“What the hell are you doing, fucking vandal!”
I was speechless with terror and stared at him like a deer in the headlights.
I tried to lie about it to my parents and say I’d found the Smurf stuff somewhere and decided to return it.
“I found it in a garden and decided to return it so the kids wouldn’t be upset.”
Mom was mad and yelled at me.
“Stop lying, Jón!”
“I’m not lying.”
But I soon saw it was hopeless; I knew from experience how difficult it was to lie to my mother. Mom couldn’t see the good in what I’d done and gave me no credit because I’d broken in to deliver toys. No, she only saw the negative. I had, for example, nothing to gain by returning the toys. Dad was more concerned about his reputation than the fact that I’d now become a criminal and a known Smurf thief.
“Why do you do this to me?” he asked tearfully.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, like so often before.
“Exactly right! You never know anything!”
The next day a detective came and searched my room. He opened all the drawers and peeked into all the cupboards. He took my Action Man stuff and looked accusingly at me.
“That’s mine,” I muttered.
Then I had to go with him to the Department of Criminal Investigation. My fingerprints were taken. They suspected me of having broken into several other places and believed, among other things, I’d broken into some work shed and trashed it. I was supposed to have broken everything and destroyed things and sprayed a fire extinguisher. I’d never do that. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t a criminal. I was just a curious kid who liked to see, touch, and smell things. The officer didn’t believe me until I broke down and burst into tears. He stood up, talked to the cops, and I heard him tell them I wasn’t the person they were looking for. I wiped away the tears and snorted through my nose. The officer drove me home. Along the way, he informed me that he had never in all his investigations had to deal with such an idiotic case.
“What exactly were you up to, kid? Who breaks in and steals things just to be able to return them?!”
“I don’t know.”
He asked, with a pitiful tone of voice, as though I was a bit speciaclass="underline"
“Is something wrong with you? Breaking and entering to steal from small children. Is this something you plan to continue doing?”
“No.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“No. Exactly right.”
UNBEHAGEN
Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty we’re vacant
Oh we’re so pretty, oh so pretty we’re vacant
Ah but now and we don’t care
They were going abroad. I saw the travel brochure on the table, so I asked:
“Who’s going abroad?”
“We are,” Mom replied, like she didn’t mean me.
“Where?”
“Bulgaria.”
Bulgaria? I’d never heard of the place until now. I didn’t know where it was. I didn’t even know if it was a country or city.
“When?”
“In July.”
I’d not totally managed to learn the months. I couldn’t remember what they were called or the order they came in. July was summer, so it had to be happening soon. Maybe it was next month.
“Where am I going to be?”
I knew I wouldn’t get to stay home.
“You’re going to the country.”
I thought with horror of my last time in the country. I wouldn’t go back there. I got tears in my eyes at the thought.
“I won’t go back to that hellhole!”
“No,” said Mom, sadly.
I was relieved.
“Can I stay with Runa?”
“No, you can’t stay with Runa.”
I didn’t feel like going to some crappy rural dump and hanging out there. I wanted to go stay with my sister up in Kjalarnes.
“Why can’t I stay with Runa?”
“Because you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too close to town. And I’m not going to be worrying about you on my holiday.”
“But I won’t do anything.”
Mom looked at me with a resolute expression.
“You’re not going to Runa’s. End of debate. You’re going to the country.”
“Where?”
“You’re going to Þrastarhóli with your aunt Bondi.”
“Where’s that?”
“Up north.”
“North? Whereabouts?”
Mom sighed.
“It’s in Eyjafjörður.”
I wasn’t any better informed about the north of Iceland than about Bulgaria. I had no idea where it was. It was as far off as Farawayistan in Duck Tales. Geography was a closed book to me. I doubted whether I could even point to Iceland on a map. I had a very faint picture of the world in my mind, and I didn’t know directions. I didn’t know, for example, where the sun came up and set. I knew that it was either in the east or the west, but I never remembered which. What little I knew of the Icelandic map was Reykjavík, Vatnajökull, and the Vestfirðir. Out west was, inexplicably, up. The Vestfirðir were fists that grew out of the land. Paradísarhellir, the cave where Hjalti had written his book about Anna from Stóruborg, was out in the east — so too was Suðursveit, though given the name it should have been in the south; that’s where Þórbergur Þórðarson was born and brought up. I was still unclear, though, exactly where “east” was. As for “north,” I hadn’t a clue.
I had driven the ring road with Mom and Dad and Aunt Gunna many years back. Dad was in a hurry, as usual, and drove like crazy. Mom and Gunna chain-smoked, listened to the big car stereo, and sang along excitedly to “The Song of Nína and Geira.” I read Donald Duck. I had no interest in seeing anything or paying particular attention to the environment. I was cold the whole time. It was really cold everywhere. I thought Iceland was ugly and boring. The mountains weren’t like mountains, but more like a pile of rocks. It felt like Mount Esja was everywhere. Sometimes we stopped because they wanted to look at a mountain, or some lake, and take photos. I stayed inside the car. Dad would hurry everyone along. The weather was miserable the whole time, typically rainy and windy. At night, we slept in a tent. Dad pitched camp while we sat inside the car. The cold didn’t seem to have any effect on him. He was out in the cold in just a T-shirt. I lay awake between them and listened to them snore. In the morning, we woke up cold and wet and had asparagus soup and bread for breakfast. Dad heated the soup on a Primus stove while we dried our butts inside the car. We drank the soup out of tins and then continued along gravel roads. Iceland rushed by, blurred and faintly gray through dusty car windows. Everywhere was windy. We stopped to see some waterfalls. They went out to see the falls but instantly came running back to the car, drenched from the water, which had blown directly onto them. When it finally let up and the wind calmed, we hit thick fog. One morning when I crawled cold and wet out of the tent, it was starting to snow.
“Where is Eyjafjörður?” I asked Aunt Gunna.
“In Akureyri. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
“No.”
“You know where Akureyri is?”