“You’re just on time,” he says. “Food is ready.”
FIFTY-ONE
As I’m posting my latest translation, I take the opportunity to give Mom a call. I realize it’s not very sensible to have no phone, with Tumi in my care. What if he had an ear infection and I had to call a doctor? He wouldn’t know how to cope if something happened to me. He might run up the moor on his own instead of finding his way down to the village. I’ll buy a phone and immediately write down the emergency number for him on a piece of paper this evening and stick it on the wall beside Hercules.
“What kind of a man is he?”
“What man?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, you haven’t phoned for two weeks, we were getting really worried.”
“He’s divorced, has two kids.”
“Does he still talk about his ex-wife?”
“Hardly ever, he showed me a picture of her, though.”
“He showed you a picture? He isn’t over her yet.”
“She was standing between their two daughters in the photo, he couldn’t have cut her out.”
“I’ve collected some clippings for you.”
“Mom, I’m still in Iceland, they get all the papers here too, you know.”
“You don’t read them.”
“They speak Icelandic here, if it weren’t for the flooding I could be at your place for coffee this evening.”
“I’ve given up coffee; I’ve made some changes in my life.”
“Anyway, I’ve got plenty to read and do with Tumi. He’s learning how to dance and embroider.”
“Is that what you’re teaching that fatherless boy? To dance and embroider? I’ve no recollection of ever seeing you embroider, neither as a child nor an adult.”
“It’s just simple cross-stitching. I let him try whatever he feels like. We bought a pattern with the picture of a horse; he wanted to embroider a blind horse.”
“A blind horse?
“Yes, we altered the pattern slightly and closed the horse’s eyes with the same colour as the crest, we’ve only changed it by four stitches altogether.”
I don’t tell her that he also swaps the colours, that he’s made its tail bright red and used the green yarn that was supposed to be applied to the grass on the mane, and that he then wanders with the yarn between different parts of the horse’s body, jumping from the unfinished head to the withers to do some stitching there and then skips to its flanks, which he chooses to stitch in sun-yellow.
“We’re mainly learning ballroom dancing and free style.”
“Don’t you need some food?”
“They have shops here just like anywhere else on the island, we get plenty.”
There is a long silence at the other end of the line. Tumi is getting restless in the play corner of the post office, having assembled the twelve remaining building cubes in every possible combination and being eager to move on to the promised visit to the bakery next door, where there are round tables and chairs and they serve hot bagels with cream cheese and cocoa.
“Anyway, Mom, I’ll talk to you again soon. Tumi is waving at you as we speak, we’re at the post office, I’m at a payphone.”
There’s a silence at the other end of the line. Finally, she speaks again:
“I heard from Thorsteinn yesterday, he was pretty down and didn’t look too good. He’s not a happy man.”
“I thought you said you’d heard from him, not that you’d seen him.”
“Well, he just popped by. We’re worried about you, you just vanished.”
“I’ve stopped thinking about Thorsteinn; right now I’m just thinking about me and Tumi.”
“He’s stuck in a predicament he has no say in. That woman seems to have him under her thumb.”
FIFTY-TWO
The boy wants to learn how to knit to be able to make socks for his unborn sisters. I’ve found a woman who can teach him garter stitching. She lives in the house next door to my sign language teacher’s, is eighty-six years old and every month delivers a hand-knit Icelandic woollen sweater with a reindeer pattern to the co-op. But I still feel I need to get Auður’s approval before buying the yarn and number three knitting needles. She thinks it’s the best plan she’s heard in a long time.
“I think he’s growing and getting taller,” I tell her, “the clothes I bought for him last month are getting too small; I think he’s stretched by about two centimetres.”
“New clothes often shrink in the wash. And what about you,” she asks, “have you met some fun people? Have you revived any old memories, done any long-line fishing on the pier?”
“I’m not sure I want to be taken care of,” I say.
“What do you mean taken care of?”
“The men here are so considerate; they want to fuss over me.”
The boy chooses a yellow ball of wool and a green one. So that the babies won’t be confused with each other when they lie side by side on the bed, he explains to me in sign language.
The old woman receives us in a spotted dralon apron and hunched back. She’s quite a lady, her neighbour tells me, a well of knowledge on premonitions and guiding spirits. We walk into a roasting living room; all the radiators have clearly been turned up to the hilt and the windows are closed. There are four woollen rugs on the floor. On the dining table there is a pile of thick-buttered skonsur pancakes with pâté and a plate of cookies. She’s done her Christmas baking, and I recognize some of Granny’s specialties: spesíur cookies, half-moons, vanilla rings, Jewish pastries and raisin buns. There are also marble cakes and twisted kleinur doughnuts, as well as bottles of soft malt and orange. Our contribution is a large box of chocolates with a picture of the Dettifoss waterfall on the lid. She takes it and says there was no need, before swiftly slipping it into a cupboard. I seem to catch a glimpse of other Dettifoss waterfalls beside the neatly folded bedclothes.
The boy knows how to behave and immediately sits at the laid table, after greeting the old lady, and spreads the napkin on his lap. The woman sits opposite him with the knitting needles and a ball of light green wool. They’re both wearing hearing aids and glasses. It transpires that she’s recently had a hip replacement, feels totally reborn, and has enrolled for a country line-dancing course. She asks me if we’re cold and if we can feel the draught; she’s had problems with her heating, apparently. By the time I leave them to go into the next house for my sign language class, Tumi is placing his third slice of cake on his plate and has downed half a bottle of malt, while the old lady has already knitted the first row of a light green sock.
The neighbour’s quilt smells of mild laundry detergent; I think he’s only been able to sleep there once since the bedclothes were last changed.
FIFTY-THREE
A balloon flies into the air, as a child releases the piercing shriek of a throttled pig. I think those are rabbit ears I see gliding over the highlands.