"Rock, Paper, Scissors" by Naja Marie Aidt & K. E. Semmel
Revisiting Naja Marie Aidt's first novel
For a while now, I’ve been planning on posting at least once a week on an Open Letter backlist title (like today), some stats and highlights from the (hopefully soon to be) revamped Translation Database, interesting new translations from other presses, maybe even some of the old-school publishing business type posts from the old blog . . . And thanks to the Life on Books podcast, I’m kicking off the Open Letter featured backlist segment with a look at Rock, Paper, Scissors, a 2015 publication written by Naja Marie Aidt and translated from the Danish by K. E. Semmel.
Before getting into the book itself, I want to take a minute to praise Life on Books. Run by Tony P with his co-host Andrew Merritt (aka Metafictional Meathead), Life on Books has quickly become one of the most popular book podcasts out there. Tony and Andy talk about great books and publishers, are very earnest and engaging, and create consistently interesting content. Open Letter has done a number of cross-promotions with them in the form of discounts and sales, and I can attest to the fact that their listeners are incredibly loyal and dedicated to reading.
I also want to say that just a couple weeks ago, Andy was diagnosed with a brain tumor, for which he underwent successful surgery. To the best of my knowledge, his recovery is going well, everything has been much smoother than he expected, and he’s been taking it easy by rereading The Crying of Lot 49 and joining the club of people (myself included) who have a muted post-horn tattoo. There is a GoFundMe set up to help him with medical costs, in case you’re interested in donating.
On a happier note, the most recent podcast is an interview with Kyle (K. E.) Semmel about their May Book Club book, Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Check that out for all of Kyle’s insights into Naja’s book, his own writing, the art of literary translation, and much more.
To be completely honest, I can’t quite remember how we came to do this novel, which happens to be the last work of Naja’s fiction to appear in English. (Two Lines published a collection of her stories, Baboon, back in 2014, which was her first work to appear in English. Also, her memoir, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book, came out from Coffee House in 2019, and she does have an untranslated novel that came out in Danish last year, “Exercises in Darkness,” which Denise Newman is translating, although I’m not sure if that’s for a publisher or not.) I know it came out of an editorial trip to Denmark, the result of which was our “Danish Women Writers Series” that included Naja’s novel along with Justine by Iben Mondrup & Kerri A. Pierce, One of Us Is Sleeping by Josefine Klougart & Martin Aiken, the easiness and the loneliness by Asta Olivia Nordenhof & Susanna Nied, and The Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen & Gaye Kynoch. And I know I met Naja first in person in Iceland in . . . 2010? But I don’t remember if this was pitched to us and it turned out Kyle was a fan and wanted to translate it, or if he knew we were setting up a Danish series for women writers and he brought it to us.
Regardless! This is a fantastic book that blends Naja’s incredible care for language—her background is in poetry, and honestly, I think of her as a poet—mixed with an almost thriller-like plot that unfolds after a father with a criminal past passes away and a secret is discovered . . .
Although I will reread these books in the future to provide my own, newly revised take and description, I wasn’t able to get to this over the weekend, so here’s our jacket copy:
Naja Marie Aidt’s long-awaited first novel is a breathtaking page-turner and complex portrait of a man whose life slowly devolves into one of violence and jealousy.
Rock, Paper, Scissors opens shortly after the death of Thomas and Jenny’s criminal father. While trying to fix a toaster that he left behind, Thomas discovers a secret, setting into motion a series of events leading to the dissolution of his life, and plunging him into a dark, shadowy underworld of violence and betrayal.
A gripping story written with a poet’s sensibility and attention to language, Rock, Paper, Scissors showcases all of Aidt’s gifts and will greatly expand the readership for one of Denmark’s most decorated and beloved writers.
And here’s a clip of a review from Asymptote Magazine written by Naheed Patel:
Things start to fall apart when Thomas, while helping his sister sort out Jacques’s things at his rundown apartment, finds a huge sum of money hidden in an old, broken toaster. Thomas decides to keep the money even though he knows his father probably came by it illegally. He hides the money in his basement; but it makes him sick with anxiety every time he thinks about it. [. . .]
