by Sjón
When I’d turned off the tap and coiled up the hose, I didn’t know what to do. I went up to the veranda and sat down. After a few minutes I heard Beate begin to hum again; it sounded as though she was thinking about something she liked thinking about, she probably thought I couldn’t hear her. I coughed, and it went quiet. She came out and said: I didn’t know you were sitting here. She had put on make-up. Are you going somewhere? I said. No, she said. I turned my face towards the garden and said: Some idiot’s thrown up just outside the gate. Oh? she said. A proper mess, I said. She didn’t reply. I stood up. Do you have a cigarette? she asked. I gave her one and a light. Thanks, she said. I walked down from the veranda and sat at the garden table. Beate stood on the veranda, smoking. She threw the half-finished cigarette down onto the gravel at the bottom of the steps. What’s the point of that? I said. It’ll burn up, she said. She went into the living room. I stared at the thin band of smoke rising almost straight up from the cigarette: I didn’t want it to burn up. After a little while I stood up, I felt unsettled. I walked down to the gate in the wooden fence, crossed the narrow patch of meadow and went into the woods. I stopped just inside the edge of the woods and sat down on a stump, almost concealed behind some scrub. Beate came out onto the veranda. She looked towards where I was sitting and called my name. She can’t see me, I thought. She walked down into the garden and around the house. She walked back up onto the veranda again. Once again she looked towards where I was sitting. She couldn’t possibly see me, I thought. She turned and went into the living room.
When we were sitting at the dinner table, Beate said: There he is again. Who? I said. The man, she said, at the edge of the woods, just by the big … no, now he’s gone again. I got up and went over to the window. Where? I said. By the big pine tree, she said. Are you sure it’s the same man? I said. I think so, she said. There’s nobody there now, I said. No, he’s gone, she said. I went back to the table. I said: Surely you couldn’t possibly make out if it was the same man from that distance. Beate didn’t reply right away, then she said: I would have recognized you. That’s different, I said. You know me. We ate in silence for a while. Then she said: By the way, why didn’t you answer me when I called you? Called me? I said. I saw you, she said. Then why did you walk all the way around the house? I said. So you wouldn’t realize I’d seen you, she said. I didn’t think you had seen me, I said. Why didn’t you answer? she said. It wasn’t really necessary to answer when I didn’t think you’d seen me, I said. After all, I could have been somewhere else entirely. If you hadn’t seen me, and if you hadn’t pretended as if you hadn’t seen me, then this wouldn’t have been a problem. Dear, she said, it really isn’t a problem.
We didn’t say anything else for a while. Beate kept turning her head and looking out of the window. I said: It didn’t rain. No, she said, it’s holding off. I put down my knife and fork, leaned back in the chair and said: You know, sometimes you annoy me. Oh, she said. You can never admit that you’re wrong, I said. But of course I can, she said. I’m often wrong. Everybody is. Absolutely everybody. I just looked at her, and I could see that she knew she’d gone too far. She stood up. She took hold of the gravy boat and the empty vegetable dish and went into the kitchen. She didn’t come back in. I stood up too. I put on my jacket, then stood for a while, listening, but it was completely quiet. I went out into the garden, round to the front of the house and out onto the road. I walked east, away from town. I was annoyed. The villa gardens on both sides of the road lay empty, and I didn’t hear any sounds other than the steady drone from the motorway. I left the houses behind me and walked out onto the large level stretch of ground running right the way to the fjord.
I got to the fjord close to a little outdoor café and I sat down at a table right by the water. I bought a glass of beer and lit a cigarette. I was hot, but didn’t remove my jacket as I presumed I had patches of sweat under the arms of my shirt. I was sitting with all the customers in the café behind me; I had the fjord and the distant wooded hillsides in front of me. The murmur of hushed conversation and the gentle gurgle of the water between the rocks by the shore put me in a drowsy, absent-minded state. My thoughts pursued seemingly illogical courses, which were not unpleasant; on the contrary, I had an extraordinary feeling of well-being, which made it all the more incomprehensible that, without any noticeable transition, I became gripped by a feeling of anxious abandonment. There was something complete about both the angst and the sense of being abandoned that, in a way, suspended time, but it probably didn’t take more than a few seconds before my senses steered me back to the there and then.
