He called her up, just a moment ago.
Now he’s sitting in the living room in his vest, talking to her, with Grímur snoring by his side. He didn’t go to work this morning. He rang at nine o’clock and apologized for his absence, and he won’t be at the concert later, not even after turning up to all the rehearsals and singing his Sicut locutus est perfectly. He is off sick.
He is always alone with old Grímur. He is always neat, he folds his clothes, washes them regularly, goes swimming every day, regularly changes the sand in the litter tray, feeds the cat at the same time as himself, does the dishes afterwards without fail. He does his own cooking, though recently he’s been tempted to use the microwave more often than seems wise. In the evenings he reads old books on genealogy and folklore, and listens to the radio while playing patience. Admittedly, he never mows the lawn, so his odd-looking house is surrounded by long grass and weeds, and strangers might think that this was some sort of a drunkard’s den. But far from it: inside everything is neat and tidy.
Not long before moving here, he’d met a woman from Dalvík and married her. They’d set up home down south in Hafnarfjörður, where he was working on the trawlers. Both did their utmost to make the marriage work, and perhaps it would have worked if they’d had children, but they weren’t lucky. After living together for two years they both felt that they had no future. She finally moved back to Dalvík with another man, with whom she had three boys. He sent them Christmas presents when they were little – ‘from Uncle Svenni’ – but it’s many years since he has heard from them.
He is off sick today. This happens a few times a year and, although he is sure that it’s a secret, the village knows all about it. On these occasions he draws the curtains – an infallible sign – and digs out the bottles he’s been hoarding for months, and stored here and there around the house as if hiding them from himself. He lines them up on the kitchen worktop along with some ginger ale and then begins to consume their contents with the same diligence and meticulousness he applies to everything else that he does, one after another.
He drinks only vodka and ginger ale, a sort of Moscow mule. He sits in his vest on the edge of the sofa in the living room, head drooping, his hands clasped together – apart from when he’s swigging. Grímur lies asleep by his side in sympathy, trying now and then to purr, but he is so old that all you can hear is an occasional creak. In between drinks they eat prawn sandwiches, which Svenni has hoarded along with the drink. They have the radio on all the time to remind them of reality, but keep it turned down low. It usually takes him four or five days to do justice to all this, and after that two days to recover. When this is going on he always calls his sister.
When he was eleven years old he was sent off to the country. His parents thought that it would be much better for a boy to spend the summer months in the countryside than on the streets of Reykjavík, which would just mean hanging about like a slob and losing his appetite. He would become a pale, apathetic couch potato. In the country, he would find out what real life was all about. He would have to work like everybody else, he’d be outside in the fresh air, the breeze tickling his cheeks and making them ruddy and healthy. Working outdoors would give him an appetite and he’d learn to eat everything that was put in front of him. He would learn to speak the best proper Icelandic; he would get to know the animals, but more importantly himself; discover his own ingenuity when confronted with unfamiliar tasks, and feel his own strength as physical labour developed his muscles.
Sending him to stay with strangers was out of the question, so his mother spoke to her sister, who lived with her husband and three children on a well-established farm that wasn’t too remote. They took him on a long, bumpy drive, and told him the names of all the mountains, rivers, farms and historic sites that they passed. ‘See how beautiful and special your country is!’ they said. When they reached their destination, his dad carried his green duffel bag for him and his mum patted his head as he solemnly shook hands with the whole family in the farmyard. They went into the kitchen and had coffee and doughnut twists. The three kids on the farm, two boys and a girl, were about his age; they stared at him, and when he smiled at them they didn’t respond, but exchanged glances. On the radio an old man was listlessly reading the news. In the kitchen hung an unfamiliar smell of animal, food, sweat and earth. Maybe the smell of Iceland itself. The milk tasted strangely sweet, with an unpleasant skin, but the doughnut twists were soft and buttery, and there were some nice biscuits – ‘Please, have some more,’ said his Auntie Elín, while Uncle Jóhannes was cracking jokes. And there were also the old farmer and his wife, Jóhannes’s parents, who made friendly conversation. They were all really nice people, but they didn’t look at Svenni when they spoke, they looked at his mum and dad.
