•
He does not know what determines it, but almost as soon as Aron ends the conversation with his friend, G. goes over to the phone by the toilets in order to call Aron. He has watched him drink practically without pause from his pint glass and shot; it seems to have affected him, talking about his experience in the movie theater. Aron looks straight ahead, as if some emptiness in his eyes protects him from the other stimuli inside the bar. At no point has G. definitively seen Aron looking in his direction. He cannot see that he does so now, as he stands up and goes toward the restrooms. And when G. turns around, before he leaves the bar’s main room, Aron is still looking dead ahead, a lonely sight. For a moment G. holds off on calling him, but he stifles his hesitation the very next moment. The phone on the wall works, as it should, when he feeds it change. G. thought such devices couldn’t be found any longer. He calls directory services and asks for Aron Cesar’s number. As when he called the same number earlier, he does not expect to need the last name. But when the girl on the end of the line claims to “have two Aron Cesars,” G. adds his mother’s name, and notes that there is only one S in it, and Cesar with a C. “A bank employee?” the girl asks. “A banker?” G. asks. “There are two Aron Cesar Óskarsons here,” says the girl. “With a C.” But then she says it’s likely the same person in both cases, that Aron Cesar has probably registered twice. G. asks the girl to give him Aron’s cellphone number and asks her again if indeed he is listed as being a banker. She tells him yes, and asks whether she can connect him, she uses the phrase put you through. He opts out; he will make the call.
•
A banker? Could that be? he wonders. Presumably, it is a joke on Aron’s part. But who am I now, who will I be, when I call Aron? G. wonders. Someone other than the person who called him earlier today? As Aron answers, G. can hear the noise of the World Cup over the phone, but he feels like the rock music, which still seems to be coming from the same LP or CD as before, reaches him from the room but not over the phone. “Who’s this?” Aron asks. “It’s Eddi,” says G. “Eddi?” “Where are you?” G. asks. “This isn’t Eddi,” Aron protests. “This is a different Eddi. Not the Eddi who talked to you this morning,” G. says, himself surprised by where the idea comes from. And he adds: “I’m going to join you later.” “What are you talking about?” Again G. thinks that Aron sounds like a teenager. “I’m going to come with you to Nóra’s,” he says. “Tell me who this is,” Aron demands. “What’s the address?” G. asks. “Did you call me earlier?” asks Aron; it is like his voice is growing up. “Who is this?” Who is whom? G. asks himself. Who said those words? “You told me to come if I wanted to,” he says. Who? G. asks again. “Who the hell is this?!” shouts Aron. “Eddi. The same one who you spoke to this morning. I called you for lunch when you were in the bookstore.” “What are you talking about? What makes you think I was in a bookstore this morning?” “She definitely won’t mind,” G. whispers, adding in the same tone: “Will you be bringing something with you?” “Who is this?” Aron repeats. “You know who this is.” “No, I don’t.” And involuntarily, like something in the surroundings brings forth the words from his lips, G. lets out “Quiet down back there.” He feels the need to piss, suddenly very urgent. “Who the hell is this?” shouts Aron. “Michel,” says G. Again silence for a moment. “What are you talking about? Michel-what?” And G. answers, “Marcello.” “Tell me who you are,” Aron says, and tries to calm down. “Marcello Mastroianni,” answers G. “Quit doing this!” shouts Aron. “Tell me who this is! Who is this?” “Sara,” replies G., then follows up with Sara’s last name. Again silence from Aron. They are both silent. Then Aron asks, “What are you talking about? Sara who?” He pretends not to know her. “This is Sara,” reiterates G., and mentions her father’s name, her last name, again. “Sorry, but I don’t know that person,” says Aron. He sounds deliberate and cold. This has thrown him off balance. “I don’t think this is funny anymore,” he says. G. cannot wait any longer to pee. He returns the receiver to the wall, and grabs the handle of the toilet door, but decides first to peek out, curious about Aron’s reaction. He places himself behind the rectangular support column, from which he can observe Aron from about five meters away. And that brings to mind an image of Aron at lunch, as he looked out of the window on Þingholtsstræti—pale—which is how G. sees Aron now, pale. He watches him tap a number into his phone, then wave to the bartender and signal that he has an empty shot glass on his table. He then takes a sip of beer, and sets the phone to his ear. Despite the babble of voices inside the bar and the noise of the soccer, which seems to be noticeably louder than before, G. hears Aron ask into the phone “What’s the listing for this number.” If Aron had been pale a moment before, he goes white at the information the girl, possibly the same one G. spoke to, gives him. Or so G. imagines. But he also imagines that Aron doesn’t know the public phone is by the toilets, that he must assume the phones in here are by the bar itself and inside the office. G.’s about to piss himself. He sees the bartender bringing an alcoholic morsel to Aron’s table, and he hurries into the toilet. As he glances in the mirror over the sink a moment, he finds he can discern a smile in his eyes; he allows himself to move it to his lips. Then he lifts the toilet seat, and looks down into the gleaming white bowl. And pisses. He looks at his penis, this slouch who has never been anywhere, except down into his underwear and back up again. And he contemplates the yellow jet coming out of it.
