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Praise for THE PETS
BY Bragi Ólafsson
“Dark, strange, elusive, compelling, and oddly charming. . . . Ólafsson’s English-language debut is part Beckettian or even Kafkaesque black comedy, part existentialist novel in the Paul Auster mode, and part locked-room mystery.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The best short novel I’ve read this year. . . . Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces—a distinguished genre that includes ‘The Metamorphosis,’ No Exit, and a fair amount of Beckett.”
—Paul LaFarge
“Dark, scary, and unbelievably funny. . . . How long do we have to wait for English versions of Ólafsson’s other books?”
—Los Angeles Times
“Delightfully funny and unexpectedly complex, The Pets introduces American readers to a fresh voice and perspective.”
—L Magazine
“An artful mystery about dead animals, mundane objects, and disobedient people.”
—Believer
Other Books
by Bragi Ólafsson
in English Translation
The Pets
Copyright
Copyright © Bragi Ólafsson, 2006
Translation copyright © Lytton Smith, 2010
Originally published in Icelandic as Sendiherrann
Published by agreement with Forlagið, www.forlagid.is
First ebook edition, 2010
All rights reserved
ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-46-7
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:
Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627
www.openletterbooks.org
This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Ólafur Stefánsson.
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og við leitum uppi tungu-
mál hvort annars
til að týnast í orðunum
til að þýða hvort annað.
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. . .
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Á leið sinni af trjánum
niður á kalt yfirborð haustsins
eru laufin jafn lengi og það tekur okkur fólkið
að taka hina stóru ákvörðun.
Þegar við svo setjumst hvort við annars hlið
og speglumst í djúpi dimmunnar á barnum
munum við hvorugt hvaða orð við völdum
—hvað þau þýddu á tungumáli hins.
(From a poem by Liliya Boguinskaia, “Pilies-stræti” (Pilies Gatvé), in an Icelandic translation by Sturla Jón Jónsson, after an English translation by Dora Mistral.)
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and we search for the tongue
of each other’s people
to get lost in the words
to translate one another.
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On their way from the trees
down to the cold autumn ground
the leaves take as long as we people
take to reach the big decision.
When we sit down next to each other
and reflect in the deep darkness at the bar
neither remembers the words we chose
—what they meant in each other’s tongues.
(From a poem by Liliya Boguinskaia, “Pilies-stræti” (Pilies Gatvé), in an English translation by Lytton Smith, after an Icelandic translation by Sturla Jón Jónsson following an English translation by Dora Mistral.)
Part
One
Reykjavík
Bankastræti
It is made from particularly durable material, 100% cotton yet feels waxy to the touch. And the seams will last a lifetime. The exterior is like a laminated dust jacket—“something you’ll appreciate, being a poet”—which makes the item totally waterproof, the perfect design for the weather in this country, or, to put it more accurately, any country where you can’t take the weather for granted. Even when a day begins without a cloud in the sky, you can’t guarantee that dust and dirt are the only things that’ll have fallen on you by the time night comes. The color, too, is a key attraction: it doesn’t garishly call attention to itself yet is likely to invite quiet admiration, even perhaps—“though of course one shouldn’t think such thoughts”—envy. The fact that it was made in Italy is insurance against the price one would have to pay for it, a price that’d clean out your pockets, as the saying goes.
And, on the subject of pockets, one of the nifty little inside pockets is made-to-measure for a cell phone. Or for a cigarette packet, if perhaps the owner doesn’t use a cell phone and is instead one of those few stubborn people out of every hundred who smokes, who don’t care about smoking’s effect on their health. The other inside pocket is also worth mentioning: small, designed perhaps for a wallet, it contains a small, dark blue, velvet bag (that’s one of the things that makes this item unique, a bag made from velvet) and in this charming little bag, which you draw closed with a yellow silk cord, are two spare buttons, for the unlikely event that the owner managed to lose the originals and had to replace them. But there’s little danger of that happening, since the stitching is, as was mentioned earlier, guaranteed to last a lifetime.
With these words—or something along these lines—the salesperson in the coat department of the men’s clothing store on Bankastræti describes the English-style Aquascutum overcoat to Sturla Jón. Sturla had decided to buy this coat a long time ago; he’d even re-ordered it after it sold out. The sales attendant has no idea Sturla Jón had made the order—Sturla hadn’t spoken to this employee, who seems to be new, before. So it takes Sturla pleasantly by surprise that the sales attendant recognizes him, though perhaps Sturla should have expected that a person whose job involves paying close attention to clothes might also pay close attention to the people wearing those clothes. On the other hand, it’s possible another employee had pointed out, when Sturla entered the store, that this was Sturla Jón the poet, maybe adding: you know, the one who published that book, free from freedom.
Sturla had first set eyes