Of course, Anglophone readers would not have been able to access Aidt’s Promethean novel if it wasn’t for K. E. Semmel—who has masterfully rendered Aidt’s spare, ascetic prose into English without displacing any of the dark emotions that lurk just underneath. I highly recommend Rock, Paper, Scissors—it is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. Aidt’s writing is free of superlatives and affectations; yet it is so vivid that I could picture every scene. At times, I imagined there was a projector running in my head, showing me a Lars Von Trier movie that had been Certified 90% Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes.
It also got a *Starred Review* from Publishers Weekly that ends brilliantly:
Laced with sex, marital problems, family drama, and money woes, Aidt’s supremely cultivated novel is concerned with the struggle to connect with those we truly love and the consequences of remaining distant. Aidt writes with verve, passion, and a sharp edge, animating a smart set of characters who must fight for truth and happiness.
Before ending with a considerable excerpt from the novel, I want to call attention to K. E. Semmel’s other works, all of which are worth checking out.
His first novel, The Book of Losman, came out last year and is a quasi-science-fiction work about an experimental cure for Tourette’s. He’s also translated almost a dozen works—ranging from literary fiction to thrillers—which you can find here. Two that I’d like to call attention to are The World and Varvara and Milk and Other Stories, both by Simon Fruelund. Simon is an incredible literary citizen who has worked as an editor at Gyldendal and teaches creative writing.
For a bit more insight into Kyle’s novel and how Fruelund’s work relates, check out this special Three Percent podcast:
And we’ll end with a lengthy excerpt from Naja Marie Aidt’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, which is available directly from Open Letter and wherever good books are sold:
The last time he saw the apartment was many years ago. It’s in a narrow, indistinct redbrick structure squeezed between two taller buildings, the tallest of which is now apparently equipped with balconies. Small trees have been newly planted on each side of the street. A woman carrying a child strapped to her chest leaves the playground across the way. The playground is also new. A fire station used to be there. He remembers the constant howling of the sirens when he was very little. Then it’d been razed, leaving an empty space where local kids hung out in great, squealing f locks, and where he and his friends built a fort made of boards (and one summer, in this fort, they’d smoked their first cigarettes, which they took turns stealing from their fathers). But the building looks the same. The windows haven’t been replaced. There’s no intercom. Even the door with its chipped blue paint is the same. Thomas shoves it open with his foot and steps into the stairwell. A steep stairwell adorned with something that was once a wine-red runner—now so filthy it’s nearly black. The wood creaks under him, the timer light clicks off. He locates the light switch and continues up to the fourth floor accompanied by the ticking of the timer light. As children, he and Jenny couldn’t reach the switch, so they had to feel their way forward in the darkness. He puts his hand on the railing. The hand recognizes each turn, each crack, each unevenness. The pungent odor of rot and mothballs is so familiar that he doesn’t even notice it at first. But suddenly it nauseates him. His father’s apartment door is open.
Jenny’s sitting in the dark on the edge of their father’s unmade bed, staring at the wall. The curtains are closed. The floor is strewn with papers, clothes, overturned lamps, and shards of glass. The air is thick with dust. A dresser has been knocked over, and the arm of a shirt sticks out from one of its drawers. Thomas enters the living room. There’s more light here. The television is missing, and so is their father’s record collection. The coffee table is also gone, as well as the silverware—the hutch is open. A dish with a f lower motif, which belonged to their grandmother, has fallen to the floor and cracked down the middle. An apple core lies beside it. He goes back to the hallway and closes the front door. The nasty odor of decay wafts from the little kitchen. The apartment has been empty for probably a month and a half. Jenny stopped by only once after their father was arrested, to water the plants. But someone else has clearly been here. Thomas goes to Jenny in the bedroom. She’s still sitting on the bed, now with their father’s pillow in her lap. He squats before her. “Come. Stand up. I’m taking you home.” “Someone broke the lock,” she whispers, running the back of her hand across her mouth.
