Þorrablót

It was the night of Þorrablót an old Icelandic party held in midwinter. The streets of Paris were quiet at 4am as it was cold and wet in the early hours. She was tired, felt sickly and completely exhausted. It was Monday now and she had to get up in only 2 hours to catch the Metro to Paris VIII (Saint-Denis) – the University.

The worry about the missed sleep and the stresses of the next day were mixed with the excitement of having earned a small fortune through the night acting as a waitress at this mad party, where all Icelandic people living in Paris met and carried out their traditions of heavy drinking, massive eating, and dancing on the table. The start of the evening had been a little stressful as worries about not knowing what to do apart from serving food were prevailing. The incompetent feeling vanished quickly as all guests of the party seemed to be hit by the constant flow of Brennivin rather quickly and standards sank to a more comfortable level. The night dragged on and as people got more and more paralytic and the amounts of wasted food became unbearable, cash for the stand-in waitresses and waiters was doubled by the hour. At three o’clock she decided to go, when foremost respectable people were lying under the table or dancing on its top with little clothes left on their bodies. She took her earnings, pinched a bag of dried fish, which turned out to be unnecessary as most left-over’s of the party were to be brought to her house anyway, and stole herself out into the orange-red light of Montmartre. 

The walk back to the house in the 6eme arrondissement would have taken her at least half an hour, so she decided to splash out and get a taxi. Back at the house she just pulled off her clothes, had a quick rinse under the shower and fell into her bed.

 

Only minutes later it seemed, the alarm went off again. Still smelling the stench of the party’s alcohol, she couldn’t face breakfast and just slipped into some fresh clothes and got ready to go. The flat was quiet, nobody had returned from the party yet; she would have known as they never just let themselves in and went to bed. Icelanders partied for days and nights, drank and ate as if there was no tomorrow, then slept for days and then pretended to regret, but deep down still enjoyed the laugh they had had. She couldn’t understand that, hated it, and had had too many a night with drunk folk in the loo and crazy girls in the kitchen. Last night had topped it and she was sure that once they were thrown out of the venue, the flat at Rue de la Boetie would serve to carry on the party. Best to be out before they came back.

 

The metro was busy at St Augustine, as usual at this time early in the week. She was lucky to find a seat and switched on her walkman. David Bowie sang ‘Oh, you pretty thing’ – that felt good and she relaxed into the seat, closing her eyes for the 60 minute journey out into the banlieu of Paris. The metro on this journey got emptier the further they distanced themselves from the city. The carriages dipped out of the comforting darkness of the underground into the shrill daylight and the graffitied grey of the banlieu.

She found some licorice cats in her jacket pocket and started to suck them. The warmth of the train made her sleepy and only the sweet treacle of the katjes kept her awake. She was holding on to her leather bag, clutching the side where her purse was sitting. Paris triggered the nervous holding on to bags in most people – sleeping on a train was dangerous – if not plain stupid.