Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

It turns out that the place they were discussing is the same place the bass player with the hat is standing in front of. As Sturla thanks the young man for the help, he notices that the musician in black is playing a new song, this time one which Sturla recognizes at once: Mandolin Wind by Rod Stewart. Sturla thinks this folky song might even be the next track on the same album as the earlier tune he’d half-recognized — a record he probably wouldn’t care to have in his collection these days, but which he’d enjoyed listening to since he was almost twenty. He admits to himself that this music cheers him: it reminds him of something good, something from a time in his life when the future lay before him — when the world hadn’t yet been revealed to him — and he decides to stop briefly and listen to the tune before he goes into the restaurant. The performer, who has lit himself a cigarette and hooked the filter into the head of the bass’s neck, notices Sturla’s attention, and rewards his listener by increasing the energy of his performance. Sturla nods to him, without being certain that the extra hoarseness he is adding to his voice is actually an improvement; nevertheless, he decides to oblige him. He fishes his wallet from his jacket pocket, chooses the smallest note he can find (10 litos ), and puts it in the open instrument case on the sidewalk. But when Sturla moves to enter the door, the singer twitches his head to signal that Sturla ought to wait, and he suddenly pauses mid-song.

“Where are you from?” he asks in a deep voice, reaching out for the cigarette on the neck of the bass.

“From Iceland,” answers Sturla, one hand on the doorknob.

“How long are you staying here in Vilnius?”

Sturla wonders whether he ought to give a stranger this information, but when the small bass player points to the open case and thanks him, Sturla replies, thinking it both a little silly and somewhat fun: “I’m heading to Druskininkai in the morning. Do you know Druskininkai?”

“Do I know Druskininkai? I know it as the back of my hand,” he replies in English. His expression suggests he knows exactly what he’s talking about. And he adds: “Druskininkai is one helluva place,” with an emphasis which is as ill-suited to him as the huge bass. “It’s a fucking healthy place, you know. Very good for your body. For your body and soul.”

Sturla nods his head and opens the door.

“But Iceland?” the man hurries to add. “It’s fucking cold, I presume?”

And Sturla asks himself, before he answers, where the man got hold of his English. And when Sturla answers affirmatively, the man shivers as though it has suddenly become freezing cold, and he blows into the air to emphasize his opinion of Iceland. And, before he starts the next tune, he raises his jacket collar around his neck, flashes a smile which gives Sturla an uneasy feeling, and waves to indicate that their conversation is over; Sturla is free to go in through the door of the restaurant, if he wants.

Never talk to strangers, Sturla says to himself, and he remembers suddenly that these words are the name of a chapter in a book he has read, though he can’t recall what book that is at the moment. He wonders if this deep-voiced Rod Stewart fan is as ignorant as Áslákur in the lift on Skúlagata, who didn’t know about Iceland’s support for Lithuania’s fight for independence fifteen years ago. Surely a Lithuanian person of this man’s age, old enough to remember the events of the past fifteen years, ought to express thanks to an Icelander he meets by chance for their support in making life bearable in his homeland, rather than venting his opinion that Iceland is intolerably cold?

There is no one in the place, and the clock shows it’s not much past eleven. The dark brown wood fixtures remind him of something German or Austrian, and the sound of the music which is coming out of little loudspeakers, including one by the coat hooks, is in keeping with the fixtures. Sturla thinks some more about what he read describing the founding of Vilnius: among the artisans who Count Gediminas enticed from the small towns in Germany to settle in the new city, there must have been some musicians, perhaps like the bass player outside on the sidewalk in wide-brimmed hat, tall leather boots, and torn jacket — musicians playing tunes by the Rod Stewart and the Faces of their day and age. Besides the music, the first sign of life that Sturla discerns is an old man in a cook’s uniform who trots out one of the doors, which looks like it leads to the kitchen, and in through another, which he guesses is the bathroom. Sturla takes off his overcoat and hangs it on the coat hook in the entryway. Then he goes into the two-room dining room, where finely checkered cloths lie on all the tables, and he chooses a seat in the far corner of the room. He reaches for the breast pocket of his jacket, to check if he’s got his cell phone, then remembers the hazelnut in his overcoat and decides to get it; he wants it nearby.

When he turns back from the coat hook, carrying not only the nut but also the overcoat, which he has decided to keep at his table since he is alone, a young waiter is standing in his way. He gives Sturla a friendly smile but also shakes his head, offering another kind of smile that somehow convinces Sturla not to protest when the waiter takes his overcoat, saying he will hang it on the coat hook. He then invites Sturla to sit in the outer room, but Sturla tells him he’s already chosen a seat in the inner room — he wants to be more isolated — and he orders a large beer and some good liquor; the waiter proposes cherry brandy.

“That sounds good,” says Sturla, and he watches as the black-clad waiter takes the overcoat towards the coat hooks. He goes back to his seat and rests his arms on the arms of the chair, which he feels embrace him like a flesh-and-blood person. He lights a cigarette. He is pleased with the place and resolves not to let himself be affected by the everyday matters his father might later report from Iceland. The lyrical version of reality — no matter how tough he knows the real situation to be — looks much better among these surroundings. This place’s walls have certainly never belonged to an American fast-food joint, while the old, traditional eateries in Reykjavík were giving way to cheap, soulless international restaurant chains. That said, the impossible had happened: Hressingarskálinn in Austurstræti had gone back to being Hressingarskálinn again after the McDonald’s hadn’t done very well in that location. But Sturla could still see before him the plastic fixtures of the fast-food franchise; even though the management of the place had changed a long time after he and Jónas used to meet up there, he places himself and his cousin in red and yellow plastic chairs as he recalls (and invents) their conversations about the latter’s poetry manuscript and the “northern moors” melancholy which Jónas had said he perceived in the tunes and lyrics of the musician Megas.

It was about two weeks before Jónas died. He had shown up at Sturla’s workplace right at midday, to make sure he could catch the bank employee before he went for lunch, and Sturla, who was not especially eager to meet up with his cousin — he was, sad to say, becoming very annoyed at Jónas’s visits to the bank — asked him to wait at Hressingarskálinn while he finished some telex-messages which needed to be sent before midday. It turned out that Sturla enjoyed chatting with Jónas on that occasion; he found that his cousin shared numerous details about himself, details which it was natural and healthy for them to share. He even, totally unexpectedly, surprised Sturla by paying for lunch — that had never happened before, and didn’t happen the two subsequent times they met up there.