“It doesn’t matter, Jenny. Stand up.” He takes hold of her hand and tugs on it. But Jenny won’t stand.
“What have they taken?” she asks.
“I have no idea. There’s nothing here.”
“The coffee table and the television,” Jenny whispers.
He clutches her arms and hoists her forcefully to her feet. “We’re going now. C’mon.” She sniff les. Leans heavily against him. He wraps his arms around her, embraces her. She smells of warm, spicy perfume and nervous sweat.
“Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s over. He’s dead, it’s all over. We don’t need to worry about anything.”
“Oh,” she moans, “oh, oh, oh. I’m so tired. I’m so tired.” Thomas guides Jenny through the living room, where several wilted cacti with long, gnarled limbs are collecting dust on the windowsill. Now he notices an armchair lying on its side. It’s been slashed, and he can see the gray lining inside. In the stacks of paper on the floor is a photograph of their mother. “The toaster,” Jenny says, tottering out to the hallway. He picks up the photograph and puts it in his pocket. Jenny’s already in the kitchen. He follows her. A swarm of tiny flies buzz lethargically in the sink. The smell is unbearable. Something indefinable and gelatinous has formed a green stain on the kitchen table. Jenny braces the toaster under her arm and gets to her feet. She stares at the floor as though turned to stone. Thomas shakes his head. “No. Don’t do that. C’mon,” he says, brusquely. “You’re coming with me.” And she actually follows him, but when they reach the hallway, she pauses again and slides her hand along the dark brown wall. “See,” she says. “Here it is.” She takes his hand and guides it across the cracked paint, and he can feel the inscription that Jenny etched into the wall the evening he’d gone to the emergency room. Thomas is stupid. She laughs suddenly and loudly. Then she slides to the floor with a thump and begins to sob. He doesn’t have the energy to console her. He leaves her there and returns to the bedroom, where the smell is less offensive. He rights the overturned dresser and opens the drawer, the one with the shirtsleeve poking out. Inside he finds their father’s threadbare sweaters, his socks bundled in pairs, and a few pairs of underwear. The air is thick with dust and stale, stuffy heat, combined with the stink from the kitchen, sour and abominable. He checks the other bedroom, still furnished with bunk beds plastered in stickers, the ones they’d slept in as kids and also when they were older, when he was much too tall to sleep in it and had to curl into a fetal position. Standing stock-still, he regards the fading green wallpaper and its minute white vines. All the sleepless nights he laid waiting for their father to come home. Jenny’s uneasy sleep, her getting up and pawing around on the floor looking for her pacifier whenever she’d dropped it. Her whimpering. And then the relief he felt when he finally heard the key in the door, and Jacques’s heavy footfalls crossing the wooden floorboards, on the way to the kitchen for a beer. This was followed by the smell of cigarette smoke billowing through the apartment. He can almost smell it now, can almost hear their father rummaging in the living room. Then he’s overcome with dizziness. He staggers across the room and parks himself on the lower bunk, dropping his head between his knees. “What are you doing?” Jenny stands in the doorway, her raised eyes moist with tears. After a moment she sits beside him. The thin, stained mattress slumps under her weight. She begins to hum. Then she says, “Look, my little goldheart!” She sounds like a five year old. She runs her index finger over the sticker. “And the angel and the purple smiley face Aunt Kristin gave me . . .” Something seems to move at the outer edge of his vision, but when he turns his head there’s nothing. He stands. “Let’s go,” he says, panic-stricken, grabbing Jenny and towing her along, but she won’t come with him, she wants to return to the bunk bed. She says, “Stop it, Thomas,” and goes limp, holding onto first the bedpost and then the doorjamb. But he tugs, pulling her all the way into the hallway. Just as she’s about to stumble over the doorstep, he punches the door and kicks it. “Fucking hell,” he shouts, “Fucking piece of fucking shit!” He kicks at the door again. “Piece of shit!” Kicking harder, the wood snapping. He yells, “I hate this shitassfucking place!” He’s hot now, he wants to set fire to the entire building, he wants to choke the life out of Jenny; he kicks the door again, buckling the frame, anger thundering through him.
