The small size of the Icelandic nation is explained by the past, she says, while she fills my room with Gunsmoke. Volcanic eruptions, plagues, and freezing cold winters almost managed to rid the land of its people. The Easelanders didn’t really start flourishing until they got hold of electricity and central heating. In the last fifty years they’ve increased their numbers by 150,000. That’s about as many as got killed in our war. We could have solved the thing by sending them all to Iceland, a land that could easily carry a population of ten or twenty million people. But they would never have allowed them all inside the country, Gunnhildur says. The hitman bows to his fellow men, who would rather see people die than allow them to camp on their lawns.
We talk about the war and Gun continues her cigarette. She asks me about by brother Dario.
“How old was he when he died?”
“He was three years older than me. Twenty-three.”
“Wow. What was he like? Was he like you?”
“No. He was our hero. The favorite son. He was much more fit, looked like a Greek god, was in sports and…He was on the national team in pole vault.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s jumping on a stick. You know Sergei Bubka?”
“No.”
“You don’t? The greatest athlete of all time. Ukrainian guy. He won the gold in Seoul. Dario trained with him for a while. He was his big hero. And it was kind of strange, really, for the same night that Dario was killed, Bubka set a world record. His twelfth or something world record. Six-point-oh-eight meters. In some Russian town. It was like my brother’s soul was helping him out, lifting him up a few more inches. Soul vaulting.”
Fuck. I’m getting too sentimental for this frosty girl.
“Wow. That’s amazing. Did your brother ever go to the Olympics?”
“No. But he would have gone to Atlanta in ninety-six, if…”
I open my eyes as much as I can. Hanging them out to dry, hoping she doesn’t notice. No. She only watches the smoke rise from her übermouth.
“Wow. So he was like, a star?”
“Well, maybe not. Pole vaulting is not that big in Croatia. He was like a shooting star or something.”
I always sound like a lame old lady when I speak of my dead brother. Therefore I never do.
“So it must have been hard for you, to…”
“Actually, it was kind of strange. The death of my brother numbed the fact that I killed my father. Our father.”
“Why? How?”
“It’s like when you accidentally set fire to your house, it’s a bit soothing, or it kind of makes it less bad, to see your neighbor’s house go up in flames as well.”
“But your own brother is more important to you than your neighbor’s ugly house?”
“Of course. Or you can say that the thing with my father blocked me from the blow that the death of my brother would have been to me. You can’t have two MHMs in your life.”
“MHM?”
“Most Horrible Moment.”
“Aha. So the murder of your girlfriend and your road accident was not as horrible?”
“No. But when you rejected me because you thought I was a priest…that was pretty horrible.”
She smiles, before saying:
“But then I found out that you were a serial killer and fell in love with you.”
She laughs. I keep the word “love” between my ears, letting my brain fondle it like a newborn puppy.
“You’re sick,” I say.
“Yes. Lovesick,” she says and then puts out her cigarette in the half empty Gatorade bottle standing on the floor beside the futon and grabs my face. I smile my broken smile. She puts her index finger up to my mouth and replaces the missing tooth with its tip. Eye for an eye, finger for a tooth. She holds it there for a while, smiling, before removing it for a kiss.
She kisses me like an island girl who finds an ugly ship-wrecker on the shore. He’s all bruised and battered, trout-red in the face from a salty sunburn, stiff like a huge piece of meat, and can barely move his tongue. She helps him out.
Between my ears, John Lennon screams out an old Beatles’ number. The one about the warm gun.
CHAPTER 28
BED OF ROSES, BED OF MOSS
06.25.2006 – 08.05.2006
According to local wisdom, the Icelandic summer only lasts six weeks. From the last weekend in June till the first one in August. It is also said that this is the time it takes to fall in love. The only problem is that during this period the ice country is lighted up like Madison Square Garden at a Knicks game, 24-7. There are no shadows, no dark corners. It’s pretty impossible to hide things, like a car or a kiss.
