Читать книгу Pets - Bragi Ólafsson - Страница 6

1

Someone, wearing an anorak, knocked on my door at lunchtime. My neighbor Tomas is out pottering in the garden and hears me when I open the garden gate. He welcomes me home from my trip abroad and tells me that some fellow—he couldn’t say how old he was—was hanging around outside my front door around twelve-thirty.

“He was wearing some kind of blue nylon anorak with a hood,” he says. “I couldn’t see his face properly because of his hood.”

Tomas himself is wearing an anorak, and has a knitted cap on his head, as well as a scarf with the colors of some English football team around his neck.

“Maybe he was at the wrong house,” I say.

“I don’t think so,” Tomas answers. “Somehow I got the feeling that he knew where he was going. He had a plastic bag in his hand, that I think he put down in the snow while he waited to see if you were at home. He knocked for a good five or ten minutes.”

At this moment I can’t think of anyone who needs to talk to me today—Tuesday, at lunchtime, when I’m not even in the country—but when Tomas mentions the plastic bag, for one second I’m afraid that it could have been Sigurvin, an old work mate, and that the bag contained recently purchased warm beer, though it would have probably cooled down a lot in February’s frost. This fellow Sigurvin was supposed to have stopped drinking, but the memory of him drunk was so vivid and terrifying that it still bothered me.

“You didn’t notice if he took unusually large strides?” I ask.

Tomas says that he hadn’t really paid him much attention, just noticed how long he stayed banging at the door. But, come to think of it, he had also seen the man peer through the kitchen window, as if he expected me to be hiding in there.

The fact that the fellow peered through the kitchen window when it was obvious that no one was at home made me think of another old acquaintance. However, as far as I know, it’s impossible, or at least very unlikely, that he is here in Reykjavik.

“There was something about him that gave me the feeling he was in need of shelter,” Tomas says, and I’m not sure if he is joking. “Then I noticed that he was fiddling with the name plate on the door. It looked as if he was polishing it. Probably just wiping the snow off so that he could read the name properly.”

These fine copper or brass name plates give a sense of endurance and eternity. Some old atmosphere lingers from bygone days. My name plate is only two years old and yet it is so weather-beaten that one imagines its owner is old or neither old nor young; it’s almost like a grave stone. The main difference being that there are no dates or title on it, like “managing director” or “ship owner”—as one sees in cemeteries—and no wish that the owner rest in peace, in this instance inside his own front door.

I ask Tomas if he spoke to the man at all. He says that he had been thinking of telling him that I was abroad, but had decided not to; not that he was hinting that this acquaintance of mine was by any means dubious, but one could never be sure if such men would take advantage of the fact that the flat was empty.

“Such men?” I repeat. “What do you mean by such?”

“Oh, I just meant, you know, ordinary men.”

“So he was only an ordinary man?” I say and emphasize the word ordinary so it is quite obvious that I am joking.

“I suppose so,” Tomas says. “I didn’t see anything peculiar about him really, come to think of it.”

“By the way, how did you know that I was abroad?” I ask with a smile. Tomas smiles back and says that Bella, the old lady who lives in the flat above me, had asked him to keep an eye on the house last weekend while she was away visiting her sister in Akranes because she had promised, he said, to look after my flat while I was in America. Then she had started talking about me, said she couldn’t have been luckier with her neighbor, that it made such a difference sharing a house with people one could trust. I correct Tomas: I had only gone to London, Bella must have misunderstood me.

“So you didn’t see his face?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation back to the original subject matter and put an end to it. Standing out here in the frost is killing me.

“No, I didn’t,” he answers, seeming to realize that I want to get indoors. “He was too well hidden inside the hood.”

I had told Bella before I left that I would be away for two weeks—though I don’t remember telling her where I was going—and she promised (without me asking) to keep an eye on the flat in the meantime. She even offered to water my plants and insisted on giving me some cuttings when I told her that I didn’t have any in my flat. I declined her offer politely.

At twelve-thirty I was probably moving slowly down the escalator in the direction of the duty-free store or going through the customs with my suitcases and bags. At the very moment when this fellow in the anorak decided that he had knocked long enough—was maybe even trying to peer through the kitchen window—I was probably getting on the bus outside the airport. Perhaps I had sat down beside Greta, the woman I got to know on the plane just before we landed and on the bus to Reykjavik. I realize that I am forgetting her features little by little. I can’t form a clear image of her, despite the fact that I first met her fifteen years ago, saw her occasionally after that, and saw her again today on the flight. It’s strange how quickly faces fade in one’s memory. The only things I can remember clearly are her wavy, fair hair, her full lips, and her thin arms—they poked out of the wide sleeves of her T-shirt like two drain pipes. I’ll recall small details and particular facial expressions of hers better this evening when we meet. That is, if she calls.

She said she would call. And I’m feeling really guilty because I hope she will. I know Vigdis—my girlfriend or lover (depending on how you look at it)—will call this evening; she said she would give me a ring when I got home.

Before I go in with my bags, Tomas repeats something about being sure that the fellow in the anorak will come back. I tell him that I have an idea of who he is, though in reality I haven’t a clue. I have discounted the two men I thought of first and there is no way that it could have been Saebjorn or Jaime. They weren’t going to come round until later tonight. Besides, Tomas’s description doesn’t fit either of them at all.

There is something about my neighbor’s face that reminds me of my fellow passenger on the plane, the linguist Armann Valur. Probably the lower half of his face; his mouth and in particular his nose. It’s as if Tomas’s nose has no definite shape or form, almost as if it’s some tiny, useless blob. The grammarian’s nose was similar: bent, though it wasn’t broken, and the tip of it looked as if it had been melted or squashed under something, I don’t dare to imagine what.

When I’ve said goodbye to Tomas and gone indoors, it suddenly strikes me that it was strange he should be out in the garden at lunchtime, when the man in the anorak knocked at my door, and now again around five when I come home. It’s February and everything is covered in snow; what’s a man in his sixties doing out in the garden in such weather, twice on the same day? And yet sometimes it’s as if people and objects are put in a certain place on earth just to suit the whims of some eccentric; as if someone up above is amusing himself by arranging us as he likes, contrary to all common sense. I have sometimes felt as if I’ve been picked up by the scruff of my neck and moved, in different situations, either to rescue me from some calamity or—which I suspect is more often the case—to deliberately get me into trouble.

The air in the flat is stale, which is not surprising as the windows haven’t been opened for two weeks. I push the bedroom window wide open, but I only open the kitchen window a crack. When the cold, fresh air spreads through the flat I feel it’s good to be back home. I tell myself that this is my place. I have been put here, whether it was organized according to a whim of the fellow up above or resulted from a mixture of my own decisions and the unavoidable incidents which, nearly every day, give life just as much color as, for instance, music, sex, films, and books do. This is my home: my everyday world. Then, all at once, I get the feeling that my thoughts are complete nonsense. A peculiar sensation tells me that I should not take for granted the fact that I live here, that this flat is my home rather than someone else’s, even though I have lived here alone for nearly two years and haven’t made any plans to move in the near future. After a while I manage to shake off this uncanny feeling. This is my home. And I am just about to put “Lonely Fire” from Big Fun on the turntable.

