The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

by Sjón

  I woke up early in the mornings. I drifted around the house and read the books on the shelves, buttered sandwiches I piled up like towers and took outside with me, my mother’s fur coat over my nightclothes. I pottered about barefoot in the dirt and soot as I ate. Here and there I paused and thought about what I saw in front of me, or about my sandwich and the way it dissolved between my teeth, or I would let my imagination wander into the landscape and turn itself into wild grunting animals that chased me back and forth across the terrain. I took tobacco from my father’s room, rolled cigarettes and breathed the smoke in and out of my lungs, with the unpleasant sensation and clarity that followed. Father slept with his mouth and eyes open. His troubled breathing and the room’s rank odour were smeared across the walls in all the years he inhabited that tiny space. One morning when I went in to get tobacco, he awoke at once, sat bolt upright in the bed and gripped my hand, pulling me down towards him and shrieking into my face never to accept advice from a woman, before returning quite as abruptly to his slumbers, once more to wander through sleep, his skin a brittle, yellowed shell about his flesh.

  I was fond of my mornings alone, though I paid for them with evenings of fatigue. I was asleep in my bed even before the first entertainment programmes came on the television and filled our house with images of life from a world far beyond our own. Mother arranged the TV tray, with buns and marmalade, and put out teacups for herself, for me and for my father, although he only ever emerged from his room to eat his evening meal. All the solitary evenings she sat there with her teacup in the glow of the television set saddened me immensely, but my fatigue and the urge to wake with the first light were stronger. I slept in my bed and awoke to the new day as if to a celebration, even if everything lay desolate about me. My room was pleasant: the intricately carved wood of the bedstead, the chair next to it with its pile of books, the clock that ticked and the lamp whose shade was decorated with boats sailing on a sea, the picture on the wall of elves dancing in meadows of flowers. And in all the life, I lived his voice was so familiar to me, so deeply a part of me that I was often unable to tell if the thoughts I listened to were his or mine.

  One day I went along the path into the forest to catch tadpoles. In one hand I held a plastic bag containing sandwiches, a bottle of milk and some biscuits. In the other a washing-up bowl in which the tadpoles could swim, and a scoop from the time we had the boat.

  The scoop still smelled of the sea, of kelp and old wood from the shed. The yellow washing-up bowl knocked against my leg as I walked, and on the way I sang a once popular song about dying honourably on the battlefield, feeling the sun scorch my neck, its warmth soaking into my back and bare shoulders. Inside the forest the light was dimmer, slanting down between the leaves and branches of the trees, the pond with its inky waters appearing, like a black jewel, on the other side of a moss-covered bank. I dropped to my knees at its edge, sinking down into the saturated earth until small pools formed at my sides. Water lilies floated on the glassy surface, stalks descending, sinewy and strong, towards the bottom. Pond skaters skittered across the water. Dragonflies flitted in the air. The pond was teeming with tadpoles, little heads and tails milling at the surface. I filled the bowl with the murky water. It smelled of iron. Some of the tadpoles that came with it had already grown tiny legs that kicked as they swam.

  The forest was as quiet as sleep, the stillness of sleep before opening one’s eyes and peering at the pristine day. I stood up, lifting an arm to my brow to wipe away my perspiration, and looked straight into a pair of dark eyes. I’m not sure how long we stared at each other like that, our gazes entwined without blinking. My chest filled with joy and my body shivered in the heat. His gaze reached into my core, it wandered through my organism as if through some uncharted land, stopping now and then to consider what it was he saw. When he lowered his eyes and drank from the tadpole-infested water, it was as if it were my blood he drank, as if it were my flesh he touched with his tongue. And then he was gone, vanished into the forest.

  I grew up. The piece of land on which we lived shrank. The road into the city was blocked and the mines sensed the soil’s slightest vibration. In the floodlit night the beams of the searchlights glanced off our faces as we sat around the table, eating the dinner mother had so painstakingly prepared from scratch. The fire roared. My father’s hollow face was drenched, beads of sweat emerged on the backs of his hands like tiny mushrooms, his moisture staining the table. Mother’s hands trembled. I rose to speak.

  I told them they had to choose there and then whether they wished to die in the flames of all that was familiar to them, or to grow old as wanderers and face an uncertain fate in the forest. Father’s yellow eyes blinked and mother wept.

  They won’t let us die here, she said, and gestured towards the diploma. We get money every month. We live a decent life.

  I went and got the hunting knife Father kept under his mattress. When I returned I kissed my parents goodbye, went out of the door and strode towards the forest.

  He was waiting for me at the pond. I climbed onto his back and after we’d come a fair way he asked: Have you ever sat on anything softer? Have you ever seen anything more clearly?

  No. Never.

  The sight I beheld made tears well in my eyes. The luscious green, the darkness of the forest pools, the glittering sky. The animals that moved among the trees. The song of the deer and the gleaming eyes of the lynx. For some time they walked at our side, leading us deeper into the forest that was his and theirs and—so it occurred to me the further we went—mine too. I cried like the child I once was, until the night closed around me and his movements beneath me rocked me to sleep.

