Narrator

by Bragi Ólafsson

  Praise for Bragi Ólafsson

  “Bragi’s style is completely original, and, in this Reykjavík story, its charm is an important element in the narrative’s drive.”

  —Einar Falur, Morgunbladid

  “Dark, strange, elusive, compelling, and oddly charming.… Ólafsson’s English-language debut is part Beckettian or even Kafkaesque black comedy, part existentialist novel in the Paul Auster mode, and part locked-room mystery.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The best short novel I’ve read this year.… Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces—a distinguished genre that includes ‘The Metamorphosis,’ No Exit, and a fair amount of Beckett.”

  —Paul LaFarge

  “Dark, scary, and unbelievably funny.… How long do we have to wait for English versions of Ólafsson’s other books?”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Delightfully funny and unexpectedly complex, The Pets introduces American readers to a fresh voice and perspective.”

  —L Magazine

  Also by Bragi Ólafsson in English Translation

  The Ambassador

  The Pets

  Copyright © Bragi Ólafsson, 2015

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Lytton Smith

  Title of the original Icelandic edition: Sögumaður

  Published by agreement with Forlagid Publishing, www.forlagid.is

  First edition, 2018

  All rights reserved

  [Hello to Jason Isaacs]

  Tristan Corbière line on pages 18 & 130 was originally translated by Michael Hamburger.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-940953-83-0

  This project is supported in part by an award from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature

  This book has been translated with a financial support from

  Design by N. J. Furl

  Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:

  Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627

  www.openletterbooks.org

  Contents

  Five or Six Hours Earlier

  Five Minutes Later

  Fifteen Minutes Later

  Half an Hour Later

  And a Little More Than One Hundred Minutes Pass

  Tomorrow

  Narrator

  Four friends have decided to spend a weekend together in a villa in Paris, with a view to eating themselves to death. Perhaps that’s not what they set out to do, but it seems to be the underlying goal, and once they enter the house it takes over. They’re middle-aged men, perhaps a bit older, called Ugo, Marcello, Michel, and Philippe. The house they’re staying in is owned by Philippe’s family: a beautiful, stately house, a sort of small mansion, somewhere outside the city center. Ugo is a restaurateur and chef. There’s some tension between him and his wife: we get an insight into their feelings as we watch him sharpen his carving knives inside their restaurant before going to meet his companions; she, his wife, asks just what he is planning to do with all those knives this weekend. Philippe is a judge, unmarried, and lives with his old nanny, Nicole, who looked after him as a child and still seems to take care of all his needs, including those that, to her way of thinking, protect him from any desire to seek out the favors of other women. In other words, she coddles him. The third friend, Marcello, is played by Marcello Mastroianni. He is Italian, like Ugo; the others are French. He is an airline captain for Alitalia, a womanizer who has begun to worry deeply about his declining sexual prowess. The fourth is Michel, a television producer, divorced and tired of life. They are all rather handsome men, especially Marcello. They are elegantly dressed and sophisticated. Their refinement is especially evident when it comes to food. The day after they arrive at the villa they decide to hire some prostitutes, Marcello’s idea. They only hire three women, however, because Philippe doesn’t approve of the idea; he’s mindful of what his old nanny would say. But at the very moment these gentlemen are organizing their liaison with the prostitutes, a group of schoolchildren shows up in front of the house, accompanied by their teacher, a handsome, plump woman whose role in the story, we can see at first glance, will obviously not be confined to that of school mistress. Her name is Andrea. One of the boys in the class is sent to knock on the front door and ask that the class be allowed in to see a certain tree in the garden, a linden with connections to the eighteenth-century French poet Boileau. At the conclusion of the class’s visit, the aforementioned four gentlemen invite the children and their teacher in for some little hors d’oeuvres Ugo has prepared. And, following from that, the men invite Andrea to stay to dinner. She accepts, and sits down to dine with them and the three prostitutes. Her visit stretches on until you might say that she’s finally become one of the group. In fact, she becomes the life and soul of the place, the person who best appreciates the craft involved in Ugo’s food, and she is no less appreciative of the men who have invited her in. Without any great preamble, Andrea and Philippe decide to form a holy union. Yet she still gets into bed with all four of them, and to that degree takes care of them far better than the three prostitutes, who find things overly debauched and make themselves scarce. The first of the four friends to die is the pilot, Marcello. The night after they abandon ship—the prostitutes, that is—he freezes to death in the open-top Bugatti racing car he has been working on getting running in the garage beside the house. It’s a cold night—winter has arrived—and his companions place his corpse in the kitchen, in a cold-storage room with a window through which his closed eyes look out at his surviving comrades. The next to go is Michel. His death is no less figurative than Marcello’s. He dies on the balcony, the one leading out into the garden from the living room. Indeed, you could say the reason for Michel’s unusual death is that, from an early age, his stern mother forbid him from ever passing gas when someone else might possibly hear. He confesses this weakness to his companions once it becomes clear that he is in the process of endangering his health. His mother’s strict rules have continued to govern him into adulthood, well into middle age, which means he never lets himself release his inner pressure. Even when it becomes a nuisance, and suppressing it becomes very evident, especially compared to the way his friends deal with the cornucopia of food and drink, which they’re partaking of with the sole aim of getting the greatest amount possible into one’s body. Marcello, for example, shamelessly allows himself to break wind at the dinner table, in front of Andrea and the prostitutes, but Michel gets up from the table and goes outside, where he expels so violently that it is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable to hear. And to see. As time passes, repeat incidents grow more painful, and it is difficult to imagine that it’s possible to top them using the medium of film. In the wake of Marcello’s death, it might be said that Michel’s deflation is absolute. It happens as follows: the remaining four, Michel, Andrea, Ugo and Philippe, are gathered in the living room so that they can taste Ugo’s latest concoctions and remember Marcello. A weight hangs over the group, though their appetite hasn’t diminished. True, Michel has no desire for food; it isn’t sitting well in his stomach. He goes to the piano and begins to play the song that resounds throughout the film, a theme of sorts. A song at once sensual and melancholy, a slow rumba beat, a song that’s hard to dislike. Michel’s playing does nothing to diminish that effect. But suddenly, as he sits at the piano wearing the late Marcello’s white cardigan, a harsh sound escapes from him. In light of what has already happened, perhaps the sound doesn’t strike the others as entirely surprising, but they are uncomfortable. Michel lifts himself up from his chair, trying to ease his discomfort, co
ntinuing to play the whole time. Soon the magnitude of sounds crescendos, and the others, who at first respond with nervous laughter, begin to find it rather alarming, and you imagine they fear their companion is about to float off into the air. The soothing melody begins to hasten on a trifle, to run ahead of itself. When the camera zooms in on Michel, standing at the piano, it shows sweat streaming down his face; it’s obvious how much he’s suffering, that he feels tremendous pain. He knows these are his last moments, that his body can’t endure. Indeed, the song pauses. But the rumbling continues. Not for long, though. There’s a deathly silence in the room. Michel turns around and looks desperately at his companions. Then he seeks out, almost involuntarily, the door to the balcony, heading toward the only fresh air available. When he steps outside, his feet keep him going for three or four steps, but then—and this happens very quickly—he dives forward, like he is swimming, and lands prostrate, his stomach across the balcony’s wide railing. Right away, all strength leaves his body. Ugo, Philippe, and Andrea approach the door, terrified. These are pregnant moments, even, you might say, swollen; we hear dogs barking on the gravel drive in front of the house. Michel seesaws on the railing. His limbs jerk almost imperceptibly. And the barking of the dogs intensifies; they fully understand what’s happening. When the camera pans back to Michel, the consequences of his tragic flatulence become apparent. His beige pants are now green. Philippe and Ugo take his hands and drag him back to be propped up against the balustrade pillars. They retreat to a safe distance inside, along with Andrea, and watch Michel from the doorway as he sits in a puddle of his own liquid feces. He inclines his head slightly forward; his hands, which are lying open-palmed on the concrete balcony, invite us to approach him. There is a tranquility to this image, though the dogs keep on barking. It’s as if eternity itself has been captured on film. And yet it is here, at this moment in the cinema on Hverfisgata, that the thread of the film gets broken in the eyes of one particular moviegoer in the theater, a man who will shortly take over as narrator. Because he, the narrator, leaves the movie theater. Why? Because another person, someone the narrator has been pursuing all afternoon, from the post office on Austurstræti to the movie theater on Hverfisgata via stops at several other places, has got out of his seat and walked out of the room. This person couldn’t take it any longer. The man’s name is Aron Cesar. It took the narrator, however, a moment to decide whether he should continue to sit and watch the movie, or else follow Aron Cesar. He opted for the latter choice.