2

When he kicked open the gate it sounded as if it was going to break. When he got out in the street he stopped and looked in both directions. It was very cold; he pulled the hood further down over his head. He spun around when he heard the man in the garden next door, a middle-aged man with a knitted cap on his head, kicking the snow off his boots before going into his house. Then he walked west along Grettisgata, towards the center of town. Four cars came down Frakkastigur, one after another, and turned into Grettisgata. The last one skidded when it rounded the corner and managed to stop just before the rear of it crashed into the wall of a house. He began to walk faster but had to watch his step because the soles of his shoes were so slippery; they were his best shoes, with narrow pointed toes which poked out from under the threadbare bottoms of his long jeans.

At the corner of Klapparstigur and Grettisgata he saw a group of school children standing in front of an antique shop window on the other side of the street. He stopped at the corner for a few seconds, gazed at the children, and banged the heels of his shoes together to get rid of the snow that had collected on them. Then he set off down Klapparstigur, and, after a few steps, he slipped on the icy pavement and nearly landed on his back. He paused, looked around, and then carried on. The traffic on the main street, Laugavegur, seemed to be moving very slowly. Three young girls stood on the corner waiting to cross the road. He, on the other hand, just squeezed out between two cars, slid over the icy road, and mounted the pavement on the other side of Klapparstigur. Then he disappeared into a little bar.

From the outside no one would have guessed that there was any trade going on in there; it looked more like a fisherman’s hut or a dilapidated country cottage. Even the name on the sign outside had worn off, if there had been any name there at all.

There was no one inside apart from one member of the staff—a girl of about twenty who was standing in front of a blackboard that was fixed on the wall to the left of the bar. She was writing the day’s menu and seemed to be deciding what would be on it as she went along. He walked over to a table in the corner, beside the window, and let go of a worn plastic bag before he sat down. The girl stopped writing on the blackboard and turned around to see who had come in. Then she seemed to get an idea; she started writing again. It was warm inside the bar. The smell of food hung in the air.

3

At the bar in Heathrow I had been musing about the flight home, what we would eat on board and so on. I hoped I wouldn’t end up beside a chatterbox or someone who was forever getting up to go to the toilet or talk to other passengers. The last time I flew I sat beside a young man who had tried, without luck, to get me interested in his business (wholesale trade in sportswear and equipment for some peculiar fringe sports) and then rushed back and forth along the aisle, as if that three hour flight was some sort of family or general gathering: Icelanders meeting up after being away from their native soil for at least a week. Really it’s no small risk one takes, boarding an airplane. For three hours (not to mention on longer trips) one is locked in a tight, uncomfortable space, way above any civilization, with unpredictable people, who could drink themselves senseless or spill their food and drink over you—and the only place of salvation is the toilet.

I was looking forward to relaxing on board, reading the newspaper I had bought in the airport and perhaps dozing off after the meal. But those plans were to be completely disrupted. I hadn’t even sat down in my aisle seat when the man in the middle seat—a rather scruffy fellow of about sixty with a mop of grey hair that was tobacco-colored in patches, who looked like he might smell of alcohol or sweat—made it obvious with his friendly smile that we would enjoy a good chat on the way. While I waited for my turn to put my hand luggage and jacket up in the locker, he offered me an Opal lozenge from a battered box which looked as if it had gotten wet or been sat on. I declined his offer and made an effort to smile and show the appropriate amount of gratitude when he insisted that I take one.

“They are always the same, these air trips,” he said when I sat down. I got the feeling that he had been preparing this sentence while I was busy fitting my belongings into the locker. His use of the term air trips indicated that he was trying to avoid using the word flight in the plural—something that I have always felt was wrong, though I don’t know why. When he introduced himself as a linguist a little later—more correctly Armann Valur, linguist and prospective pensioner (this latter title was added more as a joke)—I was rather pleased with myself; I had immediately thought that he had something to do with languages. The power of the subconscious or good intuition, I told myself, smirking at my misfortune in meeting a hulk of a linguist before the pilot had even gotten around to announcing take-off.

I introduced myself to the fellow but got the feeling that he didn’t take much notice of my name. I didn’t fasten my safety belt straight away, as I half expected him to stand up and take off his dark blue overcoat. He was wearing a suit and a jumper underneath. I took the flight magazine out of the seat pocket and found an article that I could pretend to be engrossed in for a while. It was about the world’s most northern golf course, at Akureyri, where Vigdis is staying at the moment. But, just as I feared, I got no peace; the man beside me pointed at the flight attendant who was approaching down the aisle and reminded me to fasten my seatbelt. The “dears” are coming to make sure everyone is strapped in. I expected him to carry on talking, but when he paused I used the opportunity to get my portable tape player out of my bag in the locker. I was back in my seat with my belt fastened before the flight attendant walked past with a smile and checked (in a rather unconvincing manner) that the belts were fastened. I was quite sure that she was laughing to herself about the overdressed fellow beside me.

From the corner of my eye I saw that the woman in the window seat was slyly watching him—a dark haired woman in her forties, clearly well-educated and likely, I thought, to see the comical elements in the linguist’s appearance. I, on the other hand, had put a tape into my portable player (remixes of several Miles Davis recordings) and was busy rewinding with my headphones already in place. I gazed along the aisle while I waited for the tape to rewind. All at once I noticed a young, fair-haired woman who was sitting several rows in front of me. I felt as if I recognized her, and when she turned her head towards the person on the other side of the aisle—she had obviously been asked a question—I remembered who she was. I didn’t know her name but I had first seen her fifteen years ago, at a high school party in Hjalmholt. Her unconventionally beautiful face had caught my eye, not to mention her almost perfect body, which seemed just the same today.

This memory from Hjalmholt is still very clear, although I was only sixteen or seventeen at the time. There I was sitting on the sofa between two classmates, probably drinking to pluck up enough courage to chat up some girls from my class, and gazing in adoration at this girl I had never seen before but who was, I think, a friend of the people who were throwing the party. It wasn’t just her appearance that made her seem exciting; she was even more memorable for having disappeared with a boy, whom I knew vaguely, into one of the children’s bedrooms slightly later in the evening. She reappeared half an hour later, red-cheeked and—making no attempt to cover up what she had been doing in the bedroom—with her fair hair tousled (and even prettier), clearly after some kind of “friendly combat,” as one of my classmates put it. But the boy, who had gone with her into the bedroom, didn’t come out again, and we found out shortly afterwards that he was fast asleep. My friends and I joked that she—the one who was now sitting just a few meters away from me on the plane, in jeans and a T-shirt—had completely done him in.

I never found out any more about this girl—she didn’t live in my district nor did she go to the same school as me—but each time I have caught sight of her since then, something begins to happen inside me, something disturbing; I somehow grow smaller and bigger at the same time. In other words: I have fancied her ever since she came out—tousled and flushed, much more mature and exciting than all the other girls—of the children’s bedroom. But it’s highly unlikely that she remembers me. She left the party soon after she had finished with the boy; she was too smart—too experienced and intelligent—to hang around with children, as I thought my classmates and I were at that time.

Without realizing it, I had begun to compare her beautiful profile (at least what I could see of it from my seat) with that of Vigdis, and, for a few seconds, I seemed to lose my senses; I couldn’t remember whether Vigdis had fair or dark hair.