“Thomas,” Jenny whispers.
“FUCK!” Thomas roars. The neighbor’s door opens and an old woman sticks her head out. “I’m calling the police!” she cries in a shrill, thin voice. Jenny steps toward her. “But it’s just us, Mrs. Krantz. Thomas and Jenny, Jacques’s children, you remember us, don’t you?” Thomas balls his fists and breathes heavily, clenching his teeth. Mrs. Krantz hesitates.
“You scared me.”
“Jacques is dead,” Jenny says.
“Jacques is dead? Jacques O’Mally?”
Thomas starts down the stairs. He hears Jenny speaking in a low voice, suddenly clear and normal, almost ingratiating. “Mrs. Krantz, have you heard any strange sounds coming from the apartment recently? It looks like it’s been burgled. Have you heard anything suspicious?”
“Burglars?” Mrs. Krantz stutters nervously. Jenny continues, “Yes, it’s awful. Have you heard anything? Can you remember seeing or hearing anything?” Thomas can’t stand Jenny constantly repeating herself. Mrs. Krantz, he notices, has come all the way out into the hallway. She’s wearing a hairnet over her wispy, curly hair.
“Have you heard anything coming from my father’s apartment?”
“I don’t hear so well,” Mrs. Krantz says, tugging on her long earlobes. “Everything gets worse over time, everything, everything. It’s hopeless . . .” She squints and points down the stairs at Thomas. “Is that your brother? I remember him.”
“But you haven’t heard anything?”
Mrs. Krantz shakes her head. Thomas’s legs itch. If Jenny says “have you heard anything” one more time he’ll scream. Then he’ll murder her.
“We need to go right now, we have things to do,” he says curtly. “C’mon, Jenny.”
“It was so nice to see you again,” Jenny says, offering her hand to the old woman.
At last Jenny totters down the stairs, the toaster under her arm. Mrs. Krantz waves her bony gray hand, and Jenny waves back. Thomas is already outside in the sunlight, his cigarette lit. His pulse gallops. A thin layer of cold sweat covers his back and belly. Instantly he’s drained. The sun hammers down through a blue sky, blinding them; they sit side by side on the stoop, overwhelmed by discouragement and exhaustion. Jenny steals the cigarette from Thomas and takes a deep drag. “You don’t smoke,” he says, grabbing it back. “Can you believe Mrs. Krantz is still alive?” Jenny says. “She was such a loathsome bitch, a mean, nasty, wicked bitch. Remember that time she claimed we’d tortured her ugly mutt?” Thomas nods, but Jenny continues, agitated. “Just because we were friendly enough to walk the dog when she was sick!”
“I remember, Jenny.”
“Remember how he beat us that night? And now here she is, being all nice to us. The loathsome bitch! I should have punched that pig right in her face.” Thomas looks at Jenny. She looks angry. Then comes a faint smile and a moment’s life in her green eyes. He smiles tiredly. She squeezes his arm. A bus drives past, spraying them with dirty gutter water, but they remain seated. The afternoon sun is getting lower. For some time, they are quiet. School’s out and kids are scurrying cheerfully down the street. The boys tease the girls, the girls tease the boys. Bodies hopping and dancing and running and jabbing and slapping and pinching and gesticulating. A red-haired girl leaps onto the back of a skinny boy. Thomas suddenly feels rinsed and cleansed by the loud and happy cries of laughter from the herd. Then he remembers they’re not allowed to be here. They don’t have access to the estate. When he stands, his left foot’s asleep and his knees are stiff. Only now does he notice how cold the air is. “Don’t tell anyone we were here,” he says, squeezing Jenny’s arm.
Hopefully that’ll grab you! Again, Rock, Paper, Scissors is available through our website, you can support Andy’s recovery here, and can subscribe to the podcast via their website or wherever you get your podcasts.