At the same moment the woman vanished from the table they heard the music again, the same as before, and the Belarusian Salomé burst onto the stage: a rather pale woman of about thirty, not as slender and supple as a stripper might be. She was wrapped head to toe in multi-colored silk veils, and as for her shoes, Sturla couldn’t work out whether they were going-out shoes or just sandals with high heels. When she had turned a few circles around the pole on the stage, the aria sung by Birgitta Nilsson faded out, and different music was piped into the loudspeaker, an instrumental piece from the East. The Swede who had already been making a racket was getting steadily louder but Yuri wanted peace and quiet to enjoy watching the dancer; he shushed the bellowing Swede and got a grateful look from his companion Igor as his reward (something he’d clearly been hoping for). The woman on stage couldn’t disguise her nervousness, and no doubt the silent concentration which hung thick in the air increased her anxiety; she seemed to understand the great expectation in the eyes of all the men who had come to see what she (and the other dancers who would doubtlessly follow her) concealed under her veils.
As soon as she whipped off the first veil, the one around her neck, her shyness seemed to vanish, and her movements became supple and pliable; she wound herself around the pole like a lithe snake, and her movements earned her praise from Yuri’s lips, something in Russian which she heard and obviously appreciated, but which also gave the Swede, who Yuri had shushed a moment ago, license to air his opinions, too. When the next veil was cast to the floor, the one which had concealed her hair, the Swede shouted out, clearly against the wishes of his companions, something in his own language, something which Sturla suspected concerned what she had just revealed of her body. Her hair drew the audience’s attention: it was short and cut in layers, with cropped back and sides; a color that looked like cream had been poured over it.
The woman evidently heard this shout, but she reacted differently than Sturla, and no doubt the rest of the audience, expected: rather than give the Swede an ugly glance, she flung herself off the pole, stepped down from the stage and tiptoed in his direction like a cat. The Swede hadn’t expected she would come down from her stage, as Sturla described it to himself, but it wasn’t easy to judge from his expression whether or not he liked it when Salomé knelt on the floor before him, grabbed his knees, and pushed his legs apart. Nervous laughter gripped his companions, but the smile which had formed on the face of the victim disappeared suddenly when the woman began to tiptoe slowly with her index and middle fingers up from his knees, along his legs in the direction of his crotch. By the time Salomé’s fingers had reached the Swede’s thighs his companions had stopped laughing and had fallen silent.
Suddenly she stopped walking her fingers, moved her hand slowly and calmly to her shoulders, and quickly jerked away the third veil; now her breasts were showing under the silk. She coiled the veil around the Swede’s head and fastened it like a headband with a knot. Shouts of appreciation could be heard around the hall but everyone at that table was focused on keeping quiet; it was as if the four Swedes had succumbed to some kind of shock, that they knew they looked defeated. But when Salomé put her hand back on the victim’s knee and began to walk her fingers further up his thigh they rediscovered their voices and called out something which was meant to sound like an incentive but which was entirely unconvincing. And just as suddenly as she had begun, the dancer stopped caressing the unsuspecting Swede: she ran the palm of her hand quickly up his inside leg, grabbing his crotch and letting go afterwards with a smile which was meant to suggest very little enthusiasm. With this she turned her back on him and stepped up onto the stage, to the sounds of general applause.
While she enjoyed the praise which the scene with the Swede had won her, and glided about on the stage, either against the column or unsupported, wearing the four veils which were still around her, a question popped into Sturla’s mind: How many male Icelandic authors had at some point in their careers been in the same situation as he was at this moment — at a Lithuanian strip club watching a daring dance which had its origin in world literature (if only in name), in the company of a Russian author of novels who, according to his companion, was not an author of novels at all, while at the next table sat four somewhat shamefaced young Swedes (who Sturla was gradually beginning to suspect were in Vilnius for the same reason he was)? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that these young men were involved with literature or some intellectual activity, especially as the bar where he had first seen them was one of the restaurants that was recommended in the festival’s information packet for participants.
Suddenly, while Sturla was taking a sip from his glass of sparkling wine, Yuri jerked him out of these thoughts by nudging him and pointing at the dancer Salomé, who was looking right at him. For a minute or two Sturla had watched her rub herself tightly against the column, but now she had let go of her hold — and Yuri was spot on, she was looking Sturla directly in the face as she stretched her hands into the air, not unlike a flamenco dancer, and let her fingers play with each other, as if they were debating what they should do with the fifty-something Icelander who had evidently come here for the first time. Sturla realized he had tensed. And it didn’t help that Igor began to whisper English words to him which sounded like old-fashioned poetry (wasn’t he and not Yuri the poet?): “Wherefore doth she look at me with her golden eyes, under her gilded eyelids?”
The Belarusian dancer continued to stare at Sturla, and when she took a step in his direction and slowly lowered her hands, Igor continued: “I know not who she is. I do not wish to know who she is.” And Sturla looked around, as if he feared that everyone in the place was expecting that he was going to suffer the same fate as the Swede; when Salomé loosened the fourth veil, the one that was wound about her stomach, and let it fall to the floor, Igor leaned closer to Sturla and whispered “Bid her begone.” This sounded like a warning, for at that very moment she was heading in Sturla’s direction, at that moment she was just about to step down from the stage — but then, without warning, the drunken Swede sprang up from his seat and leapt onto the platform. From the way his hands were placed on his waist it looked like he was going to dance like a Russian Cossack, but he also looked a bit confused, as though he was well aware that he was about to embarrass himself but had nonetheless resolved to let it happen. Salomé had frozen in place and was looking at the Swede with a startled expression, and before anyone was able to do anything about it the guy — who Sturla was going to have to thank later for taking attention away from him — had unzipped his fly and begun to slip his hand inside. But just as quickly as he had dashed up onto the stage, three others from the audience followed suit: one of his companions, another man (clearly an employee), and also Yuri. Watched by Salomé’s frightened gaze they dragged the drunk Swede down from the stage without the slightest resistance. His other two companions at the table had clearly had enough of his antics; they stood up and led him out of the hall towards the bar and the exit, as the employee, a huge, broad-shouldered man in a pinstripe suit, turned at once to the dancer to reassure her and to encourage her to continue now that he’d disappeared.
“Scandinavians,” Igor said brusquely to Sturla, a sharp comment which accorded little respect to people from the Nordic lands. “You are not Scandinavian,” he continued, sounding as though he’d forgotten to pay attention to his English pronunciation.