“Is everything all right?” Stefania asked, still sitting on the chair.
“Yes, fine,” Erlendur said. “A silly idea of mine. I had a feeling someone was in the corridor. Shouldn’t we go somewhere else? For coffee maybe?”
She looked across the room, nodded and stood up. They walked along the corridor in silence, up the stairs and across the lobby to the dining room where Erlendur ordered two coffees. They sat down to one side and tried not to let all the tourists disturb them.
“My father wouldn’t be pleased with me now,” Stefania said. “He’s always forbidden me to talk about the family. He can’t stand any invasion of his privacy”
“Is he in good health?”
“He’s in quite good health for his age. But I don’t know …” Her words trailed off.
“There’s no such thing as privacy when the police are involved,” Erlendur said. “Not to mention when murder has been committed.”
I’m starting to realise that. We were going to shake this off like it was none of our business, but I don’t expect anyone can claim immunity in these dreadful circumstances. I don’t suppose that’s part of the deal.”
“If I understand you correctly? Erlendur said, “you and your father had broken off all contact with Gudlaugur but he sneaked into the house at night without being noticed. What was his motive? What did he do? Why did he do this?”
“I never got a satisfactory answer out of him. He just sat still in the living room for an hour or two. Otherwise I’d have noticed him much earlier. He’d been doing it several times a year for years on end. Then one night about two years ago I couldn’t sleep and was lying in bed in a drowsy state at about four in the morning, when I heard a creaking noise in the sitting room downstairs, which of course startled me. My father’s room is downstairs and his door is always open at night, and I thought he was trying to get my attention. I heard another creak and wondered if it was a burglar, so I crept downstairs. I saw that the door to my father’s room was just as I’d left it, but when I entered the hall I saw someone dart down the stairs, and I called out to him. To my horror he stopped on the stairs, turned round and came back up.”
Stefania paused and stared ahead as if transported away from time and place.
“I thought he would attack me,” she began again. “I stood in the kitchen doorway and turned on the light, and there he was in front of me. I hadn’t seen him face to face for years, ever since he was a young man, and it took me a little while to realise that it was my brother.”
“How did you react to it?” Erlendur asked.
“It threw me completely. I was terrified too, because if it had been a burglar I should have rung the police instead of making all that fuss. I was trembling with fright and let out a scream when I switched on the light and saw his face. It must have been funny to see me so scared and nervous, because he started laughing.”
“Don’t wake Dad,” he said, putting a finger to his lips to hush her.
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.”