When he had finished writing, his pallid hands slumped onto the quilt, and the book and pen with them, and he closed his eyes. Elinborg picked up the book and was about to read what the old man had written when the cardiac monitor that he was connected to suddenly started to beep. The noise was ear-piercing when it broke out in the silent room and Elinborg was so startled that she jumped back. She looked down at Robert for a moment, unsure of what to do, then rushed straight out of the room, down the corridor and into the canteen where Sigurdur Oli was still sitting, his banana finished. An alarm rang somewhere.
“Did you get anything out of the old sod?” Sigurdur Oli asked Elinborg when she sat down beside him, gasping for breath. “Hey, are you okay?” he added when he noticed her puffing and panting.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Elinborg said.
A team of doctors, nurses and paramedics came running through the canteen and into the corridor in the direction of Robert’s room. Soon afterwards a man in a white gown appeared, pushing in front of him a piece of equipment that Elinborg thought was a cardiac massage device, and went down the corridor as well. Sigurdur Oli watched the crowd disappear around the corner.
“What the hell have you been up to now?” Sigurdur Oli said, turning to Elinborg.
“Me?” Elinborg muttered. “Nothing. Me! What do you mean?”
“What are you sweating like that for?” Sigurdur Oli asked.
“I’m not sweating.”
“What happened? Why is everyone running?”
“No idea.”
“Did you get anything out of him? Is he the one who’s dying?”
“Come on, try to show a bit of respect,” Elinborg said, looking all around.
“What did you get out of him?”
“I haven’t checked yet,” Elinborg said. “Shouldn’t we get away from here?”
They stood up and walked out of the canteen, left the hospital and sat down in Sigurdur Oli’s car. He drove off.
“So, what did you get out of him?” Sigurdur Oli asked impatiently.
“He wrote me a note,” Elinborg sighed. “Poor man.”
“Wrote you a note?”
She took the book out of her pocket and flicked through it until she found the place Robert had written in it. A single word was jotted there, in the trembling hand of a dying man, an almost incomprehensible scribble. It took her a while to puzzle out what he had written in the notebook, then she became convinced, although she did not understand the meaning. She stared at Robert’s last word in this mortal life:CROOKED.
That evening it was the potatoes. He did not think they were boiled well enough. They could equally have been over-boiled, boiled to a pulp, raw, unpeeled, badly peeled, over-peeled, not cut into halves, not in gravy, in gravy, fried, unfried, mashed, sliced too thick, sliced too thin, too sweet, not sweet enough…
She could never figure him out.
That was one of his strongest weapons. The attacks always occurred without warning and when she was least expecting them, just as often when everything seemed rosy as when she could sense that something was upsetting him. He was a genius at keeping her on tenterhooks and she could never feel safe. She was always tense in his presence, ready to be at his beck and call. Have the food ready at the right time. Have his clothes ready in the morning. Keep the boys under control. Keep Mikkelina out of his sight. Serve him in every way, even though she knew it was pointless.
She had long ago given up all hope that things would get better. His home was her prison.
After finishing dinner he picked up his plate, surly as ever, and put it in the sink. Then went back to the table as if on his way out of the kitchen, but stopped where she still sat at the table. Not daring to look up, she watched the two boys who were sitting with her and went on eating her meal. Every muscle in her body was on the alert. Perhaps he would leave without touching her. The boys looked at her and slowly put down their forks.
Deathly silence fell in the kitchen.
Suddenly he grabbed her by the head and slammed it down on her plate, which broke, then he snatched her up by the hair and threw her backwards, off her chair and onto the floor. He swept the crockery from the table and kicked her chair into the wall. She was dazed by the fall. The whole kitchen seemed to be spinning. She tried to get back to her feet although she knew from experience that it was better to lie motionless, but some perverse spirit within her wanted to provoke him.
“Keep still, you cow,” he shouted at her, and when she had struggled to her knees he bowed over her and screamed:
“So you want to stand up, then?” He pulled her by the hair and slammed her face-first into the wall, kicking her thighs until she lost all the strength in her legs, shrieked and dropped back to the floor. Blood spurted from her nose and she could barely hear him shouting for the ringing in her ears.
“Try standing up now, you filthy cunt!” he screeched.
This time she lay still, huddled up with her hands protecting her head, waiting for the kicks to rain down upon her. He raised his foot and slammed it with all his might into her side, and she gasped with the scorching pain in her chest. Bending down, he grabbed her hair, lifted her face up and spat in it before slamming her head back against the floor.
“Dirty cunt,” he hissed. Then he stood up and looked at the shambles after his assault. “Look what a mess you always make, you fucker,” he blared down at her. “Clear it up this minute or I’ll kill you!”
He backed slowly away from her and tried to spit at her again, but his mouth was dry.
“Fucking creep,” he said. “You’re useless. Can’t you ever do anything right, you fucking useless whore? Aren’t you going to realise that some day? Aren’t you going to realise that?”
He didn’t care if she was left marked. He knew there was no one who would interfere. Visitors were rare. Occasional chalets lay scattered around the lowlands, but few people ever went to the hill, even though the main road between Grafarvogur and Grafarholt ran nearby, and no one who had any business called on that family.
The house they lived in was a large chalet that he rented from a man in Reykjavik; it was half built when the owner lost interest in it and agreed to rent it to him cheaply if he would finish it. At first he was enthusiastic about working on the house and had almost completed it, until it turned out that the owner did not care either way, and afterwards it began to fall into disrepair. It was made of timber and consisted of an adjacent sitting room and kitchen with a coal stove for cooking, two rooms with coal stoves for heating and a passage between the rooms. In the mornings they fetched water from a well near the house, two buckets every day that were put up on a table in the kitchen.
They had moved there about a year before. After the British occupation of Iceland people flocked to Reykjavik from the countryside in search of work. The family lost their basement flat. Could not afford it any more. The influx meant housing became expensive and rents soared. When he took charge of the half-built chalet in Grafarholt and the family moved out there he started looking for work that suited his new situation and found a job delivering coal to the farms around Reykjavik. Every morning he walked down to the turning to Grafarholt where the coal lorry would pick him up and drop him off again in the evening. Sometimes she thought his sole reason for moving out of Reykjavik was that no one would hear her screams for help when he attacked her.