The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  "Of course she was," Ulfur said. He was placating me. "I only wish there was something I could have done. To prevent things from taking such a terrible turn. It was Saemundur, you know, whom you can thank for your rescue. He knew somehow that she was on her way to Askja. At first I didn't take him seriously, but he was absolutely adamant about it. It never would have crossed my mind-stealing our jeep and fleeing to Askja!"

  "I'm sorry about your jeep." Only I didn't sound sorry.

  "That doesn't matter. And it wasn't your fault. You were a child. If anyone should be sorry it's me."

  And he did sound sorry, and sincere. I took advantage of it. "Actually, Ulfur, there is something you can do now." I studied his face as I explained, and as far as I could tell, his surprise seemed genuine.

  "A child? No, I never heard that. But I don't see why I would."

  I had to be careful here. "Actually, I thought you might be ... of help to me. In tracking down Birdie's child. I think the father may have been Icelandic, someone Birdie met on one of her trips here."

  Ulfur shifted in his seat. "I suppose that's possible. Do you have any evidence?"

  "No, but I know she was hospitalized after her trip to Iceland in 1961, and that during her commitment she gave birth to a child that was given up for adoption. Which would make that child around ... Saemundur's age now.

  No, Cousin, I was not subtle. I admit it. Ulfur didn't think so either.

  "Saemundur? What does Saemundur have to do with this? Surely you don't think that Birdie and I -that Saemundur is-?"

  "Is he?"

  "Are you out of your mind?" He began to laugh, a dry, hard laugh. Shaking his huge bald head. "Birdie and I were never ... involved. I swear to you, Freya.

  "No, I'm not out of my mind. It's a perfectly logical possibility. Perhaps it's not true, and I've offended you by asking, and if so, I'm sorry. But I have to find out. I have to find Birdie's child."

  "Why?"

  "Why? Because ..." But I couldn't get the words out. I'm embarrassed to admit this, Cousin, but I started crying. "Because . . ." I struggled for an explanation that would make sense to Ulfur. "Because Sigga is one hundred years old. After she dies, I'll have no one. Not a single living relative."

  "No relatives?" His eyes softened then, and his tone of voice. It's a difficult concept for an Icelander to grasp. So I guess it was the right thing to say-if I prefer to have him pity rather than hate me.

  "None." I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, took a deep breath. "Obviously, I've made a terrible mistake. Please accept my apology."

  I left the room before he had a chance to reply.

  So there. I've wrecked everything, in a scant twenty-four hours.

  It's a clear morning in Reykjavik. Out the window the morning sun slants across the lake. A type of white-and-black bird I've never seen before is perched on my windowsill. I feel foreign, even to myself. I've hit bottom, Cousin, up here in this turret. I've given up everything, my life in New York, pitiful as it was, for nothing. It's clear to me now. You are not Saemundur, and I'm never going to find you. You could be anyone, anywhere on the planet.

  What becomes of me now? Your guess is as good as mine.

  Pardon my melodrama. It seems I overreacted. That, or Ulfur has a bigger heart than I imagined. He was waiting for me at breakfast with a list of names. "Various men Birdie spent time with while she was in Iceland. I've included only people she met with more than once, or that I remember her particularly liking. Which is not to say and I must emphasize this-that I have any knowledge of whether or not Birdie engaged in sexual relations with any of these people, or anyone else in Iceland. You must find a way to be more tactful, Freya. Tell them you're writing an article about your aunt's life, trying to learn as much as possible about her visits to Iceland. I don't want to hear about you accusing anybody of anything, is that understood?"

  Understood.

  The list has twelve names. A dozen prospective fathers for you, Cuz! I'm wriggling like a bloodhound. I'm on your trail. I'm going to find you. Even if you don't consider yourself lost.

  32

  And that is that. So ends my letter to Birdie's child. Three years have passed from when I wrote that last entry, in the turret room of Ulfur's house of books on the lake.

  But don't worry, I won't leave you hanging, despite the fact that you aren't you anymore. I wouldn't skip the ending. Everything needs to end, if only to begin again. The serpent circles the globe, tail in mouth. The blackened earth rises from the sea, fair and green. Or so the volva would have us believe.

