“I’m sure I have seen you somewhere before,” she repeats, and I say to myself: “Dear God, don’t let them know each other.” Remember Armann instead, I mumble into the carpet. You must remember him from the plane. One doesn’t miss a man like Armann. Just don’t recognize Havard, I think to myself.
But it seems certain that she has met Havard at some stage; she repeats that she must have seen him somewhere before, and Havard simply answers that it’s possible but he can’t remember when that might have been.
“May I take your coat?” he asks. I imagine he puts it on one of the kitchen chairs, as he doesn’t bring it into the bedroom.
Greta has obviously come into the living room, as Armann now greets her. He says: “Pleased to meet you,” then asks if she is a friend of mine. Before she gets a chance to reply, he says his name is Armann Valur, they met today; I had accidentally taken his glasses with me from the plane we were on together and he had just come a short while ago to fetch them.
“Then we were on the same plane,” Greta says cheerfully and sniffs. “Oh, by the way, my name is Greta.”
“Pleased to meet you, Greta, My name is Armann Valur,” Armann repeats and then asks: “But tell me, were you and Emil on the same plane?”
“You and I must have been on the same plane. If you were on the same plane as Emil, then we were traveling together,” Greta answers, and I say to myself that she has a pretty voice. It’s warm and provocative at the same time — not at all thin and self-conscious, like Vigdis’s voice, for instance.
“Then you weren’t with Emil, were you?” Armann carries on in disbelief.
“Not like that, no,” Greta answers. She obviously seems to find this misunderstanding amusing. “Or I mean, yes of course I was with him on the plane today. And with you too.”
“Are we perhaps expecting more passengers from this flight?” Havard interrupts ironically and asks Greta if she would like something to drink, if he can bring her anything. She says that she brought a bottle of red wine, but maybe he could offer her a strong drink first, something to put a bit of warmth into her body, perhaps cognac if there is any.
“No problemo,” Havard answers, and I’m quite certain that the phrase “to put a bit of warmth into her body” awakens some unseemly thoughts in his mind as he fetches the cognac.
“But tell me, Greta,” Armann continues, suddenly becoming very formal, “Did you come back from London today?”
Greta laughs amiably; I would laugh with her if I could.
“Clever boy, Armann!” Havard calls from the kitchen, and I gather from Greta’s next comment that she doesn’t think it is right to tease Armann — an older man whom she has never met before — any more.
“Yes, I was just returning from London,” she says seriously; she is letting Armann know that he was right.
“So we were all returning from London,” Armann says. He seems to have understood the situation at last.
“Emil and I were once together in London,” Havard informs them, and I beg him not to say any more. But of course Havard can’t hear a man who doesn’t speak out loud and is, on top of everything else, under the bed in the next room. I, on the other hand, can hear him quite well when he goes into the living room (probably with a glass of cognac for Greta) and mentions the very subject which I was just — in my silent way — begging him not to discuss.
“We were looking after a whole house in London,” he says, as if he expects to be rewarded with the undivided attention of the listeners. “And not just a whole house, four little animals too.”
Why on earth don’t I do something? What is wrong with me? What reason do I have for lying here under my own bed while these two men (one of them just released, or escaped, from some kind of institution in Sweden, the other, who should have been long gone, having come to collect his glasses) behave as if they are at home here; it seems as though they are at home, in my very own flat. The only reason I don’t do anything is because it is too late. Now that Greta has arrived — this woman whom I have adored from a distance for nearly fifteen years and got to know by some amazing coincidence — I am not going to crawl out from under the bed and show myself — on the very day that promised to be one of the better days of my life — as the wretched coward that the day’s events have turned me into.
“Then you weren’t on the plane today?” Greta asks with a laugh.
“I was just having a look around Reykjavik,” Havard answers. “I have just come home from Sweden myself.”
“From Lund, by any chance?” Armann asks.
“Lund!” Havard almost spits the word out. “What the hell would I want to do in Lund!”
“Lund is in Sweden. You said you were in Sweden.”
I can’t decide whether Armann is teasing Havard, and maybe trying to get a little revenge after being called a clever boy, but as a result Havard’s stay in Sweden and London is not discussed any further. Greta begins to talk about the strange names of towns in Sweden; she mentions some name that I don’t catch, and when Armann adds a few more and tells them that he has been to a language conference in Uppsala, Greta shows interest and the conversation veers too far from Havard for him to bring it back down to his level. He keeps quiet for a little while and though I’m fully aware of how much alcohol he can consume, I start hoping that he is getting tired.
“But what about you, my comrade Havard, were you studying there in Sverige?” Armann asks after Greta mentions that she attended an arts course on some island in Sweden.
“I’m comrade Havard, now am I?” Havard is offended and sounds as if he is feeling rather isolated. “No, comrade Armann, men like me don’t have any need for education.”
Without having formed an exact plan, I begin to imagine that Greta could help me, that I could possibly let her know that I’m here without giving her too much of a fright, and she could find a feasible way to get rid of Havard and Armann. If she went to the toilet, I could perhaps get her attention by whistling quietly. I know it is risky — she might get frightened and scream — but if it worked I could ask her to find me a piece of paper and a pen, and then I would pass her a message when she re-emerged from the toilet. It’s also possible that I could slide out from under the bed for a second and fetch pen and paper, somehow catch Greta’s attention when, sooner or later, she goes to the toilet, and give her instructions on how best to get rid of our inopportune guests.
2
Now, when I think back to the party in Hjalmholt fifteen years ago, where Greta disappeared into the children’s bedroom, I put myself in the shoes of that boy my age whom I have always envied for his experience that evening, even though I suspect that he was too drunk to remember it properly. But there is always the possibility that nothing happened; that the boy was too drunk to rise up to the expectations of the blonde super girl (as I imagined her) and that she had mussed up her hair and reddened her cheeks herself, to give the impression that something remarkable had taken place under, or on top of, the child’s soft duvet. I have sometimes asked myself why I wasn’t the one to spend that half hour with her in the children’s bedroom, but today, as I finally get to know Greta, I am really glad that we haven’t met before. If that had happened, she wouldn’t be standing in my flat now; we would probably have said hello on the plane, maybe chatted a little (not mentioning the previous meeting), and then said goodbye without arranging to meet again in the evening. That’s how I imagine it anyway.
But then it’s a question of whether it would have been more fun to have the memory of a wonderful half hour in bed with this girl, or to have her come to meet me at my flat, while I’m hiding under a bed in a room that a child uses several weeks a year.