"Why did he offer to read it then, if he doesn't like anything written after World War I?"
"Oh, he won't admit to it. Doesn't want to look old-fashioned, out of step. So he reads modern work, then condemns it."
"That's not very fair."
"I agree. He should just stick with the Dark Ages, where he belongs. The Prime Minister of Sheepskin Manuscripts! And your vitlaus modern aunt. Quite a pair!"
Vitlaus. Witless. Meaning: one, stupid; two, wrong; three, crazy. I knew which meaning he meant. I'd heard it said of Birdie before, back in Gimli. Birdie said it herself.
"Don't say that, okay?"
"You shouldn't be so afraid of her."
"I'm not. It's just that ... you have to stay on Birdie's good side."
"Why? You're always trying to please her. She makes you perform in front of company like a pet poodle."
"She makes a lot of enemies. I don't want to be her enemy.'
"But you're just a little girl."
"I'm older than you think."
"Thirteen, right?"
"Yes, but ... I take care of my mother."
"What's wrong with her? Is she sick?"
"She had an accident."
"A car accident?"
A cartwheel accident. "Sometimes it's more like I'm the mother."
"Why didn't she come to Iceland?"
"She's afraid to fly."
"How sad for her."
"Where's your mother? Do you miss her?"
"She's in Spain. And no. I'm too busy hating her. Leaving me here with him." He reached into the pocket of his jeans jacket and pulled out a small bottle. A flask. Took a swig and passed it to me. "Try this."
"What is it?"
"Brennivin. Black Death."
The first sip I spat out. The second I swallowed. "I nearly killed her once." And a third. And a fourth. "I didn't mean to. I did something. Something that ... scared her. And she fainted and fell and hit her head and went into a ... What's the word in Icelandic? For someone who is sleeping and can't wake up?"
"Daudada?"
Daudi, death. Da, trance.
"For six days. It made her ... different."
"Different how?"
"She gets dizzy, loses her balance. Walks with a cane. Her hair turned white. She looks like a grandmother."
"What did you do?"
"At first I felt terrible. But I learned how to take care of her. I make sure she has her sunglasses and her cane-"
"No, I mean, what did you do to make her fall?"
A fifth swallow, a sixth. "I don't know."
"You don't know what you did?"
"I don't know it in Icelandic."
"Describe it."
"It's stupid. A trick, something little kids do. American kids. Maybe Icelandic kids don't even do it."
"Do what?"
"You put your hands on the ground and spin your legs through the air. Like a wheel."
"You were spinning like a wheel and this scared your mother?"
"Don't laugh. It's not funny."
"I'm sorry."
Seven eight nine. "I crashed into a cabinet made of glass. Mama thought I was hurt. She saw me lying in the glass. And she fainted. Almost never woke up."
My voice had turned hoarse, my throat strangled with sadness. My tears fortunately invisible. I'd told it. I waited for what he might say.
"Take the last sip." Pressing the bottle to my mouth. I felt the cold glass against my lips and shivered. Then the burn of Brennivin. "Here, put this on." His blue jeans jacket with the bright patches. Now I was inside it, smelling his smell.
"I want to show you something."
Ishellir: ice cave. Blue-white ice. Ice-floors ice-walls ice-ceilings. Ice fingers dripping down from the top of the cave, ice candles growing up. A curving ice chamber. A place you could slide into. Brennivin makes you slidey. Luckily Saemundur caught me. I felt something on my lips again. Not bottle.
Lips soft as fox pelt. And then his tongue melting into mine. Nothing like ice.
We kissed so long the tears dried on my cheeks.
I gashed my hand on a stalagmite scrambling out of the cave.
"Sauddrukkinn!" Saemundur teased.
"Sheep drinking?"
"Drunk as sheep. Let me see." Shone the flashlight on my wounded palm. Kissed it.
In the jeep on the ride back to the summerhouse, drinking coffee from an Esso station, Saemundur filled me in on everything I'd need to know about the greenhouses at Hveragerdi, the place we hadn't seen that day. In case we got quizzed. "The main thing is to act suitably impressed at the great technological ingenuity of the Icelanders. Harnessing our mighty geothermal power for prosperity. My father loves that stuff." He took a long sip of coffee from the cup, maneuvering the jeep's wheel one-handed. We were speeding through the glaciers again, not even stopping at the bone cairn. The view from the jeep was dreary white: white glaciers, white sky, and nothing but rubble for miles around. Not every girl's idea of the perfect vacation. But I was happy, Cousin. I was in thirteen-year-old heaven.
