I Remember You

Chapter 6

The woman was doing a little better, and seemed less agitated than during Freyr’s last visit. Otherwise everything was precisely the same as it had been the day before, so that the two visits seemed to merge into one. The woman sat in the same chair, staring out of the same window; in the air hung the same cinnamon smell, as if the same rice pudding were always being served. The worn, crocheted shawl was draped slightly further to the left over her shoulder and she’d forgotten to do up the top button on her blouse, revealing her bra’s beige shoulder strap. Otherwise, all identical: even the ladder in her thick nylon stockings showing beneath the hem of her skirt was in place. ‘I understand you didn’t want to go out yesterday. Do you remember that you didn’t think it was such a bad suggestion when I mentioned it to you? It’s good to take advantage of the nice weather while it lasts.’ Freyr spoke louder than usual. The woman wore a hearing aid and had a tendency to lose the thread. ‘And you remember what I told you about the importance of going out for regular walks? They don’t need to be long ones if you’re tired or a bit under the weather, but you’ll feel better if you get some fresh air, even if it’s only for a short time, Úrsúla.’

‘I don’t want to go out.’ The woman’s voice was lifeless and piteous, as if each breath could be her last. ‘Not now. I don’t want to be here.’

Freyr didn’t quite know how to reply. Úrsúla had had nearly a year to become accustomed to her new surroundings, but she appeared to be adjusting very slowly. They didn’t actually expect her to adapt fully to her new circumstances – the move to this nursing home had occurred rather quickly; when no other solutions were available, the decision had been made to bring her here – but Freyr had originally hoped for significant progress.

She was something of a loner; born in 1940, she had no close relatives besides a decrepit older brother who was living in Ísafjörður, which had most likely influenced the decision to move her here, along with the fact that the woman’s last legal residence had been in Ísafjörður before she fell ill at an early age and was sent to a hospital in Reykjavík. She hadn’t set eyes on the town for more than half a century; when she went to Reykjavík she was a teenager with a serious mental disorder, experiencing hallucinations and constantly plagued by fear and anxiety, and when she returned home her life was more or less over; she had grown old and there was little ahead.

In light of the woman’s condition it was unclear whether she would ever feel comfortable in her new home. She’d been an outsider as a child and had a difficult upbringing; her illness had probably started to manifest itself without anyone really noticing, and she was written off as an antisocial and rather boring kid, which meant she didn’t even have any happy childhood memories to comfort herself with. Yet she had still been sent here. This kind of decision was one of the reasons why Freyr didn’t want to have to concentrate only on his specialism, psychiatry; conventional general medicine was freer from the red tape and endless compromises of the psychiatric set-up. Úrsúla was a clear example of the system’s ruthlessness and lack of compassion, which grated against Freyr’s professional ambition. She was among the twelve residents who were forced to find refuge elsewhere when Department 7 of Kleppur Mental Hospital was closed. For decades the department had been run as a specialized treatment facility for people with chronic mental illness and severe behavioural disturbances; some of the patients, including Úrsúla, had been housed there for years, even decades. Freyr struggled to accept the argument that permanent residence in hospitals didn’t accord with modern healthcare practices or humanitarian considerations. No doubt that was true for some, but not for those who were in their advanced years and viewed the department as their home. He suspected that the nearly thirty full-time salaries saved by the closure of the department had weighed heavier than humanitarian considerations. ‘There’s nothing unusual about you taking a bit of time to get used to a new place. But hopefully it won’t take long for you to come to terms with being in Ísafjörður.’

‘No.’

