Sigur
Rós
Walking along a dark, quiet alley, I heard noise from a building on
my left-hand side. I stood by the front door to listen what caused
the ruckus, when the door suddenly opened and a drunken lot rushed
out, as they were kicked out of the bar. I recognized the entourage
as the Islandic rock group Sigur Rós. Undoubtedly they had
had a concert in the bar, after which they had started misbehaving.
The lead singer stared at me with a cold expression in his eyes. He
then clenched his fist and, unexpectedly and brutally, punched me
in the face. I felt a sudden surge of pain and fell down to the pavement.
When I sat up, perplexed, I saw that the members of the group were
far away, disappearing behind a corner.
The
passers-by said that I should go to see a doctor, since my face had
swollen and turned red. I mirrored myself from a shop window and hardly
recognized my features behind the swollen cheeks and bloated lips.
I
found a doctor's office in the basement of a nearby street. The staircase
down to the office was steep and narrow. I avoided touching the clothes
hanging from the ceiling and was careful not to mess up the papers
that were heaped on the floor and the tables.
At
the end of the basement, behind a large desk, sat the doctor greeting
me welcome. He was sorry about the mess. "I live in my office
and usually don't bother to clean it," he said. "Keeping
up the practise becomes cheaper that way."
The
doctor examined my face and wrote a drug presciption advising me to
cover my cheeks with a gel available from a pharmacy. Additionally
he wrote me a recipe for an Indian curry dish that I should eat so
as to quicken the recovery.
Back
in the streets I looked for a pharmacy and found one in the nearby
area. The pharmacist said, however, that they didn't have the gel
prescribed. "You should go to the store on the other side of
the street," he advised. "They might well have it. But remember
that you should keep on applying the gel to your face so as to avoid
the skin drying up. Otherwise you might get an infection creeping
up to your brains."
The
pharmacist's words sounded ominous. Were my injuries really that bad?
The
shopkeeper on the other side of the street had heard our conversation.
A gel bottle in his hand he beckoned me to come to his store. Studying
the prescription he put the gel into a plastic bag. He then rummaged
cupboards and drawers for lentils, onions, chillies, spices, curry
leaves and poured all the ingredients into the same bag as the gel.
I was amazed at his carelessness, since he didn't even try to keep
the powdery spices, food stuffs and medicine separate from each other.
Without saying a word, however, I paid my purchases and stepped back
to the street.
I
smeared the gel into my face. The hot sensation in my cheeks cooled
down somewhat. I walked along the streets wondering where I could
prepare the curry recipe as ordered by the doctor.