  Five or Six Hours Earlier

  He’d taken a number. He hadn’t at first realized he needed to do so in order to get in line. And as he waited his turn, he wondered what words best describe the color of fire. Would you use yellow, or red? Orange? Blue? He had clapped eyes on a postcard featuring a picture of a volcanic eruption on the rack at the door to the post office, and though it was a color photograph, he couldn’t decide what colors it showed; moreover, the eruption on the postcard brought other images of fire to mind. Or other metaphors. “Thirty-five,” called a sales clerk. “Thirty-six,” the other clerk called. But he was not number thirty-five or six. I’m thirty-five years old, he thinks, but it’s not yet my turn. “Thirty-six?” the woman called again. “No one has thirty-six?” A little period of silence. “Thirty-seven?” Is there no number thirty-seven? he thinks. The black woman standing behind him gives herself up. She’s wearing a crisp, white, long dress, and he can imagine it will take on a different image once she goes out in the rain later; the shape will cling to the woman, making her outline clearer. From behind, he judges she is about thirty. When she turns around and beckons with her index finger, he momentarily thinks she’s gesturing to him, but it soon becomes apparent she’s addressing her child, a girl he estimates is six or seven. A young mother, he thinks. She will be forty years old when her daughter is fully grown. It must have significantly different effects on the personality of a child, he muses, to grow up with parents who are just under fifty when they give birth to a child compared, say, to growing up with people who are in their twenties. Worse, he expects, especially for an only child. To spend the first years of your life, and indeed all the years to date, as is his own case, in the home or, rather, the house of a man and a woman who are in no way prepared for having a child: that must mold the child in a rather decisive fashion. Not just must: does so, in reality. He is still thinking about himself. This young, dark-complexioned girl is not forced to listen to nineteenth-century violin sonatas over breakfast, he thinks. But how has that affected him? It is the nature of progeny to disturb existing forms, assuming, that is, the parents have some form or pattern to which they are trying to hold. What’s more, in their eyes, it takes the child too long to develop into a comprehensive image with fixed form, he thinks, never mind a frame around the picture.

  I think. G. thinks. The one I call G., because his name displeases him, and always has. The one who is constantly thinking about form and shape.

  •

  I’m still waiting for number 41 to be called up. I’ve finished looking at the postcards on the stand across from the white cardboard boxes on the wall shelves to the left. They are different sizes, but together they form a very beautiful whole, a family of five boxes, each placed inside the other, the smallest into the next smallest, and so on. The dark-skinned mother and daughter have completed their errand, and leave the room. I follow them with my eyes. But when I turn back toward the clerks, I notice a man I know, or rather I know who he is. He stands a little way inside the room, near the counter, somewhat obstructed by an elderly woman. Strange to see this man here, I think. But what is so strange about it? He’s my contemporary, and although he for his part has no idea who I am, or shouldn’t have, I can say that I know who he is all too well. More than once, more than twice, I’ve wished this particular individual did not exist. Or, at least, did not exist in the same space as me, at the same time, with the same people. Of course, this was very foolish thinking, and it was a while ago now. Back then, I even devised strategies to get this man out of the way, take him off the board in some manner, although the implementation of my plans never got beyond the idea stage. But here he is, as I said. I have not seen him in a while. And I have also not been contemplating him for long in the post office when his phone rings. Apparently a busy man. The ring on his cell phone can hardly be called a ring; it is more like some kind of music, music with an obtrusive beat. As soon as he starts talking into the phone, he realizes it’s his turn. As he walks up to the counter, still with the phone to his ear, I’m aware again of his peculiar gait, which I’d perpetually allowed to get on my nerves, time and again, because of the decided self-confidence it implied.