Who knows what time it was when we finally circled the top of Thingvellir Lake and parked the rattling jeep in front of the summerhouse? We were late, but how late I couldn't guess. It was still light, but that's not saying much. We sat in the jeep a few more minutes, avoiding the inevitable. The house looked so tiny, perched in its island of tall grasses. I was hoping for one last kiss, but Saemundur seemed nervous.
"I wonder how it went," I ventured.
"Good or bad, they're waiting for us."
"I guess they are."
"We could have left sooner."
"We could have."
"They'll be mad."
I nodded. "In English it's both angry and crazy."
"What is?"
"The word mad. The way vitlaus means stupid or crazy. Mad means either angry or crazy. Or both."
We walked from the jeep to the summerhouse with our secrets thick between us. I could see Ulfur through the window, still sitting at the table. His head was in his hands. Then Birdie opened the door to greet us, mad in every meaning of the word.
18
Must I continue? Can't we please linger in the ice cave? In my delicious first kiss soft as fox pelt, in the swoon of pure velvet cave-black darkness? Me, I've been attempting to return there ever since. Yes, my darkroom job. It soothes me. It's how I stop the world when the mere spin of this planet makes me dizzy. I switch off the red safelight and there is nothing but that utter-black-of-the-universe cave-dark night. Remember the mythical Ginnungagap: no sand no sea no surging waves, no earth no heaven, nothing but the yawning gap? I've got it, anytime.
I find myself wanting to protect you, Cousin, from what comes next. Prepare you, at the very least. And so I ask: What do you know of manic depression? Nothing, I hope, if that's not too much to ask. Mood disorders are wickedly heritable. Suicide too runs in families. But let's assume for the moment and against the odds that you're untouched. These days the doctors call Birdie's malady bipolar disorder. But why settle for psychiatry's static nomenclature of an illness that is itself a shape-shifter, manifest in multiple and torturous forms? In the spirit of our ancestor poets, I could easily spin a thousand kennings for this disease: word bubbler, speech rocket, gabber, charmer, pun spawner, brain champagne, ecstasy's consort, giddy fix, midnight sun, sleep thief, marvelous party, big spender, synapse leaper, delusion peddler, rager, grudge holder, thrower of fits, ringleader, god maker, eternal flame. And: brain glacier, tongue freezer, hope snuffer, sob story, shut in, doom spell, stun gun, death wish, wrist slasher, pocket of stones.
Melter of wings.
Okay, I'll quit stalling. Here we go:
Birdie opened the summerhouse door screaming mad. True, we were a pair of lying teenagers drunk as sheep returning hours late from a reckless jaunt. Enough to make any normal adult angry. And maybe Saemundur caught hell for it later. I'll never know. But Birdie? She didn't care if I'd seen the ingenious thermal-powered greenhouses of H
veragerdi. There was no time for that. The Wolf was on the loose.
Yes, you heard me. The Wolf is on the loose! That's what your mother screamed when she met us at the door, maddened and looming large. Berserk, I thought. She's gone berserk. It was a word Birdie herself had taught me, from the Old Norse berserkr, a pagan warrior who fought with maniacal, inhuman frenzy. I froze in terror. Saemundur gave me a horrified glance, then fled into the house. Birdie swooped, caught me by the shoulders, and hiss-whispered in my ear: Ulfur has betrayed us!
And so unfolded the most god-awful of Birdie's god-awful scenes. We were leaving, Birdie informed me, blocking my entrance into the summerhouse. Our suitcases were packed and in the trunk of Ulfur's car.
"Where are we going?"
"Back to Gimli."
"Gimli? What about our trip to the East, what about Olafur's letters?"
"What about you shut up and get in the car?"
Birdie's words could slap your face and leave it stinging sure as any hand. In the backseat of Ulfur's car, I sat next to Birdie silently crying. Help me, Saemundur. But all I could see was the back of his head. Ulfur drove.
