“Are you there?” Jóhann shouted. He fired three more shots toward Birkir, who buried his face in the ground.
“Smart move you made there,” Jóhann yelled. “I don’t know where you got the seventh round but now you definitely don’t have any more. And you’re cowering there like a worm, waiting for me to blow you to smithereens.” Jóhann reloaded and came closer, feeling his way with his feet. Birkir couldn’t see what damage his seventh round had done to Jóhann—the round he’d picked up off the floor of Ragnar’s storeroom the previous day and put in his pocket without thinking. The seventh round that Jóhann hadn’t known about. Again, Jóhann discharged some shots in a wide sweep. One of them pinged against the lava surrounding Birkir, but his cover protected him well.
“He can’t see,” Birkir thought. “He’s not aiming.” Ever so slowly and gently Birkir got up on all fours and hurled his shotgun as far off to the right as he possibly could. Then he crawled backward at great speed away from Jóhann, who was still approaching, but swung and fired in the direction of the shotgun as it clattered against the rocks. At that point Birkir got up very carefully, turned, and took off at a run, his head bent low. Jóhann, meanwhile, fired some wild shots in a semicircle in front of him. Birkir felt a few pellets rattle his parka, but the range was too great for them to penetrate. He stumbled, falling to his hands and knees. Careful not to utter a sound, he got back to his feet, crept as fast as he dared away from his opponent, and began once more to run.
“Where are you? Coward!” Jóhann bellowed after him. “Where are you?”
Birkir reached the road and ran back to the houses. The ski lodge where Jóhann had waited for him was still unlocked, and he hurried inside. He switched on the light and after some searching found a telephone.
First he dialed the emergency line. He asked for an ambulance and a police team to arrest an armed man who was probably dangerous…and blind. Also he asked for someone who could operate a ski lift, the reason for which he had to explain. When he was certain that his message had gotten through, he hurried outside and ran over to the lift’s control cabin. It was unlocked, but he could make no sense of the buttons and levers, so he decided not to touch anything for fear that he might cause an accident. Instead, he went back outside and ran up the slope beneath the lift. Now and again he stopped and peered up at the cable cars but saw nothing. It was very steep, and he soon had to slow down. In the end he just walked, panting and wheezing. He had almost reached the summit when he became aware of movement inside the topmost gondola hanging from the cable. There was somebody inside, banging hard on the glass. Then the car began to swing to and fro.
“Help is on the way,” he shouted as loud as his breathlessness would let him. The car was suspended several meters in the air and there was nothing he could do. He repeated this cry a few times and the banging stopped. Then he turned and walked slowly all the way down to the foot of the mountain.
He returned to the lodge and called the only number he could remember at that moment. After a little while a voice replied, “Gunnar speaking.”
“It’s me,” Birkir said.
“What the hell time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, can it wait? I’m with a woman, and that doesn’t happen too often, as you know.”
“I found the Gander.”
“Do you need help?”
“No. It’s all safe now. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Great. Who is he—the Gander?”
“The young guy from Akureyri, Jóhann. One of the two friends.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah…well…”
“Listen,” Gunnar said.
“Yeah?”
“This woman I’m with.” He had lowered his voice. “I’m going to try to make something of this.”
“Something what?”
“A relationship or something. You know.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. Good luck to you. See you later. Bye,” Birkir said and hung up.
He went outside and gazed over the lava field. An eerie silence hovered over everything, and yet there was some mysterious tension in the air. Like a sound that wasn’t really a sound.
Jóhann was nowhere to be seen. Finding him could prove difficult if he were to wander off. But just as Birkir was thinking this, a single shot rang out in the distance. Then utter silence. The tension vanished and Birkir sensed how all his nerves grew calm and his shoulders relaxed. It was over.
He looked up at the sky and saw it would soon be dawn. He hadn’t seen its glimmer creep across the heavens like this for ages, nor had he allowed himself to take time to watch it, really concentrate on it. Somewhere in his memory there was a poem that described this so very well—something that formed the lyrics of a song he had recently heard and then forgotten. He wiped everything else from his exhausted mind and searched desperately for the words. It felt, somehow, as if this was all that mattered now; everything else was futile and vain. It was not until he heard the distant sound of many cars approaching that it finally dripped into his mind, four lines of verse to begin with:
Waking colors, warming now
with the dawn’s fire once more burning;
cool the morning kisses you,
crimson life’s blood pulses through.
And then four more lines:
First light greeting, full of joy
freed from night’s embrace, its dreamings,
sweetly heather scents the day
sundown still so far away.
As has been our custom with all my books, my friend Adalsteinn Ásberg Sigurdsson wrote the poem “Einsog vonin, einsog lífid” (translated here below) especially for incorporation into this story. Three such poems have been set to music by Eyjólfur Kristjánsson.
Just as hope is, just as life is
In the pale light, absent words,
arcs a lone bird over moorland;
silence reigns: ashimmer here
—just as hope is, just as life is—
scenes of beauty, sharp and clear.
Steepling fell-sides, stony-gray
stories tell of times long over—
heaviest on my heart lie yet
—just as hope is, just as life is—
hurt, remorse, a deep regret.
Just as hope is, just as life is
only slower, rather more,
just as hope is, just as life is
all your senses hunger for.
Waking colors, warming now
with the dawn’s fire once more burning;
cool the morning kisses you
—just as hope is, just as life is—
crimson life’s blood pulses through.
First light greeting, full of joy
freed from night’s embrace, its dreamings,
sweetly heather scents the day
—just as hope is, just as life is—
sundown still so far away.
Just as hope is, just as life is
only slower, rather more,
just as hope is, just as life is
all your senses hunger for.
Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson is the author of several books, including Daybreak, which was the basis for the 2008 Icelandic television series Hunting Men. In 2001, his third novel, House of Evidence, was nominated for the Glass Key Award, given by the Crime Writers Association of Scandinavia; his novel The Flatey Enigma was nominated for the same prize in 2004. His numerous short stories have appeared in magazines and collections.
Björg Árnadóttir is Icelandic but has lived most of her life in England; her husband, Andrew Cauthery, is English but fluent in Icelandic. They have worked together for many years, translating both English texts into Icelandic and Icelandic texts into English. They have worked on a wide variety of manuscripts, including books on Icelandic nature and technical topics, as well as literature. Their translation of Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson’s House
of Evidence was published by AmazonCrossing in 2012.
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