The woman’s reply was so categorical that Freyr chose not to argue. ‘Of course you know I’m never far away and you can send for me if you feel you need to. The nurses are always here as well, so you just let us know if you’re feeling bad.’ He turned to the nurse. ‘But I think that’s enough for today.’ He placed his hand on the woman’s and felt how she stiffened at his touch. Her dry skin was ice-cold. It was quite depressing to think how low a percentage of those who suffered from serious mental illnesses had any hope of a reasonable recovery. For example, Úrsúla had had to live her life with the unshakable belief that she was in danger; that someone was after her and wanted to harm her. No common sense or explanation could remedy this delusion, and without medication she constantly feared that some mysterious entity was on the verge of sinking its claws into her. Her medical records ran to hundreds of pages and they made for sad reading; a more oppressive life was hard to imagine. She had a major birthday this year: she was turning seventy, but that milestone would doubtless pass as quietly as everything else in her life: a slice of cake from the staff, who might also sing her ‘Happy Birthday’. Freyr resolved to remember to bring her a beautiful gift when the day arrived; he was sure it would please her. Several times he had heard her lament that she hadn’t been confirmed – four months before her confirmation was due to take place, she’d been admitted for the first time, and despite being ill and not entirely herself, she had clearly hoped to go through with the ceremony, having no doubt been looking forward to it for some time, like most adolescents. It had always struck Freyr as sad that no one had arranged for her wish to be fulfilled, but perhaps it would make amends to do something for the woman now, when another festive occasion was imminent.

‘She doesn’t refuse her medication.’ The nurse had followed Freyr out. ‘I think it’ll all work out. As long as she doesn’t have a serious attack. Of course, we can’t monitor her twenty-four hours a day, but we do look in on her and sit with her as much as we can. We’d feel better if there were a night shift here, but as long as she takes her sleeping pills before bed we can manage without it.’

Freyr nodded. In Ísafjörður there was no communal residence where the woman could live and the nursing home was the only appropriate place for her. Its staff also looked after home care in Ísafjörður and its neighbouring towns, so they had enough on their plates even before taking on a woman who had spent so many years in a psychiatric ward. He knew these regional transfers were a significant factor in his being hired by the Regional Hospital; there was no psychiatrist in Ísafjörður or in this region of the country and it was difficult for general practitioners to provide the woman and others like her with the proper care. Upon coming to Ísafjörður, Freyr had been assigned the task of holding a course for the few staff members of the nursing home on the care of the mentally ill, and although it wasn’t as good as a specialized training course of several years’ duration, it had proved useful. This wasn’t necessarily all down to him, either – the staff had worked hard and shown a great deal of interest in what he’d had to say.

After specifying what time he would come the next day and saying goodbye, Freyr went out to his car. Before getting in, he looked up at the building and saw Úrsúla’s face in the window where she always sat. It was devoid of any emotion. She stared at him, following his every move. Freyr halted, surprised, and they caught each other’s eye. He raised his eyebrows when she opened her mouth and started speaking to him through the double glazing. The fact that he couldn’t hear her didn’t appear to stop the woman; she was still absorbed in her monologue when he looked away and got into his car. Until now Úrsúla had always been almost silent in his presence, communicating only in very short sentences, and certainly never making speeches such as the one he’d just witnessed. He couldn’t work out what had prompted it, but knew from previous experience that a variation in behaviour wasn’t a good sign. It could indicate that she was starting to go downhill. As he left the car park he called the nurse to express his concern to her and ask that they keep an eye on her. He didn’t want these conscientious staff to end up in a situation like the one when Úrsúla had lost the hearing in one ear after sticking a knitting needle into it. This had occurred several years ago and Freyr had only read about it in reports, but that was enough. She had wanted to silence a voice in her ear which was threatening her, a voice that was entirely imaginary and could therefore just as easily have started plaguing her from her belly or her toes. An attempt to silence it in one of those parts of her anatomy would have been even bloodier. In any case, they had every reason to remain alert.

