Simon had told his mother about the soldier, the same one who had given them the trout before, and she went out and glanced around for him, went back in, looked in the mirror and tidied her hair. She seemed to sense that he would drop in on his way back to the barracks. She was ready to greet him when he did.
She opened the door and Dave smiled, said something she didn’t understand and handed her the fish. She took them and invited him inside. He entered the house and stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Nodded to the boys and to Mikkelina, who stretched and strained for a better look at this soldier who had come all that way just to stand in their kitchen in his uniform with a funny hat shaped like an upturned boat, which he suddenly remembered he had forgotten to take off when he came inside and snatched from his head in embarrassment. He was of medium height, certainly older than 30, slim with nicely shaped hands, which fiddled with the upturned boat, twisting it as if they were wringing out the washing.
She gestured to him to sit at the kitchen table, and he sat with the boys beside him while their mother made coffee, real coffee from the depot, coffee that Grimur had stolen and the soldiers had not discovered. Dave knew Simon’s name, and found out that Tomas was called Tomas, which was easy for him to pronounce. Mikkelina’s name amused him and he said it over and again in such a funny way that they all laughed. He said his name was Dave Welch, from a place called Brooklyn in America. He told them he was a private. They had no idea what he was talking about.
“A private,” he repeated, but they just stared at him.
He drank his coffee and seemed very pleased with it. The mother sat facing him at the other end of the table.
“I understand your husband is in jail,” he said. “For stealing.”
He got no response.
With a glance at the children he took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and twiddled it between his fingers as if uncertain what to do. Then he passed the note across the table to their mother. She picked it up, unfolded it and read what it said. She looked at him in astonishment, then back at the note. Then she folded up the note and put it in the pocket of her apron.
Tomas managed to make Dave understand that he ought to have another try at saying Mikkelina’s name, and when he did they all started laughing again, and Mikkelina crinkled up her face in sheer joy.
Dave Welch visited their house regularly all that summer and made friends with the children and their mother. He fished in the two lakes and gave his catches to them, and he brought them little things from the depot that came in useful. He played with the children, who took a special delight in having him there, and he always carried his notebook in his pocket to make himself understood in Icelandic. They rolled around laughing when he spluttered out a phrase in Icelandic. His serious expression was completely at odds with what he said, and the way he said it sounded like a three-year-old child talking.
But he was a quick learner and it soon became easier for them to understand him and for him to know what they were talking about. The boys showed him the best places to fish and walked proudly with him over the hill and around the lake, and they learned English words from him and American songs that they had heard before from the depot.
He formed a special relationship with Mikkelina. Before long he had won her over entirely, and would carry her outside in good weather and test what she was capable of achieving. His approach was similar to her mother’s: moving her arms and legs for her, supporting her while she walked, helping her with all kinds of exercises. One day he brought over an army doctor to look at Mikkelina. The doctor shone a torch into her eyes and down her throat, moved her head round and felt her neck and down her spine. He had wooden blocks of different shapes with him, and made her fit them into matching holes. That took her no time at all. He was told that she had fallen ill at the age of three and understood what people said to her, but could barely speak a word herself. That she could read and that her mother was teaching her to write. The doctor nodded as if he understood, a meaningful expression on his face. He had a long talk with Dave after the examination and when he left Dave managed to make them understand that Mikkelina’s mind was completely healthy. They already knew that. But then he said that, with time, the proper exercises and a lot of effort, Mikkelina would be able to walk unaided.
“Walk!” Her mother slumped onto her chair.
“And even speak normally,” Dave added. “Perhaps. Has she never been to a doctor before?”
“All this is beyond me,” she said sadly.
“She’s okay,” Dave said. “Just give her time.”
Their mother had ceased to hear what he was saying.
“He’s a terrible man,” she said all of a sudden, and her children pricked up their ears, because they had never heard her talk about Grimur the way she did that day. “A terrible man,” she continued. “A wretched little creature that doesn’t deserve to live. I don’t know why they’re allowed to live. I don’t understand. Why they’re allowed to do what they please. What makes people like that? What is it that turns him into a monster? Why does he behave like an animal year after year, attacking his children and humiliating them, attacking me and beating me until I want to die and think about how to…”
She heaved a deep sigh and went to sit beside Mikkelina.
“It makes you feel ashamed for being the victim of a man like that, you disappear into total loneliness and bar everyone from entering your world, even your own children, because you don’t want anyone to set foot in there, least of all them. And you sit bracing yourself for the next attack that comes out of the blue and is full of hatred for something or other, you don’t know what, and you spend your whole life waiting for the next attack, when is it coming, how bad will it be, what’s the reason, how can I avoid it? The more I do to please him, the more I repulse him. The more submissiveness and fear I show, the more he loathes me. And if I resist, all the more reason for him to beat the living daylights out of me. There’s no way to do the right thing. None.
“Until all you think about is how to get it over with. It doesn’t matter how. Just get it over with.”
A deathly silence fell. Mikkelina lay motionless in her bed and the boys had inched closer to their mother. They listened, dumbstruck, to every word. Never before had she opened a window into the torment that she had grappled with for so long that she had forgotten everything else.
“It’ll be okay,” Dave said.
“I’ll help you,” Simon said in a serious voice.
She looked at him.
“I know, Simon,” she said. “I always have known, my poor Simon.”
The days went by and Dave devoted all his spare time to the family on the hill and spent longer and longer with the children’s mother, either indoors or walking around Reynisvatn and over to Hafravatn. The boys wanted to see more of him, but he had stopped going fishing with them and had less time for Mikkelina. But they did not mind. They noticed the change in their mother, they associated it with Dave and were happy for her.
One beautiful autumn day, almost half a year after Grimur was marched away from the hill in the arms of the military police, Simon saw Dave and his mother in the distance, walking towards the house. They were walking close together and for all he could see they were holding hands. As they drew closer they stopped holding hands and moved apart, and Simon realised they did not want to be seen.
“What are you and Dave going to do?” Simon asked his mother one evening that autumn, after dusk had fallen on the hill. They sat in the kitchen. Tomas and Mikkelina were playing cards. Dave had spent the day with them then gone back to the depot. The question had been in the air all summer. The children had discussed it amongst themselves and imagined all kinds of situations that ended with Dave becoming a father to them and expelling Grimur from their sight for ever.