Black Skies

40

The teacher asked again why he was so down in the mouth. It was during a biology lesson, one in which he dreaded being asked a question he could not answer. The teacher had asked him the same thing several days earlier but he had not known what to say then either. He enjoyed biology but he had not managed to do any of his homework, not for this subject nor his maths nor any other. Aware that he was falling behind, he tried his best to shape up but could not find the energy. These days he felt too apathetic to do anything and had drifted apart from the friends he had made when he started at the school. He had not realised that he looked miserable and, unable to answer the teacher’s question, simply stared back at him, saying nothing.

‘Is everything all right, Andrés?’ the teacher asked.

The class were watching. Why did the teacher have to ask such questions? Why couldn’t he just leave him alone?

‘Sure,’ he answered.

But it was not all right.

He was living in a state of perpetual fear. Rögnvaldur had said he would kill him if he told anyone what they did together. But he did not need to threaten him: Andrés would not have told anyone to save his life. What was he supposed to say anyway? He did not have the words to describe what they did, and tried to avoid even thinking about it.

He locked the ugliness away where no one could reach it. Locked it away in a place where the blood and tears ran down the walls and no one could hear his screams.

Realising that the boy was uncomfortable with the attention he had drawn to him, the teacher hastened to change the subject, asking Andrés instead to name two perennial plants, which after a brief hesitation he did. The teacher turned to the next pupil and the class’s attention was deflected from Andrés.

He could breathe easily again. Down in the mouth. He had not experienced a moment’s happiness since coming to live with his mother. Instead his life was an unrelieved nightmare. He dreaded going to school and having to answer questions such as why he was so unhappy, why he did not have any clean clothes to wear, why he had not brought a packed lunch. He dreaded attracting attention, dreaded waking up because the moment he did so the memories flooded back. He dreaded going to sleep because he never knew when Rögnvaldur would come for him in the night. And he dreaded the coming of day because then he was alone in the world.

His mother knew what was going on, although she was never home when it happened. He knew she knew, because he had once heard her beg Rögnvaldur to leave the boy alone. She had been drunk as usual.

‘Mind your own business,’ Rögnvaldur had snapped.

‘It’s gone far enough,’ his mother had said. ‘And why do you have to film the whole thing?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ had come the reply.

He used to threaten her too and hit her sometimes.

Then one day Rögnvaldur was gone — the projector, the films, the camera, his clothes, shoes, boots, and shaving things from the bathroom, his hats, coats — all gone one day when he woke up. Rögnvaldur had sometimes disappeared before for short periods but he had always left his belongings behind. Now, however, it seemed that he did not intend to come back; he had vanished, taking everything he owned.

The day passed. Two days. Three days. There was no sign of Rögnvaldur. Five days. Ten days. Two weeks. Still no sign. He woke up in the night, thinking Rögnvaldur was prodding him, but it was not him, he was not there. Three weeks. Andrés kept pestering his mother.

‘Is he coming back?’

The answer was always the same.

‘How the hell should I know?’

A month.

A year.

By then he had learned to deaden the pain; it was strange how good sniffing glue could make him feel.

As far as he could, he avoided opening the door to the room where the blood still ran down the walls.

And Rögnvaldur did not come back.

He gazed up at the gloomy grey sky.

Strange, how contented he felt in the graveyard. He was sitting with his back against a lichened old stone, oblivious to the cold. He must have dozed off. Twilight was falling over the city and the rumble of traffic carried to him from beyond the wall, beyond the tall trees that overshadowed the long-forgotten graves. He was surrounded on every side by tranquil death.

Time had ceased to pass.

It had no business here.