  •

  Perpetually. Decided. That’s how G. phrases it. How he thinks. But it’s unthinkable that this man, who has now surfaced here, all of a sudden, in the post office, has had such words pass through his head. Decided and perpetually. How did the line in the poem go? In my distastes above all I have elegant tastes.

  •

  Aron Cesar. He talks into the phone while he hands the clerk a letter, no, a small package. His voice is so low that G. cannot hear a single word of what he is saying. He sees that Aron is telling the woman something while pointing at the package. Unlikely that he’s letting her know what’s inside. The woman looks at him, half sullenly, while he pays for the shipment by credit card. Possibly he was informing her what was in the package. Why else would he have been pointing at it while saying something to the woman? But if he had been letting the woman know the contents, G. knows why: because he is lying about it. Aron switches off his phone and slips his card back into his wallet. When he turns around to go, his countenance more visible to G. than before, a certain period of G.’s life rushes through his mind, the years characterized by an imaginary battle with the man now standing in front of him. The boy, as he’d been then. And still is, no doubt. Amid the images flash speculations about the form I mentioned earlier, that strict form I have dedicated my life to, one
way or another. In fact, it is this point in my life, which I connect to this man here in the post office in my memory, which is the only formless part. And as soon as I mention the word, I know that, compared to Aron Cesar, my own physical form is not as well-made as his. Or as well-maintained. Not as likely to capture the attention of those who constantly rove about with open eyes looking to be reassured that their normal shape is normal after all. When Aron sets off from the post office, it dawns on G. what his gait resembles. He is the walking pelican he once saw at the zoo in Paris.

  •

  But it is not just the unshakable certainty over his own excellence that leads Aron Cesar to move over the earth’s surface this way. Thoughtlessness and stupidity also fill people with a sense of security. And while we’re on the subject of thoughtlessness, that word must have a role in the snap decision G. takes to pursue Aron when he walks out of the post office. It is not until a minute or two later, when they are outside a different building on the other side of the street, that he realizes he is still holding his envelope in his hand. It takes him a whole minute to realize this must indicate his decision to go after Aron had been involuntary. He does not come to his senses until he runs his eyes over a book displayed on a table on the second floor of the bookstore opposite the post office, part of the so-called beach-reading sale. On the cover of the book is an image of a white mailing envelope with a blue-and-red striped border and the words par avion in one corner. Aron has, in other words, entered the bookshop opposite the post office. And G. follows behind, in from the rain which might well set Austurstræti afloat. It seems likely Aron will be here a while.

  •

  G. puts his envelope back into his bag.

  •

  It had taken him a moment or two to call the name to mind. G. had immediately remembered Cesar, but not Aron, not until he was contemplating him from behind the counter. Which is strange because, as I mentioned, this was the individual G. had had firmly in mind for a long time. But as he observes Aron at the magazine display inside the bookstore, his memory suggests that Aron is Óskarson, named after his mother, Ósk Völundardóttir. And G. knows the woman. Although he does not pay much attention to what happens inside the Icelandic Parliament, he knows Ósk Völundardóttir was a Member of Parliament for one or other of the parties, knowledge that has stuck in his memory, unlike other similar trivia, because at one time they had practically knocked each other over in the street in front of Parliament, G. and this woman. He was passing by one day a few years back, it was winter, he remembers that it was snowy and cold, and at the very moment he walked past the building she stormed out the front door, Ósk Völundardóttir, as if fleeing from something. And she collided with him. He remembers her apologizing. She took off so fast he felt sure she would get into another collision before getting to the other side of the square at Austurvöllur. He also remembers wondering whether he, rather than she, should not have apologized for getting in the way of a person who ran the country. But maybe she was hurrying some dirty laundry away from Parliament, and all her attention was concentrated on not spilling her bag. That her son, Aron Cesar, had lied about the contents of a package at the post office, as G. had watched him do, is not something plucked from thin air, some sick notion from a hypochondriac. Shortly before Sara and Aron split up, he had been convicted of a similar crime; it is not impossible he was committing the same crime again at the post office.