He’s holding four aces, but this doesn’t matter. He knows that people don’t always get what they want, but, on the other hand, they do sometimes get what they need. He realizes that, whatever happens, untold challenges await him: a long journey down a stony road, across scree and gravel, through fire and burnt-out cities, shadowed days, disgrace, and a deep valley, until he reaches the gates of darkness.
Aroma of Ashes
Sunlight pours in through the west-facing door. Ólafur watches the rays dancing in his wine as he recalls a great Dixieland band he saw on YouTube yesterday. He takes another sip, the memory of it makes him smile, and he begins to tell the others about it in a soft, almost matter-of-fact voice, and the three of them watch him, smiling. But there’s unrest in the air.
He says he can’t remember what it was called – but it was on YouTube, he repeats somewhat solemnly, as if that was an important fact, in itself a little funny, as he realizes with a new-found sensitivity brought on by the wine. He repeats, almost sternly, ‘YouTube, you know.’ He pauses very briefly, to admire the sun’s rays dancing playfully around his glass and reflecting from the walls of their bright and beautiful living room, but then describes in remarkable detail how the clarinettist, a pretty girl, had raised one foot as she played, how the trombonist rolled his eyes, how the scrawny trumpeter held his instrument as if he could scarcely lift it, and how the drummer grinned and twirled his drumsticks as the stocky double bass player spun his instrument around like a dance partner in a polka. He was so amusing, that double bass player. On YouTube.
Ólafur is overbearingly tall, slim and fair-haired, boyish despite being nearly sixty, but without grace. He stoops and always moves a bit like a puppet; now that he’s had a few glasses of white wine he seems to be lifting his arm not of his own accord, but as if someone’s pulling a string as he takes a sip – which he does quite frequently, though he’s singing with the choir later, down at the village hall. He’s thoughtful and cautious, and nobody blames him for the fact that the bank collapsed, or was rescued at the last minute, or was transformed into a new bank, or whatever it was that happened, nobody really knows. The general view is that it was the fault of the global financial crisis, because Ólafur has been a rock to the entire community, even though some people, mainly journalists, actually, and bloggers from down south, asked questions about the huge loans the bank had made to the Valeyri Fish Factory, and to what extent those had been to blame for the bank’s collapse, and exactly what the relationship was between the branch manager and the factory board.
All this, of course, is easily answered. They are a unit. The people sitting here are a molecule; Óli and Sigga, Jói and Anna. They would always be as one.
Perhaps one day Óli will have to answer for what happened, but Sigga thinks that in that case he should also be allowed to talk about the role he has played here in the community, as confessor and saviour. How he’s sat in his office with countless villagers, sorting out car loans and mortgages and hire-purchase contracts and debt demands, helping them to unravel their financial entanglements. And never made a fuss. Do the scandal junkies down south ever talk about that? Do the papers down south ever mention how he has sat here and calmed people, advised them, pointed them back in the right direction, lent them money and made sure that they didn’t rashly embark on careless investments that could actually wait? Sigga feels that if he were to be prosecuted for approving loans to the Valeyri Fish Factory, which certainly were instrumental in the bank’s collapse – or whatever happened – it should be easy for him to explain his actions in a professional way: how he’d acted on the best available information from head office down south, provided by people he was confident he could trust, how he was misled by people who had themselves been misled by people. She knows all this because in the evenings, when it is quiet, they snuggle into bed and talk to each other, the branch manager and the mayor, and he tells her everything and she listens while she caresses the small of his back and his hair and thighs and bottom and ends up masturbating him so that all the day’s frustrations spurt out of him.
But they aren’t thinking about banking crises or service jobs now. Later on, they’re going to enjoy a concert in which they’ll all be singing. The white wine is chilled, and the breeze is warm now that the cool of the late afternoon has passed, and the sun’s rays are dancing on the walls, drunk on the wine in which they’ve been frolicking. And there was that great Dixieland band, Ólafur said, he’d seen on YouTube yesterday when he was looking for some decent jazz in Slovakia for Einar to go and hear when he goes over to Trnava to sing in the opera.
