Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

No, Sturla Jón, the wet stain on the hotel carpet doesn’t make the room dangerous!

The red-headed girl in reception has the telephone receiver pressed to her ear with her shoulder; she seems a bit panicky as she searches through some papers on the desk. She still gives herself time to smile at Sturla as he goes by, and he feels like he’d better stop and react to her smile in some way. He has reached the glass doors of the cafeteria by the time he turns back and goes up to the reception desk. The girl, called Elena according to the badge on her dark blue jacket, indicates to him with her hand that she will help him in just a moment, and while Sturla waits he looks over a selection of brochures in canvas pockets on the wall by reception. He has selected three brochures to take with him by the time the redhead speaks his name: Mr. Jonson. He turns around, and the girl, who has taken the phone from her ear, asks Sturla if she can help him with something. He starts by apologizing for having disturbed her and as he listens to himself he thinks how silly he sounds asking if he can get coffee “in there,” pointing in the direction of the cafeteria.

“Yes, of course,” Elena replies, smiling.

“To take up to my room?” asks Sturla.

“Yes, you just ask for coffee in the caféteria.” And the girl smiles again, returning the phone to her ear and apologizing to the person on the line.

The young Norwegian or Swede is still sitting at the same table in the restaurant, a thick book in front of him. He holds a thin self-rolled cigarette and looks out the window at the avenue Sturla was on before, when he got out of the car outside the hotel earlier in the evening, and which is called G-something-or-other prospektas, like the Nevski prospect in Gogol’s short story of the same name. (He decides to ask a local, perhaps Elena at reception, how to translate “prospektas” in this context; to one who recognizes the word only from Germanic and Latin languages, using it to describe a street or avenue sounds quite peculiar.) Except for the Nordic contingent — it occurs to Sturla that maybe he should introduce himself, “being from the Nordic lands myself,” as he would phrase it — there are two older men in the place, smoking silently at a table in the middle of the room, and four young people who are talking together at high velocity and who seem to notice something funny about Sturla; when he goes past them they all look quickly at him before turning back to one another, stifling bursts of laughter.

It isn’t clear whether this place is called a cafeteria or a bar: the chairs, tables, and all the fixtures are more reminiscent of the waiting room in a federal building. There are cakes and sandwiches in a glass case at the service counter and, facing outwards on a glass shelf in front of a mirrored window, long rows of beer and liquor bottles, something which doesn’t really match what Sturla notices next: index cards with handwritten information about the breakfast the place serves between 7:00 and 10:30 every day except Sunday.

What do hotel guests do on Sunday mornings? he asks himself. And he considers himself lucky not to need to figure that out: he will be out in the country that day, in the spa town of Druskininkai.

Three young waitresses are standing side-by-side behind the till, wearing reddish jackets which are perhaps more like smocks, and they all stare as one at Sturla when he asks whether he can get a double espresso to take up to his room. The girls don’t seem to know what to say, but one makes a decision, the one in the middle: she asks Sturla if he is staying in the hotel. When he confirms that he is, she informs him that they only offer table service, that he won’t be able to take coffee up to his room.

“You don’t have any paper cups?” Sturla asks, running his eyes over the liquor selection on the shelf, to see if they carry the same whisky as he has up in the room.

The girl shrugs her shoulders, as if she doesn’t understand the question, but instead of asking why he wants a paper cup, she tells him that they only have normal coffee cups; he can sit at any of the tables in the room and have coffee.

“There’s no way I can take one of the ‘normal’ cups up to my room?”

“We only serve coffee at the tables.”

“But in those cups?” Sturla asks, nodding to a row of water glasses.

“No,” replies the girl. Sturla asks himself whether he might have to return to his room without getting any coffee out of the fancy Krups machine which gleams from between the girl who just spoke and the one standing on her right. He asks if he can order some coffee for here, and perhaps Coke in a paper or plastic glass, but that option isn’t available: he can have some Coke, but not in a paper or plastic glass.

“Þá held ég að allir möguleikar séu fullreyndir,” he says, but none of the girls seems interested in finding out what the words mean. They look expressionlessly at Sturla, who imagines that either they are hiding their amazement — who is this strange guy who wants to take coffee up to his room? — or else they don’t really understand what he wants.

The kids who were laughing at the table are now sitting in silence and don’t seem to notice Sturla as he goes past them. Still thinking about his failed attempt to order coffee, he looks to see what the Nordic guy is drinking, and isn’t very surprised to find that it’s tea. Though Sturla had considered saying hello to the man, he now decides not to; he raises his head and pushes open the glass door which swings into the hotel lobby. As he does, he thinks about how a coffee shop like this one doesn’t deserve better customers than those who make their own cigarettes and order nothing more than a single cup of tea all evening.

“I couldn’t get any coffee to take up to my room,” Sturla tells the redhead at reception; she is now sitting and talking with another young woman in an identical uniform who is putting on make-up. She seems surprised that Sturla couldn’t get any coffee, and she says she will fix it right away; he can go on up and she will bring him some coffee. Sturla thanks her gratefully and asks her to order him an espresso; he prefers coffee without milk.

What are my children doing right now? he wonders as he goes upstairs, and is immediately amazed that he is thinking about his offspring so unexpectedly, here in this distant place. Is it possible some of them were thinking about their father at the same moment, perhaps worrying that he is alone, so far away from everyone he knows? Are they are also worrying whether he will succeed in the assignment he has been given, an assignment on behalf of his country: to represent it in the narrow but vital world of poetry? No. Hardly. It had not occurred to him once to mention his role here in such grand terms. As he climbs to his floor he begins imagining what his five children are doing at that moment. He pauses and tries to picture them for himself, in the same way the omniscient narrator of a realistic novel would if he wanted to describe Sturla Jón’s sons and daughters:

Egill is sitting by the kitchen table with his mother, Hulda, and his girlfriend Puri. It is evening, as it is in Lithuania, but it isn’t the same time: there’s a three-hour difference between Iceland and mainland Northern Europe. It is uncomfortably bright in Hulda’s kitchen: sixty-watt lightbulbs in the ceiling lights illuminate every corner and every surface, but in the window is the deep darkness you find out in the country. Símon, Hulda’s partner, a store manager, is probably still at work. Hulda tells Egill how happy she is to have all five of her children at home with her; it doesn’t happen often. But Egill, who lives in London and is visiting Egilsstaðir briefly, is immersed in thoughts of Reykjavík: he longs to be in the capital city where he knows — or ought to know, since even his father knows it — that two American neo-country-and-western bands are playing concerts this weekend. The Spanish Puri undoubtedly also wants to be in the capital city, if what Egill told Sturla is true and she is a songwriter and singer who has put out a few CDs — something Sturla knows isn’t necessarily any indication of success or fame nowadays.