Pets Page 8

  I should have given it to him. Though there isn’t much one can be confident that Havard will do right, I believe that he would have kept that four hundred pound promise. At least he has kept his word about what would happen otherwise.

  He goes back into the kitchen. I hear the sound of bubbling water die down; he must have taken the boiling water off the stove, and I presume that he has turned the gas off, though it’s not quite certain. More likely, he has just taken the pot off the heat.

  2

  “Hello!” Havard shouts. “Hello, Emil?” He is in the living room. I hear him move the bottles on the table, then open one of them, probably the whisky. “Is anyone at home?” he calls out. I hear the seal tear and the metallic sound when the cap is screwed off; I can hear it clearly because there is no real wall between the bedroom and the living room, just a partition through which one can hear almost everything.

  “Not bad,” he says.

  Now he is sniffing it. I wait for him to take a swig, to hear the splash from the fifteen-year-old whisky when the bottle is tipped up, but I don’t hear anything like it; instead he slams the bottle down on the table and the next moment his shoes echo on the hall floor.

  “Are you there, Emil?” he says, as if he knows quite well that I am hiding in here and am only waiting for the right moment to come out and surprise him.

  I lift the dark blue sheet up one or two centimeters, and my heart nearly stops when I see Havard pause in the space between the bathroom and the bedroom. I can’t see if he is looking in here, but I hear him whistle something and imagine that he is trying to decide in which direction he should go. Then he grows silent, goes into the toilet, and stops in front of the sink, no doubt to look at himself in the mirror.

  “He can’t have gone far,” Havard says to his reflection. “The millionaire Emil S. Halldorsson.”

  How on earth does he know about the lottery prize? Who has he been talking to? Who told him about it? It has to be the reason for this visit. Unless it is entirely a coincidence that he calls me a millionaire, which is most unlikely.

  “What’s that?” he says, surprised, and the next moment I hear him screwing the lid off something, probably my aftershave, and slap his hand on his cheeks or neck. “Après-rasage,” he says with a hard French accent, and then in English, before he bangs the bottle down on the table beside the sink.

  I was right about his shoes. He is wearing the same kind of shoes he wore five years ago: black patent leather shoes with pointed toes that have clearly covered a lot of ground; perhaps these are the shoes he bought in London just after we arrived there together. On the other hand, his pants—dark grey Terylene pants that droop down a little over his shoes when he opens his fly in front of the toilet bowl—seem to be comparatively new. I haven’t seen him in this kind of pant before.

  He starts whistling again as he urinates. I turn my head and push it down into the carpet with as much strength as I can muster.

  The air under the bed is terrible. When I bought the flat I got someone to rub down the rough surface on the walls, and the resulting dust collected in the carpet, where I suspect most of it still is. It feels as if my head is getting stuffed full with dust, which isn’t exactly what I need in these circumstances.

  By lifting the sheet slightly higher I see that Havard is still wearing his anorak. It seems to be torn above the lower right-hand pocket, which might have happened when he climbed in through the kitchen window. When he pulls the anorak back—probably to prevent it from getting in the way of the stream of urine—I can see he is wearing a suit and a light grey shirt, which I must admit goes very well with the suit. My first thought is that he has been shopping in Reykjavik on credit and expects me—who, in his mind, is quite well off at the moment—to help him pay the bills. He stops whistling for a moment, farts, and sighs happily, and when he starts whistling again I think I recognize “Habanera” from Carmen.

  It is obvious that he has consumed quite a lot of liquid. He zips up his fly and, without washing his hands, rushes out of the door by grabbing on to the lintel and pulling himself out into the hall. I don’t remember these abrupt movements of his. He seems to be in a hurry and I begin to hope, feebly, that he will leave soon, perhaps snatch something to take with him and then disappear before I return from the shop or from wherever he has imagined that I have gone. But these hopes are short-lived; he stops suddenly in the hall and comes back into the bedroom—my guess is that something caught his eye as he was coming out of the bathroom. He walks straight up to the computer, which is in the corner by the headboard of the bed, just beside my legs.

  He sits down at the table; the old wooden chair creaks and his nylon anorak crinkles. I lie dead still and don’t dare to lift the sheet. Havard presses one key on the keyboard and then seems to stand up from the chair. He takes off his anorak, throws it on the bed, and sits down again.

  “‘Dear Vigdis,’” he reads out loud, and continues in a lower voice: “‘Here I am back from London at last. How are you? Is the hotel busy? You told me the other day that you would be attending some meeting today so I shall just write to you. It was a good trip. I visited Jonas, though he was busy studying for his exams. Then I went to some concerts at Vortex and Pizza Express . . .’ Concerts at Pizza Express! That’s the damn jazz place he was always trying to drag me along to! You are such a pussy, Emil!”

