The Ambassador. Bragi Ólafsson
the class, asking her to be so good as to “trot up to the blackboard.” The girl’s name, Ljótunn, always had an effect on her classmates, the girls no less than the boys: everyone would look up or show some other indication that they had heard her name mentioned, not just because it was an unusual, embarrassing name but because it was so ironic: her facial beauty—not to mention her physical beauty—was undeniable (if you can describe beauty in such terms). Just as people tend to look at the light rather than the dark, they tended to look at Ljótunn rather than the person next to her, if they could.
“How many islands comprise the Vestmannaeyjar?” asks Armann Valur when the girl has come up to the board and stands facing the class. “Do you know?”
“Aren’t there fifteen?” replies Ljótunn.
“That’s what I’m asking,” says Armann Valur, smiling. “You have to answer.”
“I guess it’s fourteen.”
“The number gets lower,” says Armann Valur.
“There are twelve.” Ljótunn corrects herself; her final answer.
“Not bad,” says Armann Valur after thinking for a moment, and addresses the girl by name again; he enjoyed saying her name. “Not bad, Ljótunn; there are exactly twelve. When you fly over them. Seen from land, there are perhaps no more than one or two, but when someone flies over them, I mean on a big iron bird, he needs the fingers of both hands, plus two of the fingers of the person sitting next to him, in order to count them. There are exactly twelve.” He asks the girl another question which she can’t answer, then he asks her to sit back down. She is now out of the game, this is a knockout round.
As Ljótunn goes to her desk and sits down, Armann Valur follows her to her seat with his eyes, even though he knows the other pupils will notice if he indulges his temptation to watch her. Then he scans the room and settles on Jónas Hallmundsson, who is still busy thinking about what is happening down on the street outside the school building.
“Jónas Hallmundsson,” says Armann in a commanding tone. “Would you like to be next in our Vestmannaeyjar quiz?”
Jónas nods his head and glances at the person sitting next to him, his friend Brynjólfur Madsen, who shakes his head, as if to say that he wouldn’t take part in this nonsense himself. Brynjólfur looks away from him to Armann Valur as he begins asking Jónas his first question:
“What is the temperature of a simmering lava field?”
Jónas looks out the window.
“You won’t find the answer out in Lækjargata,” says Armann Valur, his arms folded and an amused expression on his face.
“A hundred degrees,” replies Jónas.
The picture which Armann Valur made of himself, with his arms across his chest and a boastful expression on his face, momentarily calls to mind Benito Mussolini on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, talking to his people. “Very good, very good,” he says, nodding his head quickly. He removes his arms from his chest, and when a pupil in the next row starts to make a comment about Jónas’s reply, Armann stops him with a wave of his hand. “But tell me this, Jónas: How many inhabitants lost their lives when that awful eruption took place on the islands?”
“Everyone,” replies Jónas, without hesitation.
“Everyone, you say?”
“Everyone but one.”
“The number keeps getting lower,” says Armann Valur, smiling.
“Then I’ll subtract the one,” Jónas says, repeating his original answer.
“You’re exactly right, as ever,” says Armann Valur cheerfully, indicating to one of the rows of students that they should quiet down. “For the Islanders, the most wonderful thing about this astonishing eruption is that none of them was killed. They can thank their God, Betel, for that, the ones who survived.”
Stifled laughter can be heard from the back of the room. Armann Valur casts a meaningful glance at two longhaired boys who are sitting side by side, his eyes questioning whether he has said something funny, whether they have found a reason to start giggling like little girls. Then he turns back to Jónas Hallmundsson who is once again looking out the window.
“And now we come to your third question, Jónas. If you answer it correctly, then you’re in the final. That, I reckon, would be a great victory. The prize—so you know now there’s definitely something to strive for—is a plane trip for one to the Vestmannaeyjar; a plane-trip, obviously, which the victor has to take in his imagination, because as you well know the principal has lately disapproved of schoolteachers sending pupils out of the country, even in the service of knowledge. But the question is–” Armann looks at Brynjólfur leaning towards Jónas so he can whisper something to him, and he jabs his index finger in the air to add emphasis to his next words: “Now, Brynjólfur, you aren’t allowed to slip him the answer before I pose the question.”
And both Jónas and Brynjólfur smile at their teacher.
“The question is this,” continues Armann Valur. “What nickname do the island boys have for the puffins they kill? And do they use their stately animal, the puffin . . . ?” He hesitates a few moments while he works out how to continue. “This question has two parts: What is the nickname the Westman Islanders have for the puffin, and do they use it—that is to say, the bird, once they have stuffed it—to promote their islands abroad? I must admit this is a complicated question, but we are at the Grammar School in Reykjavík, where things tend to be complicated.”
Jónas looks thoughtful. Armann Valur reiterates to Brynjólfur that he isn’t allowed to help his companion, and then Jónas answers:
“‘Professor.’ They call the puffins ‘professor.’ And yes, one could say that the stuffed puffin is a kind of ambassador for the people who live on the island.”
Armann looks at his pupil. He takes off his glasses, breathes on the inside of the glass and puts them back on. “Perhaps ‘provost.’ But ‘professor’ . . . I’m not of the opinion that professor is a better name for this strange bird. This wonderbird.”
“I’d be fine with provost,” says Jónas.
“Yes, no, well, we should think a little about ‘professor.’ Let us—those of us who are gathered here in this room at the Grammar School in Reykjavík—decide that the island boys’ stuffed puffin is called ‘Professor.’ That’s quite logical, since those island boys and girls are a well-educated bunch.” Armann Valur clears his throat and traces his index finger in the air to summon his pupils’ attention. Then he starts speaking as though he’s giving a lecture: “In the Vestmannaeyjar everyone has a university degree. The young as much as the old. At any given moment one-quarter of the residents have doctorates in this and that from the university on the mainland. It may be that they call their bird provost when it’s alive and on the run from the pocket nets of the over-educated islanders. But when it’s stuffed, that black-and-white bird of wisdom—which is the type of bird we are now considering—is better called professor. It is a professor of taxidermy, to be precise: it has studied its own stuffing. After all, it knows all about the straw which is packed in its head as soon as its brain has been removed. It yearns for its eternal existence on a plinth of lava; every movement of its wings, every single take-off, it is always aiming to achieve its fate as soon as possible.”
A pupil towards the end of the middle row raises his hand to ask for permission to speak but Armann Valur continues without stopping:
“You have to find out for yourself,” he says, and then directs his words straight to Jónas, who is busily taking notes on a sheet of paper while obviously having difficultly holding in his laughter. “I notice that you are taking notes, Jónas. That is good. Notes can find you in surprising places—they’re not tied down the way they would be when they’re written into paragraphs.” He hesitates and weighs his words. “Because we are not simply written words. Við erum ekki . . . ‘We are not the stuffed men,’