“This is so absurd I can’t even be bothered discussing it.”
“Why?”
“Because if we let that sort of thinking control our actions, how would we ever make decisions? Your wife went to the shop at a particular time, you didn’t come anywhere near that decision. So was it suicide? No! It was some drunken idiot in a Range Rover. Nothing more.”
“I made the coincidence happen when I phoned her.”
“We can go on like this until the end of time,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Should we go for a drive out of town? Should we go to the cinema? Should we meet at a cafe? Who’d dare to suggest anything, for fear of something happening? You’re ridiculous.”
“That’s the point,” the man said.
“What?”
“How are we supposed to do anything?”
Sigurdur Oli heard Bergthora come in through the door.
“I’ve got to stop this,” he said. “It’s just nonsense.”
“Yes, me too,” the man said. “I’ve got to stop this.”
Then he put the telephone down.
22
He followed the radio, television and newspaper reports on the discovery of the skeleton, and saw how the story gradually paled in significance until eventually not a word was said about it. Occasionally a short statement appeared saying that there was nothing new to report, quoting a detective whose name was Sigurdur Oli. He knew that the lull in news about the skeleton meant nothing. The investigation must be in full swing and if a breakthrough happened someone would eventually knock on his door. He did not know when or who it would be. Maybe soon. Maybe that Sigurdur Oli. Maybe they would never find out what had happened. He smiled to himself. He was no longer sure that this was what he wanted. It had preyed on him for far too long. Sometimes he felt that he had no existence, no life, beyond living in fear of the past.
Before, he had sometimes felt a compulsion, an uncontrollable urge, to reveal what had happened, to come forward and tell the truth. He always resisted it. He would calm down and in the course of time this need faded and he became numb again to what had occurred. He regretted nothing. He would not have changed anything, given the way things had turned out.
Whenever he looked back he saw Ilona’s face the first time he met her. When she sat down beside him in the kitchen, he explained Jonas Hallgrimsson’s End of the Journey to her and she kissed him. Even now, when he was alone with his thoughts and revisited everything that was so precious to him, he could almost feel again the soft kiss on his lips.
He sat down in the chair by the window and recalled the day when his world had caved in.
Instead of going back to Iceland for the summer he had worked in a coal mine for a while and travelled around East Germany with Ilona. They had planned to go to Hungary, but he could not get a permit. As he understood it, foreigners were finding it increasingly difficult to obtain permission. He heard that travel to West Germany was also being severely restricted.
They went by train and coach and then mainly on foot, and enjoyed travelling on their own. Sometimes they slept outdoors. Sometimes in small guesthouses, school buildings or railway and coach stations. Occasionally they spent a few days on farms that they chanced upon in their travels. Their longest stay was with a sheep farmer who was impressed by having an Icelander knock on his door and repeatedly asked about his northern homeland, especially Snaefellsjokull glacier; it transpired that he had read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. They spent two weeks with him and enjoyed working on his farm. Much the wiser about farming, they set off from him and his family with a rucksack packed with food, and taking their good wishes with them.
She described her childhood home in Budapest and her doctor parents. She had told them about him in her letters home. What did they plan to do? her mother wrote. She was the only daughter. Ilona told her not to worry, but she did nevertheless. Are you going to get married? What about your studies? What about the future?
These were all questions that they had considered, both together and separately, but they were not pressing. All that mattered was the two of them in the present. The future was mysterious and uncharted and all they could be sure about was that they would meet it together.
Sometimes in the evenings she would tell him about her friends — who would welcome him, she assured him — and how they sat in pubs and cafes forever discussing the necessary reforms that were on the horizon. He looked at Ilona and saw her become animated when she talked about a free Hungary. She talked about the liberty that he had known and enjoyed all his life as if it were a mirage, intangible and remote. Everything that Ilona and her friends desired he had always had and taken so much for granted that he had never given it any special consideration. She talked about friends who had been arrested and spent time in prison, about people who had disappeared and whose whereabouts were unknown. He noticed the fear in her voice but also the exhilaration brought about by having deep conviction and fighting for it regardless of the cost. He sensed her tension and excitement at the great events that were unfolding.
He thought a lot during the weeks they spent travelling that summer, and grew convinced that the socialism he had found in Leipzig was built on a lie. He began to understand how Hannes felt. Like Hannes, he had woken up to the realisation that the truth was not single, simple and socialist; rather, there was no simple truth. This complicated beyond all measure his view of the world, forcing him to tackle new and challenging questions. The first and most important hinged on how to react. He was in the same position as Hannes. Should he continue studying in Leipzig? Should he go back to Iceland afterwards? The assumptions behind studying in Leipzig had changed. What was he supposed to say to his family? From Iceland he heard that Hannes, the former youth movement leader, had written newspaper articles and addressed meetings about East Germany, criticising communist policy. He provoked both anger and uproar among Icelandic socialists and had weakened their cause, especially against the backdrop of what was happening in Hungary.
He knew that he was still a socialist and that that would not change, but the version of socialism he had seen in Leipzig was not what he wanted.
And what about Ilona? He did not want to do anything without her. Everything they would do after this, they would do together.
They discussed all this during the last days of their trip and reached a joint decision. She would continue studying and working in Leipzig, go to her clandestine cell meetings, distribute information and monitor developments in Hungary. He would continue studying and act as if nothing had changed. He remembered his diatribe against Hannes for abusing the East German communist party’s hospitality. He now intended to do precisely the same, and had trouble justifying this to himself.
He felt uncomfortable. Never before had he been in such a dilemma — his life had always been so simple and secure. He thought of his friends back in Iceland. What was he going to tell them? He had lost his bearings. Everything he had believed in so steadfastly had become alien. He knew that he would always live according to the socialist ideal of equality and fair distribution of wealth, but socialism as practised in East Germany was no longer worth believing in or fighting for. His mind was only beginning to change. It would take time to understand it completely and to redefine the world, and in the meantime he did not intend to make any radical decisions.
When they returned to Leipzig he moved out of the ramshackle villa and into Ilona’s room. They slept together on the old futon. At first, her landlady had doubts. As a strict Catholic she wanted to preserve decorum, but she gave in. She told him that she had lost her husband and both sons in the siege of Stalingrad. She showed him photographs of them. They got on well together. He did odd tasks for her in the flat, mended things, bought kitchen utensils and food, and cooked. His friends from the dormitory sometimes called round, but he felt himself growing away from them, and they found him more subdued and reticent than before.