  When I say you now, I'm not referring to Birdie's child. That is no longer necessary, or possible. But old habits die hard. I've grown accustomed to my imaginary audience. For you, now substitute yourself. Yes you, the readeryou, the plurality of strangers presumably reading this book. You see, certain people have convinced me to publish this pile of pages. It's no big deal, here in Iceland. Everyone writes books, especially biographies, memoirs, family histories. I throw mine in with the lot. And if you've stuck with me this far, you deserve to know how things turned out, how the mystery of Birdie's child got solved, the unanswerable question answered.

  The tricking of Freya.

  Or maybe you've already figured it out? Maybe you're smarter than I, or maybe I didn't want to see what was right in front of my face, so to speak?

  In any case, read on. Or not.

  Cousin indeed!

  I lied. My letter to Birdie's child did not end with that last entry in early June. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the weeks that followed I wrote like a maniac. The proof sits here in front of me, a stack of red-and-blue spiralbound notebooks. But it makes no sense for me to transcribe the notebooks verbatim. First of all, some pages, especially toward the end of my journey, are utterly indecipherable. Second, what is legible is not necessarily useful. The details of all my dead ends are of no interest to me anymore, although the friendships I developed with several of the old men on Ulfur's list I maintain to this day. And when I say details, I mean details: in those notebooks I documented every conversation, every interview, every thought that entered my brain, and there were many.

  Can I spare you and resort to summary? Consider it an act of kindness.

  By nine a.m. that morning I was on the phone; at noon I was sitting down to lunch with my first interview, Snaebjorn Gunnarsson, former professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. I've always loved the name Snaebjorn, which means Snow Bear. The same name as our old friend Snaebjorn Jonsson, Sometime Translator to the Government of Iceland, who authored the infamous Primer of Modern Icelandic. It could only be fitting, I reasoned, for Birdie's child to have a father named Snow Bear. But I cautioned myself not to jump to conclusions, to remain objective, to gather facts, to conduct a proper investigation.

  Snaebjorn knocked on Ulfur's door at precisely 1:00 that afternoon, wearing a black suit shiny at the knees and collar, a square-faced man no younger than seventy with thin wisps of gray hair plastered to his head. I invited him in; he declined with what seemed a whiff of disdain.

  Snaebjorn turned out to be a man of strong opinions. Over lunch at the university cafeteria, he informed me that Ulfur's family's massive private book collection more properly belonged in a place of public access, such as the Icelandic National Library. Thus the whiff of disdain. Book hoarder was, I believe, the term he used to describe Ulfur, though my Icelandic was quite rusty at the time, and the phrase was muttered under Snaebjorn's breath like a curse. Mainly our conversation was conducted in English. Snaebjorn's English was perfect but his accent odd, different from that of other Icelanders, yet somehow familiar to me. I soon came to understand why-in the early 1950s he had spent a number of years teaching Icelandic at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. "I helped to establish the Department of Icelandic Language and Literature, the first such department in North America," he recalled proudly.

  "Are there others now?"

  "I've never heard of any," he admitted.

/>   No wonder his accent seemed familiar-he had become fluent in English through speaking with the Icelandic Canadians of Winnipeg and the Interlake region. Not only did he know Birdie but he had met Sigga, Stefan, even my mother. Snaebjorn had worked on a number of translations of Olafur, Skald Nyja islands, he explained, which is how he first came in contact with my family there. He told me he'd attended the Islendingadagurinn festival in Gimli each summer, and his greatest disappointment was that he'd arrived a decade too late to meet the great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands.

  Birdie would have been in her early twenties then, Snaebjorn a decade older, but from what I could see he hardly seemed her type: fastidious, orderly, proper. But what did I know of Birdie's type, or types? Keep an open mind, I reminded myself. I told Snaebjorn I was writing an article about Birdie's life for The Icelandic Canadian, a publication he not only was familiar with but had edited during his stay in Canada. He nodded thoughtfully. "I don't know what I could tell you about your aunt that you don't already know. Our visits and conversations focused mainly on literary matters, especially pertaining to your grandfather's work."