"Leave us at Thingvellir," Birdie commanded. "We'll take the bus back to Reykjavik."
"That's unnecessary, Ingibjorg. I'll drive you to Keflavik."
The airport in the black lava field.
"Thingvellir, I'm warning you," Birdie snarled. "Or we'll get out of this car right now!"
You would have thought Ulfur was threatening us. And I guess in Birdie's mind he was. The Wolf is on the loose!
The Wolf looked at his watch, said something about our catching the six o'clock bus, the last one of the day. How grim he looked, not in the least wolfish. No longer brimming with self-importance but depleted and exhausted. For all I knew Birdie had been railing at him for hours, the entire time Saemundur and I were gallivanting across glacial passes and crawling through lava caves. With words alone Birdie could grind a person into mute surrender. I'd seen her do it many times, to Mama and Stefan, even Sigga. Me. And now Ulfur, all the way across the ocean. Why had I expected Birdie to behave in Iceland, when she never could back in Gimli? What was my mother thinking, letting Birdie take me to a foreign country? Marna! And even more than my mother I wanted Sigga to appear and take charge. To say, Enough of this nonsense, Ingibjorg! Shape up or ship out. But we were far beyond Sigga's reach, far beyond anything. I felt only dread as I saw Thingvellir's rocky plains swing into sight. How desolate it seemed to me. Godforsaken, my mother would have said. And suddenly it was over. I was standing alone with Birdie in the Thingvellir parking lot watching Ulfur's tiny car putter off. Holding my cherry red suitcase. Shivering in mean wind. A speck of misery on that vast tectonic plain.
How could Ulfur have abandoned us there? you ask. Did he not see how dangerous Birdie had become? I suppose he believed that we were as Birdie said returning immediately to Gimli, and that was the best outcome he could have wished for all concerned.
Just before Ulfur drove away, Saemundur rolled down his window and called my name. I ran to the car and he grabbed my hand, pulled me close, and whispered, "Be careful, Freya min."
Freya mine. True, they all called me that-Mama, Birdie, Sigga, Stefan even. But from Saemundur's lips it sounded altogether different.
"What did he say to you?" Birdie demanded.
"Nothing."
"Liar!" That's when she grabbed me by the shoulders, started shaking me, accused me of being in cahoots with Ulfur and Saemundur. Her hair came loose from her scarf. "Why did he give you his jacket?"
I looked down at myself in surprise. In all the chaos, I'd forgotten I was wearing it, forgotten to return it to Saemundur. The jeans jacket with the European patches. "He said good-bye. That's all, I swear."
She let go of me. I sat down on my suitcase to wait for the bus, staring up at the stony wall of Almannagja, then down to the Law Rock at its base, where a group of tourists stood listening to a tour guide. The wind picked up and I huddled on my suitcase, long skinny arms wrapped around long skinny legs, chin pressed to bony knees. Iceland was wearing me down with its earstinging eye-tearing hair-tangling wind, its sideways rains, slushing sleets, August snows. Gloomy glacier-smothered mountains, bleak volcanic deserts. So we were running back to flat little Gimli? Fine with me. I'd be happy to spend the last few weeks of my summer lazing on the hot muggy kid-crowded beach swatting blackflies. The old mundane routines seemed suddenly enticing. The prospect of escorting Mama to Betel, wasting a morning watching old ladies knit and old men play chess seemed fine, just fine. Shelving books for Sigga in the Gimli library? Nothing better. And Birdie? Birdie could go to hell. I imagined Birdie dropping into the fiery mouth of the volcano Hekla as it was painted on the antique map at Ulfur's house.
And then the bus came gliding down the long curving road into Thingvellir. I leapt off my suitcase, stood jumping lightly foot to foot in the freezing wind. The tourists made their way from the Law Rock to the parking lot, where they huddled in a group, bracing themselves against the wind. There were ten or twelve of them, and I watched impatiently while they climbed on the bus ahead of us. I wanted to board but I had to wait for Birdie. She had the money. Finally the last tourist climbed on.
"Come on!" I called to Birdie, grabbing my suitcase. "The bus isn't going to wait all day."
"We're not taking the bus," Birdie said.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. We're not taking the bus." And to prove her point Birdie waved to the driver, to indicate he could leave without us.