Freyr’s next visit was also for monitoring purposes. He’d been asked to look in on the husband of the woman who had killed herself in Súðavík. The man’s local GP had contacted Freyr the previous evening and expressed concerns about his condition, saying that he was grateful to be able to turn to a specialist who had more experience with psychological problems than he himself did. Freyr had made several of these house calls in the south, treating people who were having difficulty coping with bereavement, although he’d encountered no suicides since moving west. So he knew what to expect, as well as the most appropriate ways to assist the grieving and bewildered spouse. According to information from the hospital, the woman had never been diagnosed with depression or any other serious disease, nor shown any signs of mental disturbance. In other words, there was nothing obvious to explain her last, desperate act. In cases like these, family members would usually start by saying that they had noticed no changes in the deceased’s behaviour, and that the suicide had hit them like lightning out of a clear blue sky. But more often than not the truth would turn out to be a different story: the person who’d chosen to put an end to their life had in fact gradually sunk so low that death had been welcome. Because this process could develop slowly, family members didn’t notice the decline or simply didn’t recognize the warning bells that rang with increasing intensity.

There was no traffic in the tunnel and Freyr allowed himself to drive faster than normal. He was well aware that the structure was safe and the mountain wasn’t about to flatten him, yet he was always glad to see the opening on the other side. The lighting wasn’t strong enough to overcome the night-blindness that always hit him when he drove into the tunnel in daylight. He had never got used to the light on this six-kilometre long journey, but thought it more likely that his discomfort had a psychological rather than a physical origin. The thought of being in a place where man was not originally intended to travel aroused in him a primitive fear that he couldn’t handle. But this time it wasn’t the thickness of the rock above him or the unnatural light that bothered him.

The image of Úrsúla speaking silently to him through the window troubled him, as well as the nagging feeling that he had failed, that he should have postponed his trip to the widower in Flateyri, turned round in the car park and gone back in to hear what she wanted to tell him. He had no idea what that might possibly be, but it increased his curiosity and regret at failing to investigate the matter while he’d had the opportunity. He would probably never know what she had on her mind. A ridiculous idea nestled deep in his brain: that the woman had meant to tell him something concerning his son. But he was well aware that she couldn’t possibly know a single thing about his situation, and that this feeling was most likely a result of the phone call from his ex-wife, which was still bothering him.

The tunnel finally came to an end and as soon as Freyr was no longer surrounded by the silent rock he felt relieved. His thoughts about what Úrsúla had muttered through the glass took on a more sensible air. It would have changed nothing if he had gone back up to her; she would probably have withdrawn into her shell as soon as he appeared at her bedside again. The GPS tracker beeped cheerfully as it came back into contact with its satellites, and began directing him to the widower’s home in a sparsely populated village jutting out into the sea beneath the slopes of Eyrarfjall Mountain.

Huge avalanche barriers stretched up along the slope, silently recalling the horror of the time, fifteen years ago, when the houses and their sleeping residents had been swept away. There was an unusually small amount of snow on the slopes, and the dark barriers could be seen clearly beneath the thin dusting. Freyr let his eyes wander up along them. Maybe the woman, who was called Halla, had lost someone she cared about in the avalanche and never recovered afterwards. Many people took these shocks very badly; it was unbearable to be constantly reminded of such a loss. He knew that more than anyone.

But this turned out not to be the case. With the help of the GPS tracker, Freyr drove straight to the grieving widower’s home. He parked the car, slowly unbuckled his seatbelt and looked over the house and its garden: an unassuming, single-storey concrete abode, considerably smaller than the palaces in the newer neighbourhoods of Reykjavík. The house appeared to be decently maintained, with clean curtains and several thriving plants in flowerpots in the windows. The hedges, at present no more than naked branches, looked as if they’d been trimmed in the autumn. In other words, there was no evidence of serious depression on the part of the homemaker. Of course it was possible that the deceased woman’s husband had seen to keeping the house and garden tidy in the hope that if everything looked fine on the surface, the situation would improve; order and control would be infectious. This would be resolved in his conversation with the man, although it was difficult to know whether he would answer honestly questions concerning the division of the household tasks; some men his age felt it beneath their dignity to put on rubber gloves.

While Freyr waited for the door to be answered, he scrutinized the copper doorplate bearing the couple’s names: Halla and Bjarni. Below them were the names of their grown-up children: Unnsteinn, Lárus and Petra, whose names were still engraved on the plate even though they had long since left home. This wasn’t the only copper ornamentation at the entrance; on each side of the door hung crosses that were far less weathered than the nameplate beneath the doorbell. A third cross had been attached to the front door itself. These symbols seemed to indicate that they were people of faith, and perhaps tied in with the place where the dead woman had chosen to end her life. However, it didn’t tally with religious devotion – or the decree of the Bible – to take matters into one’s own hands in the way the woman had, rather than entrusting oneself to God. Freyr himself was no believer, and he hoped the widower would avoid going into the subject of religion.

It was so calm and quiet outside that Freyr could hear footsteps approaching from within the house. The door opened slowly and silently. The man who appeared in the doorway was dressed in clothes that hung off him loosely, as if he had put them on out of long-standing habit and not bothered to adjust them properly on his body. His thin white hair was wiry and hadn’t been combed for some time. His eyes were swollen. ‘Are you the doctor?’ His voice was hoarse, as if he were speaking for the first time that day.

Freyr affirmed that he was and extended his hand. At first the old man looked at it in surprise, or so it seemed, before taking it. His handshake was weak and he muttered something about Freyr coming in. He didn’t need to take off his shoes. In the lobby, Jesus Christ, a crown of thorns on his head, stared upwards, the very picture of melancholy. The image was in an impressive frame, considering that it was a reproduction, and although Freyr was no art expert he came to the conclusion that the picture and frame were rather new. As he followed Bjarni into the house he spotted a sturdy candle with a golden cross and an inscription from the Bible, a carved wooden plaque praising the Lord, and several crosses similar to those hanging at the entrance. Apart from the image of Jesus, the objects seemed to have been placed quite haphazardly. Perhaps the couple had come across a clearance sale at a Christian bookshop and had had trouble arranging their purchases. Otherwise it was an extremely normal-looking home, apart from the little pile of newspapers and mail lying on the mat beneath the letterbox.

‘Are you a man of faith?’ Freyr sat down on the sofa opposite the widower, who had taken a seat in a tired old easy chair.

The man stared distantly at the coffee table between them, then said: ‘Yes. No. Maybe not right now.’ His voice was devoid of all emotion. Freyr recognized this hollow sound very well from his job, and he’d lost count of the number of times he’d watched people knead their hands together as the defeated widower did now.

‘But Halla? Was she a believer?’

‘No. Yes. The opposite of me. Wasn’t so, but became so.’

‘I ask because your home seems to indicate as much – or at least it gives the impression that Christian folk live here. That’s not too common these days.’ This was a white lie; Freyr wanted to know whether Halla had been gripped by strong religious extremism, which in some cases could be a sign of underlying psychological problems or even illness. Mental illnesses could usually be characterized by changes in thinking, behaviour or mood, or a combination of all three, and Freyr was fairly certain that one or more of these changes must have applied to Bjarni’s deceased wife. He just needed to find out which ones.

‘Halla’s interest in religion resurfaced a short time ago. I didn’t give it much thought, and it didn’t bother me. The only difference was that she started reading the Bible instead of trashy novels.’

‘It looks to me as if her renewed religious interest went a bit deeper than that.’ Freyr let his eyes wander over the Christian decorations. ‘When did you start noticing it?’

The man looked up at the ceiling, as if a calendar were hanging there. ‘Three, four years ago. I don’t remember precisely.’

Freyr changed tack. ‘As far as I understand, your wife didn’t have any obvious difficulties, wasn’t struggling with alcoholism and hadn’t been physically ill. Is that right?’ The old man nodded, apparently sincerely.

‘Was there anything in your relationship or your circumstances that might possibly have deprived her of the will to live?’

‘No. We got along fine. We were happy, even. Or so I thought.’ The man paused. ‘We weren’t in any financial trouble – we’d never been rich, or particularly poor, and we were happy with what we had, which wasn’t likely to change. Although my expenses have been cut in half now, I suppose.’

