But had he expected anything other than that people here are beautiful?
A WORLD WHICH OPENS ONTO THE STREET
Before Sturla gets in the shower he turns on the television. While figuring out what channels are available, he is surprised at how high in the air the device has been placed, and how unsafe the fixtures seem. When he comes back out of the bathroom, in a cloud of steam that has been created because he thoughtlessly shut the door, there is a discussion about finances on the American news channel CNN. Three men are sitting in three chairs — chairs which Sturla thinks seem to be of Scandinavian design — and deliberating over the possibilities which investment in Chinese business might offer to western investors. The clock shows a few minutes to 10:00. Sturla half-watches the televised conversation while he finishes drying himself, and then he slips hurriedly into underwear, pants, and shirt and gets his wallet out of his jacket to take down to the cafeteria. He looks in the mirror and strokes the still-wet hair on his head so that it doesn’t hang over his forehead in that way which always reminds him of Adolf Hitler. He launches himself towards the door a little too quickly to remember the stain on the hallway carpet, which he’d only just managed to steer clear of stepping in earlier. He’d meant to investigate the stain by touching it, first when he initially noticed it and then before taking a shower, but he ends up doing so now; he finds out that the dark stain is wet, that the liquid seems to be oil or some kind of cleaning fluid.
He shivers a little in disgust as he dries his finger on a hand towel from the bathroom. He carefully sniffs his fingertip, as though it might be dangerous to bring it too close to his nose, and he bends back down to the carpet and touches the area around the stain. When he stands back up, he experiences a sudden dizziness, and while he waits for this dizziness to clear, he looks at the television screen: the pope is standing in his car, waving to a great crowd that has gathered in some European city. Before Sturla leaves the room he takes some toilet paper from the bathroom, folds it over, and places it on top of the stain.
He springs down the stairs. He is feeling good. The hotel experience always gives him a special sense of liberty, which he instinctively connects with his first ever trip abroad and with going camping as a teenager. A rented room always makes him feel that something unexpected or thrilling will happen, the sort of thing which seldom happens at his own apartment. Even the stain on the carpet in room number 304 at the Ambassador Hotel makes it somehow more thrilling, more strange — he ought to say more dangerous, he thinks, smiling to himself at this idea as he reaches the first floor.
No, Sturla Jón, the wet stain on the hotel carpet doesn’t make the room dangerous!
The red-headed girl in reception has the telephone receiver pressed to her ear with her shoulder; she seems a bit panicky as she searches through some papers on the desk. She still gives herself time to smile at Sturla as he goes by, and he feels like he’d better stop and react to her smile in some way. He has reached the glass doors of the cafeteria by the time he turns back and goes up to the reception desk. The girl, called Elena according to the badge on her dark blue jacket, indicates to him with her hand that she will help him in just a moment, and while Sturla waits he looks over a selection of brochures in canvas pockets on the wall by reception. He has selected three brochures to take with him by the time the redhead speaks his name: Mr. Jonson. He turns around, and the girl, who has taken the phone from her ear, asks Sturla if she can help him with something. He starts by apologizing for having disturbed her and as he listens to himself he thinks how silly he sounds asking if he can get coffee “in there,” pointing in the direction of the cafeteria.
“Yes, of course,” Elena replies, smiling.
“To take up to my room?” asks Sturla.
“Yes, you just ask for coffee in the caféteria.” And the girl smiles again, returning the phone to her ear and apologizing to the person on the line.
The young Norwegian or Swede is still sitting at the same table in the restaurant, a thick book in front of him. He holds a thin self-rolled cigarette and looks out the window at the avenue Sturla was on before, when he got out of the car outside the hotel earlier in the evening, and which is called G-something-or-other prospektas, like the Nevski prospect in Gogol’s short story of the same name. (He decides to ask a local, perhaps Elena at reception, how to translate “prospektas” in this context; to one who recognizes the word only from Germanic and Latin languages, using it to describe a street or avenue sounds quite peculiar.) Except for the Nordic contingent — it occurs to Sturla that maybe he should introduce himself, “being from the Nordic lands myself,” as he would phrase it — there are two older men in the place, smoking silently at a table in the middle of the room, and four young people who are talking together at high velocity and who seem to notice something funny about Sturla; when he goes past them they all look quickly at him before turning back to one another, stifling bursts of laughter.
It isn’t clear whether this place is called a cafeteria or a bar: the chairs, tables, and all the fixtures are more reminiscent of the waiting room in a federal building. There are cakes and sandwiches in a glass case at the service counter and, facing outwards on a glass shelf in front of a mirrored window, long rows of beer and liquor bottles, something which doesn’t really match what Sturla notices next: index cards with handwritten information about the breakfast the place serves between 7:00 and 10:30 every day except Sunday.
What do hotel guests do on Sunday mornings? he asks himself. And he considers himself lucky not to need to figure that out: he will be out in the country that day, in the spa town of Druskininkai.
Three young waitresses are standing side-by-side behind the till, wearing reddish jackets which are perhaps more like smocks, and they all stare as one at Sturla when he asks whether he can get a double espresso to take up to his room. The girls don’t seem to know what to say, but one makes a decision, the one in the middle: she asks Sturla if he is staying in the hotel. When he confirms that he is, she informs him that they only offer table service, that he won’t be able to take coffee up to his room.
“You don’t have any paper cups?” Sturla asks, running his eyes over the liquor selection on the shelf, to see if they carry the same whisky as he has up in the room.
The girl shrugs her shoulders, as if she doesn’t understand the question, but instead of asking why he wants a paper cup, she tells him that they only have normal coffee cups; he can sit at any of the tables in the room and have coffee.
“There’s no way I can take one of the ‘normal’ cups up to my room?”
“We only serve coffee at the tables.”
“But in those cups?” Sturla asks, nodding to a row of water glasses.
“No,” replies the girl. Sturla asks himself whether he might have to return to his room without getting any coffee out of the fancy Krups machine which gleams from between the girl who just spoke and the one standing on her right. He asks if he can order some coffee for here, and perhaps Coke in a paper or plastic glass, but that option isn’t available: he can have some Coke, but not in a paper or plastic glass.
“Þá held ég að allir möguleikar séu fullreyndir,” he says, but none of the girls seems interested in finding out what the words mean. They look expressionlessly at Sturla, who imagines that either they are hiding their amazement — who is this strange guy who wants to take coffee up to his room? — or else they don’t really understand what he wants.