Pets Read online

  He walked up the main street and didn’t stop until he reached a restaurant close to the bus station, Hlemmur. He glanced quickly at the menu in the window and then went inside. There were dark wood paneled cubicles on the left hand side that reminded one of an American country bar but many other details indicated that the place was run by Asians. To the right, near the wall, was a large dining-room table with a glass plate—it seemed to have been meticulously carved in an eastern fashion—and there were two short Asian girls standing at the counter. He walked up to them and asked, in English, if he could use the phone. They answered him in Icelandic: there was a pay phone further in, just before you come to the toilets. One of them gave him change for the phone while the other poured out the double vodka he had ordered as he asked for the telephone directory. He went over to the public telephone and searched in the directory. He dialed the number and waited but got no reply. Then he looked in the directory again for another number. While he flicked roughly through the pages he said the name Halldor out loud and repeated it several times under his breath, adding the surname Emilsson. He took a good sip out of the vodka glass and, just when he seemed to have found the number, he swallowed, which made him grimace and shudder. This time someone answered.

  He asked if that was the number belonging to the parents of Emil S. Halldorsson and it obviously was because he stuck his thumb up in the air and moved his lips as if he was saying yes. Was this his mother then? He told her that he was an old school friend of Emil and that Emil had given him their number and had suggested he call them if he wasn’t at home. Did she know if her son was in town? It was important that he contacted him, preferably today. He was abroad? Coming home today? Now, later on? He should land around five o’clock? Did she think there would be any delay? Most probably not. No doubt Emil had completely forgotten to tell him that he would be going abroad, he had spoken to him several weeks ago. He lived abroad himself and they weren’t continually in contact. What, he went off when he won the lottery? He hadn’t told him that either. He asked if he had won a fortune and smiled when Emil’s mother answered. Good for him, going off; one didn’t often get money like that.

  He thanked Emil’s mother and ended the conversation. Later on. He repeated the phrase to himself and replaced the receiver. He picked up his glass, tipped it up slowly to his lips, as if he hadn’t quite decided whether he should drink it, and gulped down what was left without screwing up his face.

  15

  I wasn’t particularly surprised to see the couple from the duty-free store get on the bus. I waited outside on the pavement with the blonde woman until the driver announced that he was ready to leave. We smoked another cigarette together and she told me that the customs officials had searched her. They had carried out quite a thorough examination, she said. To me, she didn’t look the type that customs officials would have reason to pick on. She was wearing a neat black leather jacket on top of her T-shirt—she must have bought the jacket on this trip—and she had wrapped herself in a thick, black scarf.

  I was just about to tell her that we had met before (though we didn’t really meet), about fifteen years ago, but changed my mind. I would tell her later, if we ever got to know each other better, which I really hoped we would.

  The driver had seen to all the baggage and had locked the luggage compartment. We put out our cigarettes and climbed into the bus. I didn’t expect to see Armann in there—I hadn’t noticed him come through customs—but I looked around for him before I sat down. He would obviously have to wait for the next bus; somehow I couldn’t imagine that he would be picked up in a private car.

  It seemed natural that we sit together, the blonde one and I; the only seats that were vacant were near the front of the bus.

  “My name is Emil,” I said when we had sat down. I thought it was about time I introduced myself.

  “Greta,” she replied, combing her hair back with her hands and tying it into a knot. “What were you doing in London?”

  I told her that I had been shopping.

  “For some company?”

  While I explained to her what kind of shopping trip I had been on, I took two cans of beer out of my duty-free bag and offered her one. I was pleasantly surprised when she said yes.

  “But what were you doing?” I asked.

  “Smuggling dope,” she said with a grin. “No, I was just visiting my sister who lives in London.”

  I hadn’t noticed how beautiful her smile was and how full her lips were when she smiled at me on the plane. Despite the fact that fifteen years had passed, I thought her face seemed younger now, and I secretly tried to imagine her with ruffled hair, as she was when she emerged from the children’s bedroom. There was something very sexy about her eyes, as if she was drowsy or, at least, not very wide awake, which, on the other hand, was a contradiction, because she seemed to me to be very smart and clearly had a sense of humor.

  “Were you there for long?” I asked, just to say something.

  “Yes and no,” she answered. “I would have liked to stay longer but maybe not with my sister. I like being in London.”

  “But not at your sister’s?”

  “Yes, of course it’s good to stay with one’s sister in London. But I wouldn’t have minded if she was sitting here now beside you instead of me.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to this.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, as if she had read my thoughts. “I would just have liked to stay longer in her flat, that is without her being there as well. But, what did you say, were you just shopping? Not doing anything?”

  “I was visiting a friend who is at university there,” I said. “Just disrupting his studies, he’s learning economics. But besides that, I was just wasting money. Or converting it into something else; one doesn’t really waste money by buying something with it, of course it is still in circulation.”

  “It’s still in circulation?”

