Butterflies in November

THIRTY-ONE

One of the advantages of the Ring Road is there is very little danger of losing one’s self, even in the drizzle. But it’s another matter when it comes to finding things in the dark, like a sign, for example, indicating the turn-off to a farm guest house. We drive back and forth a few times around the spot indicated in the travel guide, moving a few centimetres to the east and a few centimetres to the west of the map. It’s difficult to gauge distances in the dark; there are no landmarks here. If there were anyone else around I’d ask for directions. I can see through the rear-view mirror that Tumi is tired and feel such an overwhelming responsibility, it’s worse than being alone — I’m responsible for another person’s happiness. The area is incredibly black. No echo of life disturbs the silence of this wilderness. I kill the engine of the car in the pitch darkness to look up my farm guest house guide again, and then make out the sound of a bird.

It suddenly dawns on me that no one will be travelling this way before the end of winter. The sun won’t rise here until the spring, when once more people will be able to make out the outlines of shapeless things, hear sounds and meet their fellow beings.

I know from experience, though, that there is a landscape out there in the dark, behind those multiple layers of clouds, which the guide commends for its beauty and extraordinarily bright summer days and nights. To conjure up a lava field and valley, I have to summon my imagination, old patriotic poems and memories of foaming streams meandering down the sandy desert. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and find myself at the foot of a steep mountain, with a slope that descends directly into my bedroom window, so close to the building that I’ll have to lean my head back to see the summit between the curtains.

It’s the Christmas lights that save me.

On the sign there is a painting of two smiling cucumbers wearing caps and shaking hands over the farm’s slogan, which reads “Cucumbers in unexpected places”. We walk into the steam of a plate of meat-stuffed cabbage rolls and melted butter in a sauce-boat.

The woman welcomes us and smiles at the boy with a warm and natural air. Maybe she has a disabled relative. She tells me they discovered thermal water in the Hái-Hamar district two summers ago, which is why a small greenhouse has been built to grow cucumbers, their speciality, pride and joy. It’s become popular among overnight guests to buy some cucumbers before they set off on their travels again. They can even have them inscribed with names, messages or declarations of love. One of their guests, an accountant from the city, handed his fiancée a cucumber over the breakfast table that said “Will you. .” Those were the only two words he managed to carve on it, not that anyone had any problems working out the rest of the sentence. They even got applauded by a group of foreign investors on a team-bonding trip, who happened to be in the room having their breakfast.

“Foreigners seem to like the shadow that hovers over the farm all day and the rain. This is the rainiest place on the island,” says the woman. “Because of the shadow from the cliffs we only get to see the sun, when it’s around that is, for two hours a day, and then the shadow comes back over the farm again, although it’s brighter over in the sheep shelter in the fields facing south, and the sheep can sometimes bask in the sunlight well into the afternoon.

“So far this year it’s rained on 295 days out of 320. Not bad, eh? We even wrote it in our brochure; sure, no one comes to Iceland to sunbathe.”

We’re lucky. One bedroom less and we would have had to sleep in the sheepcote, which they’re actually planning on converting into rooms to accommodate thirty more guests. A male choir from Estonia that is touring the country singing German Christmas carols seems to have taken over the entire establishment. It turns out that the guest house has run out of linen to make our beds, so we’re given a sleeping bag room instead. The lady insists on us having dinner; they’ve made meat-stuffed cabbage rolls, potato purée and red cabbage. She’s just cleared up, but there’s plenty left. I watch the child shovelling one meat ball down after another. He hasn’t eaten much over the past three days, just a few morsels, like a small bird. But now, on the fourth day, he’s eating like a fully grown man or a sailor on a trawler. As we’re chatting, he downs three to four glasses of milk with his food.

The woman tells me the sheep keep on getting stuck on the rocks on the cliff and that milk production subsidies have dwindled to a pittance. The summer home for problem kids from Reykjavík has gone up in smoke after two cases of arson, and none of it insured, because the insurance man had only started to appraise the wallpaper and no premium had been decided yet.

“In fact,” says the woman, “we’d come full circle and tried the whole lot: traditional farming, breeding poultry, mink, foxes, pisciculture, rearing sea bass, rabbits, and apiculture. We had to keep the beehives warm all winter, only one bee survived the cold and the rain. We’re still waiting for an answer to our ostrich-breeding application. That’s why we went into the guest farmhouse business. If we get the ostriches we’ll just add them to the foreigners.”

The food is good, but the coffee is undrinkable, no matter how much I try to sweeten and stir it. For an instant I think I catch a glimpse of the back of a familiar figure in the yard through the window, a mere flash. The imagination runs wild in this drizzle. The farmer’s wife offers me a slice of a freshly baked cake called “Conjugal bliss” to go with the coffee. A heavy cloud of rain weighs over everything, but the woman seems content enough.

