Narrator

by Bragi Ólafsson

  •

  While he watches Aron smoke the cigarette, three men of a similar age as him come by, maybe a little older, walking along the sidewalk toward Bankastræti. They’re bankers. The people who make decisions, G. thinks. Filled with fragile self-confidence, greedy for ever-higher wages. But all the signs indicate their wives or girlfriends chose their clothes for them, especially their shoes. Two of them are in black, short overcoats. The third is wearing a tight-fitting jacket and light blue shirt that stretches out past the jacket’s cuffs. Why such narrow-toed shoes? They remind him of his mother’s clock, its hands. He looks at his watch; it shows exactly twenty minutes past twelve. The midday news is about to begin on the National Radio. His father is preparing to turn on the radio, lunch in front of him on the table. Aron Cesar, on the other hand, is done eating, and the men from the bank are on their way to get sustenance. They walk past him, and he hears them talking about enjoying some dish, which they mention by name, how they could imagine getting such a thing again. They haven’t already eaten, have they? No, they are on their way to get food. They walk down the steps to the sidewalk by the outdoor chess set, then down Lækjargata, and disappear inside the doors of the fast food restaurant next to the champagne bar, a place G. has always pictured as the scene of a crime, a crime with a capital C, one just now committed, still being committed, about to get committed. But what about himself? He realizes that maybe he should get something to eat. But this unexpected event on his agenda at the moment allows no such thing. By now Aron Cesar has risen to his feet, put on his hat, since it has started raining again, is brushing off his pants and preparing to walk off along the sidewalk, in the direction of Bankastræti. Without Aron noticing him, G. takes a few steps toward the high school. He feels sure Aron will head up Bankastræti, and does not therefore need to go after him immediately.

  •

  He pauses by the wall of the building that houses the Art Festival. And as he looks across Lækjargata, keeping an eye on Bankastræti, he sees the trio from the bank come back out the door of the fast food restaurant. One of them, the one dressed in the jacket, seems to be adjusting his coat, which indicates he’d taken it off, although they could not have been inside the place more than half a minute or so. He surmises from the men’s gestures that the restaurant was not up to scratch, that they are trying to shake off its effect on them. Then one of them points to another nearby place, and they appear to almost at once decide to go in. But at that moment Aron has reached the sidewalk on Bankastræti. Time to go after him. The rain is worsening. G. imagines the three bankers anxious to take shelter, even more than to satisfy their hunger. Aron has reached the corner of Skólastræti by the time G. gets to Bankastræti. He is standing by the window of the store that used to be Hans Petersen, the camera store. Does Aron have any children? G. asks himself. Will they be waiting at home with their hungry beaks come the end of the workday? It may be he’s fathered children—it’s actually very likely—but they are not part of his life in the loft. What’s more, he isn’t returning home after the workday. His working day includes a visit to a woman he met the day before. And the next day: another visit from some other woman, coming to see him at his loft. Is he still caught up in the same thing as before, because everything else in his life, the things meant to be edifying or uplifting, have run aground in the sand and come to no good? Surely his parents’ educations, the fact that they have their respective homes on separate continents, put pressure on him to learn a trade or science? What kind of job includes walking around town, a meeting in a house on Þingholtsstræti in the middle of the day, and still being able to afford a trip to a bar to watch soccer in the afternoon, which I know, which I think I know, is on Aron’s agenda?

  •

  Þingholtsstræti is the next street over from Ingólfsstræti. I myself once had a job on that street, the job that is for all intents and purposes the only real job I’ve had in my entire life, with the exception of my so-called youth work experience. A medium employed me as a transcriber. It wasn’t, of course, a full-time job. There would have needed to be more rapid contact between the worlds involved. But I remember seeing it as a real job at the time, I even thought quite highly of it. I felt like I had responsibilities, not least when I was sent to the corner of Þingholtsstræti and Bankastræti with film the medium needed developing. What added to this sensation that I was being entrusted with something important was the fact that my parents had never tried to instill any sense of trust in me. I would take the film to Hans Petersen, the photo shop. Actually, I think those rolls of film, which I am coming to realize were far, far greater in number than the scant few my parents treated our family to when I was a kid, must have contained very few, if any, actual pictures of the séances. Kristján, the guy who organized them, and the guy who finally fired me, used to take pictures of the participants before meetings began. Truly peculiar photographs. There would usually be seven to eight people, typically a mix of genders, and he arranged the group a bit like a soccer team along the wall of the room where I was situated at my desk, seeming to make a big deal about the fact that people shouldn’t smile or have unnecessarily joyful expressions. Yet I think it quite probable that one of the many rolls I took to get developed had been shot during a séance. “There’s nothing on this film,” the woman who served me said, “It’s blank.” Just like Mom’s image of me in the kitchen. Although the kitchen was visible. I remember the woman at Hans Petersen asked me if I was working for Kristján on the corner, as she put it, and although she had this slightly odd expression, or perhaps because she did, I didn’t think it made my job less meaningful to have been asked this. Not until several days later, that is, when I remembered the question in the wake of having seen Kristján at an embarrassing moment; namely, I barged in on him in the middle of a certain private ceremony, one I feel rather uncomfortable mentioning by name. He had not expected me to be in his house at that time of the day, before noon, because I tended to turn up in the afternoon and stay until evening, often until the séance itself. This unpleasant insight into his life led, several days later, to him firing me. People don’t want to have in front of their eyes those who remind them of how inappropriate their private acts become in front of others. Now, at this very moment, Aron is turning onto the street to which his errand summons him.

