The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

"No, my dear, your grandmother has requested that we bring downstairs the Blue Book, it's that one on the third shelf up-"

  Unlike most things not seen since childhood, the Blue Book seemed just as huge and heavy as it had to me back then. Of course, it might have grown in the meantime; the chronicling of a family history is by its nature an ever-expanding endeavor. I couldn't resist flipping its pages before placing it on Halldora's cart. Genealogies of all types were crammed between the blue leather covers, some in English, some in Icelandic, some handwritten, some typed, some photocopied from books. I remembered as a child being dulled into near-oblivion by the lists of names and dates. They seemed no less wearisome now. Even so, I handled the book tenderly. It was Sigga's lifework, this exhaustive exhausting tome of ancestry.

  Sigga was waiting for us in the library, seated at the table. I kissed her on the cheek, lightly, her skin so fragile I was afraid even my lips might bruise her. Then I placed the Blue Book in front of her and took the seat opposite. Halldora sat next to Sigga, hands neatly folded in her lap.

  "I want you to have this, Freya," Sigga announced.

  I reached across the table, but she stopped me with her hand. "Not now. Now I'm just going to show it to you. Get you oriented. But after I'm gone. I'm leaving it to you. Soon you'll be the only one of my people left on this side of the ocean. You'll become the keeper of the family history. Of course I'd always planned to leave it to your mother. Birdie never had the patience for this type of work. Anna was the one for details. A very smart person, your mother, not flashy like Birdie, but keen. To think that she ... and leaving you alone in the world ... Are you sure you're managing all right, Freya?"

  "I'm fine, Amma. Really I am."

  Sigga said nothing, and I wondered if she saw through me. She was never easily fooled. But no, she was drifting.

  "Oh dear, where was I?"

  "Freya is to take on the responsibility," Halldora prompted. "That's where you were.

  Sigga nodded.

  "But, Amma ... what will I do with it?"

  "Do with it? You'll save it of course. Keep it up to date. All these pages with paper clips, you'll see, I've written the changes in pencil but they need to be typed up. Can't type anymore because of the arthritis. I've heard you can put it all into a computer. Do you know how to use one? Stefan won't have anything to do with that, he's so old-fashioned. But one of our relatives in Reykjavik is doing a lot of this work on the computer. You can get information from him. And then, eventually, you'll pass it on to your children."

  "What if I don't have children?"

  "Not have children?"

  "Some people don't. Birdie didn't." I scanned Sigga's face for a reaction, but there was none. "Anyway, I don't know if I will. I'm almost thirty, I'm not even married."

  "Women are waiting much too long these days," Halldora commented.

  "Well, Freya still has plenty of time." Sigga looked at me reassuringly. "Now, let's begin. You'll need to listen very carefully. And I've made Halldora promise to stop me if I ramble. Imagine spending all that time yesterday on Aud-the-Deep-Minded, when you don't even know the names of my own sister's children back in Iceland! And they're related to you on both sides, you know, through your grandfather and me. In fact, that will give us a good place to start, since you'll be meeting them this summer."

  "They're coming for the festival?" Halldora asked.

  "No, Freya is going to Iceland! Thorunn invited her!"

  "Did she now?" Halldora looked skeptical, with good reason. I wondered if I should bother telling Sigga I wouldn't be making the trip to Iceland in the summer. It didn't seem worth upsetting her. Let an old woman believe. Who knew if she would even be around by then, or have enough of a memory left to remember who I was, much less where I'd promised to go? It seemed impossible and impossibly sad to me that a mind like Sigga's could ever lose its way. But I'd already seen it starting to happen, mistaking me for my mother ... Sigga-the-Deep-Minded was as good as gone.

  "Sigga," Halldora prodded. "I think it's time we get started."

  "Started?"

  Halldora reached in front of Sigga and opened the Blue Book. "You were going to show Freya how you and Olafur are related."

  "I was? Yes, yes, of course. And we're going to begin with this." She pulled out a folded piece of paper lying loose in the front of the book, opened it, and spread it flat on the table. "My niece Thorunn from Iceland had this prepared for me by a genealogist, brought it to me last week as a birthday gift."

