He sits down at the table; the old wooden chair creaks and his nylon anorak crinkles. I lie dead still and don’t dare to lift the sheet. Havard presses one key on the keyboard and then seems to stand up from the chair. He takes off his anorak, throws it on the bed, and sits down again.
“‘Dear Vigdis,’” he reads out loud, and continues in a lower voice: “‘Here I am back from London at last. How are you? Is the hotel busy? You told me the other day that you would be attending some meeting today so I shall just write to you. It was a good trip. I visited Jonas, though he was busy studying for his exams. Then I went to some concerts at Vortex and Pizza Express. .’ Concerts at Pizza Express! That’s the damn jazz place he was always trying to drag me along to! You are such a pussy, Emil!”
Of course, that’s not quite true; I remember once trying to get him to come with me to a jazz concert in London, but that was at Pizza on the Park, not Pizza Express. He carries on reading:
“‘As you can imagine I bought some music and a few books et cetera. .’” At this point Havard stops reading the unfinished letter and asks himself who this Vigdis can be. Then he carries on reading quietly, snorts at something I have written and stops reading when he gets to the words “to settle my accounts.” He repeats the words out loud with a question mark at the end. “What on earth does the man mean: ‘To settle my accounts?’” adding, in a husky voice as if it came from the throat of some grumpy old man: “Emil and Vigdis. Who are you fucking these days, Emil?” Next he pretends to be a small child trying to read from a primer: “Emil likes fucking Vigdis. Vigdis always says yes when Emil wants to go to bed. She wants Emil to be happy and Emil is always happy because Vigdis is so good to Emil. But now little Emil is sad because he went away and there was no Vigdis there. Emil misses Vigdis very much. He has written her a letter.”
How is it possible that I know this man? There is nothing in my life or character that leads to the conclusion that Havard and I should meet. My reaction to this soliloquy is to imagine that the directors of the institution in Sweden where he was kept saw no other solution than to get rid of him, even though he still had to serve two thirds of his confinement. I can quite understand their decision. However, it is unforgivable — if that is the case, which I don’t really believe it is — that the directors did not inform me and others who know Havard, in good time, so that we could take some precautions before he arrived in Iceland.
Now he has suddenly lost interest in the letter to Vigdis. He stands up and leaves the room. I don’t hear him take his anorak with him. And when I am sure that he has gone out, I stick my left hand out from under the bed and feel around until I touch the nylon. I let go of it straight away to avoid dragging it down on to the floor.
I hope that he will get going now, but then realize that he is obviously going to wait for me; he has come a long way, he clearly knows about the money I have won, and he is going to make me suffer for not taking him up on his offer in the kitchen at Brooke Road. He knew quite well at the time that I had those four hundred pounds — or rather eight hundred — and from his point of view I could have easily managed without them.
He has started on the whisky. I can hear him unscrew the lid and fetch a glass from the cupboard. He obviously takes his time choosing the right glass and starts whistling “Habanera” again. The glass rings. I guess that he selects one of my blue Iittala glasses. Then he pours so much into it that I have to accept the fact that he is not leaving any time soon. That uncomfortable fact is made more blatant when he opens a beer can — if it isn’t out of his plastic bag then it is the fourth from my pack — and walks into the living room.
I hear him going through the CDs on the table and after a few minutes the first tones of “Mysterious Traveller” by Weather Report can be heard. Though I am far from being in the mood for jokes, I find it really amusing that he should pick this track — it is so very appropriate.
“What is this!” he exclaims in pleasure, and it’s quite clear that on this occasion he is referring to the music. He gets a kick out of hearing something that is strange; he feels that he is more normal and has more freedom to follow his own whims.
He is obviously interested in the things that I brought home, I listen to him reading out the titles of the videos and piling up the CDs like a stock of cards. I shiver with anxiety at the thought of the scratches that this treatment will inflict.
“Where can this guy be?” he says. “One doesn’t start heating water and then run straight out to a bar! No, Emil, one doesn’t behave like that.”
I really wish that I could answer him but I’m not thinking of coming out. I didn’t come home to meet Havard Knutsson!
3
We had only known each other for about a month when we went off to London together. And it was by complete chance that Havard, whom I didn’t really know at all, accompanied me. I had just started working in a hardware store when a friend of my father, a former professional footballer and joint-owner of a soap factory in England, invited me to stay in the flat he owned in London for six weeks and take care of some animals that lived there: a cat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, and an ancient iguana that had been given to him by a Mexican colleague from the world of football. His daughter lived in the house, which was situated in Stoke Newington in North London, but she was going away on a trip to Europe, so she needed someone to look after the flat and the animals. The daughter, Margret Osk — who was always called Osk — had spent several years in London learning to play the violin, and I had even seen her play with a string quintet a few years back in Reykjavik. I met her father Orn at a party my parents held several weeks before Havard and I left for London. My father insisted that I talk to Orn because we shared an interest in books on waterskiing, mountaineering, and exploring, however strange it may sound. We got on well, and when Orn found out that I wasn’t doing anything special at the time his daughter would be away, he invited me to use his house. He even offered to pay me pocket money, as he called it — more as a joke I think — while I stayed there. He told me that I could take someone with me if I wanted to, he would pay for another person as well.
I didn’t take long to think over that tempting offer, and I remember phoning Orn the following day to see if it was still open. In the beginning I intended to go alone, but Havard was very interested when I mentioned the trip to my workmates, not least because I had blurted out that I could take someone with me. In the short period that I had worked in the shop I had gotten to know Havard a little, and although we didn’t have much in common, which I was quite happy about, I thought that he was interesting to talk to, especially about music and taste in music — a subject which, of course, one cannot discuss in any depth. Besides I was much more receptive to odd and even dubious characters at that time, and I can’t deny that Havard aroused my curiosity in this respect.
I don’t remember if I agreed straight away or if I took some time to think it over, but the outcome was that he accompanied me to London. Originally, he only intended to stay three weeks, but when a month had passed I saw no other option than to kick him out.
It became apparent that the Havard who shared the house with me in Stoke Newington was not the same interesting Havard whom I had got to know in the hardware store. And now, as he appears five years later, it seems obvious that the Havard who climbed in through my window a few minutes ago is the same Havard who lived with me on Brooke Road. And that really scares me. I don’t know what to do; I was looking forward to coming home, listening to the music I had bought abroad, having a drink to unwind after the journey, and talking to my friends (who, I expect, were also looking forward to seeing me). Not to mention the fact that I am expecting a visit from a woman with whom I have already fallen in love.