I walked home the same way I had come, across the stretch of flat ground. The sun was nearing the mountains in the west; a haze lingered over the town, and there wasn’t the slightest nip in the air. I noticed I was reluctant to go home, and suddenly I thought, and it was a distinct thought: If only she were dead.
But I continued on home. I walked through the gate and around the side of the house. Beate was sitting at the garden table; her older brother was sitting opposite her. I went over to them; I felt completely relaxed. We exchanged a few insignificant words. Beate didn’t ask where I had been, and neither of them encouraged me to join them, something that, with a plausible excuse, I would have declined anyway.
I went up to the bedroom, hung up my jacket and took off my shirt. Beate’s side of the double bed wasn’t made. There was an ashtray on the nightstand with two butts in it, and beside the ashtray lay an open book, face down. I closed the book; I brought the ashtray into the bathroom and flushed the butts down the toilet. Then I undressed and turned on the shower, but the water was only lukewarm, almost cold, and my shower turned out to be quite different from and a good deal shorter than what I’d imagined.
While I stood by the open bedroom window getting dressed, I heard Beate laugh. I quickly finished and went down into the laundry room in the basement; I could observe her through the window there without being seen. She was sitting back in the chair, with her dress hiked far up on her parted thighs and her hands clasped behind her neck, making the thin material of the dress tight across her breasts. There was something indecent about the posture that excited me, and my excitement was only heightened by the fact she was sitting like that in full view of a man, albeit her brother.
I stood looking at her for a while; she wasn’t sitting more than seven or eight metres away from me, but because of the perennials in the flower bed right outside the basement window, I was sure that she wouldn’t notice me. I tried to make out what they were saying, but they spoke in low tones, conspicuously low tones, I thought. Then she stood up, as did her brother, and I hurried up the basement stairs and into the kitchen. I turned on the cold water tap and fetched a glass, but she didn’t come in, so I turned off the tap and put the glass back.
When I’d calmed down, I went into the living room and sat down to leaf through an engineering periodical. The sun had gone down, but it wasn’t necessary to turn the lights on yet. I leafed back and forth through the pages. The veranda door was open. I lit a cigarette. I heard the distant sound of an aeroplane, otherwise it was completely quiet. I grew restless again, and I got to my feet and went out into the garden. There was nobody there. The gate in the wooden fence was ajar. I walked over and closed it. I thought: She’s probably looking at me from behind the scrub. I walked back to the garden table, moved one of the chairs slightly so that the back of it faced the woods, and sat down. I convinced myself that I wouldn’t have noticed it if there had been someone standing in the laundry room, looking at me. I smoked two cigarettes. It was beginning to get dark, but the air was still and mild, almost warm. A pale crescent moon lay over the hill to the east, and the time was a little after ten o’clock. I smoked another cigarette. Then I heard a faint creak from the gate, but I didn’t turn around. She sat down and placed a little bouquet of wild flowers on the garden table. What a lovely evening, she said. Yes, I said. Do you have a cigarette? she asked. I gave her one and a light. Then, in
that eager, childlike voice I’ve always found hard to resist, she said: I’ll fetch a bottle of wine, shall I?—and before I’d decided what answer to give, she stood up, took hold of the bouquet and hurried across the lawn and up the steps of the veranda. I thought: Now she’s going to act as if nothing has happened. Then I thought: Then again, nothing has happened. Nothing she knows about. And when she came with the wine, two glasses and even a blue check tablecloth, I was almost completely calm. She had switched the light on above the veranda door, and I turned my chair so I was sitting facing the woods. Beate filled the glasses, and we drank. Mmm, she said, lovely. The woods lay like a black silhouette against the pale blue sky. It’s so quiet, she said. Yes, I said. I held out the cigarette pack to her, but she didn’t want one. I took one myself. Look at the new moon, she said. Yes, I said. It’s so thin, she said. I sipped my wine. In the Mediterranean it’s on its side, she said. I didn’t reply. Do you remember the dogs in Thessaloniki that got stuck together after they’d mated, she said. In Kavala, I said. All the old men outside the café shouting and screaming, she said, and the dogs howling and struggling to get free from one another. And when we got out of the town, there was a thin new moon like that on its side, and we wanted each other, do you remember? Yes, I said. Beate poured more wine into the glasses. Then we sat in silence, for a while, for quite a while. Her words had made me uneasy, and the subsequent silence only heightened my unease. I searched for something to say, something diversionary and everyday. Beate got to her feet. She came around the garden table and stopped behind me. I grew afraid, I thought: Now she’s going to do something to me. And when I felt her hands on my neck, I gave a start, and jumped forward in the chair. At almost the very same moment I realized what I had done and without turning around, I said: You scared me. She didn’t answer. I leaned back in the chair. I could hear her breathing. Then she left.