We decided that Gun better not come to the hotel again. We wanted to keep her parents out of it until we had set the date. The Seven Elevens are not the problem, but Balatov may be, and Good Knee definitely is. But my genius girl finds a way. She realizes that one of her girlfriends actually works at Mahabharata, the Indian furniture shop across the parking lot. All I have to do is to sneak out around midnight and take a stroll around our deserted neighborhood, saying hi to the team of seagulls responsible for keeping it clean, before ending up at the back door of the Indian store, where Gun waits in her little red Fabia, fresh from massage class or a night out with the Tarantino Fan Club. She’s got the key as well as the security code she types into the thing on the wall next to the entrance. We make our way through the office and out into the store. In back there are three king size beds on display, all made in India by twelve-year-old carpenter whiz-kids. We’ve tried them all, but the one behind the Kama Sutra room divider is the safest. It can’t be seen from the screaming bright window out front. So after all, we manage to find a semi-dark corner in the bright and shining land. And by making the Hindu handiwork squeak, I can honor the memory of my lost love. Still the bed holds up to all our freaky gymnastics. Those Indian kids really know their craft.
Our nights in the Mahabharata must count as one of the best products of globalization. The Croat celebrates his Indian summer in Iceland with French champagne, Japanese sushi, and muscle-relaxing Thai music. (Gun brings this all, the music bit from her class.) Condoms come from Manchester, England, and cigarettes from Richmond, Virginia, the hometown of our Friendly Father. No, she doesn’t smoke inside the shop. And we have to be careful not to leave any stains or bras behind.
Bit by bit Gun manages to move the rest of Munita’s stuff (head included) out of my brain and redecorates it with her own. Indian rugs and lamps. And bit by bit the summer of sex becomes the summer of something else. The secrecy adds a deeper dimension to it, and I try everything I can to make her ice melt, while her newly-learned carnal tricks easily turn my blood into running lava. I could die happy and be buried in Icelandic soil with a tombstone marked: Tommy Olafs, dishwasher (1971–2007). At the end of each session, Gun sprays the bed with some Indian aroma she found in the office. By the end of the month it smells like the best little whorehouse in Bombay.
“It’s OK, really,” she says. “Nobody buys beds during the summer.”
“Why not?”
“They’re too busy using the old one.”
Apparently Icelanders are a different people during the bright season. They stop doing things they use to do in wintertime, like watching TV, dressing up, and bathing. Until recently TV was even shut down in July. Summer is so short that people really need to focus on it. If the temperature reaches fifteen degrees Celsius (happens three times a year), all the shops and banks close two minutes later, so the employees can go outside and enjoy the heat wave. It’s called “sun-break,” Gun explains. You have to feel for these people. Those six weeks wouldn’t qualify as summer anywhere else. “The Land of the Ten Degrees” is no joke; the average temperature in July is exactly that. Icelandic summer is like a fridge that you leave open for six weeks. The light is on and all ice thaws away, but it can never get really warm. After all, it’s only a fridge.
But one Saturday night in early August,
all the beds vanish from the store. Gun calls her friend. They’re getting ready for autumn, she explains. The Sweet Karma line, from the elementary factory in Bombay, is bound to arrive any day now. We break the rules of Torture, and she takes me for a ride outside the city.
It’s a beautiful night, with fancy clouds out west participating in the golden sunset across the bay, and all the winds have gone abroad for the weekend. We drive east and I get that fresh-out-of-prison feeling. Finally I get to see something other than Balatov and bus line 24, Olie’s mole, and Indian furniture. The road takes us past the former home of a famous dead writer. Apparently this is the only house in Iceland that comes with a swimming pool. It was part of his Nobel Prize, Gun explains, though he had to provide the water himself. It’s a museum now. You can see the water he swam in, hoping to eye his strokes of genius, I guess. She’s taking me to the most famous place in the land, Thing Valley, the site of the world’s first outdoor parliament. Actually, I don’t think there have been any others.
