And with what returned our questing Freya? The answer to one question: yes, Birdie had a child. What became of it nobody knows, is probably impossible to find out, and no one but me seems to care. A partial answer, an unusable answer. And then, too, I'd obtained answers to questions I'd never intended to ask. Birdie swaying in front of her bedroom window, each typewriter key buried in its own neat piling of snow. Her life's work vanished. How everyone secretly took credit: Mama, Stefan, Sigga, me, each of us simultaneously and solely shouldering the same and entire hunk of blame. It was the most startling thing I'd discovered-next to you, Cousin. It made a mockery of the burden I'd believed was mine alone, the sense I've had ever since Birdie's death that at the heart of me there is something bad, something criminal, a belief that has fused to my sense of self like a barnacle, tenacious and cementlike in its grip.
So, yes, like Gylfi I returned home with newfound knowledge, but at first there was nothing to do with it. No one to tell. No fanfare, no feasts. No elixir to share with the tribe. Until I began writing you this letter.
After I got started, I wrote to Stefan and asked him to ship me Birdie's old Underwood typewriter. It seemed only fitting.
Oh, Clever Cousin, vanishing without a trace. No birth announcement, no birth certificate. No evidence you were ever born. I returned home from Gimli in late September, hired the detective in early October. Now it's December and I've received conclusively inconclusive news: The detective has found nothing. I got a letter from him today, along with a bill for his services. Not that I regret hiring him. You're worth it. Even the idea of you is worth it.
Don't worry, I'm not giving up. I'll develop new theories, avenues of investigation. A plan even. In the meantime there's nothing to do but keep writing.
I've been reading up. When I can't write or sleep, I read through the night. In Iceland in winter words take the place of light. I'm conducting evening-wakes of my own, with the three books that lay on Birdie's suicide altar. Stefan was kind enough to include them when he shipped her typewriter. I like to think she left them there for me, or maybe you. We'll never know. Stefan says she wrote no note: at the end of her life Birdie was at a loss for words.
I've just finished reading the first of the three. If you haven't read Egil's Saga, Cousin, I recommend that you do. Not only because some believe it to be the greatest saga ever written, precursor to the modern novel, a crowning achievement of medieval literature. And not only because Birdie was one of those believers. It's a question of influence. Birdie loved Egil's Saga. She loved Egil himself, that cruel, charming, cunning, brilliant, impulsive, trollish brute of a Viking warrior-poet. She claimed, in fact, to be directly descended from him, and if personality is any indication, I wouldn't be surprised if this were true.
What strikes me most is Egil's poetry, woven throughout the saga: Odinsent, bloodstained, tear-riddled, mead-laden, heartless and heartbroken, magical, mundane. And life-saving-Egil nearly committed suicide once, after the death of his sons, but composed himself back into life with his famous poem, "Lament for Lost Sons." My tongue is sluggish/for me to move, begins Egil's lament. My poem's scales/ponderous to raise. Word by word, line by line, Egil wrote his grief, his rage, his loss, and his ultimate resurrection. (Of course, I shouldn't use the word write to describe Egil's process, since he did not write. He did not know how. Christianity brought writing to Europe, and the Icelanders came late to Christianity. Alone on their rugged island, our stubborn heathen ancestors held out against God and pen. Viking exploits, deeds of the gods, law, history-all were preserved in memory like amber and passed through the generations as precious verbal jewels.)
Shall we write it together, Cousin, when we meet? Our own "Lament for Lost Mothers"? Or have I already begun? It has not escaped me that I may be attempting Egil's strategy myself, seeking to resurrect myself with words.
Today my darkroom buddy, Frank, informed me that Klaus is considering firing me.
I have to admit, Cousin, the thought of being fired fills me with terror. There aren't many places left in New York for a black-and-white printer to work, and what else can I do? I never finished college; I don't know com puters; even my typing skills are limited to hunt and peck. I have nothing to put on a resume but burns and dodges; maneuvers accurately in dark places; discerns the finest shades of gray.
