•
… by fucking her … I wonder how I look in the eyes of the people walking past the screamingly huge window of the store? If they care to look at me, that is. He defiled her by entering her … Would these people suspect that the young man on the other side of the glass had never been inside another person? He had come out of his mother, and has not been anywhere since.
•
The second croissant is equally satisfying. He did not know he was so hungry. Neither did he think he had it in him to use the kind of words he had just been thinking. The smell of the croissant, and its taste, takes his mind to France, calls up images of his second trip abroad. And as he takes a sip of coffee he watches Aron Cesar get up from the table inside the sports bar.
•
He knows, he can see on the sports page of the newspaper in front of him, that today’s match, the one which has dragged Aron inside the bar, is between England and Costa Rica. He wonders if his father is perhaps over at his nephew’s, that coarse man who today is undoubtedly drunker than usual because England is in the spotlight. And because he knows his father has not returned from an errand he should long since have concluded, G. reckons it more than likely he ended up in the apartment with the giant screen, even though the German team is not playing. His mother would already have let him know if his father had showed up. But then she should already have called him to express concern that he still hadn’t returned from the bakery. In other words, he expects a call from her shortly.
•
The trip to England with his elderly parents was actually one of the most ridiculous things he has ever heard of. What is there for a fifteen-year-old, a teenager, to do in Bath, England, totally alone with his middle-aged—well past middle-aged—parents, a man and a woman who had only had on their itinerary seeing some Roman monuments and visiting a bath where the Romans had once bathed? It was a totally dissimilar and enjoyable experience for the same person, twelve years later, to go on his own to the world’s capital, a capital as far as he sees the world. Where he saw the pelican in the zoo. Where it saw him.
•
It approaches, it draws me the way a magnet attracts a needle. It looks for all the world like my darling redhead, my beloved.
•
Aron sits back at the table; he has gone to get himself a beer. But then he stands up and heads back to the bar, and returns to set another full glass on the table. Aron Cesar. I should maybe call him again.
•
It was on some bridge between the left and right banks of Paris, I cannot remember what the bridge was called, that I heard the voices of Icelanders. I have already mentioned I was twenty-seven at the time. Before I went abroad, I read a book I got at the library, by some Putnam, an American, where he’s describing eight blond Icelanders in Paris during the third decade of the twentieth century, who every night faithfully went to a particular bar in Montparnasse, and never said a word to anyone else, but stood erect at the bar and drank themselves stiff, striding out into the night and going to their studios. According to the author of the book, they were artists. Since I’d just finished the book, this Putnam’s description was fresh in my mind when I heard the voices of the two Icelanders on the bridge, and it came to light, after I followed my compatriots for a good part of the day, that one of them, the man in his seventies, tremendously mismatched to look at yet not disheveled, was some kind of artist. The other man, who was a little younger, possibly mid-fifties, seemed to me to be interviewing the older man; at least, he kept on asking questions and getting answers in between, and the conversation sounded like it concerned the life and career of the older man. Much of what I heard them say I recorded in my notebook when I returned to the hotel that evening. I had tracked them into a café, into a bar, and finally into a restaurant, until they disappeared into an apartment on the other side of the river, the right side, some kind of apartment block, very ugly and gray. Somehow I found out, I do not remember how, that this building was connected with some kind of arts organization. I guessed that the Icelanders, at least the elder one, the artist, had some space in the building, presumably a studio, like the blond Icelanders in the American book. A large part of their back-and-forth, the artist and the interviewer, was about some book that was seemingly going to be published by the artist’s brother—who in fact they made much fun of—and that concerned the artist’s career—but what struck me afterward as most memorable was their very peculiar conversation about the Nanga Parbat mountain in the Himalayas. It was obviously on the artist’s agenda to create some work or other with Nanga Parbat in the title; he thought it was amusing, not least because the name Nanga Parbat, abbreviated, had the same initials as his own. I have yet to find out who these people were, or are; I tried to find out after I came home from Paris, but soon gave up. I do not know, therefore, whether the book they discussed was ever published or not.