But midway through, we realize that our Czech-made car is pretty low on gas. We decide to stop and go for a little picnic instead. We take a short walk in the lunar park and sit down on a bed of stiff gray moss. Unfortunately there are no trees and no Indian room dividers to shelter a hot game of lovemaking from the small but steady traffic, plus the temperature is more fitting for a game of ice hockey. We settle for a kiss and a sip of Kaldi beer, admiring our small red car parked on the roadside, framed by a deep blue mountain under a lone pink cloud. Above it, the sky is almost white. Some long-beaked bird flies-walks-and-flies around us, at a distance he considers safe (well within gun-reach, though), screaming his lungs out. Apparently we’re in his backyard. The conversation turns a bit serious, as it should, I guess, when most of the fucking has been done.
“So, you think you can live in Iceland?” she asks me.
“Well, I guess I have to.”
Silence, punctuated with bird screams.
“So, that’s the only reason?”
“No. I don’t know.”
She looks at me. Her Gatorade eyes are two blue-green hot springs in the rocky field that surrounds us, just like the ones I saw in the photos of the in-flight magazine on my way up here. She’s still looking at me. Does she really want to waste her life on Toxic waste?
“You want me to?” I finally continue.
“I don’t know. I’m just asking.”
She brings out a cigarette. It falls from her shaky hands. She picks it up and places it between her stern lips. Lights it.
“I mean, I guess I have to. For the time being,” I say.
“For the time being?”
Her words come with a lot of smoke. Actually, the smell is kind of nice, out here in the crisp cold air.
“Yeah, I mean…”
“You like it?”
“Iceland? Yeah, sure. I mean, how can you not like this?” I ask, gesturing at the scenery fit for any lunar love story.
“But you wouldn’t want to live here?”
“You mean, for good?”
She nods. My apartment on Wooster and Spring appears in a flash, my flat screen full of Hajduk games, the barbecue restaurant down the street, and my beautiful black Heckler & Koch that I keep under the loose tile in the corner of my bathroom. I wring my right hand with the left, while murmuring:
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that.”
She takes to her feet, leaving the half empty beer bottle lying in the moss, and heads for the car.
“Hey!” I say.
I catch her climbing the roadside, with two beers in my hand. The bird takes to his wings and hurries across a small pond on the other side of the road. He seems to have rented the whole fucking area.
“Hey, Gun. What’s the matter?”
Her eyes are wet when she turns around. We’re standing in the roadside, beside the car.
“You haven’t thought about that?” she asks.
“No, I mean, you have to think of my situation. I only take one day at a time.”
“What about MY SITUATION?” she says in a rather harsh way and then takes a quick draw from her half-burned cigarette, with shaking lips.
I have nothing to say. I didn’t know this girl could cry. The bird is back, screaming at us. At me.
“I’m sorry, Gun…Gunnhildur.”
“What do you think this is?”
“You and me? It’s been the hottest summer of my life.”
My shoulders shake from the cold.
“Really?”
“Yes. The best summer I’ve…”
“What’s the matter then? You’re still not sure?”
“I mean, Gun. You’re a nice girl and I’m a…”
“You’re a great guy.”
I am?
“You’re a fucking great guy. And now you’re telling me that…”
She can’t finish. Only her cigarette. That she throws away before walking over to the driver’s side of the car.
“So you want to…?” I try to say.
“YES!” she screams, opens the car, gets inside, and slams the door.
I’m left standing alone between the car and Iceland, holding two half empty beer bottles. She seems to be serious about us.
Am I?
A brand new looking SUV approaches from the east. It slows down as it passes by. I’m faced with a Talian looking couple in their fifties. Some gray haired lovers with a heavy tan, wearing dark blue windbreakers over yellow polo shirts. Dead happy bastards. They’re smiling so hard that you have to suspect that the site of the world’s first outdoor parliament must be hosting an outdoors senior group sex festival this weekend. The woman in the passenger’s seat even has her arm around her partner who, come to think of it, looks a bit like a retired hitman.
