Bragi Ólafsson - Pets

Without having formed an exact plan, I begin to imagine that Greta could help me, that I could possibly let her know that I’m here without giving her too much of a fright, and she could find a feasible way to get rid of Havard and Armann. If she went to the toilet, I could perhaps get her attention by whistling quietly. I know it is risky — she might get frightened and scream — but if it worked I could ask her to find me a piece of paper and a pen, and then I would pass her a message when she re-emerged from the toilet. It’s also possible that I could slide out from under the bed for a second and fetch pen and paper, somehow catch Greta’s attention when, sooner or later, she goes to the toilet, and give her instructions on how best to get rid of our inopportune guests.

2

Now, when I think back to the party in Hjalmholt fifteen years ago, where Greta disappeared into the children’s bedroom, I put myself in the shoes of that boy my age whom I have always envied for his experience that evening, even though I suspect that he was too drunk to remember it properly. But there is always the possibility that nothing happened; that the boy was too drunk to rise up to the expectations of the blonde super girl (as I imagined her) and that she had mussed up her hair and reddened her cheeks herself, to give the impression that something remarkable had taken place under, or on top of, the child’s soft duvet. I have sometimes asked myself why I wasn’t the one to spend that half hour with her in the children’s bedroom, but today, as I finally get to know Greta, I am really glad that we haven’t met before. If that had happened, she wouldn’t be standing in my flat now; we would probably have said hello on the plane, maybe chatted a little (not mentioning the previous meeting), and then said goodbye without arranging to meet again in the evening. That’s how I imagine it anyway.

But then it’s a question of whether it would have been more fun to have the memory of a wonderful half hour in bed with this girl, or to have her come to meet me at my flat, while I’m hiding under a bed in a room that a child uses several weeks a year.

“Didn’t Emil say when he was going to come back?” Greta asks when Armann mentions that he is hungry and that they should find something to eat.

“I haven’t heard from him at all,” Havard answers and adds that something must have happened, it looks as if I had rushed out in a hurry.

“But you said you were expecting him any minute, didn’t you?”

“I thought so, yes.”

“But it must be quite a while since he came home. He did mention that he had to stop somewhere in the taxi on the way home, but he said he was just going to relax at home after the flight.”

“Well, he called me at least,” Armann comments, and I seem to hear him stand up; he groans with the exertion. “He left a message on my answering machine and told me about my glasses.”

I am in the process of turning over on my side — I am extremely tired of lying on my stomach — when Armann comes into the hall, puffing and panting like he has just come in from a long walk. I roll back on to my stomach, lift the sheet slightly up from the floor, and see him go into the bathroom. He has taken his cigar with him (which is no doubt the reason for his heavy breathing) and puts it down, still smoking, on the edge of the sink while he gets ready to urinate. I can hear that Greta and Havard are still wondering where I have gone. She suggests that I have gone to visit my parents, but Havard rules that out because of the telephone call from my mother.

“Something must have happened,” Greta says. “I think it’s rather strange that he hasn’t let me know, we had agreed that I should come here to meet him.”

“Yes, I think so too,” Havard says. “I expected him to be at home, it’s not every day that I am in Iceland.”

“He must turn up,” Greta says, trying to make it sound as though there is no reason to despair. “He can’t have gone far, at least.”

I am here, Greta, I whisper under my breath, though there is no reason to whisper as Armann is making so much noise as he urinates that it probably drowns out all talking. I resist the temptation to watch him, let the sheet fall carefully to the floor, and decide to change my position until Armann comes out. But he suddenly shouts “Damn it!” and I lift the sheet a little to see what is going on. The first thought that comes to mind is that he has bumped into the burning cigar, but when I look at him there is no mistaking the fact that he has pissed over the edge of the toilet; he is holding his penis with one hand and looking down at his pants and wiping them with his other hand. I lift the sheet up slightly higher and can see his face; he is frowning and muttering something in a huff.

“What’s going on?” Havard calls from the living room.

“There is some damn puddle here on the floor,” Armann answers, as if the bathroom doesn’t quite meet his hygiene requirements.

“You should take more care not to pee on the floor,” Havard shouts, and I’m glad that Greta doesn’t laugh at his pathetic joke. “You will flush the toilet, won’t you?” he carries on, as if he is doing his best to make Greta laugh, but she isn’t amused, or — as is likely — she doesn’t think Havard’s comments are funny in the least.

Either Armann shuts out Havard’s comments or he is too busy wiping his pants and shoes with my towel. In any case, he doesn’t reply. When he has flushed the toilet and put down the towel beside the sink, he calls out to the others in the living room that it might be time for them to eat something. I get the feeling that they — Armann, Havard and Greta — are the ones who live here and that I am at the most some sort of insect, some dust mite that has fallen onto the floor from the sheet and will be sucked up in a few days when Greta orders Havard to get out the hoover. I really want to slide out from under the bed and grab hold of Armann’s leg when he comes out of the bathroom — this impossible situation is getting on my nerves again — but he still has something left to do. Instead of washing his hands, he begins to examine his face in the mirror, and I can see him begin to squeeze a spot or a wart on one of his nostrils.

Armann’s suggestion seems to go unnoticed. I hear Havard say something about music. Since Armann is in the bathroom, I imagine that he will play something that he has chosen himself, no doubt to please the lady.

“I don’t mind,” Greta says, and it becomes obvious — contrary to what I expected — that Havard suggested they play some Viennese waltzes, probably my Janos Ferencsik edition. I imagined that he would carry on with Elvis Presley, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Greta’s presence had influenced his choice.

“Maybe it’s too loud,” he says, and though I don’t hear Greta agree, the volume is lowered, almost down to nothing.

I don’t see if Armann succeeds in squeezing the spot on his face, but suddenly, as he starts whistling along to “The Blue Danube,” he has a comb in his hand — which probably came out of his pocket; I don’t own a comb myself — and he runs it through his tobacco-colored hair, from his forehead down to the nape of his neck. He seems to be having trouble getting his hair to stay in place, so he wets it with water from the tap, tries again, and seems to have more success this time. Then he puts the comb in the side pocket of his jacket, bares his teeth at the mirror, and walks out of the bathroom.

“Now I wouldn’t mind getting one of those food trays that we had on the plane,” he says on the way into the living room. “Wouldn’t that be good, Greta dear?” he adds, like he’s addressing his wife.

Greta says that she isn’t hungry enough to want airplane food and she thinks that they should wait for me, if they are thinking of eating at all. She then gets the idea that I probably have a cell phone and suggests that we try to find out, I must have one on me. While she phones information and asks for the cell phone number of Emil S. Halldorsson, I try to remember where I left my phone. I took it out of my jacket pocket when I came in, but I can’t for the life of me remember where I put it. I expect it is in the kitchen or the living room, but then it starts ringing here in the bedroom. I remember now: I put it down beside the computer when I was looking at my email.