The Swedes decided to stay at this pub a little while longer. They ordered a round of some strong spirit in shot glasses and toasted themselves: four young men from Scandinavia visiting the Baltic. When they stood up to go out one of them suggested that they should have one more round, and just then — totally without having thought about home — the idea occurred to Sturla that his first work as a prose writer, not counting the article he had written about the poetry festival which had yet to happen, would be a kind of manual for foreigners who were visiting Reykjavík: a work of fiction which in content and appearance would be published as though it was a guidebook that introduced strangers to Iceland’s capital city — but it would do exactly the opposite, in fact. It would lead the reader astray and give him a completely opposite, but possibly just as interesting, picture of the more than two-hundred year-old city. Sturla imagined the Swedes were drinking a toast to his new idea as they gulped down the contents of the next shot and either bellowed or shrugged off the bite of the taste. They swaggered boldly out onto the sidewalk.
Sturla followed the Swedes out and trailed them at a suitable distance for about ten minutes. They had obviously gotten Dutch courage from the drinks they’d downed, and their conversations on the way oddly reminded Sturla of the interactions of people in a dance club, a place where no one can hear anything at all but the loud music. In contrast, the noise they were making here allowed Sturla to especially notice how great the silence was that ruled the streets of the city, even though they teemed with life. It all suggested a very beautiful, dream-like condition, the scene in a movie which prepares the viewer for something unexpected, something which alters the perspective of those watching events unfold, like the impact of a well-executed short-story. And just like earlier in the evening, when he was sitting in the car on the way from the airport, Sturla thought about how handsome the Lithuanians were; it was, though, as Sturla admitted to himself, a somewhat fanciful thought. He simply wanted — he felt he had a duty — to be positive towards his hosts.
As he was following his unsuspecting tour guides, they vanished through the door to the place they had talked about (a place which was obviously targeted towards men) and he reckoned that, since these young men — who definitely looked like they’d had good upbringings back home and whose appearance suggested they were a socially acceptable bunch — were allowing themselves (without pause for reflection or preface at all) to step one after the other out of the fully-clothed and safe world they were used to and to head inside, towards the uncertain moment when you find yourself standing, dressed, in front of naked strangers: given all this, it could hardly be harmful for a fifty-something father of five to watch young women taking off their clothes. What’s more, he thought, it would be a useful experience for a middle-aged poet who is trying to train himself in a more revealing literary form to get to know the sort of underground cultures in which people pay for nakedness. He’d certainly be able to get himself a table a good distance away from the stage.
That plan turned out not to be so easy: the only free table was right next to the stage. When Sturla entered the club — having gone through some kind of ceremony at the entrance he could only describe as a weapons search, paid the rather hefty cover charge, and read on a placard hanging on the wall in the coat-check that the club’s atmosphere was supposed to evoke the Middle Ages — the Swedes had already sat down at a table right in front of the stage, with a direct view of the glistening pole which the dancers would hold onto as they stripped.
As Sturla was looking around the hall at the variously hairy heads of the men who had gathered together there, a young bare-breasted woman in a white miniskirt and black Chinese slippers came up to him, and she indicated politely that he should sit at a table with two middle-aged men by the right side of the stage. Sturla planned at first to decline her offer, but when he saw that all the other tables in the hall seemed to be occupied he reconciled himself to sitting with two men who, to tell the truth, didn’t seem to be on their first visit to such a place. The bare-breasted woman asked Sturla whether he wanted champagne or vodka. He said he wanted champagne and when he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket to make sure his wallet was still there the girl told him that the champagne was included in the price; he didn’t need to pay anything, she would bring it to him before the show started. Sturla nodded that he understood but told her he nevertheless needed to go and get his wallet from his overcoat in the coat-check. The woman offered to accompany him, as if she expected he wouldn’t find the way.
“We have a Salomé night tonight,” said the girl in English as they went in the direction of the coat-check. “It’s première,” she continued, and Sturla nodded his head and felt for a moment as if they — he and this young, pretty woman, who seemed hardly aware of her naked breasts — were discussing a major cultural event (he didn’t, of course, rule out that possibility).
“I am looking forward to it,” Sturla interrupted the woman, who was beginning to describe this Salomé night in more detail, and while he thought about the similarity between that title and The Night of One Poem which he was attending in Druskininkai he told the woman (truthfully) that Salomé was one of his favorite stories; he had read the play both in English and Icelandic — she did mean Salomé, the daughter of Herod, didn’t she?
“It’s Salomé who makes her father cut the head off Judas,” the woman answered in English, and she let Sturla know she would bring him champagne once he was sitting back down; the show would begin any minute.
Sturla thanked her for this and when he allowed himself to look shamelessly at her youthful breasts she seemed suddenly to remember that they were on show for everyone’s eyes, and she gave a friendly smile to Sturla and thanked him for — for what? thought Sturla, which left him with a strange feeling: it wasn’t sexual in any way, it was more of a tender and affectionate feeling; he had seen something beautiful in this young woman who firmly believed that Salomé had forced her stepfather to behead Judas. While Sturla tried to figure out how a headless man manages to hang himself, he watched the back of the bare-breasted woman as she went towards the bar. He got his wallet from the overcoat, though he was a little uncomfortable leaving the new overcoat in the unguarded coat check.
The men at the table welcomed Sturla back with smiles and raised glasses; it was as though they had missed him in the two or three minutes he had been away. One of them, a rather tall man who seemed to be the spokesman for the companions, told Sturla in English that the show was beginning, but the other man who, without being especially fat in other respects nevertheless had the largest paunch Sturla had ever seen on any man, looked at Sturla with curious eyes and asked him where he came from. They said they were Russian and both seemed delighted to have an Icelander at their table. The tall one raised his glass again and said he would toast Sturla when his champagne arrived; his companion with the paunch said, out of the blue, that he had come to the right place, that this was the place for Icelanders, and he asked what Sturla was doing in Vilnius.
“I am a writer,” replied Sturla. “I am going to a poetry festival here in Litháen.”
“In. .” the tall one asked, confused.
“In Lithuania,” Sturla corrected himself, and they told him the Russian word for Lithuania.
Suddenly there was a loud noise from the club’s loudspeaker.
“I’m a writer too,” said the paunchy one, and he looked at the unlit stage.
The tall one giggled a little strangely, and Sturla thought that perhaps he was laughing at the same thing he himself found funny: the heavy Russian accent of his companion, which called to mind images of the grey and glowering Soviet figures in western movies about the Cold War.