4

The barmaid brought a glass of dark beer and put it on the table for him. She had large breasts, bigger than you would expect on a little body like hers. He gazed at them. He picked up his glass when she put it down on the table and moved it nearer, without taking his eyes off the girl, who turned around and walked back to the bar. Her behind was neat and small compared to her breasts. She took a magazine from the bar, walked behind the counter, and turned up the music. Then she sat down with it, crossed her legs, and began to turn the pages. He carried on looking at her. He lifted his beer glass, put it back down on the table, and dipped his finger in the thick froth. He licked the froth off his finger and groaned. It wasn’t easy to guess what emotions the groan was meant to express. The girl seemed to hear him despite the music; she looked at him casually and then turned back to her magazine. After a little while he lifted his glass again and took a long draught. Half the beer had disappeared when he put it down again, wiping the line of froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. When he had swallowed it, he let out a long, loud sounding “ah” and called out to the girl, asking if he could get something to eat here. She said he could; they had sandwiches and soup. He said he wasn’t going to have any soup but wouldn’t mind a sandwich; what choices did she have? She closed the magazine, stood up without saying a word and brought a menu which she put down on the table. He had finished his beer and passed her the glass in exchange for the menu. She asked if he wanted another one. He nodded and asked for a Jägermeister to go with it, and just some kind of toasted sandwich with ham and cheese. She could put other ingredients in it too, but not asparagus or whatever it was called.

When she had gone off with the glass and the menu, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped out one cigarette, and lit it. The girl brought him the beer and the Jägermeister and then disappeared into the kitchen. He had only had a sip of beer when she came out again with the sandwich, but his schnapps glass was empty. He had taken off his anorak and laid it on the next table. Underneath he was wearing a light yellow shirt and a dark, double-breasted jacket. The barmaid sat down again and carried on looking at her magazine. He gulped down the sandwich and finished off the beer. Just as he was asking the girl to bring him another one, the door opened and a young couple walked in. She was wearing a baggy parka and a dark brown furry hat, while he had on a long overcoat with a strange looking hood. He stood up and asked the girl for another Jägermeister to drink with the beer, then he disappeared into the men’s room.

The girl took the drinks to his table and met him as he came out of the toilet. He smiled at her but didn’t get a smile back. Then he put on his anorak, picked up the plastic bag, and peered into it to make sure that everything was still in place. He swallowed the schnapps, screwed up his face, as if he was in slight pain, and downed about half the beer in one gulp. He zipped up his anorak, took several steps in the direction of the outside door, looked back towards the kitchen, and then went out. An icy blast blew into the bar, and the door took a good thirty seconds to close again. An uncanny silence fell on the place; the couple at the table stared at the door in wonder, and when the girl came back in from the kitchen he had gone. The only signs of his presence were his half empty beer glass, cigarette stubs in the ashtray, bread crumbs on a plate, and a crumpled napkin.

He now stood with his plastic bag on Hverfisgata, just opposite the Danish Embassy, and looked around several times before he carried on down the street. He walked up Ingolfstraeti and turned down Bankastraeti. The sun began to shine when he got near Laekjargata but had disappeared again behind a cloud by the time he reached the taxi stop below the little old houses of Bernhoftstorfa. He pushed down his hood and squeezed into the first taxi. He didn’t answer when the taxi driver commented on how cold the weather had been that month but asked to be driven up to Breidholt, to Sudurholar; probably it was Sudurholar. He would recognize the place when they got there.

5

Armann Valur nudged me with his elbow and placed the open flight magazine on my table, beside the tape player. The German model Claudia Schiffer gazed up at me from the page. I removed one earphone so I could hear what Armann was trying to say. He kept his eyes fixed on the magazine as he tapped the picture of Claudia with his finger. Then, lowering his voice as if he didn’t want the woman by the window to hear, he said:

“She’s not bad, this one.”

I said no in agreement, waited a few seconds before I put the earphone back in place, and sat up straight in my seat, as if to state that I wanted to be left alone. A new track was playing when I started listening again and, as I tend to do when I listen to music, I tried to harmonize it with Claudia’s face, which was still gazing at me from the magazine. I could easily imagine the slow, relaxed drum beats of Miles’s music being used as background music in a photo studio in Europe while some model shifted positions or pouted and ran her fingers through her golden locks. Vigdis came to mind. At this moment, she was probably changing sheets in the hotel just by the church, and was no doubt wondering if I would call her as soon as I got home, as I had promised. I hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to call her straight away or relax and listen to one or two records in the living room first. The only thing I was sure of was that I was looking forward to coming home to my own flat; unpacking the CDs, books, and videos which I had bought; and arranging the wine bottles, cigars, and cigarettes from the duty-free store on the table in the living room. I decided to postpone answering the questions that popped up in my mind: whether Vigdis and I were really in love, or if the exciting feeling I experienced when I imagined her, in a short black skirt, changing sheets in the hotel up north, had anything to do with her personally, or if this imaginary figure could be anyone, even the blonde from Hjalmholt.

Armann didn’t seem to have understood that I wanted to be left alone. I had shut my eyes and was trying to look as though I was concentrating on the music in the headphones, but it didn’t seem to make any impact on my neighbor; he nudged me again and wanted me to look back at the magazine. On the right-hand page, beside the conclusion of the interview with Claudia, there was an ad showing all kinds of Icelandic products that were ideal to buy for friends and business colleagues abroad: for example Icelandic sweaters, Black Death, cheese, smoked lamb, and, last but not least, Opal lozenges, which was exactly what Armann was trying to draw my attention to. I nodded and wondered whether my fellow passenger—despite his linguistical education—had different values and manners than other people, or if he had suffered some kind of mental breakdown recently. Perhaps his studies had made him strange. I was thankful that at least he didn’t smell of alcohol or sweat, as I had feared, but what I found strangest of all was that he didn’t seem interested in talking to me. Instead he was trying to get my attention by pointing to something that he obviously wanted me to share with him.

I saw that the woman by the window was watching us and noticed that she had a reddish-purple mark on her neck. It’s a hickey, I said to myself. I saw her as an educated woman of around forty who was on the way home after spending a few days with her foreign lover, and who felt no need to cover up the hickey on her neck; on the contrary, she was very happy with it. She would gladly have paid tax on it, if demanded. I tried to imagine her lover, and pictured an Italian or a Greek, a well-built, stocky man in an expensive black suit and a white shirt, with an open neck, revealing the shiny dark hairs on his chest. In other words: the complete opposite of the man who sat between us, and who was, at this moment, probably considering what goods the world of aviation (if one can use such prosaic terms) was offering and if it was necessary (seen from a more general point of view) to conduct all that commerce in the air. I was quite sure that if I gave him the chance the floodgates would burst open and I wouldn’t be left in peace for the rest of the trip.

“Maybe this is something one should try,” he said. “They are those giant sized packs, much bigger than these here,” he added, shaking the half-full box of Opals he had fished up out of his coat pocket with some difficulty—the seat belt was still fastened over his stomach. He didn’t offer me a lozenge this time, just helped himself to one and began to tap the box with his index finger while he examined the catalogue more closely.

I tried to imagine what kind of music this overdressed Opal eater listened to at home and came to the conclusion that some sort of learned silence reigned there, broken, at the most, by the evening news and the occasional program on very abstract subject matters. Probably he had never heard anything like the music that was now playing in my headphones: “On the Corner,” from 1972 when Armann was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years old and, no doubt, still a student. I had started to put together a program of music that I would listen to when I got home and emptied my bags. “Lonely Fire” from Big Fun was number one on that list.

6

While the car waited at the traffic lights at the corner of Laekjargata and Hverfisgata, he took a thick old leather-bound book out of the plastic bag, opened it, and gazed at the first page for a few moments. When he closed the book again he stroked it with his hand, put it down on the car seat, and knocked on the hard cover twice with his knuckles. Then he opened up the plastic bag and examined a beautifully carved sailing ship that was wedged into an open wooden box.

