Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

“A man’s head is a heavy burden. .” Where did Sturla recognize that from? When one of the stage lights clicked on to illuminate the dry-ice smoke which was pumped onto the stage from both wings, it suddenly dawned on Sturla, in light of what the voice had said about the heavy burden of a man’s head, that it was from some of the most quoted lines of twentieth-century Icelandic poetry. In this light, those lines evidently had some other hidden meaning, unless this meaning was exactly what had been in the poet’s mind when he wrote the poem. And perhaps it was the case that the double-entendre had been further pronounced by a kind of partner to the line: the title which another poet had given to both a poem and a full-length collection, The Head of the Woman , a head as different from a male head as can be.

“But please keep it erected. .” Wasn’t that how the man in the loudspeakers had put it? If Sturla remembered correctly, the readers addressed in the poem about the man-head were men, not women—“but yet we must stand upright” went the second line — and with the following line in his mind—“and summer redresses most of our sins”—Sturla allowed himself to contemplate the ugly idea that the poem was an incentive to young students who had filled their heads with serious study during the winter to head into the summer firm and rigid; to let the other sex sense their active libidos without having to ask; such aggression would be forgiven and no-one — no-one but the other sex — would note such brazen behavior amidst the dazzle of summer. .

Sturla tried to recall more lines from the poem — a poem which he’d been required to memorize during high school — and found the lines which he had buried deep in his brain were eerily well suited to the moment he had reached in his own life: “we left the old dwelling-place behind /—like a daily paper in a wastepaper basket—.” Reykjavík was now his old dwelling-place, it was the daily paper in the wastepaper basket, and if he remembered correctly, at the end of the poem was the line “excited and new,” exactly describing what Sturla thought he and his companions, the Russians, were expecting they would be offered any moment now: something exciting and new.

Just then a champagne bottle was brought to the table, along with three glasses on a black, dirty tray that was covered in old ring stains from other glasses. “With compliments from your host, Herodes,” said the bare-breasted hostess, smiling. It wasn’t the same woman as the one Sturla had got to know a little; this hostess was quite a bit older, with massive, rolling breasts, and a confident manner, which she made very clear as she swiftly grabbed Yuri’s hand and shook her head in reaction to his clumsy, bullying attempts to slap her on the ass. If Sturla read her glance correctly, he saw the endemic, historical antipathy of Lithuanians towards Russians, which flared up, instead of the submissiveness the club’s owner doubtlessly required her to show to customers. Igor seemed to be thinking along similar lines: he smiled at the girl and thanked her for the table service — though he found out soon after that the champagne was only cheap sparkling wine; he would have to order some real “bubbles” when they had finished enduring this piss from Herod.

At the same moment the woman vanished from the table they heard the music again, the same as before, and the Belarusian Salomé burst onto the stage: a rather pale woman of about thirty, not as slender and supple as a stripper might be. She was wrapped head to toe in multi-colored silk veils, and as for her shoes, Sturla couldn’t work out whether they were going-out shoes or just sandals with high heels. When she had turned a few circles around the pole on the stage, the aria sung by Birgitta Nilsson faded out, and different music was piped into the loudspeaker, an instrumental piece from the East. The Swede who had already been making a racket was getting steadily louder but Yuri wanted peace and quiet to enjoy watching the dancer; he shushed the bellowing Swede and got a grateful look from his companion Igor as his reward (something he’d clearly been hoping for). The woman on stage couldn’t disguise her nervousness, and no doubt the silent concentration which hung thick in the air increased her anxiety; she seemed to understand the great expectation in the eyes of all the men who had come to see what she (and the other dancers who would doubtlessly follow her) concealed under her veils.

As soon as she whipped off the first veil, the one around her neck, her shyness seemed to vanish, and her movements became supple and pliable; she wound herself around the pole like a lithe snake, and her movements earned her praise from Yuri’s lips, something in Russian which she heard and obviously appreciated, but which also gave the Swede, who Yuri had shushed a moment ago, license to air his opinions, too. When the next veil was cast to the floor, the one which had concealed her hair, the Swede shouted out, clearly against the wishes of his companions, something in his own language, something which Sturla suspected concerned what she had just revealed of her body. Her hair drew the audience’s attention: it was short and cut in layers, with cropped back and sides; a color that looked like cream had been poured over it.

The woman evidently heard this shout, but she reacted differently than Sturla, and no doubt the rest of the audience, expected: rather than give the Swede an ugly glance, she flung herself off the pole, stepped down from the stage and tiptoed in his direction like a cat. The Swede hadn’t expected she would come down from her stage, as Sturla described it to himself, but it wasn’t easy to judge from his expression whether or not he liked it when Salomé knelt on the floor before him, grabbed his knees, and pushed his legs apart. Nervous laughter gripped his companions, but the smile which had formed on the face of the victim disappeared suddenly when the woman began to tiptoe slowly with her index and middle fingers up from his knees, along his legs in the direction of his crotch. By the time Salomé’s fingers had reached the Swede’s thighs his companions had stopped laughing and had fallen silent.

Suddenly she stopped walking her fingers, moved her hand slowly and calmly to her shoulders, and quickly jerked away the third veil; now her breasts were showing under the silk. She coiled the veil around the Swede’s head and fastened it like a headband with a knot. Shouts of appreciation could be heard around the hall but everyone at that table was focused on keeping quiet; it was as if the four Swedes had succumbed to some kind of shock, that they knew they looked defeated. But when Salomé put her hand back on the victim’s knee and began to walk her fingers further up his thigh they rediscovered their voices and called out something which was meant to sound like an incentive but which was entirely unconvincing. And just as suddenly as she had begun, the dancer stopped caressing the unsuspecting Swede: she ran the palm of her hand quickly up his inside leg, grabbing his crotch and letting go afterwards with a smile which was meant to suggest very little enthusiasm. With this she turned her back on him and stepped up onto the stage, to the sounds of general applause.

While she enjoyed the praise which the scene with the Swede had won her, and glided about on the stage, either against the column or unsupported, wearing the four veils which were still around her, a question popped into Sturla’s mind: How many male Icelandic authors had at some point in their careers been in the same situation as he was at this moment — at a Lithuanian strip club watching a daring dance which had its origin in world literature (if only in name), in the company of a Russian author of novels who, according to his companion, was not an author of novels at all, while at the next table sat four somewhat shamefaced young Swedes (who Sturla was gradually beginning to suspect were in Vilnius for the same reason he was)? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that these young men were involved with literature or some intellectual activity, especially as the bar where he had first seen them was one of the restaurants that was recommended in the festival’s information packet for participants.