This final addendum indicated that although the man was crossing an emotional minefield, he did have a mental map of the area and would probably make it through unscathed. He was able to view his circumstances from a neutral perspective; although his black humour wasn’t particularly funny, it was a sign that he wasn’t completely overwhelmed by the gloom of his current situation.

‘I’ve come to help you, as you know,’ said Freyr. ‘There must be a lot going on in your head and hopefully I’m better than nothing if you have any questions. Or I can do the talking, if you find it more comfortable.’

The man snorted. ‘I just want to know why she did it. You can hardly answer that, can you?’

‘No, maybe not, but I think it’s likely she was ill. Mental illness can cause people unbearable pain and they can see no way to relieve their suffering other than suicide. When that’s the case, there’s no one to blame; there’s nothing that you or anyone else could have done. You should keep that firmly in mind.’

The man gave Freyr a sceptical look. ‘Halla wasn’t in any pain. I would have known.’

‘Maybe her faith eased her discomfort, or else she concealed it out of consideration for you.’

The man shook his head, but no longer seemed quite so convinced. ‘I’ve been thinking about it almost constantly since it happened, trying to remember something in her behaviour that I should have noticed. Something that could have helped me prevent her from doing what she did. But I can’t recall anything.’

Freyr decided not to reel off all the principal manifestations of suicidal tendencies. One of the clearest warning signs was a similar earlier attempt. But this was certainly not the case here. Right now it would be unhealthy for the man to become filled with regret; if Freyr were to name some of the signs, it could cause the widower even more distress if it turned out that any of them applied to Halla’s behaviour. Instead Freyr directed the conversation to how Bjarni might best arrange things to help him come to terms with the loss of his wife. The man seemed to listen and take note, and even asked a question or two, which was a good sign. Freyr was heartened to hear that the couple’s daughter, Petra, still lived in town, although the sons had long since left for the south. So the old man wasn’t left entirely alone, and Freyr urged him to have his daughter come and visit as often as possible, to go to her place for supper and accept all the companionship that she and the family had to offer. When asked, Bjarni said that he wasn’t considering following the same path as his wife, which was also a good sign, although his saying it didn’t mean they could assume it was true. Freyr was feeling reasonably satisfied with the way things were going when he realized that he had to get home. Bjarni also looked a bit tired and seemed to have stopped taking in what he was being told.

‘I’m going to look in on you tomorrow, if you don’t mind; and you can call me any time.’ Freyr handed him a business card and watched the man squint at the small lettering. Again Freyr was reassured by the widower’s reaction, since the man showed a sign of interest.

After saying goodbye, Freyr walked to his car. As he reached for the keys in his jacket pocket, he noticed a steeple that he hadn’t seen on his way through the village. Surprised, he returned to the house. ‘One final question: didn’t Halla attend church here in Flateyri?’ he said when the man reappeared in the doorway.

‘Yes.’ Clearly he understood precisely what Freyr was asking. ‘She didn’t belong to the parish in Súðavík, or attend mass or do anything else at that church.’ His voice hardened as he added: ‘She just chose to die there, but I don’t understand why she did it or why she chose that as the location.’ He fell silent, letting his eyes wander past Freyr to the town behind him. ‘Like many of us, her interest in the past grew over the years. She had recently taken to visiting old friends quite often, and she developed an increasing fascination with genealogy.’ He noticed that Freyr found this interesting and clearly wanted to make sure his words weren’t misunderstood, or that anything more could be read into them than he originally intended. ‘But I’ve felt the same, and I didn’t take my own life. It was all perfectly normal.’

On his way to Ísafjörður, Freyr couldn’t help but wonder why the woman had gone to another community’s church to kill herself. She’d doubtless wanted to protect her friends and relatives from finding her dead, but she could have chosen the church in Suðureyri, Þingeyri, or Ísafjörður, all of which were much closer. There must have been a reason for her choice, but Freyr found it impossible to guess it. He knew that it mattered; he just couldn’t figure out why.