Black Ice

by Colin Dunne

  With one scarlet talon she was tracing the blue, blurred letters at the top of his arm. She did the V, then the I, but gave up halfway through thee, and yawned instead. Someone ought to do a study of the incidence of boredom in beautiful girls: it's phenomenal.

  'I didn't get this off the shrinks, I swear it, and maybe I don't explain too good, but I'll try. Look. You gotta know what you are. You think, here I am, I'm a goddam peasant from Chile and my pa's a fisherman, and that's what I am. I started thinking like that, and naturally I started seeing what I really was. I'm an Icelander. My daddy's an Icelander. So let's get the hell to Iceland.'

  'Did you find your father?'

  He had turned his face towards the band. They were doing their best to wake up Greenland. Even so I still heard him give that sour, edgy laugh again.

  'I found him, okay. That was something. That was really something.' He went quiet for a moment while he thought about that and I thought then that he wasn't going to tell me. He raised his glass to me. In a much better English accent than he could've managed sober, he said: 'Sam, you're a bloody good bloke.' He slapped the girl on the rump and said: 'He's a bloody good bloke, this Brit. He's one of the good guys.'

  He put his drink down and rearranged the girl and then started again. 'Yeah, I found him. We stood staring at each other. Just staring. He was crying, for Christ's sake. Tears pumping down his cheeks. So was I.'

  'I can understand that.'

  He shook his head. 'No, you can't. You see, we couldn't speak to each other. He didn't speak any English. I didn't speak any Icelandic. So what else could we do? We stood and cried like two fucking big babies. That's something.'

  'Do you like living here?'

  'Do I like it? Look at these girls, for chrissakes! They don't look like this in Chicago, I'm telling you. Have you seen the country? All those mountains and rivers. It's a helluva country.'

  I knew why he hadn't answered my question. I also knew he would, in his own time. It only took another half-minute's silence.

  'I hate it, man.' He patted the girl again as she whispered into his ear: 'Sure, sugar, sure.' Then he carried on. 'Sure, it is a great big wonderful place, I know that. But do you know what lonely is? I look at those mountains and I feel so lonely I could cry. Spend most of my time round at the Marine House - the guys on embassy security duty give me a game of pool and a few Buds. Hell, at least I can tell what they're talking about.'

  For all his toughness, he was just a little boy who'd turned one corner too many and lost sight of home. Now he was just very lucky that he happened to tell me. At two in the morning, with enough of the right stuff down my throat, there are few problems I can't solve. And this was one I knew something about.

  'Go home,' I said.

  'This is my home.' He stabbed a finger against his "bicep. 'I got Icelandic blood in these veins. Pure one hundred per cent Icelandic blood.'

  I shut him up with a wave of my hands. 'Blood doesn't have a nationality. It's just the red stuff that fills up your tubes. You're an American. You look like one, you talk like one, you think like one, you are one. Go back and be one.'

  'Yeah, but my daddy .. .'

  'He's got nothing to do with it. Look, I'll tell you my theory.

  Shall I?'

  He hitched the girl up a bit higher and gave me a big grin.

  'He's going to tell us a theory. My bloody good bloke. Let's hear

  it, Sam.'

  He was so drunk that if I'd told him the story of Goldilocks he would've hailed it as the solution to the human predicament. The story of Goldilocks probably makes more sense than my theory, but I told it anyway.

  'You are alone. I mean, so am I and so's everyone else too, but for the purposes of this drunken explanation, you are alone.’

  ‘Right?'

  'Right.' He tipped his drink up and somehow managed to

  keep his eyes on me at the same time.

  'People are frightened of being alone, and they use anything to try to disguise the fact. They use sex, they use love, they use

  marriage, they use friendship, they use all these things to try to kid themselves that they are not by themselves. Most of all they use family. They give them special names like uncle and sister and grandma to try to bind them closer. Sometimes it works.

  Sometimes-say at a family party at Christmas-you really feel as though you belong to a sort of club. Or if you're with one of these girls, or the two of us having a drink.'

  He raised his glass. 'You're a bloody good bloke,' he said again. 'And you're right, I just know you're right.'

