Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  "You could say it destroyed us, that summer trip to Fljót. Destroyed us as a family. It has certainly shaped my whole life. Covering up. Family pride. It was taboo. We could never mention it. My mother made sure of that. I know that she talked to Benjamín, later. Explained the matter to him. That made Sólveig's death nobody's business but her own. Sólveig's, that is. Her secret, her choice. We were all right. We were pure and respectable. She went mad and threw herself into the sea."

  Elínborg looked at Bára and suddenly felt pity for the lie that she had been forced to live.

  "She did it by herself," Bára went on. "Nothing to do with us. It was her business."

  Elínborg nodded.

  "She's not lying up there on the hill," Bára said. "She's lying on the bottom of the sea and she's been there for more than 60 terrible years."

  Erlendur sat down beside Eva Lind after talking to her doctor, who said the same as before: her condition was unchanged, only time could tell the outcome. He sat at his daughter's bedside, wondering what to talk to her about this time, but could not make up his mind.

  Time went by. The intensive care ward was quiet. Occasionally a doctor walked past the door, or a nurse in soft white shoes that squeaked against the linoleum.

  That squeaking.

  Erlendur watched his daughter and, almost automatically, started to talk to her in a low voice, telling her about a missing person that he had puzzled over for a long time and perhaps, even after all those years, had yet to understand fully.

  He started telling her about a young boy who moved to Reykjavik with his parents, but always missed his countryside home. The boy was too young to understand why they had moved to the city, which at that time was not a city, but a large town by the sea. Later he realised that the decision was a combination of many factors.

  His new home felt strange from the start. He had been brought up in simple rural life and isolation – with warm summers, harsh winters and tales about his family who had lived in the countryside all around, most of them crofters and desperately poor for centuries. Those people were his heroes. He heard about them in stories of everyday life that had been told for years and decades, accounts of hazardous journeys or disasters, or tales that were so hilarious that the storytellers would gasp for breath through their laughter or burst into fits of coughing that left them curled up, spluttering and shaking from sheer joy. All these stories were about people he had lived with and known, or those who had lived in the countryside, generation after generation: uncles and nieces, grandmothers and great-grand-mothers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers way back in time. He knew all these characters from stories, even those who were long dead and buried in the little cemetery beside the parish church: midwives who waded icy glacial rivers to help women in childbirth; farmers who heroically rescued their flocks in raging storms; farmhands who froze to death on their way to the sheepcote; drunken clergymen, ghosts and monsters; tales of lives that were part of his own life.

  He brought all these tales with him when his parents moved to the city. They bought a wartime bathhouse built by the British military on the outskirts of the city, and converted it into a tiny house because that was all they could afford. Urban life did not suit his father, who had a weak heart and died not long after he moved. His mother sold the bathhouse, bought a cramped little basement flat not far from the harbour and worked in a fish factory. The son did not know what to do when he finished his compulsory schooling. Did manual labour. Building sites. Fishing boats. Saw a vacancy advertised with the police force.

  He no longer heard any tales, and they became lost to him. All his people were gone, forgotten and buried in deserted rural areas. He, in turn, drifted through a city that he had no business being in. Knew that he was not the urban type. Could not really tell what he was. But he never lost his yearning for a different life, felt rootless and uncomfortable, and sensed how his last links with the past evaporated when his mother died.

  He went to dancehalls. At one of them, Glaumbaer, he met a woman. He had known others, but never for more than casual meetings. This one was different, more steadfast, and he felt that she took control of him. Everything happened too quickly for him to grasp. She made demands of him which he fulfilled without any particular motivation and before he knew it, he had married her and they had a daughter. They rented a small flat. She had big plans for their future and talked about having more children and buying an apartment, quick and tense with a tone of expectation in her voice as if she saw her life on a safe track that nothing would ever overshadow. He looked at her and it dawned on him that he did not really know this woman at all.

  They had another child and she became increasingly aware of how distant he was. When their baby son entered the world he was only moderately happy to be a father again and had already begun mentioning that he wanted to put an end to all this, he wanted to leave. She felt it. She asked whether there was another woman, but he just stared blankly without the question even registering. He had never contemplated it. "There must be another woman," she said. "It's not that," he said, and started to explain to her his feelings and his thoughts, but she did not want to hear. She had two children by him and he could not seriously be talking about leaving her. Them. His children.

