Trap
Page 1
Trap
Lilja Sigurðardóttir
Translated by Quentin Bates
Contents
Title Page
Maps
Pronunciation guide
April 2011
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
May 2011
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
June 2011
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Translator
Copyright
Pronunciation guide
Atli Thór – Atli Thor
Austurvöllur – Oyst-uur-voet-luur
Bragi – Bra-gi
Breiðholt – Breith-holt
Davíð – Dav-ith
Dísa – Dee-sa
Eyjafjallajökull – Ey-ya-fyat-la-jeok-utl
Finnur – Fin-noor
Guðrún – Guth-ruun
Gunnarsdóttir – Gunnar-s-dottir
Hallgrímur – Hatl-griem-oor
Hljómskálagarður – Hl-yowm-scowl-a gar-thur
Húni Thór Gunnarsson – Hueni Thor Gunnar-son
Iðnó – Ith-no
Illugi Ævarsson – It-lugi Eye-var-son
Ingimar Magnússon – Ingi-marr Mag-noos-son
Jóhann – Yo-hann
Jói – Yo-ee
Jón Jónsson – Joen Joen-son
Jón Sigurðsson – Joen Sig-urth-son
José – As in Spanish
Kauphöllin – Koyp-hoet-lin
Keflavík – Kepla- viek
Kópasker – Keop-a-sker
Krummahólar – Krumma-hoel-ar
Lágmúli – Low-muel-ee
Laugardalur – Loy-gar-da-lur
Laugavegur – Loy-ga-vay-gur
Libbý – Libb-ee
Listhús – List-huus
Margeirsdóttir – Mar-gayr-s-dottir
María – Maria
Marteinn – Mar-tay-tn
Mjódd – Mjow-dd
Múlakaffi – Moola-café
Ólafur – Ow-laf-oor
Öskjuhlíð – Usk-yu-hlith
Reykjanesbraut – Reyk-ya-nes-broyt
Reykjavík – Reyk-ya-viek
Ríkharður Rúnarsson – Riek-harth-uur Ruenar-son
Thorgeir – Thor-geyr
Tómas – Teo-mas
Valdís – Val-dees
Icelandic has a couple of letters that don’t exist in other European languages and that are not always easy to replicate. The letter ð is generally replaced with a d in English, but we have decided to use the Icelandic letter to remain closer to the original names. Its sound is closest to the hard th in English, as found in thus and bathe.
Icelandic’s letter þ is reproduced as th, as in Thorgeir, and is equivalent to a soft th in English, as in thing or thump.
The letter r is generally rolled hard with the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
In pronouncing Icelandic personal and place names, the emphasis is placed on the first syllable.
April 2011
1
Sonja was wrenched, shivering, from a deep sleep. She sat up in bed and looked at the thermometer on the air-conditioning unit; it was thirty degrees in the trailer. She had closed her eyes for an afternoon nap and fallen fast asleep while Tómas had gone to play with Duncan – a boy of a similar age who was staying in the next trailer. While she’d been snoozing, the sun had raised the temperature in their little space to thirty degrees, at which point the air-con had rumbled into action, blasting out ice-cold air.
Her dreams had been of pack ice drifting up to the shore alongside the trailer park, and however ridiculous the idea of sea ice off the coast of Florida might be, the dream had been so vivid that it took Sonja a few moments to shake off the image of grinding icebergs approaching the beach. While she knew the dream had been a fantasy and that the chill of the ice had in fact been the air-conditioning, it still left her uneasy. A dream of sea ice wasn’t something that could bode well.
Sonja got off the bed, and as soon as she stepped on the floor, she stubbed a big toe on the loose board. This trailer was really starting to get on her nerves. But it didn’t matter, because it was really time to move on. They had been here for three weeks, and that was already a dangerously long time. Tomorrow she would discreetly pack everything up and in the evening, without saying goodbye to any of the neighbours, and under cover of darkness, they would drive away in the old rattletrap she had paid for in cash. She had coughed up a month’s rent in advance, so the trailer’s owner wouldn’t lose out.
This time, she and Tómas would travel northwards to Georgia and find a place there to rent for a week or two; and then they’d move on again – to some other location, where they would stay, but then depart before they’d put down any roots. They would leave before they could be noticed, before Adam could track them down. Adam who was Tómas’s father; Adam who was her former husband; Adam the drug dealer. Adam the slave driver.
One day, once they had travelled far enough and hidden their tracks well enough for Sonja finally to feel secure, they would settle down. It would be in a quiet spot, maybe in the US, or maybe somewhere else. In fact, it didn’t particularly matter where the place was, as long as it was somewhere they could disappear into the crowd, where she wouldn’t constantly have to glance over her shoulder.
