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.
“What do you mean, do?” his mother said.
“When he comes back,” Simon said, noticing that Mikkelina and Tomas had stopped playing cards and were now watching him.
“There’s plenty of time to think about that,” their mother said. “He won’t be back for a while.”
“But what are you going to do?” Mikkelina and Tomas turned their heads from Simon to their mother.
She looked at Simon, then at the other two.
“He’s going to help us,” she said.
“Who?” Simon said.
“Dave. He’s going to help us.”
“What’s he going to do?” Simon looked at his mother, trying to work out what she meant. She looked him straight in the eye.
“Dave knows about that sort of person. He knows how to get rid of them.”
“What’s he going to do?” Simon repeated.
“Don’t worry about it,” his mother replied.
“Is he going to get rid of him for us?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. The less we know, the better, he says, and I shouldn’t even be telling you this. Maybe he’ll talk to him. Scare him into leaving us alone. He says he has friends in the army who can help him if need be.”
“But what if Dave leaves?”
“Leaves?”
“If he leaves Iceland,” Simon said. “He won’t always be here. He’s a soldier. They’re always sending troops away. Posting new ones to the barracks. What if he leaves? What will we do then?”
She looked at her son.
“We’ll find a way,” she said in a low voice. “We’ll find a way then.”
19
Sigurdur Oli phoned Erlendur, told him about his meeting with Elsa and how she thought that another man — who had got Benjamin’s fiancee pregnant — was involved; his identity was unknown. They talked the matter over for a while and Erlendur told Sigurdur Oli what he had found out from the ex-serviceman, Ed Hunter, about the theft from the depot and how a family man from the hill had been arrested for his part in it. Ed believed that the man’s wife had been the victim of domestic violence, which corroborated the account given by Hoskuldur, who had heard it from Benjamin.
“All those people are dead and buried long ago,” Sigurdur Oli said wearily. “I don’t know why we’re chasing them. It’s like hunting ghosts. We’ll never meet any of them and talk to them. They’re all just part of a ghost story.”
“Are you talking about the green woman on the hill?” Erlendur asked.