I considered it. At that moment I definitely considered severing my fate from Birdie's. Climbing on the bus and leaving her behind to carry out alone whatever awful scheme she'd concocted. Why didn't I? I had no money, and more important, I had no concept yet of my own autonomy. I was a child still, dependent on adults to move me from place to place. And Birdie was watching me as I wavered on the edge of betrayal.
"Freya!" she called. It was a warning and a plea. Or so I heard it. I was both afraid of her and afraid for her. The bus pulled away and I stared at Birdie in disbelief.
"Why?" I was angry and I didn't care if Birdie knew it. "Why did we sit here freezing waiting for a bus we're not even going to take?"
"You thought we were waiting for the bus?" Birdie laughed. "Oh no. We are waiting for the Wolf to clear the area."
"But that was the last bus! How will we get to the airport?"
"The airport?"
"Gimli!" I shouted into the wind, and the wind blew it back in my face.
Birdie studied me. An hour earlier she'd been a rage-monster; now she was glacier-cool, mountain-steady. "We're not going back to Gimli, elskan."
I began to cry. Not the hot stunned tears I'd cried back at the summerhouse. No, this time I wailed. I howled into the wind. I fell to my knees and sobbed. Manua! I cried. My dear befuddled gray-haired plain-Jane gentle loving Mama who was afraid to fly. I want Mama! I cried so hard my teeth chattered and I began to hyperventilate.
And suddenly Birdie was back, the old Birdie who comforted me from nightmares was putting an arm around my shoulder, soothing me until my teeth stopped chattering and my shoulders quit heaving and I began to breathe slow and normal breaths again. Then she knelt beside me on the gravelly pavement and took both my hands in hers.
"Dear Freya," she began. Her voice was calm, no hint of agitation. "I should have explained to you sooner. I forget you aren't a child anymore, you're nearly grown up, you can understand things. I'm going to confide in you the truth of our situation. We're in danger."
"We are?"
"The important thing is to act quickly." She took my hand and we began walking with our suitcases, following the road the bus had taken out of the park. I didn't ask where we were going. I was too numb. We crossed the bridge over the river Oxara, passing the cheerful white Thingvellir church and its graveyard of moss-encrusted iron crosses. On the other side of the bridge, Birdie glanced around, as if to make sure no one was watching us
there was no one, Cousin, no one anywhere! and then clutching my hand she pulled me off the roadside and we began following a trail that circled the lake.
On and on we walked, no longer hand in hand-the trail was too narrow-but single file, me struggling to keep up with Birdie's frenzied strides. Sometimes the ground was nothing more than rock split into chasms brimming with the clearest water I'd ever seen, orange and blue stones gleaming in the depths. White and yellow wildflowers spiked the tall grasses, purple ones grew on the pebbled banks of twisting streams. White puffs of milkweed bloomed like the heads of miniature grazing sheep. In some places the earth was so thick with moss it felt like sponge beneath my feet. The wind picked up, the wind died down. The lake lay like glass, then frothed into whitecaps, then calmed itself again. I noted these things without finding them beautiful. Beyond it all the vast Thingvellir plain surrounded, overwhelmed us. I felt we were nowhere. Thingvellir may be the big Somewhere in Iceland. But there's nothing there. No towns, no houses. Only mountains looming in the distance. A single road, and we weren't on it.
Even if I couldn't see it, even if the sky was still a bright light gray, I could feel night beginning its fall. The twittering and shrilling of birds turned to silence, and still we walked, and while we walked, Birdie got talky again. Explaining, justifying, blaming, scheming. Shouting things at me over her shoulder and above the wind. Establishing the germ of delusion that in the coming days would mutate in countless directions, forming plots and subplots and archplots, holy synchronicities, malevolent coincidences.
"This may come as a shock to you, Freya min, but Ulfur has been plotting against us this whole time."
"Plotting . . . ?"
"To steal Olafur's letters for himself. He wants to keep them in Iceland. Did you see how eager he was to be rid of us? He never had any intention of helping us find the letters. All ruse. I wouldn't be surprised if he is on his way to the East now, to track down the letters himself. What a coup that will be, another feather in the hat for the great scholar and recoverer of lost manuscripts!"
The Tricking of Freya Page 17
