That was outside, though, where Zen no longer had any desire to go. He'd found a cosy nook at the back of a subterranean den where a few youngsters were half-heartedly dancing, and a lissom blonde refilled his shot glass as soon as he emptied it.
Later on the action on the dance floor hotted up considerably, until Zen seemed to be the only person in the place not flinging himself about to the battering rhythms of the sound system. Several of the girls were now dancing topless, their breasts jiggling about in a touching, natural, slightly comical way. Their partners too had stripped down to the absolute minimum. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and testosterone.
Later still, the place was half empty, the lissom blonde ignored him, and the lights came brutally to life. Zen consulted his watch, but it was still on Italian time. Anyway, they were evidently closing. He got to his feet and shuffled over to the door. The streets were even more packed than the bar had been earlier. No one was dancing, but a couple of drunken scuffles broke out and were quickly subdued. The little, dark, shabbily dressed people were much in evidence too, looking on at the proceedings with that sly, half-mocking expression they all had.
Zen's first priority was to find a taxi and get himself driven to the consul's house, but that was not so simple. The streets where he was were all pedestrianized, and his enquiries were either ignored or elicited a broad gesture and a string of verbiage he couldn't understand. In the end he set off walking along the main street, confident that sooner or later he would find a taxi rank.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a car in a side street with an illuminated sign on top. Someone was getting out of it. Zen started to run, but he was still some way away when the taxi revved up and drove quickly away. The person who had got out of it entered a nearby block of flats and closed the door. Disheartened, Zen turned back towards the main street. He was still some twenty metres away from it when the figure came rushing at him out of an alley to his right, a knife in its hand.
Zen's drunkenness saved him initially. He was so startled that he fell over backwards, landing heavily on his buttocks as the assailant swerved past. It was one of the little dark men he had been seeing all evening. He turned now, the knife held out, and walked back to where Zen was lying sprawled on the paving stones. The blade of the knife gleamed in the light from the nearest street lamp, but the man's face was in shadow.
Tackling a man on the ground is a tricky business. You have to stoop to his level to get anything done, and if you do you lose your only advantage. Aurelio Zen was aware of this, having been in this situation before, but playing the other role. His attacker, oddly enough, was also aware of it. He made no further berserk moves, did not hurl himself on his prone victim, just stood there, sizing up the situation.
Zen was still drunk, but drunks can often focus very effectively on just one thing, which was all he had to do at present. So when the dark figure made its move, aiming a kick at Zen's ribs, he was ready. He flipped over, away from the blow, and was on his hands and knees before the other had regained his balance. The next assault was a straight lunge aimed at Zen's chest, which he parried at the cost of slit knuckles, then rose to his feet, using his assailant's impetus to throw him clear and to one side.
They were both standing now. Taking the initiative, Zen moved in and aimed a kick at the hand holding the knife, following up with the heel of his right hand slammed up into the man's jaw. He felt completely fearless, even when the swung blade returning stung him on the shoulder. Off balance but totally in control, he stripped the man's shin with the instep of his left foot, causing a satisfying shriek, then stepped back to consider his next move.
It was only then that he noticed the siren and the flashing lights at the far end of the street. A moment later a white Volvo with blue and red stripes and a yellow shield on the door pulled up. Disconcerted, Zen looked round for his attacker. He was nowhere to be seen. Two uniformed patrolmen got out of the car.
One of them spoke to Zen, who shrugged and replied in Italian, 'Sorry, I don't understand.' One policeman inspected Zen's hand, which was covered in blood. The other bent down and picked up a knife from the pavement. He got out his radio and made a call, then the two men led Zen over to their car.
The next hour and a half was spent in the emergency department of a hospital, where the injuries to Zen's hand and shoulder were cleaned and the former stitched. At a certain point he remembered the consul's card and the receipt with his address, which he handed to the hospital staff. When Snaebjorn Gudmundsson showed up in person, he initially seemed more agitated by Zen's lack of agitation than by what had actually happened. Zen just ignored him. He was feeling better than he had for months. He had no idea what had happened, still less why. That didn't matter. Something had, and he had dealt with it. He was in charge again, engaged with the real world, making and breaking. It felt good, and he wasn't going to let some weedy, neurotic diplomat tell him otherwise. In fact it was only with the greatest difficulty that Gudmundsson managed to convince Zen to come home with him and go to bed rather than take to the streets and see if there were any bars still open, but in the end he prevailed. They drove somewhere, Zen got out, they went inside, there was a bed, he lay down.
He awoke in a bright, hard light. His shoulder and hand ached abominably, but neither could begin to match his head. He was lying fully clothed on a narrow wooden bed in a musty room filled with cardboard boxes. He had no idea where he was, or any memory of how he got there. The world was a painful enigma whose solution, if there was one, eluded him utterly.
Some time later, Snaebjorn Gudmundsson appeared with a cup of tea in his hand.
'Feeling better?' he asked in an excessively loud and patronizingly cheery tone. 'Bathroom's to the left. I'll be next door when you're ready to talk.'
Twenty minutes later, Zen shambled into the room next door. It was a bleakly austere space stretching from one end of the small one-storey house to the other. The walls were white, the floor bare wooden boards, the furnishings hard and minimal. Since the front door was at one end, he must have crossed the room to get to the bed where he had woken up, but he had absolutely no memory of this.
'So how are you feeling?' Snaebjorn Gudmundsson demanded, putting down the book he had been reading.
'Like hell,' Zen replied succinctly.
'Yes, well, you seemed a bit the worse for wear last night, I have to say. Apart from your various injuries, I mean.' 'I drank a lot.'
'Expensive business here in Iceland.' 'I'll pay you back.'
'Oh, don't worry about that. You're evidently a VIP. I'll bill the embassy’
Zen collapsed in a chair made of wooden slats on a stainless steel frame. It was as uncomfortable as it looked. 'Did they find the person who attacked me?' he asked. Gudmundsson looked at him oddly.
'No, they didn't. You say he was dark, unkempt looking and short?'
'Shorter than me, and I'm shorter than most people here.'
"That's very unusual. Our genetic pool here in Iceland is remarkably homogenous. Or to put it another way, everyone's related to everyone else. We don't have a distinct class of shorter, dark-skinned people, like the Lapps in Finland.'
"They must be immigrants.'
'That s not really a problem here. We're an island, of course, which helps. The points of entry are strictly controlled and we're very particular about who we let in. Excessively so, some might say, especially if if s a matter of non-Northern European individuals. When the United States military applied to build Keflavik as a base during the war, the government agreed on condition mat no black servicemen be stationed there.'