Finally I stood up to go inside. It had grown completely dark. I had drunk up the wine and thought up what I was going to say—it had taken some time. I brought the glasses and the empty bottle but, after having thought about it, left the blue check tablecloth where it was. The living room was empty. I went into the kitchen and placed the bottle and the glasses beside the sink. It was a little past eleven o’clock. I locked the veranda door and switched off the lights, and then I walked upstairs to the bedroom. The bedside light was on. Beate was lying with her face turned away and was asleep, or pretending to be. My duvet was pulled back, and on the sheet lay the cane I’d used after my accident the year we’d got married. I picked it up and was about to put it under the bed, but then changed my mind. I stood with it in my hand while staring at the curve of her hips under the thin summer duvet and was almost overcome by sudden desire. Then I hurried out and went down to the living room. I had brought the walking stick with me, and without quite knowing why, I brought it down hard across my thigh, and broke it in two. My leg smarted from the blow, and I calmed down. I went into the study and switched on the light above the drawing board. Then I turned it off and lay down on the couch, pulled the blanket over me and closed my eyes. I could picture Beate clearly. I opened my eyes, but I could still see her.
I woke a few times during the night, and I got up early. I went into the living room to remove the cane; I didn’t want Beate to see that I’d broken it. She was sitting on the sofa. She looked at me. Good morning, she said. I nodded. She continued to look at me. Have we fallen out? she said. No, I said. She kept her gaze fixed on me, but I couldn’t manage to read it. I sat down to get away from it. You misunderstood, I said, I didn’t notice you getting up, I was lost in my own thoughts, and when I suddenly felt your hands on my neck, I mean I see how it could make you … but I didn’t know you were standing there. She didn’t say anything. I looked at her, met the same inscrutable gaze. You have to believe me, I said. She looked away. Yes, she said, I do, don’t I.
TRANSLATED BY SEÁN KINSELLA
ICE
(extract from the novel)
ULLA-LENA LUNDBERG
SHE CAME TO FINLAND on foot across the ice, through the forests, tied to the underside of a freight car, in a submarine that surfaced for one short moment by the outermost skerries where a smuggler’s speedboat waited. She jumped into the Carelian forests by parachute. She changed clothes with a Finnish military attaché and rode to Finland first-class on his diplomatic passport. Once over the border, cars with dimmed headlamps waited on secret forest tracks. Signals were flashed. Finally—Papa! General Gyllen, without whom there would have been no hope.
Well and good. The more versions the better. How it actually happened, no one will ever be told. Except for Papa, the names of the people intentionally or unintentionally involved will never be revealed. The fact itself is momentous enough—in 1939, Irina Gyllen was the only known case of a former Finnish citizen managing to flee to Finland from the Soviet Union. If any other human being is ever going to do it again, it is of the utmost importance that no one ever finds out how it all took place.
