•
“There’s nothing doing,” he hears one of the soccer fanatics say, when the crowd has persisted into the second half of the game and still no goal has been scored. It is not until Aron begins to speak into his phone again that anything happens, at least from his standpoint. G. in fact notices that the blue man occasionally sneaks a glance at him, but never again gets the impression that he’s interested in him. Almost as soon as Aron’s phone rings, his own phone does. But it only rings once, not long enough for him to answer it. He immediately suspects it was his mother; it is not the first time she has let him know, with one or two rings, that she is about to call him, like the ghost that knocks at the front door before the real guest arrives. And he’s correct. She calls again two to three minutes later, right at the same moment as Aron says goodbye to whomever he is talking to, having gotten some information from him, a review, of some French film in the movie theater on Hverfisgata.
•
“Hi, Mom,” G. says. If she only knew how he hesitates to use his full name. But she does not even greet him; there is something too important weighing on her chest for her to be able to do so. And all the while he is listening to her barrel on about his father, how worried she is about him, no longer because she doesn’t know where he is, but now precisely because she knows where he is, he can hear Aron saying on the phone: “I can’t be bothered to finish watching this game.” Then he continues, saying he could just as well go to the movies, and why not, to see this French one, he recognizes one of the actors in it, someone only named on the other end of the line, and consequently he says to his conversation partner: “Blast from the past? A little like Caligula? No? But from the same era? Okay. But I’ll blame you.” He then confirms his interest in seeing the movie by adding that he would very much like to disappear into darkness for two hours, before going to visit … G. cannot follow what Aron says, because someone in the bar shouts something at the game, not to mention that his attention is occupied by his mother who is raising the idea of sending the police to find his father. Still, it is clear from the phone conversation that Aron is getting ready to leave. As soon as G. perceives from his mother that some mess has come up involving his father, and as soon as it’s clear to him that he doesn’t understand what the problem is, given that his father is precisely where his mother knows him to be, he decides to step out of the bar to talk to her outside. It is not raining at the moment, and he can simply wait outdoors for Aron to continue on his way. He looks over at the blue man, and half thinks about telling his mother that the man in the reporter’s jacket is here under the same roof as him, although it might be said that the aforementioned is under his own roof right now, so deep in thought does he seem to be, with his eyes practically glued to the empty glass in front of him. “Wait a minute, Mom,” says G., and gets up to go outside.
•
When his mother asks him about his movements, about where he is right now, he feels like she’s occupied with something bigger. He places himself in the doorway one over from the post office, a building that houses an assortment of business offices. From here, he can watch the door of the sports bar. While he listens to his mother repeat her narrative about how his father is in the house of his nephew, the son of his brother, G. sees a twenty-something youth come out of the bookstore opposite; he pays attention to him because he has a man-bag not unlike his own—not only that, but the boy has a large-size envelope he has obviously bought from the store, and that is only lacking an address on it. Unlike G. himself, this young man has a patchy beard, and for some reason it’s the beard itself that leads G. to reluctantly accept the fact that the boy is in front of him in line with his envelope; it would never occur to G. to let such a growth cover his features. “What do you think he told me, that good-for-nothing, your cousin?” His mother took every opportunity she got to avoid using his cousin’s name. “He kept repeating that your dad was a real hot shot,” she says. “And you can imagine how those words sound coming from the mouth of a man who hasn’t left his couch in years. Hot shot!” Then she tells G. that he, the cousin, who is named Héðinn, had phoned to let her know that his father had come to visit him before noon, and they were now watching the World Cup match. And Héðinn had gone on about how G.’s father was such a hot shot, though to be honest he’d gotten a little sleepy, but he would definitely wake up again soon. His father was, in other words, drunk. He was dead drunk. And it was barely midday, just past. “But why would he call and tell me this?” G.’s mother shouts despairingly into the phone. G. agrees with her, but reacts by himself asking a question that he also feels needs directing to his mother: “But why are you telling me this?” “Am I?” she says. She hadn’t expected that. “And Mom. Don’t go phoning anyone else about this,” he says. “But I’m talking about your father,” she says, and G. reiterates to her that she must hold off on calling the police, as she had mentioned doing at the beginning of the call. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Then he adds: “I’m also a bit busy at the moment.” “Also?” she asks, astonished. “Busy? With what?” “I’ll tell you later,” answers G. “But I managed to buy the cream you told me to.” “I don’t think I ask you to do too much,” says his mother, her voice sounding hurt, and he tries to convince her that he was not trying to imply that about having to go to the pharmacy for her. “Am I not your mother?” she continues, and at that moment he gets the impression that she is relieved to be talking about something other than his father. “I made you,” she says. G. frankly does not know how to respond. And it seems his mother herself is surprised by these words; a shared silence enters their conversation. “I’ll mail the letter for you tomorrow,” says G. “In fact, I have to go to …” “And your father, of course, too,” interjects his mother. “Dad what?” he asks. “It wasn’t just me who made you,” she says, slightly embarrassed. “Couldn’t you look in on him?” she continues, meaning he should go to his cousin’s. “No, Mom,” he says. And as he repeats that he is busy, he sees the door of the sports bar open, and Aron emerge. Hot on his tail comes the blue man, as though they have departed together, have decided to leave as one. Which is altogether unlikely. G. tells his mother that he has to hang up now, and allows himself to be somewhat brusque. He regrets it at once, and promises to call her back soon.
•
Aron takes a route directly to Lækjargata, and is obviously in a hurry. I see the blue man watch him go, but it quickly becomes clear they did not leave the bar together, not in the sense I first thought. I for my part set off as Aron approaches the corner of the District Courthouse. The confidence that characterizes his gait evaporates when he is hurrying like this.
•
How often must they have gone to the movies together, Aron and Sara. Back then, the movie theater on Hverfisgata had a different name, and G. imagines the rapidly-walking Aron is recalling memories of movies past. G.’s thoughts unexpectedly give way as another person crosses his path, a person intimately associated with Aron, although G. doesn’t understand the connection immediately. As Aron surges past the District Courthouse toward the corner of Hverfisgata and Lækjargata, G. sees three middle-aged women in the middle of the square, walking north, virtually right in front of Aron, and he recognizes one of their faces at once, connecting her right away to Aron. Strange how the mind operates at moments like this, when two things collide before your eyes, things you know are linked, though can’t think how, and before you can dredge up the link there comes a feeling that you have a duty to bring people together, because they are not capable of it themselves, they don’t notice one another. It takes G. a few moments to realize that the woman he recognizes is Aron’s mother. She’s wearing a long rain- or wind-jacket, and along with the other two women is striding on at no less a pace than her son. Later, when he has managed to connect a name to the face, he feels like she must have seen her son walking there, practically in their way. So why didn’t she do something? Did she not want to see him? He could hardly just pass her
by. He was right in front of her, as close as when he, newborn, lay on her breast. To G.’s mind the coincidence is downright remarkable, that the mother of the man he has pursued since lunchtime should cross his path now, just when he, the son, is about to bring him, G., into the night, into the darkness of a movie theater, on one of Reykjavík’s dingiest streets. Earlier today, when his own mother asked him if he had seen this woman in town, this former member of parliament, Ósk Völundardóttir, he indicated that he had. Could it be that his lie had been an omen, a sign he was going to see her a little later? His eyes follow her as she drifts away toward Hafnarstræti. She has dashed south, from Húsavík or Dalvík, he imagines, and that’s why she is in such haste. She needs to conduct some business before heading back north. Aron himself has reached Lækjargata. G. takes care not to lose sight of him. But then, as he continues to look after Ósk, something happens that is no less strange. She looks briefly over her shoulder, not toward her son, but toward him. She has seen something that catches her attention. It must be that, since she allows herself a moment to look back. But only an instant. Perhaps to verify what she saw. Then they continue their rapid march, she and her two acquaintances, and soon disappear onto Hafnarstræti.
•
But was it him, G., whom she saw? Would she recognize his face from when she ran into him outside Parliament so many years ago? G. tries to picture for himself how things went between her and Sara when Aron first presented his girlfriend. Whether they became friends. And what impact it had on Ósk Völundardóttir, what happened later. Did she too experience the rug being pulled from under her son’s feet? Start to cry?