Ólafur takes another sip of the refreshingly cool, slightly sharp wine. ‘I think they were Czech or from around there or something, unless they were from YouTube?’ he says thoughtfully. ‘And they played, you know, Dixieland… you know, it’s so cheerful, such fun. And they were so lively. Especially the double bass player, he was a hoot. I’d quite like to see them – listen, guys, shall we pop over to Trnava to see Einar in The Gypsy Princess and take in this band at the same time?’
The sun-drenched wine has clearly gone to his head and he’s repeating himself; it’s as if he’s temporarily lost control, is suddenly drunk. But Sigga knows that it won’t last long, because as soon as he becomes aware of it he’ll have a glass of water and keep drinking water till he’s regained control over himself.
He is like that.
The phone rings upstairs, but he doesn’t seem to hear it. He waves his arms around and says in a strange voice, ‘I think… I…?’
A gentle breeze drifts in from outside – the smell of the sea. Anna and Jói occupy the sofa. Sigga stands in the middle of the room, looking at Óli, thinking about him. She hesitates as if unsure whether to run upstairs to answer the phone, fetch the food, or stay and listen to the story. There’s unrest in the air, maybe because of the phone, maybe it’s drifting in from outside with the squeals of the children on the trampoline, the motorboat’s clattering and the squawking of the seagulls, or maybe it’s triggered by something between them, because these four go back a long way. They affect each other, and there are many things they know about each other and various things they don’t know about each other – despite being a molecule. And things they don’t know that they know about each other.
With gentle eyes he looks at his Sigga and then at Jói – then fixes his gaze on Anna. ‘I think…’ he says in a hoarse voice. ‘I…?’
And the sunlight flows in from the west – there’s plenty more of it, and suddenly it’s as if the evening won’t be coming at all, not until maybe sometime in the autumn.
Now and again the dying breeze billows a white curtain with lazy sensuality. A heavily laden honey bee buzzes on the patio. From outside come the giggles of children jumping on trampolines, mixed with the strident sounds of the redshank and the winnowing of the snipe, the ringing of the telephone, and Roy Orbison crooning about loneliness on the CD player in the background. The others smile at Óli. They know him and they know that this will pass. He’s never drunk for more than three or four minutes at most. He will probably take the phone call himself. They’re usually for him.
This is what their lives are like. They are a molecule. They are a unit. Anna and Sigga are the very bestest of friends in the whole world and Jói and Óli are best mates, and they were all here together playing catch and ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ on the streets, got confirmed together and attended Akureyri High School together, having paired themselves off almost automatically – Thirteen, fourteen, maids a-courting – the petite dark one with the tall fair-haired bloke and the small, dark bloke with the tall blonde – and they went to Copenhagen together for a few years at university, came back and built their houses side by side, and had their children one after the other, who were brought up together and played catch and ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ – and went south.
They meet at weekends and drink white wine and have something fine and exotic to eat, which they cook together, working in
harmony from all kinds of recipes, and they play bridge instead of ball games outside like they used to when they were kids. Sometimes they go for a ride on the horses that Kalli looks after for them. They are life partners. Sometimes they have guests – Andrés and Fríða, Árni Going Places, who lives in the old doctor’s house, and Jósa, or Kalli and Sidda, Árný the nurse, and Jói’s old mother, Lára, who is Lalli Lár’s daughter and the only one of their parents still alive. But then they can’t invite Lára’s brother, Lalli Puffin, because he and Lára aren’t on speaking terms.
Sometimes they sing together in harmony to the accompaniment of Óli’s maudlin (and inaccurate) accordion playing, and on Thursday evenings they gather here, at Sigga and Óli’s, to listen to the symphony concert from Reykjavík on the radio; some of the villagers poke fun at them for this and call Ólafur ‘Óli Smartypants’. But how else would the four of them have got to know Mahler and Rimsky-Korsakov?