  'These,' I said, jabbing him in the chest, and that's not a tactic I'd risk sober, 'are fairy-stories we tell ourselves so we won't be afraid of the dark. But they don't mean a thing. In the end, there's just you, Palli Olafsson, that's all.'

  The girl on the floor yawned. 'Too much talking.' Then she curled round his leg again.

  Palli was leaning forward again, frowning in concentration.

  'It's like a new deal when you're born?'

  'That's it.'

  'It doesn't matter who your father is?'

  'No. Not a bit.'

  He clapped his hands on his legs to applaud himself as he triumphantly yelled at me: 'Okay, so if your father- your own father- was, say, Adolf Hitler, would you still say all that?'

  'As a matter of fact, my father was an American.'

  At first he took it for a joke whose meaning had got misted over by the booze.

  'Well, don't you go near any of those Klansmen down "in Alabama, not with your hair, buster .. .'He stopped as he saw my face. 'Hey. You ain't joking?'

  I shook my head. 'All I know about my father is that he was an American GI stationed in Britain.'

  'Wow.' He took a gulp at his drink. 'Wow,' he said again.

  I was nine when the letter came. As soon as I opened it, I felt my nerves sizzle. I don't know why, but I remember that quite clearly.

  'Dear Samuel,' it began, and no one, not even the superintendent, called me that. 'I thought I would drop you a line to say that we hope you are getting on all right. You'll be ten next month, won't you? Quite the young man, I expect. I want you to know that your mum had to put you in the home because of the problems it would have caused in the family. I expect she thinks about you a lot and I know I do. I was thinking the other night that you don't want to grow up thinking you weren't loved, so I decided to write this letter. All the best. Your grandma.'

  Looking back now, I suppose I was devastated. I was excited, but it was excitement with a touch of terror in it, I think.

  Although she had written her name and address quite clearly, I never made any attempt to reply to it or to get in touch with her. Now I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps I never thought of it. Perhaps I did, and rejected it. I don't know.

  And I never told anyone about it either. I kept it, folded in its envelope, as a secret. Often when I was alone I took it out and reread it, testing each word for different meanings and interpretations. Eventually, it disintegrated.

  It wasn't until three years later, when I was thirteen, that I went to the superintendent and said I wanted to know who my parents were. He told me my mother had been a local factory girl and my father was a US serviceman. 'As far as we can establish,' he said, 'they only met on the one occasion.' He warned me against digging too deep. People who did were almost always disappointed, he said. His advice was to let well alone. When I said that was what I'd do, he looked relieved. After that I never asked again.

  Not that I told one word of that to Palli.

  'Wow,' he said, for a third time. 'Don't you know who he was?'

  'No. I don't know who my mother was either.'

  'Can't you find out some way?'

  'I could- I don't want to.'

  'That is very, very cool.' He shook his scrubbing-brush head, grinning and giggling. 'You don't want to know and you carry on as though nothing's happened?'

  'Nothing did happen to me, did it?'

  'I guess not. T
hat's it! Christ, you are right!' He reached over and grabbed my hand and started shaking it. I thought mine was coming off at the wrist. 'So what the hell does it matter about your old man, you're here and you're having a good time. It's a new deal. Every time, every life, it's a new deal.'

  As he was calling up some more drinks, he suddenly

  remembered something. He leaned over the table and put his hand on my arm. 'You know what I said ... you know, about the Alabama Klansmen, shit, I was only joking.'

  'That's okay, Palli.'

  'I mean, fuck, you don't look anything .. .'

  'Forget it, Palli.' Somehow, through the seas of booze, I managed to recognise that as the key moment. 'You know that Solrun's done a runner, don't you?'

  'She has?' He tried to look surprised but failed. He knew. Without a doubt he knew.

  'Look, I know you've got to be loyal to your pal but do you think she could've gone to him?'

  'No chance.' I could see the effort it took for him to face me with steady eyes. 'He's back in the States, working in a muffler

  shop in Jamaica. You know, near Kennedy.'

  'Where you should be? Back in the States?'

