Restoration

by Olaf Olafsson

  Kristín’s legs were bare and the stone was cold to the touch when she knelt to scrub the floor. The blood had begun to congeal but the trail was thin except where it had pooled. The rain had washed away most of the blood outside but nonetheless she rubbed the cloth repeatedly over the patch where he had bled the most.

  After she was finally done, she decided to go to the cemetery. Her leg was sore but she was able to limp along. She spotted them as she neared the gate: four shadows in the faint glow of the lantern that Pritchett had hung from a branch by the grave.

  She paused and although she had not intended to hide, she stepped instinctively behind the stone wall by the entrance. From there she watched as Pritchett lowered the body into the grave, the fattore climbed out, and the priest stepped forward to the edge. She was soaked to the skin and cold but stood without moving until the priest had fallen silent and Pritchett had refilled the grave. Afterward she turned and picked her way back along the path through the darkness between the cypresses that had begun to sway again in the wind, step by step, and had just reached the courtyard when Alice arrived.

  “Not a word to anyone,” she said, and Kristín nodded more eagerly than was necessary, feeling a kind of shiver of frightened relief and anticipation go through her.

  IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH TO TURN ONE’S THOUGHTS to the past, not when one longs for a respite from the here and now—a word, a movement, a shard of light in a mirror, the echo of a voice through a half-open window.

  The rain has eased, and the view from the window is autumnal; there is a gray film over the fields and the meadows are colorless; the flowers seem to be hibernating. Yesterday I had the lemon trees moved into the greenhouse, and Pritchett did not object as the farmhands had nothing more pressing to do; it was impossible to work in the downpour, and I was on edge and had to find myself some employment. I tried to be of use to the farmhands, not leaving their side while they worked, holding the reins of the horse as they lifted the trees from the cart and carried them inside. I remained behind after they had gone; it was cool and damp in the greenhouse and I stood still, listening to the quiet and looking out through the glass at the English garden where all is neat and orderly and there is nothing to show that the world is going up in flames.

  The farmhands went straight from the greenhouse to the cemetery to dig fresh graves. The Fascists and the partisans clashed in the forest last night, fighting in the rain and the dark. Near Fontalgozzo and Chiarentana, our two most outlying farms, there were many casualties. The farmers brought the bodies down the steep slope on a cart, which was no easy undertaking in the mud, but they were in a hurry to see them buried. They drank coffee in the kitchen while Pritchett supervised the laying of the bodies in the simple coffins that the carpenter started making this morning. They were all young men and of course there was no way of telling which faction they had belonged to—in death they were all alike, peasant lads snatched by fate.

  It doesn’t take much . . . Concentration, a few sentences, or perhaps the drawing I found after the burial when I was rooting through the papers that were cleared out of the library when we converted it into a dining room for the children. It is Pritchett’s drawing of the fountain in the garden, with its two dolphins spouting water, dated May 14, 1935. I smooth it out on the table and think of those days when all was well and we were cheerfully busy from morning to night, when suddenly I hear his voice in the emptiness: “Mummy, the dolphins are my frog’s best friends.” Putting down my pen, I shove the drawing back into the pile of papers where I found it. But his voice, still so clear, persists. We are sitting out in the garden, listening to the tinkling of the fountain, and I’m reading him Pinocchio. The sun is shining but we are in the shade of the pergolas; he’s sitting on my lap.

  “Mummy, why did Pinocchio’s nose grow so long?”

  “Because he told lies.”

  He scrambles down to the ground, turns and looks me in the eye.

  “Mummy, look at me.”

  “All right.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can fly. I can talk to the dolphins,” he says, waits a moment, then asks, “did my nose grow?”

  I smile at the memory and am about to answer him as I did then but the words won’t come. His voice fades, the echo grows distant and with it his face. I can no longer see it in my mind’s eye, can no longer picture it, no matter how I try. I start to panic and quickly reach for a picture of him, staring at it for a long time, engraving it in my brain.

  When I sat singing to him after he died, I told him I would never forget him. Not his voice, not his fingers, his eyes, his lips, his hair . . . I don’t believe I stopped singing for the whole time I was talking to him in my head and stroking his cold brow and cheeks before they took him away. It was a lullaby that I sang over and over again, ceaselessly, until we were back at the hotel and you yelled at me. I hadn’t realized I was still humming it.

  I started to cry uncontrollably. I didn’t have the strength to get up on my feet but reached out to you where you were standing in the middle of the room. For a moment I thought you were going to take me in your arms, for a moment I believed you were going to put everything aside but our sorrow. But you didn’t. You turned and, hiding your face with one hand, you reached for the doorknob with the other.

  I sat on the unmade bed all night, without undressing or turning on the light. The pills I had in my purse might have helped but I didn’t want to take them. I hoped I would die. Not only that night but long after.

  KRISTÍN THINKS BACK TO THAT DAY EARLY IN NOVEMBER. It was cold, but her father’s hands were warm when he caressed her cheek before he cast off the boat. They were always warm, those big, thick hands.

