“I have great difficulty imagining that gun-toting guy at this event we were invited to yesterday,” continues the Argentine poet Rolf with a smile. Sturla thanks his lucky stars that this man, rather than some bore, had been waiting for him at the start of his three-day sojourn in Druskininkai. “After dinner yesterday — I’m not going to tell you how it tasted — we were led by our reins into some old bath house at the back of the lot.” Rolf points towards the back door in the middle of the room. “And then some kind of lyrical play was performed for us, some highfalutin play that had so little to do with reality — I don’t know what your opinion of poetry is — that we would have needed a gunshot from the Greenlander to bring the spectators, or even better the performers, back down to earth — and I bet that’s exactly what the Greenlander would have done: he’d never have sat quietly in his seat through the whole debacle.”
It occurs to Sturla that it’s a little unfair of the half-German Argentinean to direct his sarcasm at a festival to which he’s been invited in good faith; while such a character could be entertaining to pass a little time with, it could be risky to show him too much attention; he might start taking advantage of this attention to get his interlocutor on his side, so to speak. When irony becomes someone’s habitual way of expressing themselves, then they are quick to lose sight of how uniform the stance has become — and how tiring. But hadn’t Sturla done the same thing, or worse, in his article against the festival? Would his readers — if the article was printed in Jónatan’s magazine (not that it looked likely at the moment) — recognize that his irony wasn’t meant to be hostile? It was used, rather, to incite the reader to re-consider how a festival of this caliber might best succeed. But Sturla is beginning now to feel like he might expect to spend a few enjoyable days with some stimulating company; even just Liliya, and now this lively guy Rolf, would be enough.
After they talk a little more — a conversation which convinces Sturla he doesn’t need to fear that the Argentinean will become a nuisance — Rolf proposes that they head to the main building, where the lecture- and dining-room are housed. And he advises Sturla to leave his luggage at the bar; he will get the key to his room once he has met Gintaras. The pink-haired woman overhears the conversation and corrects Rolf; she has the keys to the rooms. Sturla can leave the case in his room before they go to Dainava, which Rolf tells him is the name of the main building.
Sturla’s room turns out to be in the next building, a building which reminds him even more of Madame Ranevskaya’s country estate because it hasn’t been contaminated by the Scandinavian ski-lodge style. His room is small but pristine and neatly decorated: he describes it to Rolf when he returns to the bar as being “like a woman’s powder room from the turn of the nineteenth century, provided, of course, you take away the television.” Rolf, who says that he hasn’t been quite so lucky with his room, which is in some Stalinesque industrial-era block next to the Dainava building, has ordered another round of beer, and fifteen minutes later as they stroll out the back door, the same door Sturla used on his way to his building, Sturla notices that Mister Tuzenbach is more than a little drunk. It isn’t even a minute’s walk to Dainava, a strikingly ugly concrete house with four floors, nothing at all like the amenable set for The Cherry Orchard.
Despite the mostly mild weather this October morning, a whole row of coats is hanging on the coat rack inside the building. The babble of voices carries down from the upper stories, which Rolf takes to indicate that the lecture is over and that it is now time for lunch; he feels sure that the events have been arranged around the meals, rather than the meals arranged to accommodate the length of the lectures.
As the group comes down the stairs towards the entrance, one of the first people Rolf points out to Sturla is Gintaras; “You should watch out for that one,” he whispers. “Although he looks like your typical, dull office worker, at the welcoming ceremony last night, he was trying to pour down his throat, and the throats of everyone around him, about as many vodka shots as there were minutes.” Rolf introduces Sturla to Gintaras when he has come down the stairs, and as Sturla stumbles for words to explain why he didn’t get on the bus the day before, he sees Roger the Dane. Roger is supporting himself on the banister in the middle of the staircase, looking pale and sickly, and he seems to be in need of help, like he won’t be able to make it to the lobby on his own. Sturla can’t decide whether Gintaras completely believes his excuse about having arrived too late for the bus, and he looks stunned when Sturla begs his forgiveness: “Roger, the Dane,” needs someone to hold onto. And as Sturla and Rolf hurry up the stairs, Liliya suddenly appears along with some other people on the landing of the staircase, and at the same moment Sturla and Liliya’s eyes meet, Roger draws everyone’s undivided attention by sinking down and sitting on the stairs, groaning either from exhaustion or effort.
Liliya has a sheer yellow scarf bound around her head, and despite the dramatic circumstances Sturla gets a warm feeling when he looks at her. They immediately go to Roger and nod to each other — which Sturla thinks apt in front of the Dane. Rolf and the others who have followed Liliya are standing a few steps away, and Gintaras comes to help Sturla and Liliya, first in making sure that Roger is showing all the usual signs of being alive, and then by helping him onto his feet and supporting him the rest of the way down the stairs. Liliya smiles tenderly at Sturla, and she says she will meet him in the dining room soon; she and Gintaras will see to Roger, who has been somewhat feeble since they arrived, the poor man.
“Too much poetic strain,” Rolf whispers to Sturla with a smile, and Sturla is about to give him an explanation for the Dane’s exhaustion — that he’d nodded his head too fast, and too often, during the lecture — but he decides against it; he realizes that irony shouldn’t take up too much room in this early stage of their acquaintance. The two of them, he thinks, are probably the only participants who’ve had two beers and two shots of vodkas before noon.
They come into the huge, rather unpleasant hall where tables have been set for more than a hundred people, and they sit at the round table nearest the door, so that they are easy to spot and “Liliya, my friend, the one in the yellow scarf, won’t need to look for us when she comes in,” as Sturla tells Rolf. They have their backs to the bright windows, which reach to the floor, and people of a similar age sit at the table that’s facing the two companions — which is how Sturla has begun describing the two of them in his mind, after their hour-long friendship. It quickly becomes clear that they need to get their food from a long table that is out of sight behind a stout column, but just as they stand up with their plates, Liliya appears in the door. She is resting her hand on Roger’s shoulder; he looks much better now than he had a few minutes before. They sit down next to Sturla and Rolf, Liliya beside Sturla and Roger by Rolf, and Sturla considers his physical proximity to Liliya a real reason to be happy.
She places a hand on his shoulder and plants a kiss on both cheeks, although not a third, like the greeting the American got from the two women in front of the Novotel Hotel.
“It’s good to see you again. I thought you’d gone back to Iceland.”