  “At least it doesn’t disappear,” I said, beginning to regret my stupid attempt to be clever. “I mean the money I took with me, it’s in London now,” I explained and tried to sound as if I was deliberately making a poor joke. “I didn’t really waste it, I just exchanged it for something else.”

  “I see,” Greta said with a good-natured smile.

  “Well, I won the lottery a few weeks ago,” I was quick to add, trying to steer the conversation away from this silly remark about wasting money. I realized straight away that I had made matters worse; it was stupidly naive to tell a complete stranger that one had won the lottery. But her reaction didn’t seem to indicate that I had made a fool of myself:

  “May I ask how much you won?” she asked keenly.

  “A million.”

  “A million?”

  “Yes, one million.”

  “Then what? You went and wasted the lot in London? I mean, did you take it all with you to London?”

  We both laughed. I answered that I hadn’t wasted it all, and we began to laugh again at the verb “waste,” which is difficult to avoid using when talking about money; we had made a new version of the word game The Lady in Hamburg. While Greta told me about her unsuccessful shopping trip, as she called it—she had spent a whole day in town, from ten in the morning till seven in the evening and hadn’t managed to buy a single thing for herself—I began to wonder if I had bought enough in London, if the trips to the music stores and book stores had been as productive as I had expected them to be, if one can use such professional terms in this context.

  As I started thinking that, instead of meeting on the plane, we had bumped into each other in London, maybe walked into the same bar and one heard the other order a drink, Greta asked—not in the imaginary bar but beside me here in the bus—if I lived alone or with someone. I was surprised that she asked me this—I thought that these kinds of questions came later on, after you got to know a person better—but I told her the truth: I
had lived alone for a little while now but had a seven-year-old son who lived in Denmark with his mother and came to visit me in the summertime.

  “I’m in a similar situation,” she said. “I have a five-year-old daughter, and I live alone. Or almost, I live in the basement of my mother’s house.”

  We carried on talking for the rest of the ride, and I think, considering how we had only just met, we were quite frank about ourselves. I didn’t mention that I had a girlfriend and thought it was very likely that she was keeping similar information to herself. It looked like the romantic comedy I had imagined outside the toilet on the plane might actually reach its happy conclusion. We agreed to meet in the evening, she would call me after she had had her supper, taken a bath and so on.

  Of course Vigdis cast a large, dark shadow over the excitement and nervous fluttering that I felt inside, but it had to be like that; I wasn’t going to stop now, I couldn’t do it to myself nor to this interesting woman whom—however illogical it was—I continually imagined changing the sheets and scrubbing bathrooms in the hotel rooms in Akureyri where Vigdis worked. I wouldn’t see Vigdis for several days and told myself that I had to wait and see what would evolve with Greta. I couldn’t even be sure that anything would happen. It could be that whatever was meant to happen had already happened. If she called, it might just be to say thank you for our conversation on the bus; she had to spend time with her daughter this evening and maybe she would contact me later.

  Her mother came to pick her up at Loftleidir Hotel. I had already declined the offer of a ride with them. I would take a taxi as I had to stop at a certain place on the way. Despite the fact that I was impatient to spend more time with this new girlfriend, it was too much of an insult to Vigdis to ride in Greta’s mother’s car. While I watched mother and daughter drive off, I suddenly felt that the clothes that Vigdis had asked me to buy in London were unbelievably drab. I thought that it would have been a real waste of money to have bought them.

  I couldn’t decide if I felt good or bad. When I sat in the taxi and told the driver to go to Grettisgata, I saw a dirty white Hyundai drive up to the couple from the duty-free store. I found it rather amusing that I, though I knew nothing about them, just the same, knew the name of the man who stepped out of the car. And he, this Eyvi, didn’t know that I, a complete stranger who at this very moment was driving away in a taxi, was responsible for the fact that his brother was giving him a whole liter of fifteen-year-old malt whisky, instead of some cheap cognac in a plastic bottle.

  Still, I thought he might get nothing at all.

  16

  Before he sat down in one of the booths, he fetched a cup of coffee. He made a point of asking for a large cup of coffee, in a mug if they had one, and ordered another double vodka. There was a newspaper folded on the table. Once he had moved several empty beer glasses and dirty dishes over to the next table, he opened the newspaper and began to read. They were playing old, Icelandic pop songs on the radio. He skimmed through the newspaper, then he folded it again and used it to wipe the table, which was wet from the previous customers. He gazed into space for a few minutes, sipping his coffee and vodka now and then, always the vodka first, then the coffee. He took the book out of the plastic bag and placed it on the table, after first inspecting it to make sure it was perfectly dry and clean. He turned the pages slowly. He wasn’t reading the text; he just seemed to enjoy looking at the old pages. Then he closed the book and gently stroked the back and front covers, as if he were wiping off a thick layer of dust and didn’t want it to spread all over the table.

  Next he put his hand in the pocket of his anorak and took out the money and the photo of the girl with the Bible he had acquired in Austurstraeti. Then he got his wallet out from his inner breast pocket and took out a slim pile of bills. When he had added the piles together, he found that he had forty seven thousand kronur. He straightened the bills, put them down on the table, and, finishing his vodka, pressed a glass down on top of them like a paperweight.

