•
Aron is back on the phone. This time the conversation doesn’t concern commercial matters, like the earlier call. Now he’s talking about something that happened yesterday, something that was a lot of fun. I have no intention of repeating the words he uses about the thing he felt counted as fun.
•
Does Aron know his father’s language? He certainly has the appearance of a person from whom Portuguese should flow like a brook from mountain—but not all that glitters is gold, as my mother would say. From what I’ve heard so far from his mouth, nothing spills out but wretched Icelandic rocks mixed with the grit and dust of unseemly English loanwords.
•
When Aron drops the magazine on the floor and bends to pick it up again, G. sees what type of magazine it is. It isn’t about classical music. “Did I tell you who I hit up yesterday?” Aron says, half whispering into the phone while he grabs the magazine and rolls it up, like he’s trying to claim ownership of it. G. strains forward to hear who Aron met yesterday, but as he says the name into the phone two foreign men come past G. and their exotic language, something Slavic, distracts him from Aron. Since G. thinks he understands some of the words the men are saying, he is barely able to concentrate on what Aron adds next, but he manages to make out, however, that “she,” presumably whomever he met yesterday, lives on Barónsstígur, “want to go there with me tonight?” He also hears Aron call his interlocutor “Eddi.”
•
Eddi and Aron. Barónsstígur. G. returns Interior Design, and picks up a music magazine. And then he hears the name of the woman Aron was saying he met the day before. “Her name is Nóra. No, just Nóra. I think so, anyway. I only met her yesterday,” he says. And he laughs. He reiterates to “Eddi” that “she definitely won’t mind.” But he doesn’t hear any more; Aron lowers his voice. The Eastern Europeans on his other side occupy his attention further by saying something funny and laughing unnecessarily loudly.
•
Nóra? Is that an Icelandic name? To whom did the name Nóra belong? Rather than seeing before him some woman with this name, he imagines a black cat wearing it on a small tag hanging from the collar around its neck. Sara’s hair was no less like a cat’s.
•
She invited him. Not exactly to come visit, but she said that he should knock on her door if he was passing through the neighborhood. That was six months after her curtailed visit, likely nine or ten months after she and Aron were through. And he made up an errand in Seltjarnarnes, he pretended he had been to Grótta, the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula.
•
She lived in a tiny house in the garden of her parents’ detached house, a building no doubt originally intended as a storage shed or some sort of outhouse. On the door was a sign that G. remembered a little tree branch had been hooked into, curving forward, as if at once to welcome a person and ward him off. It was a Friday evening. And he had been drinking. He does not anymore, it’s important to say. And never really has, except for a few times in those peculiar years. But when Sara came to the door, she did not want to see him. He said he had been touring the lighthouse, but that did not sound convincing, at least not to her ears. But if she really had something else to do, as she told him while he stood there in front of the door, it was something she obviously made up on the spot. A lie, to put it plainly. And she paid for the lie. Or her mother did, rather. It was not in his character to use such expressions, “paying for,” but the crime he committed that evening calls for crass language. There was no doubt Sara’s parents, the composer and the violinist, were hosting some gathering. A low drone hummed from inside the house, so it must have been rather noisy inside, and after Sara sent him away, he noticed how intolerably the murmuring got on his nerves. Yet at the same time it drew him toward the house. Her mother must have been playing her instrument for her guests that evening, because otherwise she would have hardly left it on the windowsill in the living room. Aside from being a ridiculous place to set such a sensitive and precious possession as a violin, the windowsill was hot from the radiator turned on beneath it. The violin was warm to the touch as he reached into the open window for it. But why did he reach for it? What was going through his mind as he did so? He imagined the wood of the secretary he would one day own being as glossy as the instrument’s wood. No, he didn’t. Not at that moment. That happened later. He only knows he drank a pint bottle of brandy that night, and he knocked on the door of the girl he imagined he was in love with. Half the bottle was already in his bloodstream by the time he reached through the window, and so only half of his head was working, if that much. The second half of bottle went down inside him after he had stolen the violin, while he was sitting by her fence feeling sorry for himself. He does not even remember whether it was a cold or warm evening. Did he know at that moment the memory of the violin, the bottle and the fence paneling, and of the pitiful folk melody and lyrics resounding in his head, would be more important than some description of the weather in Seltjarnarnes? He knows only that he conducted himself in the way he would have expected the half-Brazilian Aron Cesar to, had the same situation lay before him. But what is Aron doing now? At this very moment? He slides the phone into his pocket and sets the magazine down, rolled up and no longer in saleable condition, on the table display by which I am standing. And he, Aron, determinedly strides out of the store.