•
Aron pretends not to know the name. He finds it uncomfortable to hear. He argues that Sara does not exist. That she has not existed. G. tucks his penis back inside his underwear, zips up his fly, wipes a little urine from the side of the toilet bowl, flushes, and washes his hands.
•
But Aron isn’t there when he comes back out. All three glasses on the table are empty, not even his outline remains, so abruptly has he left the place. And G. himself bids the bar goodbye, with the girl’s voice in his mind, the one who taught him that Aron Cesar Óskarson had registered himself as a banker. Was that Sara? Is that where she’s hiding, providing information about other people? Would she read aloud from the letter G. had sent her, if she was asked to do so?
•
The rain is not as heavy as before. G. looks down Frakkastígur, but there is no Aron. Could he have gone up to Laugavegur, or down to Hverfisgata? G., of course, has no idea how far up or down Barónsstígur Nóra lives. He guesses Aron chose Hverfisgata. When he reaches the corner and looks up the street without spotting Aron, he calls to mind that there is an Indian food joint in a building on the right; when he reaches the place he realizes that it is the same kind of place they disappeared into, the three bankers on Lækjargata. Perhaps their colleague, Aron, has headed inside? He looks in the window, seeing several customers at the counter, but Aron is not among them. Presumably he has lost him. He made a mistake going to the toilet inside the bar. But as he keeps on walking in the vague hope that Aron has paused along the way to smoke, at almost the next moment his wish is granted; it’s as if he’s been heard. When he comes around the corner of the corrugated iron building that houses the restaurant, he becomes aware of a person up against the wall, and in the nick of time, before the person becomes aware of him, G. manages to about-face, to hurry across the street to the other sidewalk, where he can hide behind a car. It is Aron standing by the wall, G. saw that immediately. He’s smoking. He holds a cigarette a finger’s length from his lips. He faces a large parking lot the size of three, maybe four house widths, and he notices that he has his left hand on his belly. He’s frowning. He sets his shoulders and leans slightly forward, a pained expression on his face. He closes his eyes, throws away his cigarette, and puts both hands on his stomach. Then he turns his head away from the street, even more wracked by cramps. For a moment, it occurs to G. that perhaps he should be worried about Aron. But Aron suddenly stretches, and looks toward the street, seeming to feel comparatively better. G. stoops a trifle lower so the car covers him bett
er. Aron fishes out another cigarette. After several puffs, he walks rapidly across the parking lot, and G. follows him along the other side of the street. They cross Vitastígur, and past several houses, until they come to another, bigger parking lot, larger than that by the Indian place. Aron heads across the lot, going diagonally toward Barónsstígur. Again he casts away a still-burning cigarette; it lands on a car. And G. sees him light yet one more, after he crosses Laugavegur, through an unusually packed crowd of people, a sign something special is happening in town. Something’s going on. And he grafts those words on Aron and his journey, a journey that is probably near its end. Is he smoking all those cigarettes, because he knows they will be his last? G. can hear barking. Not just from one dog; at least two. He hears it coming from a backyard on the right side of Barónstígur, just past the corner with Laugavegur. And he thinks about the death on the balcony, the peace that followed the pitiful image of Michel on the railing. And he briefly thinks he’s perceived something similar here on this street corner in downtown Reykjavík, something like a loud silence. This is how a city sounds, or is silent, when besieged.
