Халлгримур Хельгасон - The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

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.

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.