•
I return my magazine to the rack where it belongs, not on the table like Aron, and follow him. It is still raining. I had actually read a little news in the music magazine that gave me considerable pleasure. Like a little sunbeam in all the gray moments, although I would never use such a simile myself. Aron heads directly across the street and into the supermarket on the right side of the post office. I am not going to mention the name of this store, no more than I mentioned the name of the folk singer earlier, or the magazine Aron was looking at. In truth, it’s the supermarket a singer with a guitar often sits outside; I assume he wants compensation for his contribution to the noise pollution along the street. I have more than once heard him sing a song by the aforementioned folk singer. The one who wrote that ridiculous song. How did it go, again? So easy to look at, so hard to define.
•
Once G. is inside the supermarket, it pops into his mind that he could hurry the envelope over to the post office while Aron decides what to buy. He seems to be taking his time here. He is poking into this and that, just to have something to do. Aron has been forced to kill time until he is expected on Þingholtsstræti. But what should he himself do? Make haste to the adjacent building with the envelope? Is he entirely confident about the title he’s chosen? Was it perhaps a blessing that Aron was unexpectedly there in the post office? Is hesitation in this case a victory? He does not entirely trust that he will be able to get to the post office and back; he realizes he does not want to lose Aron. As he watches him take a plum from the fruit table and roll it in his hand, thumbing its skin, a vivid picture of Aron comes to mind, inspired by the pages of the magazine he was looking at in the bookstore. He sees a hot climate, tropical, a pool, palm trees in the background; Aron is lightly-dressed, his proudly-displayed skin the color of milky coffee, enjoying life to the hilt, and he imagines how good Aron and Sara must have looked with so few clothes on. Together. And, following from this, getting naked. She with her light skin and rust-red, long hair. Again he hears, from his mother’s friend’s lips, that word: fashionable.
•
Aron decides to buy plums. G. slips over to the dairy cooler, then turns his back to Aron as the latter strides over to the milk products and plucks something G. thinks is yogurt. From there, Aron goes back past the fruit and vegetables, and fetches himself a croissant. G. trails after him as he goes to the cash register to pay. To maintain a distance between them, he lets one customer separate them in line. It just so happens that the man is double Aron’s width, this is a man who ought to appear in a PSA about this kiosk wanting to falsely call itself a supermar
ket. G. hears Aron ask for a pack of cigarettes. “And a lighter, too,” he adds. Once again G. is struck by how inconceivable it is that this Icelandic voice, as pubescent as it is in spite of emerging from a thirty-something-year-old man, should also know how to speak Portuguese. That Aron Cesar Óskarson is in his mid-thirties is no less absurd. When did he last see him? My youth is dead like the spring. It wasn’t so long ago they were both as alive as a biting, crackling winter. As the fiery autumn that ignites winter. Only thirteen years have passed since Sara was getting hot between the sheets with Aron. And one year fewer since she received that letter from G. He has long wondered whether she read it under those very covers, and what she did with it after she’d read it. Had she thrust it into a desk drawer, a drawer she had thought would store letters from Aron, if Aron sent her any? All he knows is that the words of the letter followed her to where she later went. Which wasn’t so much later. He knows it as well as … as well as what? As much as Aron Cesar is self-assured, his mind answers. As well as the fact that men like Aron send no letters. There are only notices. Not from him, but from the authorities, saying he has broken the law. That he is beyond repair. That he would be more at home in Brazil, in the City of God. And a lighter, too. I need to set light to something. Did Sara set light to his letter after reading it? He pictures a blue fire eating up the paper, while the flame from the candle is yellow. That Aron is still twenty. That inside him, a red fire burns. That he still dreams about lying under palm trees, his lighter next to the sun lounger, ready to set light to anything, to destroy anything casting a shadow over him.