•
One long-forgotten memory gets in G.’s way as he follows Aron up Hverfisgata, as they approach the National Theater. There, he remembers seeing Sara through the window of the bookshop opposite the theater, sometime during high school, at the beginning of his life’s formless period, back when Aron and Sara were together. And he recalls struggling to decide whether he should go into the store, act like he had some reason to be there, casually bump into Sara. He did not do so. He didn’t wade in. Because he usually doesn’t wade in. He regrets this now, more than fifteen years later. Something could have happened. Sara might have had a book in hand, and he would have pretended to know the book, or actually would have known it, he had recently finished reading it. He could have warned her off it. And she would be grateful. Where, then, would Sara be today? The basement-level second-hand bookstore is still there; indeed, the sign makes clear it is open limited hours. But what about the violin he stole from Sara’s parents’ window? Didn’t he allow himself to wade in that time? He did something no one, least of all he himself, might have expected he would. Doesn’t the same situation prevail now? Isn’t he allowing himself to wade in now, forging onward after an ex-boyfriend of the girl he loved, up the dingiest street in the city, focused on keeping up with him? Aron picks up his pace as he draws closer to the movie theater. Aron is like G.; he does not want to miss the first minutes of the movie. Because a movie without the first minute, what is it but a story without a trigger? Sun without shadow.
•
As G. stands at the entrance to the movie theater, on the steps outside the door, he sees the blue man again. And he starts. But he isn’t sure whether this breeds unpleasantness, as is usual when one startles. It is conceivable that he does not feel the slightest bit bothered about seeing this man in the distance. All the same, he makes sure not to look too long. But did the blue man see him? Where exactly was he situated? On the corner of Vatnsstígur. He was standing there like a picture of a person, a figure cut from a plastic sheet and set on a cardboard background. This brings to G.’s mind the old prints his father had showed him back when G. was ten or eleven years old, realistic images of famous battles and events in human history, which the polymath himself had pottered away at setting up according to his whim, imprinting figures with pencil onto colorful cardboard. His father had bought these pictures from an old classmate, the owner of a toy shop downtown, which G. remembers being on the corner of Bankastræti and Smiðjustígur. G. briefly finds this funny. He imagines that it had been his father who arranged the blue man there on the corner of Vatnsstígur and Hverfisgata, in the same kind of jacket that he, his father, had found in the so-called Uniform Store, and wished his son owned.
•
After Aron has finished buying his ticket, and G. is safe to enter the cinema, he looks back down Hverfisgata, by which time the blue man has disappeared. He pictures him having crossed over the street and gone down Skuggahverfi, rather than up Vatnsstígur toward Laugavegur. It occurs to G. that it had been his mind, not his eyes, which produced the image of Aron’s mother a few minutes ago. In just the same way, the image of the blue man had been created. Printed pictures. For a moment G. thinks of the music store on Laugavegur, and he imagines the blue man browsing through the CDs. Is it conceivable that the blue man traveled with Aron and G. further than out of the sports bar? Unlike his father’s cardboard pictures from the toy store, the background behind Aron and the blue man on this overcast June day is not particularly colorful, but the color of the figures is, nonetheless, sufficiently vivid that they can easily be distinguished from one another, their outlines altogether different. G. watches Aron buy some refreshments. He stands by the ticket window and tries to pass the time by learning about the French movie he is going to see. Relative to the amount of refreshments Aron buys himself, it wouldn’t hurt for him to be wearing a jacket like the blue man wears, with enough pockets to fit the Coke and beer bottle, the bag of popcorn and candy that the cashier has set out on the table in front of him.