I should stop comparing myself with King Gylfi. Not because he's a king and I'm a lowly worker bee. Actually, it's Gylfi who's the pawn. The scholar Snorri Sturluson's pawn, to be exact. Yes, the same Snorri who was assassinated in his hot pool. For Snorri, Gylfi is nothing more than a literary device, the king's quest a clumsy platform upon which Snorri can expound to his readers the whole of Norse cosmology, lest it fall into oblivion. As Birdie had explained to me so long ago, when I was far too young to understand, Snorri was worried that the young Christian writers of his time were forgetting the pagan myths from which the baroque kennings of skaldic poetry arose, and without which the poetry is rendered meaningless. And so Snorri-a Christian himself-penned The Prose Edda, a treatise on the art of skaldic poetry that preserves the pagan myths for posterity. The Prose Edda is the second of the three books on Birdie's altar. In it reside the tales of gods and goddesses, dwarves and giants, that Birdie regaled me with as a child. Freya and Freyr, Odin, Thor, Loki-they I re all here. The Tricking of Gylfi too. Along with the hundred kennings for sword, plus kennings for sun and stars and rivers and anything else to which a poet might want to refer.
And so King Gylfi's quest and trial were nothing more than a vehicle for Snorri, a convenient format for explicating the old mythology. In the context of Snorri's master vision, Gylfi is a cipher, a mere literary trick. And what about you, you ask? Are you nothing more than a vehicle for my pent-up musings? Good question, Cousin. In the world of the Old Norse, questioning acted as a form of ritual, and as Gylfi learned, posing the right questions can save your life. I intend to keep asking them until I find you.
Do you remember, Cousin, the story Birdie told of how Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, was born in the East of Iceland with teeth cutting through his gums? Skaldagemlur! his grandmother Ingibjorg the light-mother had cried out. Destined to become a poet. And you? Were you born with teeth? Are you a scribbler, a versifier? Do tell.
Ah, but you are silent as ever. I'm no closer to finding you than when I returned from Gimli at the end of September. It's February now, the day after my birthday, Birdie's deathday. Excuse the morbidity. I am thirty years old. Yes, I celebrated, or tried to. In other words, got drunk with my buddy, Frank, from the darkroom. February is not a good month for me.
Saemundur appears in my dreams sometimes, with his black hair, his eyes the odd green of a glacial river. Eye-moon-lure.
Did you know that the great god Odin hung himself in a ritual act of selfsacrifice, from the World Tree, no less? I remember Birdie ranting about it on our fateful drive to Askja. You can read about it yourself in the ancient poem "The Words of the High One," which is in the third of Birdie's books, The Elder Edda, a compilation of the oldest pagan verses. Here speaks Odin himself:
Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows For nine long nights, Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin, Offered, myself to myself. The wisest know not from whence spring The roots of that ancient rood.
They gave me no bread, they gave me no mead: I looked down; with a loud cry I took up runes; from that tree I fell.
Odin saved himself by interpreting the runes. But nothing saved Birdie. She ran out of words and meaning. Sacrificed herself to herself.
You disgust me sometimes. Yes, you. Don't look so injured. You escaped, whoever you are. I imagine you living a perfect life somewhere and a jealous rage comes over me. It should have been you, not me, that Birdie took to Iceland. Your birthday for her to desecrate.
And now I'm about to lose my job. All because of you. I know, I know. You didn't ask me to embark on this dredging expedition. But if it weren't for you, I would never have begun. I feel responsible for you. For finding you.
And I will.
Maybe getting fired wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
Sorry about that. I hit a low point there. But things are looking up now. In fact, I'm entertaining a new theory about you. If Birdie conceived you during her 1961 visit to Iceland, then Sigga might have arranged for you to be raised by your father in Iceland. Or relatives of his. Or ours. Kin is my point. No matter what Halldora says, I simply can't imagine Sigga consigning you to a blind adoption, sent off to live with strangers in Ontario or British Columbia. She would want her granddaughter raised by kin.
Why don't I quit speculating and hop on a plane to Iceland and look for you? That's what you're wondering? Good question. With a simple answer: I can't afford it. I wasted my meager savings on that private detective I hired. Who turned up zip. So I'm saving again. Besides, it's winter in Iceland now, a daunting prospect. Who could find anyone in all that darkness? Days so dark they pass for night.
