Sun on Fire

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  Fabían walked around the corner of the house and pointed to a shelf attached to a sheltered corner on the west side of the house.

  “That’s where we put the food for the redpolls. Would you mind?”

  Birkir set up the stepladder where he could reach the shelf, and climbed up. He scattered the seeds around and climbed back down.

  “What did you live off of out there in the country?” he asked.

  Fabían replied, “Housekeeping was actually a bit of a struggle because we had very little income. The idea was to earn money selling handicrafts, ceramics, candles, and my drawings. Jón would sell pamphlets of his verse, and Sun would sing her songs. But none of this brought in enough money, so Jón expanded our cottage industry into growing cannabis in the attic. There was a perfect space up there, once they’d brought in lights. Jón and Helgi had learned how to do this on their travels in Europe. I became just as good at horticulture as I was at drawing. For nearly a year, this all worked quite well, but then the authorities got suspicious and busted Jón, Helgi, and Rakel on a sales trip near Reykjavík.”

  “What happened to you?”

  Fabían coughed several times, and his voice cracked as he continued, “The same evening my friends were arrested, our house burned down, and Sun died in the fire. I managed to escape. I was found the next morning, wandering aimlessly. I’d suffered some kind of mental breakdown, and they sent me to a psychiatric institution.”

  Fabían coughed again more violently, and he suddenly vomited. He continued gagging for a while, and when he looked up, Birkir saw that he had a nosebleed.

  “I’m sorry,” Fabían mumbled. “I’m having a relapse.”

  “Let me help you in,” Birkir said, helping Fabían upright and supporting him as they made their way back through the yard. As they approached the steps to the house, Fabían fell to his knees. Birkir bent down and gathered him up. It surprised him how light his load was.

  “Can you carry him inside?” Rakel had appeared on the porch and was holding the front door open.

  “Yes,” Birkir said, and walked up the steps carrying Fabían in his arms.

  “And up to his room?”

  “Yes.” Inside, he continued up the stairs and carried the patient into the room on the second floor, laying him down on the bed.

  “Thank you,” Rakel said, “I’ll take over now.”

  “Do you mind if I stay awhile to see how he’s doing?” Birkir asked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give him an injection and he’ll fall asleep. You can come back tomorrow.”

  22:30

  After a generous evening meal at home with his mother, María, followed by a half-hour nap, Gunnar decided to round off the day with a visit to his regular bar on Smidjustígur, in the hope that a couple shots of bitters would alleviate the misery of his head cold. The bar was walking distance away, but, although he could move around reasonably well with the aid of his crutches, his back hurt like hell. He called a cab.

  As he entered the bar, Gunnar signaled to the bartender, then paused to scan the room for a seat. He didn’t think he could cope with standing or sitting at the counter. There were no free tables, but he saw an empty chair by a table for two, at which sat a familiar figure—a slim, sharp-nosed man with grayish, wavy hair parted in the center, and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was writing something on a piece of paper, but looked up through his thick spectacles as Gunnar sat down next to him.

  “Emil Edilon. Good to see you, Maestro,” Gunnar said.

  “By all that is holy! If it isn’t the Germanic Giant, back from the dead,” Emil said, eyeing the crutches Gunnar had leaned against the table. “Are you trying for a disability pension? I know a doctor who’s good at forging certificates.”

  Gunnar pretended he hadn’t heard this and asked, “How’s the writing going?”

  Emil sadly looked at the paper in front of him. “I think too much. One shouldn’t think. One should just write gibberish. That’s what readers like best. But you wouldn’t understand—you have no more feeling for literature than for any other nonedible pleasures.”

  A waiter came to the table and set before Gunnar a Holsten beer and a small square bottle of Jägermeister bitters.

  “Where on earth did you learn to drink that stuff?” Emil asked.

  “From my mom. She likes bitters.”

  The bar owner stocked these brands specially for Gunnar, who was the only customer who ordered them.

  “OK,” Emil said. “Now go and bother someone else. I’m working.”

  Gunnar looked around but couldn’t see any free seats. “Hey,” he said, “do you know Jón the Sun Poet?”

  Emil looked at him suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

  “I bumped into him in Germany.”

  “What were you doing in Germany?”

  “Never mind that. Do you know the Sun Poet?”

  “Yeah, I used to buy pot from him back in the days when I still enjoyed the stuff. He grew a good strain and knew how to process it.”

  “What about now?”

  “I stopped smoking cannabis a long time ago. It’s bad for people who need to use their brains—but you don’t have to worry about that sort of thing.”

  “I mean, do you know the Sun Poet now?” Gunnar asked impatiently.

  “We sometimes talk,” Emil said reluctantly. “You can have an intellectual discussion with the Ogre if you catch him at a good moment. He’s at his best when he’s had three or four pints. After that he becomes tiresome.”

  “Is he a decent poet?”

  “He stopped writing poetry a long time ago. He never recovered after the accident.”

  “What accident?”

  Emil Edilon looked wearily at Gunnar and set aside his pen.