  His children. Eva Lind and Sindri Snaer. Pet names that she chose for them. He did not regard them as part of him. Lacked all paternal feeling, but recognised the responsibility he bore. His duty towards them, which had absolutely nothing to do with their mother or his relationship with her. He said he wanted to provide for the children and divorce amicably. She said there would be nothing amicable about it, as she picked up Eva Lind and clutched her. His impression was that she would use the children to keep hold of him, and that only strengthened the resolution that he could not live with this woman. It had all been one huge mistake from the outset and he should have acted long ago. He had no idea what he had been thinking all that time, but now it had to come to an end.

  He tried to get her to agree to him having the children for part of the week or month, but she flatly refused and told him that he would never see them again if he left her. She would see to that.

  And then he disappeared. Disappeared out of the life of the little girl of two who was in her nappy and holding a dummy as she watched him walk out of the door. A little, white dummy that squeaked when she bit it.

  "We're going about this the wrong way," Erlendur said.

  That squeaking.

  He bowed his head. He thought the nurse was walking past the door again.

  "I don't know what became of that man," Erlendur said in a barely audible voice, looking at his daughter's face, which was more peaceful than he had ever seen it. The outlines clearer. Looked at the equipment that was keeping her alive. Then looked back down at the floor.

  A long time passed in this way until he stood up, bent over Eva Lind and kissed her on the forehead.

  "He disappeared and I think he's still lost and has been for a long time, and I'm not certain he'll ever be found. It's not your fault. It happened before you came into the world. I think he's looking for himself, but he doesn't know why or exactly what he's searching for, and obviously he'll never find it."

  Erlendur looked down at Eva Lind.

  "Unless you help him."

  Her face like a cold mask in the lamplight from the table next to her bed.

  "I know you're searching for him and I know that if there's anyone who can find him, it's you."

  He turned away from her, poised to leave, when he saw his ex-wife standing in the doorway. He did not know how long she had been standing there. Did not know how much she had heard of what he had told Eva Lind. She was wearing the same brown coat as before, on top of a jogging suit, but now she wore stilettos too, an outfit which made her look ridiculous. Erlendur had barely seen her for more than two decades, and he noticed how she had aged during that time, how her facial features had lost their sharpness, her cheeks fattened and a double chin started to form.

>   "That was a repulsive lie you told Eva Lind about the abortion." Erlendur seethed with rage.

  "Leave me alone," Halldóra said. Her voice had aged too. Grown hoarse. Smoking too much. Too long.

  "What other lies did you tell the kids?"

  "Get out," she said, moving away from the door so that he could get past.

  "Halldóra . . ."

  "Get out," she repeated. "Just go and leave me in peace."

  "We both wanted the children."

  "Don't you regret it?" she said.

  Erlendur didn't follow.

  "Do you think they had any business coming into this world?"

  "What happened?" Erlendur said. "What made you like this?"

  "Get out," she said. "You're good at leaving. So leave! Leave me in peace with her."

  Erlendur stared at her.

  "Halldóra . . ."

  "Leave, I said." She raised her voice. "Get out of here. This minute. Leave! I don't want you around! I never want to see you again!"

  Erlendur walked past her and out of the room, and she closed the door behind him.

  21

  Sigurdur Óli finished searching the cellar that evening without discovering any more about Benjamín's tenants in the chalet on the hill. He did not care. He was relieved to escape from that task. Bergthóra was waiting for him when he got home. She had bought some red wine and was in the kitchen sipping it. Took out another glass and handed it to him.

  "I'm not like Erlendur," Sigurdur Óli said. "Never say anything so nasty about me."

  "But you want to be like him," Bergthóra said. She was cooking pasta and had lit candles in the dining room. A beautiful setting for an execution, Sigurdur Óli thought.

  "All men want to be like him," Bergthóra said.

  "Aei, why do you say that?"

  "Left to their own devices."

  "That's not right. You can't imagine what a pathetic life Erlendur leads."

  "I need to work out our relationship at least," Bergthóra said, pouring wine into Sigurdur Óli's glass.

  "Okay, let's work out our relationship." Sigurdur Óli had never met a more practical woman than Bergthóra. This conversation was not going to be about the love in their lives.

  "We've been together now for, what, three or four years, and nothing's happening. Not a thing. You pull faces as soon as I start talking about anything that vaguely resembles commitment. We still have completely separate finances. A church wedding seems out of the question; I'm not clear about any other type. We're not registered as cohabiting. Having children is as remote to you as a distant galaxy. So I ask: What's left?"