Sonja peered into the microwave – something that had become a habit. Inside, giving her a sense of security by being where it should be, was the sandwich box full of cash. It was a white box with a blue lid, and was stuffed with the dollars and euros she had scraped together during the year that she had been caught in Adam’s trap.
This bundle of cash was her lifeline, in this new existence where she dared trust nobody. She had got herself a prepaid Walmart MoneyCard and had loaded it with enough to keep them afloat for a few months, but she had not dared apply for a normal credit card; she didn’t want to risk Agla, with her access to the banking system, using it to track her movements.
Her heart lurched at the thought of Agla. The memory of the scent of her hair and the warmth of her skin under the bedclothes brought a lump to Sonja’s throat that refused to be swallowed. The more time that passed since their parting, the harder she had to work to stop herself from calling her. Iceland was behind her, and that was the way it was. This was her and Tómas’s new life, and she was fully aware that to begin with it would be a lonely one. But loneliness wasn’t her biggest problem; a much weightier concern was their safety –Tómas’s in particular. If she allowed herself the luxury of contacting Agla, there was every chance that Adam would sniff out their communication and use it to track her down.
Sonja opened the trailer door and sat down on the step. The air outside was hotter than inside the trailer and the afternoon sun cast long shadows from the trees across the bare earth at the centre of the cluster of trailers. Sonja took a deep breath of the outdoor air and tried to throw off the discomfort the dream had left her with. The old, toothless guy opposite stood over his barbecue, which sent up plumes of smoke as the fire took; Duncan’s mother sat in a camp chair outside the trailer next door, listening to the radio. There was a peace to the place, but it would soon come to an end, broken by the noise of traffic and horns on the freeway as people began the commute home from work.
Duncan came out of his trailer at a run, along with the basketball that he dribbled everywhere. He half crouched over the ball, and Sonja smiled to herself. She and Tómas had seen that his weird dribbling technique didn’t affect his accuracy when he shot for the basket. His skill at basketball was unbelievable, and after a few days playing together, his interest had infected Tómas as well.
Tómas…
‘Duncan! Where’s Tómas?’ she called, and the boy twisted in the air, dropped the ball through the basket fixed to the trunk of a palm tree and, when his feet were back on the ground, shrugged.
‘Where is Tómas?’ she repeated.
‘I don’t know,’ Duncan said, still dribbling the ball. ‘He went down to the beach just now, but then some guys came looking for him.’
‘Guys? What guys?’ In one bound Sonja was at Duncan’s side.
He finally let the ball drop from his hands. ‘Just guys,’ Duncan said. ‘Just some guys.’
‘Tell me, Duncan. Where did they go?’
Duncan pointed towards the woods that lay between the trailer park and the beach.
‘What’s up?’ Duncan’s mother called from her camp chair, but Sonja didn’t give herself time to reply.
She sprinted towards the beach, her mind racing. The vision of ice on the shore, the groaning of the floes as the waves grounded them on the beach and the chill that the white layer brought with it clouded her thoughts as if the dream were becoming a reality. She cursed herself for not having bought the gun she had seen in the flea market at the weekend.
It’s never good for an Icelander to dream of sea ice, she thought. That means a hard spring to come, and ice brings bears.
2
Tómas jumped from stone to half-buried stone at the edge of the woods, where they formed steps rising up a slope and finishing in the sand at the top of the beach. He was barefoot as he had left his sandals at Duncan’s place. But that didn’t matter; the sand on the beach was soft underfoot, and he could collect his sandals on the way back, before his mother could find out that he had taken them off.
He was only going to pick up a few shells – preferably the black ones, which were the rarest and also the best. Most of the shells on this beach were yellow, brown or a rust red, but there were the occasional black shells and those were the ones he needed for what he was making. It was a suggestion his mother had made. She said it was something she had done as a child, and by the time the cigar box was almost covered, Tómas could see that it was going to be impressive. The box had come from the old guy who lived opposite and Tómas was going to use it to store football pictures. And then his mother had suggested that he should cover it with shells, so Tómas had spent three evenings gluing them in a pattern to the outside of the box. Now he needed just one more row of black shells to finish the job. There was no doubt in his mind that this was going to be the finest box in the entire world in which to keep football pictures.
The tide was high, leaving the beach so narrow that it would be difficult to find any shells now. He would have to come back once the sea had receded. Tómas dug his toes into the sand, his attention now on the entrance to an ants’ nest. There were no ants in Iceland, so this was something new to him, something he found fascinating. The ants’ nest was nothing more than a hole in the ground, but dozens of ants marched to and fro in perfectly ordered single file. They were so intent on what they were doing that it had to be something very special – some kind of ant construction project, perhaps. Tómas picked up a stick and pushed it into the hole, in the hope of reaching all the way down to the nest, but it seemed to be deeper down than he had thought. The ants were alarmed, and for a few moments rushed around in all directions. But they were unbelievably quick to regain their usual discipline, and set about repairing the damage done to the entrance to their nest.
