Pets Page 2

  I never found out any more about this girl—she didn’t live in my district nor did she go to the same school as me—but each time I have caught sight of her since then, something begins to happen inside me, something disturbing; I somehow grow smaller and bigger at the same time. In other words: I have fancied her ever since she came out—tousled and flushed, much more mature and exciting than all the other girls—of the children’s bedroom. But it’s highly unlikely that she remembers me. She left the party soon after she had finished with the boy; she was too smart—too experienced and intelligent—to hang around with children, as I thought my classmates and I were at that time.

  Without realizing it, I had begun to compare her beautiful profile (at least what I could see of it from my seat) with that of Vigdis, and, for a few seconds, I seemed to lose my senses; I couldn’t remember whether Vigdis had fair or dark hair.

  4

  The barmaid brought a glass of dark beer and put it on the table for him. She had large breasts, bigger than you would expect on a little body like hers. He gazed at them. He picked up his glass when she put it down on the table and moved it nearer, without taking his eyes off the girl, who turned around and walked back to the bar. Her behind was neat and small compared to her breasts. She took a magazine from the bar, walked behind the counter, and turned up the music. Then she sat down with it, crossed her legs, and began to turn the pages. He carried on looking at her. He lifted his beer glass, put it back down on the table, and dipped his finger in the thick froth. He licked the froth off his finger and groaned. It wasn’t easy to guess what emotions the groan was meant to express. The girl seemed to hear him despite the music; she looked at him casually and then turned back to her magazine. After a little while he lifted his glass again and took a long draught. Half the beer had disappeared when he put it down again, wiping the line of froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. When he had swallowed it, he let out a long, loud sounding “ah” and called out to the girl, asking if he could get something to eat here. She said he could; they had sandwiches and soup. He said he wasn’t going to have any soup but wouldn’t mind a sandwich; what choices did she have? She closed the magazine, stood up without saying a word and brought a menu which she put down on the table. He had finished his beer and passed her the glass in exchange for the menu. She asked if he wanted another one. He nodded and asked for a Jägermeister to go with it, and just some kind of toasted sandwich with ham and cheese. She could put other ingredients in it too, but not asparagus or whatever it was called.

  When she had gone off with the glass and the menu, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped out one cigarette, and lit it. The girl brought him the beer and the Jägermeister and then disappeared into the kitchen. He had only had a sip of beer when she came out again with the sandwich, but his schnapps glass was empty. He had taken off his anorak and laid it on the next table. Underneath he was wearing a light yellow shirt and a dark, double-breasted jacket. The barmaid sat down again and carried on looking at her magazine. He gulped down the sandwich and finished off the beer. Just as he was asking the girl to bring him another one, the door opened and a young couple walked in. She was wearing a baggy parka and a dark brown furry hat, while he had on a long overcoat with a strange looking hood. He stood up and asked the girl for another Jägermeister to drink with the beer, then he disappeared into the men’s room.

  The girl took the drinks to his table and met him as he came out of the toilet. He smiled at her but didn’t get a smile back. Then he put on his anorak, picked up the plastic bag, and peered into it to make sure that everything was still in place. He swallowed the schnapps, screwed up his face, as if he was in slight pain, and downed about half the beer in one gulp. He zipped up his anorak, took several steps in the direction of the outside door, looked back towards the kitchen, and then went out. An icy blast blew into the bar, and the door took a good thirty seconds to close again. An uncanny silence fell on the place; the couple at the table stared at the door in wonder, and when the girl came back in from the kitchen he had gone. The only signs of his presence were his half empty beer glass, cigarette stubs in the ashtray, bread crumbs on a plate, and a crumpled napkin.

  He now stood with his plastic bag on Hverfisgata, just opposite the Danish Embassy, and looked around several times before he carried on down the street. He walked up Ingolfstraeti and turned down Bankastraeti. The sun began to shine when he got near Laekjargata but had disappeared again behind a cloud by the time he reached the taxi stop below the little old houses of Bernhoftstorfa. He pushed down his hood and squeezed into the first taxi. He didn’t answer when the taxi driver commented on how cold the weather had been that month but asked to be driven up to Breidholt, to Sudurholar; probably it was Sudurholar. He would recognize the place when they got there.

  5

  Armann Valur nudged me with his elbow and placed the open flight magazine on my table, beside the tape player. The German model Claudia Schiffer gazed up at me from the page. I removed one earphone so I could hear what Armann was trying to say. He kept his eyes fixed on the magazine as he tapped the picture of Claudia with his finger. Then, lowering his voice as if he didn’t want the woman by the window to hear, he said:

  “She’s not bad, this one.”

