Butterflies in November

NINETEEN

Auður is on the phone.

In celebration of the news that genetic research has now demonstrated that woman played a larger role in the development of humanity than man, she wants to come over and cook me lunch tomorrow. To consecrate the stove in my studio apartment, she is going to bring some holy water from the baptismal bowl in the church she plays the organ in and sprinkle my home. This is also because, she says, people are always inviting freshly divorced men around to dinner, pampering them and volunteering to scrub their floors for them. Men have such a vast support network behind them: mothers, sisters, friends, friends’ wives, ex-wives, the friends of ex-wives, ex-mothers-in-law, sisters of former mothers-in-law. They’re told not to think twice about bringing over their dirty laundry, which can be chucked into one or two machines while they’re enjoying their meals. What’s more, their children get to stay over if their dads are having a night out on the town with their buddies. Auður tends to talk a lot, with each clause crammed with multiple digressions and interjections, but apart from that, she’s great.

It has started to rain, making the ice treacherously slippery outside, and I rush out before my friend arrives to buy some coffee and Christmas cake. I decide to buy some rock salt to sprinkle over the icy steps, at least for the benefit of the postman with the red hairband, who rings the bell when documents are too big to squeeze through the mailslot in the door and likes to chat about his favourite hobby, pole-vaulting.

As I’m walking up the path with the bag in my arms I see my lovely musical friend is sitting somehow to the side of one of my unswept and unsalted steps, clutching one leg. She has fallen on a patch of ice and her left leg looks unnaturally twisted under her. She nevertheless waves at me with a strained smile. Crouching beside her, my first thought is to fulfil my civic duty and take out the rock salt in my bag to sprinkle it all around her, to mark her territory. Like those chalk lines they draw around corpses in that Scottish crime series I now officially subtitle, I trace a white outline around the six-month-pregnant woman on the path in front of my temporary new home.

“It’s just a ligament,” she says as we peer at the abnormally big swelling on her left ankle.

I’m filled with a deep sense of guilt and, for some peculiar reason, think of last night’s dream. I hear myself telling her that it will be OK and ask her if she can walk. She can’t touch the ground with her foot. I try to help her up, but she collapses again with a smothered groan, so I rush inside to call an ambulance.

They’ve already loaded her onto a stretcher in a woollen blanket, and fastened the straps around her big round tummy, which has suddenly inflated to the size of a huge balloon under the cover, when she turns her head towards a brown paper bag on the steps:

“Sorry, I just brought some takeaways,” she says. I promise to cook next. A shot of pain crosses her face as they carry the stretcher away. I follow her to the ambulance and she squeezes my hand as we say goodbye.

“Can you collect Tumi from the kindergarten for me and keep him over the weekend, I don’t want to involve Mom in any of this, not yet at least, her blood pressure is far too high. The only thing you need to watch out for is his sleepwalking, he’s been known to open doors and vanish behind corners, and even to put himself in danger. Once I found him down by the lake. Just make sure you don’t startle him when he’s in that state.”

“OK,” I say.

“He also likes to feel a lock of hair brushing across his face when he’s falling asleep. I find it also reduces the likelihood of him sleepwalking,” says my friend with the long ponytail.

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Hakúna matata!” she cries out to me. That’s Swahili for “don’t worry”, by the way, from The Lion King, his favourite movie. She waves me goodbye, beaming from ear to ear.

I’m left standing in the unsalted slush, in the pale grey light of noon, with a bag containing brown rice, an organic vegetarian dish and apricot mousse in little paper boxes. For the sake of making some token gesture, I sprinkle the steps with salt.