Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

A quarter of an hour later he’d headed up the stairs of the Ambassador Hotel clutching two open beer bottles in an embrace and thinking the peculiarly reassuring thought — which admittedly stemmed from a drunken, fuzzy logic — that Jónas Hallmundsson, his cousin and brother poet (if that was the right way to put it) had indirectly warned him against his schoolmate Brynjólfur Madsen. Jónas had in some unexplainable way known Sturla would step into his trap and take advantage of the unused manuscript, which no-one had even seen — no-one, that is, except Brynjólfur. But if that was true, why hadn’t Jónas placed the manuscript in Sturla’s hand before he quit the stage? Was it possible his cousin had “rushed ahead,” as he’d put it in “kennslustund”— and Sturla had let it stand, unchanged — earlier than he’d planned to?

As Sturla puts the other empty beer bottle into the trashcan next to the mini-bar, he remembers how he’d demanded that the refrigerator be filled the previous evening. He’d probably sworn at and insulted the dwarfish man at the front desk, Henryk, who in one of Sturla’s versions of what happened the previous day had been a more powerful omen than the hazelnut from the airport. While Sturla shakes his head over this silly need he has to constantly look for allusions in everything, in the past and in the future, he asks himself what will protect him now, now when the nut which ought to bring him luck is no longer among his earthly possessions, now when he has no overcoat to shelter himself. There is, on the other hand, the question as to whether he has any further need of a good luck charm, now that the oracle has been recited.

Liliya pops into his thoughts, and he remembers she had been holding a plain silk scarf in one of her hands while they talked in the lobby; she’d held onto it with the hand she hadn’t used to take his arm. And he decides that after breakfast he will look for a scarf of his own to wrap around his neck; he doesn’t want to stroll the cool autumn streets of Druskininkai with the collar of his jacket turned up like the penniless poet Martín Marco on the cold streets of Franco’s Madrid. And in this context — as he measures himself against Cela’s character in the movie by Mario Camus about the poets, the intellectuals, and the prostitutes of The Beehive —it occurs to Sturla that he will perhaps be able to get a scarf in the Spanish-owned clothing store, Zara, which he saw the day before on Gedimino Prospektas, next to the Novotel Hotel and diagonally across from the McDonald’s he has decided to visit while he’s in town. He’d seen a breakfast prominently advertised in the window which, based on the picture, was going to be rather more exciting than the one he’d received at the hotel.

Two hours later Sturla stands outside Zara. He is wearing a stone-grey cotton scarf around his neck, and his thoughts turn to Stella, the shop on Bankastræti, where he’d stood just a few days earlier in a new overcoat which now protects an entirely different person than it was intended to. He lights himself a cigarette, and when he blows out the smoke, he tastes the beer he drank inside McDonald’s in his mouth. As he heads towards the Ambassador Hotel, intending to sit down in the cafeteria and have another beer, he sets eyes on a man who is standing outside the shining, well-polished glass door of the high-rise Novotel Hotel; he’s wearing a beige overcoat. Sturla can tell, even at a distance — at least, over the ten meters or so that separate him from the man in the overcoat — that it is a well-made, expensive item of clothing, which perhaps isn’t surprising given that the owner appears to be a guest at the hotel, which Sturla knows is one of the most expensive and best hotels in the city, possibly the same hotel he mentioned in his article, the one with the Jacuzzi tubs and orange chocolates in the cloth bag. The man in the overcoat, who appears to be around Sturla’s age, has a thin, dark brown leather case under his arm. He swaggers out onto the sidewalk, back and forth, like he is waiting for someone, and the way he raises his head, as if he’s basking in the sun on this sunless day, suggests a considerable — and perhaps healthy — self-confidence, something which Sturla himself lacks at this moment, even though he is pleased with his new scarf and has managed to placate himself well enough with the five beers he’s had since he woke up.

Sturla adjusts his scarf and looks up at the hotel building, with one eye on the man in the overcoat; just then he greets two women who have come cheerfully out of the hotel and onto the sidewalk. They embrace him in a very Southern European way, with three kisses, and then they set off at a stroll in the same direction as Sturla had been heading. The women are somewhat younger than the man. One of them wears a light gray suit; the other a white coat. Nothing about those people — except perhaps the man’s overcoat — should give Sturla a reason to follow them, but he doesn’t want to let them out of his sight; he finds himself following along the street. He suspects that these well-dressed people come from France or Italy, that they are probably educated people who are somehow connected with the business of art or culture. Just before they reach Sturla’s hotel, they decide to cross to the other sidewalk, as if they’re reluctant to mix with the wretched appearance the Ambassador Hotel presents to the sidewalk. They are gallery owners or art collectors, thinks Sturla, and it comes as no surprise when he sees them stop in front of the bronze figures on the National Theater. When he, too, comes to a halt, he hears them speaking English: they are American. He hears one of the women say interesting in a way that doesn’t match other English-speaking regions. The one in the white coat takes a photograph of them, with the theater in background, and they continue along the street in the direction of the cathedral square.

The place they vanish into had aroused Sturla’s attention the day before, for the simple reason that its name is Literatu Svetainé. It is building number 8 on Gedimino Prospektas. Sturla hasn’t figured out what the word “svetainé” stands for, and he decides to take the opportunity to find out.

Afterwards, he realizes he hasn’t any reason to dwell on what happened after he pursued the American friends of the arts inside Literatu Svetainé. He’d sat at the bar, ordered a glass of beer, and loosened his scarf, which was becoming sweaty around his neck. He’d heard the man in the overcoat (who had actually removed his overcoat before sitting down with the women at a table a little way from the bar) order himself smoked salmon and something which sounded to Sturla like Baby Tomato Soup; they also asked the waiter for some chilled Riesling wine and sparkling water. There was no bass player in a hat on the sidewalk outside this tastefully designed place. When Sturla left his half-empty beer glass at the bar and went towards the entrance, five or six items were hanging from the coat rack, but by the time he opened the door to the street and saw that the sun had broken out from the clouds which a few minutes earlier had lain over the day like a plastic wrapper, there were only four or five items left. Sturla took as long as he needed: he buttoned his jacket as he stood in front of the coat hooks; he wrapped the scarf around his neck — though there was no need to since the sun was beginning to shine — and very calmly placed the overcoat he’d taken from the coat hanger over his forearm. He noticed that the texture of the material was similar, if not identical, to the Aquascutum overcoat from Bankastræti. It isn’t until he is approaching the National Theatre, having crossed to that side of the street, that he allows himself to peek at the inside of the coat. There, in gilt embroidered ornamental letters on a dark blue silk square he reads: Brooks Brothers; in smaller letters below that: Established 1818.