  I would live much of my remaining life in darkness.

  He wasn’t always the way I saw him then, he told me. I’ve been living under a witch’s spell, he said. In the day I’m a bear, in the night a man. Can you promise me something? You must never see me as a man.

  I stared into the forest. I saw its lush abundance, the great moss-covered standing stones that topped the curve of a hillock. How they ever got there had long since vanished from any living memory, only the forest itself knew. My gaze wandered up the thick trunks of the trees, onwards into the blue expanse of sky, and then, for the first time, he put the blindfold over my eyes.

  To begin with, my time in darkness was like constant waking. My body would seek him out and the fire that burned within me flared at the slightest touch. All through the day I would live in the excitement of approaching night. Each hour took me closer to him, each morning bound up with the night that had passed and that to come. I woke up wanting it to be night. Could a person feel more elated?

  Through days, weeks, years we wandered. I aged in the forest. Eventually we neared the fringes. The trees became more scattered, abandoned houses began to appear. First one, then another, then another still. I realized we were wandering towards death. It was the only thing that awaited us, there was nothing else. My chest ached at the thought.

  Do you think about dying too? I asked him. About which of us will be first? About who will be left behind, and who gone forever?

  No, he said. I don’t think about it.

  I gave birth to a girl. A magnificent girl who thrust herself from my body with a victory cry. Her blood-smeared eyes opened and we looked at each other for the first time. I became someone else. The mother of this girl. She would draw nourishment from me and I would cherish giving her life. The first night, snuggled up. The smell of the forest pools on her body and mine. All of a sudden I felt a will had come to me. The will to live with this child. All of a sudden there was a future beyond the now in which we existed. It was the child’s future. Her life, held in my arms, feeding so hungrily from my body. I existed for her sake. Only for her sake. She was the innermost circle. He was outside, though close. He would never be closest again. It frightened me more than it frightened him.

  One night I dreamt about my parents. I was sitting in the kitchen eating my mother’s food. Fat
her and Mother watched me eat in silence. Then Mother asked me how I was. I told her about the girl, about the beauty of the forest and the man I loved who was a bear during the day and whom I was forbidden to see as a man. Mother looked at me for a long time, then went out and brought back some candle stumps she wrapped in a tea towel and handed to me.

  So you can see the one who makes you happy.

  Father chewed on his food and said: Don’t do it. It’s good the way it is.

  When I awoke I was holding the candle stumps in my hand.

  What until then had been so easy, so taken for granted, became impossible. I lit the first candle.

  I saw you. How could I not, I tell myself in an effort to explain. It was inevitable. The betrayal was there from the start, implanted in our history, perhaps its very premise.

  It’s my fault that we wander now on separate paths, each in our own landscape. It’s my fault that we may never find each other alive. Perhaps I am a mother who failed her child. Perhaps I will never see her again. Perhaps there is no way back. Perhaps you are already dead.

  *

  I walked alone in the forest. I no longer know how many nights followed the days.

  I saw a light between the trees. A cottage. Little windows and lamps burning inside. It was night. My fists pounded at the door. Is anyone there? Open up. Help me.

  Rain battered down.

  Was this the last of my strength I mustered?

  My lungs expelled the scream from my chest. The earth rumbled and shook. The mountain, suddenly rising up, emerging before my eyes. The eternity of darkness in front of me. Smooth rock reaching into the sky.

  The door opened. Shadows steeped in lightless murk. A shuffle of footsteps. A person without the will to lift their feet, passing through the dark.

  I peered inside. The fire burning in the open hearth. The golden rings hanging on the wall. A narrow bed. A figure lying outstretched upon it, face hidden beneath a newspaper. Hypodermics littered about the floor.

  Ellinor?

  A voice from under the paper.

  My name. My name. Someone spoke my name.

  I stepped forward to the bed. Did I not? I sat down on a stool beside it. I heard the sound of breathing.

  Yes, I replied. You know who I am?

  Laughter. I waited. I heard his breathing dwindle, a gentle whistle.

  I think I slept too. I was exhausted.

  When I awoke on the floor, the man was up making coffee. He turned with a mug in his hand and gave it to me as if we were old friends. The radio was playing. A song I heard once, a long time ago. He was handsome this man. He touched something inside me and it must have shown in my face because he laughed at me and straight away I felt angry and restless.

  I want you to do something for me, he said. His eyes were blue. He turned back to the fire and heated up some powder in a spoon. He filled a hypodermic, knotted the tie around his arm and stuck the needle deep into his vein.

  I have something you need, he said.

  I didn’t want to watch him, so I went over to the wall where the golden rings hung. They sparkled in the light of the fire.

  That knife you carry. His voice again. So aggravating. Have you used it?

