linguist before the pilot had even gotten around to announcing take-off.
I introduced myself to the fellow but got the feeling that he didn’t take much notice of my name. I didn’t fasten my safety belt straight away, as I half expected him to stand up and take off his dark blue overcoat. He was wearing a suit and a jumper underneath. I took the flight magazine out of the seat pocket and found an article that I could pretend to be engrossed in for a while. It was about the world’s most northern golf course, at Akureyri, where Vigdis is staying at the moment. But, just as I feared, I got no peace; the man beside me pointed at the flight attendant who was approaching down the aisle and reminded me to fasten my seatbelt. The “dears” are coming to make sure everyone is strapped in. I expected him to carry on talking, but when he paused I used the opportunity to get my portable tape player out of my bag in the locker. I was back in my seat with my belt fastened before the flight attendant walked past with a smile and checked (in a rather unconvincing manner) that the belts were fastened. I was quite sure that she was laughing to herself about the overdressed fellow beside me.
From the corner of my eye I saw that the woman in the window seat was slyly watching him—a dark haired woman in her forties, clearly well-educated and likely, I thought, to see the comical elements in the linguist’s appearance. I, on the other hand, had put a tape into my portable player (remixes of several Miles Davis recordings) and was busy rewinding with my headphones already in place. I gazed along the aisle while I waited for the tape to rewind. All at once I noticed a young, fair-haired woman who was sitting several rows in front of me. I felt as if I recognized her, and when she turned her head towards the person on the other side of the aisle—she had obviously been asked a question—I remembered who she was. I didn’t know her name but I had first seen her fifteen years ago, at a high school party in Hjalmholt. Her unconventionally beautiful face had caught my eye, not to mention her almost perfect body, which seemed just the same today.
This memory from Hjalmholt is still very clear, although I was only sixteen or seventeen at the time. There I was sitting on the sofa between two classmates, probably drinking to pluck up enough courage to chat up some girls from my class, and gazing in adoration at this girl I had never seen before but who was, I think, a friend of the people who were throwing the party. It wasn’t just her appearance that made her seem exciting; she was even more memorable for having disappeared with a boy, whom I knew vaguely, into one of the children’s bedrooms slightly later in the evening. She reappeared half an hour later, red-cheeked and—making no attempt to cover up what she had been doing in the bedroom—with her fair hair tousled (and even prettier), clearly after some kind of “friendly combat,” as one of my classmates put it. But the boy, who had gone with her into the bedroom, didn’t come out again, and we found out shortly afterwards that he was fast asleep. My friends and I joked that she—the one who was now sitting just a few meters away from me on the plane, in jeans and a T-shirt—had completely done him in.
I never found out any more about this girl—she didn’t live in my district nor did she go to the same school as me—but each time I have caught sight of her since then, something begins to happen inside me, something disturbing; I somehow grow smaller and bigger at the same time. In other words: I have fancied her ever since she came out—tousled and flushed, much more mature and exciting than all the other girls—of the children’s bedroom. But it’s highly unlikely that she remembers me. She left the party soon after she had finished with the boy; she was too smart—too experienced and intelligent—to hang around with children, as I thought my classmates and I were at that time.
Without realizing it, I had begun to compare her beautiful profile (at least what I could see of it from my seat) with that of Vigdis, and, for a few seconds, I seemed to lose my senses; I couldn’t remember whether Vigdis had fair or dark hair.
4
The barmaid brought a glass of dark beer and put it on the table for him. She had large breasts, bigger than you would expect on a little body like hers. He gazed at them. He picked up his glass when she put it down on the table and moved it nearer, without taking his eyes off the girl, who turned around and walked back to the bar. Her behind was neat and small compared to her breasts. She took a magazine from the bar, walked behind the counter, and turned up the music. Then she sat down with it, crossed her legs, and began to turn the pages. He carried on looking at her. He lifted his beer glass, put it back down on the table, and dipped his finger in the thick froth. He licked the froth off his finger and groaned. It wasn’t easy to guess what emotions the groan was meant to express. The girl seemed to hear him despite the music; she looked at him casually and then turned back to her magazine. After a little while he lifted his glass again and took a long draught. Half the beer had disappeared when he put it down again, wiping the line of froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. When he had swallowed it, he let out a long, loud sounding “ah” and called out to the girl, asking if he could get something to eat here. She said he could; they had sandwiches and soup. He said he wasn’t going to have any soup but wouldn’t mind a sandwich; what choices did she have? She closed the magazine, stood up without saying a word and brought a menu which she put down on the table. He had finished his beer and passed her the glass in exchange for the menu. She asked if he wanted another one. He nodded and asked for a Jägermeister to go with it, and just some kind of toasted sandwich with ham and cheese. She could put other ingredients in it too, but not asparagus or whatever it was called.
When she had gone off with the glass and the menu, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped out one cigarette, and lit it. The girl brought him the beer and the Jägermeister and then disappeared into the kitchen. He had only had a sip of beer when she came out again with the sandwich, but his schnapps glass was empty. He had taken off his anorak and laid it on the next table. Underneath he was wearing a light yellow shirt and a dark, double-breasted jacket. The barmaid sat down again and carried on looking at her magazine. He gulped down the sandwich and finished off the beer. Just as he was asking the girl to bring him another one, the door opened and a young couple walked in. She was wearing a baggy parka and a dark brown furry hat, while he had on a long overcoat with a strange looking hood. He stood up and asked the girl for another Jägermeister to drink with the beer, then he disappeared into the men’s room.
The girl took the drinks to his table and met him as he came out of the toilet. He smiled at her but didn’t get a smile back. Then he put on his anorak, picked up the plastic bag, and peered into it to make sure that everything was still in place. He swallowed the schnapps, screwed up his face, as if he was in slight pain, and downed about half the beer in one gulp. He zipped up his anorak, took several steps in the direction of the outside door, looked back towards the kitchen, and then went out. An icy blast blew into the bar, and the door took a good thirty seconds to close again. An uncanny silence fell on the place; the couple at the table stared at the door in wonder, and when the girl came back in from the kitchen he had gone. The only signs of his presence were his half empty beer glass, cigarette stubs in the ashtray, bread crumbs on a plate, and a crumpled napkin.
He now stood with his plastic bag on Hverfisgata, just opposite the Danish Embassy, and looked around several times before he carried on down the street. He walked up Ingolfstraeti and turned down Bankastraeti. The sun began to shine when he got near Laekjargata but had disappeared again behind a cloud by the time he reached the taxi stop below the little old houses of Bernhoftstorfa. He pushed down his hood and squeezed into the first taxi. He didn’t answer when the taxi driver commented on how cold the weather had been that month but asked to be driven up to Breidholt, to Sudurholar; probably it was Sudurholar. He would recognize the place when they got there.
5
Armann Valur nudged me with his elbow and placed the open flight magazine on my table, beside the tape player. The German model Claudia Schiffer gazed up at me from the page. I removed one earphone so I could hear what Armann was trying to say. He kept his eyes fixed on the magazine as he tapped the picture of Claudia with his finger. Then, lowering his voice as if he didn’t want the woman by the window to hear, he said:
“She’s