  •

  When he’s gone roughly ten feet along Þingholtsstræti, he suddenly turns around, like he’s left something behind. I lean toward the window of the clothing store on the corner and pretend to be busy with something other than following him: I open my bag and appear occupied getting something out of it. I take out the envelope with the manuscript, and feel for a moment like the one hundred and fifty-one manuscript pages are closer to three hundred. Then I turn back to see Aron standing in front of the steps to Caruso, examining the printed menu in the frame on the stair railing. Didn’t he just finish eating? The weather has cleared up for now, but more precipitation looks likely. It’s plausible that the improving weather’s effect on Aron Cesar is to make him want something refreshing to drink. He wants a beer. But does he drink? If you’re partaking of the green herb, would you also drink? I recall the news story about the poet who killed someone inside this very restaurant eight or nine years back. I will never forget the man’s name, although I don’t know what he wrote. But I wonder what’s it’s like to be a poet with a poetic name: Svanur, the name of that poetic bird, the swan? Not good, I imagine. But perhaps it benefits a poet to kill someone? G. remembers an Icelandic literary critic once complaining that domestic authors generally did not have the requisite life hazards to have anything remarkable to say in their poetry. Would homicide be considered a hazard for the one committing it? According to what G. read in the news about the killing at Caruso, the poet was not in danger from the photographer at the moment he killed him. It came to light later that the poet had had dealings with the photographer, involving the latter taking a picture of him at some unfortunate moment in the poet’s life, an
image published in a prominent place in a major newspaper. And instead of writing about the experience, the poet killed his subject. G. sees Aron place his finger on a particular dish on the menu, and move closer to see better. Then he goes off along the sidewalk, and soon crosses the street, toward the house where the séances took place. His step is lighter than earlier; perhaps he’s looking forward to seeing someone. G. knows he is allowing himself to look forward to something.

  •

  As he starts to walk in the same direction as Aron, he happens to glance up at the house where he worked, and cannot understand how it can be that this is the first time he’s found it strange that the séances took place in such a busy, noisy area as this part of downtown. And, simultaneously, he remembers having read in the paper or heard on the radio, though he seldom engages with media, that this particular corner in downtown Reykjavík is the most dangerous street corner in the whole of Europe at certain times of day or night—presumably on weekend nights.

  •

  Even though it’s barely ten years ago that he received his unexpected insight into the world of spiritualists, he now feels like it’s unthinkable that there’s any life left in that world today. But as he thinks along these lines, he wonders if he sees the present as so modern that ten years in the past becomes more or less ancient history. A decade-and-a-half back, the twenty-something Aron Cesar was caught up in drugs. It does not look like anything has changed. Has that world, the world of drugs, not moved on, become outdated, in the same way he imagines the spiritualist world has? Are the substances that Aron is taking to a man on Þingholtsstræti perhaps totally different, more modern, than the ones Aron himself used back when he was twenty or so? I know as much as any one man can know about the ancient and the modern … One need not delve very deep into the nature of these two aspects of culture, drugs and the supernatural, to see that they have at least one thing in common: Hallucinations. Although sometimes G. had loved to transcribe the conversations that took place in the séance—especially when the medium needed to arrange his flow of information from the other side in accordance with, or rather not in accordance with, information the participants were not ready to accept as being correct—he is probably as little excited by the world of spiritualism as he is by the world of forbidden substances being sold in secret. The sort Aron Cesar is about to take into this house here in the city center. Haus und Garten. Will he get to hear him say those words into the intercom? No. It does not happen. Aron goes into a passageway, and disappears from his sight. The doors are obviously around back.

  •

  I had no idea until now that the square where I was sitting down to wait for Aron was called Bríetartorg: Bríet’s Square. It’s on the corner of Amtmannsstígur and Þingholtsstræti, and it’s really hardly a square, more like a corner lot on which no house has been built. Possibly there was a house here once, but no longer; it’s vacant. I think I mentioned it before, but maybe not, that I tend to have trouble deciding what I feel about my own feelings, or, rather, trouble assessing whether what I feel is really what I feel, whether it is in general not simply what I think I should feel. And once again I come up against this question as I consider whether I ought to be proud that I know who this Bríet was. And therefore know what she did to merit having a little square named after her. Aron wouldn’t know that. But how long is he planning to be inside?