  The farm stood at the head of the fjord where it narrowed and the mountains retreated from the sea, making room for a small area of lowland. The river cascaded down a deep ravine at the head of the fjord, then meandered in a shallow course over the sands before deepening and flowing down to the ocean through the meadow by the farm. Farther down the fjord a village stood by a small cove, sheltered from the open sea, home to some two hundred people.

  She watched the boat moving away down the fjord. It had one set of oars, and her father and her uncle shared the rowing. She waved to them as usual, watching them grow distant until finally they were nothing but a black speck at the mouth of the fjord. There the expanse of water widened, the mountains rose high, sheer and black against the sky, and birds swarmed along the cliffs. Beyond lay the open sea.

  She dawdled up the river. There was a hoarfrost on the marsh, a thin film of ice, pierced here and there by a head of cotton grass, nodding gently in the light breeze. In the west, above the cliffs at the fjord’s mouth, the pale winter sun dipped in and out of the clouds.

  Her mother, who had been making pancakes, came to the door to check on her. Kristín waved to her and she waved back, holding her arm aloft for a long time before going back inside.

  She didn’t feel the cold and continued to walk up the river as far as she was allowed, to the big rock that was shaped like a troll. She was not allowed to go any farther to the east, and no farther south than to the patch of marsh, absolutely no farther, and only as far as the sheepfolds to the north. These were her boundaries, and she had once been spanked for forgetting herself and walking up to the waterfall alone. Her mother undertook the task, as her father had begged to be excused. Kristín heard them talking; he said, “Oh, couldn’t you do it, love?” Her mother did not hit her hard but Kristín wept long and bitterly over the shame.

  She threw stones into the marsh, the film of ice broke, and the stones disappeared with a hollow sound into the bog. Her mother came to the door and called her. She went inside.

  So passed many an afternoon. She sat on a chair in the kitchen, reading a book or coloring, while her mother knitted. Her mother hummed a tune, time passed, and darkness fell over the fjord. Every now and then her mother glanced at the clock, and when it was dark she went out and
lit the little beacon that her father had built. There was a larger lighthouse in the village but they had their own beacon, too; there was safety in that.

  At six o’clock her mother began to prepare supper. She laid the table, scrubbed the potatoes, and sliced the bread she had baked that day. Her father and uncle rarely came ashore later than seven, unless they made a big haul or were caught in a storm, in which case they would sometimes row to the village and wait out the weather with Kristín’s maternal grandparents.

  Her mother attended to the embers and looked out of the window. The wind was picking up; they listened to it beating on the windows, a cold westerly, blowing straight in from the sea. The chimney whined and the blue flame flickered but did not go out. Her mother was not anxious, she was used to the wind, yet she glanced out of the window and absentmindedly stroked Kristín’s cheek as she returned to the fire. The pot was ready, waiting for fresh fish. Kristín pictured them coming in to land, dragging the boat up the beach, hurrying inside. She saw them so clearly: her uncle first, as he came in and gave her a hug, slipping a cold finger down the back of her neck to tease her, her father following with the fish for supper—“There you are, girls.” They took off their wet clothes and thawed out by the fire while the fish simmered on the stove. The evening stretched out before them, with cards or reading and the jokes of her uncle who did not get on with his father and preferred to live with them. That’s how it was: idyllic, the four of them in that little house on the limits of the inhabitable world, at the bottom of a deep fjord with the mountains overhead, the winter and the night, and the sea outside, the sea that both gives and takes away.

  Seven o’clock passed, then eight o’clock. A blizzard had blown up; wet snow plastered the windowpanes and the house shivered. She followed her mother to the door but was told to wait inside while her mother went out to look for the boat. She came straight back in because it was impossible to stand upright in the wind. The snow blew in with her and she shut the door hastily, brushing off the wet flakes, then said, “They’ll have gone to the village. Let’s eat.”

  Despite making sure that Kristín ate well, she hardly touched her own meal; her fingers trembled and kept flying to her face to push aside a lock of hair. She got Kristín ready for bed and said her prayers with her, then sat still beside her while she was falling asleep. But Kristín couldn’t get to sleep right away, although she closed her eyes, and when she heard her mother saying her prayers again she almost opened them to remind her that she had already done that. But she didn’t because she liked hearing them again and feeling her mother’s presence. Finally she fell asleep and dreamed that they had come home and her father was sitting beside her, stroking her cheek as he always did when he had had to wait out the storm in the village until late at night or next morning. She heard their footsteps in the kitchen and their voices through her sleep, and waited to feel the hand on her cheek, cold from the sea. When it didn’t come, she woke up and got out of bed. They were standing in the kitchen, her grandfather and two other men, cold and plastered with snow, still wearing their outer clothing. Her grandfather was hugging her mother who looked like a sparrow in his arms, so small and weak that Kristín hardly recognized her.

  The church stands on a mound outside the village. From there one can see over the roofs of the village to the farm at the head of the fjord. The church is white with a red roof, a small porch, five rows of pews, and a cross over the altar. Kristín was christened there.

