Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

“Do you remember the folder you gave Jónas?” asks Sturla, replacing the photograph in the plastic folder.

“You always looked away when I pointed you towards my breasts,” continues Fanný, though she takes back her words, saying she was only joking. “Why should you have been shy about such matters? You who ended up having five children, a whole kindergarten, and who was present for all the births, isn’t that right?”

“Do you remember the folder you gave to Jónas?” Sturla repeats, replacing the black plastic folder by the wall at the end of the table.

“Do I remember the folder? What folder?” Fanný picks up the plastic folder, takes the photograph of herself back out, and contemplates it as though she’d forgotten to scrutinize some particular detail.

“The one grandfather had,” says Sturla. “The folder he always kept on his writing desk. It was a leather folder you could open up; there were some compartments in it, almost like envelopes, and inside it was some sort of dry, thick paper which was designed to be an underlay for writing on.”

Fanný sets aside the photograph and takes off her glasses, which are lime-green in color and also shaped like two horizontal limes or lemons. She bends her head and strokes her temples like she is trying to hide some pain that she can’t keep the lower half of her face from revealing. Sturla watches her replace the picture in the folder and put it on the kitchen chair at the other end of the counter.

“Why are you bringing this up?” asks Fanný when she has put her glasses back on. “What about this folder?”

“Don’t you remember giving it to him?”

“Are you sure I gave Jónas some folder?” She drinks from her red wine glass and dries her lips with a napkin from the counter.

“I know it because, among other things, I was quite upset that you gave it to him .”

“And what about this folder? Why on earth would you be upset about some folder?”

“Because I had always wanted to own it. But right after grandfather died you all of a sudden gave the folder to Jónas. Because he was such a wonderful student.”

“A wonderful student?” Fanný smiles half-sadly, and looks around pensively.

“All I wanted to know was whether you remembered this. Not that it makes any difference now.”

“No, my Sturla, it doesn’t make any difference at all. How many years has it been since poor Jónas died?”

They are silent for a while. Then, when Sturla says that it mattered a lot, that it matters even more to him today, Fanný suddenly loses her patience.

“Sturla. If you want a folder exactly like that, you can take this folder here.” She indicates the plastic folder on the kitchen counter. “I don’t need a special folder to cover my breasts. They will be on public display anyway soon. I even think the show will be at the Art Museum of the Icelandic Federal Labor Union, or whatever it’s called.”

“Mom, I’m not mentioning the folder because I need a folder. I’ve had grandfather’s folder ever since Jónas died.”

Fanný shrugs her shoulders, as if to show there is no need to discuss the matter further.

“I am talking about it now because there were things in the folder that belonged to each of them, both grandfather and Jónas. There were papers from grandfather from when he was in Norway, and some photographs, and a whole manuscript. .”

“I remember pictures of you and Jónas which your grandfather had on his desk,” interrupts Fanný. “You were on a swing in the playground across from Freyjugata.”

Sturla looks disappointedly at his mother, who continues:

“I always went there with you, when I was looking after you boys those years Þeba worked at the office. Don’t you remember the photo?”

Sturla says he remembered it.

“I took it myself using your father’s camera. The one he never allowed me to use. You were on the right swing and Jónas on the left and behind you was that nurse who killed herself.”

While his mother spends a long time telling him — perhaps it seems longer because Sturla has heard it all before — about how the young nurse at the kindergarten on Freyjugata cut her life short; about how Þeba, the wife of Hallmundur, Jón’s brother, made her family very unhappy by taking a job (even though Hallmundur earned more than enough for the family); and how it fell to her to care for the young Jónas as well as her own children, Jónas who fifteen years after the picture was taken at the playground cut his own life short using the very same method as the woman who had stood between him and Sturla in the picture — the whole time Fanný’s narrative grows from moment to moment like a dark and sinister flower, watered by the wine, Sturla smokes one cigarette on the heels of another and has another two shots of schnapps; he doesn’t make a fuss when Fanný opens another bottle of red wine, though it isn’t yet five o’clock. He regards this woman, recalling the conversation he’d had with his father two days earlier, and is amazed that he almost described to her what the folder she gave to Jónas contained. Why on earth would he tell her about that? He must never tell anyone.

“Get yourself a little more red wine, or I’ll drink it all myself,” says Fanný, pushing the bottle towards him on the table. But Sturla knew as well as she does that once he leaves she’ll open another bottle; he can see her taking one to the bathtub in the laundry room. He imagines the young girl from upstairs coming down to the basement and sitting on the edge of the bathtub beside his mother; he imagines the girl in the bathtub instead of his mother; he imagines himself getting into the bathtub with the girl — and Fanný suddenly asks, making it sound like she is saying goodbye to him, as though she’d prefer to lie down in a hot bath than to have her son stay any longer:

“And you’re definitely going?”

“Going where?”

“Aren’t you going abroad in the morning? I was only asking whether you’re definitely going.”

“I think so, yes,” answers Sturla, continuing, “I think, therefore I go.”

“Yes, of course you’re going,” answers Fanný. “You don’t need to think any more about it. You’re going in the morning. Have you got your ticket already?”

“Yes, mom, of course I already have my ticket.”

“Then everything’s ready. You only need to remember your passport.”

“I’ll remember my passport, mom.”

“Do you need a passport in the country you’re going to?”

“I don’t expect it will be enough to show them my poetry.”

“Your poetry?”

“I am going abroad to recite poetry.”

“I know that, Sturla.”

“Yes, and I know that I need a passport to get into Lithuania.”

“Thanks for the book, Sturla dear. I will look at it more soon.”

This is the first time since he gave her his book a few days ago that Fanný has mentioned it. He remembers at once that he’d brought another copy of the book with him, like she asked him to, but he decides only to let her have it if she mentions it without being asked.

“I hope you enjoy it,” he says. “It was written using that folder I was talking about. You could say that the book actually came out of grandfather’s folder.”

“I don’t remember father having a folder,” says Fanný, as though the word folder has just come up in their conversation for the first time. “But that is a beautiful picture on the cover of your book,” she adds, smiling weakly.

“That’s a picture of that folder I was telling you about,” explains Sturla, but he doesn’t want to bring this topic back up: his mother clearly doesn’t want to discuss it, or to remember it, even though she admits remembering the folder once she more closely examines the cover image on Sturla’s book.