She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Is that you?” she gasped.
He wasn’t like the image she retained of him from his youth, and she saw how badly he had aged. He had bags under his eyes and his thin lips were pale; wisps of hair stood out in all directions and he regarded her with infinitely sad eyes. She automatically began working out how old he really was. He looked so much older.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not doing anything. Sometimes I just want to come home.”
“That was the only explanation he gave for why he sometimes sneaked into the living room at night without letting anyone know,” Stefania said. “Sometimes he wanted to go home. I don’t know what he meant by that. Whether he associated it with childhood, when Mum was still alive, or whether he meant the years before he pushed Dad down the stairs. I don’t know. Maybe the house itself held some meaning for him, because he never had another home. Just a dirty little room in the basement of this hotel.”
“You ought to leave,” she said. “He might wake up.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “How is he? Is he all right?”
“He’s doing fine. But he needs constant care. He has to be fed and washed and dressed and taken out and put down in front of the television. He likes films.”
“You don’t know how bad I’ve felt about this,” he said. “All these years. I didn’t want it to turn out like this. It was all a huge mistake.”
“Yes, it was,” she said.
“I never wanted to be famous. That was his dream. My part was just to make it come true.”
They fell silent.
“Does he ever ask about me?”
“No,” she said. “Never. I’ve tried to get him to talk about you but he won’t even hear your name mentioned.”
“He still hates me.”
“I don’t think he’ll ever get that out of his system.”
“Because of the way I am. He can’t stand me because Im…”
“That’s something between the two of you that…”
“I would have done anything for him, you know that.”
“Yes.”
“Always.”
“Yes.”
“All those demands he made on me. Endless practising. Concerts. Recordings. It was all his dream, not mine. He was happy and then everything was fine.”
“I know.”
“So why can’t he forgive me? Why can’t he make up with me? I miss him. Will you tell him that? I miss when we were together. When I used to sing for him. You are my family.”
“I’ll try to talk to him.”
“Will you? Will you tell him I miss him?”
“I’ll do that.”
“He can’t stand me because of the way I am.”
Stefania said nothing.
“Maybe it was a rebellion against him. I don’t know. I tried to hide it but I can’t be anything else than what I am.”
“You ought to go now,” she said.
“Yes.”
He hesitated.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you hate me too?”
“You ought to go. He might wake up.”
“Because it’s all my fault. The situation you’re in, having to look after him all the time. You must…”
“Go,” she said.
“Sorry:
“After he left home, after the accident, what happened then?” Erlendur asked. “Was he just erased as if he’d never existed?”
“More or less. I know Dad listened to his records now and again. He didn’t want me to know, but I saw it sometimes when I got home from work. He’d forget to put the sleeve away or take the record off. Occasionally we heard something about him and years ago we read an interview with him in a magazine. It was an article about former child stars. “Where are they now?” was the headline or something equally appalling. The magazine had dug him up and he seemed willing to talk about his old fame. I don’t know why he opened up like that. He didn’t say anything in the interview except that it was fun being the main attraction.”
“So someone remembered him. He wasn’t completely forgotten.”
“There’s always someone who remembers.”
“In the magazine he didn’t mention being bullied at school or your father’s demands, losing his mother and how his hopes, which I expect your father kindled, were dashed and he was forced to leave home?”
“What do you know about the bullying at school?”
“We know that he was bullied for being different. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t think my father kindled any expectations. He’s a very down-to-earth and realistic man. I don’t know why you talk like that. For a while it looked as if my brother would go a long way as a singer, performing abroad and commanding attention on a scale unknown in our little community. My father explained that to him but I also think he told him that even though it would take a lot of work, dedication and talent, he still shouldn’t set his hopes too high. My father isn’t stupid. Don’t you go thinking that.”
“I don’t think anything of the sort.”
“Good.”
“Did Gudlaugur never try to contact you two? Or you him? All that time?”
“No. I think I’ve already answered your question. Apart from sneaking in sometimes without us noticing. He told me he’d been doing it for years.”
“You didn’t try to track him down?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Were he and his mother close?” Erlendur asked.
“She meant the world to him,” Stefania said.
“So her death was a tragedy to him.”
“Her death was a tragedy to us all.”
Stefania heaved a deep sigh.
“I suppose something died inside us when she passed away. Something that made us a family. I don’t think I realised until long afterwards that it was her who tied us together, created a balance. She and Dad never agreed about Gudlaugur, and they quarrelled about his upbringing, if you could call it quarrelling. She wanted to let him be the way he was, and even if he did sing beautifully not to make too much of it.”
She looked at Erlendur.
“I don’t think our father ever regarded him as a child, more of a task. Something for him alone to shape and create.”
“And you? What was your standpoint?”
“Me? I was never asked.”
They stopped talking, listened to the murmuring in the dining room and watched the tourists chatting together and laughing. Erlendur looked at Stefania, who seemed to have withdrawn inside her shell and the memories of her fragile family life.
“Did you have any part in your brother’s murder?” Erlendur asked cautiously.
It was as if she did not hear what he said, so he repeated the question. She looked up.
“Not in the slightest,” she said. “I wish he was still alive so that I could…”
Stefania did not finish.
“So you could what?” Erlendur asked.
“I don’t know, maybe make up for …”
She stopped again.
“It was all so terrible. All of it. It started with trivial things and then escalated beyond control. I’m not making light of him pushing our father down the stairs. But you take sides and don’t do much to change it. Because you don’t want to, I suppose. And time goes by and the years pass until you’ve really forgotten the feeling, the reason that set it all in motion, and you’ve forgotten, on purpose or accidentally, the opportunities you had to make up for what went wrong, and then suddenly it’s too late to set things straight. All those years have gone by and …” She groaned.