  Of course, that’s not quite true; I remember once trying to get him to come with me to a jazz concert in London, but that was at Pizza on the Park, not Pizza Express. He carries on reading:

  “‘As you can imagine I bought some music and a few books et cetera . . .’” At this point Havard stops reading the unfinished letter and asks himself who this Vigdis can be. Then he carries on reading quietly, snorts at something I have written and stops reading when he gets to the words “to settle my accounts.” He repeats the words out loud with a question mark at the end. “What on earth does the man mean: ‘To settle my accounts?’” adding, in a husky voice as if it came from the throat of some grumpy old man: “Emil and Vigdis. Who are you fucking these days, Emil?” Next he pretends to be a small child trying to read from a primer: “Emil likes fucking Vigdis. Vigdis always says yes when Emil wants to go to bed. She wants Emil to be happy and Emil is always happy because Vigdis is so good to Emil. But now little Emil is sad because he went away and there was no Vigdis there. Emil misses Vigdis very much. He has written her a letter.”

  How is it possible that I know this man? There is nothing in my life or character that leads to the conclusion that Havard and I should meet. My reaction to this soliloquy is to imagine that the directors of the institution in Sweden where he was kept saw no other solution than to get rid of him, even though he still had to serve two thirds of his confinement. I can quite understand their decision. However, it is unforgivable—if that is the case, which I don’t really believe it is—that the directors did not inform me and others who know Havard, in good time, so that we could take some precautions before he arrived in Iceland.

  Now he has suddenly lost interest in the letter to Vigdis. He stands up and leaves the room. I don’t hear him take his anorak with him. And when I am sure that he has gone out, I stick my left hand out from under the bed and feel around until I touch the nylon. I let go of it straight away to avoid dragging it down on to the floor.

  I hope that he will get going now, but then realize that he is obviously going to wait for me; he has come a long way, he clearly knows about the money I have won, and he is going to make me suffer for not taking him up on his offer in the kitchen at Brooke Road. He knew quite well at the time that I had those four hundred pounds—or rather eight hundred—and from his point of view I could have easily managed without them.

  He has started on the whisky. I can hear him unscrew the lid and fetch a glass from the cupboard. He obviously takes his time choosing the right glass and starts whistling “Habanera” again. The glass rings. I gu
ess that he selects one of my blue Iittala glasses. Then he pours so much into it that I have to accept the fact that he is not leaving any time soon. That uncomfortable fact is made more blatant when he opens a beer can—if it isn’t out of his plastic bag then it is the fourth from my pack—and walks into the living room.

  I hear him going through the CDs on the table and after a few minutes the first tones of “Mysterious Traveller” by Weather Report can be heard. Though I am far from being in the mood for jokes, I find it really amusing that he should pick this track—it is so very appropriate.

  “What is this!” he exclaims in pleasure, and it’s quite clear that on this occasion he is referring to the music. He gets a kick out of hearing something that is strange; he feels that he is more normal and has more freedom to follow his own whims.

  He is obviously interested in the things that I brought home, I listen to him reading out the titles of the videos and piling up the CDs like a stock of cards. I shiver with anxiety at the thought of the scratches that this treatment will inflict.

  “Where can this guy be?” he says. “One doesn’t start heating water and then run straight out to a bar! No, Emil, one doesn’t behave like that.”

  I really wish that I could answer him but I’m not thinking of coming out. I didn’t come home to meet Havard Knutsson!

  3

  We had only known each other for about a month when we went off to London together. And it was by complete chance that Havard, whom I didn’t really know at all, accompanied me. I had just started working in a hardware store when a friend of my father, a former professional footballer and joint-owner of a soap factory in England, invited me to stay in the flat he owned in London for six weeks and take care of some animals that lived there: a cat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, and an ancient iguana that had been given to him by a Mexican colleague from the world of football. His daughter lived in the house, which was situated in Stoke Newington in North London, but she was going away on a trip to Europe, so she needed someone to look after the flat and the animals. The daughter, Margret Osk—who was always called Osk—had spent several years in London learning to play the violin, and I had even seen her play with a string quintet a few years back in Reykjavik. I met her father Orn at a party my parents held several weeks before Havard and I left for London. My father insisted that I talk to Orn because we shared an interest in books on waterskiing, mountaineering, and exploring, however strange it may sound. We got on well, and when Orn found out that I wasn’t doing anything special at the time his daughter would be away, he invited me to use his house. He even offered to pay me pocket money, as he called it—more as a joke I think—while I stayed there. He told me that I could take someone with me if I wanted to, he would pay for another person as well.

  I didn’t take long to think over that tempting offer, and I remember phoning Orn the following day to see if it was still open. In the beginning I intended to go alone, but Havard was very interested when I mentioned the trip to my workmates, not least because I had blurted out that I could take someone with me. In the short period that I had worked in the shop I had gotten to know Havard a little, and although we didn’t have much in common, which I was quite happy about, I thought that he was interesting to talk to, especially about music and taste in music—a subject which, of course, one cannot discuss in any depth. Besides I was much more receptive to odd and even dubious characters at that time, and I can’t deny that Havard aroused my curiosity in this respect.

  I don’t remember if I agreed straight away or if I took some time to think it over, but the outcome was that he accompanied me to London. Originally, he only intended to stay three weeks, but when a month had passed I saw no other option than to kick him out.