•
Aron continues up Barónsstígur. He reaches the corner with Grettisgata, and pauses. G. stops too. He looks through the window of some kind of bookstore or gallery in the house down from the kiosk on the corner. And he notices that Aron has fixed his eyes on a particular house on this side of the street, further up. He takes out his phone and dials. He is asking for Nóra’s house number, G. speculates. What’s more, the call only lasts a few seconds. He waits by the storefront as Aron heads along the sidewalk on the other side, and does not start after him until he disappears into the alleyway about midway along the block between the corner and Bergþórugata. Aron has gone in by the time G. reaches the passageway. He creeps along the graffitied wall, and peeks around the corner to the right. He sees Aron standing on some kind of wooden platform, perhaps a balcony, knocking on a door, or maybe a window. There are many plants in the yard, and Haus und Garten surfaces in G’s mind, the magazine Aron had flipped through in the bookstore, and Interior Design, too, the one G. himself had reached for. How long a period has passed since he followed Aron into the bookstore. He feels like their whole lifetimes lie between that moment and now, here in this courtyard off Barónstígur. But suddenly Aron disappears into the house, like he’s being pulled inside. Did he throw away his cigarette? Did he want to set fire to the plants in the garden? Does he know that the rain has already extinguished the embers? G. walks along the fence that encloses the garden, and positions himself by a tall birch. The rain worsens. It’s now as dark as it ever gets in an Icelandic summer. G. guesses that Nóra’s apartment is framed by the three windows above the wooden platform. In the middle, there’s a door, or rather a window that reaches down to the floor, and G. thinks it likely that the windows on either side belong to the living room and the bedroom, with the kitchen facing out to the street on the other side. Light yellow curtains are drawn across all the windows, and when G. tries to detect whether the door is closed he sees the shape of a tall person behind the pale, yellow fabric. Nóra. This is she. Nóra appears to have long hair. And she is thin. When she puts her hand to the door handle, as though to make sure it is actually locked, G. hears a loud shout from the window or door of another apartment in the vicinity. It seems to be coming from the next house. Could it be someone is that caught up in Greece versus Ivory Coast in the World Cup? Nóra has disappeared from the window-door. G. moves a little further along the fence, trying to catch sight of Aron inside the apartment, but it is Nóra who again lets herself be seen, although G. cannot see her very well. She is in the window to the left, setting a candlestick in the windowsill, putting a tall candle into the holder. Then she turns around, and seems to give Aron a sign to come to her; he, G., or she, rather, Nóra, only needs to wait a few moments before Aron’s faint silhouette appears. He is no longer the stooping salesman crouching over the low living room table. He flicks on his lighter, and carries the candle over to the window. Then Nóra embraces him, and G. thinks he places his hands somewhere lower down, and they disappear from the window, over to the next, the window-door, then somewhere else, and he can’t see them anymore. He tries to imagine how close the candle is to the window curtains. The flame illuminates them beautifully, but he can’t see what colors lie behind the screen. He thinks it likely that the candle is white. But the flame will be blue, the type of fire that eats up paper.
Tomorrow
I believe I stand by the fence for five or six minutes after Aron lights the candle. But what am I thinking? Who? Who thinks what? Him? The one who has never been anywhere? He goes into the living room in Philippe’s house in Paris. In off the balcony. And he moves things about on the piano so they are arranged the same way as the things, or the same kinds of things, that live on the piano in his parents’ living room. The lamp with the light brown shade he puts on the right side, and the dark blue and white vase, the Chinese one, on the left. He then moves into his own living space in the basement. His blonde mat from Isfahan, which his father got permission from his mother for him to have, after a comment he made that the blonde—the mat, not the mother!—would enjoy the cellar better than being hidden inside their bedroom; he cannot decide whether the mat should be on the floor in front of the coffee table or on the wall above the Danish console. And because of this, the blonde mat lies on the floor. And he calls to mind the rim that formed when he brushed the dust from the chiffonier a few weeks ago. He calls it a rim, but he knows that another word would better fit the thick ridge that took shape after he stroked the orange dust cloth over this tall piece of furniture he had forgotten to wipe down for several years.