On the front step, Kátur the dog lay with his head on his paws, patiently waiting for the new boy to come outside and feed him biscuits. And when Svenni was allowed to leave the table and sneakily took with him a biscuit and a doughnut for the dog, Kátur pretended to be surprised, and showed his appreciation by placing his head on the boy’s lap and letting himself be stroked. He was an old dog and a great judge of character. They sat together like that on the step while the adults finished their coffee and a discussion about the state of the nation. The breeze tickled the boy’s cheeks and penetrated his clothes, making him shiver slightly. After a while, his parents came out, and he hugged them before they set off again, leaving him with these new people.
He learned to muck out the cowshed and to know each cow by name. He learned to drive the tractor and helped to move timber because farmer Jóhannes was building a new barn. He learned to herd the sheep, to shear them, learned to rake hay, to decipher the terse commands that were never explained, only repeated with the preface: Come on, lad, didn’t I just tell you to… He learned knots and strange names for engine parts of cars and tractors. He learned new phrases and sayings. He learned to work and he learned to be silent.
The family were not unfriendly to him during those first weeks, but they didn’t treat him like a child, more like an imperfect adult. The children rarely spoke to him; they went everywhere in a threesome, distant and superior like a secret order. Each morning he ate porridge mixed with skyr, which he hated with a vengeance. Maybe this was the real taste of rural life. He learned to switch off his taste buds and all his senses as he obediently spooned the colourless glob into his mouth and swallowed. He learned to eat food without tasting it, to be at the receiving end of meanness without getting upset, to listen to conversation without taking part.
The hardest thing was having to go out every morning straight after eating porridge and skyr to muck out the cowshed. The shovel was heavy, the stench was gross, and he was scared of the rats that the other kids told him lived in the cowshed. He sensed terror in its dark corners, thought he heard scratching and scraping, thought he could see them scuttling about. After a while he learned to be scared without letting fear control him.
The days passed, weeks, a month. Every day he helped with jobs around the farm; he often went to bed late with aches and pains in every joint and muscle, and the following morning he found it hard to get up to face the porridge and skyr and the cowshed. He learned to be tired but feel the exhaustion only physically. When he had time off, he would sometimes get a book from the well-stocked library and read about clairvoyants and interpreters of dreams, shrewd sheep and haunted cowsheds; sometimes he lay down in the heather by a brook and inhaled the scent of the earth and listened to the water’s flow, and Kátur would come to him and put his head in his lap, have a biscuit and let himself be stroked. He learned to miss his mum without letting it get the better of him.
Sometimes, in the kitchen, with a bored voice on the radio reading the news in the background, his Auntie Elín would give him a hug, scratch his head and say, ‘And how are you, young man?’ And he would say, ‘Fine,’ gloomy but content. The Secret Three began to pay him a bit more attention, asking him about life in Reykjavík,
telling him about all the various dogs that had worked on the farm – none of whom was a patch on Kátur – and also about shrewd sheep, lively horses, haunted cowsheds, strange men, and all the fantastical things that had happened among the hollows and hillocks that surrounded them. Rural life came to him without his noticing it, slowly and smoothly like the current in the brook by whose banks he sometimes lay with the dog. The old woman, farmer Jóhannes’s mother, took him with her up the mountain, where she showed him herbs and explained how they worked, which ones tasted good together, and then invited him into the kitchen to boil them up, so that in the evening he was able to proudly offer everybody wild thyme tea. After lunch he was allowed to creep into the old farmer’s room for a snooze at his feet, while the old man soothingly stroked his back and read him stories from the Sunday paper.
Days passed, hot and long, dense and wet, long-winded, abrupt, colourful, resonant, hazy, sunny. They began to make sense. He woke each morning with the usual list of jobs to do: the sheep, which turned out to be not at all smart, to be chased out of the field; the cows, which grew increasingly smart the more he talked to them, to be herded; the haymaking, the silence, the breeze and the toil. With each passing day, the shovel in the cowshed became more manageable, the rats in the dark corners more harmless, the cowshed ghosts more withdrawn. The Secret Three invited him to ride with them on top of the hay cart when they returned from the meadows, and they lay in the hay, giggling.
