“Better presents?” he said. “It was all the same. Really just like in the old Christmas rhyme: a candle and a pack of cards. Sometimes we would have liked something more exciting, but our family was poor. Everyone was poor in those days”
“What about after he died? Your brother.”
Erlendur said nothing.
“Erlendur?” Eva said.
“Christmas disappeared with him,” Erlendur said.
The birth of the Saviour was not celebrated after his brother died. More than a month had elapsed since his disappearance and there was no joy in the home, no presents and no visitors. It was a custom for Erlendur’s mother’s family to visit them on Christmas Eve when they would all sing Christmas carols. It was a small house and everyone sat close together, emanating warmth and light. His mother refused all visitors that Christmas. His father had sunk into a deep depression and spent most days in bed. He took no part in the search for his son, as if he knew it was futile, as if he knew he had failed; his son was dead and he could do nothing about it, nor anyone ever, and that it was his fault and no one else’s.
His mother was indefatigable. She made sure that Erlendur was nursed properly. She urged on the search party and took part herself. She was the last to come down from the moors when darkness fell and searching became futile, exhausted, and was the first to set off back into the highlands when it grew light again. After it became obvious that her son must be dead she kept on searching just as energetically. It was not until winter had set in completely, the snows were so deep and the weather so treacherous that she was forced to give up. Forced to face up to the fact that the boy had died in the wilds and she would have to wait until spring to look for his earthly remains. She turned towards the mountains every day, sometimes cursing. “May the trolls eat you who took my boy!”
The thought of his dead body lying up there was unbearable to Erlendur, who began seeing him in nightmares from which he awoke screaming and crying, fighting the blizzard, submerged in the snow, his little back turned against the howling wind and death by his side.
Erlendur did not understand how his father could sit motionless at home while all the others were hard at work. The incident seemed to break him completely, turn him into a zombie, and Erlendur thought about the power of grief, because his father was a strong, vigorous man. The loss of his son gradually drained him of the will to live and he never recovered.
Later, when it was all over, his parents argued for the first and only time about what happened, and Erlendur found out that their mother had not wanted their father to go up onto the moors that day, but he did not listen to her. “Well,” she said, “since you’re going anyway, leave the boys at home.” He paid no heed.
And Christmas was never the same again. His parents reached some kind of accord as time went by. She never mentioned that he had ignored her wishes. He never mentioned that he had been seized by stubbornness at hearing her tell him not to go and not to take the boys. There was nothing wrong with the weather and he felt she was meddling. They chose never to talk about what happened between them, as if breaking the silence would leave nothing to keep them together. It was in this silence that Erlendur tackled the guilt that swamped him at being the one who survived.
“Why’s it so cold in here?” Eva Lind asked, wrapping her coat tighter.
“It’s the radiator,” Erlendur said. “It doesn’t get warm. Any news about you?”
“Nothing. Mum got off with some bloke. She met him at the old-time dancing at Olver. You can’t imagine how gross that freak is. I think he still uses Brylcreem, he combs his hair into a quiff and wears shirts with sort of huge collars and he clicks his fingers when he hears some old crap on the radio. ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean…’”
Erlendur smiled. Eva was never as bitchy about anything as when she described her mother’s “blokes”, who seemed to become more pathetic with every year that went by.
Then they fell silent again.
“I’m trying to remember what I was like when I was eight,” Eva suddenly said. “I don’t really remember anything except my birthday. I can’t remember the party, just the day it was my birthday. I was standing in the car park outside the block and I knew it was my birthday that day and I was eight, and somehow this memory that is totally irrelevant has stuck with me ever since. Just that, I knew it was my birthday and I was eight.”
She looked at Erlendur.
“You said he was eight. When he died.”
“It was his birthday that summer.”
“Why was he never found?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he’s up there on the moor?”
“Yes.”
“His skeleton.”
“Yes.”
“Eight years old.”
“Yes.”
“Was it your fault? That he died?”
“I was ten.”
“Yes, but…”
“It was no one’s fault.”
“But you must have thought…”
“What are you driving at, Eva? What do you want to know?”
“Why you never contacted me and Sindri after you left us,” Eva Lind said. “Why didn’t you try to be with us?”
“Eva,…”
“We weren’t worth it, were we?”
Erlendur looked out of the window in silence. It had started snowing again.
“Are you drawing a parallel?” he said eventually.
“I’ve never been given an explanation. It crossed my mind…”
“That it was something to do with my brother. The way he died. You want to associate the two?”
“I don’t know,” Eva said. “I don’t know you in the slightest. It’s a couple of years since I first met you and I was the one who located you. That business with your brother is all I know about you apart from the fact you’re a cop. I’ve never been able to understand how you could leave Sindri and me. Your children.”
“I left it to your mother to decide. Maybe I should have been firmer about gaining access but…”
“You weren’t interested,” Eva finished the sentence for him.
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. Why didn’t you take care of your children like you were supposed to?”
Erlendur said nothing and stared down at the floor. Eva stubbed out her third cigarette. Then she stood up, went to the door and opened it.
“Stina’s going to meet you here at the hotel tomorrow,” she said. “At lunchtime. You can’t miss her with those new tits of hers.”
“Thanks for talking to her.”
“It was nothing,” Eva said.
She hesitated in the doorway.
“What do you want?” Erlendur asked.
“I don’t know.”
“No, I mean for Christmas”
Eva looked at her father.
“I wish I could have my baby back,” she said, and quietly closed the door behind her.