Bragi Ólafsson: Pets

It wasn’t until I got home, at around nine o’clock in the evening, that Havard woke up. He jumped up like a dog when he heard the door slam, met me in the kitchen where he fetched a can of beer from the fridge, went back to the sofa, lay down, and put Elvis on again.

However, here on Grettisgata at the moment, there is gentle piano music playing in the living room. I don’t recognize it right away; I imagine it is something that Greta brought with her, but then I hear it is Alicia de Larrocha playing music by Enrique Granados. Greta pours red wine into the glasses and mutters something quietly to herself, which probably means she has spilled some wine. Havard begins to whistle “Habanera” and stops suddenly when Greta comes back into the room.

She is barefoot. I had tried to pull the sheet very gently, hoping to hide myself better, but considering how much I see of Greta as she tiptoes carefully towards the stool by the desk — she is no doubt trying not to spill anything from the glasses — the sheet seems to be just as high above the floor as before. When she has only one or two steps left to reach the chair, she accidentally puts her right foot in Havard’s underwear. She stops and gives a little kick to try and shake them off her toes, but they seem to be glued to her. She bends down and places the glasses on the table, probably beside the keyboard.

“What?” Havard asks with a laugh.

“Nothing,” Greta answers and uses her left foot to loosen the underwear from the right one.

Bragi Ólafsson is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Time Off , which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1999 (as was The Pets ), and Party Games , for which Bragi received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. His most recent novel— The Ambassador —was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller’s Award as best novel of the year. Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster’s The Glass City into Icelandic. He is also a former bass player with The Sugarcubes, the internationally successful pop group that featured Björk as the lead vocalist.

Janice Balfour was born in Scotland and relocated to Iceland in 1972, where she studied literature and Italian at the University of Iceland. She began translating articles and texts for museums shortly thereafter. In addition to Bragi Olafsson, she has translated two collections of short stories by Gyrðir Elíasson (currently unpublished in English).