When I explained my business and asked him to promise life-long discretion, he nodded after a moment’s thought. I had half expected him to try to evade my request with a smile or a few well-meaning words but perhaps he didn’t get the chance.
He nodded and sat without speaking while I told him about my relationship with his son Atli, the reading on New Year’s Eve (I didn’t mention that I’d snatched the papers before leaving 56 Fjolugata), the months at Kopasker, my little boy, and the fisherman and his wife from Raufarhofn who had adopted him.
He sat in silence, and stopped turning the pebble over between his fingers, stroking it instead with his thumb as if it were fragile.
“No one except my father knows who the father is,” I said. “You don’t need to keep an eye on the boy except from a distance.”
The sun shone through the window on his pale cheek. He screwed up his eyes and moved out of the glare.
“Why are you confiding in me?” he asked finally.
“My father is getting on,” I said. “And Arni is a fisherman . . .”
“I’m sorry?”
“His father,” I explained.
“Oh, yes. His father, yes.”
“And who knows what will become of me. Better safe than sorry.”
The coffee was cold; perhaps it hadn’t been sufficiently hot when his secretary brought it.
“So you’re sailing today.”
“This evening.”
“Sea air is supposed to be good for the health. I wish you bon voyage, Asdis.”
I had no choice but to trust him. Watching him now as he reaches for the sugar bowl and puts a white sugar lump into his mouth, I remember how I grew calm in his presence.
“I do hope it’ll clear up in good time,” he says. “It was such fine weather this morning.”
The waitress, whom I had advised to improve her English, seems a bit nervous as she approaches our table. I smile at her.
“I even miss the days when she was at her worst,” he says, breaking the silence. “You know she was fond of you.”
I’m not prepared for this and have to clear my throat before I can reply.
“It was mutual,” I say. “I often think of her.”
The rain drums on the road outside. We eat slowly. I’m not hungry but the food is edible. The girl doesn’t seem afraid of me any more.
“Five Hundred Useful Phrases for Waiters and Waitresses,” I say to her when she removes our plates.
“William Forsythe,” she says archly.
“William P. F. Forsythe,” I add.
We stand up.
“Are you nervous at all?” he asks.
We set off hand in hand.
“I think I’ve made up my mind what to do,” I reply.
“Good. Good. That makes me feel better.”
Flickering silhouettes, a faint echo.
Lights ahead of me, a far-off glimmer, noise, roars of laughter. My former employer leans over to me and whispers something in my ear but I can’t catch the words. Through the open side entrance I can see sunshine on the damp lawn. I listen as I think I can hear a bird chirping incessantly now that the rain has stopped. It reminds me of the blackbird in my poplar early in the morning when the blue-gray light creeps across the fields and feels its way down the branches of the trees. I listen but then the old man leans over to me again.
“He’s a swimming champion,” he whispers. “Have I already told you that?”
He’s sitting between his parents diagonally opposite us. I saw them enter and bowed my head involuntarily, even though I’m sure they wouldn’t recognize me. Since they sat down I’ve been staring at him but have sometimes had to look away.
“Ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you . . .”
The side entrance closes and the songbird is silenced. Before I go down in the morning and light the fire, Tina and I generally sit by the window watching the blackbird through the glass. She scratches politely at the door to let me know she’s there, and rubs up against me as soon as I let her in. We wait for the light to reach along the branches of the poplar and touch the wings of the blackbird. When it flies with the light up into the quiet morning air we stand up and go downstairs. And I say, “Daylight has come, Tina. A new day.”
I have to look away.
“He’s very like you, Asdis,” says the old man.
They come in hand in hand, he and his mother, his father walking a few paces behind, as bowed and as shy as ever. He stops all of a sudden as if he has got lost and come to an unknown turning, before continuing. When they sit down he runs a comb through his gray hair.
He smiles easily, my son. Tall, fair-complexioned and smiling. I see when he leans over to his father that he knows he’s ill at ease in this company. I see how fond he is of him.
“Ladies and gentlemen. No one knows what the future will bring but with this education under your belt . . .”
People rise, we move down to the lobby. The sky is still cloudless but I forget to listen for the songbird. A cloudless sky; the puddles on the pavement outside evaporating.
I see them come out of the hall behind us. His parents vanish into the crowd while he joins a group of his friends by the cloakroom. Dr. Bolli and I walk out and hail a taxi. The old man climbs in. I’m about to get in beside him, then ask him to wait for me for a moment.
“I have to see him once more,” I say. “Just once.”
I walk back in and squeeze through the crowd, half blinded after the sunshine. A tremor runs through me and I have to lean against the wall while I recover. He’s still in the same place with his schoolmates by the cloakroom. I approach, then stop. He’s happy. I can tell he’s happy. I stand motionless, watching him, and when he turns his back to me I walk further into the lobby so that I can see his face. My progress through the crowd is slow and just as I’m passing the cloakroom he turns round and walks straight into me. I jump and drop my bag on the floor. It opens and a couple of things spill out of it: my lipstick and the photo of him in my arms.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m terribly sorry.”
