenanigans involved, as his grandfather explained to Kalmann by comparing fish to candy. “Now the warehouses were unused and one house in three was empty”. And the building where the fishermen lived has been transformed into a hotel for tourists.
Fortunately, Kalmann specializes in shark fishing. He then demonstrates unfailing patience. Otherwise, he is quite explosive, punching holes in walls with his fists, self-harming. It must be said that the sea is his element, which he examines with precision – “A sea always looks as if it hasn’t been touched by anyone except the wind.” On his boat, there is no one to say that he has the “head hollow like a buoy”, and he can chat with the seagulls, something his beloved grandfather loved to do before he was put in a retirement home and almost no longer recognizes Kalmann, who is heartbroken. But Kalmann gives the lie, roaming the village as a sheriff, with cowboy hat, star and mauser bequeathed to him by an American father who quickly vanished into thin air.
Kalmann is also a hunter, that’s how he discovered a pool of blood one day when he went fox hunting – “It’s surprising, actually, how much blood there is in a person”. The body has disappeared but the analyzes point to Róbert McKenzie alias “the king of Raufarhöfn”, the richest man in the village, who had the largest fishing quota and relied heavily on tourism. Kalmann finds himself at the forefront of the police investigation, which he confuses with his polar bear stories. But he can count on the love of his mother and the powerful analyzes of Noi, his best friend, a geek he only knows online and whose sweater he has only ever seen.
Kalmann, Translated from German (Switzerland) by Barbara Fontaine, ed. Gallimard, coll. La Noire, 368 p., €22.