  In front of us lay a handmade drawing that I mistook at first for a map of the solar system. It was a particular type of Icelandic genealogical chart, Sigga explained. She pointed to her own name handwritten in a small circle at the exact center. Surrounding her name expanded a series of concentric rings, the closest one sectioned in half, the next into quarters, the next into eighths, etc. Ten circles in all filled the page. Ten generations. The ring closest to Sigga's name, bisected horizontally, contained her parents' names, her father in the top section, her mother in the bottom. The next ring contained in its top two sections her father's parents, and in the bottom two sections, her mother's parents. And so on. As if you dropped yourself like a stone in the middle of time's lake and all your ancestors rippled out around you in perfect concentric symmetry. It was quite beautiful, actually, like some ancient alchemical diagram, all the names handwritten in neat foreign script. The chart went back to the early seventeenth century, Sigga explained. "It could go even further, but the genealogist ran out of room."

  "But there are only first names ... ?" I puzzled.

  "The first name is what matters. You can figure out the last names easily enough. Just look to the next ring to see who the father is, and add son or dottir. Easy as pie. But there are no siblings in this kind of chart. Just parents and grandparents and great-great-greats."

  The lack of siblings gave the chart its symmetry. Instead of forking wildly in all directions like the branches of a traditional family tree, it unfolded like the rings inside an old-growth trunk, circling backwards generation by generation over time. I swirled my finger through the names like a labyrinth, the Thorunns and Ingibjorgs, the Palls and Jons and Gunnars.

  Next Sigga turned to another genealogy chart in the Blue Book, this one working forward in time with neat boxes and lines, documenting parents and children, grandparents and greats, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins. This was the genealogy Sigga had worked on so painstakingly during my Gimli summers, tracing Olafur's side of the family; it ran about forty pages.

  "Did you ever reach the Viking poet Egil Skallagrimsson?" I asked.

  "That's a separate chart, in the back. We'll get to that later." Sigga was hitting her stride, focused and intent. "Right now I'm going to show you exactly how your grandfather and I are related. Actually, we're related in several completely different ways-can you imagine that?"

  I could. Not specifically, of course, but it seemed entirely possible and indeed probable to me that every Icelander is related to every other Icelander somehow, if you're willing to look back far enough. The real question was, Did I want to imagine, much less understand, such ancestral connections in all their exhausting intricacies? I did not. I could not. The truth is that even with the aid of three cups of Halldora's coffee and a couple of stale butter cookies I barely managed to keep my eyes open as I attempted to follow Sigga's crosscuttings between the circles and squares. Olafur's third cousin had married Sigga's mother's first cousin. And so on.

  "Amma," I pleaded. "I don't think I'm cut out for this."

  "Nonsense, elskan." She patted my hand reassuringly. "You'll catch on soon enough."

  After my tedious lesson in Blue Bookology, I took Sigga back to her room and settled her in bed.

  "I do hope you'll see Vera, Freya. She called yesterday, I forgot to mention it, and when I told her you'd extended your stay, well, she practically insisted you go to Winnipeg and pay her a visit."

  "I don't know, Amma, I-"

  "Your mothe
r's dearest friend in all the world," Sigga reminded me.

  Dear Vera, Mama sighed. Indeed, Birdie smirked inside my head.

  That afternoon Stefan and I packed up the parlor. The old brass clock that had been a wedding present for Sigga and Olafur, Winnipeg etched in tiny lacy script on the clock face. Had Sigga's sister come from Iceland for the wedding, and bought the clock in Winnipeg? Maybe at Eaton's? I detached the pendulum and wrapped it separately in tissue paper.

  "Why don't you take it, Freya? I can ship anything you want to New York."

  "Thanks. I'll ... I need to think it over. Figure out what I have room for." My basement apartment flashed through my mind. It was not large, but there was plenty of room. In the eight years I'd been there I'd never furnished it; it was only temporary, after all. If I took the furniture from Oddi, I could have a real bed instead of a futon on the floor, a desk instead of a door balanced on two file cabinets, a dining table, a couch. Wooden bookshelves instead of milk crates. A dresser or two. I could rent a U-Haul, drive it all back to Manhattan. But did I really want an apartment furnished by my dead?