They go on cultural trips, sometimes down south but more often abroad, because Reykjavík feels like an unnecessary stopover. They sometimes joke that Valeyri is more of a city than the capital; it’s got a café, a choir and a harbour bustling with activity – and druggies in dark corners. They’ve taken weekend breaks to all the big European cities, always meticulously planned: museums and theatres and other significant buildings before lunch, after which Anna and Sigga go off to buy presents for the grandchildren in H&M and hunt for bargains and be the bestest friends in the whole world, while Óli and Jói have a beer at a pavement café or a bar and talk. Jói quickly gets tipsy and starts confessing his sins and Óli nods, interjects the odd encouraging and sympathetic word, shakes his head, laughs, sighs, massages his friend’s aura. And of course they also have to keep up with Óli and Sigga’s son, Einar, as he does the rounds of minor European opera houses performing roles in Italian operas, not leading roles, admittedly, but not the smallest ones either; he often gets an aria, which he always makes the most of. The men go on trips to watch Manchester United and sit, wearing their team shirts, in the supporters’ stand with other Icelanders from out in the sticks, and sing along with the rest of them, sheepishly inebriated and happy. Afterwards, they go to a bar and Óli becomes a bit woozy for a minute or two and nods sympathetically, while Jói gets completely plastered and confesses all. They also keep the local football team going. It’s called Svarri, after Valeyri’s mountain; they’ve bought players from here and there, and a trainer, and as a result the team has occasionally made it into the top league, hovering there for a short while but soon dropping down again.
This is what their lives are like. They are children of the sun and they radiate prosperity, with their complexions tanned just enough without looking weathered, their clothes, their jewellery, how they carry themselves. Once dark-haired, Jói now has a ring of grey stubble surrounding his bald patch, and although it’s just stubble on the head of a bald bloke there’s something about it that looks intentional, as if designed by an Italian barber; his neck is thick enough to indicate limitless sexual drive and he has large, strong hands that could create countless tools to change the world, and he caresses everything within his vicinity as if to sense its structure and possibilities: cabinets, wood, stones, artefacts – and women. Every woman he meets becomes like a new mirror in which to see his own reflection, a hint of another kind of life which he must savour before carrying on with his own. He is restless, strides about, constantly tucking in his shirt, almost threateningly; he seems possessed of the entrepreneur’s unwavering charm and makes people feel as if he is about to build something magnificent. Also dark-haired, Sigga is small and broad-hipped – child-bearing would have left her chubbier, if she hadn’t constantly counted the calories – and, like Jói, has an efficient and successful manner, is quick-witted (which everyone likes), sensitive and kind. She and Jói are related, second cousins once removed. She knows all there is to know about her children and grandchildren, because she knows how to ask the right questions and draw the right conclusions. When she was five she decided that Anna, who lived three houses away, should be her best friend because she was so beautiful, with blonde curls, a bright smile and a gentle disposition, and since then they have met every day – the bestest friends in the whole wide world.
Three years ago, she decided to go for it when the rest of the local Independence Party committee persuaded her to lead the party in the local council elections, and she proved so popular that they achieved a clear majority and she was appointed mayor, after having worked in the school office for years.
And Anna… she sits on the sofa, so pretty, her legs crossed and her shapely fingers holding the stem of the glass in her lap, the same silky-soft sweep of blonde hair as back then, the same graceful physique, the small upturned nose and big blue eyes, the same decorous smile hiding all sorrow, repulsion, ardour – anything that might be stirring inside her. She has 365 dresses, and when she teaches the children geography and maths none of them can find it in themselves to misbehave, because it might upset her. And yet her mind is hard and her heart is cold. If her thoughts include even the slightest affection for Jói, she manages to hide it from herself.
He has stood up now, even though the story about the band on YouTube doesn’t seem to have completely finished, because Óli – gazing earnestly into Anna’s eyes and saying in a strange voice, ‘I think… I…?’ – is still waving his hands as if looking for the right words to describe exactly what tune they were playing on YouTube, that Dixieland band that was so great. Upstairs, the phone is ringing. Jói has started to tuck in his shirt, in that fierce way of his, as he paces the floor. It’s a nervous habit with him, as if he thinks that his pot belly is a secret that can be hidden by a straightened-out shirt. He imagines that all his secrets are tucked in. He is restless. Returning Óli’s earnest gaze, Anna notices out of the corner of her eye that Jói has lost weight and gets a strong sense that he’s started smoking again, even though she hasn’t smelt it on him yet. She needs to ask Sigga about this. That’s how their lives interweave, that’s how their mutual trust works: Jói confesses his sins to Óli, who in turn tells Sigga about them in the evenings before they go to bed, on the strict promise not to tell anybody, least of all Anna – and Sigga then tells Anna about it at the kitchen table as they hold hands, the very, very bestest friends in the whole world. This is how Anna knows about Jói’s adventures on his business trips down south, about the cheating and the drinking and the gambling. And about the troubles in the Valeyri Fish Factory that he never talks about at home, unless it’s to reassure her that everything’s all right, just as if he were tucking in his shirt.
She knows all his secrets. She sees through him. The place he used to occupy in her heart is a cold, dead hollow where flowers once grew; an attic covered in cobwebs in a ruined palace; a freezer compartment where each new story of his adventures and follies, each new confession, is stored. In the old days, it used to be a hot place that warmed her insides wherever she went, but it all began to die twenty years ago when she was dusting his desk and came across a letter carelessly stuffed under the phone bills. From someone called Olga, it contained a drawing of him naked with his penis erect and red hearts squirting out of it; underneath, in bold, feminine handwriting, were the words love balls and cutie bum and hot willy. When Anna confronted him that evening as they stood side by side in the bathroom cleaning their teeth, he stopped, lowered his toothbrush and stared at himself in the mirror, aghast, and remained silent for a long time before confessing that he’d had an affair with this artist in Reykjavík who was always in the papers because of the ‘happenings’ she organized. Then he started pacing around the bathroom, trying to tuck in his pyjama top, howling and crying and swearing that this was nothing but a silly fling, that he was a man who needed his release but she alone was the queen of his mind, the muse at his table, the goddess, the sun, she alone owned his heart and his mind – and probably also his lungs and kidneys as well, as she sarcastically put it when reporting the conversation to S
igga, as the two of them sat in Sigga’s kitchen a few evenings later. She alone mattered to him, he said – he loved her.
‘So does that mean,’ she asked quietly, ‘that you can’t treat people properly if you love them?’
He sank to his knees, crawled to her, weeping, and asked for her forgiveness, to give him another chance, he would learn his lesson, it was stupid of him to look elsewhere, a man whose wife was the most beautiful in the whole country, the goddess of light itself… She kicked him in the chest and stormed out. He fell against the bathtub and cut the back of his head, but she ignored him, put a coat on over her nightdress and went down to the shore, which was deserted apart from Smyrill the poet standing there gazing at the ocean. She raged along the water’s edge and thought about what a bastard he was and whether she should start a new life down south with the children, then ten and twelve years old – she could teach just as well there as here – and find herself an eighteen-year-old lover. Then she went home to sleep. A new day dawned with a new silence.
That evening he brought her flowers, stared at her like their pet dog and enthusiastically agreed with everything she said to the children. She threw him out of the bedroom and they never again slept together. Never again did she trust him, but she knew that without her he would be lost; she continued to despise him always, but occasionally, when he looked particularly miserable, she stroked his hair or his cheek, and he would pitifully stretch his head towards her like a love-starved puppy.
And the Wind Sees All Page 8
