Both of Sturla’s daughters are somewhat darker than their brothers. It is largely because of this that Hildigunnur’s parents have great difficulty understanding their older daughter’s resolute desire to improve her skin color by engaging in that dangerous, even life-threatening habit: tanning. Hallgerður, Hildigunnur’s sister, actually already has the look their parents (and probably also their brothers) wish Hildigunnur had, and the reason is simply that Hildigunnur had changed herself. She has altered herself through strength training and an almost debilitating competitive temperament which little by little has given her eyes and mouth a determined look; her father — who still wants to picture the face of the girl he fathered — constantly has to wipe the more recent image from his imagination when they talk.
Sturla imagines that Hildigunnur is at the fitness center in Egilsstaðir, and as he turns his thoughts to Hallgerður, to where she might be at this minute, he introduces Símon, Hulda’s partner, into the picture. Símon comes into the kitchen and reaches in the kitchen cupboard for the coffee mug with his name on it. Then he blends himself some kind of milk drink with coffee and a large quantity of white sugar from one of those sugar containers you find on tables at country diners and gas stations. His lumbering movements and weary sighs — sighs which sound almost half as loud as the physical labors that cause him to complain — arouse even more hostility in Egill than he ordinarily feels towards this country town; the sounds intensify the uncomfortable feeling which accompanies being seated, motionless, in an overly-bright rural kitchen when he should be in a warm, dark music venue in Reykjavík, among people who have no idea where Egilsstaðir is, who have never been into a co-op. Símon sits down with them, Egill, Puri, and Hulda, and says something about his job before lifting the coffee mug to his thin lips and beginning to slurp.
Even though Sturla has only met his children’s stepfather twice — at Hallgerður’s confirmation four years ago and then a year after that, when he went east to stay with his children while Hulda and Símon went abroad — and though he’s seen Símon dressed in a black, pinstripe suit, Sturla always imagines him in a white butcher’s apron that’s stained with blood and viscera from the animals at the meat counter. Sturla pretends not to know that Símon has had nothing to do with meat processing since he began working his way up the company as a young man, when he was completely unaware that he would one day be the surrogate father of five rather good-natured and promising children — instead of father to his own children.
The first thing Sturla does when he gets back to his room is to see whether the toilet paper has managed to soak up the liquid from the stain on the carpet. It turns out that it hasn’t made so much of a mark that the paper needs changing. He lights himself a cigarette, pours some whisky into a glass, and acts on his idea of placing one of his shoes on top of the paper, in order to press it down onto the wet spot. While he is up, he hangs his overcoat and suit in the closet in the entryway; he strokes the material of the overcoat, letting it rustle as he does, then fetches the whisky glass, raising it so he can see the color of the twelve-year-old drink against the light brown shade of the coat. The color of the whisky always reminds him of the caramel wrappers in the tins of Quality Street chocolates at his grandfather the ambassador’s house, tins which never seemed to get empty. Those were the candies he always saved for last, the most exciting ones. The color of the overcoat, on the other hand, is the color of dry earth: of the rational, of stability, of permanence. As he takes a sip of the drink Sturla realizes how much he longs to have a coffee on the side. A few days ago he was being offered expensive coffee in a clothing store in Reykjavík, but here in the Ambassador Hotel, in the capital city of Lithuania-land — as he calls it at this moment — he seems unable to get any coffee up in his room, even though the cafeteria is open, even though there is a high-quality espresso machine, which looks like it is brand-new, perhaps even unused, waiting to be put to use downstairs.
Sturla slips his hand into one of the overcoat pockets and gets out some of the sugar which he’d taken from the clothing store on Bankastræti. He examines the brown package for a bit and wonders whether he shouldn’t be avoiding coffee, since it is so late and a pleasant tiredness is easing throughout his whole body, promising him a good, deep night of sleep. It has been a long day. Good sense whispers to Sturla that he should let the people in reception know that he doesn’t need the coffee; he ought to brush his teeth, rest his cheek on the white, freshly-washed linen of the hotel pillow, and let himself disappear into sleep, that one dwelling place in life which you can always count on being the same, as complicated and unpredictable as it is. He decides instead to go on a short stroll around town. He reasons that it will be good to get a generous dose of oxygen into his lungs before lying down for the night. Just as he remembers he’d meant to call his father and let him know he forgot to get the VCR from the repair shop — which therefore will get in the way of loaning the Iranian movie the next day — his phone rings loudly, and it takes him a little while to find the gadget; it is a new experience, answering a phone that isn’t connected to a wall.
“Sturla dear?”
“Hi, mom.”
“How are you doing?”
“I’m doing well. I’m just waiting for coffee to arrive in my room.”
“In your room? Are you going to drink coffee in your bedroom? Are you in a hotel?”
“Yes, mom. How are you doing?”
“Do you need to be at the hotel? Aren’t there coffee shops there in. .?”
“Mom.”
“Why can’t I be with you over there. .”
“I only just got to the hotel,” Sturla interrupts. “I’m going to go and nose about town.”
“Jenný just left, “ says Fanný with a heaviness in her voice. “I think she is about ready to give up on Tobbi.”
“Þorbjörn?”
“Þorbjörn Gestur, yes. That damn dog.”
“Mom, there’s no need to call someone a dog.” And to change the topic of conversation Sturla repeats his question about how she is doing.
“But aren’t dogs man’s best friends?” answers Fanný contrarily, and Sturla lets her answer her own question.
“They were in a summer house up north, Jenný and Tobbi,” she continues. “Some teachers’ residence Tobbi rented. And how do you think that this summerhouse trip ended? It began with Jenný driving back to Reykjavík, leaving Tobbi back at the house. .”
“But mom, how are you?” He lights himself a cigarette and pours another whisky.
“I am not feeling well as long as Jenný isn’t doing so well,” says Fanný, and Sturla gathers from her reply that she is quite drunk. She continues her report about her sister and her sister’s common-law husband; the story is that Þorbjörn Gestur, the English teacher who has lived with Jenný for several years, had, while staying at the residence, offended Jenny so disgracefully on the second day that she couldn’t stand staying another minute under the same roof as him, in “some Scandinavian pine-hut in North Iceland,” as Fanný puts it; Sturla thinks this is unlikely to be a direct quote from her sister, a German translator. Jenný drove home that evening, six hours without stopping, but Tobbi remained at the house the rest of the week, and was even somehow able to make his way to Akureyri for wine and some food, to help him drink all the wine. The evening before he was due to leave the summerhouse he wrote a long message in the guest book on behalf of the next guests, a young couple and their family — the woman’s father and the man’s mother — who turned up at midday Friday when, according to the rules, Tobbi ought to have finished tidying the house and be ready to be gone.