Aefingar 30: Venus loved Adonis. I must buy some stamps and envelopes. I hope they will remember to bring my bicycle. They rubbed their hands for joy when I had finished the story. You need not always be reproaching me with that; it is now many years since it happened. Is your wound healed? No, it heals slowly. Turn your gloves inside out.
Do you remember Snaebjorn Jonsson's Primer of Modern Icelandic, the book Birdie used to tutor me back in Gimli? I am making use of it again. Your mother would be pleased. In the subway, on the street, in the darkroom, I murmur Snaebjorn's absurd paragraphs out loud. Yes, I'm brushing up. Ja, Ja (rhymes with wow wow), I'm Iceland-bound.
Don't worry, I am building a more serious vocabulary list as well: birth born death died mother sister aunt cousin adoption unknown; to look for; to find.
Klaus has been oddly kind since I gave notice. He lent me and Frank his van so we could empty out my apartment. Most of the so-called furniture the futon, the card table, the boards and concrete blocks and milk crates, the old door masquerading as a desktop-we piled on the sidewalk outside my apartment building with a FREE sign. The rest we took to my storage locker in Queens. I made Frank unlock the padlock and raise the metal door. I couldn't bring myself to look inside. The plan was for me to hand him stuff from the van; he could put it wherever he saw fit. I guess I forgot to warn him that the locker was nearly full already.
"What is all this stuff, Frey? Are you a fence or something?"
"It's my house. My mother's house. I didn't know what to do with it so I just stuck it all here."
Frank peered at me hunched in the back of the van. "Don't you think you should go through it sometime, keep what matters, sell the rest?"
"If I'd known you were going to be so nosy, I would have hired a professional." I began passing him boxes. By the time we got back to my apartment, all the furniture we'd left at the curb was gone.
It makes perfect sense to me, Cousin. Like one of Old Gisli's rigmaroles I memorized as a child:
A dream dreamt I a short while ago Of that dream there are many things to tell A whale appeared to me on the heaths bellowing Over that whale men sat watching Off those men blood was running Of that blood drank the ravens Through those ravens creaked the wind From that wind turmoil in the clouds Off those clouds shone a moon From that moon a very bright sky In that sky, stars On those stars grew leeks And with those leeks maidens played Over all the lands and islands
You can't tell me one thing does not lead to another. Birdie went to Iceland. With a man had sex. From that sex conceived. From that conception gave birth. From that birth gave up the baby. Back that baby went, to the man in Iceland.
Of course there are other possible scenarios, but this is the one I've decided to pursue. Even if you didn't end up in Iceland, someone there will probably know where you are. They keep track of us, you know, their far-flung kin.
31
I am writing you now from a four-windowed turret in the house of books overlooking the lake in the middle of Reykjavik. It is five o'clock on a bright June afternoon; I have been in Iceland nearly twelve hours. My intention is to write you every day, to pretend to myself that I am keeping you abreast of my progress, although I know full well you won't read a word of this until it's all over. I am writing by hand, in a red-and-blue spiral notebook I bought in a stationery store in downtown Reykjavik today. The pages are of a different dimension than ours, longer and narrower. It's odd to write by hand again. I got used to rattling out my thoughts on the dark green keys of your mother's typewriter, a one-to-one tippity-tap correspondence between fingertips and letters. Birdie's Underwood is now sitting in the storage locker in Queens. And I am here, on the lower lip of the Arctic Circle, pen in hand.
And you?
The Wolf was waiting for me at the Keflavik Airport.
Perhaps that surprises you. Let me explain myself. To begin with, I did not ask Ulfur to host me. Sigga and Stefan put him up to it. I'd planned to contact him, but before I had a chance, a letter arrived: he'd heard from Sigga that I was traveling to Iceland, he would be honored to host me during my time in Reykjavik. My first instinct was to reject his offer. My memories of him from my last visit are not particularly fond. For the most part I remember him ignoring me. I remember his high forehead tilted skyward, his long straight nose in the air. What had Saemundur called his father? The Prime Minister of Sheepskin Manuscripts. I'd secretly called him Mr. Myndarlegur, handsome and ambitious, but also brusque and intimidating. An arrogant man, who for some reason Birdie found appealing.