Five Minutes Later
It is not without pangs of hunger that he observes Aron eating his store-bought snacks. It has stopped raining for a while, it seems, and Aron seems satisfied to sit on the stairs at Bernhöftstorfa. He spreads the plastic bag from the store on the stairs before he sits down. G. has to content himself with standing there contemplating Aron. He positions himself slightly further up, by a restaurant on Bankastræti, one named for the hill’s slope: Banker’s Hill. On the way here, Aron had stuck his nose briefly in the door of a small bar on Austurstræti, between the bookstore and the diner called Hressingarskáli, and shouted a few words to the employees; he could hear they took the form of a question. It was some kind of sports bar, with large TV screens on the walls; he must have been asking about the game later today. As Aron reached the corner of Austurstræti and Lækjargata, G. noticed he studied his reflection in the window of the souvenir shop, and he halted for a few moments before making sure he looked okay, in order to cross from one street to the next. G. allowed himself to do the same thing as he reached the corner window. But what was the difference between the two as they regarded their reflections? Aron is wearing a hooded, waist-length, nylon anorak, with a fur collar; G. has on his mustard yellow corduroy jacket. Aron is in black sneakers and dark gray jeans, which G. has to admit do not go badly with the dark blue jacket, and he assumes Aron has on a dark-blue T-shirt or shirt, just barely visible beneath the jacket. G. is wearing old, grayish brown wool pants, which could well be his father’s, or even grandfather’s, but were left behind by a deceased uncle. His mother thought he could use them. He also got to choose a couple of old pieces of furniture from the uncle’s estate, beautiful items no one in the family cared for. His pants go really well with his dark brown suede shoes. He’s wearing, too, the overcoat that was a Christmas present from his parents, and under the corduroy jacket he has on a light pink turtleneck.
•
Aron starts to eat. He begins with the plum. He discards what he doesn’t eat on the sidewalk at the foot of the stairs. Then he stuffs the croissant into his mouth, washing it down with the yogurt drink. I could never imagine sitting down at a table with this man. From where G. stands he cannot hear whether the movements of Aron’s jaw give off any noises as he chews the mixture of yogurt and bread, and he cannot tell, either, whether he eats with his mouth open, but he can well imagine the expression on Sara’s face, back then, watching her boyfriend eating in front of her. It is difficult enough having to imagine what happens to the food after it enters the body; one should be spared having to hear the sounds of it entering. But it is not just the food that needs getting rid of. Aron lets the yogurt packaging go the way of the plum remnants. Then he takes his phone from his pocket and begins to play with it, or so it seems. He looks over his shoulder, as if making sure no one is monitoring what he’s doing. And lights himself a cigarette.
•
That G. himself has a cell phone in his coat pocket is not exactly of his own volition. His mother wants to be able to get hold of him. She’s an invalid. She does not trust his father will be reachable at times when he has popped out for a bit and she desperately needs some assistance, which happens not infrequently. He, her son, also sometimes rings her when he’s not at home. Not often. Usually he’s at home. While he observes Aron Cesar toying with his phone, he gets the idea to call him. Why not? He could play a trick on him. He could pretend to be someone else. Although he does not know much about the functionality of his handset, he knows for certain that his number does not appear on the screen of the device he is calling. He asked specifically for the feature that reveals that information be removed; he does not want people to know it’s him calling them. Why not ring up Aron? On Aron’s screen, the caller would be listed as unknown. But what should he say? What could he say? Should he sound threatening? Isn’t an anonymous call innately threatening, in this time when telephone users generally know who’s calling before they start a conversation? He could pretend to be conducting business with Aron, but prefer not to give his name. At that very moment, Aron’s phone rings.
