Eavesdropping by Stephen Kuusisto

Author:Stephen Kuusisto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

19. Blue Lagoon

It was an improbable package tour. We’d come to Iceland for no better reason than to hear Cuban music. We were three men visiting Reykjavík to hear the Buena Vista Social Club and smoke cigars.

Gary was driving our rented Ford Escort and describing what he saw. His friend Greg, a weight lifter, was riding shotgun. The man could barely move.

“Look over there,” said Gary. “There’s a pile of volcanic rocks that looks like the Michelin Man!”

“I can’t turn my head,” said Greg. “My seat belt is around my throat.”

“Are there any birds?” I asked from the backseat. I was held in position by suitcases.

“Every living creature appears to have been eaten.” Gary said. “Wait,” he added, “there are some algae on the rocks off to the right.”

I remembered that Giacomo Puccini was reputed to have eaten all the ducks in Italy. “Maybe Puccini was once in Iceland,” I said.

This was no more improbable than the appearance in Iceland of the Buena Vista Social Club—a group of veteran Havana nightclub performers who had returned to the stage after a long hiatus enforced by Fidel Castro. They’d won a Grammy. They had a movie. They were on a world tour. The average age of the group’s musicians was just over eighty.

It was April and very cold. The northern sky was brighter and bluer than we’d imagined. Though Reykjavík is a relatively small city, we managed to get lost. We drove in tight and hopeless circles down streets that were all named in honor of Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic epic poet. It felt reassuring to be lost in a town where everything was named for a poet. Being lost on a poet’s street is different than, say, being lost on I-80.

“We’ve just turned off Snorri Street and we’re back on Snorri Street,” said Gary. “We will soon be in Greenland.”

It was Gary who had first seen the advertisement for a Cuban getaway in Iceland. He called me while I was preparing to teach a class.

“Icelandic Air has a deal,” he said. “We can hear hot Cuban music in Reykjavík. Fly round-trip from New York. Get concert tickets, air tickets, and three hotel nights, all for five hundred dollars. Hell, it’s a perfect sound-montage escape.”

“All right,” I said. I thought: Why not go to Iceland where the only sounds are from the volcanic fissures between the rocks; where the North Atlantic wind rips over the stones; where people whisper in the restaurants and there is a musical chiming of shrimp forks on the fine china.

And then there was the promise of postmodernity, all that long-suppressed Cuban dance floor music amplified in the Icelandic night. How perfect. And cheap. It was easy to say yes.

So here I was, officially sight-seeing by ear in a very cold place. After we found our hotel and checked in I switched on the radio and caught a few moments of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” as played by Glenn Gould.

There were no sounds coming from the adjacent rooms. No scrape of furniture.

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