•
The reason I dwell on this memory from Paris is, however, that after reading the news about the chamber group, I began to think about the manuscript in my bag, and to wonder about the response it would get from the people to whom it was addressed. Will it be considered by an editorial board? Or will it be only the publisher who runs his eyes over it, and allows his so-called daily disposition, the way he feels at that particular moment, dictate whether he reads beyond the first two or three pages? To send this off, away from me, to get it out of my hands, one might say that it is at the moment a half-finished work. And therefore simply initiated. Because all it has left is to reach its conclusion. But the course of events doesn’t run ahead of a person, it does not give one the slip. It does not wait for you, either. I am sitting here in the building next to the post office, I could so easily uproot myself a moment, go next door, even leave my unfinished coffee for a little while. But I decide not to return to the post office before tomorrow, when I will come back with the letter my mother asked me to mail. She must be about to call me, any moment. But if it reaches the editors, those I imagine there in the building to which the envelope is addressed, and they examine the contents, what questions will they ask? “But what about the girl, the one mentioned at the outset? What happens to her?” I feel quite sure that will be the first question they ask themselves: “Does the man who crossed himself in the cemetery have nothing more to do with the story? And will something happen with the newly-sharpened knives of the restaurateur, Ugo, other than their being used to cut meat?” But I have not mentioned any knives, I will not take responsibility for them. Indeed, it is also not certain that these people, whom I imagine to be two or three women, and the publisher, a man, will have read the story in its entirety when they discuss the manuscript. Perhaps they will have gotten no further than the point where I have the publisher himself say: “But why is he pondering the publisher’s response? Should he not instead be worrying about the reader?” And when the two women, or three, agree, the publisher adds a third question: “Why doesn’t he just continue with the story?”
Half an Hour Later
And that’s what he does. He continues. The match between the English and Costa Rican national teams begins about a quarter of an hour after G. settles into the sports bar. It is much brighter in the Brazilian stadium than the stage they find themselves on, he and Aron. But there is much merriment here. The atmosphere is relatively calm and well-tempered, considering an important match is at stake, something that traditionally involves fights or brawls, especially among spectators. G. sits with three young men at a table next to Aron; he gets their permission, he does not barge in on them. Aron has his back to him, and although he turns to follow the game on the television screen, to which he in fact doesn’t devote much attention, it is unlikely that Aron notices him. G. however, recognizes another man he knows, or at least has often seen, and not only recently or over a span of years, but almost all his life. This fifty-something man lives in Vesturbær, the west part of town, somewhere close to Aragata, possibly on Lynghagi or Fálkagata; he’s a rather singular charact
er, one of his neighborhood’s landmarks, you could say. As far back as G. can remember, back to the first time he saw this man, from around the end of elementary school up through G.’s high-school years, the man wore blue. Always blue, except his footwear. G. is amazed, thinking about it, that he never managed to learn the man’s name. He cannot remember exactly why, but at some point his mother mentioned this person, and they talked about the jacket he wore, a so-called reporter’s jacket, an item of clothing reminiscent of a soldier’s uniform due to its many deep pockets, an indication that whoever was wearing the garment had all kinds of things on their person, plenty to keep them busy. G.’s mother once actually wanted him to have this kind of jacket, wanted to buy it for him at the Uniform Store on Laugavegur, after his father had advised her that such jackets were on sale there. As soon as G. recalls his parents’ peculiar suggestion that he wear a particular item of clothing, one they wanted to give him, he is surprised to realize, once again, how little interest they typically showed in him. Is it an ugly thought that the money he receives from them by way of monthly allowance is compensation for accepting their apathy? Wouldn’t it have sufficed to point this jacket out to him at the Uniform Store, wasn’t there some dogged affectation involved in wanting to get it for him? G. has enough money himself, money he gets from them. He declined the jacket. A reporter’s jacket is not for him. He is not a journalist. And on that note, there is no way the blue-clad man, the one present now, inside the sports bar on Austurstræti, has a job reporting the news to people. At first glance, he’s not watching the game, sitting alone at a table further inside the place, a beer in front of him, deep in thought. G. casts his mind back about twenty years. He is standing at the high school’s west door, looking toward the cathedral tower of Neskirkja. Above him, the sky, the clear sky of memory; he has no idea why he puts it so poetically, given that he never felt comfortable at school. The blue man comes walking along the pavement, tromping in the direction of Hagatorg, no doubt on his way downtown, and one of G.’s school friends, whom G. thinks it ridiculous to consider a friend, points at the man, who back then would have been about thirty years old, maybe just over, and says something to the effect that he would not want to run into this guy in the dark. The blue man’s stooping gait, the way he seems to press his foot hard and determined against the ground with each step, used to draw the attention of the kids as he passed. G. remembers that one of his peers, whom he finds it odd to call a peer, like calling the other kid a friend, wrote a short story that won some competition at school, and the man in the reporter’s jacket was a character in the story, his role being to follow a young girl home from prom. The story did not end well, he remembers that much, and he also remembers having felt that such stories should not be written. But such stories are always being written, more often than they actually happen in reality. I think, on the other hand, that in actuality, on this rain-soaked June day, the blue man has not come here to watch the World Cup. Because that’s not what he is doing. He is doing something altogether different. He is some place altogether different. And, thinking along those lines, I recall a phrase from one of the two books my parents’ former tenant left in my apartment when he moved out, those books I have made my own: “And thus he is not what he is, he is where he is.” And I see these two men before me, the tenant who formerly owned the books and the blue man, as the same person. These are people who somehow hang outside the center of existence, getting evicted from a rented apartment when someone else needs to use it, then landing the role of a violent man in some kid’s prize-winning story, because no one knows what they are dealing with in reality.