  There was no hint of anger in Bergthóra's words. So far, she was still only seeking to understand their relationship and where it was heading. Sigurdur Óli decided to capitalise on this before matters got out of hand. There had been ample time to ponder such questions over his drudgery in Benjamín's cellar.

  "We're left," Sigurdur Óli said. "The two of us."

  He found a CD, put it in the player and selected a track that had haunted him ever since Bergthóra started to pressurise him about commitment. Marianne Faithfull sang about Lucy Jordan, the housewife who, at the age of 37, dreamed of riding through Paris in a sports car with the cool wind in her hair.

  "We've talked about it for long enough," Sigurdur Óli said.

  "What?" Bergthóra said.

  "Our trip."

  "You mean to France?"

  "Yes."

  "Sigurdur . . ."

  "Let's go to Paris and rent a sports car," Sigurdur Óli said.

  Erlendur was trapped in a swirling, blinding blizzard. The snow pounded him and lashed his face, the cold and the darkness enveloped him. He battled against the storm, but he made no headway, so he turned his back to the wind and huddled up while the snow piled up against him. He knew he would die and there was nothing he could do about it.

  The telephone started to ring and kept on, penetrating the blizzard, until suddenly the weather cleared, the howling storm fell silent and he woke up at home in his chair. On his desk, the telephone rang with increasing intensity, showing him no mercy.

  Stiffly he got to his feet and was poised to answer when the ringing stopped. He stood over the telephone, waiting for it to start again, but nothing happened. The telephone was too old to have a caller ID, so Erlendur had no idea who could be trying to contact him. Imagined it was a cold caller trying to sell him a vacuum cleaner with a toaster thrown in for good measure. He silently thanked the telesales person for bringing him in from the blizzard.

  He went into the kitchen. It was eight in the evening. He tried to shut the bright spring evening out with the curtains, but it forced its way past them in places, dust-filled sunbeams that lit up the gloom in his flat. Spring and summer were not Erlendur's seasons. Too bright. Too frivolous. He wanted heavy, dark winters. Finding nothing edible in the kitchen, he sat down at the table with his chin resting in his hand.

  He was still dazed from sleeping. After returning from a visit to Eva Lind at the hospital at around six, he sat down in the chair, fell asleep and dozed until eight. He thought about the blizzard from his dream and how he turned his back on it, waiting for death. He had often dreamed this dream, in different versions. Yet there was always the unrelenting, freezing blizzard that pierced him to the bone. He knew how the dream would have continued if his sleep had not been broken by the telephone.

  The ringing began again and Erlendur wondered whether to ignore it. Eventually he lunged out of the chair, went into the sitting room and picked up the receiver.

  "Yes, Erlendur?"

  "Yes," Erlendur said, clearing his throat. He recognised the voice at once.

  "Jim from the British embassy here. Forgive me for calling you at home."

  "Did you ring just now?"

  "Just now? No. Only this time. Well, I just spoke to Ed and I thought I needed to get in touch with you."

  "Really, is there anything new?"

  "He's working on the case for you and I just wanted to keep you in the picture. He's phoned America, looked through his diary and talked to people, and he thinks he knows who blew the whistle on the theft from the depot."

  "Who was it?"

  "He didn't say. Asked me to let you know and said he was expecting your call."

  "This evening?"

  "Yes, no, or in the morning. Tomorrow morning might be better. He was off to sleep. Goes to bed early."

  "Was it an Icelander? Who grassed on them?"

  "He'll tell you about it. Good night, and my apologies for disturbing you."

  Erlendur was still standing by the phone when it started ringing again. It was Skarphédinn. He was on the hill.

  "We'll uncover the bones tomorrow," Skarphédinn said without any preamble.

  "About time too," Erlendur said. "Did you call me just now?"

  "Yes, did you just get in?"

  "Yes," Erlendur lied. "Have you found anything useful up there?"

  "No, nothing, I just wanted to tell you that . . . good evening, evening, ehmm, let me help you, there you go . . . er, sorry, where were we?"

  "You were telling me that you'll reach the bones tomorrow."

  "Yes, some time towards evening, I expect. We haven't uncovered any clues as to how the body ended up being buried. Maybe we'll find something under the bones."

  "See you tomorrow, then."

  "Goodbye."