Bragi Ólafsson - Pets

Despite the fact that we quickly spent the allowance Orn had given us, we were by no means in difficulties. Havard had brought his last month’s pay from the hardware store and I had a reasonable sum, which I had intended to use to buy a car at home. Havard, however, managed to spend all his money — and some of mine too — in his last week in London. He discovered that one could walk into certain offices — that I initially took for printing firms because bookmakers was printed on the signs — and bet on horses and dogs, amongst other things. He managed to persuade me to lend him two hundred pounds after some dogs ran away with the last of his money. Two days later he asked me for four hundred pounds, on top of the four hundred that I had given him to ensure that he would disappear.

But money matters weren’t the reason for my asking him — or rather ordering him — to get out. Money is something that one can always obtain again, even if it has disappeared once.

6

He doesn’t seem to have the patience to listen to a short song like “Hound Dog” right to the end. He switches off the stereo just as the guitar solo begins and it sounds like he is going into the kitchen to fetch more whisky. Then he takes several minutes choosing something new to play. He whistles something out of tune and I — who have really nothing better to do — try to find out from his whistling what his musical preferences are at the moment. I cross my fingers in the hope that he will leave the turntable alone; I still haven’t forgotten the terrible sound I heard when he scratched the needle across the shiny, immaculate vinyl recording of Bizet’s “Pearl Divers” that belonged to Orn’s daughter, Osk, on Brooke Road.

After several bars of “Computer World” by Kraftwerk, the phone rings and Havard turns down the sound of the mysterious Germans before answering.

“Emil’s place,” he says, as if he is acting as my secretary. “Emil? No, he isn’t. . Armann? Armann Valur? Glasses? Did he call you? Just now? Yes, he had to go out for a minute, I’m expecting him in a short while. Yes, yes, we will be here. Just knock. What are you saying? Yes, that’s it. It stands back from the street, you’ll see a garden with a white fence, go into it and then you’re there. In half an hour? A quarter of an hour? The glasses? Wait a moment, I’ll have a look.”

I hear him move the CDs on the table and before I know it he is standing in the hall by the bedroom door, no doubt trying to get away from the music.

“Here, I’ve found some glasses, they have. . yes, that’s right. Quite thick, yes. OK, just come along.”

He hangs up, walks into the bathroom, and copies the sound of the drums — or rather the drum machine — that is coming from the music in the living room. I lift up the sheet a fraction. I can’t see a cigarette in his hand, but I detect the faint smell of tobacco smoke. He stands there for a little while, and seems to be stretching his face towards the mirror above the sink. For a few seconds he taps one of his feet on the floor, though not in time to the music.

Although he has already been here twenty minutes or half an hour, I still find it strange; I still can’t believe it. I tell myself that I may be having a nightmare. But just maybe. There is so little chance that it is impossible. In other words, it is reality. It is reality with a capital R; the most emphatic R I have ever experienced in reality.

What Havard does next makes the reality — at least the reality that I experience from two and a half meters away — even more meaningful, although I don’t know whether there is any meaning in reality. By lifting the sheet slightly higher, I see him take off his jacket, put down the lighted cigarette on the edge of the sink, and begin to undo his belt. Then he drops his pants to the floor, lifts his shirt and pulls down his white underwear. I can’t see his face — I would need to lift the sheet dangerously high — but I get a full view of his penis in profile (if one can talk about such things in profile); it’s thick, though not very big, and strangely dark, as if it had been sunbathing on its own. Havard lifts it with the palm of his hand, pulls it out, and moves it up and down until it begins to stiffen. My heart begins to beat faster. Now I feel like I am prying into Havard’s life, but I know that if I let the sheet fall he is likely to notice. So I am sort of forced to watch. When his penis has started to stretch upwards, Havard suddenly stops playing with it. He lets his shirt fall down, turns his back to the door, and opens the toilet. Before he sits down on the seat I notice how white his legs are, especially compared to his dark penis.

While he is sitting I let the sheet fall down carefully to the carpet. Though I have the opportunity to see his face while he is sitting on the toilet, there is more chance that he will look into the bedroom from that position; besides, I have had enough of prying into his life, at least for the time being.

I can’t help hearing the noises that accompany what he is doing. He takes his time, though he doesn’t seem to be having any difficulty, and when I hear him stand up and flush the toilet, we are halfway through another track. Then, suddenly, I become aware of the smell from the toilet, and when it gets stronger — I could say disgustingly strong — I think of a sentence from Herzog : “Do you think I could give myself to a man whose shit smells like that!”

While Havard is calmly doing up his pants, I suddenly feel a tickle in my nose and realize that I’ll have to sneeze sooner or later. I ask God to let Havard turn on the tap, or do something noisy, when I hear water start pouring forcefully into the sink; God seems to be listening to me. I bury my face in my hands and smother the sneeze as well as I possibly can. Then I wait in suspense for Havard to turn off the tap and search the bedroom, but nothing happens. The water keeps pouring into the sink and I begin to hear heavy sighs from Havard, sighs that soon change into rapid groans. I lift up the sheet one or two centimeters — enough to see up as far as Havard’s waist — and watch him press his thighs against the sink. His right hand goes up and down; he is masturbating. Not only is he about to soil my sink but he drags Vigdis’s name into it too; I think I can hear her name being called between groans. He wants her “to come here,” he wants to show her something, she will have to bend down, and then, all at once, as if he wasn’t quite expecting it, he comes; he lifts his body up and presses even harder against the sink. Compared to his previous groans, the sound he makes when he ejaculates is half choked, as if he is disappointed, as if Vigdis hasn’t done what he had told her to do.

I try not to imagine how he will clean up or if he will bother to at all. I lay my cheek down on the carpet and shut my eyes; I feel like I have been straining to do something difficult too. The water continues pouring into the sink, and when it finally stops Havard goes into the living room and plays the first track of the CD again. Soon he starts singing — or rather talking — along to the music from the loudspeakers:

Interpol and Deutsche Bank. FBI and Scotland Yard.

Then I hear him pouring something into a glass and lighting a match. He is still muttering the lyrics to himself:

Business. . numbers. . money. . people.

7

When I hear Havard giving a toast in Spanish — he is no doubt rewarding himself for his achievement in the bathroom — I recall our visit to a little Spanish bar in a narrow lane off Oxford Street. It was around the time when he bought his ukulele. I remember the visit particularly well because it was almost the only occasion on which Havard and I had a sensible talk. He told me about his mother and father, who didn’t consider themselves capable of looking after him when he was small because of their drinking problem, and how he grew up more or less with his grandmother who lived next door. When he told me about it I felt that I was listening to a sensitive, sincere individual, and I imagine now that he must have felt unusually well that day and was perhaps genuinely grateful to be there with me in another country. I don’t remember his exact words, but there in the bar he spoke about people at home not understanding him; sometimes he felt as if he lived in a different world from Icelanders in general, but in the same breath he mentioned how comfortable it was to be in England and speak a language which no one else could understand.