  Her mother insisted that they conduct the funeral as if the bodies were there and bury the men in coffins. Kristín’s grandfather tried to dissuade her but she would not budge. Kristín heard him mention his concern to the minister.

  “Perhaps you could make her change her mind?” he said. “Empty coffins . . .”

  The minister shook his head: “It’s up to her to decide.”

  It is cold in the church during the closing of the coffins, which takes place two days before the funeral. When the minister speaks of her father and uncle, Kristín averts her eyes and puts her hands over her ears.

  “Dear,” her mother says, trying to pry her hands from her ears, then abandons the attempt. “Dear . . .”

  Kristín is the last to leave the church, deliberately lagging behind, making herself as inconspicuous as possible. The minister leads her mother by the hand. Her grandfather has been keeping an eye on her but now forgets himself and goes out with the others. Once she is the only one left she turns back and goes over to the coffins.

  She pushes aside the lid of her father’s coffin. There is nothing inside, nothing but his Sunday suit and a copy of the Bible. She climbs into the coffin, lies down on her back, and closes her eyes.

  She hears them come in. They seem agitated, then approach the coffin. She senses their presence as they look at her but she does not move or open her eyes. She is dead. Surely they must understand that and leave her alone.

  She refused to wear anything but her yellow dress. Her mother did not have the strength to argue with her and no one else tried. It was as if the grown-ups did not know how to handle her, not even her grandparents; they were kind to her, of course, cuddled her and patted her on the head but said little. But no one seemed to know what to say, not even her mother, who moved like a shadow, weeping for the first few days, then stopping, too drained even to cry.

  During the funeral Kristín’s mind was on the pond below the mound. She had seen inside the coffins and knew that her father and uncle were not there. So she thought about the pond where she used to play when she came to see her grandparents, and the birds that visited the pond. There was a swan there when they arrived at the church and her thoughts were on the swan the entire time the minister was speaking. The church was packed to overflowing. The wind had dropped abruptly; now an easterly breeze freshened the air and the sun laid a blue film over the fjord where harmless ripples tossed the sunbeams to and fro. She was impatient to go outside and see if the swan was still there, and she wriggled in the pew, turning around, trying to see out the open door. But the church was too crowded and she encountered too many eyes that did not know how to meet her gaze, so she looked away and waited for the service to be over.

  The moment they were outside, she let go of her mother’s hand and set off at a run down the slope. Everyone stopped but it was a moment before her mother reacted. Perhaps it was only a few seconds but it seemed much longer and the congregation stood rooted to the spot, watching the child wade out into the pond as if her life depended on it. And then the swan took off, slowly and smoothly as if wishing to leave behind its reflection intact on the surface of the water, rose majestically into the air and soared away over the fjord. Kristín was left standing in the water, not moving until her mother’s voice split the cold silence.

  Shortly after the funeral, she and her mother moved to the village to live with her grandparents. Her mother had never been talkative but now she grew even more distant. The house at the head of the fjord stood empty until the following spring when a young couple moved there from the village.

  As soon as she was old enough, she went to study in Reykjavík, and from there to Copenhagen. Her mother passed away when she was a teenager, drifted away quietly on a summer morning. Her grandparents supported her but they were not rich, so she worked alongside her studies.

  She never went back to the head of the fjord after she and her mother moved into the village. She didn’t even look in that direction, not in daylight. But sometimes in the evenings she would climb up the mound by the church and watch the beacon in the darkness, wondering if they had seen its light as they drowned.

  THE REHEARSALS WERE PROGRESSING SLOWLY. NO one wanted to be a dwarf whereas competition was fierce for the part of Snow White. Negotiations were tricky, but Kristín proved a model of patience. She reasoned with the children, skillfully averting acrimony by distracting the attention of enough of them to the work that needed to be done behind the scenes. By the time she had finished, three wanted to be responsible for th
e costumes, five for the creation of the backdrop, and four offered to rewrite the story to give the dwarfs a more prominent role. It fell to Signor Grandinetti to guide the children in writing the script, while Kristín took responsibility for the set and costumes, and Schwester Marie and I for the actors. I had been the one to suggest that the play should be performed in the greenhouse where the lemon trees were stored. They were still there, although the storm appeared to be abating, the temperature was gradually rising, there were glimpses of sunshine, the wind had fallen silent, and the colors had been revived in the garden and fields.

  The teacher and scriptwriters got down to work in the classroom while Kristín led her charges outside to the greenhouse. Their work progressed well, and once they had drawn the stage design on paper, they went inside to find props and costumes and to paint the backdrop—an old canvas that I had found in a shed below the house—before sweeping the floor and tidying up while the script editors finished their work.

  The rehearsals got off to a good start until the wicked stepmother forgot herself so far as to eat the apple that she was supposed to give Snow White, and felt so ashamed that she tried to hide the evidence. But of course she was found out—as, she was reminded, is always the case—at which point the other children started complaining that it was unfair and they wanted apples too. By then it was past three o’clock and time to feed them anyway, so I decided to go inside and ask the kitchen staff to bring some fruit, bread, and drinks out to the greenhouse.