  •

  While G. speculates that she must be about to call him, his mother, he decides to follow up on his idea of calling Aron Cesar, as he earlier conceived. It is time to play his prank. He gets up and walks a few steps toward the house Aron went into. It is diagonally right, opposite the square. He scans for movement in the windows of the house, but at first glance sees nothing, even though none of the blinds are down. The basement windows are slightly buried, and the bottom parts of the first-floor windows are approximately a person’s height from the sidewalk. The house is obviously newly renovated. It’s like he remembers this house had seemed in rather bad shape when he last saw it. The white window frames give the appearance of confidence, and the unpainted corrugated iron is a sign that the siding panels were set very recently. They always leave corrugated iron unpainted for the first year. But why? Why does he know this about corrugation? He has never held a paintbrush, or driven nails into a wall, not even one time in his high school work experience program. In all likelihood, it’s totally idiotic to be calling Aron. But if he rings him, should he then immediately say a name? It is ridiculous to be calling him. But it’s also ridiculous to wait here outside this house and not call him, given that he’s had the idea in the first place. He sits back down on the bench. Would he not in truth be doing Aron a favor by causing him to take the phone out of his pocket in front of the man in the apartment? Would it not indicate how sought after business with him is? He gets the phone out of his pocket, and it takes him a short time to get Aron’s number from directory services. “Do you want me to connect you directly?” The girl who gives him the number offers to do that, or something like it. But he declines. As he types in the number, two teachers walk past whom he knows from high school, they are on the Amtmannsstígur side, on the side nearer him. He does nothing to reduce the chances of them seeing him; they would not recognize him, even though one of them taught him one winter in school. The call gets answered. He waits. “Hello?” He waits a little longer. “Is that Aron Óskarson?” he asks, when Aron seems like he’s not going to say anything else. “Who’s speaking?” asks Aron. “Is this Aron Cesar?” asks G. “It depends on who’s asking,” says Aron. G. allows a few beats to pass. “Who is this?” asks Aron again. “Do you have anything for me?” G. says in reply, and feels the way his heart beats faster. “What do you mean?” asks Aron. “Who is this speaking?” Yes, who is this? G. asks himself. Who do I imagine this is? “I’m asking if you have some stuff for me,” he says, placing his left hand on his chest, as if to slow the beating. “Some what?” asks Aron. “You know what I mean,” says G. “No, I don’t,” says Aron. Does he detect impatience in Aron’s voice? G. tries to imagine a glimpse of the face Aron will be making to the man living in the apartment. “I’m asking if you have anything. I need it today.” To those words, Aron responds with something approaching aggressiveness. “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouts. “Who gave you my number?” Without realizing it, he has let the cat out of the bag. Who gave you my number? G. decides to play another prank, and marvels at his own daring—at first glance, to an external observer, as he puts it himself, daring is not the foremost character trait one would associate with him. How many thoughts fit into the very short time period between a question and its response? “Nóra,” says G. The idea arrives completely from the blue. And Aron repeats her name. “Nóra? Who are you?” he asks. “It doesn’t matter,” replies G. “I’m just looking for some stuff, and I was told to call you. By Nóra.” “You’re messing around with me,” says Aron, asking again who this is. There is despair in his voice, mixed with nervous laughter. “I’ll just have to look somewhere else,” G. pulls out this suitable answer, but before he disconnects, he clears his throat. The throat-clearing is the last thing Aron will hear over the phone. It is starting to rain again. G. hadn’t meant to clear his throat, but in retrospect he is fairly certain he has done the right thing. Possibly he’d seen this done in such situations in a movie, one time, the character in the movie having rung up someone without giving his name, and then clearing his throat when he felt enough had been said, as a way to end the call.

  •

  He shouldn’t have done this. Involuntarily, he stands up from the bench and heads the other way, where the two teachers went, up toward Ingólfsstræti. No, why should he not have done this? The rain intensifies. If anyone is surveilling him, he will undoubtedly attract more suspicion by looking away from the building rather than toward it. He turns back again, and goes directly across the street; he heads along the sidewalk toward Bankastræti, past the building where Aron is inside. And, needless
to say, he is talking with the man: as he passes the first window on the first floor, none other than Aron Cesar is on the other side of the glass. He is looking out, and from the perspective G. has, from under Aron’s neck, he strikes G. as rather pale in his appearance. But that must be his imagination. He is not going to let himself off the hook, pretend he is not somewhat imagining, that he is not under the influence of the way things are in movies. And without being tempted to look in Aron’s direction in the window, although perhaps he does squint his eyes just slightly toward him, he can be totally confident that, as far as Aron is concerned, G. is simply some passerby on his way along the street. Which he is. So Aron is to be found on the building’s first floor. Now G. knows that.