Once they reached Saebraut he asked the taxi driver to stop at a store, where he could buy cigarettes. The driver didn’t make any comment, just stopped at a drive-in store a little later. While he waited for the cigarettes he put the book back in the plastic bag beside the ship, closed the bag carefully, and put it down on the seat.

They set off again along Saebraut in the direction of Breidholt. When they were about to turn into Vesturberg he stopped the driver and told him to carry on until they reached a certain block of flats in the Sudurholar area. He explained to him that he was going to check if his friend was at home and he wanted the driver to wait. The driver asked him to leave the plastic bag in the car. He asked the driver if he didn’t trust him and the latter replied that that wasn’t the issue, no one got out of his car without paying. He said OK but how could he trust the driver, he could just drive away, maybe his wallet was in the bag—besides the contents of the bag were worth more than a taxi fare, considerably more. The driver kept silent. He lifted the bag and gave it a shake, as if he was demonstrating that it was a token of mutual trust, then he put it down on the seat again and got out of the car.

He ran up the steps which led to the balconies on the second floor, a sort of outdoor staircase, from which one had access to the flats in the building. He stopped for a moment outside the second door from the end but didn’t knock, then he went on to the furthest apartment and rang the bell. A young woman came to the door. She was wearing a long black T-shirt and tight leggings. He said good morning and asked if Hinrik, his old pal Rikki, was at home. The woman ran her eyes up his body and shook her head, he was at work. Then he asked if Rikki was no longer playing in a band, he had expected him to be at home in the morning, but the woman repeated that he was at work, he only played on weekends now. She was getting cold standing in the doorway and was about to shut the door. He stopped her by putting his palm up in the air, gave a quick glance back towards the taxi in the parking lot below, and asked if he could use her toilet. He explained that he was in a taxi and needed to pee before he set off again. The woman looked him straight in the face, then lowered her gaze and looked away before she asked how he knew Hinrik, she wasn’t used to letting strangers in. He said then that they were old friends, he had even come here before, maybe she didn’t remember him but he had been there just the same, though it could have been before she met Hinrik. She repeated that she didn’t like letting strangers in but gave in when he pointed to the taxi waiting for him. He was on his way back downtown.

She stepped back into the hall to let him pass, and he nodded, stepped in, and offered to take off his shoes. She told him not to bother, it wasn’t necessary, but he said he didn’t want to leave dirty footprints. She told him where to find the toilet, he had to go along the corridor there and it was the middle door.

He disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he raised the toilet seat and looked in the mirror above the sink. He ran his fingers through his thick hair and noticed that the mirror was the door to a cupboard. He opened the cupboard and looked at the selection of perfume, aftershave, toothbrushes, and medicine. He took out a plastic container of codeine, flicked off the lid, sniffed the contents and stuffed four pills into the breast pocket of his jacket. He ran his finger over other pill jars in the cupboard and before he closed the door he shook a little aftershave into his hand and patted it on to his cheeks and neck. Next he unzipped the fly of his pants, pulled out his penis, and let the dark stream pour straight down like a waterfall into the toilet bowl. He said out loud that was good, as always; there wasn’t much that could compete with it. Then in a lower voice, almost whispering, he added: “Especially in strange houses.”

7

The captain’s voice introduced itself over the loudspeaker. To begin with it sounded as if he was only going to chat to the passengers, but then he began to relate various facts concerning the flight, for instance that we were flying over Scotland, at a height of thirty thousand feet and there were twenty-five degrees of frost outside.

“That’s not very warm,” Armann commented. Yet I sensed that he was quite happy with the temperature in these parts, besides it was in keeping with the clothes he was wearing. “What would that be in Fahrenheit?” he added.

I told him I didn’t know, maybe about twice as high, and at that moment Armann grabbed the opportunity that I was afraid he had been waiting for. He had caught me in a trap that I wouldn’t be able to get out of for the rest of the trip.

“Yes, but that is just it,” he said and stuffed the Opal box back in his breast pocket, this time so it would be easier to pull out again. “Shouldn’t one say ‘twice as low’? That’s the thing with frost and heat; as soon as the frost increases the heat goes down, isn’t that so?”

I felt like telling him to discuss it with the captain but refrained. It wasn’t such a terrific sacrifice spending three hours of one’s lifetime on something in which one hadn’t the slightest interest. I reminded myself that what doesn’t kill a man should harden him, and with that in mind I launched into the discussion on frost and temperature, but said I hadn’t given it much thought, at least not specifically.

“It is exactly one of the things we make mistakes about,” Armann said. I expected him to pass me his Opal box. “In reality the cold never goes up.” When he had uttered these words, he bent forward a little and glanced at me, as if he was trying to judge my level of intelligence or observation.

“Really?” I asked dubiously, and consoled myself with the thought that it took much less energy participating in something boring than trying to struggle against it, especially when there was no possibility of avoiding it.

“Yes, it is just like that,” Armann said and raised his index finger to emphasize the point. “Heat rises on the other hand. When there are heat waves old people die in their cars, even people my age—except, of course, I don’t have a car—but as soon as one moves to a colder part of the world, as for instance where we are now, the situation is reversed: the cold actually goes down as the frost hardens.”

“No, are you sure about that?” I interrupted. I thought it rather unlikely that he really believed what he was stating.

“Yes,” he said, but he took time to reconsider his earlier statement. “What I mean is that the more degrees of frost that are added, the lower the heat goes, and as a result the temperature goes down. In other words: the frost goes down.”

I was going to object but decided to see just how he would get himself out of this dilemma. I gave him my full attention to show him I expected an explanation.

“We can take a clear example from everyday life,” he continued and it was quite obvious that he was waiting impatiently for the flight attendant, who had started to serve drinks, to reach us. “Let’s imagine a particular person, one man in a two-room flat. Another man comes in the door and the number of persons in the flat goes up; the number of inhabitants increases but the space allotted to each one diminishes, that is if we imagine that both of them are going to live in the flat.”

“Now wait a minute.”

“Otherwise they aren’t inhabitants, as we understand the word,” he added hastily.

“I wasn’t referring to that.”

“Let’s just imagine that these two individuals have bought the flat together. They were maybe inclined that way, if you know what I mean.”

“But you are talking about two completely different concepts,” I said. “Numbers and space. One can’t compare numbers and space, especially when you are trying to support your proposition that cold can’t go up, just go down.”

I thought that he would begin to realize the frivolity of the conversation and give up. But he stubbornly carried on.

“Yes, you can,” he said, “just as hot and cold are completely different concepts. It’s feasible that there are no other entities in the world as strongly opposed as heat and cold. One goes up while the other goes down.”

“Not at the same time,” I objected. “Though the temperature goes up somewhere, that doesn’t mean that the cold goes down at the same time. Unless you mean that while the heat goes up in Bolivia, for example, there will be more frost in Norway, or something like that.”

“That is just what I mean,” Armann replied, very pleased with himself. “Just like the example with the flat; the greater the number of inhabitants the less space there will be.” His serious expression—and the pause in his argument—hinted that we had reached a certain level of agreement in our discussion, “a certain landing,” if one could talk in those terms. But, even though the discussion had come to a close, I couldn’t resist adding one more comment.

“But the temperature goes down too,” I said and emphasized the word down.

