Page 151 of Hang on St. Christopher

Smith could be any one of hundreds of men flying anywhere.

It was all really rather brilliant. This was how a professional lost a tail. Multiple flights, multiple identities before continuing to his final destination.

Two days of this, staying at the airport Hilton, looking at grainy CCTV tapes, eating Hafragrautur (oatmeal and water) for breakfast, and cod and chips for lunch and dinner.

Sympathetic local peelers, a good airport bookshop where I found Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden’sLetters from Iceland.

The hotel room. Night. A bed. A table. A desk. A lamp. Some nice stationery. A Bible in Icelandic, which began with1 Í upphafi skapaði Guð himin og jörð.2 Jörðin var þá auð og tóm, og myrkur grúfði yfir djúpinu, og andi Guðs sveif yfir vötnunum.3 Guð sagði: “Verði ljós!” Og það varð ljós.Too much bloody light, in fact. Through double curtains at midnight, the sun had still not quite set. I read one of MacNeice’s bits fromLetters from Iceland,which was typically Ulsterish in its gloomy portents but which got my mood perfectly:

So I write these lines for you

Who have felt the death wish too.

But your lust for life prevails?—

Drinking coffee, telling tales.

Our prerogatives as men

Will be cancelled who knows when;

Still I drink your health before

The gun-butt raps upon the door.

I pulled back the curtain and stared at the annoying twilight. This was all bloody pointless, wasn’t it? It wasn’t even my case. I got up, dressed, and got a taxi to the airport. I went to the Iceland Air information desk to book a flight home, but there was no one there. There was no one in the entire airport apart from a couple of sleepy security guards and a cleaning crew.

I walked around looking at the closed shops and restaurants. There is something beautiful and depressing about an empty airport with its harsh lighting and its implicit message that to go is the great thing, thathereis the place you should not be.

Buses to Reykjavik ran every twenty minutes day or night, rain, shine, or snow. I was leaving Iceland today come what may, and I’d never seen anything of the place.

I went outside.

It was 4:25 a.m., but of course the sun was up.

The bus driver, a suspiciously cheerful lady with curly red hair, asked me in English where in the city I wanted dropped off.

“I don’t know. Anywhere, I suppose. I just want a quick look ’round. I’m flying out this afternoon.”

“I will drop you at the Rat House.”

“That sounds like my kind of place.”

A twenty-five-minute run through what appeared to be a volcanic wasteland until we hit the outskirts of Reyk. Pretty, colorful houses that weren’t at all like the tin shacks of MacNeice and Auden’s day.

The bus driver dropped me at the Ráðhús Reykjavíkur, which turned out to be the city hall and visitors’ center.

There were plenty of people around: elven, athletic, handsome people in T-shirts and light jackets. A grubby dark-haired, unshaven, smelly Mick in a leather jacket, black jeans, and Doc Martens looked well out of place.

I walked to the harbor and the city center.

People said “good morning.” It was that obvious. I said “good morning” back.

An attractive, friendly city on a lough, filled with attractive, friendly people. It was Belfast’s northern evil twin. No, Belfast was the evil twin and Reyk was the good twin.

“Good morning,” a gorgeous silver-haired lady walking a dog said.

“Morning.”

---