“No that’s Daniella. Daniella Goldblum. She’s also a guest of the festival this year. But please excuse me,” asks Gintaras, and Sturla assures him it’s no problem; he even tries to look friendly. Although the organizer has certainly allowed the American poet to speak badly of him, Sturla figures he owes him something for having played hooky on the first day of the festival.
When he sits back down between Liliya and Rolf the latter is only just beginning to eat while Liliya has cleaned her plate.
“He has very particular consultation hours,” Liliya says playfully, and she apologizes for having stolen some things off Sturla’s plate. She is going to get a very little more, and she asks Sturla and Rolf if she shouldn’t get some more beers on the way.
Sturla finds Liliya’s confession turns him on a little, but he is also irritated by Gintaras’s over-officiousness, and no less by this so-called Jenny Lipp. Was she the one in the suit or in the white coat? He takes off his scarf, which he’s been wearing since he got off the bus. He slips out of his jacket and lets it rest on his chair back. As he watches Liliya move away from the table with her plate, he listens to Roger tell Rolf, in Danish, about his high opinion of the English poet Keats.
This, then, is what a Belarusian really looks like, thinks Sturla, as he imagines how time might have treated the body Liliya conceals in light-blue jeans and a black tunic, a body which has endured a similar length of time as his own, a body about which he hasn’t yet wondered if it has reproduced or if it is “in someone else’s possession,” as he phrases it to himself; he is amazed that he hasn’t yet considered whether Liliya is married or in a relationship. He doesn’t remember having seen a ring on her finger, but he does remember that she knows nothing about him — not that he is the divorced father of five children, the same number as his grandfather Benedikt had, a man who around the middle of last century was the official face of the Icelandic people in two countries, first in Sweden, then in Norway.
Just as Rolf said, the food tastes good, “even better than the day before.” But Sturla doesn’t get much time to enjoy his meal; he has only half-finished the meager portion he’d gotten for himself when Gintaras comes back to the table and asks Sturla to accompany him into the lobby again. This time, there is no apology for the disturbance.
“You know who she is, Jenny Lipp, don’t you?” he asks when they get to the lobby, and the determination he tries to manifest is evidently unnatural to him.
“Like I said, I just got here this morning,” Sturla answers curtly.
“You must have seen her at the reading” says Gintaras, and his assertive tone persuades Sturla that the invisible Jenny, who in all likelihood is right now enjoying her midday meal in peace, is certain of her accusation: it was definitely him, the Icelander— who, ever-so-humbly, had only now arrived at the festival — who’d been sitting at the bar in the restaurant on Gedimino. She isn’t just “wondering” if it was the case, as her messenger, Gintaras, put it earlier.
“Although you didn’t make it to Druskininkai on time,” Gintaras says, “you had already arrived in Vilnius by the time the Americans’ reading took place.”
“You have to excuse me,” says Sturla, “but I am having no small amount of difficulty understanding why it is that I ought to recognize this Jenny Lipp.” He tries to use as formal a wording as possible in order to underscore the absurdity of the topic of discussion, and he recognizes at once how peculiar it is that the two of them, adult men from different countries who are meeting for the first time, are having this conversation.
“She says she is certain that she saw you at the restaurant I mentioned before,” replies Gintaras, “and the waiter said that. .”
“You can tell her from me,” interrupts Sturla, “that I am certain I have never seen her before. I do not know what this person looks like. And that is the end of the matter.”
“You say you are certain you never went to the restaurant?”
Sturla tries to use his eyes to make clear to Gintaras that he is done answering questions. “As I told you, and as I thought you understood,” he says, “I have only been into one restaurant in Vilnius, and one alone; it was a place on Pilies Street. And in case you want to know, I didn’t get to finish any of the food I ordered there. Which it looks like is going to happen here too.”
“She told me that the waiter at the restaurant had confirmed that. .”
“I can only add,” Sturla says firmly, “that the scarf you saw me wearing just a moment ago was bought in Vilnius because my overcoat was stolen in the restaurant I was telling you about. And now you are talking to me as though I have committed a crime! ‘But someone saw you in some place!’ As far as I know, I’ve been seen by other people all my life — except, perhaps, the occasional times when I’ve been in the toilet.”
“I am not accusing you of anything,” Gintaras attempts to assure Sturla. “For my part, it is a pain to have to trouble you with all this, but as the organizer and guarantor of this festival, it is my duty to attend to all matters which concern our guests. And she, this Jenny Lipp, has, as I said, asked me to investigate whether. .”
“To investigate?” interrupts Sturla, and he gets an affirmative answer to his question about whether she, Jenny, had herself used the word “investigate.”
“She thinks you took Darryl Rothman’s overcoat from the coat rack in the restaurant she saw you in.”
Sturla looks at Gintaras for a few moments, then replies: “Forgive me, Gintaras. It is Gintaras, isn’t it?” And when Gintaras nods his head, wearing an anxious expression, Sturla continues: “Should I know who Darryl Rothman is? Wasn’t I just telling you how my overcoat had been stolen from a restaurant in Vilnius? And do you know who runs that restaurant? It is the brother of a man from here, a man called Jokûbas who works with this festival. You know Jokûbas Daugirdas, don’t you?”
“It shouldn’t make any difference who Darryl Rothman is,” replies Gintaras. “What Jenny was concerned about is that. . you. .”—he hesitates and looks around uneasily—“that perhaps you have. . inadvertently. . taken his overcoat with you from the place.”
While Sturla repeats his question about who Darryl Rothman is, saying that he has a right to know, he looks towards the dining room and sees that Liliya has sat back down and is hunched over her food.
“Darryl Rothman is an art dealer from America who subsidizes our festival. He is actually headed to Tallinn on a rather similar business trip right now. .”
“And this Jenny said I’d inadvertently taken some overcoat?” asks Sturla as he praises himself for having correctly guessed the conceited overcoat owner’s profession. “Are you sure she used the word “inadvertently”?” he adds, and he continues, after Gintaras admits that perhaps she hadn’t used the word “inadvertently,” “It seems to me that she is actually accusing me of having stolen some overcoat from some American guy I’ve never seen, from some restaurant I’ve never been to — and now it occurs to me that maybe this American you named is the person who stole my overcoat. All I have to say is that I don’t care for accusations by a woman from America who I have never heard reading her poetry and whose lousy poetry I never want to hear read. You can tell her to go to hell!” And when it is evident that the fury behind his words is enough to silence the organizer, Sturla storms out of the place towards the dining hall but stops when he reaches the door and turns back to Gintaras. “In fact, I’ve got a better idea,” he says. “You can tell her to go back to America!” He pushes open the door and heads as coolly as he can manage over to the table by the window.