“A bit like you,” he says with a touch of warmth.
It is true that I didn’t actually have a watch, but I do have a compass in the car that has always enabled me to find my way, even though I may not always know the precise time in terms of minutes.
He stands behind me at the table and loosely places his hand on my shoulder, as he explains the watch to me. I sense a creeping weakness in my body and suddenly feel that this relationship still stands a chance that entirely hinges on me being able to dissimulate the fact that I know how to read the time, that’s my trump card right now. Because I’m a woman and he’s a man.
“So you can set whatever time you want on one dial, free time, your own personal time, whereas the home dial will show you the time we other ordinary, boring, mortals live on,” he says in a soft voice. “Do you have any plans?”
“I’m thinking of taking a late-summer holiday and travelling,” I say, even though the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until I heard myself say it. “At least I’ll know what time it is,” I add, flashing the golden watch.
“I see you’ve already removed your ring.”
He’s right, I’m not wearing the wedding ring because I took it off when I was cleaning the insides out of the bird. But I only have to glance at the glistening draining board to realize that it actually isn’t there any more; it has vanished with the innards of the goose and vegetable peels. Tomorrow, when I’m in a more lucid state, I’ll rummage through the garbage and go through the bird’s entrails again, digging for gold.
He doesn’t seem to be taking the ring issue too personally and is already thinking of something else.
“Shall we lie down for a bit?”
NINE
I follow him into the bedroom with the two-timing watch on my wrist for one final exchange of bodily fluids.
It’s a double bed, the bed of a woman and man who were close, of a woman who has kissed his tummy and a man who has tightly wrapped himself around her and kissed her breasts and more besides. Here, as I blow fluff off his navel, I peruse the familiar territory one last time.
I wouldn’t call it a guilty conscience, but I can’t deny that Nína Lind has briefly entered my mind. Even though this could be looked upon as a repeat performance or an action replay, my husband is nevertheless being unfaithful to the future mother of his child and I am his new mistress.
Afterwards we spend some time chatting about our childhood scratches and mutual scars, but despite our four years and 288 days of marriage, I had never noticed that scar under his shoulder blade.
No matter how often or cunningly I try to put the question to him, he won’t give anything away about what might have happened to him, other than:
“Doesn’t matter now, good night.”
“Good night.”
He turns over on his side. I wonder if there is some way of prolonging the moment, of finding something that will grab his attention.
“Good night.”
“Yes, you’ve already said good night.”
“Yeah, I just wanted to say it again, I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me.”
“Yes, I heard you, I said good night too.”
“Good night.”
He is half buried under the quilt, his head under the pillow, one of his legs protruding over the end of the bed, hairy all over, except for the soles of his feet. His clothes are in a pile on the floor. His mom has started to do his laundry; I notice the pleat of the iron on his underpants. He obviously isn’t troubled by his conscience, this man lying beside me with his hairy arm draped over my stomach. Once he has drifted into sleep, I move his arm to be able to readjust my viewing position: now that we’re divorcing it’s about time I got to know my husband. I watch the way his expression dissolves and his facial features revert to their original formless state, his mouth half gaping. I scrutinize the remaining traces of the little boy in him, which are in themselves more than sufficient to satisfy any need I might have for a child. I watch his hairy chest, who knows if it is the heart of a child beating underneath it? Seems such a short while since those first sounds were stuttered, before he could master words and use them to his advantage. A little pout suddenly forms on his mouth and I sense he may be having a bad dream, although his deep breathing betrays no emotion. I try to remember what we might have done over the course of the past five years, but am unable to fill in all the little time lapses. Vague as the recollections may be, I can categorically say that he never vacuum-cleaned. And neither did I, because we don’t have any carpets, most of the memories end in the bed. A relationship to me is all about the right body and the right smell, the home is a shell for the body, not a place for exchanging existential views and having discussions. Even though you still have to load the washing machine and cook for the body.
But I do have a flashback of him solicitously carrying me some tea, taking slow, cautious steps out of the kitchen with a bright yellow liquid in a rattling porcelain cup, his big body looming over the delicate vessel with its pattern of blue flowers, flexing his knees and hunching his shoulders, as he carefully places one foot in front of the other, as if he were carrying the egg of life in his hands, as if he were holding the slippery body of a newborn child, his entire being focused on the task at hand. Apart from that, it’s mostly mornings I recall; we’re saying goodbye to each other, then a short moment later we’re saying goodnight to each other; there are vast gaps in between, I could perhaps resuscitate some extra quarters of an hour here and there, but other than that can remember nothing else. If I were forced to, if I were to be locked up between the walls of an old classroom and compelled to produce an account of our four years and 288 days of cohabitation, I could maybe dig up enough events and words to fill a blackboard totalling thirty days. How many pages would that be in a double-spaced manuscript? The same words frequently recur over and over again. You can’t really say that conjugal life does much to advance the evolution of language.
I gently lift the quilt, as if uncovering a newborn child in a cradle to peep at its curled-up body and baby crochet socks. I place the palm of my hand flatly on his warm stomach. He heaves a faint sigh and turns over on his back, and then on his stomach again, exhaling heavily and producing a deep, faint sound, like the foghorn of a ship as it pulls out of harbour to sail off to another land.
And now I commit him all to memory, since he is about to leave. I scan his throat, shoulder blades, back, ribs, buttocks, thighs, the crease of his knees, calves and the soles of his feet, all unbeknown to him, without waking him, secretly shifting my gaze from place to place, studying his body like a relief map, exploring him, surveying him from vertebra to vertebra, recording everything I see, capturing him in the minutest detail, storing every single hair of his body so that I will be able to conjure them up at will again, until the day comes when I lose the longing to do so and no longer remember the feel of his skin, because he has been replaced by another body perhaps.
A new sound has penetrated the bedroom, at first almost imperceptibly, then growing and switching tone until it turns into a distinctly intrusive buzz. There can no longer be any doubt: at least two bluebottles are hovering in the vicinity of the bed. At that same moment, I spot one of the flies landing on my husband’s face, plunging its legs into the lake of his chin and strolling around the undergrowth of his stubble. I wave it away, but it lands again on his forehead, cheek, nose, chin; I blow on it and try to dust it off his face without waking him. Then I stretch out to grab the poetry book on the bedside table: The Head of a Woman. I use it as a fan to banish the fly, ever so delicately, like a diva who has grown weary of a suitor in an operetta. The fly then doubles its efforts, so I roll up the book and strike it on my husband’s upper lip, squashing it in a single blow and turning it into a shapeless black blotch just under his nose. Thorsteinn wakes with a start, springs up and grabs his head the way air passengers are instructed to do when bracing themselves for a crash landing.