Pets by Bragi Ólafsson

Author:Bragi Ólafsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Letter
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

When I hear Havard giving a toast in Spanish—he is no doubt rewarding himself for his achievement in the bathroom—I recall our visit to a little Spanish bar in a narrow lane off Oxford Street. It was around the time when he bought his ukulele. I remember the visit particularly well because it was almost the only occasion on which Havard and I had a sensible talk. He told me about his mother and father, who didn’t consider themselves capable of looking after him when he was small because of their drinking problem, and how he grew up more or less with his grandmother who lived next door. When he told me about it I felt that I was listening to a sensitive, sincere individual, and I imagine now that he must have felt unusually well that day and was perhaps genuinely grateful to be there with me in another country. I don’t remember his exact words, but there in the bar he spoke about people at home not understanding him; sometimes he felt as if he lived in a different world from Icelanders in general, but in the same breath he mentioned how comfortable it was to be in England and speak a language which no one else could understand.

Except me of course.

I told him I understood what he meant, and while we laughed at the idea that he should perhaps speak English in Iceland—as there would be a chance of someone understanding him then—I thought he was cheerful and ready to make the best of our stay in London.

But then, exactly a day later, it seemed that Havard had gone off the rails emotionally and intellectually, and with each day that passed he seemed to move further and further away from the equilibrium that he had enjoyed that afternoon. It is probably ridiculous to talk about mental equilibrium in a person who has just arrived in a new country and spends a large amount of money on a musical instrument which he has never heard of before, but, considering his behavior during the rest of his stay, he seemed comparatively normal as we chatted in this friendly bar—even though that was the place where he decided to call himself Howard and to introduce me as Email from then on. Emil was far too Scandinavian a name for the British Isles.

It was also in this Spanish bar that Havard explained to two native bank clerks why we were in London. When he had finished telling me about his past, he took out his new instrument to have a look at it and handle it, and the men at the next table became very keen to find out what kind of guitar it was. One of them thought it was a toy guitar, and when Havard told him it was a ukulele, they admitted that they had never heard of anything called that. We were both rather chatty after the beer and the Spanish brandy that the bartender had recommended and were quite willing to talk to these city men.

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