Her mother Leonóra, who was a rationalist, said that the visions, the sounds and the smells were a natural reaction to grief, part of her mental response to her father’s death. They had been very close and his death had been so traumatic that her senses were conjuring up his presence; sometimes his image, sometimes a smell associated with him. Leonóra called it the inner eye that was capable of bringing her mental pictures to life; she was susceptible after the shock and her senses were hypersensitive and fragile and conjured up abnormal sensations that would disappear with time.
‘What if it wasn’t the inner eye, as you always said? What if what I saw when Dad died was on the boundary between two worlds? What if he wanted to visit me? Wanted to tell me something?’
María was sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed, They had discussed death openly after it became obvious that Leonóra would not be able to escape her fate.
‘I’ve read all those books you brought me about the light and the tunnel,’ Leonóra said, ‘Maybe there is something in what people say, About the tunnel to eternity, Eternal life, I’ll soon find out.’
‘There are so many vivid accounts,’ María said. ‘Of people who have died and come back to life. Of near-death experiences. Of life after death.’
‘We’ve discussed this so often… ’
‘Why shouldn’t they be true? At least some of them?’
Leonóra looked through half-closed eyes at her daughter who was sitting beside her, utterly shattered, The effect of her illness on María had been almost worse than it had been on herself, The thought of her mother’s approaching death was unbearable to María, When Leonóra had gone she would be alone in the world.
‘I don’t believe them because I’m a rationalist.’
They sat for a long time in silence, María hung her head and Leonóra kept drifting into a doze, worn out by her three-year battle with the cancer that had now finally defeated her.
‘I’ll give you a sign,’ she whispered, half-opening her eyes.
‘A sign?’
Leonóra smiled faintly through the haze of drugs.
‘Let’s keep it… simple.’
‘What?’ María asked.
‘It’ll have to be… it’ll have to be something tangible, It can’t be a dream and it can’t just be some vague feeling.’
‘Are you talking about giving me a sign from beyond the grave?’
Leonóra nodded.
‘Why not? If it’s anything other than a figment of the imagination. The afterlife.’
‘How?’
Leonóra seemed to be sleeping.
‘You know… my favourite… author.’
‘Proust.’
‘It… it’ll be… keep an eye out…’
Leonóra took her daughter’s hand.
‘Proust,’ she said, exhausted, and fell asleep at last, By evening Leonóra was in a coma, She died two days later without ever regaining consciousness.
Three months after Leonóra’s funeral, María woke with a jolt in mid-morning and got out of bed, Baldvin left early for work in the mornings and she was alone in the house, feeling weak and worn out from bad dreams and serious long-term stress and debility, She was about to go into the kitchen when she felt instinctively that she was not alone in the house.
At first she looked around her in a panic, believing that a burglar had broken in, She called out to ask if anyone was there.
She was standing there, frozen into immobility, when suddenly she smelled a faint hint of her mother’s perfume.
María stared straight ahead and saw Leonóra standing by the bookshelves in the semi-darkness of the sitting room, speaking to her, But she could not make out the words.
She stared at her mother for a long time, not daring to move, until Leonóra vanished as suddenly as she had appeared.
4
Erlendur turned on the light in the kitchen when he got home to his apartment-block flat. A heavy bass beat was pounding from the floor above. A young couple had recently moved in and they blasted out loud music every evening, sometimes deafeningly loud, and threw parties every weekend. Their visitors tramped up and down the stairs well into the early hours, often making an appalling noise. The couple had received complaints from the residents on their staircase and had promised to mend their ways but so far had not kept their word. To Erlendur’s mind, what the couple played was not really music so much as the relentless repetition of the same heavy bass beat, interspersed with raucous wailing.
He heard a knock on the door.
‘I saw your light on,’ his son Sindri Snaer said, when Erlendur opened the door.
‘Come in,’ Erlendur said. ‘I’ve just got back from Grafarvogur.’
‘Anything interesting?’ Sindri asked, closing the door behind him.
‘It’s always interesting,’ Erlendur said. ‘Coffee? Something else?’
‘Just water,’ Sindri said, taking out a packet of cigarettes. ‘I’m on holiday. I’m taking two weeks off.’ He looked up at the ceiling, listening to the thudding rock music upstairs that Erlendur had already ceased to notice. ‘What’s that racket?’
‘New neighbours,’ Erlendur called from the kitchen. ‘Have you heard from Eva Lind at all?’
‘Not recently. She had a fight with Mum the other day.’
‘A fight with your mother?’ Erlendur said, coming to the kitchen door. ‘What about?’
‘You, from what I could hear.’
‘What can they be fighting about me for?’
‘Talk to her.’
‘Is she working?’
‘Yes.’
‘On drugs?’
‘No, I don’t think so. But she still won’t come to any meetings with me.’
Erlendur knew that Sindri attended AA meetings and found them helpful. Despite his tender years, Sindri had suffered from major drink and drug problems, but had single-handedly turned over a new leaf and taken the steps necessary to master his addiction. His sister Eva had not been using recently but refused to consider rehab and meetings in the belief that she could stand on her own two feet.
‘What was going on in Grafarvogur?’ Sindri asked. ‘Some incident?’
‘A suicide,’ Erlendur said.
‘Is that a crime, or…?
‘No, suicide’s not a crime,’ Erlendur said. ‘Except perhaps to the living.’
‘I knew a bloke who killed himself,’ Sindri commented.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, Simmi.’
‘Who was he?’
‘He was all right. We worked together for the council. Very easygoing bloke, never said a word. Then he just went and hanged himself. Did it at work. We had a shed and he hanged himself in it. The foreman found him and cut him down.’
‘Do you know why he did it?’
‘No. He lived with his mother. I went out on the piss with him once. He’d never touched alcohol before, just puked up.’
Sindri shook his head.
‘Simmi,’ he said. ‘Weird bloke.’
It seemed as if the pounding bass line upstairs would never let up.
‘Aren’t you going to do anything about that?’ Sindri asked, glancing up at the ceiling.
‘That lot won’t listen to anyone,’ Erlendur said.
‘Do you want me to talk to them?’
‘You?’
‘I could ask them to turn off that crap. If you like.’
Erlendur considered.
‘You can certainly try,’ he said. ‘I haven’t bothered to go up. What did you say they were fighting about, Eva and your mother?’