•
He can hear that Aron has started talking on the phone. The person sitting opposite him seems to have his eyes glued to the screen on the wall. Aron does not. He apparently takes the call with some excitement, saying he was waiting to hear from the caller. “Listen,” says Aron, and allows the word a little time to resonate, as though important information will follow on its heels. “You remember the boy who …” But then he lowers his voice, and his next words struggle against the sports bar’s soundscape, the murmur from the crowd at the game in Brazil, the forced excitement of the Icelandic commentator. G. gets the feeling all of a sudden that the boy Aron has mentioned must be him. G. That he is him. Aron’s glance in Lækjargata, when he looked toward the cab, and then toward G., still haunts him; he thinks he knows that Aron is reporting over the phone that he saw him, and heard the driver shouting at him, like he, the “boy,” was making a mess, had perhaps failed to pay his fare after the meter started running. “What was his name again?” G. hears Aron ask. He, Aron, has raised his voice once more. But then he returns to whispering, and something happens in the game that elicits a reaction from the audience. G. manages to hear, nonetheless, that Aron agrees with the answer his interlocutor gives as to the “boy’s” name; they have settled the matter. Then he stops talking on the phone. But what happens after the call? Does Aron turn to him and smile? No. He gets up to fetch another drink. One more beer. Number four, if not five. Aron then obviously makes sure not to look in his direction when he returns to the table with the pint glass.
•
A goal is almost scored. Or so G. thinks he hears. The atmosphere in the place seems to be coming close to what is expected: things will come to a head, someone in here will pick any plausible reason to start a fight, a war of words at least—but just as suddenly as it looks like his wish will get fulfilled, there’s a sudden silence. He was rather hoping to witness some kind of commotion. He looks at Aron out the corner of his eyes, trying to see if Aron is perhaps watching him, but cannot see any sign to indicate Aron is even tempted to look his way. Perhaps it’s not surprising; he has had him in his sights long enough already, been aware of his presence long enough; no need to trouble himself. But what is Aron going to do? Is he expecting a continuing pursuit? Is he perhaps hoping for that? Is he even planning to start some kind of game? Some kind of chase? Cat and mouse? Mouse and cat? G. thinks it likely that Aron Cesar would look forward to such a thing. And following that thought, G. decides that Aron should get what he wants. But then, as he contemplates Aron from the back, he considers it more likely that everything he’s interpreted as an indication of Aron’s awareness of him, that Aron knows G. is following his every step, is actually nothing but fantasy.
•
The boy. “You remember him …” Him, the man who, today, this gray June day, in the middle of the Brazilian World Soccer Championship, has left his nest on Aragata, the street of intellectuals, and so given anyone who wants it the opportunity to reach into the living room window on the garden side, which G. knows he left open, just like the window in the back yard on Seltjarnarnes had been; by loosening the screws on the window clasp, anyone could creep in, open the door to the quiet street, relax in the calm as he removes all the furniture, rugs, and pictures that G. has gathered around himself—all without his mother, there on the upper floor, suspecting a thing, since the room where she spends her days faces out to the garden on the east side.
•
He overestimates this man, Aron Cesar. Why should he remember anything? And then to be confident someone has had the ridiculous idea of pursuing him. Placing himself in Aron’s shoes, he finds it highly unlikely that he would be able to pretend nothing was amiss, if he knew another man was tailing him. What happens next, however, what comes to G’s attention next, is that he notices the blue man watching him. Staring at him. Focused. G. allows himself to think that maybe this is an involuntary stare, which naturally doesn’t involve much concentration, but when he looks away for a moment, and then looks back again, the latter still has eyes on him. He reaches for his glass, without taking his eyes off him, and it is as if the very stars have stopped moving while he takes a sip of beer. G. looks away again. He lets a few moments pass before he looks at him again. But now it’s like the blue man had never noticed him. The way he looks straight past him, toward the door, leads G. to conclude that t
he guy’s line of sight, which G. had felt certain was directed at him, in fact passed him by, that the blue man has been thinking about something that concerns him alone, which nothing outside his inner focus computed. And then there’s some rising excitement in the game. And abruptly it comes to nothing; it was really nothing in the first place. The same pattern repeats itself immediately. And so nothing happens, twice. He cannot remember where the words come from, that nothing happens twice, but they are not unwelcome at this moment, which endures until they leave the scene, Aron and G.
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