I dash outside to fetch the sleeping bags in the trunk. The pot of fish balls is still firmly in its place, although the same can’t be said of the three goldfish. The jar has been knocked over and the lid has come off. Its orange contents are scattered around the trunk. Two of the fish lie dead on a dry patch and one of the sleeping bags is drenched. A small puddle has formed in a hollow by the spare wheel, where the third goldfish is still showing some sign of life, judging by the twitching of its tail. After several attempts, I manage to grab him and slip him through the neck of a half-empty bottle of water, but even when I seal the top of the bottle with my thumb and shake it, the fish shows little sign of perking up.

Tumi goes out into the yard after dinner to skip with the little girl of the house, who is around his age, but a head taller. When I come back to fetch him for bed, they’re busy saving some worms from drowning in a puddle. I don’t mention the fish yet.

On my way up to the bedroom I meet my ex-lover on the staircase and halt at a distance of five, six steps.

“Nice trousers, like the floral pattern, they suit you.”

“Thanks.”

He looks at the boy, who is in a hurry to get past us.

“I didn’t know you had a child.”

“No, I’m minding him for a friend.”

He smiles and we both move one step closer to be able to shake hands.

He hesitates, reluctant to release his grip.

“I knew you’d left town, but I didn’t know where to, this is an incredible coincidence.”

“Yes, really incredible.” He’s still holding my hand.

“I’m not following you, even though I would have wanted to, I arrived here last night,” he says. “Ahead of you then.”

I offer him a smile.

“Business trip,” he adds by way of explanation.

“Actually I’m on the point of leaving. I’m planning to get back to town tonight. Mission accomplished.”

Then he strokes me gently on the cheek.

“Unless you need company?”

“I don’t know,” I say nodding towards the kid, who is standing there perfectly still, watching our lips.

“You’re certainly one hell of a skater.”

“Thanks, you too.”

The boy gets the dry sleeping bag and I a blanket, but as soon as I come across a co-op I intend to buy two new eiderdown quilts, adult size. The boy pours the sand and pebble out of his shoes into the sleeping bag. There are multi-coloured fleece rugs on the floor.

“It smells old in here,” he says. Or maybe he’s saying that I smell good. He must be already missing kindergarten and his mommy and grandad, who sometimes comes to collect him, but at least he thinks I’m nice and that I still smell good, even though I know I must smell of rain and all the people we’ve encountered on our journey. After slipping into his sleeping bag he tries to speak in a low voice and wants to whisper something to me in confidence, but his voice comes out as loud and resonant, despite his utmost efforts.

His hand is too small to enclose all the signs of the world in words. But I have three books in the car to teach me how to understand a deaf child; I just need to make time to read them.

Having kicked and tossed under the duvet every night since I collected him from kindergarten over ten days ago, the boy sleeps to dawn without stirring.

I’m also tired. A deep depression looms over the country and I am lying in its eye, while the outside world remains enveloped in a mist.

There is some movement in the corridor; I even think I hear a faint knock on the door. A drowsy numbness starts to spread across my forehead and then descends to my cheeks. Bit by bit, I feel the day fading, odours and sounds evaporate. I sense the world withdrawing behind a thick woollen blanket with brown squares, as the flow of honey-sweetened hot milk trickles through my veins. Someone is holding me tightly. I have a vivid feminine dream and feel the mountain towering over me. When I wake up later to see if the little, dead still body beside me is still breathing, I feel as if someone were quietly closing the bedroom door behind me, but I’m too exhausted to tear myself away from my dream and get out of bed. Although I feel no need to lock the car at night, I do distinctly remember having locked the bedroom door. Granny never locked the little blue house on the seashore when she went south, not even when she spent five months recovering in the geriatric ward of the local clinic one winter. I don’t even remember there ever having been a key to the house. It was open to anyone, always full of all kinds of guests, ministers, men out of jail or stone-collectors from around the globe — they sat all together at the kitchen table eating layered tart with jam.

Once, during my last summer in the east, I was kissed on the guest mattress in the attic, without knowing by what cousin. It was almost as if nothing had happened. I barely felt it, but nevertheless knew that it was inappropriate. The following morning I wasn’t quite sure and couldn’t remember which of the two brothers had slept on the left side. I felt no change except that, for the first time, I asked Grandad to serve me coffee and Icelandic pancakes instead of porridge. After that Granny decided out of the blue that we were too big for the guests’ mattress. On the first night I slept alone in the living room, I dreamt I was wearing a half-knit white woollen cardigan with brass buttons.

I wrote this down in my diary: last summer in the east. At the beginning of October I turned fifteen.

When the boy wakes me up the next morning, I’m covered in a thick duvet in a blue cover. The blanket has been folded neatly at my feet.