Bragi Ólafsson: The Ambassador

“We were also talking about movies yesterday,” says Liliya, and she tells him that Jenny had sat down at their table after the reading and put on a haughty expression when they began discussing the light-weight and worthless Oscar-winning movies. Rolf had given an entire speech about “the crazy heifer (or, in English, ‘the mad cow from Kansas’)” as he called her once she’d gone to bed (long before the others), and he’d described how Jenny had personally declared war upon him as a poet with her perfectly tasteless last poem earlier that evening, a poem about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and American support for child murderers and needless destruction: she had earned gaping admiration from everyone with some showy bravado, having recited some endless nonsense about the life of an American poetess in Lithuania.

As he listens to Liliya talk about people interacting at the festival, Sturla realizes suddenly that he wishes he was there; he wants to take part in these lively conversations — arguments, even — with informed and entertaining people. They say goodbye, promising to meet the next evening, once Liliya has returned to the city and they can get together at the coffee house on Pilies Street, where Sturla intends to go himself after their phone conversation. Liliya says she wants to show him the bar she wrote about in her poem, and Sturla feels that it is apt, a kind of postscript to their phone call, to tell her about the clever license he took in breaking her word “language,” “tungumál” in Icelandic, across two lines. Tungu, the first part of the word, means “tongue” in English, and mál, the second part, can mean almost anything, from a court sentence to needing to pee.

“But it doesn’t mean anything rude, does it?” asks Liliya, and Sturla is a little surprised to hear that she’s clearly ambivalent about him adding to the poem an ambiguity which wasn’t originally there.

And then she tells him about the walk she went on the day before. Shortly after he disappeared from the dining hall she’d walked along the river that ran through town, and the fall had been so beautiful that she couldn’t trust herself to put it into words. He is ashamed that they can’t go there together later in the day, as there will be such beautiful afternoon sun.

Sturla is a fraction of a second away from asking Liliya if she has experienced The Season of Poetry, as the festival organizers had envisaged it, but he realizes in time that such oafish humor would only offend Liliya’s feelings, feelings he thought he’d sensed in her wish that they could enjoy beautiful things together.

And so they say goodbye to each other.

When Sturla has thanked the old woman for the use of her phone, and offered her payment, which she refuses, he feels bad for having deceived her about his name the previous evening, and he decides to correct matters.

“I have to apologize for not giving you the correct name yesterday. I am not Stavros Monopolous.”

But she doesn’t seem to understand what he is driving at. “Why not?” she asks, after Sturla has put no small amount of effort into explaining his meaning to her in English.

“My name is Sturla Jón. Sturla Jón Jónsson. I come from Iceland.”

And the woman shrugs her shoulders and pats Sturla’s upper arm in a friendly way. “You like coffee?” she asks.

“Yes, but the tea was very nice.”

And she waves him away good-naturedly with a few words in her own language as if to underline that she also knows something he doesn’t understand.

Sturla looks optimistic when he emerges onto the street in the overcoat, his scarf wrapped around his neck. He is feeling good; he decides that whatever happens over the next few hours shouldn’t be determined in advance — he won’t plan more than an hour ahead. The only thing he knows he is going to do is buy a few movies for Liliya; he will play the role of Rastignac, the student, to her Madame de Lucingen.

She said she lives with her mother, Sturla thinks as he begins walking along the street in the direction — as far as he can tell — of midtown. As he contemplates the fall in the city he remembers Miroslav Holub’s feelings about poetry and uses those words as a justification for being alone, walking through Vilnius when he ought to be working on behalf of poetry with the crowd in Druskininkai. If it is true that poetry can be found in all things, then it’s just as true of the hazelnut he now catches sight of and picks up from among the fallen leaves on the sidewalk as it is of the large, concrete lecture hall.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to celebrate this nut, Sturla thinks as he looks at the beautifully created natural specimen in the palm of his hand; then he throws the hazelnut out onto the broad lawn beside the sidewalk and keeps on going.

He buys four DVDs in the record store. In addition to the film starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, he chooses Sunset Boulevard , which is by the same director; Night at the Opera , by the Marx brothers; and Made For Each Other starring James Stewart and Carole Lombard. He thinks long and hard about this last one, since Liliya might misunderstand his choice and think that the title is meant to reveal his actual feelings. He buys three new CDs for himself: one by Kate McGarrigle, the newest release from Maria Muldaur, and the compilation Sing it Again, Rod by Rod Stewart. By the time he’s concluded his transactions, only a thousand Icelandic kronur remains of his slot-machine winnings.

The restaurant where Liliya and he had talked about meeting the following day is the same one Sturla had briefly sat down at before deciding to follow Jokûbas’s advice; it is about midway between the town hall and the little traffic circle which opens into Pilies Street and several other streets. Sturla is quite warm from walking, so he decides to sit down at a sidewalk table and get some coffee and some whisky, that long-awaited combination he’d never managed to get on his first evening in the hotel. They are digging up the section of the street nearest the town hall, and as Sturla waits at the table for his drinks he watches the workmen, who are in blue, labor with drills and shovels, and he allows himself to believe that he could happily do a job like that for a while: rising early in the morning, spending time in the carefree company of sturdy men during the day, and heading home tired in the evening, perhaps with every part of his body feeling like he’d achieved something, something which you could literally call a foundation.

Sturla is lost in thought when he suddenly notices the bass player in the black hat enter the traffic circle from a little side street. He starts; he feels a stab in his gut as though he’s seen something terrible. Perhaps Sturla wouldn’t have recognized the guy if he’d been wearing the overcoat, but when he saunters onto the sidewalk he is wearing the same clothes as when Sturla first saw him: a well-worn jacket, black jeans, and cowboy boots, and he is holding an instrument case. Although one could say fall has arrived today, the bass player has certainly not let the season dictate the way he dresses; he clearly couldn’t expect a warm day if he was planning to spend it outside playing his instrument.

It occurs to Sturla to go straight up to this man who has made him far more angry than everyone else over the past days put together, and let him know that he can’t expect to get away with robbing people of their winter clothes. He is about to leap from his chair when he pauses because he realizes that he , and not the bass player, is wearing the same kind of overcoat he suspects the stranger of having stolen. And he makes up his mind to let the bass player go about his business in peace because he should, in fact, be satisfied with the way things are turning out. He watches the man in black walk along Pilies Street: after going a few meters along the street he stops suddenly beneath a giant shop sign which sticks out from the wall of one of the stores; he looks up at the sign, turns around just as suddenly as he’d stopped, and goes back up the street. Then he pauses at the corner of the street where Sturla first saw him, puts his case on the ground, and takes out his instrument.