Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

Quivering bottles of soda and beer are being carried into the room in crates and technicians are testing the microphones. There is a sense of anticipation in the air, but for now everything remains relatively quiet and the hotel manager gives himself time to chat to us in the hall.

“Things will be livening up later on; we’re expecting a group of foreigners from the dam construction this evening.”

Adopting a mysterious air, he then lowers his voice as he leans over the counter between two palm plants:

“We’re in an odd situation here. The cancellations due to the construction work on the dam have actually been far less than the number of bookings from the contractors above. We only get the odd ecological tourist who comes here to experience the desert. What’s more they like to keep to themselves, hardly buy a single souvenir and bring very little currency into the country.”

He has straightened up again now and raises his voice: “One has to look at the big picture.”

We both slip into silence, the hotel manager and I. I’m waiting for the restaurant to open. The boy wants boiled fish with potatoes and butter, just like at his grandad’s, if I’ve understood correctly. The kitten also wants fish. The hotel manager leans over the counter again.

“And then, of course, there’s the commercials. We get quite a few film crews around here shooting their ads. Mainly for mobile phones. They’re starting to bring in some currency. A foreigner recently said to me that he felt like he was living inside a mobile phone commercial here, nothing but sand and rocks, total freedom. Of course, some people are quite keen to track down these places with nothing around them. There isn’t a single blade of grass growing here at the moment, although we’re planning on planting a small oasis of pine trees in the sheltered area behind the building. We’ve been in touch with the Forestry Service and they’ve given us the green light. Unless we go for some mountain ash instead.”

The boy’s lips silently move, as he reads a sign on the wall in six languages. Once more the manager lowers his voice and turns on that mysterious air:

“And then, of course, there’s a fair bit of local traffic from people in the area if there’s something going on, people like to come here for a change of atmosphere and to give themselves a treat, gawk at the foreigners and have a drink.”

There’s a TV in the dining room so we watch a programme on some foreign channel while we’re waiting for our food to arrive. A man from a small Alpine village in Austria, who keeps goldfish the size of trout in his garden, is being interviewed. He’s taught them to play football, he claims, and to stick their heads out of the water to kiss him. His wife complains about how her husband spends all his free time kissing and fondling the fish and confesses that she is jealous. She invites the reporters in for dinner and chats to them, as she fries some brown trout. She is wearing a stained apron and seems to be quite chuffed by all the attention she is receiving from the cameras.

“We’re out of fish,” says the waitress, “it’s mainly Italian dishes we have. Pizzas are the most popular. That includes soup of the day, mushroom.”

I order milk for the boy and water for me.

“Is skimmed milk OK?” the girl asks. “People never order milk with their food here.”

Tumi can only handle two morsels before the cheese seems to get stuck in his throat and he can’t breathe and coughs into his glass of milk. Finally, he spits out the food into a green napkin I hold up to his mouth.

When I come back to the table, after washing his face, our plates have been taken away and clean sets of cutlery have been wrapped in green napkins on the table. The girl tells me that the kitchen staff agree that the Margarita and calzone weren’t quite up to scratch and they would like to offer us hamburgers and chips on the house instead.

“All hotel guests are entitled to one free drink and a discount on two further drinks at the concert tonight.”

Once the boy and cat have fallen asleep under the same duvet, I take a shower and finish reading Gli Indifferenti by Moravia. Feeling a slight chill after all my travels, I slip on a thick white sweater and return to sit in the dining hall. The place is steadily filling up with guests, who group into tables, according to their level of acquaintanceship and family ties. Many of them bear a striking resemblance to each other, with their red faces and freckles.

Two foreigners in anoraks by the entrance cast their dark eyes on me over their pints of beer. One of them has a rolled-up cigarette poised between his fingers. Scanning the room with my eyes, I notice a teenager, sitting slightly apart, about seventeen years old I would guess, with a bottle of coke and a glass full of ice cubes in front of him. He sips on the bottle, but doesn’t touch the glass. There’s something oddly familiar about him. He has a sensitive air and pale complexion, and I imagine he has started to harmonize the proportions of the various parts of his body and that he is no longer as lethargic as he was. He has dark, undulating hair, which he has clearly tried to wet and comb down.

I sidle up to his table and ask him if I can take a seat. When he looks up I see that he has beautiful green eyes and that he probably suffered from bad skin that has now started to heal. I order the same thing he’s having and, before I know it, have leant over slightly towards him to ask him when his birthday is. His gaze shiftily darts in all directions, like the deserter of an enemy army who is on the point of disclosing information that could put him in peril of his life.

“At the end of May,” he says, but without any hostility, pulling the hood off his head. A dark lock of hair dangles over his forehead.

“Are you from here?” I ask him bluntly, sipping on my soda. The youngster whitens and glances nervously over his shoulder, as if he were expecting someone.

“I see that you two have already introduced yourselves,” says a man taking a seat at the table beside the youngster.

He slips a hand around the boy’s shoulder, as if to tell him he’s got nothing to fear, and smiles at me. It’s the man from the bridge.

“Hi, and thanks for your help earlier.”

“Same to you.”

“We came to listen to the singing, but he’ll have to wait a few years before we can watch the act that follows the choir,” he says.

After chatting with them for a while, I tell him I have to go and check on Tumi. As I get up, he asks if I could do him a favour. He has to take the boy home before the show begins and he wants to know if I can watch the sick falcon for him while he’s away, it’s in a box.

“He’s already been fed, so you won’t have any worries. It’ll just be for a few hours or until tomorrow morning at the latest. There’s one place I have to stop off at on the way, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back at the hotel tonight.”

Far be it from my mind to weigh the prospect of the company of a feathered predator against that of a naked man, I can clearly see that I will be given no choice about which of the two I would like to sleep or wake up with.

He follows me to room ten, walking behind me up the stairs with the box in his arms, and places it on the bedside table. The bird gives us a hostile glare through the two little holes in the box. The kitten immediately arches its back and hisses at the feathered guest, fluffing its hair up in all directions. Before we know it, he’s leapt out into the corridor and vanished around the corner on two paws, as if he had been swallowed up by the earth. The man from the bridge promises to help me find the kitten when he gets back, and tells me he is extremely grateful for the favour.