•
G. is able to find out that the film, called La Grande bouffe, is a forty-year-old Italian-French production; these weeks are feature weeks showing old European movies, and this particular film has been specially selected for the schedule due to its numerous challenges. “Challenges from whom?” asks G., and the kid working there finds the question funny, answering with a smile: “From the middle-aged men who saw the film back in the day in the University Movie Theater.” And when he mentions “Monday movie” at the University Movie Theater, G. recalls how his father told him about the tradition of movie-going in their part of town; what’s more, he remembers, too, his mother’s disapproval of the phenomenon, how she snorted when her husband, the philologist, recollected some Polish or Russian movies he’d seen on a Monday. G. sees before him the black-and-white darkness of the giant hall that was the University Movie Theater. And he pictures the blue man disappearing in there some thirty years ago. After he has paid for his ticket he waits for Aron to move away from the concession stand so that he can go over there himself. He does not have to wait long. He watches Aron tread carefully, with his acquisitions, toward the screening room. Coke and beer. G. noticed that Aron spent considerable time seasoning his popcorn. And did so considerably well, it seemed to him. Before he goes over to buy something to take into the screening room, he walks over to the front door and looks around, to see if he sees the blue man. It’s started raining again. And everything is washed in gray. Which is good, he thinks, because that will add to the experience of settling into a dusky hall and watching colors flicker across the screen. He knows that the picture is in color, not black and white; he asked about that. And as he was asking, he thought of his father, of the movie trips they took together on Thursday evenings when his mother hosted her sewing circle. He was beside his father, at the ticket booth in the University Movie Theater, a ten- or twelve-year-old boy, his father sixty, in his woolen coat, asking the woman at the box office whether or not the movie was in color. It was his joke, to get his son to smile. “Yes, it’s in color,” said the boy in the box office. “But it only has English subtitles.” But are there any nude scenes in it? G. had thought he should ask the boy, because that question had always burned on his lips when father and son went to the movies together.
•
Once he’s inside the room, and can
see Aron is sitting near the center of one of the front rows, his head casting a small shadow onto the very bottom edge of the screen. G. suddenly has the desire to go over to him and tell him that he saw his mother just now. The top of Aron’s head against the screen is like a page number at the bottom of a white page in a book, or would be if the screen were white. But it is not: a trailer for some recent Icelandic movie is being projected on it. In addition to Aron and himself, there are three people in the theater: two sitting together in the middle, and the third toward the end of the row behind Aron. All men. G. sits in the next-to-last row, further in. At that point, his phone rings. And he asks himself, as he opens up the handset, why his father never calls him, whether a call from his father would not have some major significance to him at that moment. But, as before, his mother is on the line. From her nervous agitation, G. at first supposes a worse fate has befallen his father than overstaying at Héðinn’s, or being called a hot shot, but it’s something else entirely: G.’s mother letting him know that his father did finally return home. “Good,” he says, and starts to explain to her that he unfortunately can’t talk right now. But he does not get far, because his mother interrupts him. “I’m not going to tell you what he looked like,” she says, disapprovingly. “He took a cab home. And his shirt covered in ketchup, or I don’t know what. Blood, perhaps? He was simply in no condition to tell me himself. And the taxi driver didn’t know anything.” “Mom, I’m at the movies,” G. cuts her off, and decides right away to add, to mend things, that he’s at the movies with a young man he met today. She reacts by saying his name, as if with an exclamation mark after it, and that leads G. to think about giving a name to this imaginary person he has mentioned, giving him a name chosen from those scrolling over the movie screen as part of the trailer for the Icelandic movie currently being shown. But he lets suffice the explanation that “this guy” he met has dragged him along to some French film. But his mother does not believe him. “Are you with a girl?” she asks. And G. asks himself: Does she think it’s Sara? Does she perhaps suspect her son has lost all touch with reality, that he is telling a lie about the guy because he is embarrassed that he is imagining Sara sitting next to him in the theater? Or does his mother not remember what happened to Sara? Did she ever know? “No, Mom, there’s no girl,” he says. “You can tell me,” she replies, and it is as if she is worried she will not get to see her little boy again. “Be careful that Dad doesn’t sleep on his back,” he says. “He’s sleeping,” she says. But when G. promises to call her later, and repeats the words a little louder, because she cannot hear him, he is shouted at by other moviegoers: “Quiet down back there!” That’s Aron, he can tell. And Aron turns around in his seat, staring back for a few moments.
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