  "Then you never had a ... romantic interest in Birdie?"

  "Me ... and Ingibjorg?" He made a short, harsh sound, something between a cough and a laugh. "A beauty like Ingibjorg would hardly have wasted a moment on a homely man like me." He sounded wistful, and I had no reason not to believe him.

  Yet Snaebjorn still proved useful to my investigation. After lunch he took me on a tour of the newly constructed National Library, a modernlooking building adorned by large red shields. A Japanese influence, Snaebjorn explained, as if to make some sense of it. Inside, he set me up with a microfiche machine and a young library assistant, and I spent the rest of the afternoon flipping through films of Iceland's daily paper, Morgunbla- did, looking for references to Birdie's visits. I made it through her one visit in the 1950s and the two visits in the 1960s, and left the library with photocopies of several articles and an interview, which I planned to translate with Ulfur's help. (I admit I was tempted, but no, I did not scan the microfiche for the headlines from our 1978 vanishing act. I wasn't prepared to revisit that yet.)

  Despite having to cross Snaebjorn off the list, I was far from discouraged. In fact, I considered the day a promising start. There were still eleven names on Ulfur's list, and I remember the feeling of certainty that grew in me that evening. For the second night in a row I was unable to sleep, and I cycled Johanna's bike around the lake at one o'clock in the morning. Birdie's child is here in Iceland. The sun hadn't set but the light was muted, an early morning dusk that cast a green glow on the water.

  What happened to the blind-adoption-in-Canada theory? you ask. I let it slip from my consciousness. Over the following days and weeks in Reykjavik I became increasingly convinced that I was closer than ever to finding Birdie's child. Propelled by my own blind faith, I pursued the investigation with a nearly religious fervor. Birdie's child is here in Iceland.

  And I was right.

  Friday night Saemundur arrived on his motorcycle to take me out on the town. His pale cheeks were flushed red from the wind. "To sample some of our famous nightlife." He handed me a helmet and I climbed behind him on the bike.

  "Is it famous?"

  "Quite the scene."

  I fastened my hands tight on his hips and we were off. Soon we were bumping along the cobblestone streets of Old Reykjavik, choked with throngs of drunken youth, on foot and in cars, yelling, laughing, singing, fighting, embracing. Dancing to music that pulsed from cars and club windows. "This is runtur," Saemundur yelled, above the roar of the bike and the thrum of the street. "It means circle, or maybe circuit is a better word."

  Inside a club called Berlin he bought me a beer that cost ten American dollars. The air was thick with smoke and sweat. Saemundur smiled at me, that same wide smile that had made me melt as a teenager. "How do you like it?"

  I paused. I wanted to say I loved it, and why don't we dance, and slug my beer like a true drunken fun-loving Icelandic chick. Instead I blurted out, "I don't. I hate crowds. I can't breathe."

  I waited for a teasing retort, but Saemundur only shrugged. "Then we'll go.

  He didn't say where. He just climbed back on the bike and I climbed on behind him. I felt like a disappointment as we breezed through the night. (It seemed like night somehow, though it wasn't dark.) But I hadn't come to Iceland to sample its nightlife, I reminded myself, or to impress Saemundur. We sped through residential streets, passing young boys kicking soccer balls at midnight, until I had no idea where we were. Then I smelled salt and fish and we came to a stop along a strip of rocky coast.

  "If it weren't so cloudy tonight you could see all the way to Snaefellsnes Peninsula from here. That's where I'll be spending the next few days. Leading people across the Snaefellsjokull Glacier. That's the real Iceland. Not Reykjavik's drunken fools."

  "Sheep-drunk, you call it?" I remembered the expression from our ice cave escapade.

  He laughed. "Yes, sauddrukkinn. Drunk as sheep. And why are we speaking in English, when you are supposed to be practicing your Icelandic?"

  "I am? I never said that. Really, Saemundur. I can't remember much. Just simple things."