“Is that so?” Armann said. I couldn’t make out whether his question revealed his lack of interest or lack of confidence.

“You can’t deny it,” I said.

“Only up to a certain level,” he answered. “When the temperature is so low that it reaches freezing point, then it begins to . . .” He hesitated, and, in order to gain time to think, he waved to the flight attendant, who was still too far away to be of any assistance.

I, for my part, began to wonder, as a result of our conversation, what decision the captain would take when the plane approached Keflavik airport. Would he go up or down? Would we, Armann and I, and the rest of the passengers, succeed in landing?

8

When he emerged from the bathroom, he stayed on the threshold for a little while, lifted his hands up to his face to sniff them, then took hold of the doorknob without turning around, and quietly closed the door. He looked about for the woman, but when he didn’t catch sight of her, he went into the next room. The door was partly open, and, after giving it a gentle push, it revealed a child’s bedroom. He smiled and looked around the colorful little room; it was full of toddlers’ toys which were jumbled together with things that belonged to a slightly older child, obviously a boy. Then he walked over to a small desk with a computer on top. The computer seemed to be too big for the table; there wasn’t room for anything else on it. He pressed a letter on the keyboard and a soldier in a camouflage uniform—holding a big machine gun, with a helmet on his head and a fierce, pitiless expression on his face—popped up. He was startled. He jerked his hands back and shook them, like he was also holding a vibrating machine gun, though he didn’t add the appropriate sound effects. Then he tapped the computer, as if he was patting a child on the head, before turning to the large birdcage beside the desk.

There were two little budgies in the cage. He bent down to it, tapped on the rails, and clicked with his tongue in an attempt to attract their attention. The birds just looked at him, nothing more; they seemed completely uninterested. He picked up a yellow pencil which was lying on the desk beside the computer, poked it carefully in between the bars of the cage, and waggled it, but the birds took no notice. So he poked the pencil into the stomach of one of the birds. That resulted in both of them flying up with loud squawks; they seemed to crash into each other or the sides of the cage. It was difficult to see exactly what they were doing, but the noise they produced brought Hinrik’s frightened wife running into the room and she asked him what on earth was going on. He answered that he had unexpectedly found himself in this room; he had no doubt gone in the wrong direction when he came out of the bathroom. The birds seemed to have calmed down.

The woman directed him out into the hall. While he followed her, he praised the child for his attractive bedroom, or were there perhaps two children, he had noticed that there were bunks in the room. At least they were animal lovers, it was years since he had seen a budgie in a cage. She didn’t reply, just waited by the hall door with her arms crossed. He walked into the hall, and when he bent over his shoes he seemed to remember something suddenly. He straightened up and asked the woman if he could make one phone call, he needed to see if another friend of his was at home before he set off again in the taxi. She sighed impatiently, said something about it being quite sufficient that he had been allowed to use the toilet, she wasn’t sure that it was normal allowing some stranger to come in, he must be able to understand that. He said he did, of course she should never open the door to a stranger, but, as he and Rikki were such good friends, she could trust him one hundred percent. It was obvious from the expression on the woman’s face that she didn’t quite know how she should react to this last comment, but after thinking a little, staring worriedly at the floor, and puffing as if she was exhaling cigarette smoke, she gave in and said he could make one call, but it had to be short. She was busy, had no time for this. He thanked her.

As he picked up the receiver, he called out to her that he just had to dial information first; he wasn’t quite sure of the number. When he got through to the operator, he asked for the number of Emil S. Halldorsson, Grettisgata something or other, he wasn’t quite sure what the number was. While he was pressing the numbers that he had been given, there was a loud knock on the front door and the woman went to answer it, swearing under her breath that there was no peace here at home, during lunchtime in the middle of the week. The cab driver stood on the doorstep and asked the woman politely if his passenger was by any chance still inside. She said he was coming, he was just making a phone call.

He had let the phone ring for a good while without getting any reply, and when he came back and saw the taxi driver in the doorway, he smiled and said well, well, so he had come to fetch him. The driver said he had just wanted to check if he had disappeared off the face of the earth. While he put on his shoes he thanked the woman warmly, he had expected such kindness from the wife of his friend Hinrik, who was such a fine fellow. His last words were that no one had answered at his friend’s house, he was no doubt working, just like poor old Rikki, and then he followed the driver down to the parking lot. Once inside the car, he said he wanted to go down to Austurstraeti, where the driver would be rid of him. He wouldn’t have to worry about him any more, at least not for the rest of that day. He took the leather-bound book out of the plastic bag and was busy turning over the pages as the taxi drove out of the car park and along the road.

9

Probably half an hour had passed since take-off. The woman in the window seat asked the flight attendant for two little bottles of white wine and said no thank you when she was offered a liqueur to have with her coffee later. I had made up my mind not to drink anything on the way; I was going to wait until the evening when my friends, Saebjorn and Jaime, were going to drop in. Those plans were altered when Armann ordered four little bottles of red wine and told the flight attendant to put two of them on my table. I didn’t want to decline his offer, and after a few minutes’ thought—which involved changing my plans for the rest of the day—I decided to take an active part in the wine purchasing by ordering four miniature bottles of Cointreau to have with our coffee; two for me and two for Armann. He seemed really pleased at that. But later it became apparent that the red wine was free—part of the service, Armann said with a smug smile, rephrasing the information he’d been given by the flight attendant—while I needed to pay for the liqueurs with my credit card, which I had to fetch from the overhead bin. While I was standing up, Armann turned to the woman in the window seat and asked her if we couldn’t offer her a liqueur with her coffee. By using the word we he had made us into comrades. She thanked Armann for the offer but no, she wasn’t very partial to strong drinks. Armann seemed almost offended when she declined; he repeated what she had said, “not partial to strong drinks,” and when I sat down again I heard him mumble something to the effect that it was her choice.

“These bottles don’t hold much,” he observed and lifted one of the red wine bottles up to eye-level. “Perhaps it’s about one glassful. Maybe slightly more.”

I replied that he was probably right but didn’t want to say any more, in case he was going to start another discussion like the one on heat and cold. Armann opened the bottle he was holding, poured the contents into his glass, and then put his hand into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a paperback. I couldn’t imagine him shutting himself off in a book and, of course, that was not quite what he had in mind. He opened the book and while he turned the pages (rather roughly for my liking) he said he wanted to show me something. He had bought this book in Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road and discovered, afterwards really, that it was exactly what he had been looking for.

“That was lucky,” I said and poured red wine into my glass.

“Yes, you could definitely say that,” Armann answered. “It’s always a pleasure when life takes one by surprise. It doesn’t happen that often, does it?”

He pulled his glasses case out of his jacket pocket. Like the Opal box, it appeared to have been sat on. However, I was rather surprised at how modern the shape of the frames were, and I noticed that the woman by the window watched Armann’s clumsy movements—he put on his glasses and replaced the case in his pocket—with a smile. He seemed to be having trouble finding what he was going to show me, and the woman, who had taken out Harper’s Bazaar from her bag, appeared to be rather shocked at the way Armann thumbed his way back and forth through his book. She, on the other hand, turned the pages so carefully that I imagined she had bought the magazine for someone else at home and wanted it to look untouched.

I asked Armann what the title of the book was.

“It’s a really remarkable volume,” he said, but was too engrossed in turning the pages to answer my question. I hadn’t noticed what was on the cover but from the little diagrams—some kind of calculations with words instead of numbers—I guessed that it was of a scientific nature, no doubt some complicated, advanced grammatical text.