•
He moves closer. Not only to better hear what’s being said: he would like to smell the cigarette smoke. Experiencing that smell, he returns to his high school years, out on the sidewalk in front of the school, that awful establishment almost next door to where he is now, feeling like he is present within the very walls of the buildings as he listens to Aron on the phone. He speaks like a nineteen-year-old thinking of skipping his next class.
•
What terrible memories I have of school. And worse still, memories about going to school. Sitting at the breakfast table with his parents, listening to Mom’s smacking noises, Dad’s middle finger tapping ceaselessly on the table as he reads through the newspaper. The morning music ritual had become rarer at that time: they tended to put something on the player when they were in the midst of some kind of conflict, or irritable from the day before, and he remembers, like it happened yesterday, what they played the last day, what it was he had had to endure before he reached the long-awaited moment of moving into the basement and becoming his own man. Personally, I am a lover of chamber music, as it’s called; I’ve probably mentioned that before, but when it lurks as background to other sounds that automatically stretch it and tug at its notes and pollute it, it is no better than that noise pollution I find so irritating: the rustling for popcorn in paper bags at the movie theater. Brahms’s String Sextet No. 2 is downright intolerable when those you are listening with are occupied with feeding themselves toast and cucumbers, and when emanating from these same people is an almost palpable remorse that has been built up and calloused over several decades. My own man. As I became the day after Brahms had been especially selected to aggravate me. From that day, I was free from the torture in the kitchen each morning. For sure, it took me no little time to clean the basement apartment and make it mine, not least because my parents’ tenant, thrown out so I could enter in, was hardly a clean freak. In fact, I would have needed to hire some assistance with the cleaning which lay before me. The tenant did not just leave dirt and dust, he somehow managed to forget two books on the hall table, the same table I later polished up, and which classifies in my mind today as one of my favorite things. The books were publications that were later of great benefit to me, although I did not realize it at first. For a long time, I was afraid that the tenant would
come back when he found out that he had forgotten the books, but it has not yet happened, seventeen years later. And my parents are still alive. And I am, too. Which is not something to be taken for granted.
•
But how does Aron live, how does he organize his space? I won’t rule out that he lives in accommodation financed by his parents, his father being just as prosperous as I imagine him to be, some fishing mogul in Brazil, and his mother no less well off, but potentially his funding comes from others’ misfortunes, mostly young people, through the transactions he conducts. He lives in some kind of penthouse. And I don’t have to wait long for my suspicions to be confirmed. “Come by my loft,” he says into the phone, talking to someone of the opposite sex, I can tell. I do not know if that constitutes a pleasant surprise for me, exactly, but it is nevertheless surprising to hear Aron describe his living situation to the girl on the phone. He takes considerable time in doing so, since he is clearly trying to entice the girl to come over. What I do not know at first, however, is that Aron is asking whether “she” can’t come by some time tomorrow, maybe in the afternoon, the invitation somehow not fitting with how he recently asked a friend whether he wouldn’t come with him this evening to some woman’s place, a woman whom he said he met yesterday. But then I come to my senses. This is some totally different woman he wants to meet tomorrow. “Why don’t you come up and see me around two tomorrow?” he asks. And I can tell from listening to him he gets an affirmative answer to the suggestion. “I’m actually busy today,” he says. “Tonight? No, I need to meet a guy tonight.” He’s lying. Unless he was lying to his friend, although I still don’t understand why he was inviting him on a date with the woman he met yesterday. Something has clearly gone over my head. Aron says goodbye to the woman on the phone and lights a second cigarette.
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