“So you’re from Dalir?”
He eyes me up.
“We don’t hide our beauty queens in the kitchen, instead we’ll put you out serving in the dining room.”
He stands.
“You’re hired and start on Monday at nine. And one other thing, Miss Hekla, you won’t serve in trousers, but in a skirt. You’ll get your uniform on Monday.”
The head waiter escorts me through the smoking corner of the dining room, between the starched white tablecloths. There are silver sugar bowls and cream jugs on the tables and crystal chandeliers in the air. He gives me a briefing, speaking in hushed tones, and tells me that the bulk of the customers are a group of elderly gentlemen, who are considered permanent guests and show up for the cold buffet at noon, when it’s jam-packed, and elderly ladies who come in for coffee and cakes in the mid-afternoon, usually in twos or threes. The bar is open for two hours during the day, from eleven to one, which is when the select clientele gets drunk; many of them become unruly and difficult to handle. Then there are the high school boys who come in and order coffee with sugar cubes and nothing else, and sit here for ages smoking, he explains. They’re bunking off school, have poetry books in their pockets and dream of becoming poets. Once they’ve had a poem published in the school mag they move over to Skálinn, Mokka or Laugavegur 11, he concludes.
I notice a woman in a black skirt and white apron and cap atop a dome-shaped structure of lacquered hair, who is standing with a coffee pot by a round table, pouring into the cups of a group of middle-aged men. She observes me.
“There will be two of you in the dining room with the waiters,” he explains.
Finally he shows me the Gilded Ballroom where Ellý Vilhjálms sings with Jón Páll’s band on weekends, as well as the back rooms and dressing rooms, adding that there are forty-six bedrooms in the hotel that can accommodate seventy-three guests. Next week Lyndon B. Johnson, the vice-president of the United States, is expected in the country and, even though Johnson himself will be staying at the newly opened Hotel Saga, a part of his entourage will be staying at Hotel Borg. He lowers his voice even further to inform me that the vice-president is interested in vegetation and livestock, and has expressed some interest in visiting Icelandic farmlands. As he says this, he indicates someone with a nod of the chin:
“That’s one of the heads of the Sheep Farmers’ Association sitting over at the corner table with the director of the Reykjavík Sewage System. It seems likely that Mrs Johnson will be visiting his sheep farm.” To complete the tour, he shows me how to clock in and out with my card.
When we walk through the kitchen, the woman who was serving in the dining room is standing by the sink, smoking. She fans the smoke away, stubs out the cigarette, chucks it in the bin, grabs a tray with prawn mayonnaise open sandwiches and prepares to swing back into the room.
“Sirrí, this is Hekla. The new serving girl. She’ll be working in the dining room with you.”
I stretch out my hand and she nods without putting down the tray.
I work it out in my head: If I work nine hours and sleep for seven, I’ll have eight hours left over in the day to write and read. If I want to write at night, there’s no one to stop me. And no one who is encouraging me to do so either. No one is waiting for a novel by Hekla Gottskálksdóttir.
The man in the Snæbjörn bookstore allows me to put an ad up in the window.
Single girl with full-time job looking for room to rent. Punctual monthly payments.
I have a dream
The sofa is covered in newspaper cuttings.
I bend over and swiftly skim through them. They’re in both Icelandic and English and they all seem to be about the black American pastor Martin Luther King.
“The black rights campaigner,” says Jón John. “I’ve been collecting these. The blacks aren’t free, no more than we are. But they’ve recently found a voice.”
He bends to smooth out some of the crumpled cuttings with his hands, reads in silence and carefully rearranges them on the sofa.
His lips are moving.
“I dream of a world in which there is a place for everyone,” he says.
I notice the Icelandic cuttings are shorter than the others, by just a few lines. My friend confirms this.
“King gave his speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom last month, but none of the Icelandic papers reports what he said.” He picks up a few clips:
“Althydubladid on August the 29th mentions the march and that the black leader gave a speech but doesn’t quote any of it. Morgunbladid makes very little of the march and doesn’t say a single word about Martin Luther King or the speech. But it says that some famous artists participated in the march to draw the limelight to themselves. It also says that there were fewer people than expected. But it was still a higher number than the entire Icelandic population put together, Hekla.”
He takes a deep breath.
“But since Icelanders have no interest in Martin Luther King,” he continues, “his friend down south at the Vellir base has procured him some American papers that his sister sent him from back home.” Jón John browses through the collection searching for a particular clipping, pulls out the article and translates for me as he reads:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character… I have a dream today!”
He has tears in his eyes.
“King says the black man’s problems are the white man’s problems.” He carefully puts the cutting back in its place