Irina Gyllen sleeps alone. If she has to spend a night among other people on a boat, she doesn’t sleep. When she goes to bed, she takes a pill. Which makes her hard to wake up when she has to deliver a baby. The Örlanders know this, it is one of her peculiarities, along with the fact that her medical licence is Russian, so she cannot practise in Finland until she has taken the necessary Finnish examinations. In the Soviet Union, she was a gynaecologist. In Finland, she took a course in midwifery and has now taken this job on the Örland Islands while she studies for her Finnish medical certification.
The Örlands are safe. Mama and Papa have spent their vacations there and know that the locals have boats that can get to Sweden in any weather. They also know that no stranger can slink in unseen. Persons that Irina Gyllen has reason to fear never come ashore without the islanders reporting on their every movement. For much of the year no one comes at all.
It is quiet. You can hear your own heart, your breathing, your digestion. All in good condition, though she’s already into her second life. She lost a lot on the other side; she hardly looks like a woman any more. Tall and angular without any visible softness. A sharply sculptured face, feet that have walked and walked, hands that have worked and worked.
Her body has smoothed over the fact that she has given birth, but people on the Örlands know that Irina Gyllen has left a child behind. A son.
When she wakes up, she takes a pill. Her hand is then steady, her mind adequately dulled, her memory manageable. It is then she works, writes and keeps her records. She lives in the Hindrikses’ little cottage while the community builds a Health Care Centre with the help of a Swedish donation. The people are good—friendly and considerate—but they make no attempt to treat her as one of them. They call her doctor, although she assures them she is not one, and they do not gossip about her in the village. It is only much later that she realizes the reason they don’t is that their silence implies that they know things which can’t be told.
The Hindrikses are good people—happy, talkative, lively. Being always greeted with friendly smiles, always getting an analysis of the weather before she goes out, being praised for having the sense to dress warmly, eating her meals with the family and not forgetting to thank them for the food—all of it helps to keep other things at a distance. There is nothing to see on the surface. Or is her closed expression striking evidence of unnatural self-control?
Of what, exactly? Of the terrible desire to live that forces people to sacrifice everything. As a doctor, you have no illusions. Early on, you notice the hope in dying patients, see how they take note of the slightest sign of improvement, refuse to admit that it’s only a matter of days. The will to live is stronger than any pain or affliction—even medical students make that sober observation. It adjusts to any reality if it means that life can be augmented by one small measure. Just a few more moments, during which salvation may appear.
In theory, Irina Gyllen had understood the situation precisely. In practice, the feeling ambu
shed her and knocked her senseless. All she could think about was saving her own life. They took her husband first. For the boy’s sake, she did what they had agreed on. Repudiated him, filed for divorce. Continued to work, because the regime always needs doctors; doctors are not something they could afford to discard. Except he was a doctor too. Yes, but surrounded by informers and jealous men. As if she wasn’t. Born in Russia, father a Finnish general.
Working isn’t enough. Even the best disappear. There is no way out except Finland. Even that exit is closed because she has given up her citizenship. But Papa has connections, contacts, and she can still be in contact with Papa through the Finnish legation. Which in recent years she has not dared to visit. But there are employees whom, with her heart in her throat, she can run into on the street.
Papa Gyllen is also a former officer in the Imperial Russian army. The reason she will be arrested, that she should already have been taken, even before her husband. Will he be pressed to inform on her? Just a matter of time. No.
You live out your final days, you prolong them—if you can hold out, one more day, a week, then something may save you. You think only about saving yourself, everyone else can be sacrificed. It’s why people become informers. The only reason Irina Gyllen doesn’t become an informer is that she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.
In order to save yourself, you can also abandon a child. You don’t even take him to your husband’s parents and entrust him to their care. You just run over to the neighbours, whom you hardly know, and ask if he might stay with them for an hour while you run to the hospital. In his pocket, he has a slip of paper, fastened with a safety pin, with the address of his paternal grandparents. It’s like pushing him out onto the Nile in a basket of reeds. Maybe he’ll be sent to his grandparents, themselves deeply compromised, perhaps about to be arrested. Maybe he’ll be put in an orphanage where his identity will be erased. Maybe they can be reunited quite soon. Through the Red Cross, now that the war is over.