  I said no in agreement, waited a few seconds before I put the earphone back in place, and sat up straight in my seat, as if to state that I wanted to be left alone. A new track was playing when I started listening again and, as I tend to do when I listen to music, I tried to harmonize it with Claudia’s face, which was still gazing at me from the magazine. I could easily imagine the slow, relaxed drum beats of Miles’s music being used as background music in a photo studio in Europe while some model shifted positions or pouted and ran her fingers through her golden locks. Vigdis came to mind. At this moment, she was probably changing sheets in the hotel just by the church, and was no doubt wondering if I would call her as soon as I got home, as I had promised. I hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to call her straight away or relax and listen to one or two records in the living room first. The only thing I was sure of was that I was looking forward to coming home to my own flat; unpacking the CDs, books, and videos which I had bought; and arranging the wine bottles, cigars, and cigarettes from the duty-free store on the table in the living room. I decided to postpone answering the questions that popped up in my mind: whether Vigdis and I were really in love, or if the exciting feeling I experienced when I imagined her, in a short black skirt, changing sheets in the hotel up north, had anything to do with her personally, or if this imaginary figure could be anyone, even the blonde from Hjalmholt.

  Armann didn’t seem to have understood that I wanted to be left alone. I had shut my eyes and was trying to look as though I was concentrating on the music in the headphones, but it didn’t seem to make any impact on my neighbor; he nudged me again and wanted me to look back at the magazine. On the right-hand page, beside the conclusion of the interview with Claudia, there was an ad showing all kinds of Icelandic products that were ideal to buy for friends and business colleagues abroad: for example Icelandic sweaters, Black Death, cheese, smoked lamb, and, last but not least, Opal lozenges, which was exactly what Armann was trying to draw my attention to. I nodded and wondered whether my fellow passenger—despite his linguistical education—had different values and manners than other people, or if he had suffered some kind of mental breakdown recently. Perhaps his studies had made him strange. I was thankful that at least he didn’t smell of alcohol or sweat, as I had feared, but what I found strangest of all was that he didn’t seem interested in talking to me. Instead he was trying to get my attention by pointing to something that he obviously wanted me to share with him.

  I saw that the woman by the window was watching us and noticed that she had a reddish-purple mark on her neck. It’s a hickey, I said to myself. I saw her as an educated woman of around forty who was on the way home after spending a few days with her fo
reign lover, and who felt no need to cover up the hickey on her neck; on the contrary, she was very happy with it. She would gladly have paid tax on it, if demanded. I tried to imagine her lover, and pictured an Italian or a Greek, a well-built, stocky man in an expensive black suit and a white shirt, with an open neck, revealing the shiny dark hairs on his chest. In other words: the complete opposite of the man who sat between us, and who was, at this moment, probably considering what goods the world of aviation (if one can use such prosaic terms) was offering and if it was necessary (seen from a more general point of view) to conduct all that commerce in the air. I was quite sure that if I gave him the chance the floodgates would burst open and I wouldn’t be left in peace for the rest of the trip.

  “Maybe this is something one should try,” he said. “They are those giant sized packs, much bigger than these here,” he added, shaking the half-full box of Opals he had fished up out of his coat pocket with some difficulty—the seat belt was still fastened over his stomach. He didn’t offer me a lozenge this time, just helped himself to one and began to tap the box with his index finger while he examined the catalogue more closely.

  I tried to imagine what kind of music this overdressed Opal eater listened to at home and came to the conclusion that some sort of learned silence reigned there, broken, at the most, by the evening news and the occasional program on very abstract subject matters. Probably he had never heard anything like the music that was now playing in my headphones: “On the Corner,” from 1972 when Armann was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years old and, no doubt, still a student. I had started to put together a program of music that I would listen to when I got home and emptied my bags. “Lonely Fire” from Big Fun was number one on that list.

  6

  While the car waited at the traffic lights at the corner of Laekjargata and Hverfisgata, he took a thick old leather-bound book out of the plastic bag, opened it, and gazed at the first page for a few moments. When he closed the book again he stroked it with his hand, put it down on the car seat, and knocked on the hard cover twice with his knuckles. Then he opened up the plastic bag and examined a beautifully carved sailing ship that was wedged into an open wooden box.

  Once they reached Saebraut he asked the taxi driver to stop at a store, where he could buy cigarettes. The driver didn’t make any comment, just stopped at a drive-in store a little later. While he waited for the cigarettes he put the book back in the plastic bag beside the ship, closed the bag carefully, and put it down on the seat.

  They set off again along Saebraut in the direction of Breidholt. When they were about to turn into Vesturberg he stopped the driver and told him to carry on until they reached a certain block of flats in the Sudurholar area. He explained to him that he was going to check if his friend was at home and he wanted the driver to wait. The driver asked him to leave the plastic bag in the car. He asked the driver if he didn’t trust him and the latter replied that that wasn’t the issue, no one got out of his car without paying. He said OK but how could he trust the driver, he could just drive away, maybe his wallet was in the bag—besides the contents of the bag were worth more than a taxi fare, considerably more. The driver kept silent. He lifted the bag and gave it a shake, as if he was demonstrating that it was a token of mutual trust, then he put it down on the seat again and got out of the car.

