possible to have it hot, it was so bloody cold outside. The young man smiled and said he could make him a child-size ice cream, he would be quicker with it. Maybe that was the thing, he answered; he’d have a child’s size one. Children knew what they wanted; if anyone could make a right decision it was a child. When he took the chocolate-covered cornet (and looked goggle-eyed at it, amazed at how small it was) he asked the youth if he knew of any good bars in the vicinity, if there were any in Austurstraeti for instance. Yes, there were two or three in Austurstraeti, but there were more and rather better ones in the neighboring streets—the ones on Austurstraeti were pretty weird. There was one that was some kind of health bar and another very strange one on the right—he gave more accurate details on how to find it—but wasn’t quite sure whether he should recommend going there. He liked the sound of it and would take a look at the strange place. The young man asked him if he had come from the country and he replied that he had been in Breidholt. Then he smiled, pierced the crisp chocolate with his teeth, and took a large bite. With his mouth full, he told the young man he had been living abroad, hadn’t been in Reykjavik for several years. He swallowed the ice cream and gave a shudder, it was so cold, then added that he was just visiting an old friend before going abroad again. He paid for the ice cream, said he was going to take a look at this strange bar, and got a peculiar smile from the young man behind the counter.
He walked straight over to the bar, as if he knew exactly where it was. He peered through the window before going in and dropped the half-eaten cornet on to the pavement. He stood on it and squashed it like he was putting out a cigarette.
Inside the bar, three men were sitting at a table beside the counter and a man and a woman were at another table near the window. The smell in there was the smell of yesterday, or all the yesterdays that had been since it opened—stale cigarette smoke that seemed somehow to choke any possibility of good memories. The interior was clearly not designed to distract attention from the customers, who all looked as if they had been there a long time. But, despite the fact that he had just come in, they took no special interest in him. He walked up to the bar and asked for a double vodka and coffee, if there was any coffee to be had. The bartender was a man of about fifty, with bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. There was no coffee ready but he could make some; he, the bartender—who seemed to be the owner of the place—had coffee, that was no problem, he’d see to it straight away.
The three men who sat beside the bar had clearly become interested in his conversation with the bartender; they turned round to face the bar and one of them, who seemed to be the oldest, or at least had sat there longer than the others, said the word coffee, as if it hadn’t been heard in there before. Then they carried on talking and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, they were quarreling noisily, so loudly that the bartender ordered them to shut up or they would have to leave. They calmed down quickly, almost as though someone had blinked again.
He took the vodka glass and sat down at a table in the middle of the place but he stood up again straight away and asked the bartender, who was busy making coffee, if he could make a phone call. The men at the table looked at him again in wonder. He was shown into a room behind the bar that seemed to serve both as a wine cellar and the kitchen. There were several framed prints on one of the walls—they reminded him of the inside of a retired sailors’ home—as well as two pin-up pictures from porn magazines. One showed a pale woman of about fifty, who had remarkably firm breasts for her age. He gazed at the picture while he called information and asked for the number of Emil Halldorsson, Emil S. Halldorsson. While he held the receiver in his left hand and waited for the number, he grabbed hold of his crotch with his right hand, rubbing and pressing the denim with his thumb. He let go of himself when he got the number, transferred the receiver to his right hand, and called again. Like when he called from Sudurholar, no one answered.
When he came back out into the smoke-filled air in the bar he smelled the aroma of brewing coffee and stopped to breathe it in. Havard sat down again beside the vodka glass and had a swig. He was just about to light a cigarette when one of the three men by the bar spoke to him: Hey, you there, you got a special contract already? Laughter rose up around the table and was followed by a bad fit of coughing from one of them, who had a particularly pale face. Another, the only one who sat facing him, told him not to take any notice of his friend, he hadn’t woken up yet; he had no idea what he was saying. But he wanted to know what the man had meant when he asked if he had a special contract. The one who had spoken didn’t seem to be in any state to explain, he was too busy coughing, but his friend told him not to worry, it was nothing. Then he slapped the weakling on the back and stuck a cigarette in his mouth, as if to glue his lips together. The latter dragged out the cigarette, laughed wheezily while he got over his coughing fit, put the cigarette back between his lips, and lit it. Then he took out a leather wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out several kronur bills. He counted the money, returned it to his wallet, and put the wallet back into his pocket. The way he behaved suggested that he was in the habit of counting his money quite regularly. The newcomer stood up from his table, picked up his empty vodka glass, and walked up to the bar. The owner of the place, who had just poured steaming coffee into a cup for him, automatically brought out the vodka bottle, poured some into the empty glass, and asked if he needed milk or sugar in his coffee. He said no, turned around, and went up the table where the three men sat. He stood still for a little while, staring directly at the one who had just finished counting the money in his wallet. All three of the men stared back at him. Their expressions suggested that they had seen something unexpected; something was about to happen, and they would have to react.
11
After the meal, which turned out to be some kind of Cordon Bleu and not chicken as I had guessed, Armann fell asleep with his empty food tray in front of him. He had declined the flight attendant’s offer of coffee, finished off his red wine and one of the Cointreau bottles, and nodded off almost before he had swallowed it. The flight attendant suggested that I tip his seat back, so that he would be more comfortable. While I was adjusting Armann’s seat, the woman by the window asked me, with a slightly mocking expression on her face, if I was going to cover him up with a rug too. I smiled back and said I thought he was wrapped up well enough already. She looked as though she was going to try to fall asleep too, and when she had shut her eyes, with her head resting against the window of the plane, I imagined that she was tired after spending last night with her lover and was floating into sleep on those memories. Now, when it was nearly three o’clock and one hour into this three hour flight.
On the other hand, it was impossible to say what was going on in Armann’s mind. At first I thought of him having fallen asleep like a little child, but after further reflection I decided it was inappropriate; one would never see this kind of expression on a child’s face, even if its parents had poked it for fun or pulled its skin this way and that. Sleep would never disfigure a face so badly, except perhaps on a person who always slept alone and didn’t have to think day and night of looking good for a wife or lover. I smiled at this poor theory of mine—I began to wonder if I had been infected by my fellow passenger’s lively imagination—but I only needed to look over to the other side of the aisle to realize that there might be some truth in it. A middle-aged couple, who had asked me earlier to help them get their luggage down from the overhead bin, were asleep, and there was such a childlike, peaceful expression on the man’s face that it was impossible to imagine he had ever frowned, or looked depraved or lustful, even when he was enjoying intercourse with his wife.
“May I take the tray?” the flight attendant asked.
I was going to pass her the woman’s tray first. She seemed to be asleep, but then I saw she hadn’t touched the dessert, so I offered to lift Armann’s tray instead—he had clearly enjoyed all the food. But in order to get the tray off the table I had to be rather organized; he had put his glasses down in his unused coffee cup and his right hand—with three fingers gripping the tray, as if to prevent it from being thrown away—lay in his lap, heavy with sleep. I managed to loosen his fingers and move his hand without waking him. I couldn’t think where to put his glasses while I helped the flight attendant, so I pushed them into the pocket of my shirt and got rid of our used food trays.
Once the food trays have been removed, one feels that a very important stage has been reached. Besides having been fed and feeling comfortably full, the second stage of the journey