Svanur’s face is one big question mark.
I explain.
“When she said, ‘Waterlily phoned,’ then I would answer, ‘Yeah, Waterlily phoned?’ That’s called repetition, she said.”
Svanur looks at me as if I’d proposed a new theory on the laws of black hole physics and time.
“Isn’t it okay to repeat?” he asks hesitantly.
“No, Gudrún didn’t think so.”
“And what should one say—instead of repeating?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you ask her not to leave?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He grabs a milk carton from the fridge, pours two glasses, and pushes one over to me. My mother sometimes saves a glass of milk for me with a slice of brown-butter layer cake with white buttercream on a plate on her beside table; the milk is lukewarm out of the steel flask that is actually meant for coffee, I know the taste.
We are both silent.
Then my neighbour picks up the thread.
“Now you’re a womaniser.”
I ask myself whether I’ve misheard him or whether he might attribute some other meaning to that word than I do. But Svanur isn’t the type to speak in metaphors.
Should I tell him that I haven’t touched a woman’s bare flesh—not deliberately at least—not held a woman with both hands for eight years and five months, or since Gudrún and I stopped having sex together, and that apart from my mother, ex-wife, and daughter—the three Gudrúns—there are no women in my life. There is no shortage of bodies in this world, however, and they occasionally have the power to stir me and remind me that I am a man. A woman steps out of a hot tub, water trickles down her flesh and the mounting steam engulfs her; it’s close to freezing outside and the half-moon wading through the clouds enters the scene just before the swimming pool closes. It’s also possible that I may have unwittingly grazed bare arms in a short-sleeved shirt while I was in line at a store, or that a woman’s hair may have touched me as she was bending over; the girl who cuts my hair springs to mind, for example. When she shampoos me at the sink, she stands behind me, massages me around the temples and says I have good hair. I once asked her what she was thinking and she laughed, looking at me through the mirror, and answered: a certain man and recipe. No, I would need to shoot myself, to shred my flesh with a steel bullet to feel the body. That’s what men do.
“Because some of Aurora’s friends were asking whether you were chasing skirt. She asked me and I told her that you’re not chasing skirt at the moment. They asked Aurora if you were over your wife yet and she asked me and I told her you weren’t. They wanted to know whether you frequented cafés or the theatre and I said I didn’t think so. They asked if you’re a reader and I told Aurora that you are, so she told them and they seemed to be quite excited by that and wanted to know what kind of books and I said novels and poetry, and they wanted to know Icelandic or foreign and I said both.”
Before I know it, I’ve popped the question:
“I was wondering if you could lend me a rifle. For the weekend.”
If my request has caught him off guard, he isn’t showing any sign of it. Instead he nods, takes off the apron, and places it on the back of the chair, as if he had been waiting for me to mention the weapon. He vanishes into the living room and I hear him rummaging through a locked cupboard. In the meantime, I examine two photographs on the fridge, one of Svanur in a fleece jacket with the dog by his side and the other of Aurora in a group of smiling women. They’re in outdoor gear and hiking boots and half of the group is kneeling as if it were a photo of a soccer team. After a short while he returns with the rifle and leans it against the wall, beside the mop. He motions towards the pictures.
“Once the caravan is fixed, Aurora and I can find our own patch of moss by any babbling brook we want.”
He then sits opposite me at the table and pours himself another glass of milk.
I hear him say that he suspects Aurora has started to read poetry.
“When I slipped past her through the bathroom door last night, she said that I was eclipsing her horizon.”
He shakes his head.
“Sometimes I feel it’s better to think about Aurora than have her beside me. She’d never understand that.”
He has his elbows on the table, hands in front of his face, and speaks between his fingers.
“Aurora doesn’t realise that a man has got stuff going on inside. That a man has a feeling for beauty. Oil leaks from the car onto the wet asphalt and the rainbow colours make me dream of another reality.”
I stand up, take the shotgun, and Svanur escorts me to the front steps. I hold the weapon under my arm, with the barrel pointing down.
Should I tell him how things are, that I’m not going to grow old?
Does he suspect that?
If I were to ask Svanur to give me just one reason why I should continue to live.
I’d only ask for one, but it could be two.
By way of explanation, I’d say that I’m lost.
Would he then say: I know what you mean, I don’t know who I am either. And embrace me in the gap of the hall door, half inside and half out, his body framed in a rectangular halo, over a hundred kilos, in a T-shirt tucked into his trousers at the front and hanging out at the back. Two middle-aged men locked in an embrace on the steps in front of the entrance, the fifth of the fifth?
Aurora would call out: “Who’s there? If they’re selling dried fish or prawns, take the prawns.
