Bragi Ólafsson - Pets

If time has some special role then I think it is two-fold: to take things away from one (if one can speak about Anna and Halldor having been taken away from me) and to give one something else instead (for instance the lottery prize I won) — something that doesn’t replace the loss, but helps one to forget now and again what one has lost. Perhaps one can rely on time in these functions, but in all other aspects it is not possible. Suddenly a new age has dawned, the age in which one will disappear into one’s grave. I’ve passed thirty, and as midnight is approaching on this day of my homecoming from abroad, I am lying under my bed and there are people in the living room biding their time until I appear. It seems as though time is going to disappoint them.

When I look out of the rather narrow bedroom window and see the lampposts that shine between the houses on Laugavegur, I remember a story that I read once about the first street lights in the city. Towards the end of the nineteenth century several lights were purchased — no doubt they were some sort of oil lamps — and the first one was set up on the lower slopes of Bankastraeti. I think it was in autumn or the beginning of winter, at least it had started to get dark in the evenings, and on the very day that the first street light was set up it was broken by someone who threw a stone at it. I can just imagine some Havard, some dirty lout in homespun pants, tramping down Laugavegur in the dark and not realizing what kind of light is down the hill on Bankastraeti. He walks faster towards it, and when he is standing in front of the lamppost, the first lamppost in the town of Reykjavik, he wonders why on earth someone is trying to light up the town; it’s completely unnecessary to illuminate what goes on in the dark. He looks around, and in the dim light he sees a stone — just the right size to fit into his fist. He bends down, picks it up, gazes for a little while at the flame burning inside the lamp, and then steps back several paces, to avoid being under the broken glass when the stone shatters it.

The piano quartet has been removed and Elvis’s voice comes out of the loudspeakers. Someone goes into the toilet and this time the door is closed. It sounds as though all the men are in the living room; Havard is talking (something about stereo equipment) and I hear Armann offer Jaime and Saebjorn a cigar, so it must be Greta who has gone to the toilet. I let the sheet fall to the floor and shut my eyes. I imagine her pulling down her black skirt — I try not to see the wet patch left by Armann on the floor beside the toilet — and then her panties; they are black too. Will she check to see if the seat is clean before she sits down? I try to hear what she is doing in the bathroom, but the music is so loud at the moment that I can’t make out a thing. I suddenly feel as if these four men have become good friends, that they know each other well and have met to discuss something they have in common, something that only men talk about, something that Greta has inadvertently given them permission to talk about by disappearing into the toilet. After “Suspicious Minds” comes “Don’t Cry Daddy,” and that song adds to the relaxed atmosphere that seems to prevail in the living room. For a moment I long to take part, to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in , but the next moment I am really glad that I am alone, all by myself.

There is a knock on the front door. I hear Greta flush the toilet and then another knock. Then there is a more insistent banging, like some sort of drumming practice. Saebjorn says he’ll answer and I hear him walk towards the door. The drumming is still going on when he takes hold of the door knob.

7

“Does this place belong to Emil S. Halldorsson?” the person outside asks, and two or three men, whom I imagine are standing behind him, begin to laugh, like he said something really funny. It sounds like drunken laughter to me.

“Who are you?” Saebjorn asks, and I tell myself how ridiculous it is that I know who he is though I have never seen him.

“I’m looking for Vardi,” he answers and the laughter, which it would be more correct to call giggling, carries on.

“There is no one called Vardi here.”

“Are you sure?” the stranger says in disbelief. Then he shouts victoriously: “Who is this then!”

“Hi, Rikki,” Havard says. He has obviously come out into the hall, but he clearly doesn’t know quite how enthusiastically he should welcome his friend.

“If you didn’t know,” his friend says, “then you know now that he is Vardi. Havard Knutsson, criminal.” All emphasis is placed on the last syllable of the word criminal .

I picture this Hinrik as a rather dubious character, but I am probably drawing an unnecessarily black image of him in my mind. One isn’t necessarily bad just because one is an acquaintance of Havard; I was his acquaintance for a little while, and I imagine that some people have seen me in this light too. But I’m quite certain that it annoys Havard to be called a criminal in front of people who haven’t the slightest idea that he actually is one.

The bathroom door opens. I turn my head quickly and lift up the sheet — far too abruptly I realize — but I’m too late to catch sight of Greta, she has gone into the hall.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Hinrik asks, and one of his mates adds in a rather childish whine, “Yes, how about it. Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

“Who are they?” Saebjorn says and then Greta asks what is going on.

“It’s alright, he’s just a friend of mine.” Havard explains, and I can imagine he is silently cursing Hinrik for dragging the whole band along too.

“What’s up, Vardi?” Hinrik says, and I can just picture Saebjorn standing in the doorway blocking the entrance. “Aren’t you going to let us in?”

“No one else is going to come in here,” Saebjorn says decisively.

“They aren’t stopping, it’s alright,” Havard says. “Just let me talk to them.”

“What nonsense is this?” Hinrik says pitiably, and Havard asks him to be patient.

“If anyone has patience, I have, Vardi.” My impression of him doesn’t improve with hearing his voice.

Greta asks Havard to talk to her for a moment, and a few seconds later they appear in the bedroom. Hinrik asks Saebjorn if he is this fellow, Emil S. And while I listen to Havard and Greta, I can hear Hinrik explain to Saebjorn that Havard had called him earlier this evening and invited him to look in at the flat on Grettisgata.

“You’re not to invite anyone else in,” Greta says angrily to Havard, making sure that no one else can hear her. She tells him he has to understand that the flat is no dance hall, besides, I am not even at home and I’m the one who lives there, not them. Havard is quick to understand that she is right; he mumbles some kind of objection but then says he’ll talk to Hinrik. He is just like that, this fellow. She can calm down. The front door is obviously still wide open, even I am getting rather cold, and I hear Greta shiver when she goes back out into the hall.

“What’s going on?” Hinrik repeats. And Havard answers that there is nothing going on, he just can’t let them in, something has come up. This friend of his doesn’t seem quite ready to accept the fact that he can’t come in.

“We have come all the way from Breidholt, Vardi,” he says accusingly. “There are forty degrees of frost outside, and we are freezing to death here.”

I can imagine how they are dressed, and I’m not surprised that they want to come in.

“You are going to play somewhere, aren’t you?” Havard says. “I’ll look in afterwards.”

“I haven’t seen you for several years and I’m not even allowed in. What kind of pussy lives here anyway?”