Ulfur wasted no time in getting me to a psychiatrist. It was had enough, in his view, to have the suicide of the daughter of Olafur, Skald Nyja islands, on his conscience. He would not allow a granddaughter to be added to the list. My depression was so severe there was even talk of admitting me to a hospital. Luckily for me, Dr. Bjornsdottir was a keen diagnostician.
It was obvious that I was depressed, curled into a comma, but through interviews with Saemundur and Ulfur, she pieced together my family history of bipolar disorder and my own recent bout of mania, or hypomania, as she eventually determined. It was Dr. Bjornsdottir who gave me the diagnosis of cyclothymia. I call it manic depression lite.
I asked Saemundur once what I'd been like on the Ring Road trip.
"Like yourself," he replied. "But multiplied. Excessively."
Self-multiplied inventor of spin.
In addition to checking up on me every few months to assess my progress and fine-tune my medications, Dr. Bjornsdottir makes me sit in front of a light box every morning during the winter months, and gives strict orders to regulate my intake of sunlight in the summer evenings. Light, she reminds me, is my zeitgeber, the force that in my case most easily meddles with the brain clock that regulates mood. At all costs, prevent circadian rhythm disruption.
And I do, I have. I'm terrified of ending up like Birdie. A sadglad bird, a madmad bird. I fear ending up like my mother. Will it confuse you if I start calling Birdie my mother? It confuses me, still. It took me a while to sort everything out. Call me gullible, but I'd actually spent my whole life believing I'd emerged from Mama's womb.
The Tricking of Freya.
After my nothingness period-after the medications began kicking in-I started feeling and thinking again. It wasn't pretty. I wandered the streets of Reykjavik in perpetual rage. Everything began making sense. Why Mama didn't take me to Gimli the first seven years of my life. Why Birdie took such an obsessive interest in me. Even why she kidnapped me, why she killed herself on my birthday. For a time, I hated them all Birdie, Sigga, Mama. Birdie, always complaining about being conspired against, while it was I who was truly the victim of conspiracy, a conspiracy that stole my very identity, then covered it up with lies. Mama, sweet Mama! Who would have thought her capable of such deceit! Sigga, of course, had not traveled to Connecticut to help with my birth I had already been born, back in the Selkirk Asylumbut rather to hand me over to my new mother. Sigga the peacekeeper, vainly attempting to placate the two sisters, pretending their rift was nothing more than sibling rivalry. Birdie, somehow, I blamed the least. I'd spent years blaming Birdie. I was done blaming Birdie.
Halldora, of course, had lied to me outright, claiming Birdie's child was born in 1962, not 1965, feigning ignorance over the child's gender, all so I wouldn't suspect the truth. How Halldora insisted the infant had been given away to a good home. (That last part was true. Mama was my good home, and even at my lowest point I never regretted that she raised me.) Was Halldora protecting me from a truth she thought I might find too awful to bear? I don't think that for a moment. It was Sigga she was protecting; Sigga was all Halldora had left in this world.
And what about Stefan? I still suspected he knew more than he was saying, and I confronted him the first chance I got. By early August I was well enough to leave Iceland. I had nowhere to return to in New York; Gimli seemed my inevitable destination. I arrived in time for the annual Islendingadagurinn festival. All the hotel rooms were booked and Sigga's house had been sold by then -I had no choice but to stay with Stefan. He picked me up at the airport, and I badgered him the entire drive from Winnipeg to Gimli, barely noticing the scrubby landscape unfolding out the window, the appearance of the long flat lake of my childhood.
"I was right," I began. "Birdie did have a child."
"Yes."
"It was me, Stefan."
"I know that now."
Of course he knew, I'd written him a letter. But I wanted it said out loud. It was not as satisfying as I'd hoped.
"You knew," I continued. "You knew from the very beginning!"
"I didn't, Freya, I swear to you. It seems unlikely, I know, impossible even, but I honestly had no idea. Your family kept its secrets well."
"I guess they all had strong motivations. Birdie was terrified that if she let the secret slip, she'd never be allowed to see me again. And of course my mother feared nothing worse than being exposed, afraid she would lose me to Birdie if I found out the truth."
I thought about Mama, all those years keeping her big secret from me, while I was keeping my big secret from her. I never had a chance to tell her, before she died so suddenly, that it was I who'd caused her fall, her coma, and all the miseries that followed.
"I'm sorry, Freya. I'm sorry for all of it."
"Sorry is the story of my whole sorry life, isn't it?"
Stefan had nothing to say to that. It was dark when we pulled into Gimli, and I was grateful. I was still adjusting to seeing things in their true light.
I couldn't bring myself to attend the Islendingadagurinn festivities-the parade, the crowning of the Fjallkona, the silly contests and games and dances-but I did manage to make an appearance at the opening of the New Iceland Heritage Museum. Sigga had been scheduled to speak during a ceremony honoring her donation of items from Olafur's study to the museum. But she was feeling too frail, or so she said, and insisted I take her place. I think she was just preparing me for my new role as spokesperson of the poet's estate, the only living family member of Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands. Since then, I've spoken several times at various literary events in Iceland, but that evening was my first venture into public speaking, and to say I was nervous would be an understatement. Sigga and Stefan assured me I'd done a wonderful job.
