Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

I notice how he rapidly glances around the room as he’s leaving, and picks up the duvet, which the boy has kicked off onto the floor, and spreads it back over him again, showing the same care to all creatures great and small, just like those ptarmigan chicks.

“I’m a vet,” he says. “I have to pop over to a farm to perform a caesarean on a calving cow.”

I pull out a book, the posthumous publication of an early work by a French author, and read a story about a father and son who perished as the father was trying to save his ten-year-old son from drowning. The boy was then buried in his father’s arms in the churchyard on the island, which they had planned to visit before returning on the ferry that evening. I’m having problems concentrating on my reading under the menacing stare of our overnight guest; not even the death of the hero manages to hold my attention. I decide not to sleep, but to wait for the return of the falcon’s owner. The choir resounds from the floor below. They are being applauded now and will no doubt give an encore. I seem to have dozed off for a moment, because when I come to, I remember fragments of a dream: I’m lying on the grass under an apple tree and, as I’m looking up at these succulent red apples, I hear myself saying: “Opportunities will soon fall on you.”

By the time I return to the hall, the lights have been dimmed and a rotating multi-coloured mirror ball has been lowered into the middle of the dance floor. An exotic bird is about to launch herself around the central pillar. She has travelled from far across the desert, considerably further than the choir even, judging by the colour of her caramel toes and violet nail polish. Her eyelids droop heavily as she holds one leg suspended in mid-air, displaying a foot in a laced shoe with a thick sole and high heel. A heavy burden seems to weigh on her as she slowly allows herself to sink to the floor, until her black fringe touches the newly laid oak parquet. Despite the heavily dimmed lights, the scars are clearly visible under her breasts. The lights revolve, blinking green, red and violet. Huddled together up against the stage, the men form a protective wall around the exotic bird who has come from afar. Several of them are talking into their mobile phones in various languages, probably to the wives they haven’t seen for such a long time. But the star of the male choir’s secret surprise number is clearly having problems hoisting herself off the floor again, and eventually solves the problem by squatting and parting her knees to the audience.

After this, many guests join in the karaoke. The hotel manager and a group of foreigners burst into a rendition of O sole mio , and are followed by three men singing the song about the man who sailed home again across the sea, I Am Sailing . The last singer is a man with a long torso and greenish-blue tie whose bulging dry lips almost kiss the microphone as he stretches his long neck, while the rest of his body remains on the stage. He moistens his lips and tilts the microphone stand forward, as if it were a woman in a tango. The tune hiccups around the hall until the voice is suddenly isolated on stage with no accompaniment and the man eventually realizes that the playback has broken down. He stands by the mike, silently mouthing the words with his lips, as some men rush across the hall. Then the room erupts into whistles and applause, and the singer awkwardly adjusts his tie.

The heat and humidity are rising, the men have slipped their jackets onto the backs of their chairs, people are starting to touch, collide, rub against each other and step on each other’s toes — the pairing off for the night has begun.

The owner of the falcon suddenly reappears again and sits down beside me in the corner.

“Hi again,” he says, “did I miss much?”

“Loads, how did the caesarean go?”

“Well, it was a white calf with red spots, just like its mother.”

“Was that your son?”

“No, he’s the son of some friends; he was helping me out today so I invited him here for a meal at the Pizzeria Space.”

He has booked a night for himself and the bird in room thirteen, which is just opposite ours in the corridor. When we get upstairs, the door is open and the boy has vanished from his bed. The box is still on the table. We run up and down the full length of the corridor, up and down the stairs, and rush to warn the staff at the reception desk that a child has disappeared from his bed. I’m so irresponsible and careless. There’s no one at the reception desk. I think I hear a gunshot outside the hotel. A drunken guest reports seeing a dwarf in elephant pyjamas somewhere backstage. And that’s where we find him, wide awake, holding the kitten in his arms, beside the striptease artist, who has almost completely changed back into her civilian clothing again.

The man from the bridge carries the boy upstairs, as I hold the kitten. The bird needs to be moved into the other room, but as soon as we approach room ten we notice something odd: the door is ajar, the window wide open and the fluttering curtains are more perforated than I remember. The box is still on the table but there’s no sign of life inside. The bird is dead inside the cage — heart attack, says the expert, his plumage is still intact at any rate. We all move into room thirteen and leave the box in number ten until morning.

The girl at the reception desk can offer no explanation for how the lead pellets got through the open window. The male choir is sitting at the breakfast table with sombre faces.

“Well there might have been some shooting last night,” she finally concedes with some reluctance, “the guests from the dam might have been trying to shoot some snow buntings to throw on the grill, the way they do back in their home countries.”

I settle the whole business over the phone and get the car dealer to take the old car back and send the box of chocolates that is included in the offer to my friend in maternity ward 22b.

We wait for the brand-new car to arrive across the desert before the evening, before setting off with some hot cocoa in the thermos. I get a thirty-five per cent discount off the hotel bill because of the pellet holes in the curtains, an extra fifteen per cent because of the noise caused by the ball during the night and another fifteen per cent because there were no staff available to enable me to change rooms, thus forcing me to move into the vet’s room for the night.

“Not that it would have changed much,” says the girl at the reception desk, “we were fully booked.” She then offers to wash and dry one load of clothes while we are waiting. The hotel manager hasn’t resurfaced yet, even though we’re well into the afternoon.

The boy shows considerable interest in the jeep when it arrives and gloats on it with the other men, kicking its wheels, as I transfer our things from one car to the other. He has slipped both hands into the pockets of his overalls. The hotel staff are very impressed by this exchange of vehicles out in the middle of nowhere. We don’t have much further to travel now; tonight we’ll be sleeping in the newly planted bungalow on the edge of a ravine.

“Thanks for last night,” a voice close to my ear says, “it was nice to meet you, are you leaving then?”

They all say the same thing, “Thank you for your stay.”

“Sorry about the bird,” I say.

“And the pellet shots,” he adds.

“Yeah.”

“The rest wasn’t so bad.”

“No, the rest wasn’t so bad.”

We formally say goodbye to each other by the car. The hotel staff form a semicircle at the bottom of the steps, like the servants of a manor bidding farewell to a distinguished guest. The boy stands beside me and stares up at us, looking from face to face. He seems anxious: