Reykjavik Nights

52

He halted in front of the house and stared up at it before continuing on his way through the lightly falling rain. He had often retraced these steps, lingering briefly in this street. The girl’s family no longer lived here; they had moved out more than ten years before. He was not sure which room had been hers but liked to imagine that it was the one with the pretty attic window, that it was there she had awoken to a new day and got ready for school, before yelling a quick goodbye to her parents because she was running late. Cheerful as ever, according to their account.

The house had changed owners twice since then. A young couple lived there now and Erlendur wondered if they were aware that it had been home to the girl who had disappeared on her way to school. He doubted it. People came and went without dwelling too much on the past; they built new lives, shaped a new future. The cycle of life. Time waited for no man.

He was filled with the old sense of sadness as he followed the girl along the street for the last time. They walked towards the site where Camp Knox had once stood, like a bleak memorial to the occupation and the nation’s impoverished past. There he stopped and watched her go on, her outline fading into the softly falling rain.