And I'm sure both my mothers were very proud.
Sigga was still my grandmother at least, and she seemed for the most part cognizant of that fact. I never told her that I had learned about the Tricking of Freya. I was afraid it would trigger some sort of mental decline from which she might never emerge.
One huge piece still remained unsolved. Whose name belonged in the other half circle of the genealogy chart Thorunn had prepared for me? Who was my father? I'd run into nothing but dead ends in Iceland, and certainly didn't expect to find the answer in Gimli. Yet that is exactly where I learned the truth. It happened when I showed Stefan the letter Birdie had written to Thorunn, after they had taken the newborn-me away from her. There were parts of it I'd never been able to understand, no matter how many times I reread it. Either Birdie's handwriting was too erratic or my Icelandic too poor, or both. Stefan was the only one I could possibly consider showing it to. I gave it to him one night after dinner, and the next morning a neatly typed translation was sitting on the kitchen table. It was dated February 20, 1965, two days after my birthday.
My Dearest Thorunn,
Brace yourself for some terrible news. I've been locked up in the Selkirk Asylum ever since I returned from Iceland last summer. I haven't written you because what was the point? They are censoring my mail, I'm certain of that.
They say I'm mad, Thorunn. And I suppose I am.
A terrible thing has been done to me. They're all saying it's for the best, the doctors and nurses, my mother and my sister.
I've given birth to a little girl. And now they've taken her away from me and given her to Anna, to keep and raise forever! I'm supposed to pretend she isn't mine. This is the arrangement they've devised: I'll be pushed aside like some dotty spinsterish aunt, and dull Anna and her dull accountant husband will raise my daughter in their dull American suburb! Anna will bring her to Gimli every summer from Connecticut. On one condition: I'm never to reveal my identity to the child.
To be fair, they gave me two so-called choices: to give my child up to strangers in what is called a Blind Adoption. I would never see her again and she would never be able to learn who I am. Or, I can give her to Anna to raise. Under the condition that she never knows who her real mother is!
&n
bsp; And they say I'm the crazy one.
All of this they've decided without even offering me a chance to prove myself as a mother. Unfit!
Poor Anna, they say. She's always wanted a child. Can't you give her this?
And they call this a choice!!!
But I have promised to abide by this arrangement. Because I know what will happen if I don't: Anna will simply stop bringing the child to Gimli. She'll keep me away from her. Besides, even if I tell the little girl, they'll all deny it. Say it's some crazy idea of crazy Birdie's, and who would believe me against upstanding Sigga and respectable Anna the American?
My closest relatives have plotted against me.
She is gone, Thorunn, gone.
She arrived a whole month early. But isn't that like me, always the speedy one, always ahead of the game?
Think of it as the greatest gift one sister can give to another. That's what one of the nurses here actually said to me. A terrible woman named Halldora Bjarnason, a skinny little bitch, but not to be underestimated. She's in thick with Sigga on this, in fact I believe she came up with the idea. Sigga would never have thought of such a thing herself! It's not the way our people do things, is it, Thorunn? You know that. You told me three of your siblings were given away to families in the district who couldn't have children of their own, but they always knew who their parents were, who their brothers and sisters and grandparents were! There was no secrecy involved, no government cover-up.
They say she'll be better off without me, that I'm unfit to raise a child. They've gotten the court to declare this! My mother my sister my doctors and the Canadian government are all in collusion against me.
Skaldagernlur! My baby was born with a tooth cutting through her gums, Thorunn. Like Olafur. I checked before they took her away from me. She'll be a writer I'm certain, if Anna doesn't stifle the living life out of her.
Even my breasts are weeping.
They want to keep me here still, at Selkirk Asylum. They say we must guard against postpartum depression. But it is not giving birth to a beautiful infant that is depressing, no! It is having your child kidnapped by your closest relatives in collusion with agents of the government! How could such an act not crush one's very soul???
At least they let me name her. Anna would have named her Cathy or some other bland American name.
I named her Freya.
I was finishing my third cup of coffee and my tenth reading of the letter when Stefan came into the dining room. He'd been out tending his rosebushes, before the heat of the day came on full force. I remember the light sweat on his brow, the streak of dirt left on his forehead when he wiped it off with his gardening glove. The way he slouched slightly in the doorway, impossibly tall and yet never imposing. A square, Birdie had called him once. Herself deemed a trapezoid. And me, a little ovoid, ready to hatch.
"You were born prematurely," he said.
I nodded. One more fragment of truth floating up for air.
"If you count back-" He stopped, then tried again. "I've done the calculations. February minus eight equals ... June."
None of this was making sense to me, despite my three cups of coffee. Eloquent Stefan, suddenly stammering about February minus June? I sat and waited. He came to the table and sat across from me. When he poured himself a cup of coffee, I noticed his hand was shaking. Trembling. Even though it was cool in the house, a new trickle of sweat was accumulating on his forehead, dripping down his brow in a muddy smear.
