“The problems of gays are the problems of non-gays, Hekla.”
He folds the paper cuttings, one after another, collects them together and puts them back in their place in the Sælgætisgerdin Nóa sweets tin, opens the wardrobe and places the box at the bottom of it beside the sewing machine.
He shakes his head.
“I’ve tried in vain to get a job at the Vellir base, but they don’t want any blacks or queers. Even though I’m half soldier. Queers get kicked out of the army and jailed if they’re found out. They’re looked upon as child molesters and communists.” He sits down on the bed beside me.
“The Icelandic government negotiated a deal to make sure there would be no blacks at the base. They sent one over by mistake last year, and they let him stay on condition that he never left the barracks. He had a tough time this summer because he couldn’t sleep in the sunlight at night.”
He’s silent for a brief moment and then says:
“My blood runs in the veins of so many, Hekla. Both in those who’ve gone and those who have yet to be born.”
He then wants to know how the job interviews went. I tell him I’ve been given a job as a serving girl in Hotel Borg.
“I’m supposed to serve in a skirt and not in trousers.”
He smiles.
I also tell him that his namesake, Johnson, the vice-president of the United States, is coming to the country next week.
“Might he be a distant relative?” I add. “L.B. Johnson and D.J. Johnson?”
“There’s a difference of one ‘s’. I’m Johnsson with two s’s. The son of John.”
The Beauty Society
The trays are heavy, once they have been loaded with coffee pots, silver sugar bowls and cream jugs.
The head waiter is keeping an eye on me on my first day at the job. So is my colleague Sirrí.
“This is my serving area and that’s yours,” she says. “You serve those tables and I serve these tables.” She watches and is waiting for me when I come back into the kitchen after my first trip with the tray. She wants to warn me that certain punters can get difficult when they’ve had a few drinks.
“The older men are the worst,” she says.
“If they pinch you, then come into the kitchen and we’ll switch tables. They grab you when you walk past. They grope your arse and run a hand up your skirt. They’ll also fondle your breasts when you’re pouring into their cups. Then they’ll do everything to make us bend over. Normally they’ll drop a teaspoon. Once a waiter wanted to spare me the trouble and was about to bend over for the spoon, but the customer insisted on me doing it. They whisper into your ear, follow you, want to know where you live. They wait for the serving girls after they’ve finished their shifts. One drunken regular customer followed a girl into the larder when she was getting some mayonnaise. He cornered her there and tried to touch her up like a piece of meat. If they follow you out onto the street, go into the lingerie store at the bottom of Skólavördustígur and ask them to let you use the back door out of the storage room. They won’t dare follow you in there.” She mentions some other stores that have a backdoor exit such as the Liverpool domestic appliances store. I feel like asking her whether there are any bookstores that save damsels in distress, whether it’s possible to hide there, even for a whole night, alone with a book, but I refrain.
“Beginners face the highest risk,” she adds.
“If you complain they’ll say: that’s the way it’s always been, get used to it.
“One girl lost her balance when she was pinched and dropped her tray. She was a single mother and had a kid to look after. She got a warning and was transferred to cleaning the rooms. That’s said to be even worse because the chambermaids are alone with guests who walk around naked in open dressing gowns while they’re vacuum-cleaning. I don’t know what happened, but one day she came down from the third floor, crying and was in a real state. They took her into the office.”
My colleague blows her smoke into concentric rings and then stubs out the cigarette.
“They said she wasn’t the right type for this kind of job.”
When I walk back into the room to collect the dirty crockery, I notice a familiar man sitting at a round table with a group of old men, watching me.
He’s had the meat soup and is carefully cleaning the meat off the bones and sucking out the marrow. A pile of bones lies on the rim of the plate.
He addresses me through a cloud of cigar smoke.
“So you’ve started waitressing at Hotel Borg.”
I look up, it’s the man from the coach, the one from the Beauty Society who gave me his business card.
“Do you enjoy laying tables?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer but continues.
“I only ask because one of the tests in the Miss Iceland competition entails precisely that: laying a table and folding serviettes.”
He adds that the competition is still being developed and they are also considering asking the girls to have a go at repotting plants.
“Are you interested in house plants?”
“No.”
“Needlework?”
“No.”
“Reading good books?”
“No, only bad books.”
He looks at me uncertainly and laughs.
“So the girl has a sense of humour.”
The man leans over to his neighbour and mutters something, as if he were putting him into the picture. His table companion eyes me up and nods his head.
Then he turns to me again and asks if I’ve thought the matter over.
“What matter?”
“Can I invite you to become Miss Iceland?”
“No, thank you.”
The man continues unabated.
“You’ll get to travel abroad, a limousine and private chauffeur.”
I quickly pick up the dishes.
“… Miss Iceland gets a crown and sceptre, a blue Icelandic festival costume with a golden belt for the competition on Long Island, two gowns and a coat with