  “In the early seventies, the Sun Poet was living on a hippie commune down in Fljótshlíd. That all came to an end when the house burned down. His fiancée perished in the fire. It was a terrible loss—she was a very gifted musician and a particularly sweet person. The rest of us never understood what she saw in the Ogre.” Emil hesitated, struggling to remember the man’s full name, but then it came. “Jón Sváfnisson. Apparently, there was a nice side to him, though he kept it to himself.”

  Gunnar was familiar with Emil’s problem remembering people’s names, and how he’d sometimes invent nicknames to help sidestep the issue. That’s why he called Gunnar the Germanic Giant.

  “What do you mean, he never recovered?” Gunnar asked.

  “The guy was transformed. Before, he was full of ideas. He was focused and meticulous in his writing. After the fire he just got weird. You can occasionally detect a creative thought in him, but it never ends up on paper.”

  “Does he have any tendency toward violence?”

  Emil shook his head and briefly smiled. “The Ogre is big, and he was once fit. I’ve seen him step in to stop a fight or two, but otherwise he can’t be bothered to start throwing punches himself.”

  “What about Helgi Kárason?”

  “The artist?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “And Lúdvík Bjarnason, do you know him?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  Emil peered into his empty glass, then picked it up and showed it to Gunnar. “It would help to have a refill.”

  Gunnar turned toward the counter and shouted, “Waiter! The same again for the author and another round for me, please.”

  The bartender acknowledged the order.

  “Who is this Lúdvík?” Gunnar asked.

  “The guy wanted to be an artist, but his dream was undermined by his total lack of talent. Instead, he found his niche helping out artists who did achieve success. He organizes exhibitions and that kind of thing. He may never have been able to create a work of art worth more than the materials used, but he has an eye for presentation.”

  “Can
a person make a living doing that?”

  “I think so. He handles the whole shebang, including packing the artworks and arranging their delivery, all of which can be a mammoth job if it’s a big exhibition, and he only works for the artists who can afford to pay. When he’s not doing that, he works in the studios, stretching canvases and so on. He even paints the backgrounds for one of the artists who does big paintings. He’s got plenty to do.”

  Gunnar lowered his voice. “He’s got a record of violence.”

  “I know.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Couldn’t you be bothered to read the police report?”

  “I just haven’t got around to it,” Gunnar replied.

  The bartender brought the drinks and put them on their table.

  Emil waited until he had left, and then continued, “This guy—what was his name again?”

  “Lúdvík.”

  “Oh, yes, Lúdvík. As a young man back in the seventies he was into weight lifting, which was definitely not trendy during those hippie years, but he pursued it with great enthusiasm alongside his art studies. He also liked exposing himself, but he mostly satisfied that urge by posing nude at the art school.”

  “So was he convicted for something connected with that?”

  “Oh, no, it was for something quite different. At that time in Reykjavík, people were dealing in all sorts of dope, naturally, and although everybody always went on about love and peace, there was a need for effective and able-bodied heavies. The hippies were prone to buying stuff and paying later—sometimes forgetting to pay altogether. Our weight-lifting friend was called upon when kids owed money, and he would spook them so efficiently that they instantly got clean and found themselves jobs to pay the debts. Either that or they hit up their fathers for loans, which was probably more common.”

  “Is he still involved in that kind of thing?”

  “Oh, no. He stopped some years ago, right after he nearly killed someone by accident.”

  “Do you know if he has any connection with Jón Sváfnisson?”

  “No doubt he collected for the Sun Poet, the same as he did for others in that line of business.”

  Birkir woke to the sound of his alarm clock. This was his day off, and he had resolved to keep it that way—at least to start with.

  He got up, retrieved the morning paper from the front door mailbox, and sat down to read it over a leisurely breakfast: a sip of cod liver oil, a cup of strong tea, and two pieces of toast with cheese and cucumber. Then he set about getting ready for a training run. A long one.

  First he went out onto the balcony to check the weather and decide what to wear. The wind had changed directions, and there was now a stiff easterly breeze, but it wasn’t raining. Back inside, he began by smearing a thick layer of Vaseline on all the usual friction points—nipples, neck, groin, and his protruding navel. He’d suffered in the past after skipping these precautions, even drawing blood on long runs, and now he was careful to avoid repeating that mistake. Then he put on tight running pants, thick socks, a thin sweater, and a light windproof jacket topped with a bright-yellow reflective vest, and tied on his Asics running shoes.

  Mixing up an energy drink, he filled two small plastic flasks with it, another two with water, and then fastened the four flasks to a belt that he clipped around his waist. Finally he stuck a couple of bananas into his jacket pockets and put on a wool hat, thick gloves, and running goggles with yellow lenses. He picked up his bag containing clean clothes, toiletries, and swimming gear, and headed out to his Toyota Yaris, parked in his reserved spot behind the house.

