replies Sturla, and he asks himself whether the residents of the building think it is perfectly normal to ask their super what he is up to. Wasn’t it a little bold of the man, who doesn’t know him at all, other than in passing, to inquire about the contents of the bag he is carrying into his house? Does the man know, for example, that Sturla is a poet? Had it come up at one of the tenants’ meetings Sturla is required to attend? No. He is not listed that way either in the phone book or on his mailbox. Even though the attendant in the clothing store the day before—the man on the street—had known his line of work (that is, his other job, not as a super) Sturla reckons it unlikely that many of his neighbors know he is involved in writing poetry. He likes that idea: living alone in a huge apartment block in Reykjavík and sending out a body of literary work which, perhaps, none of the people from the building had any idea could be bought in the bookstores.
What’s more, he isn’t just a poet who has published some books: he has been selected on the merit of those books—and probably because of his character, too—to be sent to another country as the appointed representative of the people. This fact is foremost in Sturla’s mind when his neighbor asks:
“A cell phone, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Sturla answers.
“I don’t know where we’d be without those phones,” the man continues, asking Sturla with his eyes whether or not he pressed the right button.
Probably in the same place, Sturla thinks to himself: here in a lift on the first floor, about to ascend to the upper floors. But instead he says, without pause: “I only got this phone just now, because I’m going overseas.”
“And where are you traveling to?” his neighbor asks.
“To Lithuania.”
“Lithuania?”
“It’ll be cheaper to use a cell phone abroad than to use the phone in the hotel room,” Sturla adds. He realizes immediately that he’s just given his neighbor, who’s practically a stranger, the mental image of him lying in a hotel room, far away from home.
“A hotel in Lithuania?”
But before Sturla can decide whether he ought to confirm the picture which has clearly popped up in the man’s head, there is a new question:
“Isn’t Lithuania some place near Russia?”
“It’s by the Baltic Sea.”
“Yes, it’s by the Baltic Sea,” says the man.
“It’s between Poland and Belarus.”
“Belarus?”
“It’s like a part of Russia,” Sturla hears himself explain. “Or of the Soviet Union, to be precise. It was part of the Soviet Union.”
“Lithuania? Didn’t the Icelandic people sign a petition on behalf of Lithuania not that long ago?”
“I couldn’t say,” answers Sturla.
“Three hundred thousand signatures. I think that our Foreign Minister went over there and delivered it to the president of Lithuania. Or the prime minister.”
“What was the reason for the signatures?” asks Sturla. “Did you sign?”
“No, not me.”
“I didn’t know anything about it,” says Sturla. “It’s rather unlikely that there were enough Icelanders for three hundred thousand signatures, if both ours were missing, right?”
“That’s true. Unless I’ve got it backwards, and Lithuania signed something for Iceland.”
Although Sturla is quite content to keep talking about topics on which he, Sturla, is clearly better informed, he decides to steer the conversation away from geography and the collecting of signatures for petitions and towards something his interlocutor will surely know more about: “You could say I’m going on a business trip of sorts,” he says, looking around nonchalantly, as if the business he is going to conduct isn’t at all remarkable.
At that moment the elevator door opens, but the information Sturla has just announced makes his neighbor press the button that holds the door open and turn to Sturla; he looks like someone who has just been told something he long suspected.
“You’re going on a business trip to Lithuania, you say?”
“Yes, kind of,” replies Sturla Jón, realizing that the explanation “business trip to Lithuania” suggests he is involved in a drug deal or prostitution, or maybe both. He feels he’d better correct the misunderstanding, but he doesn’t want to directly state that misunderstanding—in case there isn’t one. But his neighbor jumps in first, accompanying his words with a smile that is clearly meant to be ambiguous:
“Then it’s what’s called in English ‘business and pleasure?’” And with that he releases the button and waves his open hand as he leaves.
Sturla doesn’t feel that this is the way he wants to end the conversation, but when he hurriedly adds that the business in Lithuania concerns his job, his everyday affairs, his comment is cut off by his neighbor bidding him goodbye with the words: “Well, enjoy the trip.” And it immediately strikes Sturla that Þorlákur (if that is his name) has the impression that he is headed to a conference of supers, or something of that nature. He decides to make it quite clear, before he leaves the man on this floor, that he, a poet, is not going to be part of a congregation of supers, whatever that peculiar assembly is like.
“I am going to a book festival,” he blurts out, and he imagines that he looks like a dog who has heard his owner calling.
Sturla’s words have a magnetic effect on the man: his free hand, the hand which isn’t holding the broom, thrusts out to block the open elevator door from closing, and he asks, surprised:
“What did you say? A book festival?”
“A poetry festival, to be precise. An international poetry festival.”
“Listen, don’t go anywhere,” says the man; he stays in the elevator and once again presses the door hold button so the elevator won’t move. “I just remembered I’m supposed to get the laundry from the dryer for my wife. Is it okay if we head back down?”
Sturla has no idea where he stands anymore, and because he doesn’t know how he ought to reply he simply says, “Yes, okay,” and so the elevator goes back down, when it ought to instead be going two floors up, to Sturla’s floor.
“So you write poetry,” his neighbor wants to know.
“That’s what I’ve been up to, yes.”
“And have you published anything?”
“My new book was published a few days ago.”
“Your first book?”
“I’ve published a few books,” Sturla answers, looking searchingly at the man.
“I clearly don’t keep up very well,” he says, apologetically, and asks Sturla what the book is called, saying that it