And there you have it. I don't have to like him. Birdie did until he dismissed her manuscript-and that's what matters. Is not Ulfur my prime suspect? Who else is a more likely candidate to be the father of Birdie's illegitimate child? True, Ulfur was married, but considering Birdie's track record according to Vera, anyway-that would only make him a more attractive prospect. He even has a child the right age to be you: yes, Saemundur. Impossible, you say? I say maybe not. True, the black-haired Saemundur looks nothing like Birdie. But all that might mean is that Ulfur's genes overwhelmed Birdie's. And Ulfur is certainly a dominating type, after all.
Of course this theory assumes that Ulfur and his wife adopted the child he conceived with Birdie. Unlikely, but possible. Perhaps Ulfur couldn't stand the idea of a child of his being raised by strangers in Canada-nonIcelanders, no less! and his wife acquiesced. While it might seem unlikely that Ulfur's wife would have agreed to adopting the child of her husband's mistress, maybe she (I have to admit, I don't even remember her name, have never met her; she still lives in Spain) was not the jealous type, had affairs of her own, or simply liked the idea of raising a grandchild of the great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, whose fame was already established in Iceland at the time.
So tell me now, Cousin: Are you Saemundur?
If not, there is still the possibility that Ulfur is the father of a child by Birdie and arranged for the child to be raised by relatives of his in Iceland. The Icelanders have a long tradition of fostering, dating back to Saga times. Back then, a child might be raised by relatives or close friends of the parents, sometimes out of financial necessity, sometimes as a way of strengthening family or political bonds. This was not adoption in the sense we know it; in a fostering situation, children know full well who their natural parents are, and maintain their original family ties throughout their lives. The tradition has continued up to the present; as far as I've been able to find out, blind adoptions are nearly unknown in Iceland.
And, even if Ulfur proves not to be the father at all-and what kind of proof can he offer me?-he is in the best position to help me track your father down. As part of his duties as host, Ulfur drove Birdie around, introducing her to people all over Iceland. He will know the men she met, and possibly, hopefully, the one with whom she consorted.
Such is the state of my speculations to date, and the main reason I decided to accept Ulfur's offer. Money, I have to admit, is another factor. I purchased an open-ended plane ticket extremely expensive, but how can I possibly pick a return date? I have no idea how long t
his search might take. A week, a month, more? Originally I'd planned to stay in a cheap bedand-breakfast in Reykjavik, but cheap is relative in Iceland, where according to the guidebook I bought in New York, a single glass of beer costs ten American dollars, and you can't rent a car for less than a hundred dollars a day. I had to face the facts: accept Ulfur's offer of a place to stay in Reykjavik, or limit my trip to a measly week.
Still, I feel like a traitor, a guest in the lair of the Wolf, the man who conspired to suppress Birdie's great opus. Except I'm not sure I believe that. I know as well as anyone what it's like to become the object of Birdie's paranoia. Remember how she used to call me my mother's little spy? We've all taken our turns: Sigga, Stefan, my mother, me. And those are only the traitors in Birdie's immediate circle. Birdie could pull enemies out of a hat. True, Ulfur denounced Birdie's Word Meadow, called it eagle muck. But who am I to judge even that? I've never read a word of it, Birdie never let me. And readers are entitled to their opinions, are they not?
Yes, yes, I'm rationalizing. And believe me, I was plenty nervous about my decision. I stole the man's jeep, after all, dragged his name into scandal. Yet Ulfur is a known entity, which counts for something when arriving solo in an essentially foreign country. Indeed, when I stepped out of the airport at six o'clock this morning I recognized absolutely nothing. This was because I could see nothing. Fog obscured everything. The air outside the airport was nothing more than an oozing white sponge that turned my skin clammydamp. I shivered, and was bending to pull a jacket out of my suitcase when I heard someone say my name. I stood up, saw no one. Then a large bald head emerged from the mist like a glowing planet. "Ulfur?"
The Tricking of Freya Page 31