The owner of the neighbouring farmhouse would often pop over after supper to play cards or just to chat, while the evening story burbled away softly on the radio. He had once been the local MP, an important man, who still spent part of his summers here even though he’d long since stopped farming and moved south to join the rest of his family. He was a frequent visitor, perhaps because there wasn’t much left for him to do out here in the sticks and he was bored. He was full of energy and humour, and everyone automatically started smiling when he came, because he knew many amusing tales about eccentric priests, malignant ghosts and clever farm animals. Sometimes his wife came with him. Then she would sit with her knitting in her lap, smiling faintly but perhaps a little smugly as he regaled them with stories she’d heard before.
Towards the end of the summer there was a harvest festival. The grown-ups drank vodka and ginger ale before and during supper, and became very jolly. They told Svenni there would be a dance later. Binni Frank’s band from Reykjavík would be playing and they would all go dancing – he should come too, hadn’t he brought his Sunday best with him? The ex-MP waved at him and said, ‘Hey, come and sit by me, son! You’re Pétur Ólafsson’s boy, aren’t you? I remember your grandfather very well…’
He launched into an anecdote about Svenni’s grandfather meeting some strange man who said something strange to him. Svenni didn’t understand the joke, but nevertheless he was proud that there was a story about his grandfather. The ex-MP told Svenni that he’d heard how hard-working he’d been and how well he’d done this summer. He talked with cheerful abandon about MPs and other important people – ministers, professors, priests, actors and radio celebrities – told stories of drinking, womanizing and witty comebacks.
At first, when the ex-MP put his hand on his thigh and squeezed it, Svenni thought that he must have suffered some kind of involuntary tremor at the dinner table which the man was trying to stop. Or that it was the man who was feeling shaky and needed to steady himself. The boy said nothing. The hand remained on his thigh while the man continued merrily slurping his meat broth with his spoon in the other. The hand moved further up. Svenni didn’t know what to do to get rid of it, whether he should move away. He couldn’t swallow any more. He just sat there, alone and helpless, while this paw continued its journey up his thigh, finally coming to rest between his legs, in his crotch. He knew that he should stand up, but he just sat still. He was only eleven and hadn’t yet learned to stand up for himself.
He is off sick today. He has called his sister, to whom he doesn’t often talk, being naturally reticent. He is on his second bottle of vodka. He sits in the living room in his vest, fidgeting on the edge of the sofa, phone in one hand and glass in the other. He is talkative. He speaks softly and his voice is clear – it’s actually not that noticeable that he’s drinking, he doesn’t slur his words, doesn’t repeat himself, doesn’t ramble. But he doesn’t stop talking. He talks incessantly. He talks about all sorts of distant relatives, many generations back, about whom he knows a surprising amount, and artfully traces their connections to each other. He laughs. He asks about her circumstances and her family, how everybody is and how they’re getting on with what they’re doing – which he’s remembered incredibly well – with hardly a pause for her response, as if afraid that she’ll slip away from his reach. And then he begins to talk about the time he was sent to spend a summer in the country at the age of eleven, and learned to work and learned to keep quiet, learned to be tired without feeling it other than physically, learned to eat the food without tasting it, learned to swallow obediently.
‘Yes, Svenni love,’ she says quietly. ‘I know.’
He doesn’t raise his voice, appears far away, as if it had nothing to do with him, as he tells her how the ex-MP came into his room that night, woke him and led him out to the cowshed. He describes everything he was made to do and how he had to do it time and again during the weeks that remained of his stay there, how he couldn’t tell anyone, how he learned not to feel anything.
‘Yes, Svenni love. I know.’
Finally he falls silent, breathing heavily but otherwise making no sound. At the other end of the line, she too is silent. At last he heaves a sigh, drains his glass and plonks it on the table. Grímur gets to his feet, hopefully sniffs at the plastic wrapper of a prawn sandwich, yawns, stretches, turns around a few times and then fondly prods at his companion’s thigh, looks at him searchingly with his one eye and snuggles up to him again, creaking.
