Their mother plodded back to the house and fetched the baby, carried it out into the cold rain and laid it down with Grimur’s body.
She was about to make the sign of the cross over the grave, but stopped.
“He doesn’t exist,” she said.
Then she started shovelling earth over the bodies. Simon stood by the grave watching the wet, dark soil slam down onto the corpses and saw how they gradually disappeared beneath it. Mikkelina had begun to tidy up in the kitchen. Tomas was nowhere to be seen.
A thick layer of mud was in the grave when Simon suddenly had the impression that Grimur twitched. With a shudder he looked at his mother, who had not noticed anything, then he stared down into the grave and to his horror he saw the face, half-covered with dirt, move.
The eyes opened.
Simon froze.
Grimur stared up at him from the grave.
Simon let out a mighty scream and his mother stopped shovelling. She looked at Simon, then down into the grave, and saw that Grimur was still alive. She stood on the edge of the grave. As the rain beat down on them it cleared the mud from Grimur’s face. For a moment they looked each other in the eye, then Grimur’s lips moved.
“Please!”
His eyes closed again.
She looked at Simon. Down into the grave. Back at Simon. Then took the shovel and went on filling the hole as if nothing had happened. Grimur disappeared from sight, buried beneath the soil.
“Mum,” Simon wailed.
“Go to the house, Simon,” she said. “It’s over. Go to the house and help Mikkelina. Please, Simon. Go to the house.”
Simon looked at his mother, who was bent over, holding the shovel, drenched by the cold rain, as she finished filling the hole. Then he walked away without saying another word.
“Tomas possibly thought that it was all his fault,” Mikkelina said. “He never mentioned it and refused to talk to us. Went completely into his shell. When Mum shouted and he dropped the bowl on the floor, it set off a sequence of events that changed our lives and led to his father’s death.”
They were in a tidy sitting room waiting for Simon. He had gone out for a stroll around the neighbourhood, they were told, but would be back any minute.
“Really nice people here,” Mikkelina said. “No one could treat him better.”
“Did nobody ever miss Grimur, or…?” Elinborg said.
“Mum cleaned the house from top to bottom and four days later she reported that her husband had set off on foot over Hellisheidi moor for Selfoss, but that she had not heard from him since. No one knew she had been pregnant, or at least she was never asked about it. Search parties were sent out onto the moor, but of course his body was never found.”
“What business was he supposed to have in Selfoss?”
“Mum never needed to go into that,” Mikkelina said. “She was never asked for an explanation of his travels. He was an ex-convict. A thief. What did they care about what he was doing in Selfoss? He didn’t matter to them. Not in the least. There was plenty else to think about. The day that Mum reported him missing, some American soldiers shot an Icelander dead.”
Mikkelina half-smiled.
“Several days went by. They turned into weeks. He never showed up. Written off. Lost. Just your ordinary Icelandic missing person.”
She sighed.
“It was Simon that Mum wept for the most.”
When it was all over, the house seemed eerily silent.
Their mother sat at the kitchen table, still soaking from the downpour, staring into space with her dirty hands on the table and paying no attention to her children. Mikkelina sat beside her, stroking her hands. Tomas was still in the bedroom and did not come out. Simon stood in the kitchen and looked out at the rain, tears running down his cheeks. He looked at his mother and Mikkelina and back out of the window where the outlines of the redcurrant bushes could be seen. Then he went out.
He was wet, cold and shivering from the rain when he walked over to the bushes, stopped by them and stroked the bare branches. He looked up into the sky, his face towards the rain. The sky was black and rolls of thunder rumbled in the distance.
“I know,” Simon said. “There was nothing else to be done.” He paused and bowed his head, the rain pounding down on him. “It’s been so hard. It’s been so hard and so bad for so long. I don’t know why he was like that. I don’t know why I had to kill him.”
“Who are you talking to, Simon?” his mother asked. She had followed him outside, and she put her arm around him.
“I’m a murderer,” Simon said. “I killed him.”
“Not in my eyes, Simon. You can never be a murderer in my eyes. Any more than I am. Maybe it was a fate he brought upon himself. The worst thing that can happen is if you suffer because of what he was like, now that he’s dead.”
“I killed him, Mum.”
“Because there was nothing else you could do. You must understand that, Simon.”
“But I feel so terrible.”
“I know, Simon. I know.”
“I don’t feel well. I never have, Mum.”
She looked at the bushes.
“There’ll be berries on the bushes in the autumn and everything will be okay then. You hear that, Simon. Everything will be okay then.”
29
They looked over to the front door of the home when it opened and a man came in, aged about 70, stooping, with thin white hair and a friendly, smiling face, wearing a smart thick pullover and grey trousers. One of the helpers with him was told that the resident had visitors. Simon was pointed in the direction of the sitting room.
Erlendur and Elinborg stood up. Mikkelina walked over to the man and hugged him, and he smiled at her, his face beaming like a child’s.
“Mikkelina,” the man said in an astonishingly youthful voice.
“Hello, Simon,” she said. “I’ve brought some people with me who wanted to meet you. This is Elinborg and this man’s name is Erlendur.”
“My name’s Simon,” the man said, shaking them by the hand. “Mikkelina’s my sister.”
Erlendur and Elinborg nodded.
“Simon is very happy,” Mikkelina said. “Even if the rest of us never have been, Simon is happy and that’s all that matters.”
Simon sat down with them, took hold of Mikkelina’s hand, smiled at her and stroked her face, and he smiled at Erlendur and Elinborg too.
“Who are these people?” he asked.
“They’re my friends,” Mikkelina said.
“Do you feel good here?” Erlendur asked.
“What’s your name?” Simon asked.
“My name’s Erlendur.”
Simon smiled.
“I’m Mikkelina’s brother.”
Mikkelina stroked his arm.
“They’re detectives, Simon.”
Simon looked at Erlendur and Elinborg in turn.
“They know what happened,” Mikkelina said.
“Mum’s dead,” Simon said.
“Yes, Mum’s dead,” Mikkelina said.
“You do the talking,” Simon said imploringly. “You talk to them.” He looked at his sister and avoided Erlendur and Elinborg.
“All right, Simon,” Mikkelina said. “I’ll come and see you afterwards.”
Simon smiled and stood up, went into the hallway and shuffled away down a passage.
“Hebephrenia,” Mikkelina said.
“Hebephrenia?” Erlendur said.
“We didn’t know what it was,” Mikkelina said. “Somehow he just stopped growing up. He was the same good, kind boy, but his emotions didn’t mature with his body. Hebephrenia is a variant of schizophrenia. Simon’s like Peter Pan. Sometimes it’s connected with puberty. Perhaps he was already ill. He had always been sensitive and when those terrible incidents took place he seemed to lose his grip. He’d always lived in fear and felt the burden of responsibility. He thought it was up to him to protect our mother, simply because there was no one else who could. He was the biggest and strongest of us, even if he turned out to be the smallest and weakest.”