Bragi Ólafsson: The Ambassador

Then he turns to the living room. Galina is sitting there on a green sofa looking towards the television, at something moving there. She nods to him, and while Sturla watches, the newsreader reels off something that causes a smile to cross Galina’s face. She stands up — with considerable difficulty — and gets The Apartment DVD case which is lying on the DVD player inside the television cabinet. She points towards Sturla and makes a motion with her index finger which is meant to suggest movement, something budging forward. Sturla smiles at her and gets a smile in return. He asks where Liliya is, in English first and then by mentioning her name in a questioning tone. She is in the bathroom. He takes the case from Galina’s hand; then he remembers that the disc is in the machine from the evening before. He switches it on and indicates to Galina that she should sit down on the sofa. And he contemplates the five little bears that Liliya’s mother arranged on the television after she learned that Sturla was the father of five children. Then he goes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator.

While the lion sighs under the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer logo, Sturla takes a half-liter of vodka from the freezer and picks up a wooden cutting board, on which there is some cheese and some slices of paprika. When he comes back into the room with the cutting board in one hand and two water glasses and the vodka bottle in the other, the names of the actors in the movie are on the screen.

He remembers the name Johnny Seven from the previous evening, but he sees that he hasn’t correctly remembered the name of the composer: it was Adolph Deutsch, not Alfred Deutsch. Next comes the name of the director and producer: Billy Wilder.

Sturla begins thinking about his father. And then the images on the screen change: instead of the grayish row of houses which served as the background for the names of the people in the movie, an aerial view of New York appears and you hear the voice of Jack Lemmon: “November first, 1959: the population of New York City is 8,420,782.”

Jack’s character says he works for the insurance company Consolidated Life. And then we get to see him in person; he is at his job, at a little desk in a hall that stretches on like the open spaces in Iceland. He tells us he sits at desk number 861 and is called C.C. Baxter, nicknamed Bud. We see the clock on the wall shows 4:41 and when it has counted off another nineteen minutes, a loud bell rings and the employees of Consolidated Life get up from their chairs and leave the room, following an intricate system which has evolved in order to avoid blocking up the narrow walkways between the work desks as they leave. The only person who doesn’t go anywhere is C.C. Baxter, and he explains why: he has loaned his apartment to his boss — for a date with a mistress — and because he needs to kill time while his boss is in the apartment with the woman, Bud works overtime.

He indicates that this is something he does quite often. We accompany him on his way home; he goes past a row of houses on the street where he lives. It’s nearly the end of the period of time for which he agreed to stay away from his boss and the woman.

Bud says he lives a short walk from Central Park. The weather is bad, and he’s wearing a hat and a light-colored duster that he buttons up to his neck. The way he braces his shoulders, walking along all hunched up, indicates that he is cold, that he is looking forward to getting home. But when he is nearly at the front steps, he sees that the light is still on in the window, and the music which he can hear from there conveys only one message: Bud can’t go home yet.

The perspective of the movie leaves Bud back on the sidewalk as it heads inside the apartment. A middle-aged man is knotting his tie inside the room; a woman who is considerably younger than him zips up her dress and puts her necklace on. The man informs her that they have to leave the apartment, that he told the apartment’s owner to come back at eight o’clock, but the woman wants to have one more martini. And then we get to see Bud again; he is loitering outside, having lit himself a cigarette. At the moment it seems like his overcoat isn’t warm enough to cover him; it looks cheaper than it had seemed in the last frame.

Bud’s landlord, who according to his account is called Mrs. Lieberman, returns to the house with her dog on a leash and bids good evening to Bud. She asks if he has locked himself out but he says he is waiting for a friend. He continues to trot up and down the sidewalk and smoke. After a little while the door to the house opens and Bud’s boss and his girlfriend appear on the stairs. As they depart with the following exchange, Bud crouches out of sight by the stairway; in front of him on the sidewalk are five trashcans that are waiting to be emptied.

“Where do you live?” the boss asks.

“I told you. With my mother,” answers the woman.

“Where does she live?”

“179th Street, the Bronx.”

“OK. I’ll walk you down to the subway.”

“I don’t think so!” the woman bursts out. “You’ll pay for my cab.”

“Why do you dames always got to live in the Bronx?”

“Are you telling me you have other dames you meet up with here?”

“Absolutely not. I’m a happily married man.”

They walk briskly away, and Bud, who’s turned his back to the street so that the bickering pair don’t notice him, hurries up the stairs and through the door. As he gets his mail from the mailbox in the lobby Sturla scrutinizes his overcoat, sitting there on the green sofa with Galina. A few moments ago the overcoat had seemed cheap and of inferior quality, but now, inside the house, it looks more like a well-made piece. It’s not quite an Aquascutum overcoat — it isn’t laminated like a dust jacket, like the wrapping around some worthless poetry. The overcoat is from Brooks Brothers, a design from 1959 made by the oldest, most respected gentleman’s clothing retailer in the U.S. (Sturla had read that on the net, after sending the article to Jónatan). The flagship store is on Madison Avenue in New York City, and the retailer has been known for its first class products since 1818. Bud’s overcoat is made of thinner and lighter material than the one that you’d find in the locked compartment in Sturla’s suitcase.

He pours more vodka into his and Galina’s water glasses and as he screws the cap back on the bottle Liliya comes out of the bathroom and into the living room. The image on the television suddenly freezes, and Liliya’s mother vanishes from Sturla’s thoughts. He is no longer sitting beside her on the sofa; he has returned to the bar in Pilies Street. Instead of a vodka bottle on a cloth-covered side table, he has two beer glasses, one half-full and the other empty, and two generous full measures of cherry brandy on the dark brown wooden surface of the bar. He puts the DVD case back in Liliya’s bag and places it on the bar. Then he taps a cigarette out of the packet.

When Liliya sits back down beside him he has lit the cigarette; he first blows smoke across the bar, then takes Liliya’s left hand tenderly and smiles at her. Her hand is cold, and Sturla Jón imagines that in order to shorten the time she spent in the bathroom, Liliya hadn’t waited for the water to get warm before washing her hands.

“You’re ice cold,” says Sturla, leaving his cigarette between his lips while he strokes both Liliya’s hands.

“Then I should drink some more,” she answers, repaying Sturla’s concern by taking his hands. “And so should you. I am not certain you’ll want to be sober when you get to Minsk. At least by the time we reach the stairs up to the apartment.”

They let go of each other and raise their shots of cherry brandy.

“To Minsk,” says Sturla.