“Get yourself a little more red wine, or I’ll drink it all myself,” says Fanný, pushing the bottle towards him on the table. But Sturla knew as well as she does that once he leaves she’ll open another bottle; he can see her taking one to the bathtub in the laundry room. He imagines the young girl from upstairs coming down to the basement and sitting on the edge of the bathtub beside his mother; he imagines the girl in the bathtub instead of his mother; he imagines himself getting into the bathtub with the girl — and Fanný suddenly asks, making it sound like she is saying goodbye to him, as though she’d prefer to lie down in a hot bath than to have her son stay any longer:
“And you’re definitely going?”
“Going where?”
“Aren’t you going abroad in the morning? I was only asking whether you’re definitely going.”
“I think so, yes,” answers Sturla, continuing, “I think, therefore I go.”
“Yes, of course you’re going,” answers Fanný. “You don’t need to think any more about it. You’re going in the morning. Have you got your ticket already?”
“Yes, mom, of course I already have my ticket.”
“Then everything’s ready. You only need to remember your passport.”
“I’ll remember my passport, mom.”
“Do you need a passport in the country you’re going to?”
“I don’t expect it will be enough to show them my poetry.”
“Your poetry?”
“I am going abroad to recite poetry.”
“I know that, Sturla.”
“Yes, and I know that I need a passport to get into Lithuania.”
“Thanks for the book, Sturla dear. I will look at it more soon.”
This is the first time since he gave her his book a few days ago that Fanný has mentioned it. He remembers at once that he’d brought another copy of the book with him, like she asked him to, but he decides only to let her have it if she mentions it without being asked.
“I hope you enjoy it,” he says. “It was written using that folder I was talking about. You could say that the book actually came out of grandfather’s folder.”
“I don’t remember father having a folder,” says Fanný, as though the word folder has just come up in their conversation for the first time. “But that is a beautiful picture on the cover of your book,” she adds, smiling weakly.
“That’s a picture of that folder I was telling you about,” explains Sturla, but he doesn’t want to bring this topic back up: his mother clearly doesn’t want to discuss it, or to remember it, even though she admits remembering the folder once she more closely examines the cover image on Sturla’s book.
“I remember this,” she says, but she doesn’t have anything more to add except to suggest that Sturla must eventually have gotten hold of the folder, and one can’t ignore the fact — as she puts it — that in order for him to obtain it, his cousin and contemporary had had to off himself.
Sturla acts as if he hasn’t heard her. But he wonders if lying behind her observation is the phrase “one person’s death is another’s life” (is he trying to be as tasteless in his choice of words as she was?), and he thinks of the mother in the poem, the one living in the darkness of shadows — as he interprets that shadow. She’ll stand by the window when he goes out the gate to the sidewalk, for sure, and she’ll wave to him as he heads past. He gives her his cell phone number (explaining why it starts with the number eight, since she’s never seen that sort of number before) and they say goodbye in the doorway, somewhat brusquely. Fanný says she can’t stand outside in this cold, that she isn’t suited to living in this cold, damp country; in fact, she ought to go overseas with Sturla to the sun and warmth.
As Sturla had predicted, his mother stands inside the window, behind the nylon screen, but the way she moves her hand when he goes past the window feels wrong, as though it doesn’t belong to her. It’s too fast: it reminds him of a duck beating its wings to get out of the way of a car on the road. He waves back and begins walking faster; he wants to hurry home to Skúlagata to read over his article for the magazine. While his mother’s monologue about the past had been going on and on he’d been remembering the newly-written text, and he is beginning to get the feeling — perhaps influenced by the wine he’s drunk — that the article is not only very well executed, but also marks the start of a new period in his life as an author: his settling of accounts with poetry (which, he thinks, will get a final farewell at the end of his visit to Lithuania) and the seeds of what lies ahead. That said, he will need the limited time he has left to touch up the text before he sends it to Jónatan Jóhannsson. There is nothing else he needs to do before going abroad the next morning except what he’d put off doing the day before: calling his children, who all happened to be with their mother at Egilsstaðir at the moment, which was unusual; tidying up the apartment a little so that it will be cozy to return to; packing; and. . he suddenly thinks, now that it is too late, of course, that he’d meant to pick up the VCR so he could return the Iranian movie to his father.
TWO HOURS AWAY FROM THE CITY by Sturla Jón Jónsson
Poetry lives in all things. That
is the chief argument
against Poetry.
“The trip scheduled from Vilnius to Druskininkai takes just two hours. The Czech poet Nezval wrote about the five minutes distance from the town but here we are dealing with a longer distance. From Vilnius to Druskininkai, it is a two-hour trip by coach.
Vilnius? Why talk about Vilnius? And what in heaven’s name is Druskininkai? What does the unintelligible name Druskininkai signify?
Well, I have been invited to an international poetry festival in a little village in Lithuania called Druskininkai, which is southwest of the capital city Vilnius and directly south of the ancient capital city, Kaunas, where the Dalai Lama once went when he visited Vilnius. No other Icelanders have been invited to the festival in Druskininkai; I’ll be traveling alone and I am supposed to show up in this country in mid-October.
It is certainly tempting to state the obvious and say that Druskininkai is an absurd name for a village, even taking into account that the village is in Lithuania, a country where anything goes when it comes to giving names.
But such temptation is too obvious for a poet to give in to it. And no less so when we are discussing a poet who has reached the stage in his art where he believes he has nothing more to accomplish as a poet.
Druskininkai means the same thing as Salzburg in Austria. Although Salzburg isn’t considered a very happening place at the moment, still, it is hardly possible to say that nothing good has come from there.
“I am called Dainius Navakas and I come from Druskininkai.” This doesn’t sound convincing though there is evidence of an individual with the name Dainius Navakas who lives in Druskininkai.
After I received an invitation to the poetry festival, I looked up information about Druskininkai on the Internet and found, among other things, the name Dainius Navakas. From what I understood from the homepage of the town of Druskininkai, this Dainius Navakas works as some kind of information official.
But now to the poetry festival. The last thing I want to do is seem ungrateful towards the people who organized it, but at the same time I have to mention that I was astonished when I saw the first event would be a recital by three American poets.