Although I didn’t expect to have peace for long, I used the opportunity to replace my headphones and switched on Miles again. The fair-haired girl in the T-shirt was resting her bare elbow on the armrest, her head leaning to one side as she gazed along the aisle. She had her index finger on her cheek and let her fourth finger play with her lips as if she was deep in thought over what she saw. I couldn’t see if she was drinking anything but imagined she had white wine like the woman beside Armann. I thought it was very likely that she was traveling alone; I hadn’t seen her talk to anyone except the flight attendant and the person on the other side of the aisle.

I looked at her for quite a while and began to wonder how long I could carry on gazing without her being aware of me. No doubt, she knew already. I think I always notice when someone is watching me; it doesn’t matter whether the person is sitting beside me or is further away.

All at once I felt Armann nudge me gently with his elbow. At the same moment the fair-haired girl turned round, as if she had heard something further back in the plane. Our eyes met for a moment. She had clearly begun to smell the food, which I also smelled now as the trolley came nearer, but, though our gazes had met, it was impossible to say if she had noticed me.

I took off the headphones to attend to Armann.

“See here,” he said. He held up the book and pointed with a thick, short finger at the upper right hand page.

“What?”

“Look.”

“What is it?” I asked, my mind still on the fair-haired girl.

Armann tapped the tape player on my table and then pointed at the text in the book. He read out:

“Since the Sony Walkman was introduced, no one has been sure whether two of them should be Walkmen or Walkmans.” He looked at me and asked if I had ever considered it.

I shook my head.

Then he carried on: “(The nonsexist alternative), that’s in brackets here,” he added, “(The nonsexist alternative Walkpersons would leave us on the hook, because we would be faced with a choice between Walkpersons and Walkpeople).” He stopped reading out loud but stared at the page as if he was still reading silently. He nodded, looked at me and then at the educated woman, no doubt hoping that she was listening too.

“That’s a question,” he said.

“Yes, it is a question,” I agreed and took the tape out of my Walkman, not to turn it round but just to keep my hands occupied.

Armann took a good sip of red wine before he continued, and as I picked up my glass to keep him company the woman at the window did exactly the same, although she didn’t seem to be aware that we were drinking simultaneously.

“That’s the crux of the matter,” Armann said. “They produce one instrument, for example this one here,” he tapped my player again, “but as soon as they use technology to produce a second player and then number three and so on, they no longer know what to call their invention in the plural. They are faced with a grammatical problem that no instrument has been invented to solve. Of course it is the same dilemma that parents have to cope with when they give birth to twins or triplets. Really they should all have the same name, that is if they are identical and the same sex; they come one after another from the same producer, they are as identical inwardly as two such instruments from Sony and the only thing that differentiates them is—at least superficially—the same thing which differentiates one Sony instrument from another.”

At this point he paused and looked at me over his glasses; he obviously expected me to be keen to find out what it was that differentiated one instrument from another.

“What can that be?” I asked.

“What differentiates identical twins is the treatment they receive, at least how they are treated as children and teenagers; what they are fed, what noises, words and music they hear. In other words: upbringing. I don’t mean just musical upbringing, rather upbringing in general, which I have always thought should be called treatment.”

“Isn’t that too clinical a word?”

“Treatment?” He almost seemed to snort at my comment. “It could well be that it is clinical but I think it is more suitable to express upbringing, at least from a general point of view. Most children are of course not brought up in any way, instead they just undergo some sort of treatment from their parents. Naturally, the treatment varies, but quite a few of them simply just get such rough treatment that they will never be anything else but children. I know about that.”

He paused again and in the meantime I imagined that something had gone wrong in his upbringing, something that he realized had had an effect on him as an adult. Then he carried on:

“But whatever happened; if you had an identical twin brother, which I doubt you have, then he should really be called . . .?”

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was being asked a question.

“Emil,” I said. Just as I had expected, he didn’t remember my name.

“Emil. Yes, that’s as good a name as any. Emil Jonsson.”

“Emil Halldorsson,” I corrected him. “Emil S. Halldorsson.”

“You know who Emil Jonsson was, don’t you?”

“Can’t say I do,” I answered.

“It can be useful to know about famous people who share your name,” he said and sat up straight in his seat. “Emil Jonsson is not the worst namesake one could think of, I am quite sure of that.”

“I don’t think I have ever heard him mentioned,” I said, and it occurred to me to mention my namesake in the Swedish Smålands, but I changed my mind.

“But perhaps you are no better off knowing about someone who bore your name in the past,” Armann carried on. “Least of all if he is dead.”

For a moment I wondered whether my namesake, whom I had thought of mentioning, was still alive or not, and whether characters in stories grew old in the same way as, for example, their authors.

“But you aren’t a twin, are you?” Armann asked. He smiled and waited for my answer, as if he wanted to make sure that I had come into this world alone, was one of a kind and so on.

I said I wasn’t.

“Consider yourself lucky,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Not to be a twin.”

This last comment made me think that he was hinting at his own personal experience of being a twin (could he even be an identical twin?), and yet it was unthinkable that there could be another version of such a man.

“Then it mentions slightly further on,” he went on and turned over the page of the book. “It states here: ‘Fearing that their trademark, if converted to a noun, may become as generic as aspirin or kleenex, they,’ that is Sony, of course, ‘sidestep the grammatical issues by insisting upon Walkman Personal Stereos.’ In other words they avoid the issue by removing the grammar from the name of the instrument. Or the name of the technology, to be more exact.”

“Is that so?” I said. “The company directors have started controlling how we talk?”

“There is no question about it,” Armann answered, clearly very happy that I showed interest in the subject. “They cut out the grammar in the name of their product because they don’t have a good enough grasp of language. One who knows that he is in the wrong naturally tries to convince everyone else that he is in the right; that is usually the way that information is passed on from man to man. They can produce an instrument that enables you to enjoy your favorite songs at thirty thousand feet above sea-level but when it comes to giving this remarkable instrument a name, they haven’t the ability to name more than a single copy; all the other copies are left in some problematic limbo. People all over the world who own the instruments are totally helpless because they don’t know how to name them when someone asks. But there is also the other possibility: that each copy is different.”

He fell silent at this point, as if he was giving me the chance to say something. Then he asked for my opinion.

“On what?” I asked.

“Whether each copy could be different?”

“That’s a question,” I said, and I realized as soon as I had said it that I had answered with this phrase before. It looked as if I had only one response on hand in reply to what the linguist was telling me and that answer had to include the word question.

“But I personally don’t believe that each individual product of this kind is unique,” he continued and pointed again at my tape player. “Isn’t it made somewhere in East Asia? Where everyone is virtually the same, whether he works with a conveyor belt or at a desk or stoops half starved over some paddy field?”

I said I thought it was produced in Korea or Japan and restrained myself from objecting to his statement that all the inhabitants of these countries were the same.

“However it may well be that they are all individual,” he said, as if he regretted having clumsily exposed his antipathy for Asians. “Maybe it’s possible to find some minute differences between one Japanese and another. But then we can also consider the opposite of Japanese technology: the Russian automobile industry! No two vehicles are the same. Each Lada, Moskvitch, or whatever it is called, is absolutely unique. Of course the Russian car comes into existence in a similar manner as most babies do, that is to say under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

Suddenly he pushed his nose up in the air and sniffed. Then he looked back towards the flight attendant, who was approaching with the food trays, and said:

“It seems as though they are going to treat us to something.”