‘Tómas!’
He glanced up from the ants’ nest, looking for whoever had called his name from the other set of steps down to the beach, on the car park side. There were two men waving happily to him. What did they want? He walked hesitatingly towards them, stopping a good way short of where they stood. They looked like they could be Mexicans, and Duncan said those were people you had to be careful of. Tómas didn’t know why – there were no Mexicans in Iceland and nobody had told him just why they were so dubious.
‘What?’ he called to the men, who both smiled amiably. They didn’t look dangerous. One of them sat down on a rock and the other walked away towards a car.
‘You want to buy a puppy?’ the man sitting on the rock asked. So they were salesmen. Florida was full of people selling stuff, and a lot of them were Mexicans.
‘I already have a dog,’ Tómas replied, his curiosity piqued.
‘Where is it, then?’ The man asked, raising one eyebrow.
Tómas shook his head. ‘He’s at home in Iceland,’ he said. ‘But one dog is enough. My mother wouldn’t let me have another one. We’re just here for a long holiday.’
At least, that was what he hoped he was saying. His English was pretty good by now, but he still occasionally used the wrong words, which made Duncan laugh.
But this man didn’t laugh. ‘Well,’ he said and sighed, ‘I don’t know what to do with the puppy back there in the car. I guess I’ll just have to drown him.’
‘No!’ Tómas yelped, stepping closer.
‘What do you think I should do with him?’ The man asked. ‘Do you know anyone who would take him?’
‘Is he big?’ Tómas asked.
‘No. Tiny. Pretty much new-born.’
Tómas’s heart ached. Maybe he could take the puppy and he and his mother could look after it for a few days while they looked for a home for it. Surely she wouldn’t be angry if he came home with a new-born puppy he had saved from drowning?
‘Won’t you take a look at him?’ The man said, getting to his feet. ‘He’s over here in the car.’
The man walked away and Tómas followed him over the sand dune and into the car park, even though he was already starting to feel guilty because Teddy the dog had been left behind in Iceland and he hadn’t seen him for such a long time. The other man was sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking. Tómas was furious that he should be smoking near a new-born puppy. Everyone knew that smoke was unhealthy.
But as the first man opened the car’s rear door, he froze as the realisation
dawned on him.
‘You called me Tómas,’ he said, looking at the man. ‘How do you know my name?’
3
Agla woke up with such a sharp pain in her chest, she was convinced she was having a heart attack.
She rolled onto her front, fighting for breath, and realised that she was in the middle of the living-room floor. By her side was a rum bottle that had tipped over, leaking dark liquid into the silk Turkish carpet. She took some deep breaths, but the pain did not relent – it was now spreading in waves to her belly. This wasn’t a heart attack – this was pure sorrow. She had dreamed of Sonja.
Agla crawled on all fours to the sofa and hauled herself onto it. Could it really all be over? Could Sonja have genuinely vanished from the face of the earth? Could it really be true that she would never touch her naked skin again, fold her arms around her, see the spark of life that appeared in her eyes every time she smiled?
Agla looked around the living room. The curtains were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness, even though, according to the clock, it was past midday. She remembered practically nothing of the previous evening, except that she had sat in the car outside Sonja’s place for a long while, in a bizarre attempt to feel closer to her. The rest of the evening was lost in a haze. Her eyes stopped at the bag of coke on the table. Next to it were two lines that were ready to be snorted, and the glass tabletop was scattered with more, so she must have spent a few hours there. She should get those two lines inside her, take a shower and get on with doing something useful. Two lines would give her the energy for that. She would be cheerful and optimistic, bursting with self-confidence, and maybe in the right frame of mind to meet her defence lawyer; perhaps even to buy some groceries and have a proper meal. That was the joy of coke – it changed not just the way you felt, but your general outlook, making you believe that everything would work out for the best. Agla leaned forwards, rolled a five-thousand-krónur note into a tube and snorted the first line.
But as the hot buzz flowed through her veins, disappointment flooded through her body. The pain in her heart didn’t give way, instead it grew as her heartbeat galloped, and she suddenly felt as if she had already been locked in a cell, alone and isolated, and she began to sweat. There was no point talking to the lawyer – new ideas now would change nothing. It was too late. Her heart was threatening to burst out of her chest, and she longed to howl; to scream and yell and break things.