  In a box labeled "Family Photos" I wrapped in tissue paper the framed portraits from the mantel. Surely, Stefan commented, I would want these. I nodded vaguely, like my mother, in a way that could mean either yes or no, or nothing. I emptied out the rest of the china cabinet while Stefan collected lace doilies and knickknacks from the coffee tables.

  "What about this?" I pointed to the fringed lamp Birdie had brought back from one of her shopping sprees. "Why don't you take it, Stefan? Just your style."

  For once Stefan actually laughed at my humor. "Birdie surely had extravagant tastes," he admitted.

  "Remember when she came back with those awful presents for us? The rooster for Sigga, and the scarf with acrobats for me, and ... what did she get for you?"

  "The dog statue. `For our ever-loyal Stefan."'

  "Birdie could be cruel."

  "She certainly could."

  Indeed.

  "Well, I guess we better get to it," I suggested.

  "Get to what?"

  "Birdie's room." I still hadn't gone in there. But maybe with Stefan it would be easier.

  "Freya," he began, then paused. "I thought you knew. Birdie's room is ... empty. I packed it up a long time ago. After ... it happened."

  Of course. I'd just assumed that since the rest of Oddi was a perfect time capsule, Birdie's room would be too. "What did you do with everything?"

  "Actually, it's all in my attic. Sigga asked me to store it until she could bring herself to sort through it."

  "And she never has?"

  "Not yet. She blamed herself for Birdie's suicide. Felt she should have kept a better eye on her after she was released from the Selkirk Asylum. But Birdie always did what she wanted. There was no stopping her in anything. Anyway, you can take a look at Birdie's things when you come for dinner tonight. I'll take you up to the attic, pick anything you want. Or all of it."

  Or none of it. Then again, I could just have Stefan ship it all to my storage locker in Queens. Then the two dead sisters' belongings could keep company, getting along more peaceably than their owners ever had.

  Stefan's house was a large and rambling affair, with many rooms, way too big for one person yet none of the rooms was empty-each was stuffed to the brim with Icelandica. It seemed less a house than an archive with a bedroom and a kitchen.

  "Why start a museum?" I joked. "Just have people come here."

  Stefan laughed. "Actually, I'll be loaning many of these pieces to the museum." On the tour of his house I saw countless old trunks, a handcrafted bed frame, display cases with carved figurines, and a bedroom furnished in the style of a nineteenth-century Icelandic farmhouse. One large upstairs room was completely filled with file cabinets.

  "Where does it all come from?"

  "I'm a collector. A scavenger. And people know that. When the oldtimers die the relatives call me in to help sort through things. See if there's anything of historic value. The children never know what to do with it all. Often they're grateful to simply unload it onto me. Boxes filled with letters from people they've never heard of, unlabeled photographs, books in a language they can't read a word of. They know I'll take good care of these things. And then the detective work begins. Tracking down the names behind the faces in old photographs. Identifying images of buildings that have long since crumbled. Reading through tattered letters."

  "People must trust you a lot."

  "I suppose."

  "You probably know more about families around here than all the old gossips at Betel combined." He laughed. I was warming him up, and it was working.

  "My head's full of family secrets. But most of those people are gone now. There's no one left to tell."

  Tell me, I wanted to say. About Birdie's child. For suddenly I was certain again that he knew, something.

  Dinner was roast chicken, rosemary potatoes, a salad with the last of the tomatoes from Stefan's garden. "You're quite the cook," I said. "For a bachelor."

  Stefan blushed. "One learns to take care of oneself, I suppose."

  "Some learn better than others." I was referring to myself, but he didn't know that.

  "I hear you may be going to Iceland next summer, Freya."

  "Well, Thorunn invited me. But I can't say I'm exactly anxious to return. Not after my last trip. What a disaster. I made quite a bad name for myself, you know. We were all over the newspapers. Half the island was out searching for us. A couple of outlaws."

