The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  I said yes even though I hated it. What I hated most was not how slowly everyone moved or how boring it was just sitting and knitting and moving one chess piece an hour. It was seeing Mama there with all those old people. Mama was in her early fifties then, but she could have passed for nearly seventy with her white hair and her cane. I'd almost lost Mama once. I didn't want to see her growing old before her time.

  All this, while Birdie was sleeping. If she wasn't up by the time Mama and I came home from Betel for lunch, it was my job to wake her. Carefully. Once Birdie was up, who knew how the day would go?

  After lunch Mama napped, which Sigga explained was another side effect of her head injury. Sometimes she'd even fall asleep sitting up at the kitchen table with her sandwich half-eaten, and Sigga and Birdie would have to move her. Each afternoon she slept for hours and hours, so deeply that you had to shake her shoulders to wake her. It scared me when she slept like that. I was afraid she might curl back into her comma.

  While Mama napped Sigga went to her part-time job at the library. And me, I was all Birdie's from then on. If she would have me.

  A horse is hestur. Unless you're riding it or hitting it or even just looking at it, in which case it's no longer hestur but simply hest. Take something from a horse and suddenly it spells itself hesti. Walk over to it, presto change-o you're looking at bests. Same horse, many spellings. A horse is a horse of course of course ... unless it's an Icelandic horse. Icelandic words are tricksters. Acrobats. Masters of disguise. Shape-shifters.

  And don't go thinking that if one horse is hestur more than one would be hesturs. Ha! Icelandic is too tricky for that. Horses in plural are hestar, unless you're talking about them, in which case they're hesta. Sit near them and you've got to start calling them hestum. Bring some hay to them, they turn back into hesta.

  And that's just if they're horses in general. The horse in particular is hes- turinn. (You attach the the to the back of the horse like a tail.) But try to pet the horse, it's hestinn. Take something from the horse, it's hestinum. Bring water to the horse, it's hestsins. Once there's more than one particular horse, you've got hestarnir. But watch out: touch them, brush them, look at them, say anything about them, even one word, they turn into hestana. Stand oppo site the horses and you've got yourself hestunurn. Bring 'em some water and abracadabra they're hestanna.

  "Do you see?" Birdie demanded. We were working our way through The Primer of Modern Icelandic by Snaebjorn Jonsson, Sometime Translator to the Icelandic Government, published Reykjavik 1927.

  I could see why most people spoke English. Icelandic was clearly a lot of trouble. I'd never even been on a horse. And that's just one way to decline a noun. Nouns in Icelandic can decline in nearly 200 different patterns. And then there are adjectives. One single adjective can have 144 variations, depending. Numbers shape-shift too, and even personal names decline. You can say Guttormur Guttormsson was a great poet. But if you said a poem was written by him, you'd have to call him Guttormi Guttormssyni.

  Only Icelandic adverbs are spared these gymnastics. As Snaebjorn stated in his primer, "Adverbs are indeclinable and do not suffer any change." I had a fondness for Icelandic adverbs. I too preferred not to suffer change.

  An hour a day after lunch Birdie and I had our lessons. Sigga approved. Mama didn't disapprove, exactly. She said, "Don't you think it's a bit much for a little girl?"

  "The older she gets the harder it'll be for her to learn," Birdie insisted. "A child's brain at this age is a sponge for language."

  "If you say so." Despite the fact that Mama questioned everything Birdie did, especially where I was concerned, in the end she usually let Birdie have her way. At the time I figured Mama felt sorry for Birdie because Birdie was childless. Now I wonder if Mama knew about you, the child Birdie gave away. She must have.

  I wanted to learn Icelandic, I truly did. Icelandic was the language of secrets. Icelandic was a code I'd been unable to crack, no matter how much or how hard I listened. I believed that if I could learn Icelandic I would understand all the things about the world that I didn't understand yet. I worked hard-Sigga and Mama and Birdie all agreed I was very dugleg- but I guess my brain wasn't spongy enough because I could hardly manage to construct a single correct sentence in Icelandic. Even a simple sentence like I caught one big fish. Because by the time you figure out whether if you catch a fish it's fiskur or fide or fiski and whether fish is male or female or neuter-neither (in order to know whether one should be einn or ein or eitt, or maybe einum or einni or einu), there were still all the different versions of big to choose from (stor or stort or storan or storuvi or storri or storu or stor- rar or stors), and by that time, the one big fish got away.

  That was malfraedi (mowl-fry-thee). Like vertigo, it was a word I loved to pronounce while hating what it meant. Mal is language and fraedi is study of, so mal plus fraedi equals grammar. Malfraedi made me bite my lip until it was bloody, so pretty quickly Birdie would move me on to aefingar (eyevin-gar). Exercises. Some aefingar were English that you had to make Icelandic, and some were Icelandic you turned into English, but no matter which way I translated them, they never made sense. Looking back on it now (and I've got my copy of Snaebjorn's Primer right here on my lap), I can see why. The individual sentences may have been correct, but Snaebjorn's paragraphs defied all sense. Take Aefingar 25:

  After all this time we are still here. I am going to walk round the lake; I wanted to walk up the mountain slope, but it was too steep for vie. The maids saw it through the key-hole. I put the flowers in the windows and the plates on the table. The beautiful poem "Locksley Hall" is by Tennyson. You have never been kind to me. Now come with vie across the river. Bring the knives and forks, please. I pay nothing beyond what was agreed to. It is raining on the new white tents. Let its see you run round the table.

  What was Snaebjorn thinking?

  So much for malfraedi. So much for aefingar.

  All this, while Mama was napping.

  Once in a burst of frustration I blurted out the unthinkable. "But why do I have to learn Icelandic?"

  "Why?" Birdie paused, stunned. "Because our language connects us as surely to our ancestors as our blood. Once you learn Icelandic you'll be able to read the Sagas and the ancient poems in the original, even though they were written nearly a thousand years ago. Our language is pure, Freya min. Can the English read their Beowulf untranslated? They cannot!"

  I must have looked less than eager to delve into centuries-old Icelandic manuscripts, because Birdie added, "Plus, you'll need to know Icelandic when I take you to Iceland."

  "You're taking me to Iceland?"

  "Indeed I am. Someday we'll go to Iceland, elskan, just you and me."

  I was not inclined to believe her. Hadn't she once promised to take me flying?

  Sometimes instead of Icelandic lessons in the afternoon Birdie took me to the beach. Once we even went in the morning. It was the day Birdie and I were the very first people on the lake. First to make our marks on the sand slated clean by night rain, tempting as a fresh sheet of manila paper awaiting crayon. My small footprints premiered, the half-moons of my heels, the five astonished dots of my toes. The lake flat and sleepy, the sky a blue so soft I wanted to lay my cheek on it like felt. I'd never seen the lake so early. I wasn't allowed there by myself because I could drown, and by the time Birdie woke each day and we packed a lunch and changed into our suits, it was the other side of noon, no patch of sand unchurned by running kidsteps and mother-size footprints dragging beach chairs and umbrellas, the whole thing a sprawl of towels, shovels, beach balls, buckets.

  This day was different. Birdie had been up all night I'd heard the sound of typewriter keys splattering deep in the night like rain. She'd typed straight into dawn and then tiptoed across the hall into my bedroom and whispered, Come, elskan, we're going to watch the sunrise. I said No, I didn't want to, cranky with broken sleep, shivering in my nightie, hating Birdie for dragging me down the stairs, shooshing me past the bedroom where
my grandmother and mother lay sleeping, through the kitchen, and out the back door along the two blocks to the beach and no sun to be seen. Just a cool darkness fringed pink. Birdie led me to the edge of the shore and took my hand. I jerked it away, scuffed my feet in the hard cold sand.

  And then it began, not my first sunrise, but the first I had witnessed with my own bare eyes: a small lump of ember on the far eastern rim of the lake spilling its sly orange grin over pale water. I grabbed back Birdie's hand, the squeeze between us a pulse of light. Then Birdie spread a plaid blanket onto the sand and the next thing I knew she was sleeping, her head a blond mess nested in the crook of her elbows. And I was alone with the ember-risen sun, the sand flat and perfect as a just-made bed.

  Unattended, my mother would have said, if she'd known.

  On afternoons when Birdie wanted nothing to do with me, when she locked herself in Olafur's study to work on her Word Meadow poem, or took off on one of her shopping sprees, or during those days or even weeks when who knew where she was or when she was coming back to Gimli, if ever, I helped Sigga at the Evergreen library. Sigga was the Head Librarian, elderly but vigorous. When I was with Sigga in the library, the world became, briefly, orderly and safe.

  "Is it true Icelanders cared more about their books than their babies and that's why they brought so many books with them from Iceland but left so many of their babies behind?"

  "Of course it's not true." Sigga pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose indignantly. "Infants couldn't survive the journey to America, and in those cases the parents left them behind to be raised by relatives."

  "What happened to them?"

  "Nothing happened to them. They grew up in Iceland is all."

  "But the Icelanders did bring a lot of books with them?"

  "They surely did. What else did they own worth bringing? Nothing. Most of them were destitute. But you know the saying, Bliudur er boklaus inadur-Blind is the bookless man. Who told you that nonsense anyway?"

  "I don't remember." It was Birdie, of course. I hadn't known if she was joking or not about the babies. About the books the evidence was clear: the Gimli library was full of books that had come over in immigrant trunks. When the old people died, their children would donate the books to the library, since most couldn't read Icelandic themselves.

  "When you came to Canada, did you bring your books in trunks?"

  "No, I shipped mine later. But that was different. I came in 1920. I had a place to come to. When the first Icelanders arrived in the 1870s, they didn't have anyone to ship anything ahead to. They hardly knew where they'd end up. Besides, I thought I was only visiting for a summer."

  "Where did you stay when you came?"

  "With your afi Olafur. In Arborg."

  "Even though he wasn't your husband yet?"

  "No, he wasn't. But he took in all sorts of visitors from Iceland. He welcomed anyone. As long as they were willing to work his farm!"

  "And then your books arrived?"

  "A year later they did. They came by the slow boat. By that time Olafur and I were engaged to be married. Imagine the scandal-he was thirty years older than me! Eight sets of shelves he had to build, to hold all our books."

  Gimli's library had new books as well, in English and even some in French, but the old Icelandic ones were my favorites. Sometimes I couldn't help wondering as I ran my fingers along their crinkled leather spines if maybe a particularly heavy book had taken the place on the ship of a baby who grew up in Iceland never knowing its parents.

  In the late afternoon came Coffee. Except coffee was for grown-ups, so I drank milk. In Gimli milk still came in bottles from cows that lived in places like Arborg and Geysir and Hnausa. Sigga baked the sweets we ate for Coffee, using the cookbook published by the Ladies Aid of the First Lutheran Church, Victor Street, Winnipeg, 1937 edition. There was a new volume every couple of years, but Sigga swore by the 1937 edition. The cookbook had a soft green cover that was worn and torn and creased and stained, but Sigga said it had held up pretty well considering. It had four different recipes for ponnukokur, but Mrs. B. B. Jonsson's was the best. There were two recipes for vinarterta; Mrs. B. J. Brandson's was best. Especially if you added an extra egg. Mostly Sigga baked cookies, like gingersnaps (two recipes, Mrs. Peterson's best), or Pearl Palmason's Thimble Cookies, which meant I got to roll the dough into balls and press the centers in with a thimble and fill them with jam. For visitors Sigga wanted to impress, like Mama's dear friend Vera, who ran the Ladies Aid of the First Lutheran Church singlehandedly, we made layer cakes, sometimes with frosting and sometimes icing. My favorite recipes were Frosting for Featherweight Cake and Celestial Icing. The Ladies Aid cookbook even had recipes from people who weren't Icelandic, like Scotch Crumpets from Mrs. J. Campbell. Sigga said there were lots of Scots in Winnipeg. At the back of the book was a page of Household Hints. Heat clothespins in oven in cold weather and they will retain sufficient warmth to keep the fingers comfortable while hanging out the clothes on a cold day.

  For coffee cups we used what Birdie called the Lucky Dozen: the ones I'd picked out on the day of Mama's welcome-home-to-Gimli party. Those twelve were the sole survivors, the only ones not inside the cabinet when I kicked it over. The first time we had Coffee after Mama came back from the hospital she noticed that the china cabinet was nearly empty. Stefan had replaced the glass, but three of the four shelves were bare.