"Freya, what I'm saying is ... I don't think the father of Birdie's child was someone she, someone she ... knew ... in Iceland. The timing isn't right. She was there in April and May of 1964. But the child, I mean you, you were born in February, so you must have been conceived in June. After she returned to Gimli."
So I'd been wrong about that too. Searching in Iceland for a lover of Birdie's who never existed, or at least was not the father of her child. Of me. Leave it to logical Stefan to do the math.
"Do you know," I ventured, "if she was seeing someone then? When she got back from Iceland?" I remembered my mother referring to various boyfriends of Birdie's, but never by name. Fly-by-nights, she called them. No-goods. Or married men. No one suitable.
There was a long silence. At first I thought Stefan was thinking, trying to remember back thirty years, distinguish one shadowy paramour from another, lining the dates up in his mind. But looking back, I understand that he was simply trying to summon his courage.
37
So, yes, technically speaking, Stefan is my father. You say you figured that out too? I don't believe you. Stefan himself didn't know, he insists on that, and I believe him. I count myself lucky, that I was conceived during Stefan's sole one-night stand with Birdie, when she returned from Iceland manic and charming and filled with love for everything on the planet, even Stefan the square. I'm grateful my father is not some shadowy tryst I could spend years trying to track down, only to be disappointed.
I don't call Stefan "Dad," but he's the closest I've ever come to having a father. Our bond continues to deepen. The last time I saw him was for Sigga's funeral in Gimli last winter. (Sigga went quietly, excusing herself from Christmas dinner at Stefan's house to lie down in the guest room and expire. Just like the Saga heroine she admired so much, Aud-the-Deep-Minded, who slipped away from a family feast to die in regal solitude.) We write frequently, Stefan and I-he's a technophobe and eschews e-mail-and he plans to visit us in Iceland soon.
I've also engaged Stefan to help me with a special project I've embarked on: translating Olafur's letters. Yes, Olafur's letters turned up. It seems they were here all along, in the basement archives at Ulfur's house on the lake, misfiled. Ulfur was horrified at first, then embarrassed, then thrilled. Then he handed them over to me. Birdie would have been disappointed by that. There was no cloak and dagger, no plots, no legal battles over the letters.
My Icelandic isn't quite up to the task, but there are plenty of people to turn to for help. Ulfur, of course. He'll do anything to help the letters see the light of day. And his daughter, Johanna, Saemundur's sister the linguist. And of course Stefan back in Gimli. He helps with background research on the New Iceland colony, names and places mentioned in Olafur's letters.
No, Birdie's lost Word Meadow never resurfaced. But Birdie said I had an ear, a tongue. I was born with a tooth cutting through my gum. Maybe I'll write my own Word Meadow someday.
Some things I may never get used to. They leave babies out in the snow here. Oh, they're bundled up, of course, in carriages with stiff awnings, but still it is not uncommon when there's a light snowfall to see carriages put on porches for the babies' afternoon naps. To accustom them to the weather, it was explained to me. It makes them hress, vigorous and strong.
Care for some hakarl? Take a hunk of raw shark meat and bury it in the sand until it putrefies. Make sure a man urinates on it every few days. After several months, dig up, rinse, and serve. That's how they made it in the old days. Of modern hakarl-making methods I know nothing, but the hakarl I've tried tastes rubbery and smells of rot. Other traditional Icelandic delicacies include singed sheep head-complete with eyes and pickled ram's testicles. More common are tasty lamb, fresh cod, and endless variations of soured milk products. Plus the odd supermarket vegetables, impossibly long skinny cucumbers sealed in plastic, heads of lettuce sold in the tiny pots they were grown in, roots trailing obscenely. Hothouse produce, an Icelandic specialty. Food can't be grown on this island, not outdoors anyway. These ingenious Icelanders, with their geothermally heated hothouses. I hear they're working on hydrogen-powered cars next.
Icelanders love gadgets. Televisions and computers and cell phones and every other techno-toy that appears on the market. They have expensive tastes. The simple peasant life of my grandfather is for the most part long vanished. Iceland has one of the highest standards of living in the world, and they're in debt up to their ears to pay for it. Still, can you blame them? After six hundred years of mostly abject poverty, middle-class materiali
sm has a singular appeal.
Lutheranism is the state religion of Iceland, yet somehow it doesn't feel all-pervasive. There are even groups of neo-pagans, modern worshipers of Odin and Freyja. Me, I put my faith in words.
The wind never stops.
I suppose I'll always be something of an outsider here. Icelanders are a welcoming yet insular lot. They don't consider me an Icelander, and I don't consider myself one. The older people call me a Vestur-Islendingur, Western Icelander, the name given to those who went west to Canada and America. I think of myself as an American, as much as Birdie hated that. Yet I probably fit here better than anywhere.
Do I miss my old life? It was hardly a life, hardly fit to miss.
A couple of months ago I began having earthquake dreams. Icelanders are disposed to believing in prophetic dreams, and I managed to alarm a number of friends with my visions of planets cracking open. What I saw, again and again, was the image of a nearly round object. Fine lines would appear, fracturing its surface; soon the entire sphere would shatter into pieces. I woke in terror. One morning I realized I was dreaming not of planets cracking open but of an egg hatching.
The Tricking of Freya Page 37