  'Oh, yeah.' Again the slow smile softened his face. 'I'm going fishing tomorrow. Why don't you come along, Sam? Few beers -real American beers- see what we can haul in?'

  'Why not?' I replied, in that easy-going carefree way that means you haven't the faintest intention of doing it.

  But then what a dull old world it would be if we all told the truth all the time. Like that business over the AC badge. I wasn't in any rush to tell Petursson but I'd recognised the badge the minute I saw it. It was a miniature of the US Marines breast insignia for Air Crew. The real one is about four inches across but this smaller version was the one they gave to girlfriends to 'pin' them. In the same way that little boys at parties stick their fingers in the tastiest cakes to reserve them. That was the badge. Somehow that slotted in neatly with a spare name I'd got rolling around in my mind unclaimed. I'd been fed two names. Solrun had talked about two men. One of the names, Kirillina, fitted the young Russian diplomat. Logically then ... Oscar Murphy ... or was I jumping to conclusions?

  There was only one thing to do. Try it.

  'What I don't understand is this, Palli,' I said. I didn't have to act drunk. This was Method School where you have to live the part.

  'Whassat?' He had one eye closed to focus on me. The girl had gone.

  'This.' I wanted to bring the badge and the man together in one sentence for maximum impact and with the state my brain was in it wasn't easy work. But eventually I got there. I took a deep breath. 'If your buddy Oscar Murphy had got his helicopter wings and was doing so well, why the hell did he want to quit the marines like that?'

  His face registered a hull's eye.

  Show me a conclusion and I'll jump to it. If had a family, that'd be the motto.

  24

  As soon as he picked up the phone, I went straight into my nasal-yankee voice. 'You gotta Mr Vale there?'

  'Jack Vale speaking,' he said, in that mellifluous Edinburgh accent that made the rest of the English-speaking world sound like wood-smeared savages. 'Can I help you?'

  'Sure you can, Vale, unless you wanna wind up at the bottom of the river with a nickelodeon around your neck. You can keep your stinkin' hands off my wife.'

  A long pause followed. After all, it was five in the morning in New York.

  'Behind that atrocious imitation of the great Mr James Cagney, I do believe I detect the unmistakeable voice of an old friend. How are you, Sam? And what do you mean by attempting such clumsy deceptions at this hour of the night?' Since he went to freelance in New York ten years ago, I'd rung Jack about once a year, in a variety of causes and accents.

  I'd never survived the first minute without being spotted.

  'Just testing, Jack. I was wondering if you could check something out for me.'

  'Do you have to tell me now? Oh, it doesn't matter, I'm awake. Who's it for?'

  'Grimm's sunny stories.'

  'Surely you're not reduced to that, are you? Tell me the worst then. But I warn you, under no circumstances will I even contemplate doing Sexy Secrets of the Stars again.'

  I told him. He didn't sound too hopeful.

  'Jamaica's out by the airport. He works in a muffler shop, you say?'

  'Yes. I assume that's a place where Americans buy colourful woollen scarves to keep the cold out, isn't it Jack?'

  He gave a sigh of elaborate weariness. 'You don't assume anything of the sort. But I must tell you that there are hundreds of those back-street exhaust centres - as you would put it, in your quaint British way. However, leave it with me.'

  We were finishing off all that whatever-happened-to-old thingy when I saw Christopher coming in through Hulda's door. Five minutes later he was having breakfast with me and rabbiting away with Hulda in Icelandic.

  'Absolutely delicious,' he enthused, smearing what looked like jellied seal on to his toast. He made his finger and thumb into that Gallic ring of approval. 'Superb, Hulda, superb. Try some, Sam. It's a sort of potted lamb.'

  I'd been tucking mine away behind the geraniums but now I didn't have any choice. He was right. It was delicious.

  'If it wants to get eaten, why does it go round looking like that?'

  'Don't be so squeamish,' he said. Then he rhapsodised some more at Hulda. She was presiding- no lesser word would cover it - at the head of the table, delighted at last to have an appreciative audience for her efforts.

  When she spoke back to him, in Icelandic of course, I knew what she'd be saying by the formal way she tilted her head.