  "What happened to your beautiful cups?" she asked Sigga.

  I froze. I didn't know yet that Mama couldn't remember anything about her accident. I felt my cheeks burn and I stared at my sneakers. For a long time no one said anything. Then Sigga explained that she was getting klutzy in her old age, what with her arthritic fingers and all, and if she kept it up there would be no cups left.

  I adored the Lucky Dozen, with their dainty feet and gold-lipped rims. I wanted to be the one to set them out for Coffee, but Sigga said no. She never let me near that china cabinet again.

  Coffee was served in the parlor. "It's like a morgue in here," Birdie complained after Mama put up her special heavy drapes.

  'T m sorry," Mama said. `Its my eyes.

  "You have nothing to be sorry about, elskan." Sigga touched Mama's head.

  Sometimes it was just us for Coffee, but often we had visitors, like the Arnasons with their little girl exactly my age. Her name was Nancy and she always had a doll or two tucked under her arm. Did I want to play dolls? I did not. Or the elderly Brandson sisters with trembling coffee-spilling fingers. On weekends Vera came; Birdie never came to Coffee on the Vera days. Best was when Stefan appeared with his grandfather Old Gish, who walked with the two troll-headed canes. He was the one who had entertained me with Gryla poems at Mama's welcome-home-to-Gimli party.

  "Here comes Gryla . . . " he would tease me when he walked in the door. I sat on his lap while he taught me funny verses line by line, first in Icelandic, then in a rough English translation. His knee was bony, but I didn't mind. I was especially thrilled by the lygirimur-lying rhymes nonsense poems brought over from Iceland.

  I have seen the cat sing from a book,

  The seal spin flax on a spinning wheel,

  The skate curry a hide for a pair of breeches,

  And the skua knit a sock of yarn.

  I soon surprised everyone by reciting entire lying rhymes from memory, in Icelandic. Despite my failures at grammar, it turned out I had a good ear for pronunciation and a talent for what Gisli called leggja a rninnid-laying things in my memory. Gisli taught me other verses too, verses he'd composed himself and others that had been circulating through the community for years, verses about topics lofty and mundane: scathing caricatures of locals, satires of ministers, brawls, family feuds, rumors, desires, regrets. Each verse had a story that went with it, an occasion or circumstance that prompted the versifier to compose the verse, and as told by Gisli these stories were often as entertaining as the verses themselves. The verses composed by Gisli and others like him were considered not high art but a fo
rm of common sport. Gisli called himself a hagyrdingur, a versifier, which was not the same as a true poet like my grandfather Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands. A great poet like Olafur was in a different class altogether, Gisli insisted. His own verses he referred to as arnaleir: eagle muck. Sigga said Nonsense, Gisli had a true talent.

  One thing Gisli was very strict about was that any verse measure up to the standard of the form: four lines, with complicated requirements for alliteration, rhyme, and meter. "None of that free verse for me," he'd insist. Apamensskubragur."

  "Baboonish nonsense indeed!" Birdie huffed. "Some of the greatest poetry today is written in free verse. Do you think poetry should stand still exactly as it was invented on a faraway island a thousand years ago?"

  "That I do." Gisli grinned. "That I do."

  Birdie's own epic poem, Word Meadow, was in free verse, but I myself became a traditionalist, endeared to the form Gisli taught me, with the first and third lines alliterative, echoed by the first letters of the second and fourth lines. Soon I was composing verses of my own, in English, which Gisli would attempt to translate into Icelandic, often with hilarious results.

  Once Birdie realized I had a knack for recital, she tried to get me to memorize poems by Olafur, Skald Nyja islands, but they were over my head and I much preferred lying rhymes and scary Gryla verses. Each time Gisli came for Coffee, he would teach me a new verse, nodding his grizzled head approvingly while he sucked coffee through the sugar cube clenched between his yellowed teeth.

  I liked to memorize things because that way you could make the words stand still. You didn't have to know whether a horse should be hestur or hesti or hesturn or bests; that was already done for you. Once an Icelandic word got stuck in a poem, its shape-shifting days were over.