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61
Tóvó’s Flies
That morning Tóvó was awakened by his mother. She had
been up a few times during the last two days, but she did
not speak. She was not her usual self, and now that the
measles and its after effects had lost their grip, she would
break into sobs so heartrending that Tóvó had to cover his
ears; he went outside, even though it did not help. He had
no idea that these crying spells were a burgeoning insanity,
and that in the coming years his mother would earn the
nickname Crazy Betta.
In
Iagttagelser
, or
Observations
, Panum wrote:
there is
hardly any other country, or indeed any metropolis, in which
mental diseases are so frequent in proportion to the number
of people as on the Faroes.
Tóvó’s brother, L
ýð
ar, and his sister, Ebba, were still
confined to their bunks, and their grandfather had placed a
spittoon on the bench between him. An old household
remedy said seawater had curative powers, and therefore
grandfather often made the trip to the little promontory of
Bursatanga to rinse out the spittoon. He covered it with a
lid to keep the flies away, but nonetheless they buzzed
around this interesting wooden container. Sometimes they
sat on the rim, and while they cleaned their shiny legs,
Tóvó struck. Most he killed as soon as he caught them, but
some he tortured to death. He would place the prisoner on
its back and sense the faint buzzing of the fly body as a