  It became apparent that the Havard who shared the house with me in Stoke Newington was not the same interesting Havard whom I had got to know in the hardware store. And now, as he appears five years later, it seems obvious that the Havard who climbed in through my window a few minutes ago is the same Havard who lived with me on Brooke Road. And that really scares me. I don’t know what to do; I was looking forward to coming home, listening to the music I had bought abroad, having a drink to unwind after the journey, and talking to my friends (who, I expect, were also looking forward to seeing me). Not to mention the fact that I am expecting a visit from a woman with whom I have already fallen in love.

  I decide to give Havard half an hour—an hour at the most. I’m not going to lie here squashed under the bed longer than that; I already feel as if there are cement works going on in my head.

  4

  When the phone rings I try to remember where I put it down last. The telephone itself is on the kitchen table but, when the receiver is lying somewhere else, it is often difficult to hear where the sound is coming from, especially as the ringing comes from both parts. I hear Havard stand up, he seems to bump into the table—I shudder at the sounds that accompany his movements—and he finds the receiver after three rings.

  “Hello,” he says. “Yes, it is Emil’s house. Yes, yes. No, he just popped out for a few minutes, I think he must have gone to the shop. Yes, that’s right, he is back: I think he must have gone to buy milk or something for coffee. Who am I? My name is Havard.” He is quiet for a little while, obviously listening to what the person on the other end of the line is saying, but then he continues: “I’ll let him know, I’ll tell him that you called. No, I’m not a school friend of his, I just worked with him once. All right, I’ll let him know. Yes, yes, he came back about half an hour or an hour ago. He’s bound to be back soon, I think it’s quite likely. Yes, alright, I’ll tell him.”

  Then he says goodbye and puts down the phone.

  It’s unbelievable how polite he can make himself sound over the phone. I think it is unlikely that it was Greta, she would not have asked if he was a friend from school; it was probably my mother. Havard confirms my guess straight away:

  “Loving mum just checking to see if her little boy has come home.”

  I don’t hear any sarcasm in the tone of his voice. He makes it sound—strange as it seems—as if he really thinks a mother should know her son’s whereabouts.

  Thanks at least for letting me know that it was my mother who called, I say to myself. And at the same time I wonder why the hell one ever wants to get to know other people, or let them take advantage of oneself. One feels sorry for some poor fellow who happens to work in the same place, invites him to come abroad, and pays his keep, and the only thing one gets in return is ingratitude, rudeness, and the experience of being trampled on—quite literally. The only thing that is lacking now, for me to really experience his physical presence, is for Havard to lie down on my bed—not to fall asleep, but to make the springs in this old, dilapidated divan sink down onto my back.

  I suddenly realize very clearly the ridiculous position I am in and carry on thinking about the problems that one creates for oneself by getting to know various people. One shouldn’t let others into one’s life. I only have to think of Armann Valur to confirm my theory; instead of behaving as I intended to on the plane, I felt sorry for him and spoke to him (so he wouldn’t be bored, I mean), and did him a favor by disposing of his food tray, and now I have his glasses, which I know will result in me never getting rid of him again.

  I could be enjoying myself right now if everything was going according to plan, if this man was not here on the other side of the partition, this man who brings nothing but trouble and the threat of misfortune, this truly faulty specimen who climbed in through my window and is now enjoying the comfort of my living room. He has already spoiled my pleasure in the music I bought by playing it.

  Involuntarily, I’m annoyed at my neighbor Tomas for telling me about the man who knocked on my door at lunchtime; I feel as though he is partly responsible for Havard’s arrival—then and again now in late afternoon—as if he knew exactly when I was expected home. Could it be that Tomas had found out when I was me
ant to land and had told Havard? I even think that there was a strange expression on his face when he told me about the man. Of course, I don’t know Tomas at all, my neighbor who is now sitting indoors looking forward to the supper his wife has started to cook, completely oblivious of the fact that I have condemned myself to some kind of house confinement—not just in the house, but under my very own bed.

  Havard has turned off the music and I hear him unwrapping the carton of cigarettes that I bought in the duty-free store. He has been strangely quiet the past few minutes but the silence is broken by his swearing; he burned himself on a match.

  He must have lit the cigarette, and I guess that he has had a good swig of whisky; he lets out a deep “ah,” as one does sometimes when spirits burn one’s throat.

  “Hinrik!” he says suddenly, as if the name has just popped out of his throat unexpectedly.

  I try to remember if I know a Hinrik and Havard answers my thoughts—in the loud voice he uses when he talks to himself—when he says:

  “Hinrik, mon ami in Breidholt. Why don’t I call him?”

  I can’t remember any Hinrik in Breidholt, but perhaps that’s not surprising; I don’t know any of Havard’s acquaintances, except for one fellow, a skinny boy whose name was nothing like Hinrik, who worked with us in the hardware store. He had a shriveled arm and a thick mop of dark hair, which was obviously meant to hide his peculiarly big ears but didn’t. Their friendship seemed to be built on the fact that Havard protected him from two older workers who plagued him; in return Havard was allowed to tease him a little when I was around.

  His kindness towards the dark-haired boy caused me to turn a blind eye to Havard’s obvious flaws, which I was quick to notice. However, there is no excuse for what I suspect is brewing in his mind right now. He is thinking of inviting someone over to my place.