‘Anyone would think I was cheating on you,’ Bergthóra said at last.
‘No,’ said Sigurdur Óli, ‘of course not. So you’d already started seeing him last time we met? You didn’t tell me.’
‘No, maybe I should have done. I was going to, but when it’s not as if we’re in a relationship any longer. I don’t know what we are. We’re nothing — it’s over. I thought perhaps there was still something there, but when we met the other day I realised it was over.’
‘I got a shock when I rang you late at night and heard someone there with you.’
‘You didn’t give our relationship a chance.’
Bergthóra spoke matter-of-factly, with no hint of accusation or resentment. The waiter brought their drinks. The beer, a Thai brew, was deliciously chilled and refreshing.
‘I’m not sure that’s quite fair,’ Sigurdur Óli said, but his words held no real conviction.
‘I was prepared to try,’ Bergthóra said, ‘and I believe I did what I could, but I never got anything back from you except negativity and resistance. Well, now it’s finished and we can get on with our lives. It came as quite a relief to realise that I didn’t need to go on living like that, all knotted up and on the defensive. Now I’m carrying on with my life and you are with yours.’
‘So it’s over then,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
‘It was over a long time ago,’ Berthóra replied. ‘It just took us time to realise. And now that I have, I’ve accepted the fact.’
‘This is obviously no ordinary banker you’ve met,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
Bergthóra smiled. ‘He’s great. He plays the piano.’
‘Have you told him …?’
He blurted it out without thinking, then realised in mid-sentence that he had no right to ask. But the words hung in the air and Bergthóra guessed what he had been going to say. She knew how his mind worked, knew that his resentment would have to find an outlet.
‘That’s so typical of you. Is that how you want it to end?’ she asked.
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean … I rang you to see if we could try to patch things up, but it was too late. It’s my fault — I have only myself to blame. You’re right about that.’
‘I’ve told him I can’t have children.’
‘It only really came home to me that we were finished when I rang you,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
‘You can be so like your mother sometimes,’ said Bergthóra, irritated.
‘And how much I regretted it. How stupid it was.’
‘I regret it too,’ said Bergthóra, ‘but it’s done now.’
‘Anyway, I don’t see what it has to do with her,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
‘More than you think,’ replied Bergthóra, finishing her wine.
40
The teacher asked again why he was so down in the mouth. It was during a biology lesson, one in which he dreaded being asked a question he could not answer. The teacher had asked him the same thing several days earlier but he had not known what to say then either. He enjoyed biology but he had not managed to do any of his homework, not for this subject nor his maths nor any other. Aware that he was falling behind, he tried his best to shape up but could not find the energy. These days he felt too apathetic to do anything and had drifted apart from the friends he had made when he started at the school. He had not realised that he looked miserable and, unable to answer the teacher’s question, simply stared back at him, saying nothing.
‘Is everything all right, Andrés?’ the teacher asked.
The class were watching. Why did the teacher have to ask such questions? Why couldn’t he just leave him alone?
‘Sure,’ he answered.
But it was not all right.
He was living in a state of perpetual fear. Rögnvaldur had said he would kill him if he told anyone what they did together. But he did not need to threaten him: Andrés would not have told anyone to save his life. What was he supposed to say anyway? He did not have the words to describe what they did, and tried to avoid even thinking about it.
He locked the ugliness away where no one could reach it. Locked it away in a place where the blood and tears ran down the walls and no one could hear his screams.
Realising that the boy was uncomfortable with the attention he had drawn to him, the teacher hastened to change the subject, asking Andrés instead to name two perennial plants, which after a brief hesitation he did. The teacher turned to the next pupil and the class’s attention was deflected from Andrés.
He could breathe easily again. Down in the mouth. He had not experienced a moment’s happiness since coming to live with his mother. Instead his life was an unrelieved nightmare. He dreaded going to school and having to answer questions such as why he was so unhappy, why he did not have any clean clothes to wear, why he had not brought a packed lunch. He dreaded attracting attention, dreaded waking up because the moment he did so the memories flooded back. He dreaded going to sleep because he never knew when Rögnvaldur would come for him in the night. And he dreaded the coming of day because then he was alone in the world.
His mother knew what was going on, although she was never home when it happened. He knew she knew, because he had once heard her beg Rögnvaldur to leave the boy alone. She had been drunk as usual.
‘Mind your own business,’ Rögnvaldur had snapped.
‘It’s gone far enough,’ his mother had said. ‘And why do you have to film the whole thing?’
‘Shut your mouth,’ had come the reply.
He used to threaten her too and hit her sometimes.
Then one day Rögnvaldur was gone — the projector, the films, the camera, his clothes, shoes, boots, and shaving things from the bathroom, his hats, coats — all gone one day when he woke up. Rögnvaldur had sometimes disappeared before for short periods but he had always left his belongings behind. Now, however, it seemed that he did not intend to come back; he had vanished, taking everything he owned.
The day passed. Two days. Three days. There was no sign of Rögnvaldur. Five days. Ten days. Two weeks. Still no sign. He woke up in the night, thinking Rögnvaldur was prodding him, but it was not him, he was not there. Three weeks. Andrés kept pestering his mother.
‘Is he coming back?’
The answer was always the same.
‘How the hell should I know?’
A month.
A year.
By then he had learned to deaden the pain; it was strange how good sniffing glue could make him feel.
As far as he could, he avoided opening the door to the room where the blood still ran down the walls.
And Rögnvaldur did not come back.
He gazed up at the gloomy grey sky.
Strange, how contented he felt in the graveyard. He was sitting with his back against a lichened old stone, oblivious to the cold. He must have dozed off. Twilight was falling over the city and the rumble of traffic carried to him from beyond the wall, beyond the tall trees that overshadowed the long-forgotten graves. He was surrounded on every side by tranquil death.
Time had ceased to pass.
It had no business here.
41
Sigurdur Óli was unsure how far to trust Andrés and what had emerged during their last conversation. Despite its confused, rambling nature, Andrés had seemed to be claiming that he had somehow got his hands on Rögnvaldur, and his allusion to a mask tallied with the scraps of leather that Sigurdur Óli had seen in his kitchen. Andrés had called with the express intention of giving him this information but had been unwilling to go any further and his hesitation implied that he was not sure what he wanted to achieve. From the state of his flat it was clear that he was not living at home, indeed had not for a long time. Sigurdur Óli had tried to establish the identity and address of the Rögnvaldur that Andrés had mentioned but there were only a handful of men in the capital area whose name and age fitted and none of these had been reported missing. But Andrés’s stepfather had used an alias before — more than one in fact — and could still be doing so, which would make it even harder to find him. Was it possible that Andrés had attacked him? Or was this simply the confused fantasy of a man far gone in alcoholism? Should he take him at his word? Should any claims from such a troublesome man with a long record of vagrancy and substance abuse be taken seriously?