  "Then let's talk about simple things," he said in Icelandic. "Did my father tell you I lead tours to the interior? He doesn't approve. But what should he care? He has two successful children, a geologist and a linguist. Two out of three isn't bad." (I'm guessing here at exactly what he might have said. Approximating. At the time I understood only one out of three words at most.)

  I struggled to remember the word for tour guide. "You're a leidsogu- madur," I ventured in Icelandic. Road-story-man.

  "Yes. But I try not to talk too much on the tours. I let the island speak for itself. And what about you? Have you become your family's next great poet?"

  "Hardly. I've become nothing."

  "Nothing? You're too hard on yourself."

  We were walking now, along a pebbled beach. Small waves nipped the shore. Whatever lay in the distance was obliterated by fog.

  "Maybe you should come on the tour to Snaefellsnes, Freya. You've never seen anything like it."

  "I can't. I have ... things to do in Reykjavik."

  "Reykjavik!" He sounded disgusted. "The whole point is to get out of Reykjavik. Reykjavik is nothing. The real Iceland is out there."

  Same old arrogant Saemundur. "I'm not trying to find the real Iceland."

  "Then why are you here?"

  "To find Birdie's child."

  No, I hadn't intended to tell him. But I did. I talked all the way through the early morning sunset. Sometimes we walked, sometimes we sat on the rocks. The wind blew cold and hard. At one point Saemundur offered me his leather jacket.

  "Are you sure you want to do that?"

  "You look freezing."

  "The last jacket you lent me, you never got back. Do you remember?"

  He did.

  When I was done talking-and it seemed to me I had never talked so much at one stretch in my life-the first thing Saemundur asked was, "What about my father? Do you suspect him?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Though he denied it when I asked."

  "Do you believe him?"

  "Should I?"

  "I don't know. I always wondered about him and Birdie, if there was something between them."

  "If that's true . . ." I wasn't sure how to phrase it. "Saemundur. You could be Birdie's child."

  "Me?" He laughed derisively, just like his father had. "I can tell you one thing, Freya. I am no child of your crazy aunt Birdie."

  I hated anyone calling Birdie crazy. "How can you know for certain? You're the right age, exactly. And Birdie was here in Iceland with your father in the summer of 1961, nine months before you were born."

  "And there were no other men in Iceland the summer Birdie visited? My father, the only man in Iceland!"

  He stood, arms folded across his chest, glaring at me. The sound of waves hitting the s
hore welled up between us. I couldn't blame him. Who wants to hear that the woman he believed all his life to be his mother is not, after all, his mother? At least not in the biological sense. And that his real mother was his father's mistress? Maybe Ulfur was right, I had to learn to be more tactful. But would tact lead me to Birdie's child?

  "Saemundur . . ." I tried speaking more gently. "I'm sure you're right. But I have to rule you out. Is there any proof you can offer me?"

  "Now I have to prove my identity to you? Really, Freya." I thought he was done then, but he continued. "First of all, if you think my mother would have raised the child of my father's mistress in her own house, as her own-well, you've obviously never met my mother. Inconceivable. Besides that, I have my mother's nose, exactly. And has it ever occurred to you that I look nothing like Birdie? Quite the opposite, in fact? And finally, do you really think that if I were the grandson of the great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, that my father would be able to keep quiet about it?"

  I smiled at that. "You're right. I'm sorry, Saemundur. Like I said, I just had to rule you out." I wasn't sure that I had ruled him out, not conclusively, but there was clearly no point in pressing him further. We stood quietly on the beach, listening to the waves. It must have been three in the morning by then because the sun was nowhere to be seen. It was Saemundur who broke the silence.

  "Do you have any other ... suspects?"

  "Actually, I do. Your father gave me a list of names, various men Birdie befriended on her visits to Iceland. He cautioned me that he had no reason to believe Birdie had had an affair with any of them. Still, it's worth meeting them. I've got to start somewhere. There are twelve names on Ulfur's list. Eleven, since I already crossed one off today. I don't think old Snaebjorn Jons- son was any match for Birdie."