He bends down first to pick up my bag and lipstick, then reaches for the picture. When he hands it to me, I take his hand. For a split second I hold his hand. He smiles.
“Thank you,” I say.
We drive away bathed in sunshine. I sit in silence because I don’t want to lose the sound of his voice. When I close my eyes I fix his face in my memory. He’s smiling.
I’m calmer. I’ve found him. From now on he’ll always be with me.
15
During the last few days I’ve been wondering whether the squirrels in the garden can sense a hard winter ahead.
I’ve been sitting in the conservatory and wondering, as they’ve been busy lately hoarding nuts and scampering away to hide them, two in particular, one of them a bit lame. I mentioned the squirrels to Anthony, and the crows which perch almost daily on a post down by the brook, hunched over their own shadows. He merely seemed surprised that I should already be thinking about the winter.
It’s still warm and sunny most days, showers are few and mild and the sunshine is merry in the green foliage. There is no sign of the heralds of autumn except perhaps in the early morning breeze or the song of the grasshopper at twilight. And yet my thoughts have turned to the winter and I’ve mentioned to Old Marshall that it might be best to prepare for it earlier rather than later this year.
This afternoon his daughter Lydia is coming round with her son. We’ve arranged that she should leave him with me for a few hours because he wants to have a game of cards and play with the train set I bought last year. He spoke to me on the phone yesterday and asked whether I would bake him waffles with cream and syrup. “I like them so much, Miss Disa,” he said. I’m so looking forward to seeing him.
Yesterday I received a letter from little Marilyn, which I didn’t deserve as I haven’t got round to replying to the one she wrote me while I was in Iceland. Anyway, it was nice to get her letter and I read
it with pleasure on my way home from visiting Dr. Ellis and again when I woke up this morning. The envelope also contained a photograph of the two of us, taken when I visited her this summer en route to Leith. A lovely picture which I’m going to find a good spot for in the kitchen, probably on the shelf under my mirror. She’s smiling in the photograph and as I examine it better and read her letter more carefully, I get the distinct impression that our conversation that evening has done her some good.
For the last few days a wisp of cloud has hung in the top branches of the trees which encircle the fields. Today it’s glowing and in the evenings it catches the pale gleam of the moon. Sometimes I convince myself it’s a message to me, a tuft of wool caught on the Almighty’s barbed-wire fence. There it is for the fifth day in a row and I’m getting used to it. Old Marshall, on the other hand, distrusts it; I saw him standing outside his cottage for a long time yesterday, contemplating it.
During the day I carry on jotting down this and that to pass the time and cheer myself up. I have enough leisure for this, since I hardly go near the cooking anymore as my strength is failing. But I don’t feel unwell and I enjoy listening to the echoes from the tennis courts in the afternoon lull— dunk, dunk—like a clock that’s running down. I wait for Anthony to walk across the lawn when the game is over and drink a glass of lemonade with me. I told him yesterday that I trusted the girl absolutely to take over from me. “The girl,” I say, but ought to mention that she’s about thirty. We appointed her at the beginning of the summer at the instigation of a friend of mine in Lyon, once I saw that her attitude to cookery was the same as mine. She’s extremely able and, I must say, has even improved since she came here. I appreciate that Anthony’s begun to bear up better when the conversation turns to the future.
It’s still light but I go to bed early these days. When I close my eyes my son is always with me. His voice sounds in my ears, comforting me, and my hands are warmed by the touch of his palm. He’s with me, his complexion as bright as a spring morning. It wasn’t all for nothing, then, I tell myself. You did do something good.
At night I often dream the same dream. I’m standing out in the garden in bright moonlight. Tina is with me. On the other side of the brook there are two horses looking over at me. I think I can see the whites of their eyes. There’s frost on the grass but I’m not cold when I set off. I haven’t walked far when I realize I’m resting both hands on a slender moonbeam. This always takes me by surprise, and falling instinctively to my knees I draw a little songbird in the frost with the moonbeam.
When I awake, I have the feeling that it will burst into song with the coming of spring.
Olaf Olafsson
The Journey Home
Olaf Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962 and studied as a Wien Scholar at Brandeis University, where he received his degree in physics. The author of several novels, he is Iceland’s bestselling novelist as well as the founder and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Inc. Olafsson is now vice chairman of Time Warner Digital Media. He lives in New York City.
Also by Olaf Olafsson
Absolution
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2001
Copyright © 2000 by Olaf Olafsson
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson
[Slod fidrildanna. English]
p. cm.
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42878-3
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