  At ten minutes to nine, he swung into the parking lot outside the West Reykjavík public swimming pool, parked the car, and joined the group of five men and two women gathered in the entrance lobby, all clad in gear similar to his. After a brief discussion, they agreed to take the same route as last time, and at precisely nine o’clock they headed out, running in a southerly direction down to the sea, where they turned east into the breeze. The runners took turns setting the pace against the wind, holding a rate of about five minutes per kilometer. They passed the airfield and the heated waters of Nauthólsvík Bay, and crossed the highway via the footbridge, heading toward the Ellida River valley. Before long, there was more shelter from the headwind and the runners were able to increase their speed to four and a half minutes per kilometer, maintaining this rate until they reached the valley, whose steep slopes slowed them down again. Eventually they reached their approximate halfway point, the Árbær swimming pool, where they stopped briefly to use the bathrooms and refill their water bottles, before retracing their route westward. With a short detour around the hot-water tanks at Öskjuhlíd, by the time they returned to their starting point, they had covered exactly thirty kilometers.

  It was now eleven thirty, and they were tired and sweaty. After twenty minutes of stretching exercises, and having showered, the group gathered in one of the hot pools for a discussion about training schedules and targets, and proposed distance runs in Iceland and abroad. They caught up on news of absent running mates and swapped lively reminiscences of runs from all over the world. By the time he stood fully dressed outside the swimming pool at twelve thirty, Birkir realized he hadn’t given a moment’s thought to unsolved murders all morning.

  He drove back home, put his running gear away, had lunch—orange juice, rye bread with herring, a boiled egg, and yogurt—and then headed out to walk to Jónshús—this time taking the direct route.

  There were three of them outside in the yard. The small woman, whom Birkir now knew to be Úlfheidur, stood on top of the stepladder adding bird feed to the boards in the aspen. Around her fluttered a cluster of snow buntings, pecking at the grains almost the moment they left her hand. Fabían and Rakel sat on a bench against the side of the house, enjoying the brief rays of sunshine that had broken through the early afternoon clouds.

  Birkir greeted them.

  Rakel stood up and offered him a seat. “I guess I’ve got to go do some food shopping,” she said, and left.

  Birkir sat down. “How are you, Fabían?” he said.

  “I’m feeling better than yesterday,” Fabían replied, lighting up a joint. “I need to be careful not to overdo, though.”

  “Would you mind continuing with the story you were telling me yesterday?”

  “Where had we gotten to?”

  “You told me the house in the country burned down and your friend died in the fire.”

  “Yes, but I’d rather not talk any more about that.”

  “That’s OK,” Birkir said. “But what about you? How did things go for you afterward?”

  “The incident affected me really badly, and I was committed to the Kleppur mental hospital. I had an acute nervous breakdown and retreated into deep depression, a real dark night of the soul. I just sat by the window staring out, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, saying nothing. I suffered severe dissociation—couldn’t feed myself, didn’t care about my personal hygiene. When things hadn’t improved after several months, I was diagnosed as a chronic mental patient and they gave me a permanent place on the quiet ward. I spent several years there.”

  Fabían stopped talking and stared at some starlings fighting over the apple rings he had hung in the tree the night before.

  “It’s funny, but all my life I’ve watched birds,” he said. “My mom taught me their names when I was little up north, and guys who know about these things have taught me over the years to recognize the rare ones, the vagrants. I’ve seen waxwings here in the yard. Birds have always been a comfort to me when I’m down.”

  “What happened to the rest of your housemates at Sandgil?” Birkir asked.

  “They were charged with producing and selling cannabis and were convicted, though I’m not sure they ever served a sentence. They were no more able to heal their grief over Sun’s death than I was, and all went their own ways. Sometimes they visited me, but that was all they could do for me. I’d been witness to Sun’s fate, a
nd my little soul couldn’t deal with that. My life was over.”

  “But then you began to recover.”

  “Yes, actually, much later. Twelve years passed, and a young woman came to work in the hospital. She’d just completed a postgraduate degree in clinical psychology at some foreign university. She got professionally interested in the phenomenon I’d become, and decided to try hypnosis and conversation therapy. It was a somewhat one-sided conversation for the first few months, but then, little by little, she managed to ignite a spark of life in me. I began to draw again. After two years, I was beginning to function reasonably. Jón Sun Poet visited me a couple times a year and always kept an eye on how I was doing. We were even roommates for two weeks at one point—he was admitted for treatment for mania brought on by an alcoholic binge. Life on the ward for those two weeks was definitely not boring.”

  He finished his smoke and stubbed it out. “That’s about the time I discovered blood in my stools. I didn’t have the nerve to tell anybody, so it got worse, and eventually I was bleeding from the rectum. Somebody noticed red patches on the back of my pants. At the beginning they assumed I had a ruptured hemorrhoid, but when it persisted they sent me for a checkup. The diagnosis came quickly—colon cancer. I had surgery to remove part of my bowel, then radiotherapy and chemo—the whole package. I had a colostomy and began to feel better. Oddly, when I was on the cancer ward, my mental health improved because there I was among sane folks who treated me as an equal. I didn’t want to return to Kleppur at all, but I had nowhere else to go. Then Jón came to my rescue yet again. After the fire, he’d moved back to live in the basement of his parents’ home, but by now they’d passed away. Jón lived in this large house and rented out rooms. He asked if I’d like to move in and said we could always discuss the rent later.”