VII
Fresh or high-gale winds are expected in the waters of Breiðafjörður and Faxaflói Bay…
Guðmundur Berndsen, captain of the freighter Per se, sits alone at the kitchen table in his home, drinking black coffee and looking out the window as he turns the envelope on the table and listens to the weather report on a small radio. But his mind is wandering and the soothing voice of the meteorologist goes in one ear and out the other.
It’s not as if the weather matters for him: his ship is so big you can sail it in any weather – if the captain is capable and bold, that is. And after thirty years at the helm, Guðmundur Berndsen is an old hand. It’s his habit, however, to check the weather before leaving harbour, if only to prepare himself mentally for the long separation from his wife and family, and to make the connection between his mind and the open sea that is waiting for him, enveloped in silence and mystery, both seductive and dangerous, a massive great heart that rises and falls in a cold breast, luring him like a lonely mistress.
And, just like a mistress, the open sea has come between Guðmundur and his wife, Hrafnhildur. The separation – which used to be like fuel to the fire of love and longing – has become a desert where nothing can live; little by little passionate goodbyes have changed into embarrassed silences, and excitement at meeting again has become bitter foreboding that coils itself around their hearts like a snake, poisons their blood with doubt and gnaws at the foundations of their marriage, which is on the verge of collapse.
It isn’t, however, the sea that separates them but death; the death of their daughter, in fact. The sea is just a symbol of the dark wasteland that death has left behind in their lives in exchange for the lost girl child. The dark wasteland that has, since that day, kept them apart, whether they sleep in the same bed or on different continents.
They already have a son, who was born when Hrafnhildur was nineteen and Guðmundur twenty-two. He left home around the age of twenty, to learn to tame and train horses in Vienna, half a year before his sister came stillborn into the world. His interest in Vienna had come from his mother, who loved opera and had always intended to go there herself to study singing. That never came about, but her son made his dream come true; since then thirteen years have gone by. He now lives in Austria, with his wife and son, but Guðmundur and Hrafnhildur live alone in a two-storey detached house and share the silence, the sorrow and the dark wasteland.
Hrafnhildur studied singing in Iceland and sang in a great many opera productions, besides giving solo concerts and singing duets on various occasions. She delighted in singing and music generally, so neither the uncertain revenue nor the irregular working hours diminished the pleasure it gave her to entertain people. After losing the baby she stopped singing altogether for several years, until a pastor and a psychologist supported her husband’s exhortations to take up singing again so she could renew her contacts with other people and the pleasure that singing had always given her.
So Hrafnhildur did start singing again, but on her own terms. Grief had her in its grip, and from the first day she allowed her beautiful soprano voice to be heard again, she sang only at funerals. Clothed in her long black dress, she was surrounded by such a holy aura that the loveliest churches paled beside her and the hardest men broke down and cried like babies. There, in the presence of death and sorrowful mourners, Hrafnhildur found a new role in life. In the middle of the dark wasteland life awoke in her like the smile on the lips of a dying man, like a blossom that opens for the last time.
Guðmundur was happy to see his wife leave the sanctuary of their home to sing for people again, but soon regretted having pushed her to do so. Instead of helping her deal with her sorrow, singing allowed her to wallow in it even more. She was as sad as before; sadder, if anything. When Guðmundur came back from a long sea trip the house would be dark, the windows shut, the air stuffy and no sign of life. He would often arrive to stand, unmoving, and listen to the silence, his wife’s name stuck in his throat like a potato. Then Hrafnhildur would float past him like a ghost, in that long black dress, made up like a corpse.
Guðmundur hates the black dress, that well-tailored death veil that hides his wife’s body, sucks all the energy and light out of her, turns her into a zombie and makes her avoid him, and him avoid her. He believes that Hrafnhildur could stop singing in funerals and master her grief, but that she doesn’t want to. Guðmundur reasons that she is addicted to grief, a slave to her own sorrow.
And Guðmundur is addicted to the sea, an old sailor who can’t get in tune with life, himself and existence unless the world is rocking under his feet and infinity facing him in every direction. Distance is his eternal embrace, loss his most passionate love and intense homesickness the force that maintains a balance in his life. But Hrafnhildur finds this difficult to understand.
Probably they both would just like to make peace with their own fates and each other, but they have remained silent for too long, and nothing is as heavy as long silence.
They long to talk; the words are in the air but they can’t open their mouths – or, at any rate, their hearts.
It’s been like this for nine years.
Nine years.
Guðmundur sighs and lightly taps the envelope on the table with his finger. Then he takes a sip of his long-cold coffee and looks out the window, distracted.
He isn’t looking out the window, though – rather, at his reflection in the dark glass. He is face to face with a bearded, half-bald old man in his sixties, but looking as if he retired years ago.
Guðmundur smiles weakly, turning his eyes into narrow slits that sink into the wrinkled, leathery skin.
There was a time when he seriously considered leaving Hrafnhildur, bringing to an end the long season of cold, dark and silence that was their marriage. Breaking the ice, the silence and the vows he had made in the presence of God and men. Demanding a divorce, moving out of the house and starting again.
That was two years ago. At that time he had come to hate Hrafnhildur. But the hate gradually changed to pity, pity to shame and shame to self-contempt.
Starting again?
He was an ugly old sea-dog, doomed to die alone and abandoned in some basement bedsit where his body would rot for weeks before the neighbours came to investigate the smell.
But it wasn’t his fear of lovelessness, loneliness and death that made Guðmundur abandon all ideas of divorce; he wasn’t that selfish and petty. No, it was love that defeated his doubt, the tediousness, the hatred and the shame. Love for the woman he had married and vowed to love and honour, in sickness and in health. Love for the woman who had accepted him, a self-important young ship’s mate who had nothing to offer her but those very vows.
He loves Hrafnhildur and longs to express his love, renew the vows and the wedding night. He longs to begin anew, with her. He longs to embrace her, kiss her passionately and never let her go. But life isn’t that simple.
Guðmundur catches sight of his watch – the gold watch that the shipping company gave him when he turned fifty. It’s twenty-five past eleven, only fifteen minutes until some landlubber from the owner’s office comes to fetch him.
The bloody idiots! They’re going to give up their lease on the ship and fire the crew. They offered him a job on another ship but he refused it. This coming tour is going to be his last.
Guðmundur Berndsen stands up from the kitchen table and walks with heavy steps into the master bedroom; he blows air out through his nostrils like a whale and turns the envelope in fingers as broad as a Polish sausage, hairy up to the last joint and rough as driftwood.