  He glanced around, stretched his neck to see the two girls at the counter, and little by little began to act nervously, as if he was waiting for someone and was excited about it. He tapped the book with his index finger, gulped down the coffee, pressed the palm of his hand down on the empty vodka glass, and suddenly raised his hand, waving in the direction of the counter and calling hello until one of the barmaids noticed him. She asked if he wanted something; he beckoned her to come over to him. She didn’t seem to understand his sign language at first, but then she came out from behind the bar and walked in the direction of the tables; she had a puzzled look on her face. He smiled kindly at her and asked for her name. She seemed surprised, looked away for a moment, and then asked what he wanted. He smiled at her again—as if he wanted to tell her it was all right, he was just asking out of curiosity—and then he pointed at his empty glass and told her to bring him a double whisky with ice, no more coffee, just a double whisky with ice. When she told him that they didn’t usually serve at tables there, he took hold of her arm and pulled her closer. She didn’t seem surprised, and he asked her in a whisper if she would come outside with him, maybe into an alleyway nearby; he would give her fifteen thousand kronur, just for coming with him for ten, fifteen minutes. Either she didn’t understand what he was saying or didn’t want to understand. She pulled her arm away and said something about him having to come to the bar, she didn’t take any orders at the tables. But he seemed determined to get what he wanted, and he took hold of her arm again and repeated his offer: just the two of us somewhere nearby, just a few minutes for fifteen thousand kronur. He pointed at the pile of bills under the glass. Now she understood him; the girl loosened her arm by hitting him in the chest. She told him firmly, without broadcasting it all over the place, to leave. She used these words in the infinitive and when he didn’t stand up she called to someone named Kristjan. It sounded as if this Kristjan was the owner of the restaurant, and it worked. He stood up from the table, knocked his glass over as he stretched for his money, snatched up his plastic bag, and pushed past the girl in the direction of the door.

  Several customers had noticed that trouble was brewing—one of them had stood up to be ready for trouble—and the other barmaid started calling for Kristjan. The girl who had been offered the money seemed determined to stay calm, although she was clearly offended. She watched as he left the place, bumping into the corner of a table on the way and swearing coarsely, both in English and Icelandic. He went as far as the corner of Snorrabraut and Laugavegur before he stopped and put the money back in his wallet. Then he rushed across Snorrabraut, though the traffic lights were red, and slowed down as he approached the corner of Laugavegur and Baronsstigur.

  17

  The familiar sound that comes from loudspeakers when the needle touches the black vinyl adds to the good feeling I have that this little flat, on Grettisgata, is my home, and that now I am back safely after being away. Maybe I wasn’t away very long, but it was long enough to look forward to coming home, which isn’t strange when one has bought a collection of books, CDs, and videos and is dying to switch on the stereo in the living room. I get a wonderful shiver when the first tones of “Lonely Fire” pierce the heavy, two-week-old air, to which I have added the smoke from one of the Hamlets that I bought at Heathrow.

  I wonder whether I should perhaps have invited Tomas up for a cup of coffee—he looked so cold out in the garden—but I decided against it. He must understand that I am not going to put myself out for someone, as my grandmother would have said, when I have just arrived home from abroad. I feel I need to spend some time alone in my flat—listen to a little music and even lie down on my bed—before I start entertaining others.

  The living room window seems to be frozen shut when I try to open it. I don’t dare to press hard on the single sheet of glass, so I decide to go out into the garden to see if I can scrape away the ice from the outside. While I’m putting on my shoes, I put my hand into my shirt
pocket automatically—as I usually do before going outside, to make sure that I have some change or a credit card with me—and find something unexpected. Before I pull it out of my pocket, I realize what it is: Armann Valur’s glasses.

  “I don’t believe it!” I say out loud to myself. It’s exactly the last thing I need at the moment. I remember straight away that I put them into my shirt pocket when I passed the food tray to the flight attendant, but can’t understand why on earth Armann didn’t miss them when he woke up.

  I try not to think of where Armann is at this moment. No doubt he has made them turn everything on the plane upside down. If his panic—flapping his arms in front of the airport official—was anything to go by, it didn’t seem likely that he would leave the airport without his glasses. Besides, I know now, as I am holding on to the thick-lensed glasses, that he has considerable need of them. The only thing I can do is call him or try to contact someone at the airport; I am almost sure that Armann is still there.

  I can’t have been the one who decided to put the glasses in my pocket; someone else must have made the decision.

  According to the telephone directory, Armann could almost be considered my neighbor; he lives on Raudararstigur. I am pretty sure I have the right man: Armann Valur Armannsson, Icelandic linguist. His phone rings four times before the answering machine clicks in. I must admit that I am quite surprised that he uses such technical devices, and I’m even more surprised when his message is repeated in English: “This is Armann Valur speaking. I am not in at the moment. Please leave your name and telephone number and I will see what I can do.”