  "All the more reason to go back."

  "To exploit my notoriety?"

  "That was Birdie's notoriety, Freya, not yours. Go see Iceland with your own eyes.

  "Maybe." I felt a glimmer of temptation. Then again, I was on my fourth glass of wine. Stefan had had quite a few himself. Maybe I could loosen that stiff upper lip of his yet. "How did you and Birdie meet?"

  "In high school, in Winnipeg. She and your mother and grandmother moved there after Olafur died."

  "That's when they stayed with Vera Gudmundsson's family."

  "Exactly. Birdie was a vision, even then, in bobby socks and saddle shoes."

  "Were you in love with her?"

  For a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. "I suppose. At least for the first few years. Completely unrequited. I sent her love poems and she returned them to me marked up in red. `How cliche!' she wrote. But I stuck with her. She was the most exciting thing around. A rare bit of Manitoba glamour."

  "Did you want to marry her?"

  "For a time. But eventually even a loyal dog like me gets kicked once too often. We were more like siblings than anything. Your mother had Vera, and Birdie had me. And then I went off to the war, and when I got back three years later, Birdie was wilder than ever. Having affairs with married men. Drinking and spending and shocking the entire West End. I didn't want her anymore after that. Not as a wife. But I stuck by her through the years. Doggedly."

  "And you never met anyone else?"

  "I never did."

  "Birdie used to say you were like those old bachelor farmers."

  "Except without the farm." He stood up and began clearing the table.

  After dinner Stefan took me to his study to show me his work in progress. "The nearly completed New Iceland Saga, all eight hundred-some pages of it. A comprehensive history of the original New Iceland settlement, family by family. It's actually based on the structure of Landnainabok, the Icelandic book of settlements written in the twelfth century that accounts for all the original settlers of Iceland. The important ones, anyway."

  "Slaves didn't count?"

  "Exactly. But mine's more democratic. Everyone's included here. If they took a plot of land in the 1870s, they're in the book. There's also a couple of hundred pages of background material, life in Iceland history, economics, climate, folklore, living conditions followed by a complete history of the New Iceland colony. I'm trying to include as much original source material as possible. I'm hoping to have
the book ready for next year's Islendingadagurinn and the opening of the new museum." He started flipping through the typewritten pages, the photographs and charts taped in place.

  "You know, Stefan, it's practically as long as Birdie's Word Meadow. I think that was nearly a thousand pages. Has it ever turned up?"

  He shook his head. "She must have burned it, before she ... Or dumped it in the lake. Who knows what? All her writing, her letters and journals, her poems, everything. Gone. A damnable waste, if you ask me. Anyway, I've got a photograph of Birdie here that I thought you might like to see."

  The photograph was of Birdie and a man standing in front of a statue. "The unveiling of Olafur's monument in Reykjavik," Stefan explained. "There's Birdie. That must have been 1964, the centennial celebration of Olafur's birth."

  "Who's the man?"

  "Ulfur Johansson. He's-"

  "I know who he is," I interrupted. I studied the photo closely. Strange to see this younger Ulfur, with his shock of dark hair. So rnyndarlegur, Birdie had said. Before he turned into a Wolf and came after her. In this photo there was no sign of discord. In fact, she seemed to be looking into Ulfur's eyes. Gazing? "What if Birdie fell in love on that trip, and got pregnant?"

  "With Ulfur? He was married already, I believe."

  "Did that ever stop Birdie before?"

  "No. But really, Freya, I hardly think Birdie would have had time to fall in love. The Icelanders kept her very busy, giving lectures about her father, touring her around the island. It was a lot of pressure on her, too much. After she got back she just ... collapsed. Into a deep depression. She was convinced she'd failed her father somehow. That's when she tried to kill herself. Nearly succeeded."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said. She swallowed a whole bottle of pills, who knows what. Then lay down in the bathtub. I think she thought she would drown. But Sigga came home unexpectedly and found her. A close call. She was committed at Selkirk the entire next year."