It flashed through my mind that Armann Valur could be as much under the influence as the Russian mechanics allegedly were. I thought it unlikely that the half glass of red wine he had drunk could stimulate those weird speculations on tape players and the book from Foyles. Not to mention the subject he moved on to next: that his favorite word was limbo. He felt that he, personally, was often in some kind of limbo, both in respect to his life as a human being, that is the life pattern—as he expressed it—and his life as a thinking individual amongst other thinking individuals, and often individuals who didn’t seem to think very much at all from one minute to the next. But whatever the outcome, and maybe exactly because of these thoughts of his, I was beginning to enjoy Armann’s company—even though he was certainly one of those personalities one would never wish to have as a lifelong acquaintance or consider inviting home.

The aroma of the food seemed to have taken complete control of Armann and he had definitely lost all interest in those forms of research into which he had been giving me glimpses. He managed to stuff the book back into his pocket with a certain amount of difficulty—although it was a paperback it was too big for an average sized pocket—and he got ready for the meal by putting the flight magazine back in the seat pocket, brushing something off the sleeve of his overcoat and rubbing his hands together, like someone who is looking forward to something good. Next he took off his glasses and put them down on the table, which was ready for the food tray.

I guessed we would get chicken.

10

The cab driver pulled up in the parking space in front of the ice cream stand at Ingolfstorg. He paid the driver and when he told him to keep the four hundred kronur change, the driver, who hadn’t uttered a word all the way, said he never took more than the rate; he pointed at the meter and said that was the price, that was what he accepted for the ride. Then it will just have to be danger money, he said as he opened the door and worked his way out. He shut the door behind him, zipped up his anorak, fitted his hood over his head, and walked into Austurstraeti with his plastic bag. When he had gone several meters along the street he suddenly turned round and went back in the direction of the square. The taxi was still in the parking lot, and he knocked on passenger’s side window as he passed by. The driver seemed startled; he watched his former passenger walk on, and then muttered something under his breath when he saw the passenger stop at the ice cream stand and talk to a young man.

He asked for ice cream with a topping. Wasn’t it possible to have it hot, it was so bloody cold outside. The young man smiled and said he could make him a child-size ice cream, he would be quicker with it. Maybe that was the thing, he answered; he’d have a child’s size one. Children knew what they wanted; if anyone could make a right decision it was a child. When he took the chocolate-covered cornet (and looked goggle-eyed at it, amazed at how small it was) he asked the youth if he knew of any good bars in the vicinity, if there were any in Austurstraeti for instance. Yes, there were two or three in Austurstraeti, but there were more and rather better ones in the neighboring streets—the ones on Austurstraeti were pretty weird. There was one that was some kind of health bar and another very strange one on the right—he gave more accurate details on how to find it—but wasn’t quite sure whether he should recommend going there. He liked the sound of it and would take a look at the strange place. The young man asked him if he had come from the country and he replied that he had been in Breidholt. Then he smiled, pierced the crisp chocolate with his teeth, and took a large bite. With his mouth full, he told the young man he had been living abroad, hadn’t been in Reykjavik for several years. He swallowed the ice cream and gave a shudder, it was so cold, then added that he was just visiting an old friend before going abroad again. He paid for the ice cream, said he was going to take a look at this strange bar, and got a peculiar smile from the young man behind the counter.

He walked straight over to the bar, as if he knew exactly where it was. He peered through the window before going in and dropped the half-eaten cornet on to the pavement. He stood on it and squashed it like he was putting out a cigarette.

Inside the bar, three men were sitting at a table beside the counter and a man and a woman were at another table near the window. The smell in there was the smell of yesterday, or all the yesterdays that had been since it opened—stale cigarette smoke that seemed somehow to choke any possibility of good memories. The interior was clearly not designed to distract attention from the customers, who all looked as if they had been there a long time. But, despite the fact that he had just come in, they took no special interest in him. He walked up to the bar and asked for a double vodka and coffee, if there was any coffee to be had. The bartender was a man of about fifty, with bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. There was no coffee ready but he could make some; he, the bartender—who seemed to be the owner of the place—had coffee, that was no problem, he’d see to it straight away.

The three men who sat beside the bar had clearly become interested in his conversation with the bartender; they turned round to face the bar and one of them, who seemed to be the oldest, or at least had sat there longer than the others, said the word coffee, as if it hadn’t been heard in there before. Then they carried on talking and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, they were quarreling noisily, so loudly that the bartender ordered them to shut up or they would have to leave. They calmed down quickly, almost as though someone had blinked again.

He took the vodka glass and sat down at a table in the middle of the place but he stood up again straight away and asked the bartender, who was busy making coffee, if he could make a phone call. The men at the table looked at him again in wonder. He was shown into a room behind the bar that seemed to serve both as a wine cellar and the kitchen. There were several framed prints on one of the walls—they reminded him of the inside of a retired sailors’ home—as well as two pin-up pictures from porn magazines. One showed a pale woman of about fifty, who had remarkably firm breasts for her age. He gazed at the picture while he called information and asked for the number of Emil Halldorsson, Emil S. Halldorsson. While he held the receiver in his left hand and waited for the number, he grabbed hold of his crotch with his right hand, rubbing and pressing the denim with his thumb. He let go of himself when he got the number, transferred the receiver to his right hand, and called again. Like when he called from Sudurholar, no one answered.

When he came back out into the smoke-filled air in the bar he smelled the aroma of brewing coffee and stopped to breathe it in. Havard sat down again beside the vodka glass and had a swig. He was just about to light a cigarette when one of the three men by the bar spoke to him: Hey, you there, you got a special contract already? Laughter rose up around the table and was followed by a bad fit of coughing from one of them, who had a particularly pale face. Another, the only one who sat facing him, told him not to take any notice of his friend, he hadn’t woken up yet; he had no idea what he was saying. But he wanted to know what the man had meant when he asked if he had a special contract. The one who had spoken didn’t seem to be in any state to explain, he was too busy coughing, but his friend told him not to worry, it was nothing. Then he slapped the weakling on the back and stuck a cigarette in his mouth, as if to glue his lips together. The latter dragged out the cigarette, laughed wheezily while he got over his coughing fit, put the cigarette back between his lips, and lit it. Then he took out a leather wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out several kronur bills. He counted the money, returned it to his wallet, and put the wallet back into his pocket. The way he behaved suggested that he was in the habit of counting his money quite regularly. The newcomer stood up from his table, picked up his empty vodka glass, and walked up to the bar. The owner of the place, who had just poured steaming coffee into a cup for him, automatically brought out the vodka bottle, poured some into the empty glass, and asked if he needed milk or sugar in his coffee. He said no, turned around, and went up the table where the three men sat. He stood still for a little while, staring directly at the one who had just finished counting the money in his wallet. All three of the men stared back at him. Their expressions suggested that they had seen something unexpected; something was about to happen, and they would have to react.

11

After the meal, which turned out to be some kind of Cordon Bleu and not chicken as I had guessed, Armann fell asleep with his empty food tray in front of him. He had declined the flight attendant’s offer of coffee, finished off his red wine and one of the Cointreau bottles, and nodded off almost before he had swallowed it. The flight attendant suggested that I tip his seat back, so that he would be more comfortable. While I was adjusting Armann’s seat, the woman by the window asked me, with a slightly mocking expression on her face, if I was going to cover him up with a rug too. I smiled back and said I thought he was wrapped up well enough already. She looked as though she was going to try to fall asleep too, and when she had shut her eyes, with her head resting against the window of the plane, I imagined that she was tired after spending last night with her lover and was floating into sleep on those memories. Now, when it was nearly three o’clock and one hour into this three hour flight.