  Once I had seen you I couldn’t get enough of you. I had to see you again. Every night I said it would be the last. But each time you put the blindfold over my eyes, I knew I would soon see your face again and the moment you slept I took it off. What is it about beauty that draws us so? I wanted to show you to the world. To the girl. This is your father, I would say. This man looks after you. Looks after me.

  I felt so strong. So happy. I snuggled up to you and smoothed my hand over the shapes of your body. Studied you in the light of the candle stumps. Your hands and lips, your closed eyelids. Your allure kept me awake and I thought to myself that it wasn’t right the way we were living. That it wasn’t fair on you to keep you hidden. Dazzled, I absorbed myself in thoughts of your grandeur. I wanted to lift you from our hiding place and stun the world. I became obsessed. The thoughts became a truth. They said the life we led wasn’t good enough, there was another life waiting for us somewhere, and all we had to do was reach out and take it.

  Was it my thinking out loud that woke you?

  You opened your eyes and looked at me. You looked at me and I saw in your eyes what I had done. We came together there in that look. In the grief of realizing that life as we knew it was over.

  Do you see the mountain over there? Can you see beyond it to the other side? The world is small, Ellinor. It’s not like you think. He laughed. The world’s a little dungheap.

  Do you see the mountain?

  I think back on the night that passed. The tumult and the silence that followed.

  He indicated a door at the rear of the house. That way. But I want to give you something first. Don’t you think it’s sad, Ellinor? My having what you need. The only one who has. He took my hand and drew me close. Drew me to the face into which I did not wish to look. His rugged face, the eyes that beguiled me. It was as if he were shouting, though his voice was a whisper.

  I’ve been working on them as long as I can remember. You can have them, Ellinor. The iron claws are yours that you may climb the mountain. I shall give you all you need, to do what no one else can. Do you see the mountain, Ellinor? That steep face? Its smooth and endless rock? He laughed again. That’s where your future starts.

  Claws of iron.

  The needle that sought my blood. My innermost self. His voice inside me there, and all around.

  The sudden cold and heat.

  Have you ever seen anything more clearly?

  No. Never. Never as now.

  The exquisite night. The smell of the mountain.

  He attached the claws to my outspread fingers. I laughed. The night and the warmth of his body. The dream of who I was, which I was now living out. My laughter rose and echoed back. It came out again as weeping. His face there in the night, in front of me. He was floating. Expanding and diminishing.

  Now, Ellinor.

  I laughed as he took the knife. The knife I had carried so long I had forgotten what it was. What it could be used for. Now suddenly it was all I saw. The way it shimmered in the dark.

  Do it well. He looked at me. I fell silent. The thick taste of metal in the mouth. The taste of fear.

  Do it well. The words were like blows. Nothing less. Not now, not since.

  I took the knife. Gripped it there as it danced in the air. I held the shaft. My hand, with the claws closed around it.

  I followed the knife into his body. I touched his heart. Again and again.

  So easy it was to die, I thought, and turned towards the mountain.

  All that night, all the day after and the night after that, I climbed the mountain. Scaled the steep face with my claws. I was too scared to look up or down. Too scared to turn my head to the side. I stared straight out in front of me, my hand searching for the next crack that might offer purchase, the next little ledge on which to set my foot. The cold issued from the rock and felt like breath against my face. Fatigue racked my body, wormed its way into my thoughts and settled like a fog behind my eyes. Onwards. Onwards and upwards. I inched my way, claws gouging the rock. Climb the mountain, Ellinor. I saw myself from a distance, a tiny dot moving almost imperceptibly upon the vast surface, the rock, the mountain. I could not think about the girl. I had abandoned all thought of her when I fled from the house in the night. I had left her. If I were to think of her sweet smell after a night in sleep, or of how she would come running towards me when there was something she had done that she wanted to tell me about, the radiance in her eyes, my delirious joy at her existence, I would not have been able to leave her there all on her own. The choice of her or him could only ever be her and her alone. Why, then, was I here? With blood trickling down my arms?

  My anger at this now being my life, the anger that rose up in me when all else was erased, was what made me go on, though my strength was long gone, had seeped
away, shed onto the senseless rock.

  When the second night became a dawn, when I could no longer manage to lift a hand, I found myself at the summit.

  The wind buffeted me, blowing warm, dry air into my face. He’s here, it said. The one you love is waiting for you. You’ve arrived now. You must find the hall where he lies in a casket. Go past the planes and the hangars, pay no heed to their gaping mouths through which the people surge and vanish.

  I got to my feet and looked out over the airfield. The enormous planes, so big as to almost defy belief, were lined up in a row with stiff and shiny wings.

  People on the ground, milling all around them. Lorries driving up the ramps into the bodies of the aircraft. The sound of the engines. A thunderous clamour that caused the earth to tremble.

  One of the planes detached itself and taxied away, accelerated and heaved itself into the air. I watched it climb into the sky and vanish.

  I crossed the airfield, at the perimeter of the world, and went towards the light, so bright I had to look down at the ground so as not to be dazzled. Somewhere inside me I knew I was dead.