“Almost exactly?” Havard has come back from the kitchen. Just as Armann is about to carry on with his story, the phone rings again. Havard sighs and repeats that this phone just won’t leave them in peace.
“It could be Emil,” Armann says.
But I am not the person who answers when Havard introduces himself.
“Good evening,” he says formally. “This is Howard Knutsson speaking. Emil? No, Emil just isn’t available. And who are you, if I may ask? Who am I? Well, I asked first.”
Armann obviously can’t control himself and laughs, or rather giggles at Havard’s sense of humor.
“What? Haeme? I think you have to repeat that! Emil’s friend? What? Haeme?”
It is Jaime, my friend from Chile.
“What? When? I really don’t know. I came to visit Emil and. . Who am I? Havard, Havard Knutsson. Yes, he has come home. Yes, he came home but he went off again. Yes, you will just have to come around here, I should think that he will come back. Yes, yes, I’ll be here. Alright, OK. Haeme, wasn’t it? OK, sir. I’ll let him know.”
“Who on earth was that?” Armann asks after Havard has hung up the phone and cursed Jaime under his breath.
“Some friend of our host,” he says without interest. “Someone called Jaime. I don’t know where he was ringing from. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was phoning from outer space.”
It is obvious that Havard was only pretending to be unable to pronounce Jaime’s name while he was on the phone because now he says it almost exactly like Jaime himself.
Armann clearly recognizes the name.
“James? Can it be that some fellow called James is on the way over?”
“It was Jaime. It looks like we will have to entertain more visitors,” Havard answers wearily. It is possible that he is genuinely tired.
“I can tell you that Jaime is the Spanish version of the English name James,” Armann continues.
“Oh, is it?”
“And he was a friend of Emil’s? I don’t suppose he mentioned where he came from?”
“From outer space,” Havard says, and now his voice has a trace of annoyance as well as tiredness in it. “At least it sounded like that.”
“The extraterrestrial James?” Armann seems to be getting more and more boisterous. He laughs and asks which planet the man came from.
When no reply comes from Havard — who seems to be in the kitchen, I think I heard the fridge being opened — Armann shouts from the living room:
“Well, I was going to tell you about the bartender at the Cumberland!”
There is still no reaction from Havard. It sounds like Armann goes into the kitchen.
“He was called Nicholas Blair. Yes, I remember it now, it was Nicholas.”
“Haven’t we heard enough about English jerks for the time being?” Havard snarls, though it clearly has no effect on Armann’s storytelling.
“Some people are peculiar, it’s as if they decide one fine day that they are going to be drinkers, though it is normally difficult for people to make decisions. But this fellow Nicholas received rather unusual encouragement to take to the bottle. It happened like this. .”
At this point I lose the thread of Armann’s story; there is a loud noise when Havard knocks a bag of ice cubes against the kitchen table — at least I think that’s what he’s doing — and then he starts crushing the ice.
“Then he poured water into the three glasses and. .”
“Do you want ice in your cognac?” Havard interrupts.
“Not in cognac, Havard,” Armann answers in a reproachful tone and then carries on: “Once he has poured water into all the glasses he picks up a little container — probably a little test tube from a laboratory — and from it he pours alcohol into one glass of water. Then he picks up another test tube and tells his pupils that it contains nicotine.”
“Nicotine in a glass?” Havard asks in disbelief.
“Yes, nicotine in liquid form, just as you can have morphine or whatever it is called, hashish oil.”
“Hashish oil?” It sounds as though Havard is becoming slightly interested in the story now that Armann has mentioned hashish.
“Yes, or whatever it is called. At least he pours nicotine into the second glass and makes it clear that there is just pure water in the third glass, though we don’t expect them to have had much pure water in England, especially not at that time.”
“At that time? What time was that?” Havard asks.
“It was probably in the fifties, he was no spring chicken, this fellow Nicholas.”
“This Nicholas, your friend, was a pupil in this class, then?”
“Yes.”
“And now he is a bartender in this hotel?”
“I have already told you that, yes.” Armann says, sounding annoyed at Havard’s questions. “When he has polluted the water with alcohol in one glass and nicotine in another one, he takes a little box which contains some kind of insects out of his briefcase. Then he picks up one of them and drops it in the glass of water mixed with alcohol. And what do you think happens?”
“The bug gets drunk,” Havard says cheerfully. It is obvious that Armann has managed to get him in a better mood.
“Yes, it possibly feels the effects for a little while, but not for long because it dies.”
Havard laughs.
“So when the teacher has explained to the boys just how alcohol affects. . well, I don’t know what he said precisely. . that this is what happens to insects who drink. . then. .”
Havard bursts out laughing and I hear him pour something over the ice in his glass.
“Then he picks up another insect, the same kind as before, and. .”
“Here’s to the bug!” Havard interrupts him.
“Alright, cheers,” Armann agrees. While he goes to fetch his glass in the living room he carries on: “So he puts the poor insect into the glass with the nicotine and the same thing happens as when he. .”
“Drowned the other bug!” Havard adds and laughs.
“Well, at least this creature ends up the same way; it dies of nicotine poisoning. And then there is only the last experiment and, of course, it consists in putting the third insect into the glass with the pure water.”
“Armann, I think this friend of yours was having you on,” Havard butts in.
“No, no, this last insect just swims around in the water, full of life, and that’s the end of the demonstration. Those which landed in the alcohol and nicotine had no chance of survival but the one which landed in the water was still alive when the teacher fished it out, no doubt just to be killed too afterwards.”
“So that was the prize for being sensible?” Havard says disgustedly. “Death.”
“It at least resulted in my friend Nicholas starting to smoke and drink in his teens; he couldn’t bear the thought of having some creepy crawlies swimming around in his intestines.”
“Evil shall be swept out with evil, as the saying goes,” Havard crows. I can just imagine how this fellow Nicholas appeals to Havard.
“Yes, that’s the point,” Armann agrees. “Force against force!”
“Steel against steel,” Havard adds.
“An eye for an eye,” Armann says and giggles like a little boy.
He sounds very relieved now that he has finally told his story, which has taken him half a day to tell me, although he naturally has no idea that he has just done so.
12
I never really liked the lizard — the ancient green lizard or iguana which Orn kept in his study upstairs. He had asked us not to let it out of the room — it often nibbled things that lay on the floor — and he told us especially not to let it into the kitchen; there was always a danger that it could have salmonella. Because of that risk, he added, we should always wash our hands after petting or holding it. I’m quite positive that Havard made a point of taking it into the kitchen, just because Orn had emphatically so asked us not to.