On the other hand, it was impossible to say what was going on in Armann’s mind. At first I thought of him having fallen asleep like a little child, but after further reflection I decided it was inappropriate; one would never see this kind of expression on a child’s face, even if its parents had poked it for fun or pulled its skin this way and that. Sleep would never disfigure a face so badly, except perhaps on a person who always slept alone and didn’t have to think day and night of looking good for a wife or lover. I smiled at this poor theory of mine—I began to wonder if I had been infected by my fellow passenger’s lively imagination—but I only needed to look over to the other side of the aisle to realize that there might be some truth in it. A middle-aged couple, who had asked me earlier to help them get their luggage down from the overhead bin, were asleep, and there was such a childlike, peaceful expression on the man’s face that it was impossible to imagine he had ever frowned, or looked depraved or lustful, even when he was enjoying intercourse with his wife.

“May I take the tray?” the flight attendant asked.

I was going to pass her the woman’s tray first. She seemed to be asleep, but then I saw she hadn’t touched the dessert, so I offered to lift Armann’s tray instead—he had clearly enjoyed all the food. But in order to get the tray off the table I had to be rather organized; he had put his glasses down in his unused coffee cup and his right hand—with three fingers gripping the tray, as if to prevent it from being thrown away—lay in his lap, heavy with sleep. I managed to loosen his fingers and move his hand without waking him. I couldn’t think where to put his glasses while I helped the flight attendant, so I pushed them into the pocket of my shirt and got rid of our used food trays.

Once the food trays have been removed, one feels that a very important stage has been reached. Besides having been fed and feeling comfortably full, the second stage of the journey has begun, or is about to at least, and then there’s not so long to wait until one can fill one’s lungs with, on the one hand, desperately wanted cigarette smoke and, on the other hand, cold fresh air, at least if one is on the way, as we were, to Iceland from abroad.

The flight attendant thanked me for helping her with the trays and offered me more coffee. I accepted and added what was left of the first liqueur bottle to it.

Vigdis came to mind. When I called her from the hotel the day before yesterday she said she would call me from Akureyri after I got home, though she wasn’t quite sure when. She was going to be at a meeting which could last all evening. She had asked me to buy her a jumper and some pants from a certain shop on Oxford Street; I didn’t find them, despite looking for an hour yesterday on my last trip to the shops. She had also told me to buy some special make of clothes for Halldor, my son, but I hadn’t had time to find them either. I bought a computer game instead, and I was already beginning to worry that it would be outdated by the time he came to visit me from Denmark in May or June. As I hadn’t bought anything for Vigdis I was going to get some perfume or sweets for her in the duty-free store and find some clothes for her later on Laugavegur; I wouldn’t see her before next weekend at the earliest anyway.

Armann and the woman by the window were both sleeping soundly. I was wide awake and stood up to go to the toilet, though I didn’t have any great need to go. One of the toilets was out of order—there was a hand-written sign—and I stood behind a young man who was waiting for the other one. The flight attendant, who had freed me of the food trays, was filling up the wine supplies on her trolley in the space beyond the toilets. She smiled at me and asked if I wanted more to drink with my coffee. I said no thank you, I had enough for the time being. Then I sensed that someone had joined the line, and, on turning around, I came eye to eye with the blonde from Hjalmholt. Before I turned back again she seemed to screw up her face, as if she had an itch or was trying to move her glasses further up her nose, although she wasn’t wearing any. The man in front of me was becoming impatient. He muttered something under his breath. The flight attendant thought he was talking to her, and he asked grumpily if she couldn’t find a plumber amongst the passengers. I turned to the girl.

“This is going to take some time,” I said cheerfully and tried not to let the man in front hear me.

“I’ve plenty of time,” she answered with a smile.

Of course people have enough time onboard airplanes; they have far too much time. I couldn’t think of anything more to say to improve on the clumsy remark I had made, but she came to my rescue by filling the silence:

“Can you imagine what went wrong in the other toilet?”

“I’m doing my best not to,” I said, rather pleased with myself for this answer. The fact that I was standing here in the aisle of the airplane talking to this beautiful woman, whom I had kept in the back of my mind for fifteen years, made me feel like I was in some kind of romantic comedy—the kind of film I usually try to avoid, though in this case I must admit that I wanted it to continue and reach a conclusion I had already started to hope for. “But I am beginning to wonder if something has happened in this one as well,” I added.

“They are dangerous places, these toilets,” the blonde said. “I think I’ll mess my pants in a minute.”

I didn’t quite know quite what to reply to this, if she really meant what she was saying.

“There is an even longer line at the other end of the plane,” she continued. “I don’t know what’s going on; maybe there was something in the food.”

“You can go before me,” I said, trying to sound as if I wasn’t doing her any special favor. “That’s if the person inside ever comes out.”

“Can I?” she said, gratefully, and just then a middle-aged woman came out of the toilet with a small child.

“No problem,” I said. “I can wait.”

She thanked me and when the woman and child had gone back to their seats, and the man in front had disappeared into the toilet, she said she knew what it was like with children. It took twice as long to help them though they were half our size. We didn’t say any more before she went in, but I couldn’t help imagining what she was doing once she had disappeared inside the plastic door and bolted the lock. I was in no hurry to get to the toilet and I rather hoped that she would take her time. I enjoyed standing there, making sure that no one disturbed her.

“It’s alright for you to enter,” she said with a smile when she came out, but I was partly wishing that she had left some kind of smell behind. Then she thanked me, and as she walked off in the direction of her seat, I noticed that she was carrying a little toilet bag.

I’m not sure if I imagined it but I felt as if she had given me some kind of signal with her eyes when she smiled at me. I was quite certain I wouldn’t be able to shake this woman out of my mind straight away. There was a rather heavy, heady perfume floating in the air that appealed to me straight away; she had brought her perfume in her toilet bag and had decided to use it after our conversation.

She looked back at me once, later on in the flight, and we smiled politely at each other.

Armann didn’t wake up until the captain announced that we were descending and that there were fourteen degrees of frost in Keflavik. Several passengers shivered at the very thought of it. But Armann didn’t seem to be very cold, he had clearly sweated while he slept, and I noticed that the woman by the window, who had just woken up too, couldn’t help smiling when she saw the beads of perspiration on the forehead of this overdressed man.

Armann didn’t say a word until we were just about to touch down. Then he suddenly started talking, and it was quite obvious that he was nervous. Out of the blue he began to tell me about a bartender he had met in his hotel in London. He had been chatting to him late one evening and the bartender—who had the same surname as both the Prime Minister of England and the author of Animal Farm (that is, before he assumed his “nom de plume”)—had told him a little story that explained why he had turned to heavy drinking and smoking as a young man. One of his teachers in secondary school had been a strict teetotaler, and just before he bade farewell to his pupils, who were going off to grapple with life or on to other educational institutions, he wanted to show them once and for all the destructive nature of alcohol and tobacco. He placed three glasses of water on his desk, and added alcohol to the first and nicotine to the second, leaving the third uncontaminated, just pure water.

“If one can talk about pure water in England,” Armann added in an aside.

Then the teacher opened a little cardboard box, and pulled out a black insect, which was about the size of a cigarette filter, with a pair of tweezers.