“I’m not too sure I’ll be going there again,” Sturla blurts out without thinking; he knows himself well enough to recognize that repaying Liliya’s confession with the same words (saying that he’s happy to see her, too) would reflect badly on his character. On the other hand, that’s how he feels right now, and he wonders whether the day before yesterday they’d experienced something which another kind of person might call love at first sight (or friendship at first meeting). A word he’s always considered rather lackluster pops into this mind, the word union, and when he applies it to the two of them, it’s as though he’s come across it in a noveclass="underline" he isn’t at all convinced by the idea that they’ve become infatuated with each other, after having met just three times (especially when he’s fled without fail on every occasion, or so it seems). He always vanishes for some reason just when they are about to talk.
“What do you mean by that?” asks Liliya, and she nods to Rolf, who she’s clearly met before.
“It seems to be a rule these days that wherever I’m meant to go, I’m not there — and vice versa.”
“But you’re flying to Iceland the day after we return to Vilnius, didn’t you tell me that?”
“Strictly speaking, I’ve only booked a flight for that day,” says Sturla, and asks Liliya how the lecture was.
“Nothing especially exciting,” replies Liliya, smiling impishly. “Or yes, perhaps it was a little exciting. I counted at least three sleeping poets during the last part. I thought, at one point, that one of them had died, a man I actually know (or knew); he is from Ukraine. Then one of the speakers, a Lithuanian, spilled his coffee over the papers of the next speaker. So, all in all, it was rather exciting.”
Rolf, who’s begun talking with Roger, can’t help but hear what Liliya says, and her words spark a burst of laughter in him, which in turn somehow arouses his thirst, so he offers to get in a round of drinks for everyone. There is an open bar beside the food table, and Sturla can see that the line is ten or fifteen meters long.
Based on Liliya’s account of the day before, she seems to be enjoying her stay in Druskininkai. But as they put food on their plates — and offer to take Rolf’s spot in line for the bar — she is curious to know why Sturla, as opposed to some other Icelander (that is exactly how she puts it), was sent to the festival. What were the reasons behind the choice — she’d heard (perhaps the evening before, at the welcome reception) that everyone in Iceland is a poet or musician — and how was he funding his journey since this festival didn’t, of course, pay travel expenses?
“What mainly counts is that the poet in question has published something which. .” Sturla stops himself from continuing; he can hear how dry and rote he sounds. Instead, he corrects Liliya’s notion about the creative talents of his people: in Iceland everyone is a poet and a musician, as well as working in a bank or even managing a bank. And he adds that the Writers’ Union is generally in charge of selecting who goes to what festival, and in his case the state was paying his travel expenses. In that sense, he really is the face of his nation abroad, her symbol to another nation, no different than when one country sends a carefully-chosen delegate to this or that management or business meeting across the world.
Liliya nudges Sturla and points out to him a pale-looking, long-haired man who’s wearing some kind of burlap coat which looks rather like a bathrobe. He is holding a plate heaped with potatoes, green beans and boiled carrots, and with his other hand he pours himself an orange-colored drink from the faucet of a machine. “That, then, is the face of Norway,” she whispers to him, smiling.
“And yet they haven’t always looked like that,” replied Sturla. “I know that because my grandfather was once ambassador to Norway.”
Rolf returns, bringing a tray with eight beer bottles, shortly after Sturla, Liliya and Roger have sat down with their food-laden plates, and he goes to get himself some pork and potatoes which he says looked rather promising. Sturla has no sooner popped the first bite into his mouth then Gintaras — who Sturla has managed to forget he’d been talking to in the lobby when the confusion over Roger broke out — suddenly comes up to him and politely asks him to come over to the lobby; he needs to have a few words with him. Sturla takes one of the beer bottles and apologizes to Liliya.
“You’re here, at least,” Gintaras says, in his strong accent, when they reach the chilly entryway to the building. Sturla is having difficulty working out why this conversation couldn’t wait until after the meal. “You say you took the bus?”
Sturla gives him the obvious answer — realizing that he isn’t fishing to find out if Sturla had taken a taxi and was expecting the festival to pay — but as he’s about to explain why he didn’t come the day before, he decides not to. There is something about Gintaras’s demeanor he doesn’t like, and he decides to let him direct the conversation.
“I’m disturbing your dinner because it is necessary for me to carry out certain inquiries which possibly concern you,” says Gintaras, and for a moment Sturla thinks the man is joking.
“I don’t mind about the food,” Sturla replies. “There’s time enough for eating that, right?”
“Yes, yes. Yes, yes,” replies Gintaras, evidently not entirely at ease. “But tell me: do you know the restaurant Literatu Svetainé? In Vilnius?”
Sturla looks into the eyes of this man who, instead of offering to assist Sturla (who has only just arrived), is interrupting his lunch. “Literatu? Is that the restaurant in the Writers’ Union building?”
“No, it is on the same street as the hotel you stayed at. On Gedimino. At the corner of the church square.”
“I don’t know the name,” replies Sturla. “Literatu what?”
“Svetainé. There is an American woman poet here” (he uses the word poetess) “named Jenny Lipp. She talked to me just now because she recognized you when she saw you in line for food, but didn’t remember you from yesterday, and. .”
“I wasn’t here yesterday,” Sturla interjects, letting the organizer irritate him even more.
“No, no. No, no. I know that. But she asked me if you were a participant in the festival and. . she also said she’d seen you in the restaurant I named, two days ago, I believe she said.”
“It seems unlikely to me,” answers Sturla. “And what is the reason for that. .? Why is she telling you that she believes she recognizes me from some restaurant? I don’t fully understand.”
“Well, I really don’t know what to say,” replies Gintaras, and it is clear that he has painted himself into a corner. “But you say you don’t know this restaurant in Vilnius?”
“No, I haven’t been to any restaurant by the church tower. I know exactly where the tower is. I did go, on the other hand, to a restaurant which Jokûbas guided me to, in — what was the street called?. . Pilies. . and. . you know Jokûbas Daugirdas, don’t you?” Sturla makes sure to keep quiet about the overcoat which was stolen from him there; he wants to connect his acquaintance, Jokûbas, with that loss, but he knows all too well that another man’s overcoat is foremost in Gintaras’s thoughts, a man who hasn’t thought about why the word of an American poetess suffices to disturb a poet from Iceland during his dinner. “And I can’t say that I would recommend the restaurant,” continues Sturla.
“No, no. I’m only asking you about it now because our Jenny was curious,” says Gintaras, a little embarrassed, and then he explains, as though Sturla has asked about it, that they’d nicknamed her our Jenny because she lives in Vilnius half the year.
“All right,” says Sturla, then he asks in passing if Jenny didn’t live in Kaunas; he had heard that she came from Kansas but lived in Kaunas.