•
His gleaming furniture, safe in the secure custody of time. His things. Himself.
•
He fancies crêpes suzette, the pancakes Ugo and Marcello ate while they were sitting at Michel’s feet, watching Andrea sit on top of him, pushing out of him dry, rasping sounds that then became by turns wet and foaming. But most of all he wants to see the film again; he cannot wait to see it again. And this time he will be better prepared for the final minutes. He still has not followed the other two gentlemen, Philippe and Ugo, to their deaths. It is Wednesday tomorrow. Nigeria and Argentina are facing off in Brazil around midday, followed by Honduras and Switzerland in the evening. He saw it in the paper in the supermarket on Austurstræti.
•
He goes back the same way. Diagonally across the large car park, and over Vitastígur and Frakkastígur, where several noisy men are standing outside the rock bar and smoking, no doubt discussing the course of events in the game. He comes up to the empty movie theater box office. The boy who sold him the ticket has moved over to the concessions stand, and tells him that the film is on the schedule for tomorrow. The same time as today.
•
It is not until he reaches the corner of Laugavegur and Vatnsstígur that he realizes what he saw. Or whom. It was past Hverfisgata, on the lower part of Vatnsstígur, where Vatnsstígur meets Veghúsastígur. He turns around and looks back down the street. Where is he now? He is hiding. But he is not exactly in camouflage; he has slipped up. He knows about him. Perhaps the color of his pants and outerwear, the so-called reporter’s jacket, has disappeared into the gray that covers the evening, but G. knows he is wearing a hat, the movie theater baseball cap, in colors that would never try to hide, were they alive and had they an independent will. And when he scans for him, in the knowledge that he is there somewhere, G. feels how good it is to have someone concerning themselves with what you do, or where you go.
•
He has never felt as good as now, under the raised umbrella. As he walks down the street, and the rain on the stretched nylon makes him feel like he is indoors, he hears a tune from La Grande bouffe, the refrain he imagines was composed especially for the film. He hums it first the way Michel played it on the piano. Michel had then sped up, and finally let it run away from itse
lf. He then added on top the orchestral arrangement, the way it sounds on the record they put on the phonograph in the living room. That version offered more of a chance to dance than the piano version. And they danced to the song, Philippe and the teacher, Andrea. It was a chaste dance, the way I think dancing should be.
•
I look forward to getting home. I’m going to remember to look up who it was who wrote the poem about the days being full. It’s called “Waking Up.” I remember it. Getting to one’s feet. It focuses on the act of composition. Writing. That one has no time to lose, that one must hasten to phrase things anew, or to have them represent something different. I have reached the pharmacy where I bought the cream. Several foreign tourists stand in a knot under their umbrellas in front of the Danish store on the other side of the street, and I slow down a bit in my stride so I can attempt to hear them. They are speaking Italian. To hear how the words end, which is so completely unlike how words in my own language end, causes me to look forward even more to getting home to Aragata, though I do not know why. I sense even better than before the proximity of the blue man behind me; I know he paused at the window of the bookstore on the corner before the pharmacy when I slowed down to hear the Italian. I cannot wait to get through the door to my house, and know that Mom can hear I’m home. She will call down to me, on the home phone, to let me know Dad is still asleep. Or dead. And I am going to allow myself to light the candle that I have placed in the candle-holder on the smoking table. And put Jaroussky on my music player, his Opium recordings, and try to hear how the forthcoming version of the Verlaine poem by the contra-tenor and the Ebène Quartet will sound, the one I read about in the magazine at noon. But before I light the candle, I am going to bring my mother the cream, and ask her to give me the letter she wants me to mail for her. Because I am going to go back there tomorrow, with the envelope containing the manuscript, before I go to the movie theater. And it, the manuscript, will be unchanged from this morning. I had been deliberating over the title I’d given it—for a brief moment I felt that The Dandy might suit the story better, especially with a view to rewarding Aron Cesar for having had the idea of calling someone by that name, but I’ve decided to stick with the original title.
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