  He ran up the steps which led to the balconies on the second floor, a sort of outdoor staircase, from which one had access to the flats in the building. He stopped for a moment outside the second door from the end but didn’t knock, then he went on to the furthest apartment and rang the bell. A young woman came to the door. She was wearing a long black T-shirt and tight leggings. He said good morning and asked if Hinrik, his old pal Rikki, was at home. The woman ran her eyes up his body and shook her head, he was at work. Then he asked if Rikki was no longer playing in a band, he had expected him to be at home in the morning, but the woman repeated that he was at work, he only played on weekends now. She was getting cold standing in the doorway and was about to shut the door. He stopped her by putting his palm up in the air, gave a quick glance back towards the taxi in the parking lot below, and asked if he could use her toilet. He explained that he was in a taxi and needed to pee before he set off again. The woman looked him straight in the face, then lowered her gaze and looked away before she asked how he knew Hinrik, she wasn’t used to letting strangers in. He said then that they were old friends, he had even come here before, maybe she didn’t remember him but he had been there just the same, though it could have been before she met Hinrik. She repeated that she didn’t like letting strangers in but gave in when he pointed to the taxi waiting for him. He was on his way back downtown.

  She stepped back into the hall to let him pass, and he nodded, stepped in, and offered to take off his shoes. She told him not to bother, it wasn’t necessary, but he said he didn’t want to leave dirty footprints. She told him where to find the toilet, he had to go along the corridor there and it was the middle door.

  He disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he raised the toilet seat and looked in the mirror above the sink. He ran his fingers through his thick hair and noticed that the mirror was the door to a cupboard. He opened the cupboard and looked at the selection of perfume, aftershave, toothbrushes, and medicine. He took out a plastic container of codeine, flicked off the lid, sniffed the contents and stuffed four pills into the breast pocket of his jacket. He ran his finger over other pill jars in the cupboard and before he closed the door he shook a little aftershave into his hand and patted it on to his cheeks and neck. Next he unzipped the fly of his pants, pulled out his penis, and let the dark stream pour straight down like a waterfall into the toilet bowl. He said out loud that was good, as always; there wasn’t much that could compete with it. Then in a lower voice, almost whispering, he added: “Especially in strange houses.”

  7

  The captain’s voice introduced itself over the loudspeaker. To begin with it sounded as if he was only going to chat to the passengers, but then he began to relate various facts concerning the flight, for instance that we were flying over Scotland, at a height of thirty thousand feet and there were twenty-five degrees of frost outside.

  “That’s not very warm,” Armann commented. Yet I sensed that he was quite happy with the temperature in these parts, besides it was in keeping with the clothes he was wearing. “What would that be in Fahrenheit?” he added.

  I told him I didn’t know, maybe about twice as high, and at that moment Armann grabbed the opportunity that I was afraid he had been waiting for. He had caught me in a trap that I wouldn’t be able to get out of for the rest of the trip.

  “Yes, but that is just it,” he said and stuffed the Opal box back in his breast pocket, this time so it would be easier to pull out again. “Shouldn’t one say ‘twice as low’? That’s the thing with frost and heat; as soon as the frost increases the heat goes down, isn’t that so?”

  I felt like telling him to discuss it with the captain but refrained. It wasn’t such a terrific sacrifice spending three hours of one’s lifetime on something in which one hadn’t the slightest interest. I reminded myself that what doesn’t kill a man should harden him, and with that in mind I launched into the discussion on frost and temperature, but said I hadn’t given it much thought, at least not specifically.

  “It is exactly one of the things we make mistakes about,” Armann said. I expected him to pass me his Opal box. “In reality the cold never goes up.” When he had uttered these words, he bent forward a little and glanced at me, as if he was trying to judge my level of intelligence or observation.

  “Really?” I asked dubiously, and consoled myself with the thought that it took much less energy participating in something boring than trying to struggle against it, especially when there was no possibility of avoiding it.

  “Yes, it is just like that,” Armann said and raised his index finger to emphasize the point. “Heat rises
on the other hand. When there are heat waves old people die in their cars, even people my age—except, of course, I don’t have a car—but as soon as one moves to a colder part of the world, as for instance where we are now, the situation is reversed: the cold actually goes down as the frost hardens.”

  “No, are you sure about that?” I interrupted. I thought it rather unlikely that he really believed what he was stating.

  “Yes,” he said, but he took time to reconsider his earlier statement. “What I mean is that the more degrees of frost that are added, the lower the heat goes, and as a result the temperature goes down. In other words: the frost goes down.”

  I was going to object but decided to see just how he would get himself out of this dilemma. I gave him my full attention to show him I expected an explanation.

  “We can take a clear example from everyday life,” he continued and it was quite obvious that he was waiting impatiently for the flight attendant, who had started to serve drinks, to reach us. “Let’s imagine a particular person, one man in a two-room flat. Another man comes in the door and the number of persons in the flat goes up; the number of inhabitants increases but the space allotted to each one diminishes, that is if we imagine that both of them are going to live in the flat.”

  “Now wait a minute.”

  “Otherwise they aren’t inhabitants, as we understand the word,” he added hastily.

  “I wasn’t referring to that.”

  “Let’s just imagine that these two individuals have bought the flat together. They were maybe inclined that way, if you know what I mean.”

  “But you are talking about two completely different concepts,” I said. “Numbers and space. One can’t compare numbers and space, especially when you are trying to support your proposition that cold can’t go up, just go down.”