Butterflies in November

ZERO

This is how it appears to me now, as I look back, without perhaps fully adhering to the chronology of events. In any case, there we are, pressed against each other in the middle of the photograph. I’ve got my arm draped over his shoulder and he is holding onto me somewhere — lower, inevitably — a dark brown lock of hair dangles over my very pale forehead, and he smiles from ear to ear, clutching something in his outstretched clenched hand.

His protruding ears sit low on his large head and his hearing aid, which seems unusually big and antiquated, looks like a receiver for picking up messages from outer space. Unnaturally magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles, his eyes seem to almost fill the glass, giving him a slightly peculiar air. In fact, people turn on the street to gawk at him, staring first at him, then at me, and then pin their eyes back on him again for as long as he stays in view, as we walk across the playground, for example, and I close the iron gate behind us. As I help him into the seat of the car and fasten his safety belt, I notice we are still being watched from other cars.

In the background of the photograph, there is a four-year-old manual car. The three goldfish are writhing in the trunk — he doesn’t know that yet — and the double blue sleeping bag is soaking wet. Soon I’ll be buying two new down duvets at the Co-op, because it’s not proper for a thirty-three-year-old woman to be sharing a sleeping bag with an unrelated child, it’s simply not done. It shouldn’t be any bother to buy them because the glove compartment is crammed with cash, straight from the bank. No crime has been committed, though, unless it’s a crime to have slept with three men within a 300-kilometre stretch of the Ring Road, in that mostly unpaved zone, where the coastal strip is at its narrowest, wedged between glaciers and the shore, and there is an abundance of single-lane bridges.

Nothing is as it should be. It’s the last day of November, the island is engulfed in darkness and we are both wearing sweaters. I’m in a white polo-neck and he is in a newly knit mint-green hoodie with a cabled pattern. The temperature is similar to what it was in Lisbon the day before, according to the man on the radio, and the forecast is for rain and warmer weather ahead. This is the reason why a woman shouldn’t be venturing into the dark wilderness alone with a child, without good reason, least of all in the vicinity of those single-lane bridges, where the roads are frequently flooded.

I’m not presumptuous enough to expect a new lover to appear at every single-lane bridge, without wanting, however, to preclude such a possibility.

When I look at the picture in greater detail, I see a young man, a few steps behind us, about seventeen years old I would guess, between me and the boy, although his face is slightly out of focus. I discern delicate facial features under his cap and get the feeling he has bad skin, which is beginning to improve. He seems sleepy and leans against the petrol pump with his eyes half closed.

If one were to examine the photo in extreme close-up, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were traces of feathers on the tires or bloodstains on the hubcaps, even though three weeks had passed since my husband walked out with the orthopaedic mattress from the double bed, all the camping equipment and ten boxes of books — that’s just how it went. But one needs to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and, contrary to the dead stillness of a photograph, reality is in a state of perpetual flux.