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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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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
