Now I see him properly for the first time; he has pushed down his hood and poked his head in through the open window. I notice that his hair is longer than when I saw him last, five years ago. He has a grip on the shelf above the sink and it is quite clear that he is going to heave his body through the open window. I don’t dare to look any longer; any second now he could lift up his head and I probably wouldn’t have time to draw back. Besides, it’s not safe to stand in the doorway any longer. I try to avoid being in view from the kitchen window — except perhaps for one or two seconds — as I slide cautiously into the bedroom, stand for a few seconds in the middle of the room, and try to hear what he is doing out there. He groans as he struggles, and I imagine that he has gotten stuck on the window latch or torn a hole in his anorak or pants, when he suddenly says “damn it” and some other words that are drowned by the music in the living room.
I get down on my knees without even thinking, poke my head under the bed, and pull out a box of toys that belong to my son Halldor. I then lie down on the soft carpet, squeeze my body in under the bed, and pull the sheet down to the floor — to hide myself from the doorless entrance to the bedroom and from the window that faces the dim back garden.
I still find it difficult to believe that it is actually Havard in the kitchen, that the man would even dare to visit me at all. And why on earth does he have to choose today? I thought I had seen the last of Havard Knutsson; once again I have found out how ridiculous it is to believe something in this life.
I hear a noise through Big Fun’s loud guitar playing, like something heavy falling on to the floor. There seem to be two thumps, then the window bangs shut; I think it is bound to break, but I don’t hear the sound of broken glass.
There is no doubt about it, Havard is inside. He pants, and something that he notices — I can’t imagine what — makes him exclaim with disapprovaclass="underline"
“What on earth is this?”
It sounds as though he is walking into the living room. I didn’t see what kind of shoes he was wearing when I looked at him from the window, but they tap on the floorboards as he walks. If I know him at all, they are patent leather shoes with pointed toes; I can’t imagine that the Icelandic winter would have any influence on the type of shoes that Havard Knutsson wears.
“What cement!” he says indignantly, and the next moment the music has been turned off. “No wonder my pal Emil can’t bear to stay at home!”
I repeat his words to myself: What cement. No wonder I can’t bear to stay at home.
Cement is, of course, one of the first words that come to mind in connection with Havard: cement in its literal meaning. I don’t know what to think about this unexpected visit. And I don’t know quite what to expect. I haven’t heard from Havard for about five years, since we sat in the kitchen on Brooke Road in Stoke Newington and I gave him four hundred pounds to go away. Go away as far as possible, much further than just out of London, preferably to another country. And he said — with a grin fueled by the two or three pints of Special Brew he had drunk before lunch — that if I could give him four hundred more then he would never show his face again.
I should have given it to him. Though there isn’t much one can be confident that Havard will do right, I believe that he would have kept that four hundred pound promise. At least he has kept his word about what would happen otherwise.
He goes back into the kitchen. I hear the sound of bubbling water die down; he must have taken the boiling water off the stove, and I presume that he has turned the gas off, though it’s not quite certain. More likely, he has just taken the pot off the heat.
2
“Hello!” Havard shouts. “Hello, Emil?” He is in the living room. I hear him move the bottles on the table, then open one of them, probably the whisky. “Is anyone at home?” he calls out. I hear the seal tear and the metallic sound when the cap is screwed off; I can hear it clearly because there is no real wall between the bedroom and the living room, just a partition through which one can hear almost everything.
“Not bad,” he says.
Now he is sniffing it. I wait for him to take a swig, to hear the splash from the fifteen-year-old whisky when the bottle is tipped up, but I don’t hear anything like it; instead he slams the bottle down on the table and the next moment his shoes echo on the hall floor.
“Are you there, Emil?” he says, as if he knows quite well that I am hiding in here and am only waiting for the right moment to come out and surprise him.
I lift the dark blue sheet up one or two centimeters, and my heart nearly stops when I see Havard pause in the space between the bathroom and the bedroom. I can’t see if he is looking in here, but I hear him whistle something and imagine that he is trying to decide in which direction he should go. Then he grows silent, goes into the toilet, and stops in front of the sink, no doubt to look at himself in the mirror.
“He can’t have gone far,” Havard says to his reflection. “The millionaire Emil S. Halldorsson.”
How on earth does he know about the lottery prize? Who has he been talking to? Who told him about it? It has to be the reason for this visit. Unless it is entirely a coincidence that he calls me a millionaire, which is most unlikely.
“What’s that?” he says, surprised, and the next moment I hear him screwing the lid off something, probably my aftershave, and slap his hand on his cheeks or neck. “Après-rasage,” he says with a hard French accent, and then in English, before he bangs the bottle down on the table beside the sink.
I was right about his shoes. He is wearing the same kind of shoes he wore five years ago: black patent leather shoes with pointed toes that have clearly covered a lot of ground; perhaps these are the shoes he bought in London just after we arrived there together. On the other hand, his pants — dark grey Terylene pants that droop down a little over his shoes when he opens his fly in front of the toilet bowl — seem to be comparatively new. I haven’t seen him in this kind of pant before.
He starts whistling again as he urinates. I turn my head and push it down into the carpet with as much strength as I can muster.
The air under the bed is terrible. When I bought the flat I got someone to rub down the rough surface on the walls, and the resulting dust collected in the carpet, where I suspect most of it still is. It feels as if my head is getting stuffed full with dust, which isn’t exactly what I need in these circumstances.
By lifting the sheet slightly higher I see that Havard is still wearing his anorak. It seems to be torn above the lower right-hand pocket, which might have happened when he climbed in through the kitchen window. When he pulls the anorak back — probably to prevent it from getting in the way of the stream of urine — I can see he is wearing a suit and a light grey shirt, which I must admit goes very well with the suit. My first thought is that he has been shopping in Reykjavik on credit and expects me — who, in his mind, is quite well off at the moment — to help him pay the bills. He stops whistling for a moment, farts, and sighs happily, and when he starts whistling again I think I recognize “Habanera” from Carmen.
It is obvious that he has consumed quite a lot of liquid. He zips up his fly and, without washing his hands, rushes out of the door by grabbing on to the lintel and pulling himself out into the hall. I don’t remember these abrupt movements of his. He seems to be in a hurry and I begin to hope, feebly, that he will leave soon, perhaps snatch something to take with him and then disappear before I return from the shop or from wherever he has imagined that I have gone. But these hopes are short-lived; he stops suddenly in the hall and comes back into the bedroom — my guess is that something caught his eye as he was coming out of the bathroom. He walks straight up to the computer, which is in the corner by the headboard of the bed, just beside my legs.