The Universal Stillness
Leaning back in his chair, Kalli rests his gaze on the centre of the doorway to the barn, which is standing open to the summer, letting in the generous rays of the afternoon sun. His breathing is light and regular, his diaphragm and soul in harmony. He is alone. He is at peace with himself, tranquil. And when, like black specks, bothersome thoughts appear, he waves them away. He finds this very easy, because he is, on the whole, quite fond of himself and indeed of all men. Just remember to breathe correctly, be at peace with your diaphragm and your soul, don’t think about anything, not even about not thinking about not thinking about anything. His mind becomes light and clear and clean, and then maybe a thought will float in on a gentle sky-blue, a thought one may enjoy: a feeling, a memory of a feeling, a memory of an object, a memory of a feeling triggered by an object. Perhaps a memory of that splendid car he once saw, sized up, wanted to own because he felt that it was the ideal car for him. Perhaps a memory of last year’s midwinter feast, when they persuaded him to imitate old car horns and tractors from the area (‘I know – that’s that old Farmall from Ásgeirsstaðir!’) and people laughed cheerfully because they were happy. Maybe the memory of a blissful feeling he once had, when he was swimming in the rain and maybe after half a kilometre he had stopped thinking about foreign currency loans and everyday stress, and felt his arms and legs and mind working together, driving him onwards in the spring rain, and he’d felt part of burgeoning nature, part of life’s force.
Maybe a memory that is good, a feeling that is tender.
Kata Choir cycles past the barn door, not stopping, clearly in a hurry. Later, he will sing for her and the whole of Valeyri. He will step forward, out of the choir, who will be humming as quietly as Kata can get them to; he will spread out his arms, embrace the hall, wrinkle his forehead, open his mouth to let his soul flow out, and he will sing: Now all is still within the dale…
All is still. There’s silence and the memory of a feeling, and his mind is clean and clear. His eyes follow a wagtail, its tail pert in the sunshine in the do
orway, and it jerks about with confidence, as if this is the perfect place to be. He, certainly, is in the perfect place. He is sitting in his barn, which he has filled over the years not with corn, but with what other people call junk, objects separated from their original purpose and waiting for a new one in what people call the real world. It’s his life’s mission to take things apart and reassemble them with other things. Every object here is waiting for its moment. An old door from a ’66 Dodge could come in handy when you least expect it and then it would be a shame if he’d thrown it out. Stacks of old copies of Familie are waiting for someone to bind them into a volume, which Andrés from the museum might keep for people to leaf through. Loose sheets of poems by his uncle Guðmundur, poet of poets. A blue Volkswagen Beetle in the corner will be restored one day; maybe then he’ll drive over to Jósa’s, pull up outside and toot its horn – currently silent, but waiting for its moment. Just to see the look on her face, as she comes out and relives that summer evening a hundred years ago when he’d come to pick her up and they went for a drive and stopped at the head of the valley, got out and made love on a mossy spot, on a woollen rug in the colours of the Icelandic flag. And then a week later they went and made love in that old church, of all places, in front of the Saviour with his fish and loaves of bread. Made love. Now there’s a memory of a feeling.
All these bits of string, rake tines, planks, electric kettles, wax, chicken wire, chairs, multi-socket extensions, curtain fabric, zips, bolts, oil, metal – all are waiting for their moment. Cables, fuses, a back scratcher, wall fixings, glue, keys, a candlestick, a bowl, an eagle feather, pencils. A phone Sidda once gave him, which he idly took apart in order to see how it worked but couldn’t be arsed to put back together. Framed photographs of Gummi and his children. All have their moment, some more than once a day. A crumpled, obsolete banknote lies next to some first day covers in an old chocolate box – it too will have its moment; as will the old curtain rings from Lalli Lár’s daughter, Lára; a bicycle whose chain he’d oiled for some kid or other; a wreck of a guitar that he’d mended at some point and was thinking of giving to Kata Choir; horseshoe nails and saddles that need to be taken to the stables.
And the Wind Sees All Page 5