CHAPTER 29
THE KAUNAS CONNECTION
08.06.2006
We drive back in silence. Even the radio is quiet. I gaze out the window thinking about my two NY bags that now have been circling the baggage carousel in Zagreb for eighty days in a row. The midnight sunset is mostly over, but a few clouds maintain their red glow out on the horizon, hovering like a flock of zeppelins over the glacier that tips the peninsula called Snow Fall’s Ness or something similar to that. Closer, the city of Reykjavik spreads in front of us like a desperate lady begging me to love her. It kind of reminds you of LA at night: flat, vast, and full of lights. The tower of the impossibly named church that stands on the hill in the middle of town is the only thing that rises above the horizon, a dark dildo against the pink sky.
Gun drives into my dead neighborhood of furniture stores and fugee camps and stops the car at an empty traffic circle close to my cell. I tell her I’ll call her. She answers by making her lips disappear inside her mouth. It makes her look a bit like her mother.
It’s about three in the morning when I check into the hotel. The Seven Elevens are fast asleep, as well as their dirty steel-toed shoes at the top of the staircase. From the end of the hallway, I hear the low murmur of TV. Balatov’s out in the kitchen, sitting at the table, wearing only his dingy underpants and still-white undershirt, plus a pair of black socks. He’s as hairy as a gorilla. It’s even hard to see were his socks come to an end and leg hair takes over. He’d need a truckload of “saving cream” for a full body shave. On the screen some stupid actor pretends to be a gunman, holding his weapon like an amateur, looking very much like the pope with a plunger.
“Fuck white night. I want black,” murmurs the voice between the two hairy shoulders.
For the first time since meeting him, I almost don’t dislike him. I grab a beer from the fridge and join him at the kitchen table. I need a friend.
“What about the Icelandic girls? You don’t like them?” I ask him.
“No Iceland girl in Granny Club.”
New friend has limitation.
We watch for a while. It’s one of those “Everybody freeze!” films. I guess every second movie made on this planet has someone
like me for a main character, or the main character spends the whole fucking movie going after a guy like me, and always succeeds just before the credits start rising like spirits from the bad guy’s grave. The Mafia hitman is one of the most popular heroes of our time. Then why can’t I live like the actor who plays me, in a Hollywood mansion with a Nobel prize-swimming pool and palm trees all around it? A handful of servants arguing in Spanish out in the kitchen and a bunch of small time celebrities with big time boobs wailing outside my front door, hungry for sex. Fuck it. I should have all that instead of idling up here in the arctic nowhere, a born-again dishwasher with an ugly name and a jumpy girlfriend, sipping on stolen Polish beer and discussing philosophy with the grandson of King Kong.
“What do you think of movies about the Mafia written by some wimps high on soy lattes. Some unshaven campus kids who’ve never even seen a gun in their lives?”
“What is?”
“Aw, nothing.”
We go back to the movie and Balatov does a round of Bulgarian swearing. Our part of the world is the true home of colorful language. Croatia holds the world record in men’s cursing. I’m only a word away from coming back at him with: “You look like you just fucked a porcupine!” Or: “I just fucked your dead mother’s rotten body in the hole where her left tit used to be!”
“You girl is good,” the bastard then suddenly says.
“My girl?”
“I see you and girl in shop,” he says with the slimiest smile and a very hairy thumbs-up. “Is good.”
“You mean…?”
“I see you make sex in shop. Is daughter priest, yes?”
There you have it. He’s been spying on me. So he’s working for the Fucking Bureau of Impotents after all.
“So why don’t you call them? Why don’t you just arrest me then?”
“What is?”
No. After a quick interrogation I have to conclude that he’s not an agent undercover. He’s too genuinely stupid. But then what is he doing up here? Why the hell is he staying in this horrible country of sunny nights and Sanskrit subtitles if he hates it so much?
The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning Page 17