Shortly afterwards he starts talking again, but switches topics and says that before the war he drove various big stars to the health spa hotel, as he calls it.
“Specially to rest and improve health.”
He reflects a moment.
“Like Mick Jagger, for example. The funny thing was,” he continues, “that they were playing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ on the radio at the same time. But he didn’t sing along. Jagger I mean.”
He’s silent before picking up the thread again:
“If it wasn’t him, it was someone very like him. With one eye brown and the other blue.”
“Could it have been David Bowie?” I ask. They both look at me and the man gives it some thought.
“Yes, now that you say it, it could have been David Bowie.”
Now that he recalls it better, the driver thinks it might have been the song about a waiting starman in the sky that they were listening to, he and his passenger.
“But he was shorter than I expected him to be,” he continues. Which didn’t surprise him because he had heard that famous people are smaller than you think. “People are either taller or shorter than you expect,” he adds.
And while the driver was watching Mick Jagger or David Bowie through the rearview mirror, he noticed how he was moving his big lips to the song.
“That sounds like Jagger,” I say.
He nods.
“Yeah, I’m sure it was one of the two.”
The woman smiles. Is she smiling at me?
Dusk is falling as we drive into the town under the bloody sky. The streets are narrow and cobbled and the car meanders on. My gaze shifts to a paved lane and I notice that there are large holes in the exposed pipes like flayed flesh.
As the driver is taking the suitcases out of the trunk I notice that his left jacket sleeve, which had lain motionless in his lap, is empty.
He raises the stump.
“Land mine,” he says, and adds that he was lucky because he got away with losing his hearing in one ear and half an arm.
“It makes all the difference to have kept my elbow.”
Then he moves the hair off one ear with his whole hand and shows me the half-ear and the scar that stretches to his temple.
“The rearview mirror helps me to understand what people are saying. I look and then I hear,” he adds.
And me I think: I hear and see.
As I’m walking through the entrance of Hotel Silence holding my toolbox, I hear him say:
“You think air raids solve everything.” Although more to himself.
II. SCARS
Watching over everything is the silence, silence
Although Hotel Silence has clearly pulled through the war reasonably unscathed, it still leaves a lot to be desired when compared to its online photographs. It’s as if all of its colours have faded, like a pale body that hasn’t seen the sun for a long time. A musty scent lingers in the air. I recognise the chandeliers on the ceiling but their light is dull and grey and lacks sparkle.
The young man at the reception desk speaks English, like the driver, and could be about twenty years old, the same age I was when I started keeping a diary about cloud formations and the flesh. He’s in a white shirt and tie and sports long bangs, which every now and then he strokes to one side.
We stand side by side for a very brief moment, the woman and I, like a couple checking into a hotel, then I take one step back with my toolbox. As the woman is filling out a form, I glance around. She and the young man talk in hushed tones.
I immediately see that the hotel needs maintenance. In many places the paint is peeling and the ceiling shows signs of both dampness and damaged plaster. I wouldn’t be surprised if the building hasn’t been heated for a long time, it is not unlike returning to a cold summer house in the spring after a winter of heavy snow. This place should be aired and patched up here and there. I knock on the wall but can’t identify the type of wood. What kind of forests were we driving through? Redwood? The entrance hall also serves as a kind of lobby and what draws my attention is the large fireplace. It has been lit and the smell of smoke wafts through the air.
Above the fire there is a painting of a forest, in the middle of which stands a leopard who gazes out of the picture while a hunter stares at the beast with a fearless glint in his eyes. The wild animal, though, looks like a fairly harmless feline with doll’s eyes.
I notice the young man occasionally peeping at me as he attends to the woman. She doesn’t remove her sunglasses, so it occurs to me that she might have a migraine after her journey.
Once the woman has vanished up the stairs with a key, the young man turns to me and leans over the desk, confidentially:
“Movie star.”
He seems to be wracking his brain.
“What was the last movie she starred in again?” He thinks a moment. “Man with a Mission? No,” he corrects himself. “Wasn’t it Man without a Mission?”
But then he’s not sure anymore and says she hasn’t been seen here on a big screen for a while.
I’m asked to fill out several forms, which takes up considerable time, the questionnaire is similar to the one at the airport. Parents. Where were they born? Should I write Laxárdalur in the eastern district of Húnavatn in Mom’s column? Family status, children, next of kin, emergency number? Who should be called in the event of a mishap? I write Gudrún Waterlily Jónasdóttir and her phone number. He runs through the form to make sure I’ve filled in all the boxes.
“They ask for your height,” he
