Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

Sturla nods his head to the bronze figures on top of the playhouse and hurries along the crowded sidewalk in the direction of his hotel. He is hot by the time he goes inside, and can smell in his sweat the stale smell of morning beers. The Nordic guy he’d seen before with a cup of tea and rolled cigarettes is back at the same table in the cafeteria, and when Sturla glances in through the glass door, he sees Liliya sitting there, in the company of some other people. She has a red kerchief bound around her head. He speeds through the lobby in the direction of the stairs, nodding his head to a young woman at the front desk who he has not previously seen, and the first thing he does when he enters his room is slip on the overcoat and look at himself in the mirror.

It is really unbelievable, thinks Sturla, how similar this American’s overcoat is to my own overcoat.

My own?

The American’s overcoat?

Who owns which overcoat? Which overcoat is owned by whom?

And what has he done? How many minutes have passed since he followed the American into the restaurant with the literary name? Suddenly Sturla has arrived in room number 304 in the Ambassador Hotel — which he just then remembers he needs to get ready to check out of; he is about to leave Vilnius and head into the country — with a beautiful beige overcoat which he’d stolen from a coat hook at a restaurant. He hasn’t even had time to wonder whether there is anything in the pockets of the overcoat.

Is there?

He slips his hand into the side pockets and pulls out two rolled banknotes, twenty dollars altogether, and also a folded piece of paper from the Mabre Residence Hotel, on which some names and sentences, in quotation marks, have been written; Sturla doesn’t bother to read it. When he looks in the inner pocket on the other side, some rigid paper and two small, bound, rather oblong-shaped booklets come to light. One bears the familiar name Daniella Goldblum, and the other, which he looks at as though time has stopped, has the name of the woman from Kansas: Jenny Lipp. Under the name is a title, Three Poems , and when Sturla opens the binding of Jenny’s booklet he sees it is inscribed to the overcoat’s owner; the date is yesterday, but it is impossible is to decipher the rest of the poet’s writing.

Three questions burst into Sturla’s head: Was the woman in the suit Jenny or Daniella? Was the woman in the white coat Daniella or Jenny? And would all these people head to Druskininkai after the meal that was conceivably still now taking place at the table?

There is little more than an hour before the bus was due to leave.

Perhaps Jenny Lipp stays at the Novotel Hotel when she comes to Vilnius from Kaunas. Sturla had thought all the foreign guests of the festival were staying at the Ambassador Hotel — or at least in hotels of a similar price range — but it was possible that this American poet who lives in Lithuania had chosen to cut herself off from this group of guests by finding a hotel on her own, thereby showing she knows her way around Vilnius. But although the self-confident American guy with the brown leather case was dressed in almost the same overcoat as Sturla — even the same size, which is a happy coincidence — Sturla doesn’t think he is a poet; in fact, he suspects his first guess is probably still the best: that these three people are involved with the art world, possibly the antiques trade. Perhaps they had been invited, through the American embassy, to their compatriots’ reading yesterday, and Jenny and Daniella had been so delighted to meet their “fellow Americans” that they’d given them inscribed copies of their chapbooks, which had been printed on the occasion of the festival.

As if to conclude the conversation Sturla is having with himself about the legality of taking possession of another man’s overcoat, he convinces himself that, unlike the loss he experienced the day before, someone who is based at the Mabre Residence Hotel — which sounds like it is a few classes up from the Ambassador Hotel (although the Ambassador Hotel’s name implies considerable luxury to the uninitiated) — is hardly likely to let such a mishap throw him off balance. His one difficulty will be that he might need to order a replacement overcoat from America — and maybe he won’t even have to do that, since, based on what he’s seen of the colorful shops and range of merchandise in Vilnius, it is more than possible to get hold of products made by the sort of manufacturer whose name gets sewn onto a silk square in the overcoat lining, a name he really isn’t concerned with remembering at this moment, as he stands in front of the mirror, wearing the coat and stretching out his arms to assure himself that the overcoat still fits.

He takes a sip from the whisky bottle but judging from his expression in the mirror the drink is too strong for this time of day, and while he again remembers that he better pack so he can check out of the hotel, he lights a cigarette, gets himself a glass of water from the bathroom, adds a small amount of whisky to it, and decides after a little thought to put the overcoat at the bottom of his suitcase. He will let the scarf suffice, at least until he has made sure that the owner of the overcoat — the previous owner — isn’t connected with the international poetry festival which, according to the printed program, will start at six o’clock today in some lecture hall in Druskininkai.

Before he locks the door to the room, he contemplates the stain on the carpet: it hasn’t shrunk and it’s still wet. He doesn’t waste any time checking out of the hotel, and when he comes into the cafeteria, with his suitcase, he sees that Liliya is still sitting at the same table as before, but she is no longer surrounded by people. There is only one person sitting with her now, a Danish man of roughly sixty, who Sturla thinks he hears Liliya introduce as Roger; he doesn’t recall having seen his face in the biographies of festival participants.

“And this is Sturla Jón, from Iceland,” Liliya says to the Dane, and Sturla has no doubt that she is glad to see him again, although she doesn’t mention it.

And even though Sturla is not especially keen on Liliya’s dark red kerchief, he shares her unspoken feeling; it feels good to see her again, and he knows that after everything he’s gone through he needs to have a person like Liliya to hold on to. And as he asks himself whether the women in Belarus wear scarves or handkerchiefs, Liliya calls to one of the waitresses and points to the half-empty beer glasses on the table, indicating that she wants three more of the same. Then she asks Sturla if she is the first person from Belarus he’s met, explaining that she’d intended to ask him this the day before.

“I am, you see, the first Belarusian Roger here has met,” she adds, and the grey-bearded Dane — who appears to be perpetually nodding his head, as if he is always in agreement with something — confirms Liliya’s remarks; he hasn’t even seen a person from Belarus on television, at least as far as he knows.

“No, I actually met a person from Belarus yesterday,” replies Sturla, who can’t tell if the Dane was joking or not.

“No! Who was that?” asks Liliya, rather expectantly.

“She was called Salomé.”

“That’s a peculiar name for a human being from Belarus,” says Liliya, and Sturla is amazed that she chose to use the words human being rather than person ; their Danish colleague paused very briefly from nodding his head, seeming similarly surprised.

But just as Sturla is telling himself that the person called Salomé would hardly bind scarves around her head, like Liliya does, the telephone in his breast pocket rings, and he apologizes to his companions before fishing the phone out of his pocket and answering it.