  'You really ought to learn some of the language,' Christopher said to me. 'You miss so much.'

  'Oh, I wouldn't say that. She just told you that it was her duty and her pleasure.'

  His head spun towards me. 'Gosh, you do after all.'

  'Sam knows me too well,' Hulda said, and they both laughed. I might've fooled him but I couldn't kid Hulda for long.

  When she went through to the kitchen, Christopher began to talk seriously. He'd heard about Solrun's mother when he got back from the north the previous night. Even at second-hand, he was horrified by what had happened, which set me wondering if he could be Batty's man sent along to throw me a lifeline. There was his nose: surely that would pass as credentials for one of the shadier trades.

  What he wanted, when he got around to it, was to express his doubts about Ivan. Knowing we were friends didn't make it any easier for him, but in the end he did manage to say it.

  'He's up at the Russian Embassy again now.' He was whispering, his eyes on the door for Hulda's return.

  I wasn't going to join in the whispering. 'Why not? He works for the Russian government.'

  'Yes, but doing what? I know he's an old friend of yours and all that, but I must say it- I think he's a spy. A proper spy.'

  'Like all of us, he operates as best he can in a world of limited possibilities.'

  'An awful lot more limited in Russia,' he grumbled.

  He'd come round to offer his services as interpreter again. He'd had a disappointing trip to Akureyri. No one was interested in his lavatory gimmick. It was hard to believe that he was genuinely surprised by this, but he was clearly quite crestfallen. Now he was having problems getting authority to move stuffed puffins out of the country.

  His gypsy face looked quite pale. 'I'm beginning to think I may not be cut out for business after all,' he said. I had to hide my smile. 'Anyway, not to worry. At least it gives me the opportunity to offer a small present to your daughter.'

  He swung over a plastic bag. Without looking, I knew what would be inside. It was. A stuffed puffin. I assumed it was stuffed but, to be honest, it looked alive to me. Alive, and very still. I'm sure you can't get that quality of malevolence into glass eyes. The look on its face was the sort of expression you'd expect to see on your worst enemy as you fell down a manhole. Malicious satisfaction. With its webbed feet clinging
to a chunk of lava, it stood with its head cocked, gloating.

  'I'm sure she'll love it.' He was almost prompting me.

  'Oh, yes, I'm sure she will. Although I'm not sure Uncle Ivan will approve.'

  'Any use for a passing polyglot today?'

  For a second, I couldn't think what he meant. Then I realised. I was tempted to include him. I might well need an interpreter. But since the old lady's death, it had struck me I was involved with some deeply serious people.

  'I can manage,' I said. 'But thanks, anyway.'

  25

  The coughing man was bothering me. l don't know why. There was no reason why Palli's girlfriend- if that's what she was shouldn't have a male guest in the spare bedroom. She didn't altogether look like a girl who was saving herself for Mr Right. On the other hand, maybe it was her poor old granddad, or maybe an out-of-town hack like me who was staying with her. When I'd heard him cough, she'd shouted out of the window at Palli and that was when he'd taken off. In the rush, I'd forgotten the coughing man.

  I'd intended asking Palli about it last night. I'd also meant to ask him about the girl and the baby, although I'd somehow picked up the impression that they didn't belong to him in any permanent sense. All that had gone the moment I'd mentioned Oscar Murphy. That sobered him up all right. It sobered me up, too - for a second, there was a fair chance he was going to redesign my face. Then, without another word, he'd got up and thundered out. He crashed through the party crowds with as much ceremony as a Sherman tank.

  I remembered he'd said he was going fishing. Maybe that would give me a chance to try to talk my way into the flat again. At the worst I could keep watch.

  It was raining. Heavy sheets ceaselessly poured down, swinging and swirling in a gusty wind. In Iceland you don't let that keep you indoors. If you did, you could be there for a month.

  As I drove up the long hill towards the Breidholt flats, I saw Palli's female flatmate rushing down behind an encased pram. If I'd thought about it, perhaps I would've turned back. But I was still suffering from brain damage from the night before and I wasn't up to flexible forward planning. So I carried on. In the car park I couldn't see any sign of Palli's Triumph.