The Darkness Knows

59

Konrád stroked his withered arm and thought about what Eygló had said, his mind returning yet again to the events on the riverbank. He had been trying to avoid letting it go there because the thoughts were unbearable, but they could be sparked off without warning, for the slightest reason. This time Eygló had been the trigger. She was right, however she had managed to divine his state of mind during their brief phone call. The regret had begun to steal over him as he watched the rescue team doing their utmost to find the man in the river, and slowly but surely the guilt had taken up residence in his soul.

Days had passed and the commotion ran its course. People accepted his explanation. Accepted the testimony of the police officers, and of the witnesses on the opposite riverbank who had seen Lúkas slip and Konrád do his best to save him, almost falling into the Ölfusá himself. The police authorities weren’t going to take any action. The bystanders hadn’t noticed anything beyond what would be considered natural in such an unusual, horrifying situation: Konrád had offered the man a helping hand.

No one except Konrád knew the truth — that he had held out his weak arm, knowing full well that it wouldn’t afford the same help. That too would be forever obscured in darkness.

Sleep wouldn’t come. He stroked his wasted arm and tossed and turned until the early hours, staring up at the ceiling, a succession of images flashing through his mind: Villi lying in the road, the attack on his father by the abattoir, his mother’s fears, Polli howling with pain on Skólavörduholt hill, the psychic Engilbert and his daughter Eygló, Bernhard hanging from the rack in his workshop, and the aghast expression on Lúkas’s face as he clutched at Konrád’s withered arm.

The suffering in his eyes as he confronted death.

And, lastly, Hjaltalín in his prison cell. Those limpid eyes staring at him from the haggard face like twin oases in a desert. ‘If you ever find him,’ Hjaltalín had said in parting, ‘make him pay. Will you do that for me? Will you make him pay for what he’s done to me?’

Not until Konrád finally managed to fix his thoughts on Erna could he find any peace. And as sometimes happened when he felt low and was missing her most, the poignant notes of ‘Spring in Vaglaskógur’ stole into his mind and he slipped into a dreamless sleep, remembering the soft sand in Nauthólsvík Cove, children playing by the water’s edge, and a flower-scented kiss.