Sun on Fire by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson Page B

that’s OK,” the ambassador said.
    “Tell me about Sunday,” Birkir said, after dictating the usual preliminaries about place, time, and persons present.
    “Where should I start?”
    “When did you arrive at the embassy that day? What was the occasion?”
    “I arrived at the Felleshus around two thirty. The reading of works by my friend Jón—the Sun Poet—was scheduled for three o’clock in the main auditorium. A translation of his poetry anthology was recently published in Germany, and he’s here to promote it.”
    “Was this event only for an invited audience?”
    “No, not at all. The reading was open to the public, and had been promoted in the cultural sections of some of the local newspapers. Also in a group mail to Icelanders living in Berlin, and a number of German Icelandophiles. Then I specifically invited a few visiting Icelanders I know, and some folks also accompanied Jón, or were invited by him. Around sixty people in total. It began with a half-hour reading of the translations by a German actor. Then, after a short intermission, Jón himself read the Icelandic originals for another half hour or so.” Konrad grimaced. “A terribly tedious program, to be honest, but there are things you have to endure in this job. We diplomats need a strong bladder and high boredom threshold to survive.”
    The ambassador briefly grinned, until he saw that Birkir was not amused. “During the intermission, I mingled with those I know among the group, and invited them to drinks after the readings. About thirty people, I guess. They waited with me outside the auditorium while the Sun Poet signed books, and then we went upstairs to the second floor, where there were light refreshments. Gradually people began to leave, and there were just eight of us left by six o’clock, which marked the end of the Felleshuscaterers’ scheduled time. I still had some personal things to discuss with some of the group, so I invited them over to the embassy building. You have the guest list, don’t you?”
    Birkir nodded.
    “Soon folks got hungry, so I ordered delivery from a Chinese restaurant, and we ate in the conference room.”
    “Why didn’t you invite them over to your residence?”
    Konrad smiled weakly. “Under normal circumstances I would have, but my in-laws are visiting me right now. I hate to say it, but they are so insufferably fussy that I couldn’t inflict them on my guests.”
    “That bad?”
    “It’s mainly that they don’t like being around folks who are drinking alcohol,” Konrad admitted. “And I can’t just send them to bed when we have guests.”
    Birkir frowned. “But couldn’t you go to a restaurant?”
    The ambassador patiently replied, “That would have been a good idea if it hadn’t been for my friend, the Sun Poet Jón Sváfnisson. He insists on reciting poetry to everybody, and often gets up on a chair or even a table to do so. I’ve twice been asked to leave a restaurant when dining with that fellow. No, it was a logical decision to use this room in the embassy for our dinner. All it should have involved was cleaning a single conference room afterward. We have people to take care of that sort of thing.”
    “But you didn’t just stick to that part of the building, did you?”
    “No. As I told you, I needed to meet privately with certain individuals in the group, which I did in my office on the fourth floor. I also went up to the third floor to fetch utensils and glasses from the kitchenette. And some people went to the restrooms on the upper floors when they found the nearest one occupied.”
    “What were these meetings that you needed to have?”
    “First of all there was Helgi Kárason, the pottery artist—and his exhibition manager, Lúdvík Bjarnason. They have booked some weeks in the Felleshus’s main gallery in the new year, and were checking it out. Our meeting was just a confirmation of the embassy participation in the exhibition, as my staff will be dealing with the